STer

Talk about an oversimplification. If a person is abusing their children, is asked repeatedly to stop, does not stop, then are you saying at no point is it reasonable to use force to protect the children? And when you use force to do that, there is always a risk of that intervention itself leading to some harm. The calculation is whether the harm of intervention is likely to be greater or less than the harm already happening. If someone is aggressing against others and won't respond to non-forceable intervention, there is no way around the calculation having to be made. So in Syria, if hundreds of children are being killed (again, it's ok if you doubt this to be the case, but then you should be very focused on finding the evidence to determine if it is true or not) how much risk of harm is justified? It's overly general to talk in isolation about "her neighborhood being destroyed." Are you saying that we would use the pretext of saving children to go in and purposely destroy civilian neighborhoods for its own sake? Or are you saying that in the course of targeting strategically important areas, civilian neighborhoods sometimes inadvertently get hit? Just remember in the calculation, there is a cost to not intervening as well as intervening. It's easy to point to any collateral damage from intervening in isolation and say that shows intervention was bad. But it's intellectually dishonest not to also point out the damage that continues to happen if nobody intervenes. If you look at both sides, weigh the pros and cons, and show that in total non-intervention is better, I can respect that. But I am not seeing both sides weighed here. And that's strange on a board so dedicated to the welfare of children when children's lives are involved here. I'm just trying to balance this conversation out because the lives of the children who may be harmed in Syria in heinous ways - not to even mention the adults - should not be left out of the discussion. That doesn't quite answer my questions clearly. My questions are: 1) Do you not think it's worth intervening? - Are you saying then that you think intervention is not merited? Even if chemical weapons were used to kill these people, including hundreds of children, we should do nothing? If so, then I'd just like to get clear on that as your view. If more children and others are killed using chemical weapons, should we continue to do nothing or is there a threshhold at which we should intervene? 2) If you do think we should intervene, but don't think "bombing to shit out of people," as you put it, is the most effective intervention, then what intervention would you suggest instead? I repeated some of what I said - and pointed out that in my first sentence - because the response seemed to miss some of it. And I attempted to address the challenges raised. If I failed to address them, then raise them again and I'll try again. I'm completely lost as to the relevance of this question. I didn't mention my emotions anywhere. I pointed out a seeming inconsistency in the way people on FDR approach the welfare of children in their local supermarket vs. the welfare of children in Syria. If they see a mother yelling at a child at the store, they come on here posting enraged at her. But if they see children likely dying from chemical weapons in Syria - surely much worse than being yelled at - they instead focus on attacking Obama's speech about it, where he condemns such behavior (a view I would think people here would agree with) but I see no threads enraged at the children's treatment itself. My emotions were never raised. What is raised is the seeming inconsistency of the approach. Why is it that if one child is mistreated on a TV show, I can expect a thread devoted to how terrible it is, but here we have a powerful state possibly attacking its own children, and even here, where people so hate states, there is nobody posting about how awful this is? I specifically asked if people doubt that chemical weapons were used and harmed these children because to me it should not be about emotion, but about the facts. If people doubt that they were used, then that would explain the reaction (though it would also bring up the need to verify those facts.) xelent, thanks for posting Stef's video on this. I look forward to watching it soon. Maybe it will clear up some of these questions.

In my post, I asked if you doubt that it happened. If you doubt the facts, that's reasonable. But then the focus should be on finding out the facts. In any case, there is a serious question here of whether chemical weapons were used on children. And even if not, there is reason to believe children are being harmed. Yet I see very little talk about these children here. Why the apparent lack of concern? In addition, even if you are cynical enough to believe that Obama cares nothing for the lives of these children, I would still think you'd be glad when he speaks about protecting them. After all, if you knew someone you felt was insufficiently concerned with children and one day you saw them witness harm to children and they spoke out about it, I would think you'd say it's a step in the right direction. I would think the attitude would be "well at least he's bringing attention to the wrongness of killing children." I find it a strange contradiction that on this board, people talk constantly about it being crucial for us to improve the plight of children, not only our own, but even future generations. But now, when there are children being harmed in Syria (unless you don't think that is happening) the attitude seems to be that it isn't our business. It doesn't seem consistent to me is all.

It's interesting that on this board, if a mother so much as verbally abuses a child, people are applauded loudly for stepping in. But if a person uses chemical weapons to kill 400 children, nobody seems too concerned. Some, like darkskyabove, say that since it was far away, it's basically not his business. This is a very interesting comparison. It surprises me that on a board so incredibly sensitive to the treatment of children, nobody seems to be concerned at all that hundreds of children may have been victims of chemical weapons in Syria. Is it that you don't believe it happened? Or is it that, since they're far away, you don't care about them? If you do care, do you just not think it's worth any intervention? If you do think it's worth intervening, then what type of intervention would you support? I'm sure I'll hear "Well in the course of intervening, you might kill some innocent civilians." OK. But if 400 innocent civilian children were just killed and we stop 400 more from being killed, how many innocent civilians are you willing to risk to save those 400? It's odd to see such complex strategic questions being reduced to such oversimplifications. Please explain.

But you don't have to choose one and only one. The question is whether they are both true. They are both true.

I would say it's more precise to say that the block of wood does not believe in evolution because it doesn't have the ability to believe in anything. Both statements are not only true, but linked to each other.

It's not that simple because harm is not done only directly. For instance, teaching someone a certain belief can lead that person to then act on it. The person who taught them may never even encounter you. Yet they may have been instrumental in the person they taught later doing something that does harm you. In fact, many of the people who have been influential in the emergence of great harm rarely did the direct harm themselves, but had others do it on their behalf or under their influence. So when someone sees a particular philosophy as harmful in that it may influence others to do harmful things, they may criticize the person putting forth that philosophical viewpoint even if that person themselves never directly harms them. That's the ultimate form of the "paradox of intolerance" that I was referring to. Frankly, I think there is no way around the fact that certain forms of tolerance are themselves intolerable (if you value health and sustainability, for instance). That's why I don't think it makes sense to advocate for "tolerance" in and of itself as something desirable. I think it's more desirable to advocate for wisdom in deciding what to support and what to oppose.

I specifically said I was not commenting on the truth or falsehood of the opinion in this thread, but simply saying that appears to be the viewpoint of many of the people you are talking about who ridicule one and not the other. That is how they find their behavior morally consistent. The statement that "tolerance is necessary if we are to co-exist" is only true to a certain extent. Beyond that you reach the "paradox of tolerance" where, if you tolerate certain things, you cannot co-exist or possibly exist at all. Some things are incompatible with health and peace and cannot be tolerated if you want to maintain those. Deciding what those things are is a difficult task.

Phil, I'm not sure I totally agree since many people's worst nightmares involve having their power of choice taken away from them. For example, if you are taken hostage, you may not have any more ability to escape than a child. (It's even conceivable that depending on the situation you have less. After all children do sometimes run away but what if you're tied up or something?) Depending on how extreme or non-extreme your childhood abuse was, there are plenty of adult situations that could be even more frightening than what someone went through as a child. However, I do agree that there are also lots of cases where fears are coming from inner child parts that have not really understood that we are no longer children and do - at least in our usual everyday state - have a lot more resources and power at our disposal than we did back then. They are burdened and stuck in time as IFS would look at it. What I really liked is your message at the end, the focus on the situation of children today and the overly narrow definitions of abuse. I find it interesting that Stefan's message on FDR, time and again, is that parenting is really the main and perhaps only serious leverage point we have for improving our world sustainably in the long run. Yet it seems hard to keep people focused on that in an active way. We get caught up in all the symptomatic discussions and often fail to really put our energy into activism on that perhaps most important front. A while back I posted this thread talking about that, which you might find worthwhile. Perhaps you'll agree with the message there.

I think people who respond that way view sexual orientation as not being a choice and therefore unjustified as a target of ridicule, whereas they view philosophical or religious stance as something a person can change and therefore justified as a target of ridicule. I'm not commenting on the truth or falsehood of this opinion, but I think that is the logic that underlies that behavior.

If you want to be "annoyingly technical" then it is correct to say a block of wood does not believe in evolution. That is a completely factual statement. If you ask "What does the wood believe about evolution?" then you are correct. You are asking about a property that doesn't apply to wood. If you say "Wood believes evolution is false," that would also be nonsensical. But to simply say the wood does not believe is accurate. It is the atheists who always are emphatic about how "lack of belief" is not the same as believing anything particular. It is simply the absence of a belief. I continue to find this definition not specific enough to account for the types of cases we're talking about.

Looks like it worked. You didn't type anything under the top quote. But you did separate them and got all the info on both. So I think it worked.

Click quote on the post you want to quote. Then click the icon in the upper left which switches you to HTML view. When you click on the HTML, you'll see that the initial quote tag has that info (the user and the post number) within it. So you just put the end quote where you want and then put the entire initial quote tag before the next part you want to quote and so on. Then they will all have all that info in them.

Isn't it? There it is. I couldn't figure out where that HTML button was. It's the only one that doesn't seem to say what it is when you hover over it. As you can see I'm sorted out now. Thanks.

Hah well I just learned through serendipity that yes, apparently just putting those quote commands around text in the main window does create quoting. In my original post I had typed them there to show what I was typing and instead got the actual effect where it put 'and' in quote format. The problem is when you use the Quote button under someone's post, it pulls the whole quote in in the main window in this colored bubble format. Where do you then go to change it? Anything you type ends up within that bubble. It's a lot more work to copy and paste by hand each part. Also, notice that the way it's done there just using the quote command in brackets, you lose the reference to where the quote came from that you get doing it by using the Quote button. What I really want to be able to do is click Quote underneath someone's long post, and then just manipulate that to end and restart the quoting leaving me spaces to put my text in between. This doesn't even get into what you do if you want to respond to pieces of multiple posts as quotes with each still referencing the original post. But I'm not even concerned with that right now.

Say someone has posted a few paragraphs and I want to reply by quoting them and then typing some things after each paragraph rather than only after the entire long quote of several paragraphs. I used to do this all the time. I'd have to go into the html and just copy the tags and put them in the proper places with my typing outside of them. Not only would my typing end up interspersed properly, but each section of the quote would still refer back accurately to the original poster of it. But now when I quote a post it is all put in one big quote and there is no simple way I can find to break it up to allow me to type in between parts of it. Can you tell me how I would go about doing that on this new version of the board.

The question is not faulty and doesn't assert any such thing. If the definition of atheism is simply "lacking a belief in a God" that does not specify whether the reason for lacking the belief is having considered it and discarded the idea or lacking the capacity to have any belief. That definition is completely open to any and all reasons for lacking the belief. If you want to limit it only to those beings with the capacity for such a belief who nonetheless lack it, then you have to put that in the definition.

Well if that's the case then the definition of an atheist cannot just be "lacking a belief in God." It would have to be "Lacking a belief in God after reflection on the subject." So we're already starting down the road of having to specify the definition more, which was exactly what I think Dogbyte was pointing out. It's actually not enough to define atheism as just "lacking a belief in God." Vegetarianism is not a good analogy since it requires a particular practice, not just a belief. UFO-skeptic is also a bad analogy as that has to do with specifically questioning whether a particular thing exists, which requires knowing about the concept. But people say atheism is just not having the belief. They do not specify first having to consider it and then reject it. In fact, that's exactly what they avoid saying it is. So Dogbyte's point is excellent.

To me this is an example where sticking to the original words is unnecessarily confusing. The word "responsible" has too many different meanings so it's better to use other, less ambiguous words. People have varying degrees of control in different situations. In my view, we can only call them to account to the degree that they had control. The two go hand in hand. If you can show that you did not have enough control in a given situation to prevent a particular outcome, then you cannot reasonably be held to account for it. That goes for things involving your body, as well. If a person has a medical condition that reduces their control to a certain degree, then to that degree they cannot be held accountable for their body's actions. The same goes with the example of children. Parents have a certain degree of control over their children, but never total control, as you say. And that's exactly why there are countless times when something horrible happens involving a child, but no reasonable person holds the parent accountable. We only hold them accountable when they had sufficient control to prevent it but failed to. Otherwise, it is not only senseless, but cruel to hold them accountable for something they couldn't have prevented. As far as I know, the question of how consciousness and the brain relate is one of the most confounding in all of science. I've never heard anyone credible in the related fields claim that is anywhere close to solved. We simply don't know at this point. Lots of speculation but nothing solid that I've ever heard of that is reputable. If we have incomplete control, it frees us from behind held accountable to the degree we are not in control. We are only as accountable as how much control we have. This is not an all-or-nothing situation. If a child throws a tantrum in the store, the parent is only accountable for it if they have enough control to stop it. If the parent is tied up somewhere or is paraplegic and can't get there or any other situation where they don't have control, then they are not accountable in any reasonable sense in that moment. You could say they are accountable for having allowed the child to develop that way, but that also assumes they had enough control of the situation to prevent it. What if the child has a medical condition that leads to emotional impulsivity and the parent has tried everything in their power but they can't find a cure for it? Are they accountable then? I don't think so. If they've asserted whatever control they have, as well as sought out help from others who might have enough knowledge to add further control to the situation, and it still isn't enough, you can't really ask for more from them.

This is an interesting point. I never thought of putting it this way. If atheism is simply a lack of belief in God, then are babies, dogs, cabbages atheists? It's a question worth asking.

Anyone interested in this topic might really be interested in the chapters called School Daze I and School Daze II in Daniel Quinn's book My Ishmael. Reading those chapters years ago was when I finally got an understanding of why we treat adolescents in our culture the way we do in terms of school and jobs.

Better watch out for the next problem. Love Addiction

I would find one of the reputable non-profits that focuses on this issue and get in touch with them for advice. They would probably be among the most expert to give advice on the situation and have the most resources to offer you, as well.

Honest, You're welcome. A bipolar father and a mother with NPD or possibly even psychosis (judging from the family history of hospitalizations) is quite a rough situation for a child. Where the parents are supposed to be nurturing the child, feeding the child with energy and sustenance, instead the child ends up spending a huge amount of their energy just trying to cope with the parents' destructive behavior. It's a complete reversal of the usual give and take direction of parent/child relationships. I agree with you that just having insight into why the parents did this doesn't finish the healing. It just opens up a greater ability to figure out what might. I also think that once you start thinking more broadly, you start to realize that it's an even larger problem. Not only were your particular parents destructive like this, but only in a society set up in such a way as to enable such behavior would that even be possible. And that's when the rabbit hole really opens up. As far as healing from the consequences of being a child dependent on such unsafe self-centered people, I do hope you'll find those communities I mentioned helpful and maybe some of the books and workbooks out there on the subject, as well. There are also therapists who specialize in precisely these issues - not only recovering from child abuse, but from abuse at the hands of a parent with these particular types of conditions. So with all of these resources hopefully you can find the next steps.

People often forget that we lived in tight-knit tribes for hundreds of thousands of years. We required them to survive in the wild. Nobody survived in the wild for long alone. Even today, when we seem to be alone, we're relying on a huge network of resources and technologies that have involved others in order to survive. So there is certainly a romantic element to nature, even in its dangers, but to attempt to survive all of those dangers in isolation is extremely misguided.

Honest, Based on your description of how your parents treated you, I would seriously be suspicious of whether they had personality disorders. Mynameismax mentioned the word "sociopaths." That is possible. But first I would look into Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD). Learning about that - and the other disorders similar to it that are marked by reduced empathy and conscience - could be a huge light bulb moment for you. Also, there are many books and forums out there specifically for people raised by those with NPD or other disorders. Having a parent or parents with a condition like these leads to a unique set of challenges and it might be really comforting for you to find people who have not only been through something generally similar in terms of an abusive childhood, but something precisely similar in terms of an abusive childhood at the hands of someone with the very same disorder.