LanceD

Because people think the Daily Show is an entertaining way to get their news.

You take plenty of time to explain what is wrong with your parents and why they are not good for you to be around. Yet when you list the reasons why you live there again you're talking about it like it's a good thing. Why is this? How does willingly living with and being at least partially supported by your abusers empower you to seek better self knowledge? Imagine for a moment that you were a father of a young child. Would you live with your parents and expose an innocent child to the same abuse you suffered? I would assume the answer is no, that you would do everything you could to not live with them and ruin your child's life in such a manner. Then why are you willing to do such a thing to yourself? Do you not deserve better? Are all of the reasons you listed to live there not simply ways to justify this mistake to the voice in your head telling you its a bad idea? I worry for you and the other men in this community who continue to live with their abusers. You all have a long list of reasons why but to me they all show a lack of confidence in yourself and a dependence on your abuser. I wish you the best and hope I don't come off poorly. I'm just trying to provoke some thought and hopefully encourage you to put all of your energy towards getting the hell out of a bad situation.

Well I'm going to try to be honest and up front without being rude but I'm not particularly good at it. So apologies in advance. This issue seems rather petty. While I understand the history and the awful living situation after reading your story I get the impression that your life revolves around this man. It sounds like you put a lot of energy into identifying and analyzing every little slight against you. It gives the impression that these things are the fuel that you run on. So I wonder, are you codependent? Have you defined yourself based on how you are treated by others? Could you imagine yourself living a life apart from people who treat you poorly? I'm definitely not defending them or trying to in any way minimize the abuse you have suffered in the past. However to me this seems different. It sounds like you are not actually living there while you put your life back together but are living there because it's where you are comfortable. It seems that you define yourself through how others, particularly your father, treat you. This impression I have is reinforced by my inability to figure out why you live there at all. If you have gainful employment why can you not provide yourself your own place to live? I guess I could be missing something or failing to consider some influencing factor. But I just have a hard time believing that you are not there by choice and simply using whatever you did before as a justification to the part of you that knows it's a mistake to live in that house.

This research is very reassuring to me as a peaceful parent! My wife and I make a point to treat our child as an equal. His opinions, desires and needs are of equal importance to our opinions, desires and needs. So as far as he is concerned we are his peers.So this research says that as my son's peer I have the most influence over how he develops as a person. That is very encouraging indeed!Sarcasm aside. My point is pretty simple. We live in a world where most children spend a significant majority of their time surrounded by peers. This creates a situation where a child's bond with the parents is eroded and replaced with peer bond relationships. So of course children are being influenced more by peers. Children model what is around them and their parents surround them with their peers! Opposite to most kids his age my son spends over 90% of his time with my wife, myself or both of us and it is plainly obvious in his behavior. He's a bit bossy, he got that from mom.He has a bit of a foul mouth, got that from me. He is very thoughtful and goes out of his way to do nice things for the people he likes. We both model thisHe is very firm in standing up for himself without being aggressive. Again from both of us. I could list things like this forever. Pointing out all of the good and bad and show you exactly where it came from. However the point is your child will be most influenced by whoever they spend the most time with and develop the deepest bonds with. Make sure you are that person and that you model the behavior you want and you'll see in your children what I see in mine.

I know the first instinct is to feel sad he died and left kids behind. However if he was a drug addict I'm gonna take an educated guess and say he probably was not a good father and that they may very well be better off without him.

I would suggest Gates of Fire by Steven Pressfield. It's a fictional story about the Spartans and the Battle of Thermopylae. The book is both a really entertaining read and a very interesting investigation of how childhood experiences shape a man.

I am a graphic artist. I primarily work with Illustrator to make designs for shirts, hats, pins, flags etc. I'm on my phone and don't have a connection good enough to get a link to my photo bucket gallery but I should be able to help you out.

Seems like this is more like evidence of adaptation. Where members of a species with certain traits are more successful at survival and mating. I don't see how this results in a species evolving into another species entirely. Note, I'm not arguing anything here since I have no allegiance. I simply have questions about evolution I've never bothered to try and find the answers too.

Well let's start with a definition of the word. I got this by Googling "define humility" Humility A modest or low view of one's own importance; humbleness I think the word 'importance' is of particular significance in the definition. So when people suggest you practice more humility I would ask myself. What benefit would this person get from me viewing myself as less important? Many times the benefit, in my opinion any way, is simply that as you lower yourself they are in turn raised up. So often times the people who hope to hold power or influence over you benefit greatly from you practicing humility. So while I very much believe being able to accurately and objectively assess your own knowledge and capabilities is of great importance. I do not think it is healthy or beneficial to you to lower how important you feel you are. That seems to me like you are just being setup to receive abuse.

That thing was a pretty long read for what really wasnt a lot of information. I've seen your posts before and they tend to be very good. I wish you had done one of those instead

Yeah the process surely will be a long and arduous one. I believe time and ample communication will be my best tools. This seems like good advice. I will definitely make a serious effort to practice this as much as I can.

The thing is you will see when you have kids of your own. You'll see how much you love them and how much you want to do what's right for them and look at the narcissistic parents taking the easy way out as the evil people they really are. Having kids of your own will affect you I agree with them, however it will simply make you hate the people you now only dislike.

My son is almost 8 years old. Sadly for him my wife and I have not always practiced peaceful parenting. For the first five years of his life we were rather authoritarian and then began learning and transitioning to peaceful parenting. He has been spanked, ordered around and made to do things he didn't want to simply because I'm his father and he should listen to me. While we were never complete monsters to him, we made mistakes that bring me great shame to admit. I mention this as an attempt to properly frame our past behaviors. While I would never attempt to excuse or justify the wrong things we did, I find it just as important to properly assess exactly how bad we were. Since we have made the change in parenting styles everything has improved. From his behavior inside and outside the home to our relationships as well as his understandings of exactly how he should expect to be treated and how he should treat others. It really has been a wonderful thing for all of us, seeing him act appropriately because he decided it's what he should do is so much more rewarding them seeing him simply act the way I say because he is afraid of what I may do to him. However I am aware that we have done damage to him. Some of this was obvious and fairly straightforward to begin repairing. Such as the trust and bond between us, it started with an apology for spankings and a discussion about how it was wrong to have done that to him and no one is ever allowed to treat him like that. This has been supported by further discussions and talks where much of the information is repeated. There are other things though that are more complex and I feel I need help addressing. He has issues with self confidence and self esteem. While I can see how the way we've tested him in the past has created these problems I am not entirely sure how to help him with them. Im also worried that there may be other potential problems I've inflicted upon him that haven't manifested yet or simply don't know to look for. I want to help him minimize the negative impact our mistakes may cause. Any help you guys can be to that end will be greatly appreciated.

The elephants displayed the ability to quickly count the amount of food as it entered the containers. Then pick the container that contained more. Regardless elephants being able to count has very little to do with the topic and I simply mentioned it because of something Kevin said and I thought he or others posting here may find it interesting. As far as my implications when describing other observed behaviors is that some animals are capable of very complex emotions. I think if people are going to decide how we should treat animals understanding that some are capable of experiencing sadness when a member of their social group dies is important.

Kevin to pick out one little point you made. Elephants have been proven to be able to count. Experiments have been done where food items were poured into buckets in front of elephants. Over 80% of the time the elephants grabbed the bucket with the most food, which actually out performed humans. Not that this has any actual relevance to the over all topic, I just thought it was interesting! I think this discussion is complicated by the wildly different levels of intelligence present in animals. I'll continue with elephants as an example. They have been observed experiencing many complex emotions, grief, anxiety and even PTSD. They are also the only animal that regularly performs rituals for their dead, often covering their bodies with leaves and dirt as well as recovering removed remains and bringing them back to spot the elephant died. These examples along with many more show that elephants are a step above most other animals. So I don't think this topic can be properly discussed without sorting animals into smaller groups and no longer talking about them like they are all the same. Mammals are obviously capable of emotion, to a greater or lesser degree based on species. So I could understand and potentially agree with arguments supporting the idea of giving them some or all protections afforded to people. I've already done this on a species by species basis, with everything we have learned about the intelligence, language and social structure of dolphins and orcas I personally have a hard time seeing the difference between them and ancient humans. On the flip side I don't think any argument can be made for any non mammal. Some of them are smarter then others but only so far as being better capable of acquiring food. So I think the debate is clouded when animals are discussed as a group. Kevin to pick out one little point you made. Elephants have been proven to be able to count. Experiments have been done where food items were poured into buckets in front of elephants. Over 80% of the time the elephants grabbed the bucket with the most food, which actually out performed humans. Not that this has any actual relevance to the over all topic, I just thought it was interesting! I think this discussion is complicated by the wildly different levels of intelligence present in animals. I'll continue with elephants as an example. They have been observed experiencing many complex emotions, grief, anxiety and even PTSD. They are also the only animal that regularly performs rituals for their dead, often covering their bodies with leaves and dirt as well as recovering removed remains and bringing them back to spot the elephant died. These examples along with many more show that elephants are a step above most other animals. So I don't think this topic can be properly discussed without sorting animals into smaller groups and no longer talking about them like they are all the same. Mammals are obviously capable of emotion, to a greater or lesser degree based on species. So I could understand and potentially agree with arguments supporting the idea of giving them some or all protections afforded to people. I've already done this on a species by species basis, with everything we have learned about the intelligence, language and social structure of dolphins and orcas I personally have a hard time seeing the difference between them and ancient humans. On the flip side I don't think any argument can be made for any non mammal. Some of them are smarter then others but only so far as being better capable of acquiring food. So I think the debate is clouded when animals are discussed as a group.

Agreed. Peter seemed to limit himself to arguments related specifically to economics. Rogan essentially painted China as some bastion of freedom allowing their people to run amok and destroy the environment and Schiff just failed to answer that. Peter took a very one dimensional economics based approach to responding to this and totally failed to bring up exactly how their environmental destruction is caused by an extremely large and powerful government. Yet an uneducated listener could easily have come away from that part of the discussion thinking China is suffering from too little government!

She is Christian. That means she cannot think, and how do you expect to change the mind of someone who can't think?

That's a great quote! Thank you very much for sharing it

Why can't I delete this?

Well as a parent myself I'll tell you that it's nonsense. They are simply using an ad hominem, attacking the messenger instead of addressing the actual argument. It's very similar to the excuses my mother makes for her bad parenting. She likes to say that teenagers are difficult and when they rebel there is nothing you can do and any rebuttal I have to this is met with "well you haven't had to raise a teenager yet!" Since my son is only seven. It's just nonsense and justification. They are shitty people who hit their kids because it makes them feel better. Instead of facing this fact they find ways to dismiss anyone who presents a view point that disagrees with their behavior.

I hate these scenarios because they all seem to assume that we are incapable of decision making. Do we really require a strict rule book that lays out our precise to response to every possible scenario? Can't we just decide on some principles to live our lives by and rely upon our decision making skills?

I agree weeb. It's sad that the same laws that protect me from being circumcised against my will do not protect babies. However this is a step in the right direction and their are some great quotes in that article. It's very encouraging to see medical professionals call circumcision mutilation! There is just so much in that article relating to self ownership and finally providing these same rights to children that I feel very encouraged after reading it.

I agree with Ivan but I take it a bit further. Why do you want to have a relationship with people who cannot use reason? And what kind of a relationship would it be anyway? I just don't see how a real caring relationship can be had between a person capable of thought and one incapable of thought.

http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/a-giant-military-surveillance-blimp-is-going-to-constantly-monitor-the-east-coast?utm_source=vicefbus More tools to spy on US citizens!

With the new information in your latest post I think for me the decision would be fairly simple. If I still loved my partner and thought that by staying in the relationship I could help them achieve better self knowledge and improve as a person. Then I would stay. However if I no longer loved the person, or as it seems in your case never actually loved the person, or thought there was no way I could help them effect positive change in their life then I would leave.