MMX2010

I'm imagining two worlds. The first is where the majority of parents are like Stefan and Christina. In this world, about 70% of people are virtuous by age 17, and about 85% are virtuous by age 25. And in this world, everyone can say, "I will not settle for anyone less than a virtuous person in my romantic relationships." while having a large dating pool to choose from. The second is our current world, where parents like Stefan and Christina are very rare. In this world, about 2% of people are virtuous by age 17, and about 3% are virtuous by age 25. And in this world, anyone who says, "I will not settle for anyone less than a virtuous person in my romantic relationships." is likely to end up alone at age 35. So in our current world, the "next best thing" to a virtuous person is someone-who-isn't-virtuous-right-now-BUT-shows-"craft-a-bility"-towards-virtue. Such a person wouldn't know all arguments in favor of virtue, but she wouldn't be closed-minded against them either. And she'd be curious and constantly exploring what virtue is. And you're right, there's no way to force virtue on to such a person. Nor is there any way to force her to stay with someone, so that she'll become virtuous. But there's a difference between providing non-coercive guidance/leadership towards virtue and allowing everyone to run freely while hoping they discover virtue independently. My suggestion is that non-coercive, virtuous leadership is more productive.

Corey, here's some "oddball" advice for you to consider. Why not go teach public school right until you have the epiphany, "THIS is why public school sucks, and I know how I can fix it!"? Once this happens, you can sell your epiphany privately.

I'm going to make two educated guess about the "friend-of-a-friend whose sister got herself pregnant to keep her boyfriend around". I feel 95% certain that one of them will be right. Either: (1) she's very young (16-22), dating someone whom she finds extremely sexually attractive, and is worried that he'll find someone else (if she hasn't already). Or (2) she's between 31-33, has been dating the man for at least nine months, has asked him "Where is this going?", and he hasn't proposed to her yet. He is not that sexually attractive, but he makes more money than she does. Let me know if either of these is correct. That question highly frustrates me, but this has nothing to do with you. I've inhaled a lot of posts from both "The Rational Male" website and the "Anonymous Conservative" blog. And I can FEEL all of that helpful knowledge well up to the surface.......but that doesn't mean I can coherently explain what that knowledge is saying. So I'm stuck with a frustrated sense of holding back a waterfall with an angry glare. ---------------------- Anyway, it's important to know that most people don't realize that misandry exists and proliferates. (You, yourself, are just beginning to realize this - and I'm glad that you are, because you can free yourself from it.) But it's even more important to know that misandry is JUST biology. http://therationalmale.com/2012/09/25/your-friend-menstruation/ That post above is one of the most important things you'll read in your life. (Seriously.) It illustrates that your menstrual cycle is constantly feeding you contradictory information, such as, "Wow, he's hot; just bang him; no one will care!" VERSUS "Wow, he's totally not hot; but he's a great guy, very caring, stable, loving, and understanding; marry him!" And it, more scarily, suggests that you (and every woman) will be feeling these contradictory impulses, at predictable times in your menstrual cycle, month-after-month, year-after-year. That's why I say misandry is JUST biology; it is the natural annoyance at hashtag Yes-All-Men that arises from being fed contradictory information about men by your menstrual cycle. ---------------------------- Despondent-men will read that article and say, "Oh fuck this! There's no way I'm going to marry any woman now!" (And they wouldn't be immoral, nor wrong, for saying so....) Clever-men and women will read that article and say, "Oh, wow. Okay....WAIT! Even though misandry is just biology, history shows that men have had varying degrees of freedom-from-female-subjugation; therefore, there must be a cultural component as well!" And they're right. This modern culture is the most misandric that has ever existed. And it's gotten that way because: (1) women have free reign to acquire resources from either their jobs, their government, or both, and (2) women have proliferated the culture with misandric messages. -------------------------- How to fight it? http://therationalmale.com/2014/03/16/preventative-medicine-part-i/ http://therationalmale.com/2014/03/26/preventative-medicine-part-ii/ http://therationalmale.com/2014/04/08/preventative-medicine-part-iii/ http://therationalmale.com/2014/04/13/preventative-medicine-part-iv/ Those four posts are excellent, because they give a great outline of what The Problem is. (The first part of the problem is that women, at varying ages, experience completely radical shifts in values. The second part of the problem is that these radical shifts in values are immorally self-contradictory when viewed over a lifetime. The third, and most important part, is that society is ALWAYS prepared to say "You go girl!!" at every point of these value-changes.) But the solution is annoyingly undefined. I say, "Once you realize that every woman experiences immorally, self-contradictory impulses, you can stop blaming yourself for being inadequate when you're on the downside of these changes. Then you can assume that every woman is permanently part of 'Team Sophistry' until she proves otherwise. And then you finally say, 'If women acting-freely DO NOT, by and large, become virtuous - due to the combination of female-biology and you-go-girl - then a man simply will never find a virtuous woman; he must, instead, craft a virtuous woman by teaching her what virtue is, all while realizing that she can become non-virtuous, at any time, if she so chooses.'" Are you trying to acquire this knowledge to confront the woman who just got pregnant?

If a trans-person is "in the closet", then they're declaring to themselves and others that "being transgendered" isn't really that important to them. Nor is acquiring any validation or respect-from-others based on being transgendered. Instead, they're declaring that "being transgendered" is much less important on their hierarchy of needs than, say, getting a good job, going to college, making their friends and family feel comfortable, and fitting in to normal society. You're making two strawmen, here. (1) That I'm assuming rather than observing. (2) That I see knowledge deficiencies in sex/gender, rather than sex only. People who have studied sex use the following terms: "natural selection", "sexual selection", "runaway sexual selection", "r-selection", "K-selection", "r-selective environment", and "K-selective environment". No transgendered person in this thread has used any of those terms in this thread. ------------------------------ Furthermore, I can also easily and safely assume that neither you, Alice Amell, Lucas, nor Liberalismus have read "Crazy Like Us" - which details the spreading of Western-defined psychological diseases into non-Western countries and cultures. That book is crucial because it describes the following: (1) In a biological disease, (caused by a bacteria, fungus, or virus), the sequence is always the same: diseased-individuals present themselves to their doctors. Blood and tissue sample are collected. A virus, bacteria, or fungus is discovered to cause the disease. A specific drug is invented. The drug proliferates and the disease is cured. (This sequence is called "Disease precedes cure.") (2) In some psychologically-caused diseases, the sequence is backwards. (In other words, "Cure precedes disease.") How? The easiest example is "erectile dysfunction". But other examples include eating disorders, PTSD, and depression. The first thing to remember is that ALL psychologically-cause disease claim to follow the "Disease precedes cure." sequence. But this is not always the case. Viagra was developed by accident. An older man taking an experimental blood pressure treatment complained of constant erections. His doctor passed this information along to the drug company, when then marketed the drug as a cure for "erectile dysfunction", a disease which DID NOT EXIST at the time; it was simply invented. Then, the drug company advertised the existence of "erectile dysfunction". And because enough men accepted the premise that they were suffering from "erectile dysfunction", enough men tried Viagra and experienced a "cure". From then onwards, both "erectile dysfunction" and its cure, Viagra, became commonly accepted definitions within our culture. ------------------ This is CRUCIAL because personal testimonials saying, "At first, I felt diseased/deficient, but then I took this drug and my disease/deficiency vanished! Yay!", are consistent with BOTH sequences - "Disease precedes cure." OR "Cure precedes disease." The second-most important question that arises is, "In Cure-precedes-disease enterprises is it IMMORAL to convince people that they had a disease that they wouldn't independently conceive as a disease, just so you can sell them the cure? (I'm not saying the answer is Yes, in all cases. But I'm sure the answer must be Yes, in some cases.) But the absolutely-most important question which arises in this thread is, "Which of the two sequences - Disease-precedes-cure OR Cure-precedes-disease - does transgender follow?" Was transgender independently and without-agenda discovered OR was it marketed as a viable condition once hormone treatment was discovered? (And how do you know?) Tundra, I'm going to model TWO identical ways of asking you about your avatar photo. Ready? Model Number One: Hey, Tundra. I'm curious about your avatar photo. Why did you choose it? Model Number Two: Hey, Tundra. I'm curious about your avatar photo. When I look at it, I get the sense that you chose it because you have a beef with non transgendered people. So, why did you choose it? ----------------------------- Tundra, only the FIRST model of asking you about your avatar is actually curious, because it presents no "poison the well" assumptions to the group. And, because it presents no "poison the well" assumptions, it allows you to freely answer the question. HOWEVER, the SECOND model of asking you about your avatar contains the "poison the well" assumption that you chose your avatar BECAUSE you have beef with non transgendered people. If you answer the question WITHOUT addressing the poison-the-well assumption, you're tacitly admitting that you chose your avatar BECAUSE you have a beef with non transgendered people. But if you CHALLENGE the assertion that you have a beef with non-transgendered people, guess what? You can't disprove my FEELING that you have a beef with non transgendered people. No one can disprove other peoples' feeling about anything! Therefore, your question WAS an attack on me - whether you "believe" it or not. ------------------------------------------- Edited to add: Experience has taught me that waiting for apologies in this thread isn't very fruitful, so I'll just pretend that your question was non-attacking by answering it. I was born in 1976 and graduated high school in 1994. I was third in my class of over 600 people, and attended public school in a middle-class, highly-liberal state. In my lifetime, FOUR major social movements have ascended, all of which followed the following structure: "We are an oppressed minority. Society-as-a-whole, (not just-us), would be better if we weren't oppressed. Be careful, though, because our oppressors profit greatly from our oppression - so you shouldn't expect them to just agree with us. After they resist our pleas over a sufficient period of time, you can just ignore and dismiss them." Those four social movements are, IN ORDER: (1) pro-Black, anti-racism, (2) pro-women, non-misogynistic, (3) pro-gay/lesbian, anti-homophobic, (4) pro-transgender, anti-transphobic. Each of these movements can be evaluated (on a 1=bad, 10=good scale) with regard to two aspects: Philosophical Integrity and Solutions Integrity. ----------------------- (1) The pro-Black, anti-racism movement scores 8 on the Philosophical Integrity scale, and a 6 on the Solutions Integrity scale. Their complaints are reasonable and scientifically-supported, but their solutions have been hit-or-miss. (One wonders whether the government-backed nature of their solutions causes the problems.) (2) The pro-women, anti-misogyny scale scores 2 on the Philosophical Integrity scale, and a 1 on the Solutions Integrity scale. Feminism as a philosophy is almost completely wrong, to the point where you can replace "women" with "men" and achieve a much more accurate assessment. (Thus, when feminists say "Women's bodies are collectivized!", you should assume that "Men's bodies are collectivized.") And its solutions are, not-surprisingly, damaging to everyone. (3) The pro-gay/lesbian movement scores a 6 on the Philosophical Integrity scale, and a 5 on the Solutions Integrity scale. Their complaints are mostly reasonable, and mostly scientifically-supported. I, personally, have zero problems with gay marriage - but I'm absolutely not sold on gay parenting. I would much prefer a "trial experimental period" of fifty years, wherein the US is divided into "states that allow gay parenting" and "states that don't". But I'm only being offered, "If you don't accept gay parenting, everywhere, you're a homophobe!" (4) The pro-transgender, anti-transphobia movement gets a ??? on the Philosophical Integrity scale, and a ??? on the Solutions Integrity scale. You're simply too new to the party to determine your grade. NOW, the absolute most important thing to realize is that the "social movement" structures I described can produce the mostly-good movement called "pro-Black / anti-racism" OR the utterly destructive, philosophically-bankrupt movement called "pro-women / anti-misogyny". Consequently, I'm not impressed with complaints of discrimination and oppression, but instead with scientific-evidence acquired under maximum skepticism. (Scientific-evidence acquired under minimum skepticism is practically useless.) Nope. I think the transgendered-community, exactly like the Blacks, women, gays, and lesbians before them, are providing social-pressure on everyone. They're using the exact same model of assuming, "If you dislike us, you're transphobic!". When they apply that pressure onto scientists, those scientists respond by finding ways that transgendered-brains differ from non-transgendered-brains. BUT a maximally-skeptical person would test the reliability of those findings, rather than just accepting them. I've designed some easy-to-follow experiments that no one in this thread either acknowledges or says we should follow. I've even improved my experiments: (1) Create twelve different groups of 30 people: (A) 9 actors pretending to be transgender, 21 transgender; (B) 15 actors pretending to be transgender, 15 transgender; © 21 actors pretending to be transgender, 9 transgender. (2) Move those twelve groups to twelve different transgender clinics but tell the scientists that, in all groups, there are 15 pretenders, 15 real-transgenders. (3) Challenge the clinicians to, in all groups, separate the 15 phonies from the 15 reals. Those experiments are brilliant because the clinicians will either: (1) not-at-all be tricked by the "15 pretenders" cue, which will confirm that scientists have, indeed, discovered reliable methods of measuring differences in transgendered-brains OR (2) be completely tricked. Such an experiment would, with 100% reliability, determine the reliability of the scientific-findings on transgender. But, ironically, I think that's precisely why you don't think such experiments should be conducted.

I'm in no position to give you career advice, but I would challenge your statement "We need excellent teachers in public schools." by replacing it with "We need excellent teachers, period."

This is easily the greatest collection of essays on men, women, marriage, and relationships. (My favorite part is realizing all of the self-deception and consequent social-deception that women employ at every stage of their lives.) http://therationalmale.com/2014/03/16/preventative-medicine-part-i/ http://therationalmale.com/2014/03/26/preventative-medicine-part-ii/ http://therationalmale.com/2014/04/08/preventative-medicine-part-iii/ http://therationalmale.com/2014/04/13/preventative-medicine-part-iv/

I definitely get that. Part of me wants to complain that hannahbanana gave us a trick question: it's neither men's nor women's fault that the hook-up culture exists; it's totally government's fault. By subsidizing bad female behavior through the welfare state, the women are much freer to pursue a hook-up culture. I'm in a position to do so, provided that I either learn game and apply it to American women or date women overseas. RooshV, among others, is an excellent source of advice here.

I'm frustrated with myself right now, because I've read a lot of posts on therationalmale.com, rooshv.com, and chateauheartiste. So I'm (theoretically) totally ready to give you a deep, definitive answer. Except I'm not. Because the correct answer requires a lot of time - both for you to get on board with the background knowledge, and for me to make sure we're communicating effectively. Best I can do is say that I laughed at her here: "Any man who sends me a text along the lines of, “Hey, Erica, would you like to go out for dinner on Friday night?” gets an automatic 10,000 points, especially if he asks at least a few days in advance..." She's hilarious because she's talking about how she feels, right now, during the composition of her article. But if she doesn't understand "hypergamy", her menstrual cycle (http://therationalmale.com/2012/09/25/your-friend-menstruation/), her sexual market value - especially as she ages (http://therationalmale.com/2012/06/12/smv-in-girl-world/), and the most-frightening of all, her ability to use sophistry to bond with whatever she wants to bond with (http://therationalmale.com/2011/10/03/war-brides/), she just won't get it! She simply won't get how her brain is out-of-touch with its desire to serve two self-contradictory instructions, how her culture is designed to make morally-justified any decision she makes no matter how contradictory it is, and how (most importantly) the majority of men are realizing this. The internet is quickly teaching men glorious phrases such as "Alpha Fucks, Beta Bucks", and "Alpha Seed, Beta Need". And who knows what's gonna happen next? Sorry if my answer was too cryptic, and if the links I posted were insufficient. Like I said, a correct answer takes a ton of time for both of us. It's a little more complicated than that. Yes, women's desire to simultaneously spin plates (http://therationalmale.com/?s=plate+theory) and not be judged for it has produced their own indecisiveness. But men (especially 38 year old men like me) have been advised not to show "too much interest" when courting an American girl between the ages of 18 and 22. Anything that looks like "too much interest" will be perceived as "OMG, he's so needy; he wants to tie me down!"

My guess? The more a trans-person believes that his/her life-misery is due to "discrimination against trans people", the less-capable the trans-person is of achieving success pre-transition.

Please, please, please email MMD and schedule a call-in show with Stef. If you really believe that " I know I am duplicating the same crap that was inflicted on me. I know the morality of what I've done is very bad. For a long time I tried to justify it and minimize it in my mind. I am no longer willing to do that.", then Stef can provide empathy and a plan-of-action much more efficiently than we message board posters can. Thanks for even getting to the point where you know what you know. But now you must learn how to alter your life based on what you now know.

I wouldn't disagree at all. But at what point does irony set in? If "the physical body (independent of the brain) doesn't have an identity because identity is a psychological/neurological phenomenon that can be influence by the physical body" is TRUE, then "the brain (independent of the physical body) doesn't have an identity because identity is a psychological/neurological phenomenon that can be influenced by the brain" is ALSO TRUE. Which means, the statement "being transgender is an identity that originates in the brain" is FALSE. (Identity doesn't arise in the brain; it doesn't arise in the body either; it arises in both.)

Homosexual - "to feel strong physical / sexual attraction to members of the same sex." How can a definition which requires the presence of other people, be deemed to "not involve other people"? I didn't. I concluded that it's much more difficult to extensively and convincingly pretend to be gay than it is to extensively and convincingly pretend to be transgender. Right, but I never said that "being able to convincingly fake being trans" disproves that being trans is primarily-biological. Instead, I've implied that "being able to convincingly fake being trans" in an environment where people are attacked for being trans-phobic whenever they disagree with trans-people would provide strong evidence that being trans is such a highly-cultural phenomenon that its biological-origins and aspects should be viewed as "limited, but not zero". (Not to mention that, in your post so far, you've: (1) mis-represented two of my more important points, and (2) attacked me by saying, ", it seems like you have some serious beef with trans people, thats just what I got from reading all the posts in this thread by you and the thread you made on the subject. If I may ask, why is this subject important to you? And furthermore, (3) Lucas has ignored my questions, and frozen me out of the discussion. And (4) Liberalismus has publically-accused me of being abusive, and has refused to provide evidence of my so-called abusiveness.) (Alice Amell has remained wonderfully polite, curious, and open-minded.) Yes, yes you have. But I've offered two counter-points earlier in this thread. (1) A study of religious/spiritual people has concluded that their brains differ significantly from those of non-religious people. A scientist within that study speculated that repeated exposures to religious services, religious meditation, and religious thoughts permanently alters the brains of religious people. It is also true that practically all religions/forms-of-spirituality describe certain "core elements" of God/spirit using overlapping/downright-identical definitions. Finally, it is also true that those descriptions match feelings which can be induced in anyone by electrical stimulation to certain areas of the brain. The overall conclusion is that religions/spirituality are almost entirely socially-constructed, with a very small amount of biological-origins. (Basically, you first get "religious / spiritual feelings" because one out of a possible million stimuli triggers that feeling. And then society explains that feeling using a religious / spiritual myth.) (2) "The phrenology debacle" occurred in science less than 150 years ago. Back then, society wrongly believed two things: that larger brains equaled more intelligence, and that the natural intelligence of men was far superior to women's. In this social environment, a bunch of scientists used a "grain-filling" method to determine the volume of empty skulls. But when the scientists knew the gender of the empty skulls, they measured skull-volume in self-serving ways. (If the skull was male, they sub-consciously really "packed the grain in" to produce higher-volume measurements. If the skull was female, they sub-consciously put less grain in.) Meanwhile, when the scientists didn't know the gender of any skulls, they sub-consciously used an equal-grain-filling method. (Not surprisingly, this second measurement-method was more accurate, and it concluded that women and men have roughly equal skull volumes.) ---------------------------------- The first study, with the religious people, suggests that "strongly believing you're a transgendered person from a young age" can produce permanent physical alterations to your brain. The second study, with the brain volume, suggests that "if you begin investigating transgendered people BY ONLY investigating transgendered people, scientists will eventually discover brain-differences because they know they're supposed to discover something". Because of the two studies I mentioned in my counter-argument, I think a "let's see if non-transgendered people can trick clinicians into prescribing hormone therapy" is highly useful. It can determine, with reasonable accuracy, the degree to which scientists' understanding of transgendered-brains is accurate AND the degree to which clinicians just "go along with" the testimonies of transgendered-people because they're culturally trained to do so. BEAR IN MIND, please, that I've drawn no conclusions about transgendered-people. I've strongly-felt suspicions based on speculations and hunches - but I don't use those suspicions, speculations, and hunches to look down on transgendered people. (If you realize this, then you'll understand the bleak-irony pervading this entire thread.)

I've read that Starbucks has highly-dedicated customer service training. So if you're using fast-food as a way to learn to deal with toxic people, Starbucks is almost certainly better equipped to teach you.

Let's recap the facts, Liberalismus. You PUBLICALLY accused me of abusing you, and now you've offered (to the curious, but not to the public) PRIVATE justifications of your argument? Can you explain, in simple terms, how this is NOT bullying?

Homosexuality and transgender are completely different. They're, in fact, so different that they're mostly dissimilar. "MMX2010 is a homosexual." involves observing his actions with other people. Because I'm not a homosexual, it's impossible for me to pretend to be homosexual for an extended period of time. "MMX2010 is a transgendered person" involves exactly zero interactions with other people. (In Stefan's "Introduction to Philosophy" series, he expresses mild frustration with certain arguments because they can never be proven false. He compares, "We're all just brains in a vat, with no control over our lives." to "I had a dream about a sparrow last night." Because there's no zero-conclusion, no way to objectively prove that we're just brains in a vat, and no way to objectively prove that I had a dream about a sparrow last night, then neither of these two statements are philosophically true. You may sincerely believe that we're just brains in a vat, but sincere belief isn't objective philosophical truth.) Because of the above explanations, and because transgendered-people have never exposed themselves to extreme scientific skepticism, the statement "I'm a transgendered person" doesn't currently acquire the status of philosophically true. It's, at best, a sincere belief. -------------------------- Seriously, if I had a couple of million dollars, I'd conduct the following simple study. Part One - Hire twenty actors to spend two-hundred hours acquiring the language that transgendered-people use to describe themselves. Part Two - Make an "announcement video" on January 1st 2015 wherein these actors say, "Hi, my name is X. I am not, and have never been, a transgendered person. But I'm being paid to convincingly pretend to be one. My goal is to infiltrate transgendered-clinics to see if I can convince the clinicians there to prescribe hormone therapy." Part Three - Have them execute the plan. (At this point, two distinct outcomes are possible. (1) I'm right about transgender, in which case the majority of my actors should easily acquire hormone therapy. If this were to happen, I'd be right that transgender is a highly subjective, socially-reinforced phenomenon that scientists have no reliable means of detecting. (2) I'm wrong about transgender, in which case all of my actors should be rejected when they seek hormone therapy.) Part Four - Confront the clinicians with the "announcement video", just to see how they react. (Either highly uncomfortable, if I'm right about transgender - or highly satisfied, if I'm wrong about transgender.) Part Five - Release the video to the public. To me, the most reliably-predictable reaction is that the transgendered community would be offended either way. If I'm right about transgender, they'll hate me; if I'm wrong, they'll still hate me. But being offended by the skeptical use of science isn't a good reason to not conduct such experiments. Right. Nor is my skepticism of transgender evidence that transgender isn't primarily biological. It's just skepticism.

Liberalismus, you earlier accused me of "abusive posting" towards you. I asked you, quite nicely, to either: (1) cut-and-paste the posts (or parts of my posts) that you find abusive, and to explain why OR (2) revoke the claim with profuse apology. Continuing to post in this thread, without responding to my request, is, in itself abusive. (Especially on the FDR-message boards, wherein accusing someone else of being an abusive poster is as serious as accusing a person of child-molestation in general society.)

I've been reading a lot of Rational Male, RooshV, Matt Forney, Chateau Heartiste, and so on the last couple of days. (So I can't remember which website told this story.) A man leaves a copy of "The Rational Male" on the coffee table, and goes to work. When he comes home, his girlfriend (or sister) has read parts of it and is very upset. He asks which chapters she has read, and she tells him. He asks whether she disagrees with anything she's read, and she says she doesn't. He asks what's the problem them. And she answers, "Men aren't supposed to know this!" Thank you.

I'm moving within thirty days. Here's a seemingly random video that I'll tie into my story. Please watch first, then read on. Within 30 seconds of that video, I knew the dude was gonna "do the right thing" and chose the Split ball, and that the chick was gonna choose the Steal ball. He just seemed way too nice, honest, and "honorable". What I would've done is spoken first (very important) and said, "I'm going to split the money with you, but I'm going to choose the Steal ball. Now I know that's sounds weird, so hear me out. If you choose the Split ball, and I choose the Steal ball, I know I'm going to have all of the money. But after I have all of the money, I'll write you a check for half of it. I dunno whether five minutes from now I'm going to be much wealthier or abruptly ejected back into my already wonderful life, but I know I'm not going to be fucked with." The attitude while saying these words is key. No nonsense. No anger. Anger just reeks of "I'm going to take vengeance on you, if you don't choose the Split ball." But because you don't have the power to seek such vengeance upon her, she'd literally rather choose the Steal ball (standing her ground) than be bullied into accepting all of that money. All dignity, with enough empathy to realize that you ain't owed the money, you ain't owed her trust, and her choosing the Steal ball (if she chooses it) isn't personal. In fact, it's so not personal that only an idiot would feel that it was personal. If she chose the Steal ball, I'd smile at her - warmly and genuinely - and say, "Hey, don't feel bad. I understand completely. You did what you had to do." No, just the opposite. Whenever we fix cars, I DO feel closer to him. I don't know whether I'll ever be a father, but I have a very strong emotional template of what "good fatherhood" is supposed to be. And car-fixing with him definitely triggers it. So I'm very flooded with positive emotions of warmth, confirmation, justice, and determination. What's missing is the permanence. The majority of my interactions with him are covered under my unspoken "Fuck you; you haven't earned that." clause. When he asks me how my day went, I feel "Fuck you", and then answer, non-emotionally, "good". When he asks me how business is going, I feel "Fuck you", and then answer, non-emotionally, "good". When he leaves a bunch of small messes laying around, (a repeated event that has always slowly-but-assuredly provoked my mother into rage-then-deep-depression), I feel "Fuck you", and I'll clean the mess. But there's no way in hell I'll ever let him see me do it, because he hasn't earned my cleaning-it-up. And more than anything, if he saw me clean it, he'd say, "Thank you" - which will provoke my "Fuck you" clause so strongly, I'd probably belt him in the face. It's simpler than that. Anyone who wants to earn the glory and honor of your permanent-commitment must be committed to understanding philosophy. Your father, like all fathers, expects a very large future payoff for having conceived you and raised you to adulthood. But he doesn't realize that he can't bully you into providing that pay-off for him. So you use words like "struggling in my relationship with him" and "maybe I feel a bond; maybe I don't" to prevent yourself from being exploited by him. But you don't realize that the wall you're trying to build isn't built with logic, words, and explanations. (Worse, you don't realize that the logic, words, and explanations you use will never 100%-perfectly describe your feelings. So if you give priority/primacy to your logic, words, and explanations, you're always going to feel just-a-little-inadequate. And then you'll try to eliminate that inadequacy with even more logic, words, and explanations - (which won't work). And then you'll feel really inadequate.) The wall you'll need (presuming you'll need a wall at all) is exactly like any bond you'll feel. It's strictly an emotion. And, like all emotions, if you just feel it without trying to think about it, it'll emerge quickly, spontaneously, "magically" - over and over again, whenever you need it to. Hope that was helpful.

My father is the main source of negative energy in my life, because he's a colossal bully. I've been living with my parents rent-free for thirteen months to save money to move to Vegas. I've been listening to FDR for right months, so my life-changing perspectives have been happening right under his nose. He doesn't trigger me anymore, because I've emotionally walled myself from him. And I will always hate his poor moral choices, and the negative consequences they've had for myself, my siblings, and my mother. But he is excellent at fixing cars, so we can "bond" whenever my car needs work. He rarely asks me for favors, because I've been so emotionally-distant from him for a very long time. So I'm rarely, if ever, "pressured" or "tested" by him to form any emotional bonds - real or fake. And I can handle all this for two reasons: (1) I know that it's impossible for him to confess all the horrible things he's done, so I'm no longer expecting a heartfelt apology, or a sincere discussion of his parenting. (2) I consider the car-fixing and rent-free living to be 1% of the restitution he owes me for being such an asshole. By your description of "compartmentalized relationship", I think mine qualifies 100%. And I'm emotionally-awesome and feel no "oh-my-god, I'm being immoral!" qualms.

I can add something that Stefan has said multiple times: Suffering trauma cannot possibly make you feel depressed. For if that trauma is strictly in the past, and can therefore never possibly happen again, then there's literally no reason to feel depressed about it. Trauma can only lead to depression when it's seen as a reliable indicator of the future. "Why should I bust my ass doing anything, when those abusive assholes will just shit on it, laugh at it, ignore it, or exploit it? Isn't it better to just do nothing, rather than work so hard when I know society is just going to tear apart and exploit everything I've worked to build?" When you agree with those two questions, you'll inevitably become depressed. But the way out of the depression is to realize that neither the abusive assholes, nor society, has even earned the right to tear apart, exploit, and permanently separate you from everything you've built. Only DEATH has that right. So when Quadrewple said, "I think the resistance to more self-growth also stemmed from anger at how much work I had to do just to be generally in an okay mood - and to quit therapy or quit pursuing self-knowledge persistently was a way of letting my unconscious rage say "fuck you" to the voice in my head which was telling me that I still had a long way to go to reach consistent happiness and I was quitting too early.", I'm not surprised that he became depressed by that line-of-thinking. But if I were lucky enough to be his therapist, I would've asked, "Why are you saying 'fuck you' to the voice in your head when you have the option to say 'fuck you' to your dad and your society - whose mutually-reinforced neglect of you put you in this position?"

I'm saying that feelings-are-feelings. And that feelings-can-only-ever-be-just-feelings. "I feel sad when you say X." can never be used as character-information, nor can it ever be altered to a different feeling just because anyone tells you it's "immoral" to feel sad when that person says X. When I accurately summarized your feelings back to you, it was impossible for you to feel pressured or judged by my summary because my summary was simply an accurate reflection of your feelings. But if I had said, like your therapist said, "Yep. Sounds to me like you're definitely just dismissing entire relationships based on disagreements. And you're definitely just trying to isolate yourself.", then it would've been impossible for you to NOT feel pressured and judged by this. Critically, though, there's no friggin' way for me to know whether you're "dismissing entire relationships based on disagreements". And it's impossible for me to know whether you're "just trying to isolate yourself". Those are highly-complicated mechanisms spoken with such false-authority that they seem easy to observe. But they're not. (I'd literally have to go into your head, feed your emotional reactions into a super-computer programmed to evaluate millions of possible reasons why you're feeling what you're feeling, and then report back what the supercomputer says. And even then, the answer the computer reports would only be the most likely answer - not the automatically correct one.) So you're feeling pressured and judged because your therapist pressured and judged you. And I'm pretty sure you're used to submitting to these pressurings and judgments from authority figures because you're just like me and everyone else: you've been forced, from birth, to surrender to these pressurings and judgments. And I sympathize, too, when you say, "And yeah, when I made the thread I was a bit hesitant to title it as I did because rationally I know it isn't immoral to have a voluntary relationship with someone even if they are a statist." But it's not enough to merely rationally know this; you've got to know it both emotionally and rationally. Because if you know it rationally, but not emotionally, you'll feel confused - which is what I think is happening now. Hope that helped.

All of what I'm about to say stems from my understanding of Stefan's book, Real Time Relationships. First of all, saying "you're dismissing relationships just because of disagreements" and "you're trying to isolate yourself" are judgments about your character, moral fiber, and intelligence. They're also, more importantly, attempts to control your feelings. Secondly, I would say that the most honest, non-judgmental, and non-coercive description of your situation is as follows: (1) When your father discusses religion, government, the afterlife, and the degree to which children choose their parents, you feel repelled by him. But when he discusses the stock market, you feel drawn to him. (2) Similarly, when your sister discusses feminism and socialism you feel repelled by her. But when she offers emotional support, you feel drawn to her. If the second part is 100% accurate, then the answer to your question becomes obvious: "Yes, it's 'okay' to have compartmentalized relationships, because everything people say while relating to us automatically produces a varying degree of attraction/repulsion. Moreover, to ask whether this is 'okay' definitely means that you're frightfully trying to use moralistic judgments to control what cannot be controlled: your instantaneous emotional reactions to what they're saying." (Please don't take my use of "frightfully" as an insult. Pretty much everyone, including myself, was trained from a very early age to use moralistic judgments to control our feelings. I've only been satisfactorily aware of this for two weeks, so my decades-long inability to grasp this concept is what's ultimately frightening.)

Once I move, I'm going to add strength training to my regimen. There's a certain justice in becoming stronger bodily as I become stronger philosophically.

I would like to tentatively recommend the Insanity program. (And I say "tentatively" because it's a very challenging workout plan that has many well-deserved warnings attached to it.) http://www.webmd.com/fitness-exercise/features/fitness-review-beach-body-insanity-program does an excellent job of reviewing the program, but I want to add my own personal reviews/warnings. 1. I "tried-and-failed" the program six times before I finally got it right. A "try-and-fail" is when you begin the program with completely earnest intentions, but then abruptly stop long enough to regress to "day zero". Some of these were because I have exceptionally weak lower back muscles, which would tear/pull really badly. (Thankfully, you can find free lower-back strengthening and stretching exercises by typing "HASfit lower-back" into the YouTube search bar.) But most of these were because: 2. You CANNOT stick with this program unless your Exercise-Motivation-Philosophy, your Self-Care Skills, and your Self-Negotiating Skills are all perfect. My first exercise-motivation-philosophy was to "be more attractive", but that doesn't work because it feels like enslaving yourself to invisible future-beings. My second exercise-motivation-philosophy was to "be more healthy for myself, because it's the right thing to do". (But this moralistic-language first triggers my Angry-Demanding-Father Parental Alter, which I inevitably defy. And then it triggers my Helpless-Nihilistic-Mother Parental Alter, which puts me in a depressed, apathetic state for months after I abruptly quit.) My third exercise-motivation-philosophy is "because it's fun to see how much I've gotten better than I was yesterday, even if I haven't at all gotten better than I was yesterday". Do you remember when you were between 4 and 8, just hanging out with other kids and one of them said, "Bet I can beat you in a race to that car over there!"? That is the only attitude / spirit which can carry me through the exercises. In this state, I find it both funny and fair to be flat on my face, completely exhausted - even though I should be performing an exercise. (And by funny, I don't mean self-attack-funny nor bullying-funny; I mean cocky/encouraging funny. "Oh hey! Isn't it funny how we always meet when you've hit the proverbial wall, when you've squeezed every last bit of energy from your lungs or muscles, and you just can't do anything? hah hah hah") 3. Because sleep, food-intake, and (especially) caffeine / alcohol intake have to be balanced just-right, you'll probably "try-and-fail" the program once or twice based on the above reasons. You'll also have to negotiate with yourself over these parameters. 4. This program is excellent at producing cardiovascular fitness, general flexibility, core balance, and general-muscle-tone BUT if you're trying to get "ripped" you'll have to lift weights. 5. A pre-workout drink (such as C4 or Volt) is highly recommended, followed by a whey protein shake. Even if this program isn't for you, I can't over-emphasize how surprised I was that any serious and consistent exercise program will trigger your abusive parental alters. And every single one of them has to be acknowledged and patiently negotiated with.

It's more illogical than that. It's implying that atheism/science is over-indulgence in certainty because it uses so much scientific evidence to support itself, whereas religion is "proper" indulgence in certainty because it doesn't rely on scientific evidence to support itself.