Mishelle

Thank you HC for understanding the path to rationality is not straight and narrow. I would say, rarely is. The mind must be healed before rationality can gain any foothold. If the stopgap helps someone survive the next leap, heaven bless OK sorry, really that I would bow out of the conversation for that was sooo passive aggressive of me. Sort of. Not really. Just trying to prove a point. Maybe not so good at it. But, Kevin and I need to draw swords I see, as this has happened now more than once. Anyway, Lians, "From an abstract standpoint, religion seems to be more dangerous. What about the followers? In my experience, spiritual people come from pretty wretched backgrounds and most of them, in their search for alternatives, choose to abandon the comfort of religion. Religious communities are certainly known for covering up severe abuse and I think this might have something to do with it. Lovers of philosophy excepted, why would you reject community support and live a life of scorn and mockery? To me, it seems much harder to break the mental bonds of spiritualism compared to abandoning religion, and that's why I considered the ideology to be more dangerous. I never really questioned the logic behind this assumption. In order to keep this short, I'll equate religion to a virus and spiritualism to a drug. Only people in desperate need turn to drugs for salvation. If spiritual people come from more painful backgrounds, it would make perfect sense for them to have more difficulty in embracing philosophy. This means that I should have more compassion for them, not less. I believe you are really hitting it when you equate spiritualism to drugs. But how desperate, really? Considering more people in the US use drugs of some sort than do not. I don't like to doll out "shoulds" I really don't! But if we are talking about what's going to heal individuals, in order to heal the world, one of the "shoulds" should be, "stop using should!" LOL The spiritual movement is not the enemy, and could be the friend, that's all I've been trying to say here sometimes, while getting a bit of what feels to me like more indoctrinated bullshit.

You seem to have missed my post just before your rant: Could you help me understand what is the "non-dual approach"?! I came to Stef out of a lack in the work in rationality! In thinking! I really get that I'm behind in the philosophy, but I really did see there was a gap in speaking of virtue and objective truth in the spiritual path, that's how I found myself searching again and found Stef. No worries, let's try again. I would challenge you, Stef, or anyone to tell the heroine addict that the answer to his trauma is virtue, rationality and reason. Why is it you get so heated up in a simple conversation trying to help a dude out. Give me a fucking break. Please excuse me Kevin and all great philosophers who I have offended here, let me bow out of this conversation now for being so crazy and irrational.

Nicely done! I really know next to nothing about ancient history, which is sad, I need to fix this lack in my education. Still, I completely agree with your final lines: "For philosophy to be successful, it has to be embedded in the very fabric of society. No one does that better than artists." I wonder how we could contribute to changing this, I think a lot about it. Much of great art is driven by pain and other very deep emotion--it comes from a "body" space, not a head space, if I can generalize a bit and sound rather New Agey. Great poets don't write because they are happy, they write because they are exalted, or miserable. This is why I don't think happiness really contributes much to the world so it cannot be the raison d'etre! Passion inspires great art. If philosophy is focused on happiness or "good living" or however you want to call it as the end goal, and virtue as the path to getting there, it does seem a bit shallow to me for producing great art. But I'm still working on this, surely I must be missing something important! On the note of the topic--Sons of Anarchy, I've also watched this, and like it. But I don't call this anarchy, because everything in their culture is still based on hierarchy and a very rigid top-down structure. There's still a master-slave component, it's only anarchy against the state, not the system.

Q: What's the difference between someone who is religious and someone who is spiritual? A: The religious person is afraid of hell, the spiritual person has been there. What's the worst thing that's ever happened to you? Been to war? Seen someone murdered? Been raped? These aren't just "unhappy" people, these are broken people, and anything or anyone who helps in the fixing deserves respect and those people who need help deserve some compassion.

Understandable! I've decided to become an exhibitionist myself, doesn't pay well, but it's fun.

So the soul is broken or virtue is broken or all of us are miserable meat for marketing. What are you saying really? what is profound? What about virtue is clear to you? If I wasn't swimming in a polluted fish bowl maybe I could see it too. You sound like you want me to believe you've walked the streets of Calcutta, bro. Step off the high horse, if for no other reason than a celebration of the winter solstice

I think you haven't quite yet picked up on what bores me! This is the journey that most fascinates, and more than once now I've seen your propensity to abbreviate, so I will not try to excavate. lol Seriously though, nothing is less boring to me. If small talk is left aside then I am thrilled. Just, fyi.

Could you help me understand what is the "non-dual approach"?! I came to Stef out of a lack in the work in rationality! In thinking! I really get that I'm behind in the philosophy, but I really did see there was a gap in speaking of virtue and objective truth in the spiritual path, that's how I found myself searching again and found Stef.

Thank you lovely Meeri I really do hear what you're saying. It's funny even after just posting that I did feel much better. That's just it, maybe I'm so good at getting over it I never really process it fully. But yes, to not avoid, I really feel that as most crucial. Ok Lians, wow! You are so wise and well-spoken, with a photo that looks like you are what, 24, tops?! More on all that coming! Thanks though dear, very thought-provoking!

Kevin I don't know everything about his work to be sure, but I think it's important to recognize that not everyone comes to the truth through a straight path or through philosophy. Tolle, and other spiritual teachers like Ken Wilbur and Chopra, can be a stepping-stone out of the matrix for a lot of folks. Not all they say has to be true or logical for it to resonate and for me nihilism was not come to philosophically. When all around you is falsehood and you know it and one more step in the game makes you want to puke, that's also nihilism to me, maybe I'm over-reaching with that definition. Here in a nutshell is the difference between Stef and the "evolutionary philosophers/spiritual gurus" or whatever they want to call themselves: "You can't stand the world because it has lost its soul." and "You can't stand the world because it has lost its virtue." In essence they are so similar!

xelent, interesting! And how did you get to Atheism from your religious background? Jer, "but l downloaded some podcasts the next day and started calling myself an anarchist the day after that." I LOVE IT! "I was a good little US patriot until I watched the TZM docs and found out about some of the sinister foreign policies and fractional reserve banking and fiat currency and such." Yes this was big for me too. Carl. Lots of guys coming from JRE, so interesting, cause i don't find him that interesting! lol Wesley interesting journey! I only learned of Adam Kokesh after Stef, seems seriously cool! But, there is no one I know who comes close to Stef's scope. what do you think?

Here we go loves, thanks for playing! I started listening to Chomsky in college, because I studied linguistics. Enter Anarchy. Then I joined the Peace Corps, enter serious Left-wing. I became interested in politics a bit in high school during Iran-Contra and oddly enough found myself living in Mena, AR many years later. This is the small town of 5,000 where they were running the drugs/weapons through. My dad had a plane in the hangar and I lived in the trailer park across the street. Mena is a dry county, and pilots are notoriously big drinkers, so they hung out at the private Elk’s Lodge. Clinton was running for President and talk about those active days at the tiny airport was common. And so confusing, because these guys wanted him to win, knowing exactly what he’d done and what kind of person he was. Enter nihilism in small doses for many years to come. Then I was in New Orleans for Hurricane Katrina and got a huge dose of nihilism when I realized Naomi Klein was spot on—Disaster Capitalism was very real and keeping me out of my living room! I lost my teaching contract after being strung along for months, as did loads of other faculty, some with tenure, as they just randomly began to close departments and restructure everything at Tulane University. The city was a total bloody mess and I saw very clearly that it was not incompetence, it was very deliberate. Enter Conspiracy Theory. Then three years later, after having lost in that time my grandparents, two uncles to cancer and still without a permanent residence, we moved to Galveston, six months before Hurricane Ike. Another 100-year evacuation and my first real descent into the rabbit hole. Total Nihilism, capital N. I considered tattooing “Fuck IT!” to my forehead. I stopped watching the news and turned to self-help books. I think I read about 50 of them. Still, it was not enough. Not enough to escape the nihilism and not enough to get me to take serious action against the system. It’s embarrassing for me to say, but I needed direct experience of the bullshit, to be deeply personal affected by the growing fascism to really GET IT already. That happened at the airport when someone pointed out, after I complained about getting double-screened and pat down and luggage sifted through, as usual, that I was on “The List.” I was like, What List? Whatever dude. And still it took another year. When I was flying again and it happened again. That time I actually went home and Googled this damn list, and WOW, that was it, that was the very last straw. I started bitching to people about it, especially in my family, and they SOOO did not get it. “There’s a LIST!” I kept repeating. There’s a fucking list of terror suspects that an unknown number of people are privy to, that you don’t know how you got on or how to get off, everyone knows about it it seems, and OMG I’m ON IT! This is like Soviet Union, don’t you see?! And I kept hearing the little old ladies in Czechoslovakia, where I was in the Peace Corps, repeating: “We had no idea what they were capable of!” I choked down the red pill once again, and this time kept it down. I got pissed off enough to take real action, which no one I knew approved of in the least, I boycotted TSA, and started bitching about the Fascist state every chance I could whether or not it was appropriate or anyone was listening. I finally found Stef through the Thrive movement website, where I was reading through the Worldview section. Someone was finally saying everything I was thinking. It was like a lifeboat because at that time I was trying to get into Ron Paul and “forcing” myself into thinking the way to change it all was through politics. I had the motivation, the energy, the drive to commit to waking others up, but it didn’t feel right the way I was going about it all because it felt kind of abusive. When Stef spoke about drawing people in, not shoving it down their throats, I knew I was not doing it right and I really started listening to how to do that. To hear Stef say politics is not the way to transform the world was like someone breaking my chains—it made such sense and felt so liberating. I feel like I’ve really been around the block, like I’ve searched and found little crumbs all my life, but that I couldn’t see the forest for the trees until I started listening to Stef. And the people in this community have taught me a lot too and I find y’all very interesting and inspiring!

I'd love to hear how you found your way to FDR, the whole story! I'd like to know not just how you found Stef, but when and how your first realized you were libertarian/anarchist, was it a solo journey, who else influenced you, what was easiest/most difficult, what specific life events propelled you along, how many in your life before that were "awake", and so on?! Any takers? I'm going to work on it myself right now.

These are some great replies and such an important topic! I didn't know of these interviews so I'll try to find them, thanks. I suffered with varying degrees of nihilism for quite a few years, including a spell that was very deep for over a year. This is such a painful place to be--you've taken the red pill alone and are in the rabbit hole, that's how I felt it. It was like a long very bad acid trip where you come face to face with all the ugliness in the world and the beauty of it becomes lost on you. Unfortunately Stef wasn't there to save me! I had to do a lot of self-knowledge and spiritual work. I know the spiritual part is not the right answer for folks here, but it worked for me. I had to keep myself focused on what's possible, even if it seemed impossible. This is spiritual work to me. You force yourself to focus on the beauty no matter what, everyday--beauty and gratitude, that's what shifted it for me. In the rabbit hole there's a light at the end of the tunnel, and that's where you've got to keep your eye. Read Ekhart Tolle. bon courage!

Hi Pat, I think it's great you want to contribute to making the show better! I'm wondering what other hosted shows you listen to? I found myself at first thinking the same thing with Stef, that it seemed abrupt somehow. But when I started to analyze the feelings more I realized I was comparing him to a therapist, not a "radio show host', if that makes sense. I was doing that because in so many other ways the show comes off as much more personal and the topics oftentimes more delicate, and so there feels like there should be more "cushion" like at the therapists office. I've listened to so many different types of radio shows, and I've never felt they applied appropriate phone etiquette. For better or worse! more food for thoughts!

So I'm having some holiday blues now because there was no Sunday Stef mass yesterday. hehe, just joking, I did miss him, but what really happened was I called my sister and she was having the whole family over and she passed the phone to my aunt, cousin, step-dad, mom before I had to stop. Since then I am having some feelings I can't explain and feel I want to drown them out with projects and activity, so I know better that I need to stop and push into this more. Thanks for reading, witnessing, trying to relate. I do feel sad, and lonely, but it's not because I wanted to be there with them. In fact, it was kinda torture to try to talk to them, my step-dad was drunk, as usual (at 2pm), my sis preoccupied (understandable), the chat with cousin and aunt forced and fake. I don't want that! And still, I don't want this either, not all the time anyway. I do well with isolation now, much better than when we first came out here, and I really do like it a lot of the time. I don't want to distract myself away from the discomfort, but at the same time I do understand it's probably not even healthy to be so used to being alone to such a degree. I wonder if anyone here has been in the situation of prolonged solitude (except for internet, yay!). I could easily go 2 weeks seeing no one but the UPS driver! Still I love spending my time exactly how I like with no schedule unless I want and answering to know one--it's like my own private Idaho--and it feels pretty luxurious because I've never had it before now. Any reason I would find to go out seems shallow and pointless--shop? (yuk) take a drive? (where?) visit someone (who?) -- nothing sounds appealing and I know someone is going to say, "that sounds like depression" but I know it's not. I'm very motivated and get lots done all day. I've always been very driven to evolve and that has not changed, but now I feel this voice saying "Stop plowing through life! Stop pushing and just be!" But it's really hard, standing still is much harder for me than moving. So, I hear me sounding very ambivalent. I feel such a pendulum swing sometimes about this. Like: things are awesome as they are stop looking to change them and relax already! And then: things could be better, make some plans how to shift this extreme solitude or it will come back to haunt you! Does anyone else have this experience?

Lians, I really appreciate this feedback! I certainly didn't open his heart, but I did make him feel he could confide in me, and that was what felt right. I used to really go after markets when I was starting out. The beauty of this blog for me is that it's really mine--I write what I want how I want with little consideration for audience which feels gloriously authentic, but which I could never do of course outside of journaling and which, if I had not secured "a room of one's own" as Virginia Wolf wrote, I would not have the liberty to do. It's a gift really, to throw out there whatever I feel, for better or worse! Still, I really understand that to have an impact I need to consider where I might easily fit and squeeze myself in, so you've really given me some things to consider! Here's to loads of exploration, dear!

Hi Lians thanks so much for reading! What a lovely reflection, I so appreciate it! I got on this kick of art from something I heard Stef saying, I don't remember where now. It was something about art having always been co-opted by the State. It was like one of those DUH-AH-HA! moments With non-philosophical readers it's always an emotional argument, so I try to provoke that actually. I think it's still so very new to people to even consider the way we've been propagandized. The older one is, I think, the harder it gets to see it. I don't get a lot of feedback, but one 'elderly' man wrote quite positively and agreed about the New Age feminism stuff and wrote a quite touching account of his recent heartache because of it--to me this is a fine success for a blog post! Do you write much, a blog or something--I've seen you give good thoughts on the boards?!

OK, maybe this one then? Feminism is Dead, Long Live Feminism! http://peacecorpsworldwide.org/homesteading/2013/12/21/long-live-feminism/

ok sounds good to me! Since it's a busy time for many, anyone that wants to keep dabbling on the definitions for a while, please send gmail address, we'd love all input! Then in another week or so we can include it here or somewhere for more feedback? What do you think?

Love Tower Past peaceful empty space Darkest silence reigns Parting leaves no trace Yet slaves’ desire stains Calling ourselves free Hooked up tied down Rusty anchors in the sea Far from face or town But to listen if you could The gently swaying breeze Sighs through patient wood In their world you reside You are not here to hear How mad thoughts collide How we’re nowhere clear Risking all just to court Stories that cave or unfold Fusion fantasy of a sort Pushing pulling hot then cold Passion plays to letting go Urges too full to say no Force forget our salted musk As long as the wanton lust Floats on loosely feathered dust As pink billowed clouds at dusk So roll the dice deal the wrath None will know unless they spy If someday truth bless our path When on lies we so rely Players focused on the win Grafting pleasure onto sin With sweet pinch swat or bite Meant to spur not to fight Astride stiff flesh love spread Twinkle the tip tongue till fed First trickling then flowing Swirling filling dripping On lobes still nipping On lips last drops sipping On grandiose dreams gripping Intending one long hot night Opens velvet morning glory Soft caress at sweet dawn light Licking scented skin to carry The slightest breath singing In the ears familiar ringing Electrified fingertip to toe All we are we now know In us divine connection For what the body craves Force no introspection Angel’s kiss or harlot’s plea An urgent need not to flea Far too long without our rhyme ‘Til the next sent word or sign Precious fleeting north wind’s hour When I feel that you are mine Lost in love’s tainted power

Yes great point! Personally I like the idea of trying to come to a 3 sentence consensus if at all possible. So, to make it broad enough that we could agree, but narrow enough that newcomers see where FDR philosophy is nailed down through the words, if that makes some sense?! On the more controversial words we could loosely define then maybe link to discussion in these threads? just some thoughts

I think it's good to quibble on the harder definitions. Like feminism, and if we include that we must include patriotism. I think it's important because coming from a heavily propagandized culture, when I first heard real resistance to these words and ideologies from Stef and this community I was really unnecessarily confused because I did not understand how they were being defined outside mainstream BS. I know it's wrong to make assumptions based on feelings, but we all do it, especially in trigger areas. Sooo many are for/against feminism and in the US South especially, so many identify with patriotism -- they think like I did -- of course i'm for equality between the genders, of course I think we need to honor the Constitution and Bill of Rights, when that's not what these isms stand for anymore in reality, if they ever did.

thanks xelent. so could we say then that syndicalism is against private business ownership? so it's that all must be "in the collective" ? everything is "open source" so to speak?

I have difficulty telling folks the difference between anarcho-capitalism and anarcho-syndicalism in their 2-second attention span. Any help resolving this would be great!