Kevin Beal

There's this idea I've been mulling over recently around the way that people respond to verbally abusive, trollish or overtly irrational people, and how it's often the case that people (myself included) will try and calmly and compassionately explain what is so wrong with what that person is saying. I often picture myself as a separate person and watch myself get into conversations with not so nice people, and what I think I've realized is that if I had a friend or a lover (or someone I was very fond of) getting into an argument where the other person started resorting to insulting, passive aggressive or otherwise offensive behavior that I would want to come in and say something to the effect of "who the hell do you think you are talking to [my friend] that way?" I think that everyone can relate to that. (The rest of this post is assuming you do). But for some reason many people do not hold themselves in the same regard, or do not act in the same way when it is themselves in that situation. We take the abuse and try and hold ourselves above it, try not to take it personally etc. I'm starting to think that actually this is a terrible thing we do to ourselves. Why would we expose ourselves to more abuse than the people we care about? Why would we not protect ourselves in the same way we would protect others? Unless of course that we do not care about ourselves that much. If we can hold others accountable for harming us, then why would we not hold ourselves equally accountable for doing the same thing? And so there is this sort of "let's be nice to abusive people" or some kind of NVC or other similar nonsense where the person doing the work is taking the abuse without expressing (righteous) anger. I'm starting to see that as a kind of terribly abusive, self destructive thing. This describes way too many peacemaker childhoods for me to believe that it is somehow going to change as soon as you are an adult. What does the youngest sibling do to avoid family conflict? He / she tries to make everyone agree on some level about something. It usually doesn't matter what that something is, the agreement is the important part. And if the parents hold much more power (as they naturally do) then that something is going to be much more in their favor, regardless of what is true and right. It's that thing that bad therapists do where a couple is fighting and the girlfriend is being abusive about some conflict they are having and the solution the therapist comes up with is to get the boyfriend to sympathize with her and that neglecting to take the trash out causes her "real" pain that he ought sympathize with... There is a kind of terrible superficiality in being nice to abusive people that I would desperately like to stop. The phrase that goes something like: "I understand that when I use a bold font face that it causes you to feel great distress and I really don't want you to feel distress, but there are reasons that I use the bold font face that I would like you to understand" A person who attacks you for using a bold font does not deserve your compassion and to talk to them as if they are a reasonable person is to misunderstand them on a very fundamental level. The only reasons that I've ever heard for why I should respond to people in this way come in two varieties: 1. If they are so unreasonable that they must be suffering in some way on the inside and thus deserve our compassion or 2. being compassionate to abusive people makes them much more receptive to your ideas. I'll first address the second. I do not doubt at all that this does result in some short term gains. (Only the most insane person would respond to a non aggressive person with rage). But I would argue that is not going to have a lasting effect on them. I can't count the number of times where I had argued a case with sensitivity and compassion where the person left saying something like "yea, there is something to what you are saying for sure" and then the next time I see them it's like nothing ever happened. They will put forward their position like our conversation had never taken place. I would argue that words don't mean shit if your actions aren't consistent with them. So when you are saying that if you support the threat of violence against me for smoking herb, and I emotionally connect only on the level that we are talking about our favorite flavor of ice cream or something, then that is not going to be (or come across) as authentic. That person is going to behave as if it were a flavor of icecream kind of conversation, and as they should, you trained them to! The fact that hitting your children is abusive has certain implications. Implications of cowardice, abuse, pettiness and conformism. Those are serious implications and pretending that they aren't there doesn't make them go away. And the first excuse for this niceness to abuse is equally as absurd. We absolutely do not owe petty vindictive people our compassion simply because they must suffer on the inside in order to behave that way. People make the decisions that they do. It's a toxic brand of determinism that excuses them on such a ridiculously flimsy basis. You absolutely and completely insult them by making it out like they had no control in the situation. Certainly that is not helpful to them. There is a certain amount of ignorance that I can totally excuse and sympathize with, but that's very rare actually. The overwhelming case seems to be that people act as if they do not believe a single word of what they are saying. For instance a person who believes in god is not praying for that god to grow back their amputated limb. A subjectivist isn't saying "I feel silly saying this, but I think that you are wrong, and I have no certainty at all that the basis of my objection has anything to do with truth". A determinist doesn't try and use a particular configuration of words to program your mind into accepting their conclusions, they argue their position. You get the point. Likewise the people who react with hostility, passive aggression, wanton irrationality know (at least on some level) that they are full of shit. Their suffering is to a significant degree self inflicted. The consequences of this may be severe. The first thing is of course that it's a continuation of past abuses, reproducing that peacemaker defense we developed responding to petty parents, teachers etc. We lock ourselves deeper into this self abuse and raise complacent children with low self worth. The other problem is that it makes compassion into a virtue rather than a natural bi-product of the actions that elicit it, making anger, annoyance, irritation into lesser experiences that only get in the way of this (ostensibly) mature and enlightened compassion. The emotional response becomes a pretense, insincere, unreal, toxic. Maybe it's the case that being nice is a good tactic, but I think it's important to be absolutely certain that it's not just a way of denying yourself (or somebody else) your honest experience. You may be doing far more harm than good. Anyway, what do you think?

I think that there's also a good distinction between making the goal be the communication of new ideas versus being a smart guy or girl, as described in the below video: Making it about the pursuit of truth and clarity as much as possible rather than who said what that true thing is. This video on public speaking, perfectionism and procrastination is something I think that can apply to a whole lot of the kind of communication that happens either on the boards or with people in our lives that we are arguing the case for freedom with.

I used to be really into the anti-walmart thing. I read books about it, watched documentaries. Personally, I think creating a situation in which there are fewer jobs necessary to achieve the same level of economic value is a good thing. Walmart costing jobs is not necessarily a bad thing. They do some pretty messed up shit to be sure, like close a branch entirely the moment a union is formed, doing all sorts of sneaky things to push people off of the property they want to develop on, the shit they pull with vendors, not great. However, the value they create probably far outweighs the damage. They do an enormous amount to keep costs low, their margins are paper thin, they put a lot of control in the hands of local people. The way people focus on walmart as the reason that small businesses close down, never looking at the insane regulations and other burdens placed on small businesses by government makes me believe that they don't really know what the heckeroony they are talking about. If walmart is bad, then government is infinitely worse (and it is). Jeffrey Tucker is a big fan of WalMart and has some material about it that's worth looking at: http://lfb.org/today/wal-mart-victim-of-extortion/ He also has a video where he talks about WalMart that I can't find at the moment...

Terribly sorry. I have no idea why I assumed that.

I've seen the whole thing before. It's really ironic that when asked what his proof of is for his vague quantum nonsense he says "you are the proof" lol. That's (basically) the name of an FDR podcast series. Obviously the message is entirely different, but it strikes me as funny.

Why are you operating from the assumption that the poster needed to do something differently? She did show empathy and she's still wrong?

Sounds empathetic to me.

Lol. Yea, that's my new favorite. What do you think about maybe re-posting it? Make it a youtube video. Maybe an FDR classics series or something like that? I'm noticing that there are a lot of people who are not aware of these unbelievable gems from the early years, when there used to be the expectation that you listened in order, lol. Just an idea add* Also to anyone interested, I have a 142 video long playlist of some of my favorite FDR youtube videos here: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL302FFA31BBE44FC7

coinbase.com looks like a very reputable site, and you can buy bitcoins thru them without doing a proof of address (for people with PO boxes).

I'm also very interested. I cannot buy from any of the big sellers like Mt Gox because my proof of address isn't valid (being that all my mail goes to a PO Box).

Speak for yourself.

Please re-post when you start the channel so that I may subscribe. Sounds interesting Sorry about the living situation, I know how that goes

@CrazyCanuck Your quotations are within the context of anger management. Somebody who has insufficient ways of dealing with their anger are the people that this is written for. This distinction between using your anger productively and using it destructively (as Kaki points out) is the difference between somebody who needs anger management training and somebody who is justly angry with an unjust situation. The distinction is made to highlight another distinction: emotions are not actions. For instance, a person who has had issues with being put down or humiliated for experiencing joy as a child may develop defenses around the genuine experience of joy that they feel later on as adults, and with their joy they become spastic or anxious and act it out in some way that offends or just puts people off in some way. We wouldn't say then that joy is the problem, right? You said that anger causes violence, but that's not even what your quotations say. The author even makes this distinction that Kaki did when they say that it's the thoughts that lead to aggression and not the anger itself. I work with a professional psychologist twice weekly who knows about the importance of anger and the inevitable problems that arise from suppressing it intimately. So if your quotations are proof, then an actual professional is even greater proof. The CBT model as described in your quotation does not make anger out to be the problem, but the associated thoughts. Do you understand that?

So how'd it go!?

Totally makes sense. Thank you! Great response

This is like saying that grief is the reason war torn villages hate war. You have the cause and effect all messed up. Anger does not cause violence. Anger is involved in child abuse and violent crime, sure, but it's also the reason we get so fundamentally how evil those things are. This is like those people who say that without god, we would have no morals and we'd go around raping kittens and blowing up orphanages. If we let ourselves feel anger then all hell will break loose (ostensibly). But I don't go around hurting people when I get angry. When people make such blanket universal statements, they are often talking about themselves (i.e. psychological projection), so I feel like I've gotta ask you. Do you have a history of violence? Are you suddenly violent when you get angry? Do you lose all self control when you get angry? Cause those are all markers of repressed rage, and that's exactly what I've been talking about since my first post in this thread. This idea that this self erasing pseudo-buddhistic nonsense somehow makes people less violent is something people should reject completely. It's not true, and it never was. It's a slave morality like the christian notion of "turn the other cheek". It's been used to fight wars, commit ethnic cleansing, it's toxic stuff.

I think that's a really profound insight actually. I just wanted to bring more attention to it

Alice Miller is amazing. If you haven't checked her stuff out, then I'd really highly recommend it. Specifically Drama of the Gifted Child. I just discovered 's work and he has some really good stuff on his website about these kinds of issues. Good luck! And if you feel like sharing I'd be interested to listen, and I'm sure others would too.

I don't "use" anger, I get angry. And I wasn't angry with you. I stand behind everything that I said, I just realized that the implication of cowardice was something anyone would take offense to (including me) so your response (which I interpreted as angry) made more sense. I didn't say you were a coward, I said that behavior of avoiding necessary conflict by creating virtues out of forgiveness / compassion was cowardly, and I'm not wrong. As far as anger needing to provide a practical benefit, I don't think that's true either. People's joy can get them in trouble, so we shouldn't have joy either? You get that's not a very good argument, right? Anger is an emotion, not an action. It's there whatever you try and do with it. If you don't feel it when you should then that's a serious problem and I say this partly out of concern. If you don't feel heat then when you put your hand on the stove accidentally you could do some serious damage to yourself. And the fact that you tell me that you no longer feel anger (after I expressed serious concerns about repression) then that's a big red flag for me. Especially since you do not seem to understand what repression is. The fact that you ignored my point entirely in the next paragraph and double down is sadly predictable given the what I said about repression. You either do not understand what I said or you are being kinda like a condescending jerk. I told you exactly how I experience this comment, and yet you repeat it. And that's what passive aggression is a lot of the time. It's repressed rage. When you do not acknowledge your own feelings / experience, you inevitably deny people theirs through passive (or overt) aggression. I get irritated when people ignore the important parts of what I'm saying and then go on to dismiss me with cliches and unsolicited and condescending advice. I'm conscious of the fact that I'm irritated and I've decided to share that with you in order to demonstrate the difference. I'm not abusing you. I'm not stressed out. I'm simply being honest. Here are some podcasts on anger: 425 – Anger And Evolution http://cdn.media.freedomainradio.com/feed/FDR_425_Anger_And_Evolution.mp3 352 – The Difference Between Anger and Rage http://cdn.media.freedomainradio.com/feed/FDR_352_Anger_Versus_Rage.mp3 1187 – Sympathy versus Anger http://cdn.media.freedomainradio.com/feed/FDR_1187_Sympathy_vs_Anger.mp3 363 – The Joy of Anger Part 1 & 2 http://cdn.media.freedomainradio.com/feed/FDR_363_The_Joy_Of_Anger_Part_1.mp3 http://cdn.media.freedomainradio.com/feed/FDR_364_The_Joy_Of_Anger_Part_2.mp3

Well, I'm not so sure it was a mistake given what you said above. It sounds like you tried bringing things to her many times and it didn't go over very well. It may be that you didn't bring it to her because you knew what was going to happen. That doesn't mean you can't talk about her to other people. This whole idea of "talking behind people's backs" really pisses me off. I am just not going to bring every criticism I have of someone to their attention, and I refuse to punish myself for bringing it to other people's attention. If you were unconsciously manipulating somebody in some way to do something like how my own mother used alligator tears to turn me against my sister, then that would be a problem, but if you are simply sharing an honest concern that you have, then that's like about as opposite as you could get. People need to know what the people they trust are thinking and feeling about the people in their lives. That's like crazy important stuff. There may have been some chain of events that would make it advantageous to confront this girl, but I don't think there is anything that means you owe her that. I don't know all the details, but I'm very suspicious of this guilt.

It's funny what I've been seeing in myself reading your responses. When I see this same concern about whether or not you come off as being pretentious, I feel an urge to say "fuck that! Not if this is at the cost of not expressing your thoughts and feelings!" (sorry for the double negative). It seems to me like an injustice. There is this quote by Stef that I think is really interesting that goes something like: "crazy people have no problem looking crazy to sane people, but sane people are very concerned with appearing crazy to crazy people". (If someone knows the podcast that's from I'd be eternally grateful ). I re-listened to 70 – How to control a human soul (my new favorite podcast) a few times yesterday and I am starting to think that this self doubt is not really serving me. At least not when I make the implication out to be that I'm some kind of blowhard or know-it-all or egotistical or something. None of those things means that I'm wrong, and even if I were wrong, so what? What am I going to get thrown out to be eaten by the wolves? I think it's true of me, and I'm sure of all of you that you are happy to be corrected, so what's the big deal about making mistakes every once in a while? The people who should be concerned about being pretentious aren't going to be, I don't think, so I wonder if really it's just another situation like how Stef says that ethics was invented by evil people to control good people. It's like how in 421 – Humiliation Stef argues that humiliation is a universal rule that applies only to you. So I was an attention starved child who liked to talk about things I didn't understand fully and I was accused by older siblings as being pretentious when they were full of shit themselves. And doesn't that seem to be how it always is? That it's usually someone being completely hypocritical that accuses other people of being pretentious? Like post modern philosophy students talking down analytic philosophy. That kind of shit seems to create these backward priorities in my head like "don't appear pretentious" and "don't offend people", rather than things like "is what I'm saying true?" and "am I being honest right now?" And I have this weird feeling like if I say something like "I understand psychology, economics and philosophy better than most people on the planet" that some kind of hammer is going to come down on me like: "you can't say that!" Weird right?

Yeesh! That's a tough one. I'm sorry about that. What is a judgment? I think a judgment is a conclusion you come to about some situation. I don't think that it's even possible to conclude something you don't genuinely believe about a situation (at least not without a severe psychological toll). The judgment is there whether or not you acknowledge it or voice it. Denying yourself your judgments is self erasure, suppression / repression and is to be lying to yourself. The actual definitions of judgment come in two varieties: "the ability to make considered decisions or come to sensible conclusions" and "a misfortune or calamity viewed as a divine punishment" I don't know you, but I think it's pretty obvious that your judgments are of the first kind. I think that there is a reason that the two definitions are conflated sometimes, and that's because most people have a very difficult time dealing with criticism. They feel very uncomfortable and instead of blaming the situation, they blame the messenger, like it's you who is causing her distress and her problems with relationships are not problems. This seems to be the case here if she resents you for reminding her of tragedies in the past. Whether or not you voice your opinion is a much more complicated question that I don't know how to answer. What I will say though is that I cannot for the life of me find any way of condemning someone for telling the truth, no matter how unpleasant. And if it's the judgment that is the "problem" and the judgment is reasonable considering the circumstances then what someone is essentially saying is that they have a problem with you telling the truth. You feeling alone, self critical, sick and very doubtful is another issue, I think. It seems to me that there would be two reasons why this would be the case. The first is because you legitimately wronged someone or because you were wronged. How is this third person who told her representing you? Are these people desiring of your honest opinion and feedback or only when it suits them? For all I know it's some third option, but in any case what's the worst case scenario? Something that I try and do a lot when I feel overwhelmed like this is to ask myself what the worst case scenario is and then see if my feelings match it. Often it is the case that the worst case scenario is never as bad as my overwhelm would have me believe, and realizing that offers me some relief. Hopefully this is of some help. Here are a couple of loosely related podcasts: 678 – Everything You Do Is... http://cdn.media.freedomainradio.com/feed/FDR_678_Everything_You_Do_Is.mp3 70 – How to control a human soul http://cdn.media.freedomainradio.com/feed/how_to_control_a_human_soul.mp3 356 – You Are Your Own Proof (Parts 1 & 2) http://cdn.media.freedomainradio.com/feed/FDR_356_You_Are_Your_Own_Proof.mp3 http://cdn.media.freedomainradio.com/feed/FDR_357_You_Are_Your_Own_Proof_Part_2.mp3

This is the podcast mentioned above: 2320 – If Your Heart Was Broken, This Was How: The Philosophy of Divorce http://cdn.media.freedomainradio.com/feed/FDR_2320_the_philosophy_of_divorce.mp3 I would say this is required listening if you are contemplating divorce. I'm terribly sorry about the cheating. That's a horrible betrayal

Do you believe political action is the way to increase freedom?

I don't understand why you would want me to have 0 points again, but maybe that's my bias People who have -30 pts are in all likelihood not going to reform themselves. Maybe we could have an appeal process, but just resetting their points almost completely defeats the purpose of the system. Tell me that if you got so many downvotes that your posts were hidden, would you ever try and reform yourself to conform to those people who rejected you? If you think that you are right in your posts, then you'll see it as an injustice and you will resent the community that rejected you in that way. If you don't believe that you were right and the people who rejected you were just being honest then that is quite a drastic flip flop and I personally would be extremely suspicious of that sort of personality. If you still want a chance at a reset from -30 to 0 then maybe we could have an appeal process and if their appeal is compelling then they get back to 0. That way we see how many times they attempted to reform and their success rate. I also dislike the idea of my reputation points being reset because I want them. And I want lots more. I'm coming after you Wesley! Or what about the idea that you can give your reputation points to other people? You build up cred and then if you want to dig someone out of a hole or if you think they are underrated / under appreciated, you can give them your points.