Kevin Beal

That sounds awesome! There is rarely a Sunday I don't have free, and unfortunately this sunday is one of them I'd love to listen / participate in future West Coast calls! I can't find my way to waking up at 7am on my day off. I was pretty bummed when they moved the Sunday show to the earlier time

Lol. Now you know how I feel This is such a strange thread.

That doesn't actually mean anything. It's not even a tautology. It's like saying that "x is y".

You appear to me to be oversimplifying the supposed oversimplification. Oversimplified as compared to what? Personally, I don't know of any way that I can help those children in Syria, and that was immediately apparent the moment I heard about it, like I probably can't help the children in any other potential or real war zone. I don't know of any way to help, that is, except not make the problem worse by supporting another evil war, and talking about ethics and anarchism with people in my life. It's really not as complicated as you have made it. Not really.

Hi Jake! Very good to hear, and welcome to the boards!

I wonder what the rates are when women are asked the same questions, or what percentage of these men weren't themselves sexually abused in their lives. Why they are focusing solely on men like it's a male problem and not part of an even larger issue; just seems a little fishy. Either way it's completely awful, it's just that similar "studies" have been done before in the US to try and draw the same kind of results showing that an ungodly number of rapists are all around us, but when they asked women the same questions we saw less men labeled as rapists and also gender symmetry in perpetration. (I'm having trouble finding the link right now, but it's in a GirlWritesWhat video where she talks about this). Not so much with stranger rape, but as the article mentions it's a minority of rapes.

That may be a very useful thing to do: feel the hurt and anger and sadness. It may even be the reason your unconscious is reminding you about them. I get overwhelmed by intense feelings even after years of therapy and my tendency is to want to stop feeling and dissociate. But if you can feel grounded enough I would suggest sticking with those feelings and exploring them some more. If you aren't in therapy, I would highly suggest that you give it a shot.

I thought that you were against using moral arguments or "moralistic thinking"? What's with the change of heart?

Okay, I'm simply going to accept all of your logic. Forceful intervention is going to cause many more deaths than letting evil Syrian murderers get away with murdering children. That was true for Iraq and Afghanistan so there's no reason to believe it won't hold true in Syria. My intervention is talking with people about how we really need to stay the hell out of Syria. How's that? Is that inconsistent?

I'm really not so sure about that. The converse may in fact be true. And I would call that hypocritical if I'm supporting one moral argument in one place and then the opposite moral argument in another. If that's not hypocritical, then I'm not sure what is. If you don't call that hypocrisy then I do and that is what I mean by it. The problem here though is that obviously it doesn't matter where in the world a person is, an immoral act is immoral. What you are doing is saying that me telling a woman that she may want to reconsider the way she yelled at her child for not coming to the car quickly enough, and me intervening (in some way that you never explain) in the chemical attacks in Syria against (in part) children, are the same and I should act the same in both instances. You have yet to make this case, you simply assert it. That is the entire basis of my last post: to prompt you into elaborating upon that point. As far as what kind of intervention I would support, I guess I would support anything peaceful that is toward the cause of helping people (especially children who have the least choice). I don't know what that looks like, or even why I'm being asked to come up with it. So why? Why is it suddenly incumbent upon me to come up with a method of peaceful intervention in the Syrian conflict? I don't really know. All I know is that there is a charge of hypocrisy that is never made explicit and then demands that people come up with ways of intervening in Syria which they would support since supporting airtstrikes is definitely out of the question. My problem is that I don't know what I'm responding to. If I'm being hypocritical, then please, just talk to me like I'm 5 years old and explain it to me. Make your case as explicitly and simply as you can so that I may have some idea as to what I'm rebutting (or accepting).

I'll answer your questions, but let's be honest about the fact that you are accusing people of hypocrisy. (Who specifically, I'm unsure). 1) No, no I don't think it's worth intervening. Especially if intervening means airstrikes and the kind of thing the US military does that they call "intervention". If intervention meant something more meaningful, and less psychopathic then maybe I'd be on board. I'm not sure what we're talking about though unless you are talking about airstrikes. You haven't proposed any other kind of intervention. As far as I can tell this is about the supposed hypocrisy of board members and nothing really to do with Syria. So let's not pretend like that's what it's about, ok? 2) I answered no to #1 Would you elaborate on your charge of hypocrisy? Let's just say I'm the hypocrite for the sake of argument. Me applauding the intervention in child abuse, and also supporting a non intervention policy with regard to Syria is inconsistent how? Because Syrian children are being murdered? Go on...

Sounds fair to me Relationships with animals can be very therapeutic. People pay to see dolphins and horses for that reason. I've also had close relationships with dogs that felt special to me. Maybe if that animal were a lion or anaconda, I might not feel like it was so special tho...

Right. I've also benefitted from that perspective. I think part of the reason this had such a powerful impact on me is the amount of self doubt that I've suffered throughout my life. To think of all the times that I have felt so much doubt (and self loathing too) when there was no basis for any of it, it makes me angry. This critical voice in my head telling me that I've made a terrible mistake I should feel ashamed of, and then only afterward, after I've felt the shame, realizing that they were full of shit. This critical voice in my head is wrong more often than it is right and all of the suffering I've gone thru because of it. Really it's not a voice in my head that is to blame. Having that voice in my head stopped me from taking lots of actions that could have seriously ended up badly for me as a child. Who's to blame are some very specific people who made the idea of me making mistakes feel like a life or death proposition. Nevertheless this defense persists for me as an adult, and I think it does for lots of people. It may be (and probably is) a complete projection on my part, but I get a very strong sense that so many people are very risk averse like I was for most my life and that the perspective elaborated upon in this podcast is a powerful way to de-normalize this sort of approach to possible mistakes. Therapy definitely helps too, but mostly I just wanted to share this podcast with people who might not have heard it before or could benefit from a re-listen.

My favorite podcast at the moment is FDR 678 Everything you do is... It's crazy awesome http://media.freedomainradio.com/feed/FDR_678_Everything_You_Do_Is.mp3

If I thought bombing to shit out of people would stop all of this, I still couldn't do it.

Nope. But this is a contradiction. You aren't asking me to accept your conclusion like you like vanilla ice cream. It is incumbent upon me to accept your conclusion if it's true because I prefer truth over falsehood. That is what you are communicating to me. It's a rational standard that is true regardless of your preferences and is binding on me.

Thanks for asking It's not the statement "I have not stated that you ought to believe anything" that contains an ought. It's the actual act of telling me this which is necessarily prescriptive (at least in part). You are appealing to the truth, which means you are appealing to a standard outside of yourself that I ought to abide to. It could be described like this: "you ought to believe things that are true, and here is that true thing you ought to believe". I think that this is actually pretty core to understanding UPB since it describes just those kinds of implicit propositions that inform such actions (actions like telling me I ought to believe something that is true). It may not be too terribly relevant regarding the coma test in particular, but it is core to the theory as a whole. Hope that helps

It's a pretty decent quality shirt. Certainly better than other shirts I've ordered online thru similar services. I kind of wish the thread count was a little higher, but I'm actually going thru Zazzle again for a design I did recently. I actually met another local anarchist because I was wearing the shirt

If the argument is... "If you accept that your family will come thru for you when you need it most then you should stick with them regardless of how much you dislike them" ...then there really isn't much of an argument there to counter. Does it apply to only the family? How 'bout the church? Your neighbor? What you can do is test the premise here with the fact that you seriously dislike your family. Can they come thru for you on that? Can they negotiate some kind of mutually advantageous solution with you? Can they admit fault, and work to overcome the negativity bias? Or do they only come thru for you when it's convenient?

"we can't sit by and do nothing", therefor we need to bomb the shit out of their country... And around 30% of people polled are for airstrikes in Syria:http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/03/syria-airstrike-polls_n_3861639.html It's so amazingly evil, I can't even comprehend it. How? How could anyone talk themselves into supporting another war?!

In my experience this is a lot of what people fantasize when they feel the angst involved in realizing that their family is a toxic thing in their lives. It's like when people want to leave the church and all they are told is how terrible their life will be if they leave, how alone and without support. I not only think that this sort of argument is most often false, but also potentially dangerous if it means getting closer to toxic people who know all your vulnerable wounded spots. (Unless it's in an attempt to find closure in the RTR "the conversation" sort of way).

There! You just did! If you don't understand why, then you need to do some more reading, or maybe ask. I believe all of your other criticisms have been addressed in depth above. I thought this point was an important one, and so that's why I made it.

Well, the attachment and desire to be around you is real. There seems to be some evidence I've seen that shows that animals care about the well being of other animals, not simply for what value that animal brings to their lives, but out of some sort of empathy. There are lots of reports of dogs coming to the rescue of their masters, and kittens in a burning building and that sort of thing. I think what the only real issue here is with the use of the word "love". The bonding and attachment and all that stuff isn't bad or irrational or anything like that, but it's not what I would call "love" since (as already mentioned) love is our involuntary response to virtue, if we ourselves are virtuous. Animals don't act on principle, and as far as I know lack any concept of justice or virtue. I could be wrong though. I don't really know very much about animal psychologies.

In the description of the video it says that he did end up getting the job. I don't know about any of those other things though...

I believe this post is what you seek. In it Mike (MMD) explains it this way: So from that I gather that it's based entirely on the previous 12 months. I don't know that this is an automated process as yet, so if there is any discrepancies I would let Mike know about it. Hope that answers your question!