J. D. Stembal

I'm sorry if I was unclear. My mother was the one with the bloody nose that went to the hospital. I ended up in the emergency room a few times with head wounds, but they were accidental and self-inflicted such as flying over my bicycle handlebars and landing on my face. Parental gaslighting has to stop. It's one of the reasons I'm not talking to my parents right now. I don't think they realize that they have been doing it to me and each other for years. It's not so much as an outright denial of my experiences as a child, but a consistent trivialization of my thoughts and feelings throughout my childhood and later in adulthood. Don't feel badly about your reaction. It should be the reaction that I feel, but I have a hard time finding and channeling that anger. Mostly, I get teary eyed when I think about my family. I'm hoping that very soon I will be able to summon and direct the anger that I used to feel a lot when I was younger.

You aren't popping any bubbles. The trust is already under attack. Children instinctively know that Santa and his old college roommate, Jesus, are fantasies. They can't figure out why their parents are perpetuating the myth so desperately, and rather than find out the reason, they will simply go along with the charade. Show them that one elder person in their lives isn't completely delusional, and this may have an astounding affect on their self-confidence, now and in the future. Last time I visited my family, my half-brother asked my dad to read him the Ten Commandments from the Old Testament because he had heard about them in school. He's nine and obsessed with capital punishment, federal agents, and imprisonment. I feel badly for him, but there's nothing I can do to help at this point. He has already turned his admiration toward state authority. I suppose if he had not thrown his lot in with the statists, like I reluctantly did in my time, he would be cracked out on prescription drugs in order to make him behave.

Double post edit: This is a better link for the documentary preview.

You could make an argument for mercy killing, but the person still has rights over their possessions, which includes the body. You can outline in your will that upon brain death, or whatever criteria you specify, that you no longer wish to live. You can't take the organs without written consent from the person beforehand. That is theft. Doing either of these things without consent is a violation of medical ethics, and you probably won't find many doctors willing to do this unless they want to be sued into oblivion. You can't find many doctors that will perform assisted suicide because it's illegal everywhere except Switzerland, I believe. Terry Pratchett published a documentary about assisted suicide. Here's a small clip of a talk he gives. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5W-NCGUkgk#t=23

Zelenn, Thanks for the stories. They were insightful. I would like any disciple that endorses the non-aggression principle. I apologize if I came off as annoyed with martial arts. I wanted to try out martial arts as a kid, but I don't think my parents wanted to pay for it as I had been golfing since I was six or seven, which is not a cheap sport. In college, I took a semester of Judo, which was fun to learn, but I despised the instructor who was a morbidly obese Olympic Judo has-been. He typically chose me to demonstrate moves. One day, he had me in some sort of head lock/arm bar and I was forced to breathe from his armpit for at least five minutes. I had to go to my happy place to endure his smell. He also nagged me about my hair length, saying that in a tournament, my opponent would be well within his right to tear my hear out to win the match, as if I was eager to compete at that level. I just wanted to learn the moves and have fun sparring. He never picked on any of the women in the class for having long hair. I am turned off by martial arts in general. As with anything, you have to search far and wide to get a good instructor.

Not to cast a dispersion on the discipline of TKD in general, but not all instructors are following the fundamentals. They are just words displayed on the wall and as far as I've seen (I've sat in on four or five sessions.) never discuss the concepts with the children in the class. The class my brother and sister go to is run by a couple, but the man is verbally abusive to the children when he's the scheduled instructor. He singles out the least capable children and shames them, often yelling, intimidating, or insulting them. It doesn't surprise me why my father allows them to go to this class. These are the real fundamentals parents want to teach their children. What the heck is an indominable spirit? Why can't martial arts just be about practicing ethical self-defense? It's horrible that instructors feel they need to sprinkle in a hodge-podge of Eastern Asian philosophy in order to sound legitimate. We're talking about some of least philosophic societies on the planet, and these values are used to influence children.

Ask any woman who has been close to a baby. They will tell you that the child smells wonderful to them, almost like food. I don't expect that any woman would actually follow through with this instinct, but it's there in our biology, a throwback from the animal kingdom. Have you ever heard a woman say to a child, "You are so cute that I could just gobble you up."? http://blogs.babycenter.com/mom_stories/why-do-you-want-to-eat-your-baby/ http://www.babble.com/dad/talking-to-babies-things-parents-say/

This meme pic was posted as troll bait; she even admits it after Tiger responds. The content of the meme pic is very inflammatory. Among other things, it suggests that religious conservatives do not lift a finger for the needy, which is categorically untrue. Why do you not have a problem with Aimee posting content like this on your Facebook feed? The full exchange is far too long for me to read. If I had a Facebook account, I would not want to see poorly thought out messages like this, probably because I'm an atheist and I don't care who gets upset about Christ and Christmas. If it was me posting a meme pic, it would suggest getting rid of Christmas entirely, but I can only oversee what goes on in my own life, not the lives of others, so posting this on Facebook would be almost entirely pointless unless I just wanted to tick people off. It's much simpler to scrap the FB account entirely if that's all it is good for accomplishing.

Oh, I got it. I was assuming that if a human would be eating another human, there would be foul play involved because 1) How many will voluntarily choose to be eaten, assuming they have the capacity to give consent, (See the Restaurant at the End of the Universe for the bovine that is bred to give consent to be eaten.) and 2) If someone voluntarily chooses to be eaten and arranges a contract beforehand to voluntarily sell their corpse upon their unexpected demise as a medical teaching cadaver, organ donator or dinner, you have to be able to refrigerate the corpse immediately to carry out these agreements. Therefore, it is not practical to enter into agreements like this unless you can control the environment under which death occurs (assisted suicide). Then, we are getting into the territory of some pretty dark subject matter, even if it is entirely voluntary, so it is much simpler to imply that cannibalism connotes murder or unplanned death where the person could not consent to cannibalism prior to death (like the survivors of the 1972 plane crash in the Andes mountains). The corpse cannot be a moral actor after death, but I would be willing to argue that the dead person still has a right over how their body is used when they die. This is why people leave wills. They want to arbitrate the fate of their property after death, which includes the their corpse. I'm getting a little creeped out, so this will be my last post on the subject. I'm sorry if anyone is also feeling uncomfortable. We should get back to talking about animals not being moral actors.

Why would you want to interact with the forty million people, assuming nearly all of them want to use the force of the state to compel you to give up your money and your freedom? How are you going to find the 1 or 2% that do not? Also, why are you suggesting that preppers are too busy for philosophy?

If you haven't listened to this call in show yet, please do so. It includes a great explanation of our emotional brains.

Your previous concerns were addressed in the first call of the Saturday show. There are individuals, according to Stefan, within the black community who desperately dislike all the race baiting that is going on in the media. They have no way to stop the momentum or to deflect the misinformation. How does a community collectively change the perception of another collective, the police? The simple answer is that they cannot. There is no functional way for a group that large to cooperate. This is the same for the police. While individual police departments may be able to change policy slowly over time, pretending that Obama can wave his majestic hand and transform every cop in America, making them more racially sensitive, is ludicrous. You can't do it. Effective decision making and management can only occur on the individual level, or at the level of the small group, no more than 150 members.

People are getting Grumpy cat tattooed? I am floored. I loved my two cats and mourned their passing. It never occurred to me to get a tattoo of two tabbies. How do you block YT videos from being embedded on specific websites? I'll have to look into that. PS: I'm still waiting on my last post to make it through the moderator filters.

When I was mentally processing the list, I was convinced the video was satirical, using heavy amounts of irony. Then, at the end, the collective man shaming message went out to the gaming community. I facefalmed, mostly at my initial reaction. The two that struck a chord with me the most were 7 and 18. Seven suggests that women who go to conventions get harassed. 99% percent of the women you find there are models who are hired to act the part of female gamer to better sell the tech products they are promoting. (One in 100 may actually be a professional gamer.) The few real gamer ladies that show up in a non-professional capacity usually come with a group of people which includes their boyfriend or significant other. Therefore, any woman at a LAN party/gaming convention are well insulated, both professionally and socially, from being harassed or assaulted by anyone. Eighteen suggests that a man would never seek to obscure his real gender in game. I would routinely pick the female character models in some first person shooters because they were smaller and harder to hit in some instances. This benefit carried on into role playing games, where you have to "LFG" (looking for group). If even subconsciously, someone thinks you are a woman because you are using a female avatar, it will be much easier to find a group. It's not so much that I wanted to obscure my gender, but that I wanted to use all the practical benefits being a female gamer would provide me. I didn't see it as misrepresentation, but gaming the system in my favor.

I read through all that because I wanted to know if you got back together with Jasmine. I was hoping not. Now, I am less concerned with that, and more concerned with your latent rage and violent tendencies. This probably would have been a more deserving topic for your original call in. I am completely aghast by your actions, but also sympathetic. As a child, I would pick on the family dog by blowing air in her face and flicking her nose with my finger. I felt confused and upset about why I behaved in that way. in retrospect, I enjoyed having the power to torment a living being below me that did not fight back. I provoked her into biting me once, and that's when I realized that my abusive behavior had to stop. It was her way of attempting to assert boundaries with me. Abusive force only respects an opposing force. I am really upset for you, your ex, and the maligned creature you hated and tortured because I know where these feelings hide. Thank you for being brutally honest, but I don't think we can handle 3000 more words of detailed horrors against helpless animals. You know that we need to start talking about the rage inside you and the cause of it. Were you a helpless animal to your parents? Hopefully, we can help you empathize with yourself as a child and talk about how badly you were bullied.

This is what you are doing to my head right now. I'm going to have to reread your last reply a couple times. It is striking me as brilliant right now, but I'm still wrapping my head around it. I like how you explained the difference between frames for the specific scenario of dating a cutter. She clearly had tremendous family issues, as did I. The previous school year, I had been dating her older sister who dumped me out of the blue after a school dance for which I had shelled out way too much dough. (Maybe she thought I had been cheap!) I must have had only two or three short conversations with her sister while dating her, but little sis took it upon herself to start calling me, and eventually asking me out after several weeks of telling me how big of a bitch her mom and sister were. The whole scenario smelled of an attempt to piss off her sister, who began to denounce me openly as a dirt bag. I was an easy mark. Either way, it was an easy decision to break it off. It began to be way too stressful to handle, as her relationship to her sister and mother fractured deeper. I should have never agreed to see her in the first place. It smelled like a set up from the very beginning. I listened to her when she need to talk, but I had no illusions that I was going to make her less abusive to herself. I could plainly see it was a loud cry for attention that her parents never gave her. I was in the same boat. I got to have revenge on the sister who spurned me, which is terribly petty, but I'm not going to claim that it did not feel good to get under her skin, hearing the things she was saying about me behind my back. To my face, all she would do is give me cold stares. Attention is nice no matter how caustic when I barely had any as a child, even if I was simply a tool for familial manipulation. Can you imagine how civil family dinner must have been for them? It gives me cold shivers to think about how I was complicit in perpetuating whatever horrors were going on over there between mother and daughter. Gah! Frame or no frame, people who like tattoos and think that they are neat should have no problems feeling that way as long as they know it's coming from a place where they have a firm basis in self-knowledge. I don't trust myself around alcohol and drugs for this very reason. I can clearly see that my addiction to brain destroying chemicals was an attempt to medicate and ignore my inner revulsion for myself, and my family. Anyone that's certain that piercing, body modification, or tattoos aren't an unconscious expression of the abuse or discontent in their childhood should have no problems with anyone discussing the possibility of trauma leading to tattoos. OMGpewpewlasers retracted his Philosopher King donation over the drug and addiction as a form of child abuse management discussion, first turning it around on us by saying the community was being repressive and close-minded. Speaking of framing...

The value of anything is at the mercy of the market or individual. Price is subjective for a reason. How is the trade of anything, including precious metals, controlled by the state? I can go on Craigslist right now and barter for something I need, without using the government (other than their legacy in creating DARPAnet) or their money. This fear mongering of gold confiscation is completely misplaced when every day the politicians are lying and the central banks are stealing purchasing power from anyone who owns and uses the dollar.

I don't think it as important to filter what childer watch as to make sure they feel comfortable asking questions about it. While you probably shouldn't be showing your kids slasher and gore films, negotiation and good judgement will be critical. Not having children myself, I often think it would be easier to not have cable, media or internet in the home, and swing by an internet wifi hotspot if you need to check your email or sneak a peak on your phone when you need to conduct business. In this manner, your kids will be allow to draw more on their creative resources than media resources. You have to lead by example, though. I remember seeing and hearing things in movies and television when I was a child that I didn't understand, live a euphemism or an idiom. I knew it was something I did not know about and I wasn't supposed to know about so I just took it for granted as a fact of reality without questioning my parents. We didn't have the kind of bond to discuss questions openly and honestly. If you don't engender that kind of curiosity in your children, they aren't going to ask question- of you when leftish media begins to brainwash them. They will conclude that everyone else must know better than their parents, and absorb media as gospel, especially if you rely on this entertainment as a substitute for parenting as was the case in my upbringing.

I'm sorry that you continue to be manipulated by narcissists, but you also have to take ownership over the fact that you chose to associate with them after leaving your FOO. Abandoning the narcissists, and moving on, as you say, may simply lead you to another one. You, on some level, are encouraging this behavior. As sick as your mother is, it may be beneficial for both of you to confront her about her mothering before you no longer have the chance to do so. I have great sympathy for you and your family, including your daughter. It must have been difficult on you and her to be separated for so long. I'm a little confused about the time of solitude and adventures. Were you driven away from your family through threats, intimidation, or divorce, or did you voluntarily leave? You seem to be painting it as the stereotypical male midlife crisis, but we all know it's a little more complicated than that. Fathers don't just ditch their families because they want to go have adventures, or free themselves from the family tax farm. They leave if it is too painful to stay or they are not given the choice. Do you have a close relationship with your daughter as an adult? Don't engage with your wife. Don't bother calling her names. She's not worth the effort. She wants you to belittle her, and to get angry, and play the role for which you she selected you. The few times you showed vulnerability while ill, she antagonized you.

I'm a little perplexed by this video. When are men hostile to women while playing video games? We know they make up about 5-10% of all online gamers and are usually pretty welcoming when we know they're out there. It's well known that guys will say some crude, controversial or disturbing things to one another when they think there are no women listening (the men's room effect), but as soon as you hear a female on vox, the tone of the conversation instantly changes. If anything, I think the video game industry and community has really tried to roll out the red carpet and typically are going out of their way to cater to the approval of women, for good or for ill.

The real value is being perceived as someone who you are not. Like MMX pointed out, tattooed individuals like to act as if the ink defines their identity. It's the me plus syndrome. You aren't comfortable in your own skin, so you have to physically deform it to accept approval from others. I'm still struggling with the concept of frame. In relationship to women and dating and RT's blog, I think it's just another word to describe people interacting when they won't empathize with each other. I have sympathy for people that scar themselves with tattoos and piercings because it takes a tentative relationship to reality to subject yourself to pain willingly for no productive purpose, and then take offense when people who have not chosen to scar and ink themselves criticize your decision as misguided or foolish because of repressed family issues. When I was 17, I dated a girl who was a self-mutilator. She extinguished matches into the skin on her arm to create designs with the burned tissue as if it was an accessory, like a bracelet. I was as curious as I was repelled by her behavior, but in the end, I knew I couldn't continue to condone the behavior by continuing to date her. I had to use social shaming without being mean or insulting about it. The reason why so many people are into self-expression through deformation/mutilation is because it's socially subsidized as hip, trendy or even aesthetically pleasant. There are tangible me plus benefits to physical augmentation just as women gain status by wearing high heels, push up bras, fake nails and hair weaves, although these aren't permanently scarring. If we can just snap people out of the trance, more people will resist the urge to continue tormenting their bodies. Part of my curiosity over the girl's commitment to mutilation was actually envy, as scary is that is to say. My outlet for my childhood pain was my artwork, which frightened some people, but I wasn't willing to wear my artwork, like she was willing to do. I wanted people to see my pain, but I wanted to disassociate myself from it. Perhaps the real reason I broke off contact with her is because I would have also started deforming my appearance in semi-permanent ways as well, associating my pain with my lonely childhood. I chose self-erasure rather that blame my parents. I think this was the same year my dad had a heart attack. She was very proud of her augmentations, which also included cutting. I think it was a compulsion for her, an addiction to pain. It's telling that many tattoo fanatics describe their desire to acquire more tattoos as an addiction. My self-abuse manifested in alcohol and drug abuse. I'm not going to argue that one manner of abuse is more or less destructive than the other, but that they are various manifestations of the same experiences of torment, isolation, and abuse as children.

I meant to writing "immoral action" but I think you got my meaning. In a free society, people could agree to deals where their family is compensated for the medical or nutritional value of their body after death. The problem is cellular breakdown starts happening immediately upon death so refrigeration is required. Refrigeration is a relatively new technology in human history. The stigma around corpses probably stems from the fact that we want to get the decaying body into the ground or out of sight as soon as humanly possible. I'm not well versed on historical cannibalism, but if Origins of War in Child Abuse is any indication, the most prominent examples of cannibalism are mothers eating their infant offspring. This custom explains the common tribal philosophy that children are not considered to be human until they can survive on their own, which is typically age five or six. By this time, they would have passed the risky phase of development where mothers were prone to kill them as a form of birth control. This also provides an explanation (but not a moral justification!) for modern child abuse, and why many people are resistant to apply the non-aggression principle to children. I'm all for peaceful parenting, but there is something buried in our baser natures which tempts us to look down on babies and children as we would lower animals. I don't believe religion, the state, and the traditional family unit has done children any ethical favors. The church, which is the origin and foundation of marriage and the traditional family, would allow the murder of any child as long as they were not baptized, so bastard children were not offered moral protections from aggression.

Thanks for the reply. What are your suspicions? I don't trust the word but the deed instead. Talk is cheap. If women want forums where they can discuss their problems and solutions, men also want a forum where they are free to do so. I keep running into this sentiment that people, mainly women, do not care to hear about or incorporate men's concerns into the discussion, namely the linked topic of reproductive justice and internet censorship in the case of my original post. This is not gender equality.This is blanket sexism against men, and an active squelching of male voices who dare to have an independent position on reproduction, child abuse, parenting, and the family. I've even faced criticism discussing men's issues here, which has not deterred me at all, but I would have thought that FDR would be one of the more tolerant forums on the internet for progressive male conversations.

This kind of childhood and past makes me mad. Although this is just a small snapshot, the level of extreme abuse is tangible. Please know that you and your boyfriend have my deepest sympathies. This is why he has trouble opening up to you, and shuts down Real Time Relationship by saying "Let me get back to you on that." Emotions happen in the moment, and he is turning them off. The goal is finding the real cause. I believe it is buried in his past, and your past as well. When I started making it a point to have these deeply person conversations, my relationship started to unravel. I went from passionate and curious to obsessed and crazy. I know now that it was a sham. It wasn't a relationship at all. It is possible that one or both of you are too frightened to find out what you already know.

While we probably need to reclaim the word anarchy, at some point, it's probably not going to be possible in the near term. I listen regularly to Alex Jones as his show covers a lot of the current events material discussed here and in liberty circles. It seems like every other guest or segment takes a crack at anarchists, with the implication that we are unstable, radical, and dangerous. All anarchism really means is that individuals should be able to pursue voluntary self governance. If I want to set up my own community and life free of arbitrary laws, or set up my own system of law, that should be my right as a free citizen. Libertarians are mostly stuck in this mindset that if only we could decrease the power of the federal government, we could live free. This will never be the case. Government needs to exist at the smallest level only, the individual and voluntary group. When governments/communities start growing bigger than 150 people (Dunbar's number), people start losing sight of the individual and replace them with the identity of the group. It is easier to start compelling people with coercive force when you are not thinking about them as individual people.