Spenc

I found the relationship between Derek and Lamont to be my favourite parts of the film. I remember when the whole issue of Donald Sterling, owner of the NBA's CLippers, came to light that maybe these black leaders should just invite Donald Sterling over for dinner and hang out. If Jesse Jackson were truly about sacrificing himself to his cause, I feel like he would be spending his days among the low, ignorant, hateful people that he disagrees with, just trying to find some way to relate to them and setting an example for integration and change.

Just wondering what level of communication you and your wife have with your son about her efforts to change. You mentioned that your situation was water under the bridge now. I'll assume you sat down and apologized and discussed it in order for this to be the case. But what about your wife? You say she has a "habit" of yelling, bullying behaviour. Does she apologize? Does she encourage your son, who is old enough to understand and participate, to point out when her behaviour veers toward bullying? And does she then discuss it, apologize and reaffirm her commitment to break the habit? A lot of callers talk about moms who never hit them, but they had a proxy bully. "Just wait til your father gets home and hears about this!" Obviously, children can figure out that the mother is an accomplice to the father's abuse, if not the orchestrator. So this leads me to wonder about the opnness about your wife's efforts to improve her behaviour. If you just say to your son, "Hey, I'm not like that, and I tell her not to do that stuff" but then she doesn't fix her methods, doesn't provide evidence of the types of exercises that would actually help her accomplish that, and doesn't offer him the opportunity to correct her behaviour and participate.....well, then you're kind of an accomplice. It's like if you had a dog that kept attacking him. You call the dog bad and pull it off him, but then you leave the dog alone with him other times. You put the dog in obedience school, but the son may not be aware you have done this. You continually correct the dog and apologize for his behaviour, but these seem like empty apologies because he isn't aware that the dog is being trained to improve its behaviour, and he isn't being welcomed into the process so that he can provide relevant feedback. I hope that your wife is actively working on her behaviour, and that your son is included in that, and that he understands you are no accomplice, but rather a catalyst for improvement.

Sorry if I'm asking something already covered in the videos posted--I don't have time to look at them at this moment.... How do you deal with arranging and organizing thoughts, memories, etc. to where they fit together? I was thinking maybe going with separate notebooks for different types of ideas I want to write down. Or maybe going with a 3-ring binder and then [e.g.] if I write about some childhood memory on May 4th and again on June 3rd and August 20th, I can just put the sheets together so that they can be reviewed together. Would you suggest I even attempt to organize things in this way at all? Does that seem like some sort of controlling behaviour that should be avoided? And finally, how do you feel about sharing the journals? When confronting parents or sharing with friends, would you give them a journal to read through? I think this is the primary reason I am thinking about organizing my different thoughts together, so that they would be digestable to someone else if I wanted to use the journal to help that person connect.

So you replied to someone else that other people have witnessed this behaviour? But because you don't react strongly to it, they similarly distance themselves form it and do not react? Do you ever tell the female that her behaviour is unacceptable? Or that you won't tolerate it? Have you ever gone further and used RTR to actually express your true reaction? Even being diplomatic, such as, "This behaviour needs to stop right away. I've been in a good mood all day and now you're ruining it." It sounds like by remaining composed, you're silencing yourself and your needs. Containing yourself should mean that you don't strike her back, do not threaten her back, and do not resort to yelling and insulting. It doesn't mean that you have to avoid any reaction at all and any expression of yourself. And if you do that, you take away everyone else's free pass to be bystanders to this behaviour as well. If you want to avoid police involvement and you want to resolve this and remain living there, you need to make other people take your side and put pressure on the woman to stop with her crap. At least that's the way I would see it. I don't know the social dynamics within the house, so maybe the girl has no interest in the approval of the other people?

just a few things that stand out to a stranger on the internet: you say you believe in homeschooling, but that your wife is too lazy. Is this a fair depiction of the situation? you portray yourself as someone who goes along to get along, instead of really being yourself. maybe your wife is part of that crowd that you are going along with? maybe you believe in homeschooling but didn't want to turn over the apple cart and never bothered to really engage her on this topic, or others of importance? maybe she isn't lazy for not homeschooling, maybe you are too lazy to do the work to give her the evidence that would convince her? sorry if any of that sounds accusatory, i don't mean to draw conclusions. i just find it hard to believe that your wife is "too lazy" to do the right thing for her children, and that perhaps you are not representing the situation fairly and honestly. I remember a similar response to saddam hussein being captured. i was in the car with my aunt listening to the AM radio for traffic updates while i was travelling with her to a family get-together (me, a broke student needing the ride from my local relative). I remember being upset that he was captured. I also had to hide this of course, because it is obviously a politically incorrect response to a tyrant's capture. i wasn't a fan of hussein, rather i was upset with the US military machine and society as a whole and the fact that they had achieved one of their stated objectives hurt me. Like, these fucking guys go over and kill innocent people and start unnecessary wars and fuck up the region beyond it's already fucked up state, and now they get to play heroes for the rest of their lives and have parades and wear medals, etc. It's like, in childhood, you only receive attention when you do wrong, even if the wrong isn't severe enough to warrant attention in the first place. The whole fucking society is committing severe, catastrophic wrongs, one after another after another, and they are ignored and rationalized, then they succeed at something that should never have been so difficult for them in the first place and they get the spotlight for it. It just isn't fair, right? Do you talk to your wife about her childhood? You describe her like someone who was looking for the type of guy she could control. What virtues would draw you to her today as a man with some understanding of self-knowledge? What virtues do you possess that should draw her, or any other woman, to you?

How do you feel when you are threatened and assaulted? How is it impacting your overall well-being mentally and emotionally? Is she using these tactics to try to control anyone else's behaviour in the house or is it just you? How would you feel if other people learned about the problems you are having with a smaller female?

Hi. Also new here from the GTA. I came across the Meetup Group on facebook also recently and they seem to have a core of very active users who gather on a regular basis. I am looking forward to engaging that community more and hopefully attending some of the meetings. You discussed being in a position where seeking out new relationships would be helpful to you, so perhaps that is one starting-off point worth considering, as it might be for me as well. And of course, feel free to message me.

I think a lot of the issue stems from the concept many people have of "a good child". For example, go to a restaurant or a grocery store. Some couple has brought their children. Children are noisy, active, curious, adventurous, etc. Those children run up and down the aisles, make noise, get in your way, etc. People have a tendency to think of these kids as brats. When they think of good kids, they think of children who sit still, keep their mouth shut, respect authority, do as they are told, don't ask a lot of questions or talk back, etc. I'm not quite sure how I would engage a person who thinks of children in this way on the merits of spanking. I suspect a willingness to engage in self-knowledge would be required on the part of the other person in order to really get through to them. I think we all know deep down that we don't want to be quiet, still, compliant automatons, but when society is hellbent on churning these people out, conformity can get in the way of many people willing to admit that the so-called "good kids" are the defects instead of the brats.

i view anarchy as a logical experiment toward the goal of achieving the maximum peace and happiness. for example, set up the problem as you would in 9th grade science class. We have a problem as good people wanting other people to have joy, but we also recognize that conflicts arise from our competing desires that can easily prevent us from enjoying peace and happiness. We hypothesize that there can be a moral standard by which people can resolve conflicts peacefully and to enjoy the conditions that will allow them to pursue their unique goals and desires. Anarchy comes in in the Method. We outline a philosophical framework of peaceful conflict resolution and opportunity for personal achievement by defining rights/UPB and we can sum this up as anarchy, or a thousand different terms. Then we try our best to run our experiment and refine it. So for example, if you have people abusing their children in an otherwise peaceful and libertarian world, we are still receiving feedback: children who are abused suffer! They achieve less happiness as a psychological consequence of their abuse, and the abuse itself would be difficult to sueeze into any rigid, consistent libertarian doctrine. Walter Block's arguments in his debate with Stef were fairly unimpressive to me. Many libertarian theorists tend to put children into special categories, with secial rights, or lackthereof, and imposing certain responsibilities upon others. I think we generally know though that these theories are interesting to legal theorists, but to living, breathing, feeling humans abuse is sometimes self-evident. So when this feedback comes in to an enlightened society, it cannot reject that data. It must conform and adapt and our very definition of 'anarchy' must change, or we must throw it out and embrace some new term in its stead as the new Method in our experiment. Anarchy and child abuse are simply antithetical, in the sense that anarchy is a theory rationally derived to serve an ends which child abuse is clearly in direct conflict with.