LanceD

As long as that needle wasn't penis shaped I believe so!

As a recovered addict myself I believe I may be able to offer you some assistance on this matter. I apologize in advance for the length of my post but it's a topic that is important to me and I believe I can offer some real help to you. First a little background on me (I'll try and be short and to the point). I was a child born to narcissistic parents. They divorced when I was 8 and from then on led lives focused on themselves and neglected to finish raising me. This led to me being a very unhappy teenager. I dropped out of high school and spent my time trying to get laid and doing drugs as an attempt to fill the emptiness and achieve some kind of superficial happiness. This led to me developing an addiction to sex, video games and methamphetamines. Eventually I hit my bottom. One day I was wallowing in depression and thinking of sad things that happened in my life. I thought back to when I was much younger and one of my cousins was murdered. This event and his funeral were significant events in my life but I was so fucked up on drugs and lack of sleep I couldn't recall the name of my cousin who was killed. This disgusted me and caused me to feel an overwhelming hatred for the person I had become. I then decided I would stop. The first addiction to go was the meth, but due to the sex and video games not being quite so destructive they took much longer to address and this leads me to my point about your question. NA and AA still operate under a paradigm of non responsibility. They are based on the idea that chemicals and activities are addictive. This has been proven to not be true through scientific research and that these problems are symptoms of improper brain development caused by bad childhoods but this fact is inconvenient to the people involved. This leads to a philosophy based around treating individual addictions, rather then the causes of addictive personalities. That is why the idea that you are always an addict in recovery is so common, because after all you are only treating symptoms and not the actual disease so usually a very destructive addiction is simply replaced with less destructive ones. Religion ties into this very well. If you have a treatment philosophy based around not holding people responsible, particularly holding your parents responsible for screwing you up, you are limiting your power to fix yourself. This makes it necessary to hand things off to a higher power that can do the fixing for you. Additionally many addicts come from religious families and acknowledging a religious upbringing as a potential cause for the addiction is very inconvenient to everyone involved. So programs have incentives to be friendly towards the religious parents who often play a significant role in choosing where an addict will go to "recover". So while giving up your power to a magical man in the sky is appealing to some it is not the way to get truly better. My suggestions to you are to first extract yourself from your fellow addicts and everyone around you who is involved in or supportive of the lifestyle you chose. While talking out issues with experienced people has obvious value, how is spending time with addicts going to fix you? Spend as much time as possible with people who are actual examples of the life you want! When I decided to start down the road to recovery I moved from Southern California where I grew up to Iowa, about 1700 miles away. This separated me not only from the people I got the drugs from and did them with but also removed me from the people who neglected and abused me. This allowed me to gain perspective and a clearer picture of myself and the decisions I had made in the past and begin the process of healing. Then I would suggest therapy. You are an addict because when you are not pursuing your addiction you are unhappy. This is the root cause of your addiction and the most efficient way to address this is to pursue self knowledge through therapy so you can process and understand why this is. Part of this is fully accepting that people are responsible for what they do. You are responsible for fixing yourself and your parents are responsible for fucking you up. Without this acknowledgement you will never have the power to do anything about your situation and will always have to rely on woo woo spiritual nonsense to patch the holes in your perpetually sinking ship. I'm feeling scatter brained at the moment so my thoughts probably didn't come out quite as concise and well thought out as I had wanted. But I hope my post is of some value to you and if you need anything don't hesitate to send me a pm. It's a long road out of the darkness but the feeling of being in the light is well worth it.

Yesterday I saw the Lego movie with my kid and was surprised to see a positive representation of anarchy in it. At one point in the story as the main characters are fleeing from the secret police, who had black and white vehicles that closely resemble the black and white cars used by most police forces in America. They then arrive at a new place that's up in the clouds and are introduced to a new character who explains where they are. Alongside images showing this place is populated with people who are obviously living a much more enjoyable life then everywhere else you've seen in the movie the character listing all the positive aspects of this place starts with "we have no government!" The icing on the cake was when some minutes later the same villains that closely resemble the US police force bust in and destroy everything. While the messages in the movie weren't perfect I was so happy to see anarchy displayed positively and the government and it's police force shown in an appropriately negative light.

The best way to pose a question to Stef is to call him.

Thanks for the long post. Since I haven't based my life on a belief that requires evolution to be false or had a particular interest in biology I've never bothered to seek the information that could answer my questions about the subject. However I'm now interested after this thread and your suggestions seem like a good place to start

Um we already have a small cartel that owns all the land. In the US the federal government directly owns 30% of the land and they force us to pay rent in the form of property taxes to use any land We call our own. So I don't understand why this could possibly discourage you from a new system, since we already have something much much worse!

Also they just made the IRS the people responsible for enforcing Obamacare. They can't get abolished.

The sad thing is, the author is a fan of Obama. So even the guy who wrote this book still isn't principled.

I'm not opposed to trying to reduce theft. It seems like a good idea. Though this will never happen

Check on craigslist, or similar websites like the LSN we have here in my part of TN, for job listings. People post small jobs and chores they want to pay someone to do all the time. I know people who have kept their families afloat during times of unemployment doing this. Find old people in your neighborhood and go do chores for cash. Residences need maintenance the elderly cannot do, you can both learn new skills and earn some money by just doing small things around the house for people. Find someone who will give you a job earning money under the table. When I was young I worked doing residential construction for cash under the table. I learned carpentry, plumbing, electrical and all sorts of other useful skills while earning a full time wage. Many of the suggestions posted before mine are good however most require an initial investment and I'm gonna guess you don't have that capability. So get out and go knock down some doors trying to find someone to pay you to do something. Also curse the people who thought the minimum wage was a good idea because that and ridiculous child labor laws are your biggest problems.

Genetically nothing prevents this. However that was a long post, this is the only thing you can respond too?

So not only do ghosts exist but they can impregnate women?! This puts your other thread where you are trying to use logic and reason to prove God is possible into a whole new light!

I didn't know that thing was a building. I thought it was just a pretty block of stone those people walk in circles around.

This statement is ridiculous. What's so impossible about a horse with a horn? There are many horses running around and many animals with horns. To say that a horse with a horn is as impossible as a magical being that can know everything and time travel is absurd. To the OP. You say that these traits you've signed your God are logically possible, then you say he can time travel and find out anything he wants? How are those two feats logically possible? Also if God can interact with the universe then by what means does he do so? He has to interact with matter and energy in order to influence matter and energy. Which means we should have no problem measuring acts of God, unless of course the way he does this is "magic" which then invalidates his existence. I'm also confused as to how he saves me from death. Everything we know about biology shows that consciousness is a result of the brain, which is matter and energy. So how does he save me? Does he snatch up my body and take it to space to live with him? Or are you implying that our beings are not attached to our bodies? Because if this is the case I think the first thing you need to do is prove the existence of the soul, because without that your whole idea here is pointless and you are wasting your time trying to prove the existence of a God who can do nothing to help you.

Yes a species that is very well suited to its environment.The whole idea of evolution is weird to me. I can't see any way for it to work without a guiding force behind it making decisions, and we all know that is nonsense. Why would a species that is surviving fine in water evolve in a manner that allowed it to move out onto the shore? If it's current existence is successful then it has no factors driving evolution and if suddenly the water it lives in is threatened how will a process as slow as evolution be able to save them? Also why are dogs still dogs? Humans have spent at least ten thousand years breeding the domestic dog. We've created all sorts of amazing variations. Yet genetically they are all descendants of wolves and all capable of procreating with each other. Also what advantage does an animal get by evolving to a point where it cannot reproduce with the animals it came from? Are you really going to get similar versions of the same updated evolved animal to all be born at the same time so they can procreate?

My question is what is wrong with the people who pay these fines? At what point do people begin to stand up for themselves and practice a little civil disobedience?

I experience the same thing. Often times songs I haven't heard in years just start playing in my head while I'm working. It's very nice. I suspect it's due to my new peace of mind. The world no longer weighs heavy on me and my mind is not constantly preoccupied with problems and stressors. So it is free to fill the void with whatever it wants while I'm not actively using it. That reads funny but it's the best explanation I can come up with!

First off, I'm very impressed by your post. You seem to be very intelligent and obviously have a bright future ahead of you. As far as your book I think I may have a decent idea. Maybe you could try talking to other unschoolers and tell their story? Maybe you could go to the unschool convention or make contacts online and interview the parents and kids. You could devote chapters to different families and discuss why they decided to unschool and specifics on their unschool philosophy. Combine that with conversations with the child they are schooling or adult that is done with it on onto tackling life. I bet after a few of these interviews/conversations you could find your theme to really tie all the stories together!

Yeah I get that, however that doesn't really help me understand how a fish evolves feet.

It's not funny. It's disgusting

Oh my god giant wall of text has defeated me!

I need this for the Introduction to Philosophy podcasts. The first one is only 40 minutes but its the most boring thing I've ever heard from Stefan. I need to get more in before it puts me to sleep

Good for them I guess? They can do whatever they want with their business. Though you will still be able to walk in and but enough beer to drink yourself to alcohol poisoning!

Lol that article is awesome. Just in the first point he refers to taxation as "economic justice", then tells the reader if they practice his brand of communism we can keep our smartphones! I hope Stefan fulfills the request because I think it would make for a very entertaining show.

While I understand what he says is his goal there are many reasons why I don't think he will be able to achieve them. For example, I live in Tennessee among the Christians and many of my acquaintances mentioned they wanted to watch this debate but that they would only do so if they were able to without their children present. Because they didn't want their kids to get any funny ideas! Really all he is doing is lending some bit of credibility to this nonsense and may in fact be working against himself.