In the belly of the beast

Are "the US", "Iran", "China", "Russia", "North Korea", etc. real? Are they people? Why are you using "we" when speaking of the foreign policy carried out by key figures in the US "government"? Not to be too annoying. I'm still trying to catch myself when using collectivist language, although its use is almost required in order to avoid scrutiny when around people who buy into the status quo.

I would echo some of the other posters and say that a combination of inborn personality traits (e.g., relentlessly asking "Why?", even if just as an unspoken thought) and a degree of social alienation could provide greater motivation to an individual for calling out many of the delusions that he or she is deriving minimal benefit from.

Sounds like barefaced communism. This isn't a "Why does this problem exist, and how can the individuals affected by it find a solution which addresses the core causes?" approach to reality This is a "This problem exists because the bad man wants to screw us! Let's all tell Daddy so he can make the bad man suffer!" approach to reality.

Maybe this question has already been answered elsewhere, but what's to stop one or more of the central banks from buying up huge numbers of bitcoins, causing a major price spike, then doing a major selloff, causing a crash and undermining confidence? After all, if I was a senior figure within an organization that could create fiat money, and I wanted to destroy any potential challengers while they were still in the crib...

What was your relationship to honesty and openness while growing up, both within your family and outside of it? Was acting ever required for your survival?

You have my gratitude for your thoughtful responses. I've just realized a few things today. (a) As Larken Rose might say: I'm asking for permission to be free! The prospect of going into debt in order to do years of coursework of highly questionable value and relatedness to my interests, so that at the end of the day I have the state created clinical psychology guild's permission to learn the skills of interest to me, and then perhaps earn a modest living, is one of the primary contributors to my low motivation and frequent hopelessness about my future. My experiences in medical school, and my current difficulties with academic motivation in undergraduate psychology, are a rebellion against this slave mentality. (b) I'm not living my values. Although entry into the private sector looks terrifyingly difficult in current and future economic conditions, something in the back of my head is telling me: "You are not staying in school until your late 30s/early40s! It's time to go out into the world, add value, and get on with the business of living! Stop behaving like a resentful slave and take the actions needed to become as free as possible!" To this end, I'm looking at a few organizations focused on equipping free-market oriented people with the skills needed to break into the private sector: http://www.discoverpraxis.com/about/ If anyone reading this thread knows of similar organisations that could help me gain the skills to meaningfully contribute to a business, please let me know. A final realization: © Members of my family all work for the state or in state created guilds/cartels. Few if any of them enjoy(ed) their work. I have been told both implicitly and explicity that work and social relationships are supposed to be boring and routine, and that to think otherwise is a mark of immaturity. By a strange coincidence, most of my family members are unhappy and have fairly superficial relationships with one another and within their broader social networks. ----------------------------------- To answer the questions that you've posed: (2) Unfortunately there are no libertarian or ancap groups on campus, nor have I met any other people who appear to lean libertarian. Basically, this campus offers either "social justice" groups or the Intervarsity Christians. That's ok though, as I've decided over the past few days to leave this region, preferably within the next few weeks. (4) A handful of people have mentioned that I have some talent in writing. I've never engaged in creative writing in my spare time, but it is useful to know that it could be turned into a side gig in the future, or be brought to bear in employment as part of a broader skill set. Thanks for pointing that out. (5) These questions: I'm not entirely sure to what extent my outlook on others is justified, and to what extent it is a defense and/or a result of my upbringing within an emotionally dishonest and emotionally isolated family. In the past few weeks, I've been trying to be more curious and open with other people, but it usually feels like a somewhat aggressive process of yanking teeth from their minds. Part of my current social frustrations may simply be due to ~10 year age gap with most other people around me over the past few weeks. I'm certainly not the only member of Freedomain Radio to complain of social isolation and the frustrations of interacting with most people, although examining the social difficulties of this community can be a chicken or egg question: Did we "rebel" against conventional thinking, partly due to unsatisfying social relationships, or does our unconventional thinking lead to greater difficulties in finding satisfying social relationships? (6) That video on "How a Man's Heart is Murdered" was excellent. It's somewhat comforting, in a way, to know that at least some of the social difficulties experienced by so many men are the result of gender-based conditioning from the culture(s) we were born into.

A sincere thank you to everyone who took the time to craft a response. It's always good to hear very distinct approaches and reactions. Probably engage in teaching, possibly in Socratic style individual and small group learning guided by the interests of the students. I am unsure how viable it would be to find this type of position within a traditional private or alternative private school setting (such as the Sudbury Valley School). The labour market for new teachers is absolutely horrendous (many education programs in Canada are cranking out 2-3 times the number of teachers that can be supported within the public and private school systems), even before the additional challenge of avoiding the public school system. When I was younger, nearly everything to do with the sciences, as well as many types of science fiction, gave me a sense of wonder. I think this is what got me through my undergraduate years in chemistry (despite nontrivial attentional difficulties after coming off of about ten years of Ritalin and anti-depressants), as well as my graduate courses in chemistry. This sense of wonder, in the real world sciences at least, began to significantly fade as the repetitive nature of lab work at the graduate level became a part of my everyday reality. Instead of a sense that I was contributing to the advancement of our species in a meaningful way, of knowledge and mastery over the natural world, it became something so much smaller and more circumcscribed. I've noticed that novelty will give me an artificial enthusiasm for just about any new academic program or job that I try, but within a few weeks this dies. This is probably an extremely common pattern, so I'm not sure if this is useful information or if it means anything. Scheduling a second chat with Stef sounds like a good idea. Yesterday, when I typed this post, was a particularly bad day, so the situation is not so bad that I can't wait a week or two to schedule another chat. I chatted with Stef in August about lifelong difficulties in emotionally connecting with others, and I have began to have some modest success in opening up to my mother and to the odd acquaintance/casual friend. Perhaps this longstanding loneliness (which is mostly still present) is interfering with my motivation outside of my social life. Other than to continue to do what I am currently doing in my social and family lives (greater honesty), I am not sure how I can make more rapid progress. My current self-knowledge reading is Nathaniel Branden's "The Psychology of Romantic Love", and I still devour any new podcasts put out by Stef. I also have a therapy session scheduled for later in the week. The stacking of universal problems unto personal ones is a valid point. Personal freedom is certainly required for happiness (freedom = virtue = happiness). I feel the urge to "spread the gospel" and try to share the insights that I have gained about the world via Freedomain Radio and other sources. Perhaps I should ease off on reading all of those Zero Hedge articles about economic collapse and the entry level job market? I don't really have a good answer for this question. Maybe moving to a larger center, finding like-minded people, and finding employment (even if part time) would do me good. Being back in undergrad feels like a shame-inducing trip to Never-Never Land. I realize that this shame is externally imposed in its origin, yet it lingers. Possibly it's because I grew up in a fairly traditional household where a man's worth was mostly determined by his role as a reliable and stoic breadwinner. Maybe I haven't found the right therapist? I usually get the sense that I am directing the therapist in the manner of an intelligent puppet, rather than collaborating with a professional who can give me insight. I never got that sense of being a puppeteer trying to coax greater initiative out of a puppet when talking to Stef. Maybe it means I have a secretly controlling personality or mild delusions of grandeur? I honestly don't know at this point in time. I certainly used to alternate between trying to exercise OCDish levels of control through various routines, and at other times going along with whatever. I had thought that I had left this behind me 5+ years ago. I have downloaded the sample of that book to my Kindle and will take a gander at it once I have worked through my current Nathaniel Branden book. Thanks for the resource recommendation. My childhood has come up in therapy, and I am not aware of a conscious effort on my part to avoid these topics. My parents did put me on various psychotropic meds between the ages of 9-18 (and quite possibly sporadic druggings earlier in my life for anxiety), notably Ritalin and an SSRI. It is not lost on me now that I may quite possibly have inflicted this drugging on other children if I had not discovered FDR and had been successful in getting through all of the hurdles to becoming a psychiatrist. Long standing social isolation and emotional shutdown prior to age 18 is what I can remember of my home life. I am still working through this anger at being drugged and emotionally abandoned throughout those years. There seems to be a persistent effort to assign diagostic labels: AD(H)D, aspergers, social anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorder. For a long time, I internalized these labels and interpreted them to mean that I was grossly defective, which was something shameful I had to hide due to the risk of semi-permanent social ostracism and professional failure. Being persistently ignored by peers in elementary, middle, and high school did not help to dispel this belief. I no longer consciously believe that I am defective, but I am sure that these beliefs still have some presence in my unconscious. My mother seems like a better prospect for honesty than either my father or younger brother, so I have been gradually pushing through those defenses of hers. We'll see how that goes. You have indeed heard some of this story before. I think some of your questions are answered in my replies above. At first I felt annoyance at your reply, since it brought to mind the old "suck it up" and "African children are starving in Ethiopia" shaming tactics applied to me by my father and brother, but I think your reply is intended as a "never give up" kind of inspiration. I was at a low point yesterday, so I haven't given up yet. I am frightened of falling into another episode of depression, and I think it was a slightly exaggerated cry for help. Impatience and frustration with my slow rate of progress is likely playing a factor as well. Beyond initial fast food and cashier positions, I have worked for two summers of undergraduate work in two different branches of chemistry (analytical/environmental and inorganic synthesis), two years of graduate level experimental research in analytical chemistry, working as both an undergraduate and graduate teaching assistant (chemistry labs and drop-in problem solving sessions), and a summer research project in psychiatry (patient and family interviewing, study recruitment, data processing). Other summers and years featured volunteer work (math, ESL, archaeological dig) and language learning (namely French and Spanish). Yours may be the most challenging of all these posts to respond to, just in the difficulty of some of the questions that you raise. Maybe I need to cut other people some slack. I think part of this is being in a statist institution and not being able to discuss one of my current primary interests (libertarian and ancap philosophy, economics, and related interpretations of psychology). Another part may be that I am still adjusting to the consequences of a new worldview, as I was a conservative only 13 or 14 months in the past, and have probably only really been fully diving into FDR for the past 9 or 10 months. Add the recent major life changes detailed in my original post, and sprinkle with major lifelong social and emotional isolation, and you've got yourself a potential recipe for cynicism and some mild paranoia towards other people. Maybe it's a superiority complex as a defense. On a brighter note, I actually had a good conversation with my mother today over brunch. I've been gradually introducing her to some of the topics discussed on FDR, so there's some hope yet. The same goes for one of my classmates in my current psychology courses. There is a small shard of optimism and progress here that could grow with time. Despite this, I have typically found a distinct lack of curiosity from other people. I suffered from this as well in the past, and I am trying to change that. If we weren't surrounded by damaged people who place numerous "no go" areas in our daily conversations, would we not live in a free society? I think my other responses may have indirectly touched on some of the points you raised here, but I wanted to express my thanks to you for taking the time to reply. Like you, I also needed to begin consistently applying honesty in my interactions with other people. Maybe people-pleasing and social withdrawal are simply two different responses to the same basic demand of letting other people determine your value.

I have a major problem with boredom and hopelessness in my life, and some intelligent outside help from the fine folks at FDR could be mighty helpful. What follows is a summary of abortive career pathways. To provide context, I am in my early 30s. Right after high school, I did a bachelors in chemistry, followed by a masters degree in chemistry. The original goal here was to pursue a doctorate in chemistry, but after watching my colleagues spend 5-8 years of their lives performing repetitive experiments, followed for many by 2-4 years of post-doctoral fellowships (more of the same at a slightly higher pay), l decided to complete a masters degree instead. Although I have always been prone to depression, I did not begin to procrastinate or succumb to apathy until near the end of my masters degree, and even then it was still fairly mild in intensity. Although the lab work in grad school did not appeal to me very much, I really enjoyed teaching (in this program, all grad students taught undergraduate chemistry labs and drop-in problem solving sessions). After doing some reading in the areas of psychology and psychiatry, as well as dating a masters student in counseling psychology, I decided that it would be fun and rewarding to try to teach people how to solve challenges within their own lives. Even at this point in my life, while a political conservative in worldview, I saw how dysfunctional the public school system is, and had no respect for the training in education degree programs (B.Ed.'s), so a career as a high school chemistry teacher was ruled out. Additionally, my mother was a clinical social worker who told me stories of her work, which always sounded interesting, even if conducted within a clearly dysfunctional public mental health system. I now think that I was given an unwarrantedly positive view of psychiatrists by my mother, and a somewhat negative view of clinical psychologists. So after finishing my M.Sc. in chemistry, I rather naively set off for medical school as a means to the end of becoming a psychiatrist. If other interesting career options within medicine caught my imagination while on that road, so much the better. So, I was in medical school for three years with a goal of pursuing a career in psychiatry. When I began my medical school career, I was not a libertarian (much less an anarcho-capitalist) and more or less fully bought into the propaganda behind conventional psychiatry. This has changed substantially, and my goal in medical school was modified into my current goal of doing training in psychiatry, augmented with additional training in psychotherapy, in order to become a direct pay psychotherapist who might have used medication sparingly. I succumbed to apathy and boredom after a few months in medical school, as well as depression, and was unable to continue after struggling for three years in this endeavor (actually four years if you count an additional year of undergrad I took in order to improve my GPA). After washing out of a mind-numbing stint in medical school, I've set myself the goal of becoming a direct-pay psychotherapist. In order to pursue this, I'm now back taking undergrad courses in psychology in an attempt to prepare for graduate training in clinical psychology. Right now I am finishing one semester out of a necessary four semesters needed to apply to graduate school in clinical psychology. However, after the novelty of this change of environment wore off (within about three or four weeks), I find myself not caring at all about the content, thinking the next two years of undergrad psychology will be boring and mostly useless (in terms of useful knowledge), and suspecting that graduate training in clinical psychology will be contain more boring and mostly pointless content delivered at a faster pace, as in medical school. Not coincidentally, I find myself constantly procrastinating on what should be easy work. Sometimes I think of trying to enter the workforce with my masters degree in chemistry. When I look at the entry level white collar job market, I see myself being lucky getting an insecure, poor paying job doing mind numbing work as a lab technician. I feel so trapped, with a voice in my head saying I have no good options. Any pathway will result in mind numbing tedium, eventual burnout, and surrounded by propagandized/emotionally damaged people incapable of talking about anything but tedious trivia. All this while the economies of the world continue their slow collapse, and the emerging Fourth Reich continues to grow. This is not the mindset that I want to have, but therapy has not been useful in turning me to a more productive direction. I would be ever so appreciative of any thoughts on this situation.

The Whitest kids U Know - Pledge of Allegiancehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2BfqDUPL1I

How far off can the concentration camps and gas chambers be?

Fair point about connecting on an emotional, rather than an exclusively abstract level. This terrifies and frustrates me, given how much skill it takes to do this while bypassing people's defenses. It seems like it is necessary to "mould" a companion for yourself, without that companion being aware that they are being "moulded" early in the process. Lians raises an excellent point about men being attacked by nearly everyone for attempting to do this, in addition to all of the background cultural conditioning/propaganda against male expressivity. Men are taught that it is usually weak, and therefore contemptible, to ever express any of our needs and preferences, outside of a few narrow areas such as recreation in "socially acceptable" areas (sports, hunting, etc.) or the desire to make money. If this is still off-topic, I'm happy to make a new thread about emotionally connecting with potential partners/lovers and friends. It just seems to naturally follow from the podcast's topics on emotional isolation and indifference towards men.

Men can of course be their own agents of change, but the task is made substantially harder when facing constant resistance from the women in their lives. Although to be fair, most men embarking on this change also face resistance from most of the men in their lives. I know that Stef has briefly commented on the skewed gender ratio of the voluntarist movement before, mentioning that there may be more powerful social pressures on women to conform and think in collectivist ways. Has he ever commented at length on this? This question still nags at me from time to time. I've accepted the fact that a (straight) man's best bet is to find a woman with the potential to think rationally and act virtuously, then gently encourage those tendencies and see if she responds with curiosity. It would still be nice to know why this is the case, beyond merely "women need more social support because they bear the children and are usually physically weaker", which is about the extent of my current understanding on this topic.

US nearly detonated atomic bomb over North Carolina – secret document Exclusive: Journalist uses Freedom of Information Act to disclose 1961 accident in which one switch averted catastrophe http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/20/usaf-atomic-bomb-north-carolina-1961

I wonder whether this "taming" of men reflects "society's" worries that, however unlikely it may be, large numbers of men might reject many of their traditional social roles, refusing to go off to war to be machine-gunned and bombed by the millions, refusing to send their kids into the tender arms of the (mostly female) public elementary school teachers while they go off to work, refusing to hold women to a lower standard of personal responsibility, etc? In other words, what would happen if large numbers of men learned to become "wild", as we all were at birth before copious amounts of social conditioning were inflicted upon us?

Such powerful videos. I can most definitely relate to it. Once the playdate phase of my childhood ended, I experienced near complete social isolation from my peers. Video games and science fiction anthologies were my primary means of escape. I am genuinely hard pressed to think of any occassions in which either one of my parents, or any member of my extended family, ever sat down with me and persistently inquired about this long lasting social isolation. Certainly no teacher or friend of the family ever had this much needed dialogue with me either. My parents put me on at least two psychotropic medications when I began to have terrible anxiety, obsessive complusive behaviours, insomnia, and trouble focusing in school following the death of a grandparent to whom I was (seemingly) very attached, at the age of 6. I do not remember anyone ever doing a more than superficial inquiry into the causes of these symptoms. There were no friendships until the college years, and no relationships of any kind until graduate school, the latter of which were always initiated via online dating. I was never consciously upset when breaking up with any of my past girlfriends, though I suspect this was simply very deep repression of my feelings, as well as severely impaired ability to attach and empathize. Things are slowly getting better now, with Freedomain Radio, therapy, and other self work. I have recently come to the understanding that I am not defective. Some anger and resentment with my parents still remains, although I am trying to come to terms with it in a constructive and mature manner. So far, that has proved somewhat elusive. Generalized problems with trust/feelings of social paranoia are also beginning to dampen, though this last problematic aspect of my personality has only just begun to come down in measurable ways. The suffocation, along with the deeply repressed anger finally attempting to push aside this intolerable, soul-sapping atmosphere, are immediately obvious. This suffocation, for so many (most?) of us, is something that is so pervasive and all encompassing that we don't even notice it after a while. What do you think would have been this woman's reaction if you had calmly aired your thoughts on this scene?

Thanks for the recommendation. Looks like I'll have to add this to my backlog of movies to watch. If there is an FDR film club, this would be a prime candidate for nomination.

Thanks for the link and your thoughts. I took a quick look at the site and it looked promising. I'm not yet a parent or even with a long term partner, so the issue of schooling is still a few years off at least, but it never hurts to be prepared. That's a real shame about the UK. I've heard it's essentially the same legal situation in Germany and some of the Scandanavian countries. Hopefully homeschooling and unschooling remain legal in North America. If you folks have or plan on having children, what kind of schooling options are you considering (or currently practicing)?

I know that having one parent stay at home and teach their children full time is best for the first few years of life, but I was wondering about a model where a group of several unschooling families shares the teaching load with their older children. The idea being that each family teaches a small group of children one day a week or so, enabling this group of parents with older children to work while continuing to provide these children with guided learning until they are ready for completely self-directed learning. This model of unschooling could have the additional benefit of specialization in teaching, as you could have parents with different backgrounds (the sciences, the arts, the skilled trades, etc.) available as specialty resources to children with more specific interests.Does anyone know of any unschooling groups or families that operate in this way?

Couldn't meshnets be directly jammed, just like any other wireless signal? Cool idea though. Good to see that there are some skilled folks out there looking to make the NSA's life more difficult.

Nice video dissecting the term "mental illness". I will try to start mentally substituting "psychologically wounded" for "mentally ill" the next time I hear or read about someone who is depressed, anxious, etc. The utter nihilism seen in so much of the manosphere, especially the large pick-up artist subsection of it, has always repulsed me every bit as much as the bull**** I hear from most feminists. One aspect of Freedomain Radio that has always appealed to me is that it offers a much saner third option to these competing insanities. Or am I being too harsh on most of the manosphere?

I am sorry to hear you are in such a terrible mental space. But please reconsider this course of action. Your post above strikes me as a declaration of mental suicide. The tone that I perceive is one of numbness and resignation to evil and corruption. Have you sought help in turning your life around and pursuing your values in a more fulfilling way?

Neat idea. I wonder if the Venn diagram approach might be too messy, however (unless inset/zoomed-in areas could be used where there is too much overlap). What would a taxonomic web look like? Here's an interesting ideological graph that I found. Broad, being too general for your project, but I thought it was a nice starting point for speaking with those not very familiar with libertarianism and voluntarism/anarcho-capitalism: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_ViFzxqJ50Sc/TNPXWbbssNI/AAAAAAAAAAU/iGtq6d9tYUg/s1600/Scope%20of%20Government.jpg

You raise two goods points on this subject. In terms of being at peace with my attraction to this woman: cognitively, I am. Sub-consciously, likely not entirely. Is there any way to decondition yourself from attraction to a person? Any advice from personal experience (if you're comfortable giving it)? I hadn't explicitly thought about the danger of an emotional affair, but that's an excellent thought to ponder. It did happen to me once several years ago while away on a course. Nothing came of it other than my ending of a relationship that in retrospect was not on solid foundations (so, a good decision in hindsight). There is also the desire to avoid potentially becoming an awkward third wheel. She has never expressed attraction to me explicitly, and body language interpretation is a weak suit of mine. I am unaware of any expressed attraction on her part. So far this entire problem has been ignored, but that's obviously not the best way to deal with it. I'm struggling with trying to think of how I could broach the topic in writing. "I like your company, X, but I feel both morally and socially uncomfortable hanging out with you and your boyfriend as a potentially awkward third wheel. Also, would I be disrupting your relationship by causing or aggravating trust issues between the two of you?" I can't see most people reacting very well to that kind of honesty.

I'd like to see Stefan take a solid crack at this subject. Argentina strikes me as one of the 20th century's tragic examples of wasted potential, given its strong starting position early in the century.

Book: "On Killing", by Lt. Col. Dave Grossman http://www.amazon.com/Killing-Psychological-Cost-Learning-Society/dp/0316040932 I've only read scattered sections so far, but it's a fairly well written account of the obstacles to killing within the minds of most men new to the battlefield (and even those not so new, at times), as well as the techniques used by militaries and police forces to squash empathy in their ranks.