In the belly of the beast

Thank you to everyone for your thoughtful responses. It has given me a thing or two to consider. The rage emerged as a longstanding depression lifted. I've heard Stef use a quote: "Anger is sadness' bodyguard." That seems true, but it could also work the other way around as well. When legitimate anger, a feeling designed to protect us from wrongs, is suppressed for so long because it would be dangerous to express it, numbness and a kind of gloom emerges to take its place. Ending up on heroin must have been awful. I could only imagine how angry you'd feel as you were piecing together the events (and non-events) of your life that led you down that path. To be met with denial and shaming on top of all that would be pouring salt in the wound. What would make what they did more forgivable would be for them to take responsibility for their choices and respond honestly to questions. "Why didn't you teach me how to make friends when you saw I didn't have any?", "Why didn't you talk to me about what is involved in establishing a career?", "Why didn't you talk to me about the nature of romantic relationships, marriage, and childrearing?", "Why didn't you talk to me about your efforts to understand the world?". I could respect a "We're clueless. We've mostly coasted through life and are pretty superficial people who happened to come of age at a good economic time. We did what felt good in the moment and what was most convenient for us at the time in how we approached rearing you," a lot more than the evasiveness and passive-aggressive emotional manipulation that I've encountered in response to airing my grievances. I've concluded that my father does not and will likely never respect me, if he's comparing me to a mass shooter. Perhaps he never respected me as a child, and so didn't even think to try to prepare me for adulthood. I mostly experience contempt when interacting with them. I feel like the adult in conversation, and there is a temptation to manage my parents emotions for them, because if I fail to do so, then they will break down in tears (my mother) or start angrily calling me crazy and ungrateful (my father). Given that I'm still not established in my new career, I'm hesitant to burn this bridge just yet, and am keeping them at a distance for now. Once I establish myself, I can push forward with them in a no-holds barred way, but I suspect that they won't have the integrity or the emotional maturity to be honest with me as I try to get them to see what they failed to do over many years. Sure, I can describe the isolation a bit more. I was basically indifferent to my peers for as long as I could remember (I would pace the playground in elementary school during recess), and mostly escaped into video games and science-fiction books when not doing schoolwork. My self-worth was tied into getting good marks in school, and not much else. Although I was in several different levels of Boy Scouts for many years (ages 7-18), I never formed any friendships from this activity. A typical weeknight would be me diligently completing my homework and wrapping up the evening by watching the 10 o'clock news, then maybe a bit of reading before bed. Weekends would be mostly spend in the basement playing with a rented video game for many hours. That was more or less my life until I went away to college, which seems quite sad and mentally impoverished on several levels when I look back on it today. Not as dramatic as being beaten in the woodshed every night, but still not good. This indifference to my peers carried over into my late teens and twenties, and only really began to abate after some fairly extensive listenings to Stef's early podcasts, and reading books by a few other key authors such as Nathaniel Branden and John Taylor Gatto. I hopes that clarifies the picture a bit for you. Good questions. I don't respect them, and they seem like pretty empty and superficial people (qualities which I at least partially projected onto the world in my longstanding indifference to my peers). At this point, I'm still in fairly minimal contact with them because I don't yet have a full time job in my new career field (I'm living fairly frugally on inherited assets for the time being as I retrain), which makes getting something like an apartment considerably more difficult without some potential support to reference. I sometimes wonder whether I should be doing this, but I feel no real guilt in doing so. I've had similar follow-up conversations, where it as if the previous upsetting conversation never happened at all! It's an avoidant pattern of interaction for my family that is becoming increasingly obvious with time. This avoidance is maddening and could even be a subtle form of gaslighting (though I'm speculating here). I'm sorry that you've also had to deal with this avoidant style of communication, but I'm glad that you've found this thread to be helpful.

Does anyone have any experience dealing with psychological and social neglect from families of origin? There is a lot of discussion about overt abuse on these forums, but negligence seems more difficult to pin down and achieve any kind of certainty. I've been trying to discuss my longstanding childhood social isolation and drugging (Ritalin, antidepressants, and the occasional sedative) with my parents and younger sibling, and they've mainly been saying "We did the best we could with the information we had", "We don't understand why you're so upset", and "It's your biology" lines with me. I feel enraged and contempt towards my parents, and disappointed in my sibling. They have never asked me any unprompted questions or done any research on the topics that I brought up. My father compared the show to a cult and me to an actual mass shooter in the news last year (I have never shown any inclinations towards violence). The drugs seemed to have made me dissociated and caused problems with my short term memory, the latter of which affected me into my late twenties. I also had the social skills of a child when I went away to college at the age of 18, and it took me many years to learn how to make friends and get a date. I have also struggled with finding my footing career wise. Despite bringing these topics up with my therapist and girlfriend, I still feel a bit of doubt as to what's going on. I'm mostly leaning towards saying "fuck them all" with regards to my immediate family, but would that be a failure to take responsibility for my life in some way? I'm now in my early 30's, so I've obviously been responsible for my decisions for a number of years now. I am making great progress in my social and romantic life, and am training in a new career that shows promise. It's just my family that is really bothering me at present, and some outside perspective might help in finally putting this to rest. I know this might be a bit general, but I'll elaborate as necessary if anyone wants any specifics.

Saint Sarkeesian and The Root of All Evil: http://www.gameinformer.com/blogs/members/b/codenamecrono_blog/archive/2015/02/23/saint-sarkeesian-and-the-root-of-all-evil.aspx An interesting article that looks at Anita Sarkeesian through the lens of religious preaching. While many commentators here might think Sarkeeesian and GamerGate to be frivolous, the video game industry has surpassed Hollywood in revenue, and is a major cultural influence on boys and young men in particular. As such, overt attempts by propagandists such as Sarkeesian to alter the way video games are made and marketed are worth paying attention to.

I've personally taken both Venlafaxin and Cipralex in the past (not simultaneously) while taking Wellbutrin at the same time in each case. Venlafaxin gave me no noticeable side effects, while Cipralex made me feel somewhat drowsy during the day. It seems that everybody's experience on each of these drugs is quite different, and it can be difficult to tell side effects and the symptoms of depression apart (e.g., drowsiness, emotional numbing, poor sleep, etc.). I have been medication-free for about eight months now and intend to remain so. What helped me the most in overcoming depression was leaving a socially-desolate town, dramatically reducing my exposure to toxic people (mostly immediate family), realizing that I was not inherently defective, pursuing a career training path that I actually respect, and becoming more honest and open with the few people in my life that I actually care about (and shrugging my shoulders at those people that reject my genuine self). A few questions that may be helpful to ask yourself, bishal: 1) Do the people in my life accept my honest thoughts and feelings when presented in a calm, matter-of-fact, and non-confrontational manner? 2) What kind of messages about myself did I receive in my formative years? 3) Do I respect my own values, preferences, and abilities? 4) Am I pursuing what I think will bring me long-term happiness (Do I respect my future self? Do I believe in what I am doing?)? I found the above questions to be very helpful to me. These questions might be helpful to discuss with a talk therapist.

Thanks for the links. I didn't realize you were speaking about The God of Atheists. I'll check it out.

I wonder how often soldiers ended up fragging their own officers in the days of conscription. Supposedly it reached a high level on the American side in the Vietnam War, but what of other wars, like WWII and Korea?

This sounds like a fascinating novel, but plugging in the title into Amazon and Google yielded nothing for me. Would you be so kind as to let me know where you found it?

He has appeared on Anarchast, which is where I first learned about him. But I also sent out feelers about volunteering with the party if its activities were really going to be purely for education purposes, and I got the sense that they wanted classical liberals and paleoconservatives rather than full-on anarchists in public roles. Maybe I'm wrong, but I think that ideas expressed on this site are still too radical for most of the Libertarian Party of Canada's membership and current leadership to stomach, barring Moen. I don't have deep knowledge of the party leadership or membership base, so take what I say with a grain of salt. This is all based on a few interactions that I've had. I'd be happy to be proven wrong.

Although Tim Moen is a philosophical anarchist, my perception is that he is surrounded by many far less radical classical liberals who still believe in the validity of reform through elections, and who will likely put constant pressure on him and any other anarchists in the party to not say anything "too crazy". I would be skeptical of this whole process even as a purely mass educational pursuit, given that my impression is that most of the party activists still support the existence of the state, and hold out some hope of electing members of their party.

Well...that's not good. In case anyone is curious, the rough cut of the film has been released on both YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=veEONs44rhM and as a direct download here: http://tru-blitz.com/headline_news/ (Go halfway down the page, under the category of "News and Top Stories"). I haven't watched any of the film yet, so can't comment on its quality.

Proposed Major Tax Hike on College Savings Accounts in the United States: http://www.forbes.com/sites/ryanellis/2015/01/19/obamas-new-state-of-the-union-tax-hike-on-middle-class-529-college-savers/ More details on this and other new proposed tax hikes in the State of the Union address: http://benswann.com/obamas-robin-hood-plan-to-collect-320-billion-in-new-taxes/

Looks like the project is still being worked on. It has been renamed to "Gray State: The Rise". https://www.facebook.com/graystatemovie/timeline

The trailer looks really great in terms of production value. The movie looks pretty conspiracy theory heavy though, which may serve to lead some of its audience to Alex Jones and the like rather than philosophy and voluntarism. The trailer is also two years old, and there have been no updates on the film's YouTube channel or website in nearly a year, so the project may or may not be dead. Making professional-grade commercial films outside of the Hollywood or tax-supported academic film circles must be murderously difficult. Still, I'd be interested in further news about this movie if the project is still alive.

I wonder what the ethics debates in Cambodia looked like a generation or two before the emergence of the Khmer Rouge?

Any woman who is genuinely attracted to jerks/assholes/"bad boys" (and acts on that attraction) obviously has significant unaddressed psychological trauma and/or is a nasty person themselves. I wonder what the male equivalent of "woman taming a promiscuous bad boy" is? Could it be "treating a seriously damaged/immature woman nicely will make her value me over the asshole stud with a six pack and a BMW"?