JanneW

Posting about this topic, I feel intense agitation, bordering on anxiety. I wonder why, and here's my theory. The topic of migration has "us-vs-them" built into it almost unavoidably. Stef gives good arguments on how statistically the group of migrants differs from the group of the host population. Important information, but sadly now we're talking about collectives as if they were a thing. And what's more, one of the collectives is supposed to include myself and the other doesn't. Us vs them. I'm not claiming anything about this is factually wrong, one just needs to be careful about the emotional reactions this may provoke in a lot of us. (In me, for sure.) We're talking us vs them and now one of "us" brings up the idea that another one of "us" might be wrong about some detail of the situation. Being philosophers we normally would welcome differences of viewpoint, which of course need to be supported by good arguments. But, emotionally, part of our simian brains is screaming "my god, our group is already under attack from the outside and now there's dissent from within?! danger, danger!" Could there be some truth to that? If true, what can be done to facilitate rational debate on the topic? Thanks to Yeravos for starting this thread. It may seem like a sidetrack to be talking about emotions that might exist in the community, but I'd say it's really not. The facts, such as there are, do not seem to be in dispute. Still, multiple people on this thread talk of anxiety when discussing the topic. Exploring these emotions seems to me to be the way to make sure we can even have a discussion.

Thanks for the explanation, MMD.

Hey MMD, do you think this is the best way to reply to this? Do you think LovePrevails is being manipulative? That's not a rhetorical question, I'd really like to know. If someone has feelings of fear and thoughts of being banned or ostracised, how ought he to say it? @LovePrevails: I don't recall anybody having been banned simply for stating a position, thus you might want to check your fears if they're justified by the reality on the forum or if they might stem from elsewhere. Janne Whenever I'm posting about this topic, I tend to feel intense agitation, bordering on anxiety. I wonder why, and here's my theory. The topic of migration has "us-vs-them" built into it almost unavoidably. Stef gives good arguments on how statistically the group of migrants differs from the group of the host population. Important information, but sadly now we're talking about collectives as if they were a thing. And what's more, one of the collectives is supposed to include myself and the other doesn't. Us vs them. I'm not claiming anything about this is factually wrong, one just needs to be careful about the emotional reactions this may provoke in a lot of us. (In me, for sure.) We're talking us vs them and now one of "us" brings up the idea that another one of "us" might be wrong about some detail of the situation. Being philosophers we normally would welcome differences of viewpoint, which of course need to be supported by good arguments. But, emotionally, part of our simian brains is screaming "my god, our group is already under attack from the outside and now there's dissent from within?! danger, danger!" Could there be some truth to that? If true, what can be done to facilitate rational debate on the topic?

Ok then, I'll give my thoughts. When discussing these issues I first try to lay aside any high-powered emotions I might be feeling. Fear and urgency only cloud the mind when thinking is called for. The state will constantly create emergencies to make people run to it. Some of those emergencies are real, yet the philosopher has to dig for their root. I'm still not sure what kind of action is being talked about here. Let's say it's political action - voting or influencing others who then vote. We know they never let you vote about the central structures that prop up the state. There'll never be a vote to abolish taxes, to dissolve the police - or to end state welfare. The welfare state is the devious invention that allows farms of tax slaves to be operated at low cost, since the slaves may think they and the masters are joined in doing good. With that in mind, politics will present you with two options to vote about to your heart's content: inviting the migrants and swelling the welfare state or "securing the borders" and swelling the police state. Going directly towards fascism or having a short detour through socialism, the wealth will soon be spent anyway. The voluntary option of letting people move freely without shoving stolen money at them is never on the menu. Voting can't make anyone free. Every vote cast is ever a vote to accept slavery, as participation in politics is taken as support for the state in some form. There's a theory that voluntaryism will win on the day 10% of the population believe in peaceful solutions. If I vote, I'm showing the world that I don't believe this, I act to make that day recede into the future. Those are my thoughts. I want nothing to do with state power, I won't side with the slave masters. Democracy is not my culture, why should I fight for it? Voluntaryism is my culture, and it's a small but growing web of individuals spread over the globe. We need to get ever better at creating more thinkers, anarchists. What happens to our home countries is nothing we can affect, what can we gain by entering politics, by ceasing to act as anarchists? I hope I'm not completely beside the track here. I hear your emotions, and I'm scared too. Destruction might come through the migrants or some other way - hasn't Stef predicted for 10 years that it will come? I plan to watch and listen to what will unfold in the world, and move places, if I have to. In the meantime I'm going to think and grow and love life, and I want the same for you who are reading here. Janne

Interesting! And found out by a professor named Mullineaux, to boot.

Hi Yeravos, how are you doing? I hope you're well, at least apart from the issue at hand! I have 2 questions before maybe delving deeper into the details of what you said. Do you have any idea as to why you are scared to talk about this in this forum? Is there evidence that people got attacked personally for holding this position, which after all seems to be very close to Stef's? I'm not sure why one should be scared to speak about it *here* - in the world at large it would be a different affair, of course. I'm just curious. The other thing I'm unsure about is what you're aiming to achieve with your posting, which obviously took some effort, intellectually and emotionally? You didn't really specify what reaction you are after from your readers. Are you looking for a rational discussion of your position which might involve counter-arguments, or for support from people feeling the same as you, or do you want people to change their actions, or is it something else that you would want as a response? You gave some statements, but didn't ask for any kind of response, it seems to me. And it's not just you, I feel the same about some of Stef's podcasts on the topic: I'm given information, which could be discussed, but what is the intention in giving me this information, what ought I to do about it? If you have an answer to that, I'd be glad. Take care, Janne

Hi Nik, welcome to philosophy! If you're ever in Berlin, you're welcome to join our weekly meetup. (Saturdays or Sundays, you can find the link here.) Or message me on facebook, I'm "Janne Wilhelm" there. Have a good time with the great people here!

Just a little nitpicking: Almost 50% of people ARE above average drivers, assuming driving skill is normally distributed.

I sympathize with your exasperation that it's so hard to find good people. But, aren't you running into contradictions here? I get the idea that your emotions are really speaking with your question: "Where's the (my?) tribe?" Can there be a tribe made up of the kind of people who oppose cleaving to a tribe? Perhaps a tribe is too much to ask for in this complicated world, if you fully take into account all the complications that make up you. I'd say, if you can find *one* good person, who's really right for you, it might be worth moving to the other side of the country to live near this person. If you can find a cluster of two or three, so much better. With one person you can have a deep and complicated relationship, in which you can grow further. A tribe might be too much of an idealization to permit real connection and growth. Try living intimately and truthfully with one person, then three, maybe that's all of tribe anyone needs?

Very nice!

You make good points, andrew. I'll add this: 3) It's presented as a lose-lose scenario, and in these cases you should always ask: Who created the situation to begin with? Let's say a schoolyard bully yells at you: "Go and hit Terry over the head, or I'll strangle this kitten!" Something bad is going to happen, whether you agree to do it or not. But who created that situation and is thus responsible for ANY outcome? Maybe the government will conscript, maybe they won't. No good person can be responsible for appeasing the bully. Thus, the (purposefully incomplete) argument that was given serves as a justification for people who are eager to join the bullies. I'd go so far to say that as a result of their upbringing they're sadists looking to complete their training. Not that every soldier is neccessarily a sadist, but people who employ lose-lose arguments are highly suspect.

Hi sash! Fellow German speaker here. I was lucky that somebody else took the time and had the courage to start a meetup group here in Berlin. I hesitated two months before going there, since then I've been going every single week, if I can at all make it. I get a lot of strength from talking with people who are a) empathic and b) rational. You can send me a message, if you want to talk. I haven't got my skype set up right now, but I'm working on it.

That's a fascinating topic! Years ago, long before I'd heard about IFS or the like, I noticed that I had several modes of talking to myself. Sometimes I would say "I", sometimes "you" and sometimes even "we" when addressing myself. These different choices of pronouns was what led me to discovering the existence of "sub-personalities" within me. It was later that I noticed that there were more than just three of them and that they differed in tone and content as well, but it all began with me noticing the strangeness of me addressing myself as "you". Like in: "You blew it again, now did you!" or "You can't do a thing right!" It took me years to separate this voice from the rest of my inner dialogue and to trace its origins to a black figure hiding in the cracks of the walls, trying to bring me down with endless criticism while taking not a shred of responsibility upon itself. Then I found another part in me, the part that was actively doing this exploration, the only voice that would use "I" to describe myself. I found that this "I" had to take responsibility, to give the structure and solidity that all the "you" and "we" voices lacked. Today, things are more relaxed within my mecosystem. Whenever a voice speaks up like: "You need to have everything ready before the guests arrive! You spent too much time on your own stuff!", I usually take notice and greet the voice: "Hello. Take a seat and say what you have to say. Who's that 'you' you're talking about, doesn't that include you too?" Then I rephrase all the sentences with "I". Oh, *I* need to have everything ready? Is that really true? Would it be the end of the world, if everything is not ready? To what extent do *I* find this task important? And I feel much, much better. Thanks for bringing this up! I'd certainly like to hear more of the inner 'yous' of all of you!

MMX2010, I'm sorry you had an unpleasant experience at the meetup. I know you only through your posts on this board, which have often been of value to me. And even in this post, writing about your negative experience, you provided two links to concise, informative articles, I thank you for that. Since it is relevant to the discussion, I provide my recollection of my inner processes on reading the first lines of your post: I felt a sadness in my gut and a picture came up inside me, a hypothetical but still in that moment very real image of myself being in a room with other people that I want to connect to, but can't. A feeling of loneliness and despair came over my body. (Not all-consuming, but clearly felt.) Up to this moment, my "head", my rationality hadn't had time to react, but now my rational system came on-line. (Rationality is much slower than gut feelings.) I reminded myself, that I don't know what you felt, that it is possible that you felt something else entirely. That I do not know the people you met there, that I know you only a smidgen through your posts. It was then that I realized that you didn't tell what had happened to you there, you only gave your conclusions - that you have the theory that your unpleasant experience may be related to the definition of empathy used within the FDR community. Ok, I'm stopping my recollections here. This illustrates that, at least for me, the emotional response usually comes first, that it is very visceral and can be very intense. Emotional empathy, if you wish to call it that. With a small delay, rational considerations followed and called up experiences that I've had where my emotional empathy has led me astray, where I had jumped to conclusions in the past. I was still concerned with your experience, but more detached, thus, if I was in a position to give practical counsel to you, possibly more helpful as I was less drenched in my own emotional experiences and more open to wider possibilities. We may call that rational empathy, BUT: At least for me, the psychological "fuel" to concern my rational thoughts with your unpleasant experience comes from my emotional reaction to what you wrote. Without "emotional empathy" there would be no "rational empathy". My rational mind would just as happily dive into the abstract definitions you provided and have a blast looking for inconsistencies or interesting insights. It was my emotional reaction to your post that focused my rational thinking on what might be of help to you. (Realizing then that I possess far too little data about you right now to be of much use.) For me, my emotional and rational systems are not competitors but instead work in tandem within me. Each is there to help the other out and to catch errors that my current amount of experience allows me to see. At the moment I'm not finding within me a third system to ascribe compassionate empathy to and I didn't much care for the very short definition given for that term in the article. I'm generally suspicious of "helping". The best help in most situation to me seems to be honesty, yet this is almost never what people refer to when they talk about "helping". I still want to know what really happened at the meetup, if you'd like to share more. Thank you for the stimulating topic! And Anuojat has written very well on the proper focus of therapy, not a lot I'd add to that. I also like MMX2010's short-cut questions, it seems to me that both could be compatible.

Very well done video. Thank you, Darius!

Nice find! Now, wouldn't it be great if a sign like this came attached to every police car, police gun, administrative building, judge's robe? I'd even be prepared to overlook the finer semantics of "confiscated" vs "stolen".

May I ask y'all ... why do you care? What would change in your life, if you found out that infinity is a number, or that it is not? I ask not to shut down the discussion, which could spark an interest in certain areas of mathematics and of thinking about the infinite, which could certainly be very valuable for some of you. I ask because your answer to the original question could depend on your answer to this question. For some intents and purposes, it can be useful to include certain kinds of infinities in your stock of numbers, for a lot of other purposes you'll only need natural numbers or real numbers or irrational or complex or what-have-you. I don't think this to be one of the questions with a universally true answer, because it does not deal with the circumstances of human action, but rather hinges on definitions in the made-up (but important) world of mathematics. If you're interested in the latter, I recommend you look into aleph numbers or transfinites. If you can grok diagonal arguments like that given by Sal9000, you should be able to push through. I'd recommend you look for good lectures on this by experts in the field, because I fear that the discussion here might lead to confusion, not clarity because the personal backgrounds of the participants are so diverse. Maybe anyone can recommend a good online resource to learn about these topics? I attended a superb course on the introduction to mathematical philosopy on coursera, which I found through this board, but sadly, the course's contents are not publicly available and there's no future date given for the course.

Thank you, Matthew, for this article - and for the other articles on your blog! You really got me thinking, feeling (and consulting my inner team). For many years now I'm on a path of being ever more honest - with people I'm close with and within reason with others as well. And I've already reaped great rewards. So I thought I had this down pat. But reading your article I noticed my first reaction to be: Why's he even talking about how to handle the after-effects of dishonesty? Just be honest all the time! ... Another voice came up within myself: "And if you've been dishonest, don't feel guilty! You hafta had got ya' reasons!" Feeling pretty self-righteous now. Only then I noticed: these two of my inner statements don't fit together logically. I was lying to myself that I was being honest the whole day, and when faced with the fact that I did hide something, I switched to strategy #2: whatever I did must have been the good. So I opened up my inner conference table and found lots of voices within me, wanting to talk about honesty and fear. I feel less rigid right now, I feel nicely warm from within and confused, but in a good way. I want to mull this over some more. Thanks again, and please keep up your blog posts!

To me, this clip was very powerful, thank you! I'm very very sad - and disgusted - right now.

Just from my emotional reactions, I'd say that through screaming and growling the singer is expressing anger, rage or hate. Melodic music cannot express these kinds of feelings very well. In melodic music, you could try to express anger through the lyrics, but that feels like repressing your anger or like passive-aggression to me if you set angry lyrics to nice melodic music. In screaming, even though I can't make out the lyrics, the emotion gets transported directly. Melodic music can express the beauty of life, or sorrow, or compassion. All of these are of value to a strong empathic person, as are anger and hate. Certain situations demand that you can feel anger and your love for beauty at the same time. Like when I'm frustrated with my spouse, I need to be angry enough to stick to what's important to me, yet connected to all the beautiful things that we have built together, to not be reactionary and stay empathic with her while staying connected with my frustration. When confronting my parents as a child, I needed to be very angry to overcome my enormous fear, yet connected to the hope for a better life - else, why bother? This fight to hold on to two very different emotions at the same time, to me is expressed in music like Alexisonfire's and other examples in this thread. That's why it is important to me that this kind of music switches between melodic/clean with screaming/growling. Thank you, Rainbow Jamz, for these questions! Thank you everybody for the great music suggestions! I'm very emotional right now and it feels good!

Wow, what an asshole. Thank you, Patrick, for linking that interview. I really admire the host. She stays rational, asks intelligent questions, tries to keep him on subject and talks openly about her feelings and her impressions of him. Russell can't handle that. If people aren't scared and/or in awe of him, he doesn't seem to know what to do. Maybe he's got nothing to give besides shock value. I used to like some of his bits, but after seeing this, I don't want to watch his stuff again. He behaves atrociously without having been attacked in the slightest. Granted, he seems to be having a bad day. An honest approach for him might have been: "I'm not in my most chipper mood, haven't had my coffee yet. Can't do my manic monkey routine today. How about us having a quiet little chat?"

Hi Yeravos, I have just read your book, and I am electrified. You made me feel happy and sad, energetic and a little fearful in-between. You made me laugh and you made me cry a tear. Thank you for your powerful book! I think your book is an incredible resource for people wanting to start working on themselves. It is short (which is good!) and directly to the point. I can imagine, that for some people it will be just the wake-up call they need to get going with self-work. For me, it was a gripping introduction to IFS and to your experience in life. I did a lot of therapy and still do in different forms, but I never consistently journalled like you describe it. I do dialogues like the ones in your book in my head quite a lot. I'm absolutely thrilled right now. You have a gift of not wasting words, of saying just what needs to be said, at least that's my perspective. I'll PM you with some typos I found. They don't detract from the value that you gave me, but correcting them could make your book feel more polished. I'm deeply sorry for what you experienced as a child. I admire what you have achieved and I'm sure you will achieve much more. I also admire that you want to help others, and I think you have the ability to do that. Thank you. PS: If I can find time, I'd like to translate your book into German. Are you ok with that?

Thank you, that was beautiful.

Edit: I see that while I was typing a lot of stuff, Tyler summed up things pretty well... Only read if interested in my dual theory of shame. Wow, Brazilda, how brave of you to face up to what you did so many years ago. I appreciate that you put a warning at the top of your post; when I'm forewarned of bad stuff coming, I'm able dial back my empathy and not be affected so much by what I'm reading - thank you. Regarding what you might gain from posting this, my take would be this: You probably were very young when you did this and you also had had very, very bad behavior modelled to you. I'm very sorry for the terrible thing your father did to you and I can guess the rest of your childhood, at least around your father, was probably quite bad as well. His actions that day towards you were truly abhorrent. But you posted about your actions towards the cat, and I'm guessing that nothing I just said is much of a surprise to you. Back then you were a child, of limited moral responsibility, but when you think of your actions now, you being much older, what happens for you when you think of this? I'm not sure what you gain by posting this. To give you an analogy, I remember doing something I was (and still am) ashamed of and how I have processed it so far. I grew up in socialist eastern Germany and one day there was a meeting one teacher arranged with four of us 16 year-olds, to pressure us into pledging ourselves into the army for a longer than the compulsory term. None of us wanted to do that, only I was safe from danger, because I have a medical condition that precluded me from military service. The teacher kept putting pressure on the other guys, they defended themselves and I got very uncomfortable. I don't know what cues triggered me to open my goddam mouth, but I heard myself say to one of them something like: 'Oh, but don't you believe in the neccessity of defending our country?' Luckily they kept to their stances in spite of my back-stabbing. I'm ashamed of that action. But what came of that feeling? I was ashamed of myself for many years, and I think that's how it should be, even though I had been inculcated with doctrine and with a fear whenever I didn't please people in authority, yadda yadda. I carried the shame of this action unaltered for 20 years, because there was no way for me to make restitution, just like in your case. The shame did lessen not before I learned a great deal more about myself. A few years ago I spent some time going over this and other shameful memories. At first, I didn't want to really fully go into the feeling of my shame and I skirted around it, as if only fleetingly touching a hot stove. But when I finally let myself fully experience the feeling, it subsided to a small ember. And I think this is because I know of myself that I have changed a lot. That I am much less prone to do shameful things to avoid discomfort in conversation, and actually had in the meantime done some brave things in confrontations. My theory, if you want to hear it, is this: There is a kind of shame that you feel completely within yourself. It has nothing to do with other people knowing about what you did. It comes from you having acted against your values, and it is there to help you learn from your experience. I make a habit of revisiting shameful memories now, to find out what they are telling me. When the lesson is learned, the shame might grow less, but a small reminder remains to make sure I remember always. On my path to living my values I welcome that. There exists a different kind of shame, and this kind has to do with other people witnessing your actions. It is frequently used to ensure social conformity. "Uh, you're not like the others, shame on you!" I try to grow indifferent to this manipulative abuse of the feeling of shame. I think healthy shame is a very private feeling. Long story short: I'm a little suspicious of airing one's self-contempt in public, especially since you simultaneously supplied some backstory that could be seen as indemnifying you. Indeed, what are you trying to gain here? Are you trying to provoke in yourself the second kind of shame? I'm alarmed that you feel hatred towards yourself. I don't know when hatred towards oneself would ever be justified. Whatever you have done, you need to deal with it and learn from it. In my mind, self-hatred is just self-attack, likely programmed into you by people like your father. Maybe you can work towards losing the self-hatred as a first step, before revisiting what might be useful private shame over you drowning the cat? Of course I might be completely wrong. I'd very much like to know what the others think. And I'd like to know what you think, Brazilda? Did I bring some clarity to your feelings or did I muddle things up? I very much admire you exploring your relationship with cruelty!