DaVinci

I'm assuming based on your table of contents that you are writing non-fiction. Most of my research into writing, while helpful to me might not be so helpful to you as it focuses on writing fiction. But, hey if it is fiction let me know cause I've started getting a really soild grasp on writing fiction. Welcome to the boards!

I don't think this issue is about boys. This issue is about control. Boys might be what they said or what she thinks, but I don't think that is the case. This was about making an example out of her to show everyone else that they are in control.

I don't think this is just a psychological issue. I think a lot of people who transition do so thinking it will solve the problem of how they are perceived by society. So a man will go on hormone replacement or get surgery, but will still have the musculo-skeletal structure of a man. So the way they are perceived doesn't really change, and may in fact intensify as they now have to deal with both an increased level of rejection in society and the issues that come from hormones and surgery. I think this is why you see men who still present as female but don't go on hormones or transition.

Yeah, to me, this issue is blown out of proportion. Even if we say that there aren't enough female characters in starring roles in these movies that doesn't mean that there is not a ton of stories out there that do star women. Anime for example is full of stories about women, or teams of women, or stories where the number of women is equal to men, etc. The real question for me is why aren't these feminists pointing this out? Why aren't they going to these stories if that is what they want. It really starts to betray their behavior as nagging. But, this is just my view on it.

My view on this is that people like mirrors of themselves. People want to see themselves reflected in others. A spouse, friends, etc. This is why you see so many people who are married to someone who looks like their sister/brother. I think it is a biological drive. Even the things that people are interested in, as in movies, books etc fall into this category. There have been many times I've seen people talk about how good a movie or t.v. show is that has a main character that looks a lot like them. So I think that this idea extends outward in a more general sense. People want to be around other people who are around the same level of attractiveness that they are. A woman who is an 8 out of 10 in attractiveness wants to hang out with other 8's. I would even say this applies to intelligence and overall character. I know I don't want to hang out with pscychopaths. I want to hang out with other non-violent, peaceful people. Now, I don't think wanting to see mirrors of yourself is bad by default. It is really how you act on it that makes it bad. This is the problem with the scenario you described. That people are segregating others from a group based on looks. A woman who is an 8 in attractiveness thinks that based just on that criteria that there is nothing worthwhile about a woman who is a 5. Everything about that woman beyond what is perceived by the most superficial glance is ignored and a hasty judgement call is made.

Someone will probably correct me on this, but I think in an anarcho capitalist world you acquire unowned land by improving it. In other words, you can't just stake a claim and hold the land forever. You have to improve it in some way. A house. A fence. A barn. Cows. Crops. Something like that. Some form of use

To me, that felling of "I wish I had X" is largely a result of the meat grinder we go through as kids. Instead of learning how to make money work for us we learn just enough math to run a cash register. Instead of learning how to communicate and negotiate we learn just enough English to fill out a job application. Instead of learning how to turn our home into a workshop for our dreams we learn to accumulate material goods and turn it into a museum that we only look at in that window between the drudgery of work and sleep we call "life." We drop into the meat grinder, get torn up, and come out only good enough for hamburgers. We have to unlearn to wish for things. We have to learn to take action to make things in our lives happen.

Did you ever finish that book?

I know in dealing with certain people in the past few years that my anger has been a response to mistreatment. It has usually been when I've been trying to be reasonable with these people and I've been met with manipulation, selfishness, and uncaring on their part. So, I think, my rage is a defense mechanism. I'm letting my frustration boil over instead of letting it fester inside me. By comparison how many times do you see a $20 bill on the ground, pick it up and then scream in bloody anger to the sky $@*#! That would be weird, right? You should just be like "Hey cool I found 20 bucks!" So anger is a response to percieved mistreatment. Now, anything can be taken to an extreme, including anger, but I would say in general anger probably is healthy as a mechanism for letting yourself and others know how you feel. It's very primal, but not a feeling that should be ignored.

You have to? Because you see your former self in others? Most people don't change unless they have to. Most people are not open minded. So did you change from being a closed minded person to an open minded one? Or were you always open minded and just didn't have enough info to make better decisions until recently?

I have always wanted to try playing a game like chess through the mail. I think it would be fun to get a letter every few days with your opponents move on it.

By Pavel G. Somov, Ph.D. ~ Less than a minute read "I don’t think we should be down on people whose minds are closed. Learning is painful, I suspect. At least, uncomfortable. Which is a level of distress. Learning – neurologically speaking – is an event of neural plasticity. To learn, a brain has to change. Any change is a disruption of homeostasis, an uncomfortableness, a level of distress. Closed minds – I posit – hurt too much when it comes to rethinking reality. Why? Because they have been programmed too tightly by other closed minds (parents, micro-culture). Not their fault, as I see it. (When you are growing up with a closed (change-fearing) mind, you are operating under the conditions of conditional love. That’s an emotionally scary environment: you learn fast, you learn well – you mimic your parents, you try to be like them, because you need to survive.) So, what we are dealing with here is just a legacy of historical pain avoidance of having to ever upgrade an evolving view of reality. If you can relate to avoidance of pain, you can relate to a closed mind. So, I call on you, Open Mind, to learn to feel non-patronizing compassion for a Closed Mind. Open your mind to close-mindnedness. After all, a closed mind is just defensiveness, i.e. self-care. No sin in that." I'm curious to hear some opinions of what everyone here thinks about this. Is it right on point? Complete non-sense? Not without merit but still highyl flawed?

I think I wouldn't date my dentist. Cause it would always be "Did you just eat chocolate? Go brush your teeth!" I can agree that a sexual relationship in therapy might not be a great idea. But, in regards to the topic that type of relationship does make me wonder what happens if you do have that involuntary response inside yourself and engage in a voluntary relationship. It seems like a contradiction except for that what happens inside your head isn't really "force". It's... biology? I also wonder where the line is between manipulation and force. I could be approaching this in a weird way, but when I think of manipulation and force I think of neglect and abuse. Like it is kind of the same thing. But I dunno. It's just the gut feeling I get.

This is difficult because we don't know any context about these families other than what these videos show. We are comparing two out of context videos of different families. That being said I'll give it a shot. I think the second girl has a very authoritarian and distant family. Otherwise she wouldn't be lying about her age to talk to people. She wouldn't feel a need to go looking for attention somewhere else. I don't think this video is going to help matters either. They have embarassed her online rather than discussing her feelings in private. I feel bad for her. The first girl is still in an early phase of development, and it sounds like the father is engaging her, which is good. Hopefully that type of engaement happens when the cameras are off too. In a sense I wonder why he shot that video. To show off his kid? Be an example to others? Just like the first video I wonder "why was this filmed?"

I've heard of many people falling for their therapist because they are telling them things they would never tell anyone. But that type of transference happens in more than just therapist client relationships. So what is the difference between the shared delusion, and actual love?

If someone makes a claim like, "You don't listen" then how are you supposed to prove that? Should you try to prove that? If this was a physical altercation and the statement was "I feel like you just slapped my face with a book", well, no one would phrase it that way. They would just say "You just hit me with a book" because they can point to evidence to back them up. The red mark on their face. The book in the other persons hand, etc. I think that is why people say "I feel like you don't listen" because it seems like "not being listened to" is something that can't be proven. I realize that one of these things is agressive force and the other is just words, and I agree that certain people should be avoided in the first place, but that is not always an option.

Time goes faster because each year is a smaller portion of your overall life. When you are one, one year is 100% of your life. When you are thirty, one year is 1/30th of your life.

The way you described walking into your school makes it sound like you didn't think quite that way when you were there. If that is the case, correct me if I'm wrong, then walking back in must have been like seeing the curtain pulled back on Oz. Seeing the illusion that what you now recognize as a prison used to just be "School".

I'm confused. Is the second part of your post real life? Honestly, the way you describe things in the second half is very similar to the first half. They bled into each other, and I think that is telling. You sound overwhelmed by the illusion. By the prison.

Nothing like a dose of truth in rap form.

This is actually one of the points of debate that comes up a lot. One person found the scene moving. Someone else found it dumb. Therefore there is no reason to consider your story thoughtfully. It's all subjective. Though I think this ignores how the internal logic of the story is playing out.

So, when you say dreams are subjectively real because we are here to experience them, are you saying "we each have subjective experiences of the same thing, but the dream is real because the senses are valid?

I don't think it is attraction they feel. I would wager it is more about that at some point in their lives they felt powerless and so are now acting out a power fantasy against the weakest people.

These issues cycle into each other. A man beats a woman. The woman beats her son. The son grows up hating women. He takes revenge on another woman by raping her. That woman learns to hate men. She promotes "women's rights" that hurt men who had nothing to do with raping her. Those men get mad at all feminists etc. Eventually it cycles down to this level and becomes this incredibly horrible act. Essentially, someone who was not raised in a violent environment wouldn't do something like this. Someone who had rejected violence wouldn't do something like this.

In various debates I've seen about works of fiction I always hear people describe a particular movie, or book, as being "objectively bad" in quality. Someone usually responds to this by saying that there is no objectivity at all in fiction, but it this really the case? Isn't the language of the book itself objective? Is the dialogue in a movie subjective? What about the actual experience of watching a movie or reading a book? Certainly two people can't have an objective expereince together, but the best stories seem to draw on universal human emotions to build upon. So can we say definitively that a novel or movie is entirely subjective?