Tweety

I thought I'd share an observation about the supporters of feminism, and see if you guys have had similar revelations. I am slowly trying to spam my friends with reason through Facebook by posting and sharing obvious hypocrisies and issues in the society. In one post I shared a video by Lauren Southern with the title "Why I am not a feminist" ( ). Against their habits, some of my friends responded to the post by liking it. One friend posted two comments including links to articles about: 1) how many women have been killed by people they know (i.e. husbands, boyfriends) 2) statistics about the salary differences between men and women in this country. Now, what was surprising at first, was that all the friends that liked the video were women and the comments were posted by a man. After thinking about why this may be, I realised that all the women are either in stabile relationships (with or without children) or married (with or without children), whereas the man is single, and constantly going out looking for girls/sex. I think he sees (consciously or subconsciously) that by aligning with the ideas of modern feminism, he pleases more women than he otherwise would, i.e. increases his sexual market value. Have you seen similar divisions between men and women? -Tweety-

I think I have heard that they were quite intimately involved with each other.

If my sister (6 years older than me) is the twin of my mother in her behaviour, I was, or my previous more submissive behaviour was, the twin of my father. He tends to keep away from uncomfortable topics. Towards my mother he is very passive aggressive, or subtly aggressive. Towards me and my sister, he can be stern, but in away that I've recognised to follow the pattern "observes- points out flaws and mistakes - accuses of failing". If I know him well, to this conflict he would say that it's none of his business, and we are adults and should solve it between ourselves. Although, I have some evidence that when push comes to shove, he will side with my mother and sister against me defending myself. I think what you say here sounds right. But I wonder, what is the mechanism by which suppressing another person from expressing him/herself manifests as difficulty calling things by their proper names? Any idea? I remember playing the victim like this towards my sister sometimes during my childhood. I'm quite ashamed of that behaviour now, but also recognise that maybe that was, as you say, developed/learned in the environment we grew up in. In my twenties, I did not behave like this anymore, but realised that my sister was indeed using our mom as a leverage against me, to get what she wanted. For a short while I was consciously considering doing the same thing just to "even out the play field". Indeed, in the bigger picture, a year is nothing. I suppose my tendency has always been towards efficacy and problem solving, so that perhaps makes me sometimes think that I haven't come far from where I started. On the other hand, not too long ago, I came to realise that my MePlus may also be "the problem solver". That is my utility to most people, and ironically perhaps, that is also my occupation. My "urgency" with solving this problem now, is of course the rapidly approaching holidays. Concerning the book The Dance of Anger, I downloaded a preview of it and started reading. However, in my opinion, the beginning of the book at least is reeking of feminism. Just from the beginning the message I got is "Women are victims of emotional suppression by men + culture". Made me a little sick. And the type of women that are described at the beginning, I think fill the stereotype of a western woman, but I have always felt like an outsider to that stereotype, so I didn't feel a connection to the writer at all. I will give it another chance though, but these were my first impressions. -Tweety-

A warm thanks for everyone's input! And thank you CuriousGeorge, I think the book might be helpful to me. I suppose my feeling of "I should confront her" partly comes from the knowledge that I would gain certainty about our relationship by doing so (Trial). But my doubt is part of the thought "Do I really want to know the truth about our relationship?". I suppose that could be a sign that I already know the truth about how things are between us, but don't want to acknowledge it. I was thinking about this fear some days ago. It is not a fear of physical retaliation or rage, that is not how my family works. It's a fear of the rest of my family ganging up on me (as has happened before) and of a collective mental aggression and of being "cast out" of the family. I have a similar feeling every time I think of talking about the most serious issues with my parents too. I actually thought a year or so ago, when I started taking some distance from my family, that I had gotten over this child's biological fear of death if he/she is being ostracised. I suppose it was only an intellectual victory over this fear, not an emotional one. I am not in therapy yet. It is something I consider on regular intervals. I am a bit of a scrooge, so the thought that I can solve this myself by journaling, thinking, and discussing it with my partner tends to win over the thought of spending a lot of money on therapy. A thought occurred to me now though, that I suppose it would make a bit more sense to try it at least, since I have not been able to solve this "problem" and it has been over a year already. Nice to have one "piece of a puzzle falling in place" feeling about this! A textbook example of a non-curious reaction, right? I was slightly disappointed about that at the time. On the other hand, if I would not have listened to the podcasts and the audio version of RTR, my internal reaction would have been "You are threatening me". Although, without the help of Stefan's podcasts, my external reaction in the situation would have then been to swallow hard and not say anything. I have no idea if our mother knows the specifics. She has not asked me anything about it, nor has she even mentioned the fact that her daughters have not spoken to each other in a year. She knows there is something between us, since she mentioned how devastated my sister has been. I do not know how much my sister has talked about the details (my sister lives close to my parents, I live a lot further away, both physically and mentally ). I do have a strong feeling, and some evidence, that mom is urging me to solve the issue and giving me "advice" for her own comfort. In fact, her response from before, when I was trying to RTR with her, was pretty much the same as my sisters: "You are making me hurt, it's your fault, you don't appreciate what I've done for you". Talk about repeating patterns in a family! I think your point about what an advice is, is very helpful. I should remember to think about the definitions of words more in my interactions. Overall, making the "real time principles-machine" click is something I'm struggling with. It's there but it doesn't always work. Perhaps it would start working better, if I could be honest with my family too (brings me back to the fear, brings me back to starting therapy). A Positive realisation at the end: The problem has been reduced to I fear my family's reaction, which is slightly irrational since I'm not a child anymore. The solution for that could be/is most likely seeking support from therapy. Awesome! -Tweety-

I am thinking of a conflict with my family, my sister and mother in particular, and trying to piece together a couple of advice/ nuggets of reason that I've heard Stefan mention in the podcasts. These are in essence (if I have understood correctly, freely repeated not direct quotes): -Bring honesty to the relationship (RTR style) -Treat others as you would want to be treated the first X times, and then treat them as they treat you -You cannot change a person -You don't necessarily know how a conversation would go -You have X number of years of evidence on how a conversation with your family will go -No one knows you better than your sibling after your parents are gone My problem bringing all this together arises, when I try to think if it would be worthwhile trying to solve a conflict with my sister or not. To clarify, I consider worthwhile in this case as a trade-off between the fear/anxiety of the confrontation vs. continuing a "for appearances only" relationship. The conflict arose when I said I felt threatened by a message she sent me. She responded by crying and saying how could I accuse her of threatening me after all she's done for me and that I've made her feel bad and ruined her day. She did not listen and/or calm down when I said, "I am saying how the message made me feel, not what you were doing". We have not spoken since, just exchanged the minimum amount of necessary sms's during the past year or so. Now, on one hand I'm not particularly keen on talking to my sister about this or anything else. I get a fairly pure fear reaction when I think of trying to talk to her. On the other hand, part of me is saying that I should confront the issue, try to solve the conflict and see if our relationship could be repaired. Further, our mother is telling me to contact my sister and saying we should resolve the issue, which on one hand makes me think she's making it my responsibility to resolve the conflict and on the other hand, makes me think if I am just stalling with an uncomfortable confrontation (as, I know, I sometimes do). So the conflict, and Stefan's nuggets of reason keep going round in my head, mixed as a nice internal debate, sometimes going one way and other times going the other way. And I keep thinking on the side: How do I recognise what are my feelings, and what is internalised guilt/shame from my mom? Am I just being stubborn for not taking the first step and confronting my sister (I hear my mom somewhere in the background in this thought)? Is it better in general to take the step of being honest and vulnerable in relationships and try not to think about the fear (I feel the floodgates of family conflicts creaking open) ? And last but not least, Am I just over analysing my thoughts, and how would I know? I hope chatting about these questions would be valuable for other people too, although my conflict is fairly specific and personal. -Tweety-

Warming is not only good for us or the plants. High temperatures cause a significant increase in human death rates, from southern to northern latitudes. Particularly old and ill people are at risk. And it is not only temperatures that are in the 40's that count: already some days when temperatures are above 23 celsius degrees at northern latitudes has been shown to increase mortality by 3-7%. The same increase more to the south requires higher temperatures (above 30's) because people are adapted to higher temperatures. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_European_heat_wave

I have not confirmed what she is saying from any studies, but in this video she is saying that zero calorie food with artificial sweeteners is making people fatter, because your brain is tricked to think you are getting sugar. This would then promote insulin production that locks down your fat reserves and aims to turn more calories into additional fat reserves. https://youtu.be/rdfk6kfqNGM Would be very interesting to hear if this is accurate. Do we have any human physiology experts here?

I sincerely thank for this viewpoint. Indeed, realising why I would be so upset about this helped! In addition, thank you so much Stephan and the whole crew for that video! Hearing someone voice your opinion with reasonable arguments just made me cry. Also made me realise how much I need to self censure around people that I have thought are at least semi-resonable and perhaps my friends. -Tweety-

A lot of people cleaning hotel rooms have a PhD from the STEM field nowadays. In Scandinavia at least.

Why on earth do they complain about tents after risking their lives crossing the Mediterranean? Why on earth do they refuse aid packages just because their religion does not approve of the red cross on them? Why on earth is it "our responsibility" to save the thousands that drown trying to cross the sea in small boats? Why on earth are Icelandic people ready to increase their population by 3% consisting solely of asylum seekers? And why are they being presented as moral heroes for thinking to do so? Why should we pay Spain and Italy because they have most of the refugees knocking on their boarder? Sometimes I feel like a child with a tantrum asking these questions from people, and all I get in response is "Perfect, so you would let the people drown in the sea". Makes me even more angry. Not entirely sure why. Am I being irrational about my anger and frustration? -Tweety-

All your answers are helpful beyond what I anticipated! I had no clue these taxes were supposed to be only temporary. A very good piece of information to have. I suppose most of government taxes are initially intended for "salvaging something" in a short term or for other purposes, at least on the surface, but end up sticking like a leech and spreading like a cancer. And eventually, as Alan points out, it is the customers and the employees that end up paying for it all. NumberSix, that sounds like a plausible statist logic, and also in the lines of what I was thinking the state might use as reasoning/fake logic. Going to work on keeping my thoughts together in the conversations with these pieces of knowledge!

Why should big businesses like Apple pay income tax in a country where they sell their products but do not produce them there or have offices there? This is a question I have tried to ask many times recently, but the person I am debating this about is heavily on the left, so the answers are in the lines of "so you want poor people to starve to death" or "Apple is taking advantage of the poor helpless citizens of X". The question and the answer always make me loose my "balance" in the conversation and/or the red thread of my thought, and usually ends with the goal post moved 10 million miles away, so I turn to the educated folk here to help me out! In particular, I would appreciate if someone would explain these kind of taxes to me from a non-leftist point of view or refer to a source where I could read a more neutral explanation of this than the left/democrats are providing. Also, I do not see the logical sequence of thought behind these taxes, but I cannot completely point out the illogicality either. If someone can clarify either the logic or the lack of it, that would be highly appreciated! As to my thoughts around this issue, I am thinking and arguing that big businesses are already paying quite a lot in taxes in VAT, in employee salaries who then pay taxes and social security, and do not consume that much of the infrastructure. Thanks a ton for any help! -Tweety-

In case you would like to have additional views on Freud, I found Alice Miller's "Thou shalt not be aware" highly interesting. She talks a lot about Freud's ideas before oidipus complex. To me that analysis gives the idea that not all Freud's theories are crap

Great topic! Although I am not participating in moshpits (perhaps my ovaries are keeping me out) I do feel the enthusiasm and energy around a pit from the people that do participate. I have only seen these camaraderie-type of moshpits, but it made me think of the wall of death. Does that go to the same category? Any thoughts? As for my thoughts, I for some reason find the wall a bit more destructive than a pit. At least physically. -Tweety-

Hi! Thought I'd share what I just found when checking the Internal Family Systems home page: There is one (1) certified IFS therapist in Sweden, in Stockholm, who also does Skype therapy. No idea what she is like, have not contacted her or any other therapist. Somehow though, I'd put my two (or more like two thousand x2) krona on an IFS therapist. Besides that, I feel super frustrated how easily medicine that alters your brain is forced down your throats around here. I'm very sorry people you go for help have not been helpful at all. -Tweety-