Alex Bell

Recently I've started to become romantically interested in a girl I met at work, we've known each other for a few months now. At first I didn't pay much attention to her other than to recognize she was a reasonably attractive female in my age group, over the past few weeks, I've started to like and respect her more. A week ago I found out things have come to a head between her and her parents, and she's decided to move out of their house - 3 days before going back to college. I was a bit taken aback at first but intrigued. I just happened to have gotten half-moved in to my new apartment but wasn't living there yet, so I told her I might have a place for her to stay if I thought she was doing the right thing. She told me her story, there's been physical and emotional abuse in her family, a lot of what she was telling me resonated with my experience. It took me back to when I was kicked out, and remembering how I had almost no one to turn to, I decided to help her out. Over the course of the next couple of days, I hung out with her, learned more about her. This is when my attitude toward her shifted from light interest to the beginnings of infatuation as my heart became involved. It's been a long time since my last relationship, which didn't end well, and I'm sensitive to starting a new one, but also coming to appreciate the emotional aspects of life and the fact that I haven't felt this way about someone in a long time. I don't want to just let the feeling die, but make a decision to pursue a relationship or not and stick to it. So I need your help: I don't have many people in my life I trust to give me feedback on this kind of thing so I'd like to know what you guys think. I see virtue/value in her as well as things I think are red flags. Things I like about her: she's attractive, thoughtful, hard working, courageous, proactive, wants to be a good parent, likes teaching people, we have similar histories we can connect over. Things I don't like about her: she can be impulsive to the point of recklessness, drinks and consumes cannabis regularly, I think she's made bad relationship choices in the past (still investigating), is potentially narcissistic (she can talk a lot at times, but does ask about my thoughts), and she goes to college 2 hours away (not her fault, but makes things more difficult). Any advice you can give as far as how to decide, ways to think about this is appreciated. My heart says yes but I don't trust it yet. My head says no but I have trouble trusting it too.

Jami, Reading your post reminded me of a time I felt a similar way: while playing guitar after consuming MDMA. My thoughts were erratic, I kept getting overwhelmed by surges of excitement, pleasure, joy and immense satisfaction as it seemed I was hitting all the right notes and no matter what, they sounded beautiful. I'm not asserting any drug use on your part. I do, however, have experience with the power of such an emotional shift, which in my case was forced through ingesting chemicals. I mean to illustrate the fact that such a state can be arrived at without actually coming to any understanding of the truth, though in the moment that's Exactly what it feels like. I haven't since had quite the same experience (chemically induced or otherwise), but at times I notice certain elements of it occurring naturally. With this context, two questions if I may: 1. Could you elaborate as to how you arrived at your new-found understanding? 2. How would you define God? The Truth? (sorry to sneak an third in there ) Thank you for sharing your experience, Alex

+1 Kevin, but will we get any answers? This hiatus may affect our communication lines with ashesmi.

I posted this in another related thread already, but this one seems more appropriate so: I got angry when hearing Joe's attacks. After finishing the episode, taking a step back and calming down, though, it seems he was just using the state as a crutch. It's obviously an emotional issue for Joe, which means he's probably never been helped to reason through the ideas. When people are confused by or afraid of (Joe) an idea or event (BP Oil spill), the inner authoritarian takes over in order to return to a state of peace as quickly as possible, even if it's a false peace ("There will always be greedy fucks and we need violence to keep them in check"). Peter never addressed the actual issue, how could such an event be prevented without the state, and instead wrote it off because "we have bigger problems" and repeated "if government got out of the way, it would fix itself." This isn't an argument, just a statement of belief; one that doesn't resonate with someone who doesn't also believe it. When you add on top of that Peter's admitted his fracking interest, it further weakens the strength of his assertion (I don't know if fracking truly is dangerous or not, but the public image is that it is, so if you're open about your financial relationship with it, you'd do well to be able to effectively argue why it is safe lest your Ethos be damaged). I think the point could have been better argued, who knows if Joe would have been convinced or not. This seems like an excellent example of why, as Stef said in his "Ending History" speech, we should stop discussing "free market solutions" as a way of converting people; they're useless if someone hasn't first accepted the fundamental immorality of the state and thus is honestly looking for an answer themselves, not just defending their current beliefs as both of these men did.

I'm not suggesting replacing the chat you guys use, though I'm more of an open source fan the software you guys use is definitely slick. I'm thinking something that's more of a server that "scrapes" new posts, broadcasts the text over IRC, and then allows the reverse process for posting. I'm not sure if this is technically possible since there isn't an API (I emailed the developers), I'm not sure if there's any way to differentiate the text, who posted them, connecting nicknames with FDR accounts. Haha the more I think about it from what little I know the more difficult it seems, but when I mentioned it some people said they'd also like IRC access and I thought maybe someone would enjoy the challenge.

At least in part of the android development community, people who can actually write code are annoyed by people who don't know how asking them to code things for free. I humbly bow before anyone who can program, and respectfully ask that you find a way to convert the chat feed into IRC or some other protocol I can use in my external chat client. Unfortunately, Firefox 26 on Ubuntu 13.10 suxx and I'd like to not need to use it to chat. Gifts of Gold, Frankincenses, and Myrrh be showered upon he who accepts such a challenge (in the form of thanks and a beer).

Hello and welcome Fabrantes! I'm actually interested in some of your knowledge! I'm interested in traveling to South America, but as I already speak some Spanish, I haven't really considered visiting Brazil. Two questions if I may: 1. Have you been anywhere in SA outside of Brazil? If so, how do they compare? 2. Do many Brazilians/people in Brazil speak Spanish as well (since your surrounded by it )? Thanks for joining, I hope to see you around!

dsayers: My understanding of the idea of scientism is that, as ccuthbert described, the current level of bureaucracy has led to falsehood being believed scientifically derived because people labeled "scientists" said so. For example, it's commonly asserted that Global Warming/Climate Change is "settled science" because "97% of 'scientists' agree." Consensus is not science, but it's being currently pedalled as such because "scientists" are in consensus. This state of affairs does not invalidate the scientific process itself, but does require one interested in actual science to further validate purported "science" oneself beyond determining who it originated from as, unfortunately, not all scientists can be relied on. ccuthbert: It seems to me that what Friendly means is he thinks at least parts of Darwin's theory are true, but is also willing to accept that other parts of it may be false. Two questions for you: Do you think any part of Darwin's theory to be true? What is your favorite flavor of ice cream?

Good point, I probably shouldn't have appealed to the authority of a dictionary, it seems today most have the convolution you pointed out.

dsayers, I tend to agree. As Steph's argued, the oligarchs don't actually want to be in danger, and tend to not pick on other governments with nukes. Nuclear proliferation could be one defensive measure, but as I outlined above, I think there are other way's to do so as well that can't be as effectively argued against (everyone having nukes is a mexican standoff, everyone being able to stop a nuclear attack is a solution).

This was what I was hoping for . I think so. However, my hypothesis is that because agression is rooted in unrepaired trauma, in their futile quest to gain control they can never truely have over other's/the environment, eventually they will destroy enough of their species/planet to die off themselves. This is barring enough non-agressors taking action to influence those who can be swayed either way into taking their side. If the agressors persist, lets say those who wrote the Georgia Guide Stones successfully reduce the human population to 500,000,000 as they plan, the fact that they wouldn't be destroyed themselves in the process of destroying all that wealth would be because, to some extent, they left room for non-agressive, rational actors and the cycle continues (the non-agressors posses the majority of intellectual and creative power, etc). Or, perhaps they eliminate the non-agressors and survive due to the power of their buereacracy and technology; because their control is built on an oversimplification of reality, eventually the technology will degrade and they won't be able to fix it and die off as in the first scenario. Perhaps during this destruction they maintain enough capital, human and otherwise, to eventually create interstellar technology. Because they would still be "feeding" on the creativity of non-agressors, any truely peaceful race would have a greater potential to develop technology, and be able to twart any agression aginst other races, as well as help the non-agressors who were left given infinite time. Not sure exactly what you mean. I'm assuming your wondering how non-agressors could overcome the power desparity? If so, I can think of a few possibilities off hand: Non-agressors could develop a defensive technology to overcome the difference. I think defensive tech might be inherantly cheaper ($60,000 stinger beats $5,000,000 Apache), but from an economic standpoint, a great many people want to defend themselves from this threat, and because the agressors can't really rely on a moral argument against propagation of defensive tech (at least as long as they couldn't argue that the tech could be offensive; perhaps a stinger could be pointed at a "civilian" building, but a sheild's not a very effective weapon), supply could meet demand and empower all who wanted to aquire the tech. As the technology is principlly built on the work of non-agressors who, as a whole, will be more intelligent than agressors, as the technology gets more complex, the gap between what non-agressors and agressors understand about it will grow, allowing for more opportunities to disable the tech. I think hacking is a good example. While I certainly wouldn't call all hacker's non-agressive, I think many of them fall in the camp; as far as superior intelligence, it seems telling to me that one of if not the main source of "government hackers" are those that were "turned" to avoid criminal charges. So, I can imagine someone being intelligent enough to hack and electronically disable nuclear weapons, drones, you name it, because the oligarchs and their bureacrats are necessarily a step behind the "bleeding edge" (though in many cases they are on the "cutting edge") And, If you want to fall a little more fully into the realm of speculation: 3. Peacful, interstellar alien races will use their technology to prevent cataclysmic destruction because of the value and potentiall of the existant non-agressors. Please forgive my longwindedness, this is the first I've deeply thought about this and thus have yet to simplify the arguments.

The other day I was listneing to Mark Passio discuss Natural Law. He came up with an interesting distinction between Violence and Force, I'm interested to see what you guys think. He uses the relationship between the roots of "violence" and "violate" to support the validity of his definition. It basically follows that of Oxford English, which is: "behaviour involving physical force intended to hurt, damage, or kill someone or something" Basically, violence denotates agression. He then defines force, again, essentially as Oxford does: "strength or energy as an attribute of physical action or movement" In this sense, people describing sports like MMA, Football, and Hockey aren't actually "violent" as everyone volunteered to participate, not to mention the physiological testing that they must past to be allowed to do so, though they're most certainly "forceful." I forward this idea because most everywhere, even here, I find that people seem to muddle the two; I'm guessing people here might have a greater capacity to both challenge the idea and appreciate clarification for it's own sake. What do you think?

Why, Steve_, do you think they do? If a bear is attacking me, am I forcing my moral structure onto it in order to defend myself?

I've been thinking about this just today, my hypothesis is this: The greatest inventions of man are made by the smartest people who, for philosophical, psychological, and biochemical reasons, are non-agressors themselves; oligarchs and their bureacrats necessarily oversimplify reality to avoid dealing with their own contradictions, which necessarily limits their creative ability. With this in mind, for an alien race to be agressive assumes the oligarchs and their bureaucrats ("the agressors") would adapt the technology of the non-agressors, but not destroy their race in the process (nanotech plauges, nuclear holocosts etc), I don't believe this is possible (just my belief). Even if they could, the peaceful civilizations would be able to develop the technology faster, and more likely to develop it at all, such that the first intersteller race was peaceful, and most after them would be. Still, suppose the Klingons have just become an Solar Power (dominating all the planets in their system). The peaceful aliens, rationally, would want to observe them, not agressing, but analyzing what caused this and what can be done to prevent them from harming anyone else. Because the peaceful aliens would have superior technology, they'll be able to stay ahead of the Klingons. I'd imagine the non-agressors would take steps to both guide developing races to becoming peaceful, and defend these races from potential threat. Icing on the cake, maybe they even seed planets with life to eventually cultivate more non-agressors to help out (the research never ends after all). A lot of opinion and belief there, which is why I want to know: what do you think Xeeg.

Not sure how you'd want to categorize these, but checkout : Red Ice Radio (covers all those topics at some point) Tragedy and Hope (focuses on current control structures and how to learn our way out of them) 21st Century Wire (Alternative Media) Hybrid Librarian (Interesting Facts/Mysteries) Mark Passio (This one's fun, he gets into "the occult" but has a decent grasp of Natural Law, discusses the NAP)