Lians

The free market will draw them for us? Straight lines are a statist scheme anyway.

None of my relationships survived the application of RTR, so I can certainly relate to your experience. I think another benefit you're going to get from parting ways with your old friend is the raw self-knowledge that you locked away in order to maintain the friendship. It's certainly worthwhile to examine why that person got into your life and how he may have negatively influenced your development. I got some truly invaluable life lessons after I parted ways with my four best friends.

Those are some very good observations, TT. I have some thoughts about the more general issue. I've always found the alpha-omega categorization misleading and unnecessary. We have better and more accurate words to describe it - master and slave. Abstract Greek letters certainly help people avoid the reality of the world around them. The master-slave dynamic is at the root of all violent hierarchies; a horrific outgrowth of anti-philosophical societies. It's accompanied by enforcers (police, military), enablers (priests, intellectuals) and a variety of other auxiliary classes. Typically, this dynamic is only attributed to men, which absolves women of the capacity to do evil. Aggression is the master's tool for control. Passive aggression is the slave's tool for vengeance. I don't know about you, but I've always found passive aggression much more sinister and toxic, particularly in its capacity to become addictive for those who use it. Aggression isn't all that difficult to identify. However, in the absence of self-knowledge, passive aggression can slither behind our defences and slowly eat away at our core.

I've had some of my biggest breakthroughs after getting rid of corrupt people in my environment. Acknowledging the scars of history then becomes a whole lot easier. It's very hard to see certain things about yourself when you're surrounded by enablers. Dealing with historical inertia is also quite important. We're creatures of habit and that's not a bad thing. However, when these habits are created within a toxic environment they can become a major roadblock on the path to self-knowledge.

Thank you for the honesty! I really applaud your desire to help people! Something struck me as odd while reading your post. You seem to have a difficulty in trusting yourself, but at the same time, you want to be an effective force of change in people's lives. That's quite paralysing, isn't it? "I want to help you, but I'm afraid I might hurt you." In my experience, these kinds of paralyses tend to occur when genuine desires meet inflicted mythologies within us. It's a clash of competing interests. A tug of war even! All you need to do is follow the benefit. You probably already know where these inflicted mythologies come from. Who in your history didn't benefit from you expressing or acting on your desires? Did you have anyone hurt you while claiming to do something for your own benefit? These are important questions to ask yourself. From an evolutionary standpoint, babies that couldn't express or act on their desires/needs wouldn't survive very long. The "I don't trust the authenticity of my desires" gene was wiped off very early in our development as a species. This means that at some point in our lives we all learn not to trust ourselves.

This is a very interesting question, Matt. Can you tell us a little more about the feelings that are beneath your concern? Is it a fear that the other person will perceive your empathy as disingenuous? That you'll say the wrong things and mess things up?

Congratulations! Your kids are so lucky to have you guys as parents! I'd give a kidney to get back those 12 years of forced indoctrination.

I think it's important to recognize that you don't have the skills to deal with this kind of situation. You may, in fact, make things worse. There are experts who dedicate their entire lives to helping people like your colleague. What you can do is look up some statistical information, local domestic abuse hotlines, organizations that deal with physically abused people, group therapy for violence victims and anything else that could be of practical use. Anything that you'd like to have if you were in the same situation. After you've done your research, you can leave an anonymous package containing all the information you have gathered. You have to have a really strong bond with that person to directly influence their decision. Even then, you'll have to deal with all the crushing shame. I think it's better to let them make a decision based on the presented information without involving yourself personally. If you think you can breach the wall of shame, by all means, talk to them instead of relying on anonymity. Thank you for caring.

First off, thank you for taking the time to research such an important topic. I'd question the approach these researches have taken in gathering the data. Genes can turn on and off based on one's environment (look up epigenetics), so I don't know how easy it is to create controlled experiments that take into account this kind of deviation. Given the complexity of the subject, they'll also have to rely on the notoriously unreliable self-reporting. Finally, you'd need some fairly conclusive evidence to overturn decades of work in psychology. If this research was credible, psychologists from across the world would be all over it. When you want to get credible information about drug addiction, you should go to experts like Gabor Mate. Have a look at this video if you find the topic of addiction interesting: He's got some popular books out and Stef has also done an interview with him. Peaceful parenting only says that you shouldn't use violence, abandon or threaten to withdrawal care and affection from your children. In the absence of these "tools" you get to be creative about your approach. Just about the most creative and effective tool then becomes negotiation. You can, of course, make the case against drugs to your children. However, if your kids get to a point where they develop substance abuse problems, you have done something wrong as a parent. The biggest problem then becomes your parenting, not drug use in itself.

What an amazing post, Mishelle! I appreciate the courage it takes to re-examine such a core part of your historic development. It's not an easy to thing to do. It's even harder to admit it so openly. Even though I have very little dating experience, I'd say that the dating scene has, indeed, mutated into something quite ugly and unsustainable. I don't think people have ever been nearly as averse to vulnerability and personal responsibility. I often find myself fascinated while watching older movies or listening to Stef talk about his dating life. "Did people really think and act like that?" It's so different from what I'm used to. The moral corruption that underlies so much of what's going on in the world right now has a lot to do with the lack of quality in people's intimate relationships. It's particularly easy to see this corruption at play in the gender rights trenches of "internet warfare." Even some of my male university professors have started making sarcastic jokes about feminism during lectures. Men are very much disillusioned with women as a whole. To me, the PUA community is the natural outgrowth of vengeance for what the feminist movement has done to western societies. Consciously or not, these men want to get back at women by reducing them to sex toys. Their success in this endeavour only shows how negatively feminism has affected women as well. I can only wonder if societies have to be completely destroyed before people start turning this trend around. I suspect women like you will play a large role in salvaging whatever value's left in the ruins. Christina Hoff Sommers is an excellent example of a former feminist that uses her knowledge of the movement to fight it.

I'm so sorry to hear about this. You weren't physically abused, you were tortured... I can't tell you whether sadism is hereditary or learned (I suspect it's a mixture of both), but I can give you some hope. You writing this post already says a great deal about yourself. I don't think you are a sadist because you show concern for other people's well being. I applaud that. I too was put through torture as a toddler. My father started beating me when I was one and a half years old. My mother beat me with implements until I got big enough to fight back. The beatings weren't as frequent as yours. I was also sexually abused. I had severe PTSD by the age of 6. I won't go into all the details, but suffice to say that I know what sadistic violence looks like first hand. Here's where I got luckier than you. I learned to suppress my anger and rage through practising aikido (Japanese martial art focusing on self-defence) from the age of 6 to 10. I then transitioned to competitive sports because they were a good way of channelling my anger and rage into something that I thought was productive. I've never injured anyone and have only gotten into one fight my entire life. I actually let myself get punched in it and only laughed at the other person, taunting him for being weak. I felt so numb at the time that I welcomed the pain. It made me feel alive. After discovering this show about 3 years ago, I became very proactive about changing myself. I've since developed a great deal of empathy, I have full access to my emotional experiences and I'm quite happy overall. I still have lots of work to do, but don't we all? There's a way out, but you have to work really really hard to get to it. I don't like telling people what to do, but if you want to solve this issue of violence, I can point you in the general direction. Here's what you need to watch out for. You have a great deal of shame and rage bottled up inside you. I'm guessing you're not particularly aware of the degree to which you've repressed your emotions. Pick up some books on psychology and work through them. I'd recommend John Bradshaw's "Healing The Shame That Binds You" and Charles Whitfield's "Healing The Child Within." Alice Miller's work is also quite good. Stefan's "Real-Time Relationships" is a must-read. You may think that these books are for "sissies" and weak people, but you should grit your teeth and work through them. Do all the exercises and start journalling. Right now, you don't really have access to any emotions that will provide the motivation, so you'll have to rely on willpower alone until you start trusting yourself a little more. Think of it as a job. In the long run, you must find a way to get into therapy. Try to save up some money and look for therapists that have a lot of experience with severe physical abuse. Healing the abuse that you went through requires the help of a professional. You must absolutely get away from your current place even if it's only a little violent. In my case, I went to a different country altogether. Staying in a place that reinforces your childhood experiences will destroy all the hard work that you're putting into self-knowledge. Violent people have a way of sensing what you went through. You project all of it through your body language and they can pick up on that subconsciously. If you're in a violent environment, you'll attract the violent people in it. You are the bloody piece of meat that is thrown in the shark tank. I can walk into a room full of people, and in a matter of a seconds, I can tell you which are the ones to watch out for. Bad people tend to have the same sensitivity, but they're not particularly aware of it. I hope this information will be of use to you. Once again, I'm really sorry that you went through this hell. Stay strong and I wish you the best of luck in dealing with this nightmare!

Thank you for taking the time to reflect on this. You, yourself, were using 10th degree black belt moves that you are unaware of. Let me explain. Your initial reply to my post triggered anger, frustration and helplessness in me. I felt a desire to take apart the poor argumentation and lecture you on how, being an intelligent man with interests in philosophy, you shouldn't be making such basic mistakes. I became aware of these feelings and examined them more closely before replying. If I was to engage you in an intellectual debate, you would have achieved your subconscious goal. We'd be talking about the arguments while ignoring the elephant in the room - your emotional experience. Both of us would end up feeling increasingly more angry, frustrated and helpless. By lecturing you on how resorting to basic logical fallacies is far below your intellectual level, I'd be doing the exact same thing that I accused you of. You'd then be able to project your emotional experience on me by pointing out my hypocrisy. "This Lians guy is totally unreasonable. No wonder I felt this way. He's the one at fault." You ignored your feelings and ended up provoking them in us. I'm guessing others felt that as well. This is very much an RTR thing. Please understand that I'm not trying to tell you how wrong and inexperienced you are. I've been guilty of the same mistakes myself and I know how hard it is to self-RTR on the fly.

If people genuinely didn't have the capacity to recognize when someone is beyond reason, it would be abusive to hold them to a standard of: "You should be able to identify people who can't think!" You can, of course, explain the logic behind your arguments and teach them how to put it in practice. What if they did have the capacity, but for some reason weren't doing it? This is where you're coming from. Would you agree that it would be ridiculous to berate a skilled cityscape painter for being unable to use perspective in his drawings? It may be a stylistic choice. He may be fed up with painting cityscapes and expressing his frustration in that way. It could be a number of things. Surely, the best approach would be to ask him before jumping to conclusions. Where exactly in your post do you show curiosity for people's experience of the situation? It's one conclusion after another. When you're trying to change people's behaviour without being curious about them, you're putting your preferences above their desires. "You should change because I want you to." That's not particularly empathetic, is it? Now, I could have taken the approach of berating you for not knowing all this despite it being the topic of countless podcasts and an entire book. How productive would that be? I suggest you take the time to explore the feelings that prompted the reaction. I know it's not an easy thing to do, but it's definitely worth it. There's an entire podcast about a listener's frustration with some board members that got troll baited. I looked for it, but couldn't find it. If anyone remembers which one it is, please post it here.

Nathan, I think you should be a little more empathetic with people precisely because they're not noobies. I brought up your concerns in a private conversation recently. The reasons behind the unproductive engaging with unreasonable people had very deep and painful roots.

There's value in the supernatural approach. I have not doubt about that given its popularity. However, as with anything, you have to ask: Value compare to what? Every time you use mythology as the go-to solution to a problem, you get increasingly more disconnected from your genuine experiences. It's very dangerous to choose short-term solutions over long-term sustainability. Another reason why you decided to focus on religion might have something to do with your dad's relationship with religion and the way you experienced it as a kid. I can come up with many possibilities and I'll probably still be off the mark because you're the one that has all the knowledge. This is where RTR-ing with yourself comes in handy. Stay curious, don't suppress the emotions and don't accept trivial answers. You'll know when you stumble on the right answer/s. I can guarantee you that.

I'm really sorry to hear about your loss. I don't have an answer for you, but I can share some of my thoughts. The question isn't about what you should substitute for heaven and angels, but why you need a substitute in the first place. Grieving is, of course, perfectly healthy, natural and even necessary. However, since you brought up this topic with reference to religion, I assume there might be something more to what you're experiencing. To me, "he's in a better place now," always implied that living was torturous for the deceased person. Deep down, we all know there's nothing beyond earth's cold embrace. One of religion's characteristic traits is that it always tries to invent mythological narratives that explain away legitimate discomfort and pain on the part of the believers. Your feelings could be there for any number of reasons and it's important that you listen and stay with them. Distracting yourself with the supernatural is, in my opinion, counter productive. If things get bad, it might be worth talking to a therapist.

It's very difficult to answer this question. If we could find objective traits that allow certain people to break out of the matrix, we'd be able to supercharge our effectiveness. I suspect that an inborn capacity for empathy and resilience in the face of evil have a lot to do with making the choice to "disconnect." I have very early memories of being shocked by people's brutality. I cherished and nurtured my hatred for people who tried to distort and destroy my genuine experience of reality. Luck also has a lot do with it. A very empathetic neighbourhood girl would often take care of me after my mother gave birth to my sister. I was 2 or 3 years old at the time. I've always had warm memories of her and I suspect that she is the reason why a part of my true self was able to survive the endless attacks of this anti-reason world. Having survived the torture of my early upbringing, I started looking for a place where I belonged. I tried with arts, sports, science and academia, but something always felt off regardless of my achievements. I felt like I was fighting an invisible beast all my life. No matter how many times it knocked me down, I always got back up. Philosophy, self-knowledge and this community were my only bastions of hope. They brought immense happiness in my life and gave form to that ugly and elusive beast. "This is it. This is where I belong. I can rest now."

I would advise you to not settle for trivial answers. A safe environment to explore your emotions could be a therapist's office. You can receive attention in countless ways without being an actor. If you were trying to develop an understanding for a foreign personality, why not study psychology? I know it's not easy to knock down the trivial answers when you're amidst what's happening. It's hard to examine the engine of a car while driving it. Your gut feeling is purely descriptive and carries no explanatory power. It's a conclusion. When I go into conclusion-land within myself, I know that I'm dealing with scar-tissue that grew over an inflicted wound. Stef's "Real-Time Relationships" (RTR) is absolutely indispensable when it comes to taking apart the complexity behind our feelings. Being able to RTR with yourself is an invaluable skill to have. I recommend you read it if you haven't already! As vlbk suggested, you can also call into the Sunday show and have Stef step you through the RTR insights and techniques.

If applied science could speak, it would say that it knows nothing about the unquantifiable aspects of our lives.

Welcome to the board, Shane! What a wonderfully passionate introduction! Fundamentally, all people are the way they are because they had to survive in a particular environment. What makes you different is that you chose to hold onto virtue despite everyone's attempt to take it away from you. Don't deny yourself the pride of this knowledge! The more work on self-knowledge you do, the more you realize that you're not the one in control. All you can do is live a life of virtue and let your feelings do the rest. They will provide the direction and motive power.

I wonder who's to blame for this nonsense - the journalist who reports it or the scientists. People take pleasure in the pain of others. -> Everything people do is biological. -> People biologically take pleasure in the pain of others. You don't need a doctorate to put together such a simple syllogism. Stating the obvious and putting it forward as a discovery... All they've done is demonstrated that the people they examined take pleasure in the pain of others. They can't come up with a general theory until they propose a reasonable explanation for this phenomena. Once they have a theory in place, they can try to verify it through experiment. That's like me hooking up a bunch of psychopaths to electrodes and proving that people biologically take pleasure in the suffering of others. Yay for cargo cult science... EDIT: Just noticed this bit. It all makes sense now.

You're using a fallacious comparison as the core of your arguments. Yes, there's a power disparity in the parent-child relationship. There's also a power disparity between you and Microsoft. That doesn't mean you can equate Microsoft and parents to a government. Governments are a power disparity maintained through violence. That's what makes them immoral. If you get rid of the violence, there is no government. In this regard, the only conclusive statement you can make about power disparity in and of itself is that it carries the capacity for corruption.

I just wanted to say that I appreciate the work that some members are doing (including you TT) to bring truth to the cesspool of YouTube comments. I, myself, don't have the stomach for that.

I've done that too. You're not alone in this. My first serious relationship ended up with her lying to me about a really important issue and refusing to acknowledge it until I brought up evidence. She then tried to keep me as a friend, but I was having none of that. What prevented me from repeating the same mistake was anger. I was so angry with her, I publicly declared that I never want to speak to her again. We were classmates and I kept my word for 2 years until we graduated. I found FDR shortly afterwards, so I haven't dated anyone for more than 5 years now. I was very involved with sports at that time and anger was the one feeling I never truly repressed. In hindsight, that relationship may have been the catalyst for my pursuit of philosophy and self-knowledge. What if the pain you inflicted on yourself through these relationships was the only way of preventing your emotions from going numb?

I think I found the video to be so valuable because I view it as a form of permission that allows my inner boy to re-experience events from the past; events that were walled off in my mind. Stef managed to tear down those walls and out came a torrent of feelings. I suspect the feeling of anger may have come from my inner boy. As a kid, I didn't know anything about the complex interplay between the sexes. I wasn't aware of how it shapes us all as individuals. I learned that at a much later point in my life. All my younger self wanted was to be acknowledged. It wanted women to recognize my inner life and stop mocking and dismissing the pain. I knew I wasn't going to get that from other men. Sadly, none of that ever happened. My mother, sister, teachers and female friends rejected everything about me that didn't serve their agenda. A constant game of "good boy" and "all boys are difficult to deal with." Mind you, "boys are difficult" is one of the nicest insults I got when I wasn't convenient for them. I enjoyed getting sick as a kid. It meant that I was going to get some attention. I also liked showing my injuries to my mother because that meant she'd fuss over my carelessness and patch me up. I was that starved for affection. The same thing was true for all my male peers. I got the same treatment from the media where all men were either immature fools or pieces of meat you threw at enemies. They abolished the mandatory military service a few years before I was supposed to "serve my country" and there was an almost universal outcry from women: "How are boys going to become men if they don't serve in the army?" To be honest, my outlook on women was very negative before I joined this community. One of my biggest motivations for working on self-knowledge is the desire to have a good relationship with a woman at some point in my life, so it's not all anger and defensiveness. However, it took all my strength to get over that unconscious distrust of women. I suspect that every time you tell a man that his negative experiences involve a lot more than what he acknowledges, you'll be met with his angry little boy. Intellectually, he may understand what you're talking about, but the emotional side would strongly oppose you. It takes quite a bit of self-knowledge to recognize this dynamic at play. I, for one, don't think we need a balance of attention, but proportionality relative to the scope of the issue. There's no attention scale that needs to be balanced with women and men at both ends. We all need different things to get to a healthy place in our lives.