J. D. Stembal

You can't counter the "Do you have kids?" retort with any conventional answer. You are damned if you do and damned if you don't. You handled the situation well. I had an opportunity to confront someone like this in public and I backed down. A braver man than I intervened in a matter of minutes and the exchange almost escalated into a fist fight. I'm not sure if I could have handled it any better. I probably sensed the impending violence, and shut my own mouth down before I could speak.

Yes, I am a narcissist. I like to be aware of it when I am because other people are going to experience it coming from me. I am not always aware of it. I have treated people, women especially, as disposable people. When I became aware of my destructive and self-centered behavior, I was able to see that other people have often treated me in the same manner. You were absolutely correct in noticing that the narcissists are everywhere. Most people do it to a small degree. It's a great skill to be able to see it when it occurs within and without and have the courage to point it out. If you feel as though it will achieve nothing in talking with the narcissists in your life, then that gut instinct is probably the correct one. At this point, maybe it will cause more agony and pain than peace and harmony to discuss it. I still fear talking to my parents about my issues with narcissism because they manipulate me and they don't even know that they are doing it. I have a lot feelings I want to express to them and when I dare to discuss them, they recoil, deny or dismiss. I projected my own feelings all over your thread despite not wanting to do so. I apologize. I am having a negative reaction to you saying that you hated your father from the day of your birth. Is this possible? Or is this an exaggeration? Or was it that your father hated you from birth? When my father said that he failed in raising me, he meant it as an accusation of my flaws (paraphrasing: "only naive people believe that anarchy is desirable"), while deliberately not acknowledging his role in my childhood. He has often claimed that he was too busy to have a close hand in raising me. When he had more time later on, he wondered why I didn't want to talk or spend time with him. It was too little for me coming way too late. I still don't think he gets it. Since he is of ill health in his retirement years, he's all about discussing what the government owes him: tax breaks, single payer health care, and maximum social security benefits. I'm suspicious that he impregnated his mistress just so he could claim dependents in his retirement years. Apparently, having dependents increases your social security checks substantially. Offload them into public school when he has ample opportunity to home school them, and you have more free money flowing from the government. It makes me ill when I think about it. I respect that you can show toughness but also display personal courage and vulnerability. How do you draw on that energy? Is it anger at your father and mother? Stefan often talks about how anger is a healthy emotional reaction. I have trouble feeling anger for people, especially my parents, without bubbling over into an incoherent rage. I fear the rage, and subconsciously squelch any anger when it is appropriate and needed. When I allow myself to react angrily at a person or situation, it feels extremely awkward and forced. Do you experience the squelching and discomfort at your own anger? Or does it flow smoothly?

Instead of answering your question, I must first ask for your reasoning behind stating that this is a plausible scenario. Can you point out a specific example of this happening?

I used to hang out in female circles as a dating tactic. I thought that if one of the women found me to be worthy dating material, the others would also come to that consensus (female group think), and I could freely play their desire for male attention off each other and have my pick of the litter, so to speak. What actually happens is that the alpha female, the one who is the most sexually desirable, runs the pecking order among her friends. Once you've dated or made an obvious pass at one woman of the circle, you can only move down the imagined hierarchy, not up. The reason for this is because the more senior hen will wonder why you didn't try to make a move on her first. (Most likely she was already seeing another guy at the time, and her less attractive friends are more available.) Instead, you settled for one of her less attractive friends. Going for the next girl up the hierarchy second flips the female pecking order around and will usually disrupt the social circle. This is where girls get into disagreements over men, when men try to disturb the paradigm. If the top chick wanted you to make a move on her first, she would have shamed her friends into not flirting with you or accepting your advances. The phenomenon of girls hanging out with the guys is an obvious attempt by women to decrease competition with other women for male attention. This is why you will generally see only one woman embedded within any guy group. When you have two women vying for guy time in a group, they will usually get frustrated with one another, and drama manifests. They openly criticize other women as crazy in an attempt to warn the men to never welcome an outside woman into her group. It's subtle behavior, but an obvious ploy for attractive women to create man harems. Sometimes, this man's woman will invite one of her "besties" or a close relative into the group for a short time if she trusts her. The last time I saw an example of female social dominion and male harems was with a younger woman I met at a cigar lounge a couple years back. We got to talking and flirting a lot so I asked her out on two dates, and she cancelled both dates hours before we were supposed to meet, using questionable excuses. I love shit tests! I told her that this was not acceptable behavior to me, and that I would not ask her out a third time. She seemed nonplussed about it, and we continued to be casual acquaintances who sometimes kicked back and smoked a cigar while chatting. On one occasion, she brought her sister and best friend to the bar lounge, and her older sister showed me some East Coast Swing dancing moves. I asked the older sister out dancing, and she politely declined. When I asked for her reasoning, she indicated that it was out of respect for her sister, and left it at that. Somehow, the younger sister, who I personally judged to be more attractive, held social dominion over her older sister, or maybe I was being fed a line as another shit test. I never saw the older sister again, and I eventually stopped talking to the young woman, seeing her as extremely manipulative. First, she flirts with me, then she shit tests me when I ask her out. I pass the shit test by friend zoning her despite her youth, beauty, and fertility. Then, she clearly strings her sister along to "get her out of the house" to parade her in front of me to test my reaction. I make a move on the older sister, and face proxy rejection. This is like playing chess where the rules change every game. This behavior both annoys me and amuses me. I've learned that I'd rather not be the butt of the joke. As far as communication is concerned, if you are a man, never get between two or more women when they are talking. Your thoughts, needs, and desires are completely invisible in these situations. You will be ignored, interrupted, talked over, and scorned if you say something objectionable just to get attention. After living with a single mother, and seeing how she could barely contain her contempt of me, I would never suggest to any man that they should share a home with a woman, especially a single mother. Ugh. It was so depressing seeing how much her son was suffering and how she blamed it all on the father, taking no personal responsibility for her role in the devastation. I felt like I was a child again with an intense need for motherly attention, and getting the unspoken brush-off, "Not now, honey. Go play with your toys while the grown-ups are talking." I was feeling the same emotions her seven year old son was feeling. Yes, I prefer the company of men over women because men don't actively seek to short circuit my brain with their ovaries. Men actually care about what other men are thinking.

A convicted murderer who has a problem assigning moral agency? Color me surprised. The name Iceman is very appropriate. He has absolutely no remorse for his actions. The interviewer asks him about the slaying of three men who almost ran him off the road, and asks if they deserved to pay for the transgression with their lives, "Was it a capital offense?" Kuklinski answers, "Apparently, it was since I killed them." Check the comments on the video. You've got more than a few people claiming that Kuklinski is a real gangster, a boss and should be respected, not vilified. No one is willing to grant the cold-blooded killer moral agency either.

Where did I suggest that you run from all the narcissists in your life? You are the one that said dump the narcissists and move on, not me. You can probably extricate yourself from your wife the first chance you get because you have no children together, and she sounds like a perpetual antagonist and lost cause after years of suffering with her. You should confront your mother, ex-wife, and daughter with your concerns about narcissism, and ask yourself and your family whether you exhibit the qualities of a narcissist as well. An environment of narcissists will tend to breed more. The macho attitude you convey in response to delicate and emotional subjects comes out of living in an environment where all parties are attacking each other and throwing insults. There is no place to be vulnerable and genuine. I could be wrong, but my ears are very sensitive for the smallest of verbal jabs. Everyone who uses them starts out small just to see what they can get away using, and then works up from there. I've been called crazy to my face at least a half a dozen times this year, and who knows how many times behind my back. My father told me to my face that he failed in raising me after I told him that I am an anarchist. That's a backhanded insult on me but a glaring judgement on him, especially considering he was never around when I was really young. I would have to stay up really late as child just to see him before I went to sleep. Shouldn't he be one of the two people most responsible for how I developed? You may not wish to have my sympathies, but I'm only a stranger on the internet, so what possible threat do I pose? We can be open and honest here, can't we?

Negative 40 reputation should be a signal to everyone not to read a member's posts. I only read what other members have quoted. Stop engaging and the troll will go away.

If this woman is engaged, why are you buying meals for her thirty-five times a year (three times a month)? Clearly, you are taking her future husband's Stewardship away from him because every time you take her out, it's an opportunity to take her out that he is missing. I also think that having quasi-romantic relationships with engaged or married women is enabling hypergamy. Feel free to disagree, but that is just my initial judgement on the matter.

Another insightful post. When I was younger, I had a strong aversion to girls who had their ears pierced. I could not explain why it bothered me so much. Seeing infant girls with pierced ears bothered me even more. Later, in college, my girlfriend got her tongue pierced without consulting me on the decision, and I nearly broke up with her on the spot. The reason why I was so offended by voluntary body modification is that my parents felt confident that I should have my genitals mutilated as an infant. This would be akin to tattooing newborn babies with a family brand or crest. I didn't get to consider the aesthetic qualities of severing flesh from my penis beforehand. It turns out that there are no benefits for the man when it comes to circumcision, the scourge of the body mods.

Do you use Sandboxie for this purpose? The reason I want to be delete customer accounts is that I don't want private companies to keep records of my purchasing history after the fact. I may be naive in my thinking, but if I ask a company to delete my account, I expect that information to be purged from their database at some point in the near future. I don't know if this is feasible in reality, but it's not going to stop me from trying. It's not my concern if they have a record of the transaction for accounting purposes, but I don't want my name or other identifying metadata attached to the transaction.

McBeer has it exactly right about the torture aspect. Rote memorization and public school's lowest common denominator teaching style kills a child's capacity to teach themselves what they want to learn. What if the child has no desire to learn the material but is forced to do so under duress? When learning something new later in life, the child, now an adult, will feel that apprehensive fear of imminent failure and shame. Have you ever had the reoccurring nightmare where you show up to class and find out that there's a test you forgot about? That's kind of how it feels.

I understand your apprehension. After 15 years of investing, I've only had one company go bust on me with no safety net to catch it, and I don't feel like I was cheated, just very naive and misinformed about what was going on. The only reason I had shares in it is because it was a spun-off subsidiary of Verizon, which subsequently went bankrupt. The snafu cost me $300 if I remember correctly. http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-10-15/verizon-begins-defense-of-9-dot-5-billion-idearc-lawsuit

How would you take physical delivery of oil? It's pretty obvious that this is not logistically feasible. If you want to play in oil speculation, you have to use the stock market. I'm not saying that you should have the desire to go long on oil right now, but there are investors who do. As much as I love silver, I don't want to put all my eggs in that basket. Historically, silver is less stable than gold. There is a podcast available to gold donators about rare strategic metal investing that I listened to a while back. You can buy a basket of industrial metals, like Iridium and Halfnium, possibly in an IRA account, and you are covered for inflation and protected from market manipulation and volatility, unlike with silver, platinum and gold (and petroleum). Unfortunately, it is illegal to take delivery of such metals so the company provides off-site storage in Switzerland as part of their overhead costs. The company is called Swissmetal.net. I've been thinking long and hard about buying a basket for my retirement account. I don't think a deflationary environment would be good for these investments, however. Check out the charts: http://swissmetal.net/daily-values/

The impression I get from British boarding schools is that they are a means to outsource child abuse for wealthy families who don't think public school is damaging enough. British society pressures the parent that their children have to learn sooner or later how to conform or they won't fit into society. This video is so depressing. My parents paid to send me away twice for a couple weeks at a time over the summer when I was 10 and 11. The golf lessons were enjoyable and the teachers capable, but some of the other children were obviously dysfunctional and abused, freely acting it out on others, and the overall experience was bittersweet for me. I recall sharing a bed with a German boy who kicked me while he pretended to sleep until I moved to the floor. What an asshole! Luckily, neither of the schools pushed religion, and were less restrictive than British boarding schools.

Other that the obvious irony in her voice while she is complimenting her son, and posting the video on the internet exploiting her child's digital identity, this is an example of acceptable parenting. The child thinks that it looks questionable, and you can tell by his laughter. He thinks it looks funny. The mother laughs along with him at first, but then starts laying on the heavy sarcasm. You can tell that her inner mom (Grandma) still has a problem with this behavior, although she is tolerating it. A good parent would have given her honest input.

Did the forum just eat another one of my posts? Four great paragraphs and the forum nuked it. My point is if you have to practice at home to become proficient in something, why go to school at all? If it's labelled as "homework", it implies that just going to class is not enough. In my experience, 3/4 of the items I needed to regurgitate for the final exam didn't require hours of homework to produce. The exception for me is higher math such as Algebra and Calculus. I really had to study just to pass these classes, but I've never used anything more complicated than mental fractions in the real world. I can add, subtract, multiply and divide all in my head on the spot. Why does the average person require more than this level of education?

Homework, by its very definition, implies that school is an inefficient tool for spreading knowledge. Everything that is useful can be learned outside of the public school system. You got it correctly in your post, and answered your own question. Having homework is very demotivating because most people only do it because it factors into their grades, and not doing homework can force even an intelligent student to flunk out of school or be held back a grade. In three quarters of my classes, I could have gotten away with not doing any homework and still passed the final exam. This is how you know that education is a sham. If the homework and lessons are just a means to an end (passing a class and getting a piece of paper), it is functionally worthless in the real world. The only practice or homework from public school I have found useful is writing. Having to write a paper and make an argument or compel the reader with the written word has been one of my most cherished abilities learned via school, and it serves me well to this day. Unfortunately, public schools don't stress public speaking in the same way. I took one speech class in high school and we were not required to recite anything in front of an auditorium-sized crowd, just the classroom. One semester of speech practice doesn't prepare anyone for public speaking engagements. I've only performed in front of a crowd, in a speaking engagement or musically, three times in my life. If students were expected to practice speaking at school rallies or events as much as they were expected to write, we would have a lot more charismatic people coming out of public school, which is something the political powers that be probably want to stifle. No public school does not mean that children will not learn to read. If there is a need for a child to learn, they will learn. My mother got this wrong when I told her that public school needed to be abolished. She claimed that only the wealthy would be educated, implying that illiteraciy would rise with economic disparity. So what? Maybe not everyone needs to be educated in order to succeed. She holds an BA in Elementary Education, but never actually taught children, so her perspective is unsurprising to say the least. Her knowledge is purely theoretical. When I had trouble with my Algebra homework. it was my dad that tutored me.

It's much more likely that confiscation will be of digital fiat money from US bank accounts. This is also why the ultra wealthy stash money in off-shore bank accounts, such as in Switzerland. If you have precious metals, how do they know you have them or where you are hiding them? It's impossible to track these assets. Also, Bitcoin is a real threat because of the anonymity and encryption. If you can buy and sell anything using Bitcoins, there is no efficient means to track e-commerce, which means that it cannot be taxed. This is the real threat that Bitcoin poses to the financial powers that be. Once the dollar starts crumbling, which mathematically has to happen, the average person will see a lot more utility in owning Bitcoin and precious metals. That's why I'm loading up on them right now. Also, I am going after depressed petroleum stocks. It's more risky than precious metals, but it's a commodity we will still need for the foreseeable future, so I won't be holding the bag for too long and these companies usually give out great dividends in the mean time.

Indeed. Very attractive women lure many prospective male suitors who shower them with attention. I have a suspicion, although I can't say for certain, that the majority of Maieesa's platonic relationships were men who subconsciously or consciously desired access to her eggs. When they realized that access was not forthcoming, they moved on. The dead give away for me is that she claims to have invited male friends to wedding receptions. For men, this is code for "I'm considering giving you some eggs." I'm being completely serious. If you invite a man to a wedding reception, he will think that he has a shot at sleeping with you. The reason why we know this is true is that no woman would ever allow her husband or boyfriend to go to a wedding with another woman.

The scary part is that this was posted five years ago. Now we know why bomb threats get called into Men's Rights conferences in the present day.

This is a spot on analysis, AJ. Every man who prioritizes "getting some" knows where to look. I spent many years looking for love in dark corners of night clubs. As it turns out, I wasn't looking for a long-term relationship, and they pretended to not be looking for that either. One of the worst and most dishonest relationships I had was a women I met in a club. She had a son, but lied to me and told me it was her male friend's kid, who was her ex-boyfriend or husband, I am not certain. After I broke up with her, she claimed that I had impregnated her months earlier (and not told me out of fear that I would leave her), but later admitted that she miscarried when I called the bluff. Was either statement the truth? I don't know. When looking for a virtuous life partner, where to look is less clear to men. Stefan has covered it once or twice in the call in show, and suggested some ideas. You could always look for love on this forum or on AVFM, and hope that you find a woman in your area, but unfortunately, as Sandman and other MGTOW proponents have pointed out, women are starting to wise up and ditch the feminist ideology out of a reproductive strategy and not out of any philosophy that promotes true equality. Women are sensing the shift in sentiment about feminism among men, and changing their tune in response. Going forward, men will have to take a very careful analysis to separate the mimics from the real female philosophers. I would argue that the majority of women (and men!) on FDR and AVFM are mimics, and not true agents of philosophy. This is where the Against Me argument comes in. You have to sit down and ask people face to face if they support you being thrown in jail or killed for selling unlicensed contraband, not paying taxes, or supporting armed revolt against authority where necessary for self-preservation. If the other person isn't behind you 100%, you should expel them from your life no matter how virtuous they claim to be.

Not that my post is entirely relevant, but all year I've been attempting to delete or erase most of my digital footprints. First to go was Facebook, then, every other social media website I've ever used. In the second wave, I attempted to focus on commercial websites and ran into a few snags. For example, NewEgg refuses to delete accounts at all for record keeping purposes. My tertiary objective was to get rid of the bulk of junk mail I receive due to online purchases. It turns out that the best way to do this is to move without giving USPS a forwarding address. Getting off of mailing lists permanently takes a lot of nasty emails and/or phone calls. This is a useful website, if you are thinking about nuking your accounts and data. http://www.accountkiller.com/en/ My next objectives are to eliminate my Gmail accounts and to get rid of my eBay/Paypal accounts. My friend was running a mail server at home which I was using for throw away email addresses, but I'm glad I didn't get rid of my primary addresses because his ISP arbitrarily decided to block the ports, and thus, his server went dead. I can't get rid of my eBay and Paypal accounts until more solutions emerge from the Bitcoin braintrust for internet commerce. It's started, albeit slowly. I have yet to actually sell anything for Bitcoins although I've extended the option to a few interested parties outside of official channels.

I've dated a number of Jewish women, and none of them were ostensibly religious. They spent the high holidays with their family, but did not identify as religious. I recall asking two Jewish women, "What is Judaism to you? Is it a religion or something more?" They both agreed that it was more than religion; it was a lifestyle and a cultural identity. Therefore, even self-professed secular Jews are racially biased and culturally nationalistic. This made we wonder why a Jewish woman would want to date me since I don't identify as culturally Jewish or anything else for that matter. I'm a Caucasian mutt with relatives who were immigrants from all over Europe. Apparently, Jewish women are allowed to date outside their race because Judaism is a matriarchal society. You are still Jewish if your mom is a Jew because the mother controls the family. Since your girlfriend is very religious, and openly worshiping the state of violence that is Israel, I would be very reluctant to continue seeing her. Once you have children, she will wrestle your children away from you, and your children will be brought up as Jews. This would be like a father who has a strong Italian family background insisting that his children embrace the cultural identity of Italy. If I was a father, I would be very opposed to this kind of cultural and religious brainwashing of my children.

Confiscation is very unlikely to ever happen again, and if it does, just don't turn yours in. It's pretty simple. If you did something unfortunate like keep it all in a bank vault, well, then you are out of luck because the bank will confiscate it from you. Do you know where all that confiscated gold went starting in 1933? It went to foreign banks with U.S. Dollars that they wanted to convert into gold. Since 1971, this has not been possible, so it is very unlikely that gold will ever be turned in again. Relevant link: http://www.cmi-gold-silver.com/gold-confiscation-1933/ In the fiat money paradigm, no government or central bank wants to consider hoarding gold, at least not as a public policy because this is an admission that their previous policies have failed. Peter Schiff has some great videos about central banking policy and the role of gold within the fiat paradigm. This is just the latest one which talks about the European Union which is currently considering QE. (fast forward to 15:00 to get to the gold comments)

The deficit is largely unimportant at this point. The national debt is a tsunami wave looming over our heads, and that's just the first wave. http://www.usdebtclock.org/ (18 Trillion and counting!)