Jot

Now I do recognize that the word "approach" would have been more suitable instead of "delivery", delivery is a part of the approach but it does not encapsulate entirely the object of my criticism. When I talk about her approach towards this issue I am talking about this high-energy, emotional state pumping, working the crowd, Tony Robbins type of discourse. I find this unempathetic. People are not born by default not wanting to take responsibility or avoidant of taking action that would improve their happiness and life. For this to happen there needs to be a long series of brutalities and injustices at the end of which the way you deal with reality shifted from thriving to coping. We do not know what others went through or the extent to which they did. But I never witness any attempt of people who have this type of approach to realize, acknowledge and point out that fact. What I always hear from them instead is that "it is 100% your fault if your life sucks" or "you have a victim mentality and need to snap out of that" with no interest or mention of why one would end up having a shit life or victim mentality in the first place and I see this as really cruel, especially since most people stuck into these paradigms of self-defeatism are unconscious of the ways in which they were set up for these behaviors, and I am really sceptical of how well most people with unhappy lives will emotionally handle "it is all my fault" and use it to their true self's advantage and the joinder of their disowned and split parts instead of a means of beating themselves up even further or as a tool of self-management. Stefan's delivery in what regard? An hour's worth of metaphors rehashing the same lesson just to make sure the lesson lodges in your brain? I am unsure of why this would be the most relevant aspect of the way Stefan approaches these issues but this is not what I was referring to. I meant his sensitivity towards the callers state and seeking first to ask, listen to, express sympathy and empathy, enlighten and only then prompt that person towards taking good action.

What type of message and delivery does appeal to you? Stefan's And why would you do what? Take responsibility for your faults? Because if you don't, you're doomed to repeat them unless by some stroke of chance, life will just happen to you and may or may not work in your favour. Life is too short to make that gamble. That is clear and I asked that while being fully conscious of this reality but the quite cynical "so what?" followed in my mind immediately. Here I am not talking about faults in regards to other people, I am strictly talking about oneself avoiding and procrastinating on taking the steps for bettering his own life. I am really curious what would this type of motivational speakers reply to that.

Even though I do not disagree with anything she said I did not feel empowered by this video. In fact, this type of message and delivery never appealed to me...it just does not answer the question "okay...why would i do that?"

It has been how many years since UPB came out;? and still lots of people do not understand that UPB has nothing to say about violence but with its initiation...

I think I have seen at least 2 other threads with this, you might want to search for them.

Late 2013 - mid 2014. Also, most of the early call in shows. You will need to check for them manually in the podcasts archive since most shows from late 13 to mid 2014 are not tagged at all and they won't be found under the call in tag, or any other tag.

Yeah, I have been longing for this as well for a really long time now. The overwhelming predominance of political shows over the past year made the show progressively alienating for me, especially since I am not living in the Western culture so all of this SJWs, BLM, politics, feminism stuff are like from a different planet for me. When I joined the show I could relate to maybe half of the callers but now it must be 1 in 20. I am also excited to see what direction FDR will go after all of this election fuss is finished.

I am not sure that what I tried paraphrasing appeared at that time mark, it has been 2 years since I have listened to it so I would have to relisten and make sure.

That is interesting but for whatever reason I find it hard to believe that suddenly the viewers of the show became uninterested in this. I do not know about numbers but I assume that the number of emails Stefan gets for calling in nowadays is huge, and from all of this only a handful make it to the show. So he is the one who chooses what gets on the show, I think that he could make full shows about childhood if he wanted to since there must be so many people emailing him that from all of those some of them want to discuss this. So this was my question about...why do not they make it to the show nowadays?

Couple of years ago a large portion of the call-in shows either focused on or evolved into (sometimes from seemingly completely unrelated topics) childhood talks with the callers. I found this the most powerful way in which Stefan would both connect emotionally and go to the roots of the problem of the callers. I have had many shocking insights listening to those. For about a year or so now, I have noticed a significant decrease in the amount of callers and time spent focusing on callers childhood experiences. This year, 2016, without claiming to have listened to all the shows I would still confidently assert that I could count the times the childhood question at least came up on the fingers...and I have no theory to why this is... I could probably entertain the fact that Stefan might have shifted the focus away from this due to him considering that it is the time for more macro orientated talks rather than really personal ones, but I remember being times during the call-ins where I could not imagine any reason for why this topic did not came up...first example that comes to mind is the quite recent call where a couple was on the fence about having kids or not and from the way they talked it was so clear that they had unhappy childhoods...and if I am not wrong Stefan did not even go into the callers past for one second which was shocking to me since I remember him always doing that in the past in similar kind of situations. What do you think?

Yeah. My bad.

Edit (nevermind)

In my opinion the biggest problem here is not even the fact that he lied but the fact that he made that sort of excuse for this. ("He told me it wasn't personal, that he wouldn't have told any girl he's dating about his sexual past.") I think you demand an honest apology from him and him making the effort to not make any more excuses but be as straightforward and honest as possible even though he fears that this might end your relationship, otherwise this would be a clear confession of him caring more about his interest than both of yours. I assume he claims he wants a lifelong relationship that is built upon trust and openness...you might want to be real careful about this situation.

In this case you cannot have empathy without having sympathy as well since empathy requires you accurately seeing the reality of what some go through which automatically gives rise to sympathy. But as Stefan put it, it seems that he was of the opinion that people with as he put it "good childhoods" don't have empathy nor sympathy for their less fortunate fellows.

That is an interesting theory indeed, I actually wonder how much credibility it would have in the scientific consensus. Assuming that is true, it gives rise to a curious situation because it seems that now we need a 3, middle category that is neither objective nor subjective...but what is it then? How should we call this...?

Objective = non-observer dependent, has an objective standard of measurement Subjective = observer dependent, there is no universal standard of measurement Universal = something that applies to every object of a certain set with no exceptions Universalize = extrapolate a proposition that applies to one (or more) objects of a set to one that applies to all the objects of that set Objectivity and subjectivity are mutually exclusive because their attributes are negating each other (i.e. non-observer dependent /= observer dependent). You cannot have a thing that both is observer dependent and non-observer dependent at the same time, that would violate the law of non-contradiction. I asked for further clarification on her use of "universalized" because I was under the impression that she used the word with a different definition than mine and I wanted to make sure I knew for certain what she meant, otherwise I am not able to understand, argue for or against her point. This is an interesting argument and it seems to me that this is exactly Luisa's point as well, however I find the way you put it more clear. I still fail to see how this is an argument for the objectivity camp. In order for something to be objective it would require having a singular and absoulute standard of measurement. Your argument is that there is an infinity of standards and that it is observer-relative, which is essentially the definition of subjectivism. Let us take the example of "time". Before relativity it was believed that there is an absolute measure of time. Einstein proved that time is subjective, for each and every one of us time passes diferently...this is exactly what your argument is but in regards to looks, am I wrong?

So the argument is that what can be universalized is objective? What does it mean "to universalize" here?

I do not see how this would be objective though... If looks are objective and you compare 2 (or any number of people) then one of them must either be less attractive, equally as attractive, or more attractive than the other one, if however, it would be observer dependent then this would mean that it would be subjective since there would be no universal standard. Am I wrong?

From an evolutionary perspective, good looks are considered those features that tell others that you are healthy and have good genes and that your off spring will have a higher chance of reproducing himself since he will inherit half of those genes. As such, even features, prominent gender specific physical characteristics that give away proper hormone levels, etc are objectively preferable (because the genes are objectively better) to uneven features, lack of symmetry and so forth. According to this logic we can objectively say that James Dean, for example, is objectively better looking than the Elephant man. However, for people who are normal looking and do not have any genetic defects or uneven features the debate over if that person is good looking or not seems endless. For example, a lot of people find Emma Watson very good looking, while a lot do not find her good looking. We could basically take every celebrity and for each and every one of them there will be people in both camps (good-looking/not good looking). Even if we were to compare someone who from an evolutionary perspective has superior physical characteristics to someone who has worse features there will still be people who will find the one with worse features better looking than the other one, but if looks are objective...how is this possible? If you take Brad Pitt and Jared Leto, for example, is there any way in which you could objectively say that one is better looking than the other? And if not, does not this mean that looks are subjective since there is no objective standard for measuring beauty? So...are looks objective or subjective? Or are they both?! But how could something be both subjective and objective?! Would not this be logically impossible? What do you guys think?

Would not they be rational if they had received proper parenting?

Why?

I remember listening to a call about social anxiety (first call). If my memory serves me right, at some point Stefan affirmed that "people with good childhoods do not have empathy for people who had bad childhoods" (and as a result developed social anxiety). It is very likely that I am paraphrasing and that this were not exactly his words but I am really confident that he said at least something very similar to this. I remember wondering at that time "well, if they had good childhoods how come they are not empathetic? Is not empathy something that develops naturally as a result of good parenting?!" I know that the word "good" is very broad and vague and does not provide enough context but knowing that Stefan is really precise with his language and does not sugar coat things at all on this matters I would have a hard time believing that when he said "good" he really meant what most society would call "good", which is in fact dysfunctional/abusive. And such...why I am not seeing here?

As defined and talked by religion, spirituality and some philosophers god is not just a being that cannot be grasped or detected by any of our senses. It is much more than that...It is defined as all-knowing, all-powerful, etc...outside of space-time...etc (he possesses some attributes that are logically incompatible). Also, I do not see how the fact that one can "conceive" of something makes it possible for that thing to exist. Let us say that I conceive of another dimension outside of space-time...does this mean that it is possible that it could exist? How does the fact that I can imagine something mean that that thing could also exist in reality?

Define God. Give us that definition you are talking about... Reality is not synonymous with nature, I explained this above, there is a difference between what we mean by nature/natural (that which abides by the laws of our observable Universe) and reality (which consists of all the things that exist). Nature is only a subset of reality.

How can a property be non-specific? This looks like a contradiction in terms to me... I think that it has properties that are not possible in any reality. And why do you equate reality with our universe? Reality is everything that possess the property of existence so restricting it to the observable Universe is leaving out all of the other possible worlds.