STer

I don't think the therapist is supposed to be an endpoint in themselves, but a catalyst. They are not meant to be your lifelong natural giving companion. They are meant to help you find and connect with those who are. Just as they may not see you if you stop paying, you would stop seeing them if your life starts working to your satisfaction. The relationship is based on temporary assistance. I would think of what goes on with a therapist as an artificial attempt to practice things so that you can then better carry them out in the organic situations that arise in the rest of life.

I don't think it matters if it's only one option or five or fifty. Natural resources are where they are. Those on the land that has those resources can choose to trade or not trade. And if not enough of them will trade you what you need to support your population, what will you do? Either enough are willing to trade or not enough are willing to trade.

I've featured this quote on my website ever since I read it many years ago. Putting it into practice, though, is a lifelong challenge. I almost feel like it requires a certain talent to do it. "Men should be taught as if you taught them not, and things unknown proposed as things forgot, to speak tho' sure with seeming diffidence. For want of modesty is want of sense. - Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography quoting from Essay on Criticism

I agree that empathy of this sort is often the best path. Perhaps it should even be the default in most cases before trying other things. But unfortunately this isn't an across-the-board best strategy (as I think you'll find out if you increase your sample size greatly and diversify where you're trying it out). First there is the issue of personality type and what people value. Most people in our culture (speaking of the US since that's what I'm most familiar with) are of the type that respond to this approach better than just laying out a rational argument, especially aggressively. But there are also a proportion that prefer facts and evidence and would not respond with a mind change to empathizing without a rational argument. Then there are the true narcissists and others with disorders that lead them to pick up on attempts to empathize as a chance to exploit. This is a small percentage, but can be very influential. So I think you need to at least keep an eye open for these groups for whom a different strategy is needed or where you might get taken advantage of if if you're not careful. That said, I think by far the majority will respond much better if you take the attitude of empathy and interest, at least at first. The interesting thing is FDR is really a place that promotes deontology - action based on principle - very explicitly as opposed to consequentialism. Yet here we have a suggestion that is really consequentialist - do this because it works better - and everyone seems to agree with it. I think people that are strong deontologist may say "No. People should respond to rational argument so that is what I will do. Whether it actually works or not is not relevant because it's the principle that matters." Does this thread mean people are more open to the "argument from effect" than they usually admit in other settings?

And what if someone has something you absolutely need to survive and they refuse to trade it?

Phuein, You stated a lot of things well. Here is all I really have to add at this point. The war between Native American tribes is not really a counter-argument because nobody is saying the lack of self-reliance is the only reason for war, just that as long as it is the case, there is a huge incentive for war. The need for importation is a cause for potential cooperation just as desperation is a cause for seeking a relationship. However, relationships suffer when neediness is involved. And I think cooperation suffers when desperation is involved. The concept of "too big to fail" seems relevant. You are right about Jensen's ideas on solutions. Of course, they are very controversial. They are good at stirring serious discussion. You say "we are not willing to sacrifice our freedom for the sake of strangers" but Jensen would say strangers have already sacrificed our freedom for us. You say "we are not willing to police the behavior of others," but Jensen would say the issue is others policing our behavior. He would frame this as a case of self-defense. I'm not speaking for myself here. I'm just explaining how he frames things. But his notion that reliance on importation is a constant risk factor for violence is what is most relevant to this thread and can be considered on its own without getting into all of his other views.

You sent the Obama and Romney teams each $3 to put into marketing? Why did you do that?

Spanking hurts kids in the long run, too Nice mainstream coverage of anti-spanking

Yes, in fact what Earley is trying to do is sort of help people apply IFS-based concepts in a more user-friendly way that doesn't require as much knowledge of the underlying details. Schwartz's work is like the 1's and 0's and Earley is creating user-friendly GUI's. If you really want to understand you should read Schwartz's main Internal Family Systems Therapy book, the one I link to on this page. That's the book that I learned all the nuts and bolts from.

The Obamacare website is the opposite isn't it? They probably paid people exponentially more to create it than they should have, not less. Or am I misunderstanding?

Great Idea, Mr. Moo. I definitely find this very worthwhile. Really like the example you posted. Great to get a healthy parenting message out in a different format than the usual.

I referred OP to the book in case he's interested in reading the whole thing since the topic seems so of interest to him. Then I detailed the relevant portion to the thread. Not a clue what you're objecting to. I'm confident I'm in the right thread and I've fleshed the argument out in as much detail as necessary at least once, if not more now. It's not necessary to read the whole book to benefit from this one aspect of the book. I can't imagine you're now claiming that you can't mention an argument you read in a book and name the book it came from without then starting a separate thread on the book. But if you are, I hope you apply the same line of thinking every time someone quotes an argument from Mises or Rothbard or anyone else. In any case, I've heard your opinion and disagree. Now back to discussion of the actual argument made, which I've laid out in 7 points above, or at least the topic OP raised: the relationship between dependence on external resources and violence.

I'm not sure where I laid it out in parts. I've pretty much already laid it out in full but here it is again with perhaps a tiny bit fleshed out. 1) Cities are areas with population densities too high to be self-reliant 2) Therefore cities require importation for survival of their residents 3) If importation is required to survive and others on the outside do not wish to voluntarily provide what is needed, there is an incentive to use force to take it. 4) Very often people on the outside do not wish to give up the needed resources voluntarily 5) Therefore, there is often a life-or-death incentive to use force to take outside resources otherwise unavailable 6) Civilization is based on cities 7) Therefore, civilization has an extremely strong inherent drive toward violence I don't see why this would go in another thread. This is precisely what OP asked about - whether the cycle of violence is based on a dependence on external resources to survive and the fact that, if they are unavailable, there is what he called a "mandate" to take them.

Perhaps I'm still not being clear enough about what I'm saying. You, as an individual, moving doesn't change the game. The game only changes if a mass movement occurs that shifts the overall relationships involved. Otherwise, you're just switching from one side of the war to the other. The war coheres in the relationship between the two sides of it and the way the structure pits them against each other. It doesn't cohere in whether any particular person is on one side or the other.

The incentives only switch at a certain threshold. As long as there is a war going on to extract resources from non-city areas into cities (if that is the case) the incentive is to be on the "winning" side of that in the short-term. There is an inherent bias for doing what works in the short-term because if you don't do that you don't even get to the long-term. When issues of survival are at stake, we should expect people in most cases to do what is incentivized in the short-term. If you mean the incentives will switch once the unsustainability becomes apparent, well people have a great capacity for denial. So they can continue doing something long beyond when the incentives should be pushing them to go another direction. It's actually perceived incentives that matter more than actual incentives for a certain amount of time.

Your individual choice to move will only pay off for you if it is part of a large movement that shifts the numbers significantly. It's similar to how on certain fundraising sites, you pledge to pay only if enough others also pledge because you know that a threshold has to be reached for your payment to be worthwhile rather than a pointless sacrifice. (These are called Assurance Contracts) I think one of the most central ideas that is commonly promoted on FDR, but which can be somewhat misguided, is this: "This larger system I don't like is just made up of individuals. So all that has to happen is individuals stop playing into it. Therefore, a wise strategy is for me, as an individual, to stop playing into it." This ignores the threshhold issue - your not playing into it, to be more than symbolic, in many cases must be matched by enough others. So either you need to convince enough others to stop playing into it too or you have to hope your move becomes a catalyst that inspires enough others. Only then is it wise as a strategic decision. Now, FDR is a special place because it's filled with outliers who are highly idealistic and willing to go against structural incentivies on principle just as a matter of integrity. I think a lot of them are willing to do so even if they know it won't pay off, just to be true to their preferences. But most people are not that idealistic and are not going to make counter-incentivized decisions unless enough others go along to make it strategically sensible. That is why structures are so important in driving behavior.

He's talking about the global system as a whole, I believe. Civilization as a whole is based on cities which basically extract resources to maintain their high population density. You, as an individual, can leave any particular city. But as long as the whole system is based on cities, they will be out there extracting. In fact, if you leave a city and move to the more rural areas, you will quite possibly just end up on the other side, being part of the community being extracted instead of the one doing the extracting. Either way, the point is that a system based on areas of high population that can't possibly be self-reliant and other areas from which they have a constant incentive or even necessity to take resources, violence, in his view, is inevitable. It's built into that extreme type of structure.

I agree with you that self-reliance won't stop all of this. But I disagree that it doesn't affect your incentives. Of course, the incentives to get enough to survive when you otherwise will die are very strong. The incentives to gain even more out of greed, despite having enough, can also be strong. But I think removing the first category does affect the incentive structure.

Yeah I'm not sure you can say that if all communities are self-reliant there will be no wars. People may fight wars over things other than resources. But Jensen's argument is that as long as we are in civilization based on cities, you will inevitably have them.

You might want to check out Endgame by Derrick Jensen. His argument there is based on defining cities as places with population densities too high to be self-sustaining. This means that they require importation of resources which means that, if they are unable to find those resources cooperatively, there will always be a strong incentive to take them violently. Since civilization is based on cities, this is his argument for why civilization is inherently violent. I'm sure many people on FDR will disagree with him. But he does a good job making the case for that type of an argument and spurs discussion.

I think you're asking about a very important topic in this thread. I've seen lots of debates about anarchism revolve around not specifically the issue of nukes, but the larger but key issue of how you deal with malicious actors, especially irrational ones. We even know there are people willing and even happy to die for their beliefs, so appeals to their self-interest alone isn't enough security. I wrote this piece a while back because I kept seeing debates that seemed to hinge on this question of the implications of malicious people for this discussion, but not really end up focusing on it openly. You might find it interesting. Some Thoughts on Anarchism & Psychopathy Some people seem to dodge this question altogether or claim that without a state, such people wouldn't exist. I think that's hard to believe. Among people who are willing to concede that we would still have to address this issue, it seems to come down to a question of whether the state is more likely to protect us from such people or more likely to become controlled by them. It would be interesting to see how people's views on that question link up to the type of parenting figures they had.

I guess it all depends on your definition of "smart." I'm sure you can use one where what you're saying is true or use a different one where what I'm saying is true. But simply exploiting something that takes almost no effort to exploit doesn't strike me as requiring smarts. It's like the old joke Chris Rock tells about how people don't have to sell crack because crack sells itself. I said that some intelligent people lack the creativity to create a product or service that can sell. That doesn't mean all products or services require creativity to sell. This is one I don't think takes much. But it's really just a semantic issue, smart or not smart. Either way I don't find what she's done impressive in the least.

First of all, I don't see how you're judging her as smart or not based on this. As I said, people aren't watching her videos for her smartness. Perhaps you can say she is more opportunistic than you. I'm not sure that equates to smart. Also, I wrote this years back: My Commentaries: If You're So Smart, Why Aren't You Rich?

Are you sure it's her intelligence that's making her that money?

Because the idea of IFS is to personify these aspects since that's the way people repeatedly spoke of them in therapy. Thinking of the sources of these experiences as personifications resonated with people and helped them communicate with themselves more effectively. So what do you name that aspect of someone (in IFS, the Self is technically not consider a part the way other parts are) that exhibits this mindfulness and observation? It is obviously a special aspect of someone since it is the aspect that can detach from all the others and observe. What do you call that so as to personify it, as well as to indicate the specialness of it? Schwartz chose to name it the Self. It seems as good as many other names you could choose. But the exact name isn't that relevant. It's just relevant that there is something to call it so people know what we're referring to when communicating internally and with each other. And in IFS if a client said "I don't like the name Self, I prefer something else" I can guarantee any good therapist would say "That's fine, call it whatever works for you." The point is to simply help the person communicate their experience. Because again the entire point is to personify the sources of these experiences because that is how many clients experience things and intuitively talk about them. Also the pain, fear, shame, etc. don't all seem to come from one place. One fear may seem to come from one part, another fear from another part. But the personification is the entire point. Actually some DO refer to managers as "protectors." It just depends if you're focusing on their purpose or their actions. Their purpose is to protect more vulnerable parts. But how they go about doing that is by doing managing behaviors and situations carefully. So they protect by managing. Usually people first notice the behavior of the part - the managing behaviors - before they realize there is another part there being protected, which is the underlying goal. Remember, the exiles being protected are usually unconscious at first, so it's not evident that protection is going on until later. So I think Schwartz named managers after the managing behavior which is more evident earlier on. No, neurosis describes what the behavior of some exiles and firefighters creates. The exiles and firefighters are the parts that people experience as driving it. You continue to mix up the behavior itself with what IFS is focusing on which is the source of the behavior as experienced by someone. We would certainly talk about neurosis in IFS, but we'd say "This particular neurotic behavior seems to be coming from this firefighter." And then we'd name the firefighter based on what kind of neurotic behavior it drives or perhaps what its role is in the system that drives it to provoke that behavior. Like I said earlier, the Self is not considered just another part like the others. It is special. So it isn't just another part that "spelunks." It has a special role in the system that is unique and qualitatively different from parts. As for the parts, you wouldn't want to name them "self" because you don't want to get too blended with them. There is something important you may be missing too. The exiles, firefighters and managers are parts that are in extreme roles. Those are the 3 categories of extreme roles parts can get stuck in. There are other parts that are just in healthy roles and are not managers, firefighters or exiles. And when an exile, for example, comes out of exile, it becomes a healthy part, no longer an exile. So you can refer to it as an exiled part. But to call it a "self" would kind of be counterproductive because one of the main things you want to do in IFS is help people keep healthy boundaries between their Self and these extreme parts which, if they take over, cause a lot of unhealthy behavior. Unblending from extreme parts is one of the key procedures in IFS. I also have a background in medicine. I understand your wariness. But I also think it's not very relevant here and that you'd realize that if you learned more about IFS and Schwartz's actual views and why and how IFS was developed. You really should read Schwartz's original book about IFS. If you did, you'd realize he isn't really trying to claim this is totally new. He even has parts where he talks about the precursors to IFS. The fact that what he's saying isn't totally novel, but incorporates a lot of other people's work, lends it credibility if anything. I think the bottom line is if you really want to understand IFS more you should read his book. And a lot of your concerns just come back to the point that this is not something Schwartz created and thrust upon clients, but the opposite. Clients kept talking in terms of parts over and over and over. He finally decided to stop fighting it and go with it and talk to them the way they were talking to him. When they kept saying "A part of me seems to want X" he stopped avoiding it and started saying "OK tell me about this part" and they would tell him. And the more he went with it, the more they related and these parts were able to get into healthier roles and so on. It's a very practical, emergent process that came from actual therapy. I don't know if there is a biological underpinning analogous to these parts. But for whatever reason, personifying these parts in the mind and relating to them as parts seems to work as a proxy for whatever is underneath. This doesn't surprise me because if you think about the evolution of our minds, it would make sense. It's the same reason that stories and myths and metaphors can have such an effect on the mind. We seem to have evolved to personify and relate to things in terms of characters. We even personify other animals and sometimes cities and so on. It helps us to relate. So I think the personification that goes on in IFS is a way of giving the human mind a better handle to work on issues as a proxy.