TDB

Did you really define murder the way he describes? It's a bit strange trying to give you pointers without hearing the entire argument. The last quote sounds like he is changing the subject.

Sorry for jumping to conclusions (and for taking so long to reply during the FDR upgrade). You said you feel guilty. What do you have to feel guilty about? Your situation is not the result of your choices. You are on a path. You can see where it leads. Do you want to go there?

So if he thinks killing the murderer is justified, he can claim it is moral to kill him? It might not be considered murder, but to you and me it is the same. Is there no universal criteria to determine if retaliation is justified? If not, then you could go about killing everyone and stating it is not murder, but justified retaliatory killing... In that case doesn't the point of view prevail? (I'm playing devil's advocate here) To me, "justified" and "moral" mean the same thing. The thought and the claim are identical, and either both are wrong (as I believe) or both are correct. I'm not clear where you are trying to go with this. Would Stef's UPB qualify as "universal criteria"? I don't follow how point of view is relevant. There are two issues, retaliation and universality, I am getting them mixed up. Say A attacks B, and B kills A in self defense. B is justified. If C comes along and kills B, claiming it is retaliation for the death of A, would anyone believe C is justified? It's hard to think even C would really believe this. Now D, a friend of B, hunts down C. In front of witnesses, C, unarmed, surrenders to D. D kills C and claims to be justified by retaliation. Will anyone be convinced? Am I addressing your point? If so, I will be pleasantly surprised.

Great! Well, I was looking for a FAQ, could not find one, decided to start one. But I could not claim I had a deep understanding. I need a FAQ! It was an invitation to start a discussion that I hoped would end up producing a reasonable FAQ. Gotta start somewhere. I think Stef suffers from the problem of being too close to it. There's a cute phrase in psychology that I've forgotten (curse of the expert?), basically means that someone who is an expert on X, while trying to explain something about X to a total beginner, has a tendency to leave out important stuff that has become so obvious to him that he no longer even thinks about it. He's not aware that he's leaving stuff out, but to the beginner it is just incomprehensible. I think one of my problems was that I just didn't get it why Stef would say something like (paraphrasing) if it's good to kill you must always be killing. I kept thinking, there are plenty of things I do that are good, but I don't do them all the time. I think I've got the interpretation now. In UPB world, theres not good and bad, there's bad and not bad (may also include neutral, aesthetic). If X is bad, you must never do X, so you must always be doing not X. So if "not raping" is bad, you must always be raping. Bad is defined as all the stuff that rates defense/arrest/punishment, all the actions that rate retaliation. So if killing rates retaliation, you must always be not killing. If not killing rates retaliation, you must always be killing. Anyhow, with my shiny new interpretation, I think I might understand the case of "never rape" vs. "always rape". Why not even consider the alternative "sometimes rape"? Because then we have to come up with some new term that specifies what sort of rape would be forbidden and punishable and another word or adjective to specify the kinds of rape that are not. So if rape is bad, you must always be not raping. If "not raping" is bad, you must always be raping. And Stef's subsequent discussion makes more sense. It has to be possible for someone to be good at all times, to be good is to avoid the bad, if not doing something is bad, you must be doing it at all times. And because we can't do much of anything all the time, other than breathing and metabolizing, all obligations are negative obligations. Of course, that demonstrates another problem I have, in that it seems that "never kill" is UPB, but it's not. We can fix it by switching to "never murder", but that just passes the problem down the line, because then we need to decide in each case, was this killing justified by self-defense, or was it murder? Maybe I was expecting too much. I need to straighten this out in my head, maybe I should go through the book again. Am I babbling, or does that sort of make sense? I want to think about those positive obligations some more, later.

Branden writes about self-esteem as a combination of self-efficacy, by which he means confidence that you can understand and cope with reality, and self-worth (? Not sure that was his phrase, memory glitch) meaning the belief that you are worthy of happiness. Are you using self-esteem to mean something else? What would it mean for self-esteem to be delusional? We easily could be delusional about our ability to understand and cope with reality. Sounds more like you mean, some people who actually deserve happiness do not think they deserve it, and some who do not deserve happiness believe they do. Right? Are you saying it is in all cases delusional, or just in some cases? I suppose, using Branden's approach, to "have none" would mean that a person felt that reality was perfectly incomprehensible and that he or she was utterly undeserving of happiness. That doesn't seem like it matches what you meant to say.

I have nothing to add to that post, but I would feel insipid just putting "+1". TDB

Your situation sounds terrible. I'm so sorry no one has taken you seriously. I am not qualified to give advice, but you did ask. I think Stef would say something like, self-knowledge is the first step toward any serious goal. You have some access to the Internet, so presumably that is an option. You also seem to have moved from recognizing a mistake you have made to condemning yourself for it. I hope you will consider working on self-compassion and self-forgiveness. If you can learn from a mistake and then move on, it can be seen as a qualified positive. If you use it to motivate self-attack, then it is a pure negative. What do you see as your strengths? What would you be doing if money was not such a pressing issue? Could you write a blog or run a web business, or would that violate the terms of your relief income? Is there any area of your life where you are the one who is in control, and you could expand it? Okay, that's about as vague as it can be. I apologize, but I am not a pro. Hope it helps. TDB

If all "murder can be both moral and immoral" means is "some killings are justified, some are not" that doesn't seem like a problem. Stef certainly has admitted that killing in self defense can be justified, at least in principle. But from the context, it seems like they mean that the same killing is both moral and immoral, depending on who's perspective you take. If retaliation as a motive justifies killing (I don't think so), then killing the murderer is moral, but it is not murder. If not, it's murder and immoral. Point of view is irrelevant.

Thank you for sharing your difficult history so honestly. I hope you get empathy and encouragement from the responses. I imagine it must be hard to live with the unpleasant memories and struggle to process them. I wish I was wise enough to give you good advice, beyond something trivial, redundant and obvious like "brush after every meal and exercise daily." I am not really sure I know what you mean in your question about body dialogue. Maybe you could elaborate a bit? My childhood was not as full of danger as yours was, but sometimes I am captured by a vivid memory of some mistake I made and I sink into guilt. But it all seems to be in my head, not in my body (well maybe a feeling like fear in my stomach). TDB

I didn't understand how your story related to my apparently inaccurate summary of UPB. Could you please give me an example of a fallacy that I committed?

And they are culturally homogeneous.

I have the book on order. Heumer has an excellent and a nice article on the web "Why People Are Irrational about Politics".

I did a quick google search and came up with a good 1 page overview on the concept if you would like to look over it. http://www.befriendingourselves.com/Self-empathy.html I am a fan of NVC, but that page seems a bit confusing. Here is a passage: This is a nice metaphor but I really need something more concrete. This makes it sound like we all have the same needs at the same time or under the same circumstances, which is really not NVC at all. Here it gets to the point, though badly. Emotions mean something. The same stimulus will not inspire the same response from everyone in every circumstance. Self-empathy means you understand what your emotion means at a deeper level than "Oh, that was a low blow." I think the message underneath that is pretty clear, something like "Oh crap, have I completely misjudged her? Is she too clueless to know that is below the belt, or does she think I have done something that deserves that?" etc.

I have struggled with the UPB book. You are one of three people I know of who claim to understand it. Can you please give me the elevator pitch version? If it does not belong in this thread, please start a new thread or email me or comment on my feeble UPB FAQ attempt at http://brimpossible.blogspot.com/2013/01/upb-faq.html. Here is a great blog that attempts to break down UPB rather well, that frankly explains UPB better than Stef even.. No offense intended Stef /emoticons/emotion-2.gif Economics Junkie is a member on the boards as well. http://www.economicsjunkie.com/universally-preferable-behaviour-a-rational-proof-of-secular-ethics/ I've seen that one, Economics Junkie is one of the three, along with you and Stef. That page helped, but didn't finish the job. I still can't summarize UPB without vigorous hand-waving. I could call in to the Sunday show, except I live in Hawaii, and so I would need to rise at 4am to do so. Thanks anyhow.

I haven't studied this much. But from what I've seen, it seems like many homeschoolers are not doing it to demonstrate autonomy. They're doing it so that they can indoctrinate their kids as they wish rather than the state indoctrinate them. It's not as if they're doing it to give the children the freedom to seek truth as they see fit. I am not saying nobody does that. I'm sure there are some very thoughtful parents that homeschool for this latter reason. But my understanding, which might be wrong, is that most homeschoolers do so for religious reasons because they want to control the flow of information to their kids in an even more narrow way, not broaden it. If I'm correct, many homeschoolers are opposing the dominant ideas of the government, but trading them for the dominant ideas of the church. And those messages are often in opposition, as this demonstrates. That's why there are religious families who believe government schools are so bad for their kids, from a religious standpoint, that they should remove them. This is why I said in my earlier post that it's oversimplifying to just claim everyone is brainwashed by the government. In fact, they are getting mesages - often mixed messages that contradict each other - from many corners. Should I interpret all this as an argument against the idea of homeschoolers being engaged in resistance, or as a change of subject?[]

I have struggled with the UPB book. You are one of three people I know of who claim to understand it. Can you please give me the elevator pitch version? If it does not belong in this thread, please start a new thread or email me or comment on my feeble UPB FAQ attempt at http://brimpossible.blogspot.com/2013/01/upb-faq.html.

Thanks for your kind words. I agree but have 2 small quibbles that are interesting to me. During a recent train disaster the government forbade official media to even travel to the site or give any coverage. Photos taken by witnesses got out by cell phone and Internet, and became widely known and discussed. Then the government controlled media became too embarrassed to not cover it, pushed to get the ban lifted, and it got coverage. Obviously, we can't conclude that the problem is solved, but neither is it a dead issue. What used to be an airtight seal has become porous. As for disappearing people, my impression is that this is less likely now, though for cynical reasons. The CCP bureaucrats prefer to make an example of anyone who manages to annoy or embarrass them. They have begun to develop their own variant of the western style PR jujitsu; if an embarrassing incident occurs, find a scapegoat, possibly even in government or state-owned enterprise, imprison him, denounce him, convict him, confiscate his wealth, declare that the system works, justice has been done, no need for reform.

I live a long distance from my family. There are issues, not sure I want to put them on the Internet. Another relative lived a long time, had significant health problems during last decade of life, needed lots of care. Putting myself in some others' place, I probably would have made similar decisions, probably would regret them now, or at least experience some guilt. Not sure what I have learned from it, feel unprepared. Self-knowledge not quite where I'd wish. I want to think about it, but maybe not so publicly.

Disappointing. I doubt that it was much of a "teachable moment". The motives that drove her to post (frustration, insecurity, desire for validation or maybe wishing for a magical cure) didn't prepare her for your input. But as STer pointed out, it might've gone better if you'd shown her that you understood her feelings first. Once you'd set her off, she was happy to cast you as the bad guy, and It got hard to get things back on track.

I don't think the only way is to undercut belief in something through rational arguments against it. Agreed. Rational argument is not even the best way. I rate demonstration higher. Not as in political demonstration on the capital grounds, but as in the Wright brothers demonstrated the principle of heavier than air flight. Well how is it disobedience at all to do something that is perfectly allowed? They're not taking the path of least resistance. There ought to be a joke in there somewhere. They are resisting the dominant paradigm, they're opting out, and doing it well. They're opening up space, demonstrating what autonomy can look like. Okay, I definitely need a better way of describing this. Homeschooling currently is perfectly allowed (small quibble, some states impose a regulatory burden) in the legal sense. In the cultural sense it still goes against the grain, incurs a cost. The government bureaucrats push them in one direction, they zag in another. They are resisting an idea. Boycott is the word I should've used. They are in conscious opposition to the dominant idea. The fact that their resistance has been sufficiently successful that their activity is now mostly legal throughout the US should not disqualify it as resistance.

In the examples you give, either people actually could not just dress, speak and move where they wanted - things were much more repressive - or the economy was horrible and a significant proportion of people were having a hard time getting basic needs met (making even our recessions look like luxury). My point is that nothing that goes on in rich Western countries is really near the degree of those cases. On an abstract level, you can make analogies. But the average Westerner does not experience anything like average people in Communist Czech or the Soviet Union before the collapse did. If an average American were transported to those societies, they'd notice some vast differences in how free they felt. There really is a stark difference between the experience of an average Westerner and a person in a truly repressive place. If you don't acknowledge that out of some kind of ideological anti-government purity then you are just not going to sound credible to most people. So it's really important to consider why this gap exists between the perilous leviathan spoken of by lib/an's and the pretty ok day to day life most people seem to feel they live. And I don't think the answer is to compare it to the denial in those other repressive regimes. It's true that things can get very bad and people still be in denial. But I don't think that's what's going on here. I think what's going on here is that Westerners have the best standard of living the world has ever known, lots and lots of everyday freedoms and they are pretty content when push comes to shove on issues of freedom. The homeschooling example is interesting because you ask whether it's resistance. But I keep pointing out that homeschooling is legal. It's a perfect example of what I keep saying - that our government has not stopped us from having a lot of freedoms. There is no need to resist anything to homeschool. It's one of the freedoms we enjoy. Above, I am admitting I have a remarkable degree of freedom compared to many people now alive, that my personal freedom is currently a nonissue. Even the risk I mention is pretty low, assuming I don't go looking for a fight. So STer's response, which seems to take everything I said as an argument against his position, seems to misunderstand what I am saying. Let me clarify. I basically agree with his point that we won't convince many people to do much of anything by talking about how the government limits their freedom, true or not. And my interpretation of what Stef has said does not contradict it either - Stef is all about raising a generation of rational people, not about starting a revolution, violent or otherwise. I am a bit less patient than Stef, but my plan doesn't rely much on that sort of propaganda (nor for that matter violence). It might get a bit of traction in a neighborhood with a lot of "stop and frisk" going on. Or maybe not. Anyhow, you would not try to abolish Catholicism by convincing Catholics that the Pope is restricting their freedom. He's the Pope, thats what he does. You need to convince them that Catholicism is nonsense. Statism is a religion. Only by undermining the fundamental beliefs can you so much as dent it. Even if we could convince the average person to gripe about government bureaucrats squelching freedom, we would not necessarily have demolished that temple. Perhaps STer will find this new approach even more challenging and difficult than the previous one. In the discussion of the USSR, I am not making an analogy. I am thinking about what makes people resist or not, even under more dire conditions. And it is eluding me. Sometimes revolts happen in good times, sometimes in bad, sometimes ruthless tyrants die of old age in their sleep. WRT homeschooling, So nothing that is legal counts as resistance? Maybe I need a new word. It's not civil disobedience. Subtle disobedience? Uncivil disobedience? Cultural transgression? Subversion?

It's a bit more complicated than that, but that's close enough. Weak government of the empire overthrown in 1911-1912 revolution, resulting in a weak nationalist government. Communist insurgency, Japanese invasion and occupation of Manchuria. Communists and Nationalists cease-fire to fight the Japanese, then resume hostilities after Japanese defeat. Mao comes out on top, uses Soviet style brutality for a while, then invents the cultural revolution. Basic idea of the cultural revolution was that Mao is god, everyone else is suspect, anything old is bad and should be destroyed. (Most of the Chinese art from before 1950 that still exists, ironically, survived in places like the British museum.) Various factions vied to prove their supreme devotion to Mao. Schools were either closed or switched over to full-time political propaganda, and teachers were in danger from students, and students in danger from each other. Maximum slave on slave violence, with no one safe. Though of course there was a preferred victim class, vulnerable to anyone who felt like passing along the bad karma. Then Mao died and Deng Xiaoping won the power struggle. According to the conventional story, he then came up with some brilliant reforms that turned the economy around. The revisionist version, documented by Kate Xiao Zhou in her book "How the Farmers Changed China," shows that the rural farmers had been pushing back against collective farming from the first, but that Mao had been sufficiently powerful and ruthless to crush resistance. During the power struggle after Mao's death, a secretive informal decollectivization began to spread from place to place. Farmers colluded with local officials to split up the collective land, allowing each family to work for themselves, so long as the grain quota was satisfied and the local officials could pretend to represent successful collective farms. This in turn led to a release of enormous creative energy, a surplus of agricultural goods, leading to informal markets and a wave of illegal internal migration. By the time the central government bureaucrats began to catch on to the reality of the situation, the beneficial results had become widely recognized and could not be turned back without a brutal and ruthless display of power and sacrifice of legitimacy. None the less, hard liners succeeded in formally outlawing many of the new activities. The new regime struggled to strangle the goose that laid the golden eggs, while trying to take credit for the eggs at the same time. The farmers responded by bribing officials to allow them to continue. This all displays the warped power of the informal sector/black market, as the economic boom lent legitimacy to the central government, and economic success combined with corruption led to entrenched stagnant politics. Most ironically, the Tiananmen protests led to a backlash, undermining the few actual reformers in the government. So here we are. The internet and cell phones have weakened the party's ability to censor the news, so that some scandals and news of disasters has spread, the sort of thing that would have disappeared into the memory hole 30 years ago. Corruption is a fact of Chinese life. Things seems stable, but who knows?

+1 This is a difficult topic for me.

Seems to me you have chosen to embrace this responsibility and are investigating options and preparing for your new role. I am trying to empathize. I get the sense that you are strongly committed to fulfilling your potential as this girl's stepfather and cognizant of the stakes involved. You are hopeful, confident, but cautious and wanting to cover all the bases. So you posted here to get some input. The only question in my mind is why you're so focused on the evolutionary psychology ideas, rather than searching the Internet for an expert family counselor or a book by such an expert. Evolutionary psychology has some solid stuff but also some more speculative and controversial stuff, and I would be surprised if it had any guidance for you other than sort of showing you the odds against you. Since you want to beat the odds, that is of limited value. But I am in no position to advise you, this is just me spouting off. I am "that guy," I love going to the library to find books by experts.

It's not really my freedom that is the problem. Things like crazy foreign policy and mass incarnation bother me, but if they went away my immediate circumstances would not change. I should perhaps be embarrassed by my ability to adapt and thrive within the coercive system, and fortunately I have never caused any powerful asshole to notice my existence and decide to make me uncomfortable. So I get to do most of what I want, I just have to accept a certain level of risk that I could be persecuted arbitrarily. STer seems interested in what would motivate people to resist. I'm not sure we're thinking about it the right way, sometimes people adapt and tolerate terrible things, because "that's just the way it is," sometimes they suddenly stop. Why did the Soviet Union collapse? Why didn't it collapse earlier, during the Czech Spring or the uprising in Hungary? Wy not last longer? Why did people put up with gulags and secret police surveillance and censorship, until they didn't? And what counts as resistance? In a way, every pot smoker, prostitute, and gambler is resisting, but culture devalues their resistance. The prisons are half full of political prisoners, but most people, including most of the prisoners themselves, consider them to be common criminals. Are the people using bitcoin, Imule and BitTorrent engaged in resistance? Are homeschoolers engaged in resistance?