Lians

Poor fella won't be able to get his quick fix of blood money for three years? Oh, the humanity!

What's your working definition of belief? If you don't define belief, a belief system can mean just about anything. How do you deal with the circular nature of statements like "believing in belief?" If I parsed the dialogue correctly, your argument is based on two dependent syllogisms, the first one being: God is the highest level [belief] system. God is predicated on belief. Therefore belief is the highest level belief system. Ignoring the circular definition of belief, the argument is valid. The second proposition, however, is not true. I'll go into that a little later. Even if we assume that your first argument stands, you've got an even bigger problem with the second one: Belief is the highest level [belief] system. God is a toxic (false?) belief system. Therefore belief is toxic. This argument is invalid because you're inverting the categorical structure that you created earlier. God is a specialization of belief, so everything you prove or state about belief applies to God. However, everything that you prove or state about God doesn't necessarily apply to belief. To give you an analogous example: Dogs are mammals. Dogs bark. Therefore all mammals bark. This is obviously false. Suggestion: Don't use fiction to make logical arguments. There's too much ambiguity. I can offer what I consider to be a rational definition: Belief is a statement that isn't backed by reason and evidence. Belief is a value neutral generalization of faith and knowledge; the lack or presence of supporting reason and evidence drops it into the special cases of, respectively, faith and knowledge. Here are some examples in case you find the definition too abstract: I believe that gases expand when heated. [may or may not be true; needs further exploration] I have faith in God, therefore God exists. [faith claim; unsupported by reason and evidence] Gases expand when heated. [knowledge claim; supported by evidence] In my debating experience, the religious position falls into roughly three categories: 1. Rejection of reality: Religious: I have faith in God, therefore God exists. [rejection of reason and evidence] Atheist: God is a self-contradictory entity that opposes physical laws. [supported by reason and evidence] Translation of the religious position: Reason and evidence are not a standard for truth, so atheists are wrong. 2. Invention of reality: Religious: I know that God exists because of X. Translation of the religious position: I'll invent a reality wherein I'm right and everyone that opposes me is wrong. I'll invent evidence when none is present. 3. Manipulation of reality/definitions: Religious: I have faith in the existence of God. Atheists have faith in the non-existence of God. To each their own. Both positions are right. Translation of the religious position: I don't give a shit about reality, and by definition, I'm right. Religious debaters often mix these three approaches in an argument to confuse the opponent. This is why I have a test question that helps me determine whether I should even bother debating: How do you know that something is true? Fundamentally, it's their reality processing capacity that is twisted and often broken beyond repair, not their belief system. If you're interested in how and why this happens, you can listen to the famous invisible apple podcast: FDR 70 - How to control a human soul http://cdn.media.freedomainradio.com/feed/how_to_control_a_human_soul.mp3

If I remember correctly, he's stated that to him, soul is a word describing the sum-total of one's experiences; the trio of the conscious and unconscious minds along with the body.

This is a very good question. It will be a bitter sweet experience, but as long as you stay conscious about the possibility of projecting your inner child on your toddler, you should be fine. Stef goes into this in some of his parenting podcasts. Recognizing the projection dynamic at play is a matter of practice. It will be harder for you relative to someone who was parented that way, but this is the reality that we have to live with. Through work on self-knowledge you may, in fact, become a better parent than those who had a much happier childhood.

Glad I could be of help. The negotiations with my vengeful part took place during a period of intense anger that I named after a song - seven days to the wolves. Without acting out, I allowed the seemingly endless anger to course through my entire mind and body. No judgements and no reservations on my part. Afterwards, the sadness and exhaustion came with a new knowledge, attitude and resolve within me. It was a life-changing experience.

I fully agree. To clarify a little more, the Alex Jones metaphor is exaggerated on purpose. The mistakes I made were much more subtle and revolved around thinking I can get people to accept philosophy if they were on the same path that I walked in the past. It was very manipulative and it never worked. Borrowing the AJ metaphor again, it would be like me trying to hook people on the less volatile conspiracy theories, so they could eventually arrive at hardcore philosophy.

I'll give you a few thoughts that I work with when I'm dealing with my own history. Take them for what they're worth. Conditional love, to me, is a disgusting euphemism. You may conditionally love your friends, girlfriend or wife, but that's not what the child experiences. To a child, withdrawal of love and affection is a death sentence. It's a threat of abandonment that evokes terrible feelings of pain and fear. These aren't irrational feelings. Looking at the history of parenting, abandoning and even killing your children if they were disobedient or merely inconvenient was common occurrence. The fear and pain are carved into the genetic history of our species. I've heard of people trying to re-parent their inner children with unconditional love and care. I'm no expert in this area, but the promise of providing the love that was never given seems disingenuous and disrespectful. Virtuous actions apply both to others and ourselves. Be honest with your wounded parts. Don't give them false promises. Acknowledge their suffering and never downplay the painful events that gave birth to them within you. I've had parts of me get rightfully angry when I tried to promise the impossible. You can't put the lack of unconditional love on the same scale as something that can be lost and found; stolen and then replaced. Personally, I've accepted that I'll never experience unconditional love and I try to work around this knowledge. I won't go into the entire argument here, but it's not healthy for me to experience this kind of love as an adult either. The only thing that puts my inner child at ease is my commitment to virtue and the firm resolve to provide this unconditional love to my own children.

You can read Antonio Damasio on the role of emotions. People who don't have access to their emotions have great difficulty in making decisions and prioritizing. That's because emotions underlie our value judgements; what psychologists call valence. One of Damasio's patients, Elliot, became a famous example of this inability to apply valence to one's reasoning capacity.

I like the quality of the line work and rendering! Nice pose and lovely work on the eyes! The background is a little distracting because of its contrast and values being too close to the foreground. More blur and less saturation will make Stef stand out a lot more. Consider adding skin highlights, particularly to the nose, chin and cheekbones, to match the vitality of the eyes! I've got to say that seeing Stef with hair is a little... unsettling.

For those who are interested in the context of the topic (and don't know that you can click on the icon in the upper right of the quote box), here's a link to the thread where I made that comment: http://board.freedomainradio.com/topic/38213-the-curse-of-knowledge My heart goes out to you... What an unbelievably fucked up environment to be in at such a tender age. I'll tell you a little bit about my own history in case you find my perspective useful. I can relate to what you're saying because my own parents put me through a lot of verbal abuse; humiliation was a daily occurrence for me. They called me a phony philosopher whenever I pushed back the madness with reason. I absolutely hated it when they called me that. I cried when I first watched this series a few years ago. At the time, I couldn't quite access the full range of emotions that it brought up in me. Much later, when I was watching it for the second time, I already knew what I was looking for both in the story and within me - the desire for vengeance. Images of me going back home and punching my parents through a wall started flooding my mind. I was feeling what my tortured younger self couldn't acknowledge at the time. I was a rebellious kid (freedom fighter is what I'd call it now) and when I was around 12 years old I got into yet another conflict with my mother. "You [mum and dad] don't love me," is what I said to her. My mother started screeching and my father stormed into the room. They proceeded to yell and threaten me into accepting that they did, in fact, love me. Madness. From that moment on, with one exception, I never got into a serious fight with them. They were delighted by this transformation, but they didn't know what the future had in store for them. Every time they treated me badly, I'd say nothing. I wouldn't retaliate, I'd just go along to appease them. Unconsciously, I was starting to enact my revenge. My parents could no longer project their sins on my rebellious behaviour, so their guilt started eating away at their happiness even faster. I've heard stories of my father getting piss drunk and crying about what he had done to me (the verbal abuse was just one dimension of my suffering), and my mother became a hypochondriac. They had no idea where the damage was coming from. When I was working through my history with passive aggression I had to decide what I wanted to do with my desire for revenge. I knew not to suppress it, and in my negotiations with this vengeful part, we came to a mutually beneficial agreement. I'd take on the once dreaded title of a philosopher and work towards creating a world where it's people like my parents that would have to drink the hemlock. Philosophy would become a shield for my empathy, and at the same time, with philosophy as a sword, I'd be enacting non-violent, systematic revenge, not just on my parents, but every abuser out there. Even though I won't be there to see it, a part of me feels happy about the brutal self-destruction of my parents. They taught me well as a kid: You reap what you sow. Now I'd like to address a few things in your post. What would have happened if you criticised him? You've just described a highly volatile and possibly dangerous man. What would have happened to your cousins had you triggered his rage? What would have happened to you? Let's say you relinquished the passive aggression and fully submitted to your uncle. I don't think that's humanly possible, but it's worthwhile to examine the other extreme. What would be left of your personality? When you are enslaved, passive aggression is a healthy thing to have as long as you're conscious about it. When it's unconscious, we almost certainly become addicted to it. It's also important to recognize that you can't change others; not your uncle, not anyone. Even in the psychological profession, practitioners are taught that you can't do anything about people who aren't willing to change; you can only assist them in their desire to heal. There's a reason why I used attraction rather than obsession in the part that you quoted. An even better word for it would be passion. There's a negative connotation to the word obsession. It's associated with irrational behaviour. The things you are obsessed about are not actionable. Teenage girls who are fans of Justin Bieber are said to be obsessed with his personality because they "love" him even though they can never fulfil their desire to be with him. It's the same with people who hang onto impossible life goals. Ethics is not only perfectly actionable, but with the exception of the laws of nature, it's the most powerful force in all of human history. Whoever control ethics controls the world. You already know that. You saw it in the story of the trial and death of Socrates. Reaching across the ages, the ghostly hand of a man who died two and half millennia ago is still trying to strangle the future. His cursed speech is so embedded in our culture that people don't even know that he's speaking through them. I was absolutely terrified when I first heard his dying words. We're given a rehashing of his speech every time we bring up anarchy in a conversation. To me, Stef's treatment of the death of Socrates is not only a beautiful and enlightening story, but also the mission statement of what we're trying to achieve as a community. Take pride in your passion for ethics! On a side note, I wrote a related post that you can find here: http://board.freedomainradio.com/topic/38234-anarchism-in-the-media/#entry350057 Aristophanes' comedy says a lot about the impact of philosophy on a morally corrupt society.

Never do! I've certainly benefited from the different perspective that you've shared. That's a good point. In my experience, this is true even for more subtle forms of addiction. It took me a while to acquire enough philosophy and self-knowledge to bust open the gates of history and stop being drawn to managing other people's false selves. When I did that, a part of me tried to tempt me with the sweet nothingness of nihilism, but it was nothing a good old Socratic questioning couldn't resolve. Having UPB in your fight against evil, in its many forms, is like driving a tank amidst a medieval battlefield.

Should have made this clearer, but I was talking about drugs like heroin. It's a well known fact (read Gabor Mate on this) that addicts use drugs like heroin to self-medicate. The suffering they went through is far greater compared to your average person. The should in my post is a reference to having consistent principles. I'm fully on board with having no unchosen positive obligations. Thing is, if I do decide to extend kindness and compassion, it should be proportional to the severity of the victim's suffering. This is a personal principle. I didn't fully recognize the difficulties that spiritual people are facing until today, and I have you to thank for that. I think this is a matter of perspective. Let me explain. I went through an Alex Jones phase before joining FDR. I won't recommend his show to anyone, but I'm also aware that I needed a validation of my anger to help me get through the initial fear of consistent rationality. Alex served this purpose at the time. In other words, I fully sympathise with people who come to this place through him, but I won't send anyone to his place. I don't like the guy, but I'm also grateful that he's a stepping stone for many free thinkers. I'm perfectly comfortable with feeling ambivalent about him. Ambivalence gives me the greatest range of possible action. Is it good or is it bad for Stef to go on his show? I don't know. The captain has a much better perspective on where the FDR flagship is going, so I trust his decisions. If I could make the for or against argument, I'd let him know about it. I can't do that, but I can sure as hell punch countless holes through both positions. Here's another thing that I learned pretty late in my involvement with FDR. You are not like most people. This may seem obvious, but again, let me explain. The vast majority of Alex Jones' listeners will never come to FDR. Alex is their be all and end all when it comes to learning about the world. You could even argue that a lot of them may have been better off never finding his show. I think there's some merit to this speculation, but I nonetheless respect their choice and judge them for it! There are a lot of things I'd recommend, but the Alex Jones show is not one of them. I simply don't know if the person I'm sending there won't get hooked on conspiracy theories, never to seek philosophy again. I don't want their tinfoil downfall on my conscience! Similarly, you, unlike the vast majority of spiritualists, chose to learn philosophy. I admire the courage and foresight it took to make this decision. However, it's important to recognize that, in choosing to come here, you're not like most people. We who love reason and self-knowledge are probably the most hated group of people in the world (evil atheists and crazy anarchists). Since you're not like most people, you should be very careful when extrapolating your experiences and making generalized statements based on that. Do mind the complexity is all I'm suggesting. I'm no saint in this regard since I've made the same mistake many times in the past. I hope this makes sense. All of the above being said, I agree that the path to rationality is not a straight line. Mine was pretty wobbly.

Just realized I never actually explained how Aristophanes' comedy is related to this show. I watched a few episodes when Sons of Anarchy first came out. To analyse the show's impact, you have to take the whole story in; both the emotional and intellectual content. If I remember correctly, the protagonists were brutish, miserable and unfulfilled. The whole environment was ripe with dysfunction. I doubt much of this has changed in later episodes. What's the message here? Here's what happens to those who fight unjust power. This is what's born out of anarchy. These are her sons!

I think the best way to go about doing this is to lead by example. Stef's doing that himself. All his wonderful metaphors come from his arts background, not philosophy in itself. Have a listen to this: FDR1449 'Arch' - A Poem http://cdn.media.freedomainradio.com/feed/FDR_1449_arch_a_poem_analysis.mp3 Personally, philosophy rekindled my passion for beauty and added so much more to it. When it comes to artistic drive, happiness and love in the service of reason can be just as effective as the pain and sadness caused by evil. I say this from experience!

Where I come from, religious people are praised and admired for their piety, while followers of spiritual movements are mocked and berated for being a bunch of "loony cultists." Your post really helped me reassess some of my thoughts and feelings on the matter. I'll share this experience in case someone finds it useful. I found myself automatically siding with the culture that indoctrinated me. Looking inwards, I also found that, relative to the spiritual people, I had a lot more compassion for religious folks. I'm not particularly fond of unconscious biases, so I gave this some further thought. While there are certainly a lot of parallels, religion and spiritualism are also different in some key aspects. Pretty much all people are coerced into religion from a very young age. In contrast, the spiritual path is, typically, chosen much later in life; it's more voluntary relative to religion. Moreover, I've never heard of spiritual leaders advocating violence. The priests, on the other hand, have a long history of inciting wars. I've never heard of a spiritual alcoholic beating the shit out of his wife and kids either. From an abstract standpoint, religion seems to be more dangerous. What about the followers? In my experience, spiritual people come from pretty wretched backgrounds and most of them, in their search for alternatives, choose to abandon the comfort of religion. Religious communities are certainly known for covering up severe abuse and I think this might have something to do with it. Lovers of philosophy excepted, why would you reject community support and live a life of scorn and mockery? To me, it seems much harder to break the mental bonds of spiritualism compared to abandoning religion, and that's why I considered the ideology to be more dangerous. I never really questioned the logic behind this assumption. In order to keep this short, I'll equate religion to a virus and spiritualism to a drug. Only people in desperate need turn to drugs for salvation. If spiritual people come from more painful backgrounds, it would make perfect sense for them to have more difficulty in embracing philosophy. This means that I should have more compassion for them, not less. Thanks for helping me address a gap in my capacity for empathy, Mishelle! I'll mull this over some more and I'd love to hear your thoughts as well!

Here's a great way of learning some applied philosophy on the cheap: http://board.freedomainradio.com/topic/38228-the-philosophers-toolkit/ The course will certainly give you a lot of ideas about what topics you can bring up with your child. It's designed for adult learners and it's somewhat heavy on terminology. You'll have to digest and present the information in an age-appropriate way. There's definitely room for creativity on your part. I've shared some thoughts about unschooling here: http://board.freedomainradio.com/topic/38077-unschooling-resources/#entry348480 I hope you find them useful. Other than that, keep listening to the show, and you'll have all the philosophical and emotional tools you need to raise a young philosopher!

Half-way through now! To me, the lecture on heuristics alone is worth the price of the course. I had so many AH-HA! moments. I've always instinctively relied on, and even created my own reasoning heuristics, calling them shortcuts. Now that I was introduced to them more formally, I can improve their efficiency tremendously. This is the one new tool that I got out of the course so far. Additional highlights: Use reason and emotions together, they're both useful! (I was surprised a professor of philosophy advocated this position!) Aristotelian logic. Difference between true and valid arguments. Learn how to parse arguments. Diffuse polarized arguments through, wait for it, negotiation! I was expecting a lot more rigid and dry topics, but I'm quite pleased with the range of information that is presented. If you combine this course with some lessons on grammar, you'll have yourself a Trivium - the famed education approach that a lot of unschoolers advocate. There's not a whole lot of debt to particular topics, but you can always supplement them with the internet, books and FDR material. Who said education was expensive? I don't expect to get much out of the other lectures since I already know the maths behind them. I'll update this thread with some additional information and my final thoughts after I finish the course.

Your articles inspired me to put some thoughts on art into writing: http://board.freedomainradio.com/topic/38234-anarchism-in-the-media/#entry350057 You may find that post interesting!

Come January, I'm turning 23. I've lead a pretty eventful life, so I feel older than I should be. It's a gift and a curse. Glad I could be of help, but my wisdom comes solely from philosophy. Keep ploughing through Stef's content and you'll reap the same benefits!

I like to remind myself of an ancient story whenever I'm thinking about the media's relationship with the truth. The story takes place in Athens, more than two millennia ago. It's something I've assembled out of our existing knowledge of the Ancient Greeks. I hope you don't mind if I post it here. I think there's something to learn from it. The earliest account of Socrates comes from Aristophanes, a famous Athenian playwright. In a comedy called The Clouds Aristophanes portrays Socrates as a quirky teacher of natural philosophy, a discipline that is as scientific as it gets when it comes to the ancients. This was no harmless humour. At the time, people accused of practising or teaching natural philosophy were tried by the State and executed for atheism. Years later, after his trial, Socrates, freed from the fear of dying, openly admits to pursuing natural philosophy in his youth. In his early philosophical journey he couldn't refute the idea of having Gods as primary movers in the world, so he embarked on what he called a second sailing - a philosophy that is focused on people rather than nature. Socrates' acknowledgement affirms that Aristophanes was no slanderer. However, there's something much more sinister about the comedy. As the plot unfolds, Socrates is revealed as someone who corrupts the young and turns them against their parents. Having received the teachings of Socrates, Pheidippides, the son of Strepsiades, argues that it's just for a wise son to beat a foolish father. Aren't the elderly permitted to punish the young because of their superior wisdom? Strepsiades, despite getting beaten by Pheidippides over a dispute, accepts his son's superior reasoning. Mind you, beating your parents was about the most deplorable thing a Greek could do back in those days. When Pheidippides threatens to beat his mother as well, Strepsiades snaps and swears revenge on Socrates for corrupting his son. The play ends with the vengeful father burning down Socrates' school of natural philosophy. The story presented in Aristophanes' comedy is remarkably similar to what we have to deal with, isn't it? This was two and a half millennia ago! Indeed, the power of philosophy was very clear even back then. Needless to say, the play had a profound impact on the way Athenian society perceived Socrates and philosophy as a whole. Here we have an example of how the media, and art in particular, attacks everyone that challenges the existing power paradigm. Emotional arguments can be a terrible vehicle for corruption. The story doesn't end here. After Socrates' execution, Plato published a transcription of his teacher's final speech. In it, Socrates makes the cursed argument that Athenians should obey the laws of the State. Naturally, this transcription had a profound impact on Socrates' reputation. The public was now on his side. Enter Xenophon and Plato who both published vindications of Socrates in the form of stories about their teacher. Xenophon, a student of Socrates, was one of the most prolific writers in all of antiquity. Up until the Dark Ages, everyone who was considered learned had to read his work. Plato himself was a renowned rhetorician. These two made Socrates famous. When the balance of the social scales tipped in favour of Socrates, art and media suddenly found themselves on his side. There's great power as well as terrible danger in the artistic mediums. I don't think we'll have much support from the media until the general public acknowledges the messages we're trying to spread. I'm not holding my breath for this possibility, but I really wish that, for once in history, mainstream art got behind just causes that are unpopular. For philosophy to be successful, it has to be embedded in the very fabric of society. No one does that better than artists. Thanks for reading my musings!

I was somewhat of a history buff from a very young age, which gave me a perspective on the destructive and seemingly random power of the State. Going over the history of the world, I was amazed that anyone could claim any certainty about politics. My father further pushed me towards becoming apolitical by mocking my lack of knowledge about contemporary politics. History and contempt for my father made the intellectual acceptance of anarchism quite an easy step for me. My parents weren't particularly religious and I pretty much became an atheist after reading a children's bible. I prayed once and didn't get what I wanted. Eventually, I realized I had to get up and put in the work necessary to achieve something. In that moment, God was no more. I was too young and inexperienced to articulate what I felt was wrong with religion, so I decided to look for logical arguments supporting atheism. Fast forward a few years later, and I'm watching the first Zeitgeist documentary. Alex Jones made an appearance in it. At the time, I was very angry and anxious. I had a growing feeling that something was terribly wrong with the world and I didn't know why. Moreover, things were, once again, starting to escalate at home (I was a "rebellious kid," you see). The angry Alex made me think the following: "He's angry. I'm angry. Maybe he's got something figured out." That was about three and a half years ago. I became disillusioned after listening to his show for a few months. He didn't understand the root causes of the problem, hence why he couldn't offer any solutions. Putting all the religiosity and conspiracy theories aside, all he did was point fingers at arbitrary groups of people and spit saliva into a camera. Stef made his first appearance on the Alex Jones show and I haven't looked back ever since. I was really into logic and debating prior to finding FDR, so the philosophy portion was quite easy for me to assimilate. Coming to terms with self-knowledge took a lot longer. Applying this newly discovered knowledge to my life was, undoubtedly, the hardest thing for me to do. It took a few years, but I got there eventually. I'm currently excited and fearful of the possibilities that lie ahead. As I once wrote, I'll keep chipping away at the unknown self until the path forward is revealed.

Mishelle, what you're experiencing is what I like to call a FOO infection. I've identified two distinct patterns to this phenomenon - unprocessed history and emotional contagion. In your case, the unprocessed history would be related to why your sister isn't sensitive to your desire to stay away from the family, why you wanted to call her and so forth. Resolving it is a matter of focused questioning and examination on both emotional and philosophical levels. Emotional contagion is the unconscious passing of emotion from one person to another. It's an automatic process that's built into us for adaptation, or even survival purposes. We are social species after all. You don't want to be happy and relaxed amidst an angry lynch mob. If anything, they'll single you out for acting differently. I haven't found a way to counteract this tendency, and I don't think there is one. It's important that you recognize when an emotional contagion is taking place. The conscious identification will allow you to isolate the questionable feelings and trace their origin. Strategies for resolving contagion issues depend on your degree of self-knowledge. RTR-ing with yourself really helps. The only long-term solution is to decrease your exposure to dysfunctional people, parting ways with them if necessary. For example, that's one of the reasons why I don't associate myself with habitually negative people. They haven't abused me or done me wrong, but their negativity is passed onto me anyway. My history and understanding of solitude is quite interesting. As a kid, I often yearned for solitude and was deeply suspicious of people who tried to portray it as negative. After school, I was usually thinking or reading alone in my room. On the other hand, as part of my activities and interests, I had to spend a lot of time around other people. I really struggled to reconcile the two social dynamics. I don't have a final solution, but I can tell you what works for me. I feel a deep desire for solitude whenever I'm trying to identify and resolve a core issue within me. There are two main benefits to the isolation approach. First, if you no longer have the issue after distancing yourself from others, the cause is most likely external (i.e. emotional contagion). Isolation is a quick and effective way of nailing down probable causes. The second benefit is a bit more subtle. False-self-driven people around you will consciously or unconsciously try to sabotage you whenever they sense that you're breaking out of the mould. By the time you emerge from your self-knowledge cocoon, it will be too late for them to affect you. After I've made some progress, I often feel a desire to put myself out there to evaluate how close I am to my goals. If things are the same and nothing's changed, I go back to the drawing board. To me, this solitude-socializing dynamic is an iterative process that is quite effective when it comes to gaining self-knowledge. I suspect things will change as I begin to introduce more positive people into my life. The desire to be alone in times of self-work will most likely diminish. In the long run, the whole process may smooth out and become more organic, allowing me to easily integrate it in my daily life. However, I won't relinquish my need for solitude until then! Here are a few disclaimers and clarifications. Working with a therapist is just about the only exception I have for what I outlined above. My history with abuse is, in many ways, quite extreme, so this approach may not work for you. On the other hand, if it works for extreme cases, it may also help with less severe ones.

Every once in a while, I like to take on the daunting task of revising my mental toolkit. Due to the scope of my work, ranging from art to science, this toolkit inevitably grows large and unwieldy as I'm using it. I value nimbleness, and I have to carefully organize and improve my selection of tools, deriving powerful generic tools and throwing away the ones I find useless. As you can imagine, this is a difficult and head-scratch inducing process. In my quest for insight, I stumbled across an online course called The Philosopher’s Toolkit: How to Be the Most Rational Person in Any Room. I scoffed at the title, but I decided to take a closer look before passing judgement. The selection of topics seemed quite interesting and so I bought it. I'm only a third of the way through and the material is fantastic. I'd usually complete the whole course before recommending it, but there's a 72% holiday discount and I wanted to save you some money. So far, I haven't learned any new techniques, but I really enjoy the empirical evidence that is provided alongside proposed methodologies. The scientific research and real-life examples really help me discern the value of my own mental tools. The course material draws on insight from philosophy, psychology, physics, mathematics and various other disciplines. It took me many years and a lot of hard work to synthesize the information that is so readily presented in this course. I really wish my parents had given me these tools when I was younger. They could have saved me all those years in which I wandered around blindly, consuming random pieces of information with the hope of finding some wisdom in them. If you never bothered going deeper into applied philosophy or have a young philosopher at home, this course is for you! As an adult, you can save yourself the effort of going through a lot of thick and poorly written books. More importantly, you can easily use the presented methodologies as a foundation for your child's lifelong learning. I'll definitely be saving a copy for when I become a dad. The information is organized and presented with great care. You'll miss out on a lot if you only get the audio version.

Forgiveness is earned, not given. Too soon and too easily are meaningless phrases because you don't have a standard for comparison. Look for the evidence instead. Are you free of your mental prison? You've gone to great lengths to, as you said, balance your inner world, so why is a single article enough to destabilize it? In my opinion, you should thoroughly examine your current situation from all possible angles and base your conclusions on evidence, not theory. There's a reason why your map is different relative to the territory it describes. You weren't looking for the actual landmarks when you set out to map the terrain. Just by reading this thread I can tell you about one glaringly obvious danger that stems from a real-life philosophical inconsistency. I ignored your theories about the unconscious for a reason. No, it's not because you didn't put forward any arguments for me to dispute. It's because you used this theory to normalize what your parents, particularly your mother, did to you. The world would be a great place if people started listening to their unconscious, right? Let me translate that. My mum will change for the better if I could get her to listen to her unconscious. I won't go into all the things that are wrong with this expectation, but I'll give you a hypothetical scenario that can be a direct result of putting your theory to practice. Suppose I'm a really nasty and exploitive person. I see you trying to get abusers in your life to repent for their wrongdoings, so I decide that you'll be an easy target for my villainy. I initially approach you with warmth and generosity to gain your trust. Once you trust me, I ask you to lend me some money that I don't intend to return. You lend me the money because you consider me a friend, but you quickly realize that I'm not going to pay my debt. Outraged, you confront me about this injustice. What do I do? Why, I break down crying because I feel guilty. I tell you all about my poor family and my financial difficulties. This is all an act, of course. What do you do? Well, to stay consistent with your past behaviour you give me a lecture about the virtue of paying your debts. You may even give me advice about how I should manage my finances. How amazing! Not only do you forgive my debt, but by deciding to keep me around, you willingly get pulled even deeper into my scheme. Delicious. The rest of my post will be pure conjecture and you should take it as such. I don't think this is an intellectual problem for you. You seem like a smart fellow, and you've been around this community for a while. I believe you're disconnected from your feelings of anger and hatred, hence why you sought refuge in eastern philosophy. It's hard to keep these feelings at bay, isn't it? Now, reading this article stirred things up for you emotionally, and a part of you, probably an inner mum, tried to silence the voices of outrage. It tried to lull them back to sleep. However, these voices were strong enough to cause you the anxiety that will motivate you to come to the one place where abusive mothers don't get to do what they want. I don't know about other people, but you do have an unconscious that's looking out for you. You should take your own advice and listen to it more. You have no way of defending yourself emotionally because you don't have your boundary enforcers, anger and hatred, on your side. As you are, you won't survive a direct emotional confrontation with your mother. If you haven't done so already, I recommend you read Stef's Real-Time Relationships and let it sink in before taking any action. RTR can be your shield. I don't have much else to say, so I'll wish you good luck on your journey. You've come further than most and happiness is just over the hill. I hope you find the strength to get to it!

If they're truly narcissistic, I'm out. If they're lying about being narcissistic, I'm out. If they don't know what they're talking about yet portray themselves as narcissistic, I'm out. No way to lose this game.