LovePrevails

Hey I'm still meaning to respond to this thread but I have a paper due Monday so it's on hold. Thanks.

I'm thinking these two are part of a series What is the false self? What is evil? While we're defining terms, the next one I suggest is "What is self-knowledge?" in more or less 15 minutes How about it? maybe ya could fit 4 of them into 60 minutes or 5 into 79 -- then they'd fit on a cd

how old are you? Evening dates are better than day time ones as if you start doing friendy things you look like a friendy person. See if you can set a definite date when you get her number as this makes it less likely that she will flake. I don't know about setting everything up it seems a bit full on, looks good in movies but in real life girls usually love that stuff from men they are already in love with but find it quite intimidating from people they don't know well! It would be great to have a conversation with her about bikes if that is something you are both interested in, ask curiously let her do 60-80% of the talking and focus on your own state and feeling laid-back while you are listening. When you don't know someone that well it is very important that they make it easy for you to feel comfortable (especially if you are a girl!) and is a big factor on whether you want to spend more time with them or not - that might seem like a shallow snap judgement but 1) it's all you have to go on and 2) it makes practical sense from a safety and evolutionary perspective. here's a tip on that I don't know what I've said so far is helpful or just complicated/intimidating I know it's a cliche but "be yourself" but not just be yourself - be comfortable being yourself that is the most important thing That's why I'm not so much with the big set-ups and games because they are very grandiose like LOOK HOW MUCH I AM DOING where as the selling point is not what you are willing to do (buy flowers, book a swanky restaurant, carry her books, or whatever the movies say girls like in a man) the selling point is who you are - if you're good with who you are then she has no reason to doubt you let me know if I'm helping or making things more complicated

Kevin thanks for the clarification it's difficult for us in Europe to see it that way as most people who consider themselves on the left here also see Obama as a corporate candidate therefore, not a socialist the left here is much different from what is considered left in the mainstream in america what are considered left in the states would just be considered "liberal" not socialist at all because they are not "radicals" - just part of the mainstream I always find it ironic when leftists call themselves radicals though because most people agree with their moral outrage at "the system" and "capitalism" what could be more radical than being pro free-market in Scotland? nothing really.

I don't understand when conservatives and libertarians say "liberal bias" in the media. I think it is pretty right-wing.

Looking back I'd say I was a very reasonable person, it's just that all the conservative/free-market people around me were so out of personal sentiment rather than based on any analysis of reason and evidence so I consistently bested them in debates. Plus I never met a person on the economic-right who wasn't on "the right" ie. pro-war, etc. so I associated the free market with being pro-war and pro-corporations. I would love to go back 10 years and and debate my 18-yo self and see what I came up against. I think over the course of 3-5 conversations I could win him round.

what a great story

facebook group for you Clark https://www.facebook.com/groups/1394625837446977/?fref=ts

When there is a large body of evidence on the way people learn, and that evidence is uncontroversial, and the schools are not only set up and run in a way that is alternative to the evidence, but actually antithetical to the evidence it's very hard to sustain the argument that incompetence is at play rather than wickedness

oh right that's a shame , I look forwards to hearing your conclusions

here's me being me! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTPi2C698-0

good analogy Prairie, the child may not want to eat the food without sugar in the end

the education system was engineered to stop the poor from out-competing the rich, as a matter of historical account. read John Taylor Gatto for the rundown - and look at what the people who funded it said about it “We want one class of persons to have a liberal education, and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class of necessity in every society, to forgo the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks.” ― Woodrow Wilson "We will organize children and teach them in a perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an imperfect way. " J D Rockefeller “In our dreams, we have limitless resources and the people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding bands. The present education conventions fade from their minds, and unhampered by tradition, we work our own good will upon a grateful and responsive rural folk. We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning, or men of science. We have not to raise up from among them authors, editors, poets or men of letters. We shall not search for embryo great artists, painters, musicians nor lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen, of whom we have an ample supply. The task we set before ourselves is very simple as well as a very beautiful one, to train these people as we find them to a perfectly ideal life just where they are. So we will organize our children and teach them to do in a perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an imperfect way, in the homes, in the shops and on the farm.” — Rockefeller's General Education Board (1906), Board's Occasional Letter No. 1, written by Frederick T. Gates

I'm trying to compile a quiz for people to assess the quality of their friendships I've just done the "so far" in short the quiz can be answered for a friendship group as a whole, and then for individual friends people can also assess themselves as a friend according to the criteria Negatives: never rarely sometimes often always Does my friend put me down? Does my friend put me down in front of other? Are they jealous when I spend time with others? Are they jealous of my acheivements? Do they take the wind out of my sales by immediately pointing out flaws in my aspirations? Do they bring up parts of me they want to change? Do they take more than they give? Do they use guilt, shame or fear to motivate me to do things I otherwise wouldn't want to do? When you express your preferences and set boundaries do they ignore them? Positives: never rarely sometimes often always When I attempt creativity or projects do they encourage me or discourage me? When I say that something is getting me down do they listen well? Do they ask questions to broaden my thinking? Do they give honest feedback on how they perceive me? Do they express gratitude for things I do for them? Do they treat you in accordance with ways you have expressed a liking for being treated? I'd rather people used their own creativity (or relayed content in their own words) rather than post links.

Idris, how would your parents have disciplined you if you refused to go to the Mosque as a child? What would your parents have done if you had decided you did not want to be a Muslim? What would you do if you had a child and your child said they did not believe in Islam and wanted to be an atheist?

That was very educational I learned a lot about history

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=582729618479293&set=a.582729598479295.1073741826.393437997408457&type=1&theater me 8 years ago in a previous incarnation ;0

Send him an email telling him the whole truth of what you thik and feel about it. If he attacks you for telling him then you know what kind of person he is to end up in a relationship like that. Sounds to me like he doesn't think he can do better and that's all there is behind it.

it's a good idea because it would make the tax system less able to be manipulated by special interest groups

Yay I'm famous! great video Ivan I think it's potentially very helpful to people

Alright Kevin, got ya. Give me a while to get back to you. As you can see I spend quite a bit of time on my posts here and it's quite demanding. tbh I think we disagree a lot less than it may seem on the surface of the point. good point Lians about my discomfort, I do find I tend to get quite triggered in general when I hear people been talked to in ways I think are incompassionate. But then I think that's useful data as well, because I'm uncomfortable with in then I think lots of people would be, and I have reason to believe that because lots of people are. As the whole point of my input in the thread is I don't want to scare people away from doing the right thing I hope the relevance is clear. RE: "Accepting responsibility and providing restitution is where the rubber hits the road." I couldn't agree more, but I don't think giving a moral beat down and sounding like someone's stern dad waiting at the door at 1am is necessary to achieve that. RE: Why are you empathising with her and not the child who's going to grow up with his penis mutilated? Simply because it is the mother who is writing in asking for help and advice on what to do in the situation. If it was the child writing in then of course it would be a different story and I would be empathising with them fully first and foremost.

Kevin, let me know what you think, It seems my comment about shame angered you a bit, which is understandable if you thought I said you liked being ashamed, but I assure you that was not my meaning. I just meant that shame is a powerful motivator for some people to change our behaviour, and sometimes it works but it is not ideal because it comes from a place of a lack of-self empathy. Shame is just an emotion that needs to be heard and understood so you can move past it, and that comes through feelings that are rather unpleasant but the more you do it the less scary they are because you know they don't harm you and there's a bit of distance between you and the pain. Using shame to motivate people to change, as I think moralizing often does, just triggers people without giving them a means to process the trigger which is probably the reason for a lot of their dysfunctional behaviour in the first place - many people avoid self-examination specifically because it provokes shame (or guilt, or fear, or anger) in them and they don't know what to do about it. Re: You have training that I don't. But I also have experience. etc. I don't doubt the value of your experience but I would just mention that having experience in, say, planting vegetables does not an expert florist make. It reminds me of an argument my dad made when I said that he hadn't learned about anarchism and yet he had the authority to say it wouldn't work - he replied by saying that he wasn't an uneducated person and knew about politics and could tell from what he knew that it wouldn't work. I don't mean for that to be contentious, I just raise the point because I think it's fair to say that experience is the mother of skill and one need try certain approaches to discover for themselves whether they work or not. I didn't mention NVC, nor is do I tend to teach it wholesale - NVC is just a model of one way to communicate! - like RTR is a model. Like all models it has its relative merrits and drawbacks. Personally I find it a quite unwieldy and convoluted way to talk. It can be very effective if people are good at it, sound genuine, and can stay present while using it, but it's a lot of work. In those cases its useful with people who are very defensive but it's pretty hard-going and long-winded until you get the hang of it. RTR is a model which has a lot of advantages in that it is big on the self-empathy, and being clear on your own experience and expressing yourself in the moment. NVC is also big on the self-empathy but a lot of people overlook that part and try and go straight into it. The drawback I see in RTR is it allows one to express what is going on for them, but it doesn't offer the person who is receiving the feedback any tools to help them help you. A good NVC communicator can make it easier for the person they are talking to do the right thing. But again it is only one model. It is not the be all and end all of anything. There are principles that underlie some aspects of it which are pretty universal in literature on good communication. Carl Rodgers, one of the most influential therapists was quite clear that in order for change to happen, it helps in heaps if you can approach the other person with UPR - unconditional positive regard. This is obviously extremely difficult to do if you have reason to be resentful of the other person! Which is why we would never expect a prison psychologist to council their own rapist! He or she would have to be a saint to do so... and the same can be said for people dealing with very abusive or neglectful parents. Another model for communicating came from Dr. David Burns book "Feeling Good Together" stresses similar with EAR: Empathy, Assertion, Respect (Dr. David Burns is highly empirical in the approaches he prescribes in all his books, he had to throw out the first edition of the book and start again because he found the original CBT techniques he prescribed did not work. He rewrote the whole text with approaches that were empirically verified to improve relationships, but also acknowledged that some [even many] people just don't have the motivation to change.) He also notes the fact that it is very hard to get someone to take on board your feedback if they don't think you respect them. (This echoes other literature on communication such as IFS therapist Pete Gerlach's book Satisfactions, and the relevant sections of 7 Habits of Highly Effective People) Let me give you an example of EAR with a friend I was bothered with for not responding to my messages. As you can see it apportions responsibility without any real criticism. I asserted my feelings and preferences, but also empathised and communciated with respect. "Hey dude is everything allright with you? Not worried but checkin you're ok! come over tomorrow for a chat is you like. I know you enjoy your space but I appreciate it when you respond to my messages even just to say 'undecided' or 'need space'. :)" Sending that message met my need to be heard for the fact I didn't like not receiving replies about possible arrangements, and I hope you'll agree that it was probably more effective than if I had just said I was bothered about it. Obviously I wouldn't expect anyone to be able to manage something even approaching this in the presence of an abusive parent - but I'm to model how it could be applied. One way that often gets peoples hackles up and triggers them so they get defensive is they feel they are on the receiving end of blame. Maybe the blame is well founded (I prefer the term responsibility to be honest - apportion responsibility ....) but nonetheless we have to ask ourselves what our target is: If our target is really to get more of what we want - empathy, understanding, care, responsibility from guilty parties, etc.- then we might want to consider what is likely to work - which may involve putting that resentment aside for a minute, if we can, in pursuit of that goal - in order to express ourselves in ways that we can be more easily heard by defensive people. That might involve doing a lot of process ourselves before going into the situation (which will serve us in the long term whether we are successful or not) it also means that we are assured that if we were not successful that we really gave it our best shot and responsibility for the failure lies absolute with the other party. Process must continue and continue particularly while we are in potential conflict situations - if we're strong enough to stay present. If we're not then we definitely need to back off and self-empathise. A bit more on process, this is my present understanding: Unless they are in the defensive, many people generally do appreciate effective feedback because they are "trying to be good" - trying to be seen as good, worthy, "ok" - in whatever way they have been equipped and continued to equip themselves with - the values they choose, often without an serious thought about how they have come to choose them, because considering it is very scary. I say, unless they are defensive, because defensive people can only hear "us against them" in criticisms - they go to the back of their brain and have to defend themselves at all costs. It literally can feel like dying challenging an opinion. They also tend to push our buttons to get us triggered as well so we don't appear as reasonable - people can be incredibly effective at this because their ego defences were formed to survive abusive situations, they had to be extremely intelligent. Some people are teetering over a constant state of defensiveness so trying to feedback is extremely difficult as we all know... for some even impossible... its up to you whether you want to go there or not - help them or not - but if anyone chooses to do so it requires a huge degree of empathy, which of course states with self-empathy and very very close self-monitoring... In order to be truly effective. You can't empathise with someone effectively when you yourself are triggered and therefore defensive also, and in fact it is damaging to do so. attempt to ignore oneself in order to reach out and empathise with someone else will only accrue resentment. Resentment is like swallowing poison and waiting to die! Emotions are resolved by empathy. They need to be acknowledged for their existence, and understood for what they represent in order to be processed. When you're not acknowledging then you get a build up of negativity which can only lead to escalation of conflict in your life, because it's a trigger to your own defensiveness. Unfortunately we have been taught to see our minor emotions as petty, because our caregivers did not know how to handle them, therefore they were seem as inconvenient, and we internalized the message that these feelings are irritating/inconvenient and often treat them with the same disdain by disregarding them. That allows lots of little emotions to build up as stated until we "over-react" (or just react to lots of things that we haven't yet reacted to.) I would guess the more defensive people are the less good they are at self-empathising. That is why sometimes empathising with them can be effective because it gives them permission to listen to themselves. When I learned to use counselling approaches to listen to people at first I thought it was my empathy that was healing them, but then I came to see that it was actually the fact that I was helping them self-empathise and process their shit instead of ignoring it or dismissing it as petty. If you want to be good at confronting people very effectively you need to self-empathise first, and then reach out from there to empathise with another from a place of balance, and self-respect - from there you can extend respect for their subjective experience (even if not for their behaviour), which can lead to mutual respect if you nail it. You respect the other person's emotional experience which helps untrigger their defensiveness - I stress if and only if you are able and it is not damaging to you to do so - and that may help them help you - if you are a not on the defensive yourself. I don't say anyone has a responsibility or obligation to do this. I just observe that if someone chooses to do this that there are some ways that are more effective than others.

I think this is good http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJQnzhhOv-c&feature=youtu.be&a