American_Crow

Great article, thanks.

Great video. I enjoy the clarity with which you demonstrate that "categorization is bad" is a self-detonating statement. Thanks for putting your voice out there.

I've been keeping a weekly blog on Minds. Topics are various, including philosophy, atheism, culture, marriage and relationships, children, economics, survivalism, and more. Link Here I am very much enjoying the blogging feature on Minds. My opinion of Minds in general is very positive. It's as user friendly as Myspace was in the early days, and the user interface makes it a good format for keeping track of a few subscriptions. The downside is that the feed format makes it impractical for keeping track of numerous subscriptions if using it, as I do, to follow certain content creators closely, hence I limit my subscriptions and there is no "favorites" wherein I can keep track of certain content creators without cluttering up my feed. (At least not that I know of - I'm a retard with computers and internet, so I could be missing some obvious solution). With that said, for following my favorite few YouTubers I find it preferable to following them through YouTube itself. I realize I've been absent from here for a long time, I intend to be back regularly again now that things are settling down for me a bit in my life. Is anyone else in this community releasing content on Minds?

Hello FDR forum members: Jesse here, re-introducing myself after a year or so hiatus. Formerly of Portland, OR, I have in fact spent the last year new to New Mexico (Albuquerque). I browsed through and did not find any mention of New Mexico anywhere in the forum, so if there is anyone else here in the "Land of Entrapment" I'd love to hear it. It does seem that there are a lot of people here that are non-philosophical anarchist types, at least insofar as they don't think government is beneficial and readily agree that it is not necessary for society to function. Several have agreed, when given a definition of anarchist, that that is what they are. I have a co-worker who is a free-market anarchist, and I've found a handful of anarchists in my time here that identify as such. In any case, I am interested in meeting up if there are others in the area. Jesse

"My theory is that as children and young adults we used paralysis as a defense mechanism. To defend our lives from the results of "ambition". Our parents, teachers, or any adult figures had ambition and we seen what there lives where like. " Speaking for myself, I do suffer paralysis that has its origins in my childhood, but I don't think the adults in my childhood even remotely scared me by their demonstration of anything that could be called ambition. I witnessed a landscape of wasted lives from people demonstrating no ambitions, and I certainly did not want to end up like them. From my vantage point now, my life up to this point does look pretty wasted, and I've spent a great deal of that time in a state of paralysis. I just finished reading RTR, and I had an insight regarding ambivalence: Ambivalence results from holding two contradictory positions in equal priority. Hence if I put myself in a position in which I need to do X now, and I need to do Y ASAP, but doing Y requires that I do Z, which contradicts X, and I must do both now, the result is that I do nothing (but pull my hair out). Keeping myself in such a constant state over a long period of time normalizes this state of being. Applying philosophy to my life is helping me to sort out my priorities, and I am breaking the deadlock.

For those who enjoy hip hop, I've recently found a collection of rappers that I'm really into. They are independent artists who together form the collective Grand Unified. Of these I listen to Tombstone da Deadman and Greydon Square a lot. The two songs that I am keen on sharing are by C Gats and Greydon Square - these two songs are very emotionally significant for me. C Gats – Dear Fatherhttp://youtu.be/bbJ25Tanm14Greydon Square – Dear Journalhttp://youtu.be/HAMLSahPgaQSorry no embed, but my technology is allergic to that function.

Grew up in North Portland, University Park neighborhood just a few blocks from the Collumbia Villa ghetto. Currently living in Milwaukie.

Invasive species, in a sense, is a part of the natural cycle of life on this planet and has been going on as long as there has been life on this planet. When North and South America merged, there was a massive exchange of species and the South American native species were more severely impacted than the North American native species. The North American species that moved into South America are now considered native species. Native species is in fact not a static roster of plants and animals, but is constantly changing over time. In the long run nature will adapt to changes in climate, introduction of new species, loss of old species, etc. That said, nature operates on a vastly greater time scale than we do. Nature has all the time in the world to adapt to changes, while we as humans are just another species dependent like all others on the functioning of the natural world and subject to the same pressures to adapt as all other species. The scale of changes brought about over the course of the last few hundred years, and at an accerating pace, are truly massive. The systems in the natural world are highly complex and interdependent, and for just a minor example of how vast these interdependencies are see what happened when wolves returned to Yellowstone. The fact is that it can be hard to see the long-term consequences of the choices that we make, and it is therefore prudent to take care in making choices that affect the stability of these natural systems. In the Willammette Valley where I live, English Ivy and Himalayan Blackberry are two invasive plants that have drastically changed the environment and have claimed massive tracts of land, eliminating native plants and the native animal species that depend on them, greatly reducing the biodiversity and thus the availability of native medicine and food plants. These two plants can probably never be removed from the ecosystem here, but it is still well advised that they be controlled to the extent that important native species can survive longer - and hopefully long enough that as the natural systems here adapt to the ongoing changes that these native species will still have strong populations when the new species have become integrated enough to be 'native'. Most people don't care, and many who care enough to "get involved" do so by joining volunteer crews that trample through the woods and cause a great deal of damage to the areas that they are "helping." My personal view is that very few people have a somewhat mature understanding of the situation. Much of the efforts to deal with invasive species issues are state projects, and while they do accomplish some good things they are subject to the same kinds of inefficiencies and agendas as every other state project, as well as serving as yet another way for the state to increase their control. I have thought a lot about this. The best way that I can think of for dealing with this issue would be at a community level, for concerned individuals to loosely organize to identify the concerns in their locality, educate themselves and enlist whatever experts they needed to sharpen their understanding of issues, and set up resources to reach out to and educate other members of their comunity that may be interested. From there it would be largely up to individuals how they wanted to proceed, be it by gathering together into community organizations to volunteer and/or fund 'restoration' projects, or to hire a private company to do 'restoration' work on their own land, whatever it takes. If no one cares enough to do anything about it, that's just the way it's going to be. This isn't likely to happen on any effective scale as long as people continue to pretend (or believe?) that the state is going to 'handle it.' Clearly there are people who care - there are several community level organizations in this area that do work on these issues, voters often vote in favor of programs to "help the environment," and lots of people give to big-name "environmentalist" organizations. Of course, many of those community organizations are stuck in statist thinking - seeking government funding, etc, and besides are crrippled in their own ability to preserve land by taxes, etc. Government programs are based on theft and coercion, and let people pretend that it's all someone else's responsibility. The big-name environmental organizations are all corrupt beyond measure, primarily selling feel-good stickers as a business model while working as go betweens for state and corporate interests (fascist middlemen?). I'm glad you brought the issue up, it really deserves more discussion. I was talking with a friend of mine recently, and he said that he would be a libertarian except that he cares about the environment. It took him about a half a second to see the contradiction once I pointed it out.

Hello, I made a commitment at the start of this year to be as honest as possible. Significantly, it wasn't long after that, while killing time on YouTube, I happened upon one of Stefan's current events videos. Intrigued, I watched a couple more and have been hooked ever since. I have learned a great deal to help me to make progress on my commitment, and have discovered ways that I hadn't realized that I was being dishonest. I have been an anarchist for several years now, though for a long time I was a socialist. At a certain point I realized that 1) the state is fundamentally violent and can only, inevitably, escalate that violence until it collapses, and 2) humans have lived quite well without states longer than there have been states, and some still do. More than a decade ago I read Bakunin and Thoreau, and had come to think that anarchy was the ideal society. When I finally came to my senses about the state, I already understood the concept of anarchy. I am currently living in Oregon, going to therapy, and working hard on self-knowledge so as to equip myself to step out of the dysfunction that I was taught in my childhood.

Responsibility can be ambiguous at times, and there are plenty of real life examples to demonstrate this. For me, the first thing that comes to mind is what tjt did - bringing it back to the parent and child relationship. I need not be abstract about it at all: My mother was abused as a child. I grew up in a terrible environment. Upon reaching adulthood I made disastrous choices and ended up having a child whom I subjected to an abusive environment. My mother justified her treatment of me as being better than how she grew up. I justified my treatment of my child as being better than how I grew up. Here's how I break it down: I recently learned that in order to take responsibility we must assign responsibility. I put it into practice and decided to hold my parents responsible for the environment in which they raised me. In doing so I was able to take responsibility for the way that I was raising my child. I took away my parent's justification, and in doing so my own justification fell apart. Now it is up to me to rectify the situation that I created with my own child as best as I can, and I take responsibility for doing everything that I can to ensure that the pattern does not continue into the next generation. Should my child passes into adulthood and act out in destructive ways, to what extent can I be responsible? I don't know. To what extent was my mother responsible for my passing into adulthood and making disastrous choices? In a way entirely, but in a way not at all because in the absense of anyone to help me it is still up to me to act appropriately. It took me nearly ten years to have things somewhat figured out, but by that time I had already hurt others and brought a child into the world whom I subjected to abuse. I don't feel that I get to pass that responsibility off; my family that left me in a bad way wasn't going to fix it, nor was anyone else. I have to take responsibility for that. So back to the example at hand, if A is left in a bad way by B, B is responsible whether or not B can be found and made to make restitution. If A goes the wrong way and dies, it was B that put him there and B is responsible. If A makes it back to town, B is not responsible for A taking his trauma out on others. B is responsible for traumatizing A, but in the absence of restitution A must still be responsible for getting his own therapy and healing his own trauma, because if he does not and then takes it out on C, and we do not hold A responsible because of B, then do we not hold C responsible for taking it out on D because of A, ad infinitum?

My anachist thinking is primarily informed by two schools - anarcho capitalism and anarcho primitivism. Anarcho primitivism informs me that anarchy is the natural state of human society, and that organized violence and slavery arose with civilization. Anarcho capitalism informs me that voluntary society is possible in the context of modern society. These two schools are to me the two that make the most consistent and morally compelling cases. I find leftist anarchist ideas inconsistent with what I think of as anarchy (i.e. voluntary society), or at best seem massively inefficient. I have heard of ideas such as parecon (participatory economy) in which everyone is supposed to attend massive meetings to vote on production and such. That strikes me as a massive waste of time. Other ideas involve democratic collectivism in other forms. Perhaps these ideas can work, perhaps they can't, but the vision of society that they propose seems tedious and boring to me. I also don't see within these visions where anyone would find incintive to innovate. Regarding primitivism, in band society there may not be a great deal of innovation, but because lifestyles remain simple there is very little actual work to be done, and much of the work that is to be done is integrated into social activities. Technologies tend to be simple enough that everyone can make and use them, though some individuals may be better at a particular thing than others. The basis for authority in band society is voluntary, based on an individual's perception of who is the most skillful or knowledgable on a particular topic. Contrast that with the idea of maintaining a modern society on a collectivist basis. Modern society requires a great deal more work because all of the technologies and production systems require a great deal of maintenance, so collectivising modern society requires much more work than band sociey, hence less natural play and social activity. Because modern technologies and systems are sophisticated enough that they require specialization, a division of labor has to be created in order to maintain the functionality of society, meaning that if none of the kids are interested in becoming an electrician, too bad. One of them needs to be, or else electricity dies with the last electrician. Because everything is collectivised, however, there is no real incintive to go beyond the minimum required to maintain functionality, which I would expect will lead to a simplification and stagnation of technologies. Meanwhile, there is supposed to still be a reason for people to produce (but why should they?), and there is supposed to still be a reason for people to go in the mines and do other hellish work - but beyond coercion how will anyone be convinced to do so? In my view, it would be a far better bargain to give up on modernity entirely and return to band society than to enter into a collectivist society. Anarcho capitalism offers natural incintive for people to carry on the work required for maintaining a modern society as well as the incintive to innovate, and thus offers modern society that is tolerable. That's my point of view on the matter. Different societies can live side by side each by their own order, but resolving disputes between the two different societies peacefully could present a challenge.

He has exposed his own daughter to massive dysfunction, he admits to that in his songs. I suspect that he's beginning to realize that if he maintains his precedent of calling his mother out on her abuse, then his daughter is entitled to do the same regarding himself. To me, becoming more mature would involve taking full responsibility for the ways in which he has exposed his daughter to the dysfunction and abuse that he got in his own childhood and to sincerely apologize to her for that, and to pay for as much therapy as she needs. That is the approach I take as a father. To "forgive" his mother and claim that she "did her best" is far more akin to letting himself off the hook. I was always able to excuse my own abusive behavior until I stopped letting my own parents off the hook. In his case he took his abusive mother to task while continuing to expose his daughter to dysfunction. Not that I study his life closely, if there's anything I got wrong I'll stand to be corrected.