J. D. Stembal

Why are you thankful that you do not believe in nuclear weapons? What does it gain you other than awkward glances from the believers?

This is the most logical conclusion when you are using arguments bolstered by data produced through state-funded science. You can't bite the hand that feeds you!

While I trust and value Dr. Maté's experiences through working with intravenous drug users for eight years, I cannot accept his conclusions because they aren't based on principles. Here is a list of the possible remedies he proposes in the book. 1) The most successful means of overcoming addictions is to open up to spirituality (something larger than yourself), whether that be god or altruism. Maté prefers a combination of leftist altruism and Buddhist principles over organized religion. 2) Minorities, especially "Natives", are abnormally affected by the malaise of drug addiction because of the viciousness and greed of white oppression. Minorities deserve reparations for this oppression. 3) Christian conservatives and libertarians lack empathy and want drug addicts to die. If we take a fraction of the money spent on the War on Drugs, more money can be spent on state-funded rehabilitation systems, reducing total crime and tax costs. Maté doesn't go out of his way to illustrate how effective his state-funded hotel is at reducing drug addiction. Through reading the book, I got the impression that it was an abysmal failure. I appreciated much of the rest of the book that didn't beg state-funded answers for questions, such as his description of how most people view addicts, how addicts view themselves, and how addiction develops in the brain. However, much to my dismay, Maté lets many parents off the hook for addiction by invoking "the best they could" mantra. This may have something to do with the fact that he is a parent himself. At many different times during the text, he conflates the desire for wealth with sickness, suffering, the source of evil, and an addiction in itself, while completely forgetting that money can just as easily fund good and desirable endeavors, like the rehabilitation of addicts. What reaction did you have to this book? I'd like to explore Maté's conclusions a little more closely, and sprinkle some voluntarism into them.

Do you believe you were helping your boyfriend in an altruistic sense? Did he ask you for help? If the roles were reversed, and he was trying to help you grow out of your religious upbringing, would you be appreciative or insulted?

There is nothing in the DSM 5 that is empirically measurable, therefore, all mental illnesses do not exist. The closest thing we have to mental illness is the long term effect of pharmaceutical or recreational drugs on the brain.

Chernobyl happened almost 29 years ago. Fukushima occurred nearly 4 years ago. I don't think the myth of nuclear physics is fading away any time soon.

To pull another card out of Mr. Molyneux's hat, "How attractive or genetically/sexually gifted was this man?" There must be some reason why your eggs are still crazy about him.

Sorry for the late reply. The thread got bumped. Without wearing a mask, what are the best ways to go about foiling the recognition software? Would growing a beard or wearing a false nose work? Or is plastic surgery the only way of changing your visual identity?

I dare you to tell me that I didn't turn out fine!

Cenk thinks Karen is ridiculous and radical? He doesn't get out of the booth very often, does he?

Why is Sports Illustrated, a magazine about athletes, sending this message to subscribers instead of this one?

This paragraph hits home for me. My father was extremely absent, but then again, so was my mother. My mother prototype was a late forty-something homemaker who looked after me and another boy two years my senior. She dragged me shopping with her, often going out to lunch with her girl friends to gossip. I felt like a nuisance, and there wasn't any negotiation, just commands. "Get out of my hair, and go play." She had a son about college age or older whom I admired, but I didn't get to see him very often. I don't recall if he was away in the military or school. He was my first male role model. Not that I understood girls at the time, but he seemed like a guy who was never short a date on Friday night. Her husband was a grumpy, fat oaf who took his dinner on a tray with at least a trio of beers while watching Wheel of Fortune and the evening news. He was a living, breathing Homer Simpson. She had at least one daughter which she talked about constantly, but I don't remember her in the flesh. She was married with kids of her own. I still harbor a lot of jealousy for her and her family. She was so content and proud of her children. She had the opportunity to learn about them, and find out who they were. She didn't seem all that curious about me, though. I wasn't her child. I felt like I was her step-child. My father is thread all to itself, so I will refrain from setting that freight train loose in here. Thanks, again, for your insights, MMX!

Why should IL residents have to pay $30 a year for the privilege of carrying a firearm (if you even qualify for a license)? Shouldn't the state be paying residents to carry arms when it lowers crime? It is expensive to own and train enough to be effective with a handgun. The "herd immunity" analogy does not work. I think the author is using it tongue in cheek. You can't compare criminal activity to viral behavior. This comparison makes the assumption that vaccinations deliver on their stated goal of lowering the frequency and severity of outbreaks. We know that gun ownership decreases criminal activity markedly. Do we derive an analogous benefit from vaccines?

Forgive me if my reaction sounds irrational, but flush those pills (if you filled the prescription). In addition to talk therapy, how about exploring the three pillars of health with your doctor instead of reaching for the prescription pad? 1. Diet 2. Sleep 3. Exercise Would you like to know more?

Ack, human potatoes! When I see a woman (or man) who is morbidly obese, I can't help but feel great pity for them. What happened in that person's past to lead them down this road? I'm curious, but scared to ask. Now that we have socialized medicine in the States, we are all now forced to subsidize this new standard of beauty, which is a moral hazard. I'm not saying that being fit or fat is a moral choice, as it is purely aesthetic, but throw compulsory health insurance on top of it and now you have the unhealthy stealing from the healthy.

Don't worry. I wasn't expecting you to have all the answers; I just didn't like the ending. I was hoping to spark more conversation as well in replying to you. I can't speak for women (or other men) but the tendency for me to treat women as objects to collect like comic books comes from a desire to compensate for lack of love received from my parents. Sex, for me, is the analog of a drug addiction. I get that natural drug cocktail of oxytocin, norepinephrine, and dopamine and I feel content and complete. I've since learned that the high I get after exercise is a distant second to the chemicals released during intercourse and foreplay, but it's still a pretty great feeling. When I stopped feeling the effects of the drugs of lust, I would soon stop seeing the woman. It's not the woman that I loved but how she made me feel biochemically. I liked the excitement and the high, and not necessarily the person. It makes me sad to think about it that way, but it's the only explanation that makes sense with my upbringing and sexual behavior. Can I ever experience love or will I act like a junky getting his next hit? This is the love vs. lust dilemma framed from my perspective. Consequently, I don't trust my initial feelings about a woman when I meet her because I am not reacting to to the person but how she makes me feel. I'm going to link a Radiolab podcast. It's an NPR broadcast, but I found it very insightful. Don't neg me, bros! http://www.radiolab.org/story/91744-this-is-your-brain-on-love/

Not All Men Are Like That Wait, no, that's a ridiculous assertion. This is what all men are assumed to be. I have a confession. The only reason I know how to tie any knots beyond a shoe lace is because of online bondage videos. Obviously, I'm no Boy Scout. It doesn't have to be violent at all, but for some reason of evolutionary biology (or past trauma?), some women can't resist light bondage as foreplay. It's like catnip. After I purchased my first firearm, my ex wanted to play "home invasion". I had to draw the line there. Playing games with a real gun, unloaded or not, is a really big no-no for obvious reasons. What if the neighbors decide to call the police? It's not a double standard to compare and contrast the sexual reproduction strategies of men and women. Women and men have fundamentally different strategies for reproduction. (See last night's call in show for SM's explanation.) I don't feel like there was a satisfying conclusion to this video, Kevin. Can we explore the motivations for men and women to pursue multiple sexual relationships? Why are the bros around the world high-fiving about nailing tens, and why are Manhattan forty-something women gossiping about penis size and veiny foreskins over a latte? P.S.: I think you were joking, but women do fart and watch pornography. Where did you get that awesome wig?

Who wronged whom, and how? You said that you actively tried to mold him into a better person (more suitable boyfriend), then he had a relapse after coming back to the States. Perhaps, you were setting up hoops for him to jump through to train him. Training is not learning, nor is it very useful knowledge. It would be illustrative if we knew exactly how this manifested in your relationship, but for now I will generalize. When tasked with a series of benchmarks, the brain will do a calculation, "What is the minimum number of hoops that I have to jump through to attain and keep sexual access? Is the effort and cost worth the benefits I will receive?" What I suspect happened is that he conformed to what you wanted him to be when you were together is Asia, and then when you were separated again, there was no need to conform any more because he did not have regular sexual access. The reason why I asked "Who wronged whom, and how?" is because in a paradigm where the women hold all the decision making power regarding sexual access, men are easily influenced by the expectations of the woman. Of course, this does not excuse your boyfriend's duplicitous behavior, but how much of your relationship required him to hit benchmarks in order to retain access to your sexual assets? Instead of using the tactic of gradually moving the goal posts, you have to know the man you want to be with before you meet him. It's very easy for men to identify "shit tests" and respond accordingly. We know the script, and we can execute it perfectly when we are motivated by what women are offering. We also know that sexual relationships that revolve around the moving goal posts can never last, but we pursue them anyway until we finally realize that it's not worth it playing that game any more. I'm mostly talking about myself here, but I think a lot of men can identify with this. From the perspective of your boyfriend, I theorize that he did not hold any anticipation that your relationship would last beyond Asia. Since you were there for a couple years, he preferred to have the companionship of a fellow Westerner instead of one of the local Chinese girls (in-group sexual preference). He could comfortably jump through any hoop you gave him, because he knew once you got back to your points of origin, he could stop pretending to be the man you wanted him to be. (For the guys in the thread.) Considering in-group and out-group sexual preferences while traveling or living in Asia, I would recommend being very hesitant around Eastern women until you find out what their motivations are. The first and only time I went to Hong Kong, I surveyed the night life of the city in the company of four Taiwanese women that I met at a product convention. They were all at least ten years older than me, so I was reasonably certain that they did not have any sexual designs, nor did I have much money at my disposal. I suspect they just wanted to be escorted around town by a young man from the West. I was a status symbol for them, like having a pool boy. They refused to let me pay for anything. Looking back on it, it strikes me as watching an episode of the Twilight Zone. This is why I have often said to men that if you want to know what it feels like to be an attractive woman, travel to Asia as a Westerner (avoid Southern Thailand and most of Indonesia). You need a baton to keep the women off of you. Many of them are sex workers, of course.

You might be onto something. Due to the extreme violence inherent in professional football, it's more about how society values males and their disposability for women. It's quite obvious, actually. There's a group of hand-picked sexually fertile and attractive women watching from the sidelines, displaying their reproductive assets, and cheering on the men playing the game while they slowly dismantle each other on the [battle]field. If you are a man, and a sports fan, women can immediately identify you as a supporter of male disposability, and thus suitable for reproduction. This reminds me of a passage from Sex at Dawn. I don't remember the name of the tribe or which continent at this point. (I don't yet own the book.) Before the men of the tribe leave to hunt, a risky endeavor, the women put on a show of singing and dancing exhorting the men to come back with a fresh kill if they want to be compensated with sexual access. What do the men do? They share the kills so that every hunter ends up rewarded with sexual access whether they actually bagged a kill or not. Men are very clever when it comes to having sex, or perhaps the women of the tribe are one step ahead of them? The above is an allegory for the social concept of sports team, army, and more. "We win as a team, or lose as a team." "We conquer as a country, or perish as a country." "We get laid as a tribe, or we die childless as a tribe."

Anyone that's been to a police auction knows that one of their main forms of revenue is selling properties, vehicles, weapons and various possessions seized from criminals. Police shake down citizens and steal from them all the time. It's not just taxation that funds them. http://www.wmtw.com/Charity-Poker-Game-Raided-By-Police/5699198 When you see that label about confiscated funds, it is more of a warning to criminals than an admission of malfeasance. It's as if the police are bragging, "We paid for this by fighting crime honorably. You're next, bad guy!" As a footnote, here's the list of vehicles selling at this month's police auto auction, 119 vehicles in all: http://www.denvergov.org/Portals/574/documents/acvlist021115.pdf

What would you say if I told you that there was no money? Well, there was a check or digital amount transferred to your bank account. However, what does that money represent? It very likely represents a future debt that your children or grand children will be working to pay off. We will go to our graves still cleaning up the mess of socialized health care that the Baby Boomers helped create. What did my parents tell me when I got my first pay stub and asked what Social Security was? That's a government program to help older people when they retire. You won't be seeing any of that money back. (Currently, Boomers, like my parents, are drawing out more funds than they ever put in. It's a Ponzi scheme. My dad also figured out that if he had more children in his retirement, he gets substantially more money out of SS, so he divorced my mom and married his mistress, temporarily keeping my mom's state-funded health care plan through some sort of divorce loophole.) Everyone knows what is going on, but they are unable or unwilling to care about it or change it. Posing this question on the forums shows you are more thoughtful than most.

The worst aspect of government regulating the free market is that it is always done in the name of protecting the consumer. Why was the Federal Reserve created? To protect investors from losing their money during banking and financial crashes. How well has that worked in the last 100 years? The very act of government intervention is a bald-faced lie from the start.

I pulled out of Facebook. It was too aggravating listening to the inane and unprincipled beliefs of the masses, and once I started posting Stefan's videos (the anti-spanking ones), other people became aggravated with me. That's when I knew that I did not belong there. Twitter is much more psychologically appealing for me. You just send off a link or a short tweet and forget about it. Hopefully, the like-minded will see it and retweet, but you don't usually get sucked into intense online debates via text. That may help you to reduce the immediate anxiety of social media. Of course, the anxiety of the threat of other people's judgements doesn't come from your email or Facebook. We instinctually learned to fear judgement from our parents, and then our teachers and peers in public school. What is school but a twelve year long exercise in judging your ability to memorize and regurgitate information? Beer is great. I really do love it, but biochemically, I will become addicted to just about anything (exercise, sex, and video games - not just drugs and foods). Gladly, I did not become an intravenous drug user because I have an intense aversion to blood and needles. I also did not hang with any IV drug users. I am extremely thankful for this. If a drug pusher rang my bell today and offered me a syringe, telling me that the contents will make me feel wonderful, I could calmly tell him to go leave and not give it a second thought. Currently, I'm struggling with my coffee consumption. It's way past healthful levels at this point. It started about the same time I tapered off my alcohol consumption. Hmmm... coincidence or causation? I am thinking I will have to cut it out entirely and go back to tea. Tea is more expensive on the whole, but has far less caffeine and a more pleasing flavor. This probably has something to do with my restless sleep, too. I've got an idea. Next time you go for therapy, ask your therapist if he has a fear of being judged. In answering your question, that may lower the guard of your protectors.

I am feeling the same way, that no one is curious about my motivations, thoughts or feelings. I've become a food and health enthusiast in the last three years. This goal comes from a desire not to turn out like my father, who had a heart attack at 47, and now thinks that we need a single-payer health care system because his medical bills continue to mount, and no insurance company will sell him a medical plan (unless coerced by the government). This, coming from a man who voted for Ross Perot. More recently, I gave up drinking alcohol, and this has caused a lot of friction with my friends, who invite me to watch ball games or parties and then I don't show. No one has showed any genuine curiosity over me seeking sobriety. One of them insinuated that I was not really an alcoholic, completely ignoring the incident where I vomited all over his girlfriend's bathroom, and stumbled home sixteen blocks in the middle of the night without cleaning the mess up first. I consumed some lacquer spray paint that night as well. I'm not sure what a live therapist would try with a block present in their patient. You have a filterer or blocker that is perhaps seeking to save you from being judged harshly. Everyone that I know has this part, including me. I've found that showing up to a party and telling everyone with a beer or a joint in their hand that I've gone sober and why aggravates that part of them that does not want to be judged. Later on, one will say to the other, "Can you believe the nerve of that guy? Where does he get off thinking he's the shit? Why does he think he's better than us? He must be crazy!" From what I've learned from practicing IFS therapy by myself, I have to gain the confidence of the part that is refusing to talk. If there is a part of me that fears judgement, I have to tell him not to worry about any negative consequences for a little while. Once I have that protector's trust, the communication becomes much easier. Of course, this seems a lot easier in theory than in practice. I have difficulty talking to my parts until the wall comes down and I start accessing my deepest emotions, which usually manifests as uncontrollable weeping or shaking. The trust doesn't last long however, and the wall goes back up too quickly. That's what I am struggling with right now. I need to ask my protectors for more time to heal the exiles.

I was prescribed two different anti-depressants when I was a teenager, Prozac and Zoloft, and had a therapist. These drugs and the therapy were an excuse for my parents not to claim any responsibility for my sadness. I did not realize the connection at the time. I was unhappy about a high school breakup which was the immediate instigator of my depression. It would be very instructive to attempt to address the real causes for your suffering. I am surprised that an IFS therapist isn't striving to find a way to engage you into successfully exploring your mecosystem. It's all about finding the self, and being curious about your parts. If you don't trust the therapist enough to open up, then you should find a better therapist. I am hesitant to give mental health advice, but I would be skeptical of any use of SSRI drugs. I'm reading Whitaker's Anatomy of an Epidemic right now. Over time, SSRI drugs down regulate the number of seratonin receptors in your post-synaptic neurons by flooding your synapses with seratonin. When you finally go off the anti-depressants, your natural chemical transmitters will have a less potent effect on your brain functions than before. You may feel better in the short run, but you may also feel worse when coming off of them. I don't have any experience with St. John's Wort aside from smoking it with marijuana in college. That was a trip. Far better than drugs and over the counter supplements, I think it would be helpful for you to step back and look at what you are eating day to day. Do you consume a lot of packaged foods? What kinds of chemical additives are listed on the box? Michael Pollan has written that you should never eat anything with more than five ingredients listed on the package. I like to take it a step further and buy mostly individual ingredients, such as a whole chicken. If I prepare it myself then I know precisely what is in it. Sometimes, I will buy sausages and other meats that have four or five ingredients, but some of those are spices. I also try to avoid products that say they have "smoke flavor" or "natural flavor" because that's corporate Newspeak for patented chemical additives. Here is one example of the bacon I ate yesterday. Beeler's Hickory Smoked Uncured Bacon (Tagline: Quite possibly the best tasting bacon on the planet.) Ingredients: Pork, Water, Sea Salt, Turbinado Sugar, Celery Powder. The only ingredient that jumps out at me is turbinado sugar. What the heck does turbinado mean? A quick search clarifies for me that turbinado sugar is a form of sugar that is considered to be raw or less refined. Turbinado refers to the process through which the manufacturer produces it, spinning it in a turbine. Sugar is what is substituted for sodium nitrate in so called uncured bacon. It's not much sugar, only 8 grams contained in a 340 gram package. While some people find reading labels and researching food to be an unwelcome chore, I find it very entertaining and fun. I feel empowered by knowing exactly what I am consuming. I hope this helps! P.S.: In addition to food, also consider if you are getting enough sleep. Is your sleep restful? Do you wake up tired or refreshed? I have a big problem getting restful sleep sometimes, and it drives me crazy during the day.