counterbalance

Oh brother, this was very hard to watch. I just want to commend Stefan for keeping his cool and maintaining his focus. Rather than "Win" the debate, I feel that Stefan is working more to appeal to and attract those individuals that have found the Zeitgeist group but have a gnawing feeling like something is missing or wrong. If these folks somehow have the great fortune to find this debate and then see first hand the contrast of brow-beating hubris, egotism and angst against the backdrop of pure logic, empiricism and benevolence - we all win. I will say that I felt some sympathy with Peter Joseph because I too have felt passionate about ideas that I was unable to express. It is a very frustrating feeling to have all the language you need and not enough of the understanding. Great ideas are powerful, simple and plain; but to discover them is hard fought discipline. Great job Stefan.

Stumbled upon this one today... Daniel Somers was a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom. He was part of Task Force Lightning, an intelligence unit. In 2004-2005, he was mainly assigned to a Tactical Human-Intelligence Team (THT) in Baghdad, Iraq, where he ran more than 400 combat missions as a machine gunner in the turret of a Humvee, interviewed countless Iraqis ranging from concerned citizens to community leaders and and government officials, and interrogated dozens of insurgents and terrorist suspects. In 2006-2007, Daniel worked with Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) through his former unit in Mosul where he ran the Northern Iraq Intelligence Center. His official role was as a senior analyst for the Levant (Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Israel, and part of Turkey). Daniel suffered greatly from PTSD and had been diagnosed with traumatic brain injury and several other war-related conditions. On June 10, 2013, Daniel wrote the following letter to his family before taking his life. Daniel was 30 years old. His wife and family have given permission to publish it. Read the letter here: http://gawker.com/i-am-sorry-that-it-has-come-to-this-a-soldiers-last-534538357

Well, it wouldn't be the first time I've over thought something! My frank discussions with my partner about my feelings on this topic were met warmly and I think she understands the difficulty of duplicating the same quality relationship as I have with my own children. Part of the reason I want to get this right is the fact that my partner feels responsibility for failing to make a good decision with the father of her child. I would like to help her heal from that shame by seeing how we have done better together as we are than she could have hoped for with even an average father as a partner. That would give me joy. Another concern that I have is that I create resentments in my own children by working so hard to help my partner's daughter feel equal. Of course, I will just do the best I can - and hopefully do no harm. Perhaps this Franklin Effect you mentioned could work through my girls as well as myself. I will give that some serious thought. Thank you so much for your thoughtful reply, you have some very good insight.

Thanks for addressing this Magnus. I think you are right on in your analysis of similar situations. I know a little about Alice Miller and I appreciate that perspective. However, she and I have already processed through this testing and trusting phase. I would already characterize our interactions as affectionate and mutually respectful and she is warm and attached to me. I wouldn't say at this point that her misbehaviours are any more frequent or disruptive than my own girls'. I'll add that I have behaved as I have wanted and as I feel I should. The problem is with my experience of my relationship with her. What I am hoping for here are some tools or strategies to overcome perhaps remnant evolutionary psychological adaptations that may interfere with my higher purpose of wanting to treat my partner's child as my own. To my point, Daly and Wilson conducted a series of studies in the '80's and '90's. One discovery was that the risk of infanticide for Canadian children during the first two years of life is 65 times greater when living with a step-parent than when living with both natural parents. There was also evidence to suggest that parents were highly discriminative when it came to abuse and would spare the natural children within the same household. Additionally, they determined that children under 5 years old were 25 times more likely to appear on a child abuse register when they lived with one genetic and one-step parent rather than both natural parents. I am not an apologist for the behaviour that leads to these statistics. Nor am I suggesting that I am tempted to abuse this innocent child or do anything else so abhorrent. What I am suggesting is that in these cases it appears the psychological mechanisms that keep behaviour in check and prevent us from behaving abusively toward our children may fail to engage when we have no genetic stake in the child. They also found evidence that people do, on the whole, manage to have peaceful and affectionate relationships with their step-children. They found especially that step-fathers may accept the reciprocal relationship with the partner (rather than the child per se) - and that they are willing to trade off greater care of step-children in order to have access to their partners future reproductive output or, to a lesser extent, to maintain sexual access to the mother. I accept that there is a sub-surface kind of economy at play here that I feel affected by and would like to disabuse myself of.

Yes, my concern is that I can never connect with her as I do my own flesh and blood. I sometimes notice a little voice in my head logging the times that I feel distaste for her misbehaviour rather than the undying patience that I have for my own children. I notice that I hesitate or have to "power through" situations where I would normally mediate evenly with compassion during a conflict or negotiation. I am damping down feelings that place her status lowest amongst the 5 of us. I find that I have to push back these doubts and rather ugly feelings with intellectualizations like "I must love this child as I do her mother" and "this child needs a father figure so badly and I am her best chance for a real future". It should be noted that she does have some behavioural problems consistent with single parenthood, an abrupt divorce and I believe early abuses (possible but unconfirmed sexual) by her estranged father who she is being protected from by the court system. She will likely need my support, patience and reliability more than any of the other children (or even her mother for that matter) and I feel the least capacity to give it to her. In fact, she probably needs me more than anyone else in her life right now. I fill the biggest hole. I hope this is making more sense. I need a tool of perspective that helps me to grow into this.

I am studying an issue within myself that relates to the approaching likelihood of my two daughters (8 and 3), myself and my partner who is a single parent to her 7 year old daughter, combining households. We are both divorced and I have my girls equal time while her daughter's father is granted once a week supervised visits. I love my partner very much and we have been cautiously and methodically combining our lives in such a way that the 3 girls already see themselves as best friends, behave like sisters and seem very much to want to be a family together. My concern is my attachment to my partner's daughter. I have a very dense textbook on Evolutionary Psychology which proposes the idea that there are evolutionary responses to social situations that are wired in as protective to survival of the individual and the tribe overtime. For example, it explains the origins of the Stockholm syndrome, as the survival response to submit to, defend and ally with the male who may have overthrown the previous dominant male of the clan. In this way you create a protective bond that may ensure your survival. The logic is that if the overthrowing male does not fear revenge from you for the killing of the former leader, then he is less likely to kill you to remove the possible future threat. I know; very stark and brutal stuff - but these remnants have been shown to still exist in modern man. I won't make this too long - but as a conscious, thinking man with access to this kind of knowledge -I recognize that there is something within me that is following similar drives. I feel a conflict that is interfering with my attachment to my partners daughter (who by the way is a perfectly delightful child certainly deserving of my devotion). Intellectually, I understand how this combining of families into one broadens and clarifies my responsibilities to this child as her father. But, I am nonetheless feeling this caveman barrier to attachment that I know I will need to resolve before moving forward. Does this make any sense? Can anyone offer some insight? Thanks in advance.

In another time and place, what would we have to do? What impossible string of circumstances and decisions could lead us to a collection of knowledge and discussion like this? I am amazed by my good fortune and am so grateful for this internet and access to the accumulating and heroic work that Mr. Molyneux is offering the world and the future! I am new, but catching-up. I have read UPB, OT and I am digging in to RTR as we speak. I may have 40 or 50 hours of A/V time invested and I am already finding favorites that I have been re-viewing. I sometimes have to stop and "collect" insights from the podcasts and videos because I find the ideas so profoundly meaningful. It is a tremendous leap in consciousness and a lot to process. I come to Mr. Molyneux via "Storm Clouds Gathering" which was my first introduction to the Non-Aggression Principle and Anarcho Capitalism. I looked it up on Wikipedia and followed a few source links to find Stefan. I think the first impactful vid may have been the remembrance day video. Wow. I openly wept. I have been aggressively reading, researching, studying and waking myself up for the last 3 years. It's hard to really to follow the route here but I believe it began with Peter Schiff. Through him I found Bastiat, Hayek and Mises and then Tom Woods and Jeff Casey. Then Lew Rockwell and Alex Jones. It was really Alex that got me researching and skeptical of my government and my culture. For all his faults (bless his heart) he sure knows how to wake someone up! From there I found Solzhenitsyn, "None Dare Call it Conspiracy", William Engdahl and Matthew White's "Great Big Book". On to Dr. Paul Craig Roberts and Max Keiser, Luke Rudowsky, Adam Kokesh and Zero Hedge, etc. Lots more books. "The Story of Your Enslavement" was what really hooked me in here to Freedomain Radio. I was left gobsmacked and solemn. I sat quietly looking out my window for a long spell and simply said out-loud, "I am not a slave". I am on a myth-dispelling mission - this last year especially - and I am absolutely ready for this phase; It feels like rounding third. All of my family relationships have been disrupted by my intellectual and emotional growth spurt. My phone calls and texts to my brother have become increasingly strained and I have not spoken with my parents for over a year. There is obviously much more to say about this but perhaps on another thread. Please let me express again my excitement and gratitude for this opportunity to share and commune with like minded people here on FDR. I have been fighting my way to you for a long time.