chrisdjmorgan

Ah, missed the replies Trying again to find some people to hang out with. Did that Meetup.com get set up?

Speaking of a Melbourne FDR group, I'm in Melbourne and would love to meet you Just started a thread in Meet-n-Greet a minute ago

Expression of interest? Just looking to hang out with some cool people. Got a bunch of FDR-friendly friends if you're looking for a group thing, or a wife and child handy if you want a family thing.

Is this the call that had that one brilliant line where he admitted "I used to be rational, but then I took drugs" (or something very similar) and thought that was a good argument for hallucinogens? Possibly my favourite line in all of FDR

I think it's fine to joke about things that would be received badly or have a negative effect in a particular group, so long as that's not the intention. Stef in particular makes a lot of jokes that seriously offend people, but it's ok within the voluntarist/ancap group, and necessary for it to be entertaining and not totally depressing. Common sense is required That's the number one "rebuttal" when I talk to people about peaceful parenting or voluntarism. "The world is a nasty place, children need to learn to survive". I don't get it, I do what I do BECAUSE the world is a nasty place, but I don't think it has to be.

Thanks so much everyone, it's nice to see people with a genuine interest in the-best-possible-parenting, rather than simply saying "dont feed kids sugar cause its bad m'kay" I'm going to reply to everyone in the one post as I'm writing in my lunch break and don't have much time. I hadn't thought of that, wonderful idea, even if just to force yourself to stop and think for a few minutes. Writing is such a good way to re-evaluate your thoughts. Mum often told me to write a letter to my 30 year old self, and then think about what 30 year old me would say back. I don't remember actually writing a letter, but it was a very useful thought exercise. Co-sleeping sounds like the way to go for the early stages, but what happens when it's time for baby to move out into their own space? Developing the habit of going to sleep with Mum and Dad is what causes babies to refuse sleeping on their own later, which would be far worse torture for them than the sleeplessness would cause us. How could this be avoided while co-sleeping? It seems developing the habit of simply going to sleep in their own space from the beginning is kinder, but they also miss out on the benefits of co-sleeping. This is probably the biggest thing I'm struggling with working out. I'm definitely a fan of swaddling baby as much as possible for as long as possible. Besides the benefits of closeness, I think having baby being right there with you as you go about the world will teach them a lot about going about the world themselves, though once they start trying to interact more you would need to recognise as soon as they want to try something and put them down straight away. If they're always stuck to you they'll never be able to try anything for themselves. I very much agree, thanks I'm so sick of the "circumcision debate" and the "nice" people not being aggressive enough to say anything but "I don't think it's a very good choice for your child". It's f***ing mutilation! Thanks I think I've added that to my watch list but haven't actually got around to it yet I've noticed I have quite a strong anti-parent bias. I've steered clear of parent groups so far, they all seem like terrible circle-jerks of terrible parenting. But because I've avoided the ones I didn't like the look of, I haven't networked enough to find the ones I do suit. Maybe I should go have a closer look. We don't have any other families with children in our peer circles. I'm really keen to change that. I'm one of those terrible people that know how good therapy can be, but then immediately think "but it's probably not worth my time and money right now". But you're right, "later" is too late. I'll look into it....TODAY! I think self-care is something my wife will struggle with. She always tends to work herself to the bone for other people, and then has no energy for herself, which in the long run she can't help other people as much anyway. We'll have to put a solid plan in place to make sure we each get what we need, or we can't be the best parents we can be. Thanks for that. Where about's are you? PM me. So long as you don't live on Jupiter I can pay for postage

Yes, that makes sense. That's kinda what I meant by replacing the old paradigm with something better. We don't need to replace the state with capitalism etc, we need to replace current parenting (and thus worldviews and emphasis on reason) with self-knowledge at the very least. Once that happens all other problems can be tackled as per demand. We don't need an alternative to state power, or an alternative to spanking, we just need to be nicer to ourselves and to each other (for me being nicer to each other is the end game, but that makes me sound like I belong in a drum circle). That comes primarily from self-knowledge and passing that onto children.

On the current generation of kids being raised as arsholes "because they were never spanked"... My rebuttal is usually that (speaking of society in general) as we remove the archaic negative things like spanking we aren't replacing it with a better alternative (like common sense). It's like the argument against anarchy: if you remove the government but don't replace it with wonderful alternatives, you're going to have chaos and violence, and people who want better lives will run back to statism. But that doesn't mean that anarchy is the cause of chaos and violence. Also, it is true that centuries of statism has produced a much better society than we once had. Centuries of spanking prevented people from committing suicide by free speech. Centuries of anarchy would have gotten us much further with less bloodshed. Same goes for peaceful parenting. My Mum always told me she that she doesn't want to punish me, but if she doesn't I won't learn to live well in society. There are a lot of rules you must follow in "the real world" or you will be punished. Totally true, Mum, how 'bout we change that.

My wife and I are having our first child (due July/August). We know a fair bit already (and are down with the peaceful parenting), but - TELL ME EVERYTHING! There's no beginning to end how to manual out there, and so much misinformation. No matter how much we learn and discuss, it never feels like we know enough.

I'm in the northern suburbs, keen to chat

The idea was to take the well known symbol and replace the statism with an cap, symbolically. Surnames are used to indicate who you are and where (who) you're from, but they aren't considered "us against them". Tribes and families are cool. So long as individual freedom is preserved they are incredibly important. I hate it aesthetically, that's why I posted it. - I was thinking about a 20 million pointed star

I've only skimmed over it, but so far I like it and would love to see more Adding to my list of resources for my own writing

So I thought it would be cool to replace the Union Jack with the ancap flag in the Australian flag, for purely personal use. Australia is ruled by the British Monarch, represented by the Union Jack corner, like New Zealand etc. As an anarcho-capitalist, I aim for a life free of monarchies and tyranny, so its gotta go. The Southern Cross represents us as the Great South Land, location identification. I'm ok with this, it's where I live, what I see in the sky every night, important to the Native Australians who were displaced from their homeland by the British Colonization (Invasion). No probs The Commonwealth Star (below the Union Jack) is seven pointed, one point for each Australian state and territory. If Australia was ancap, we wouldn't have states and territories. Just places and land ownerships. So I'm not really sure what to do here. The blue background represents the ocean that makes the entirety of Australia's border. We're a continent-sized island, so it seems appropriate. My other option was either removing the quarter flag, and putting the ancap flag stripe through the commonwealth star, representing replacing the 'states' with anarchy. But it looks strange and unfamiliar without the corner. It also looks unfamiliar without something in the lower left corner. Thoughts? Also, does anyone know if I could get in trouble for "defacing" the Australian Flag? As far as I can tell AU is super chill about the use of the flag, especially compared to most other countries, but there may be loopholes I should watch out for...

I'm looking for some discussion on this as well. Very important topic. Can anyone point me to some good resources outside of FDR?

Invalid votes are potentially destructive too. If you are one if only ten people who are solely responsible for voting, and at least 7 of those people are voting opposite to what you want, if you choose to rebel by not voting or casting an invalid vote you are increasing the bad votes from 7/10 (70%) to 7/9 (78%), thus increasing the power of the bad votes. Voting for a lesser evil is probably better than providing more power the the greater evil... IF you can work out which is which. Amongst the culture of lies and deception it's practically impossible to determine the outcomes of one party or the other, but I know that giving all the power to only a few groups is more likely to be more destructive than a little power to many groups. So I aim to even the scales a bit in parliament, give as many different parties a chance to have their say rather than letting the Libs and Labs (and the lesser major parties, the Greens and Nationals) dominate the "conversation". I think having as many different opinions and perspectives involved as possible, even if we know none of those are truly what we want, is surely better than single-minded power, and is the best use we can make of out forced participation (given that non-participation is detrimental). Also having more conflict and dissent amongst politicians slows down the process, so that less crazy decisions are made without discussion... Theoretically. P.S. Australia is pretty cool. P.P.S. Australia sucks.