Frederik

I am curious about your project. What would the arguments be about? Do you intend a focus on politics, metaphysics, ethics, etc.? What is your reasoning behind your goal to save western civilization with arguments as opposed to, say, peaceful parenting, therapy, etc.? I'm not trying to criticize, I am just curious about your thoughts on it Through which channels do you intend to gain income? Thanks!

Guys, I know that Stef is not aware of Coherence Therapy, but it's DA BOMB! Seriously, it's the therapy concept that is the most empirical, logical, most effective. Check it out!

What's the difference to http://www.debate.org/ ?

Oh, and... He is already here. *dramatic chipmunk music*

Cool! Thank you for this pleasurable conversation. It was a lot of fun

Sounds good! I personally define "RTRing" as "Openly and curiously expressing and examining one's emotional state in the moment in order to increase self-knowledge and the quality of relationships." With RTR you can find out why emotions come up and and also if they are actually yours, like with the confusion that I thought your friend projected onto you by never admitting that he was confused (i.e. he’d unconsciously deny his confusion, pretend nothing is happening and by that confusing you). Or if your own emotions are "true" or come from your false self, like you mentioned. Simon grew up learning how to cope best with a violent and unstable environment (his family), so that is really all he ever knew. As an adult, his environment naturally shifted towards more freedom and peace, but that made him terribly anxious. Therefore he went out looking for something similar, and the ring to him literally felt familiar. Having to cope with violence directed at him makes him feel in control once more. But RTR is about much more, of course. And it’s very nice to listen to, too – Stef is a great voice actor

Oh, well, that explains why you were so emotionally invested in your friend’s issues I had not considered before the fact of the financial dependence. It is obvious that you don’t have as much free choice as you would need to act on your conscience. I believe your therapist’s advice is sound. It makes sense to not challenge if that threatens the fulfillment of more fundamental needs. When it comes to deFOOing, I have my own experience with that. One thing I would say is that you can always have conversations with her. She will always be there if you want to talk to her, and so there is no immediate need to focus on your relationship with your mother now, instead of when you are in the position that is, I would argue, necessay in order to have satisfying conversations that can give you emotional closure: A relative equality in power. Therefore, I would say there is practically no loss if you don’t engage now, if you abstain from trying to be honest with her... You can always do that later! Does that help? I am sure you have read RTR?

I’m not sure why, but I get quite confused reading your posts in this thread. I am not critizising – I just wanted to give some feedback This is interesting because normally I don’t get confused anymore. I have read other posts of you and you seem like a very intelligent and insightful guy. I would not expect that you easily get confused, in general, either. It seems, though, that your friend really does not know what to do at all. Because of that, he runs to you, asking you how to handle the situation. Well, that is a weird question because there really is no answer to it. Handle it... "with care", maybe? My sympathies go out to your friend! What you described is indeed a very troubling situation. Could it be that your friend is really confused, but has never actually said to you anything like "I am really confused" or "I don’t know what to do"? Instead of admitting that he really doesn’t know what is going on and what to do, he is pretending that there is some kind of predefined "plan of action" that he needs to know, or that "deFOOing" is a mere un-emotional thing that is like and takes as much time as moving to another town. It is anything but. It is only the sad conclusion after a long-enough battle trying to rescue a damaged relationship. In other words, could it be that he is projecting his confusion onto you?

What do you mean he came to you? What is he asking you for?

What makes you think the relationship with your friend was damaged because of your argument style? If you don’t mind me asking.

I strongly support Eudaimonic's notion to start with yourself. The better your understanding of yourself is (i.e. the quality of your relationship with yourself), the better you will be able to understand your relationships with others. You asked if your concerns are valid. If we look at the information that you provided: Comes from a single mother: Does not mean she can’t have a successful marriage, but it will be that much more unlikely for as long as she does not work on herself (i.e. self-knowledge through therapy etc.) Had multiple sex partners: Statistically, a successful marriage becomes less likely the higher the number of previous sexual partners (The Truth About Sex) Prefers animals over humans: I don’t quite understand what you mean by that, but it makes me wonder if she would be a good mother if she might like kittens more than babies. Engaged twice and blames the men: This is, undoubtedly, a huge red flag. If she does not know what went wrong, worse yet, takes no responsibility for her part (in the failure) of the relationship, she becomes unpredictable and you could end up in the same place. Based on these points, I would certainly agree that there is reason for concern. In the absence of a gain in self-knowledge, recreation of the past becomes inevitable. Therefore, I would encourage to talk more about things related to self-knowledge, such as talking more about the past relationships and possibly her childhood, to gauge her openness towards personal growth.

You are trying to take the shortcut. Which is fine, if that works for you. The wise and philosophical way of changing behaviour is to be curious and ask "I wonder why I have no friends." (or the like) You’re trying the quick-fix which is to just make yourself do stuff. You think because you are talking to people you have solved whatever problem that keeps people out of your life, yet you have not explored the actual true reason for why any problem existed in the first place. And for people like myself or OP, I can tell you, this does not work. Some people need the truth, which is hard to get by, but what we get is the greatest potential for happiness

The change on the board from a year ago is tremendous! It’s very quiet in here and there is not much conversation happening. It sounds plausible to me that this negative feedback loop is in fact a contributor. I personally love most listening to older podcasts in sequence, because I love FDR for the personal freedom stuff. The amount of conversation about personal issues and the coherence within the community was tremendous back then and I would say hardly any of that is left. I do hope that the new people who yearn for the personal freedom stuff find their way to the older podcasts. They are a joy! I am hoping with you, that Stef is doing the right thing here To help prove the point, in a recent YT video the caller was saying three times or so something to the extend of "It has probably something to do with my childhood" (read: I would like to talk about my childhood) but Stef was very reluctant to go there. The call was only 30 minutes, and ended with Stef giving advice of the "Don’t do that!"-quality and saying "Listen, I got a huge mass of callers tonight..." Ususally Stef asks for feedback but here he didn’t, and I am pretty sure the call was not very satisfying for the guy. (/watch?v=WhTOEjY6EaE) That would have never happened a couple of years ago. I hope that Stef has good reasons for all of this that I just don’t understand!

Wait, did you just do the same with the facebook friend as you did with your other friend that you left a voice message for? Don’t pretend you didn’t see the unfriend coming

Congrats on stepping out of the matrix and discovering the beauty and wonder of rational philosophy! I can comfort you in the fact that philosophy is actually not part of science How did you come across FDR?

Maybe the books suck so they leave you unsatisfied? Also, reading is very demanding on the brain, and speech is much less so. Have you tried listening to the books in audio?

Thank you for sharing! It’s a fascinating story and I loved reading it. I think we can all agree that she is not acting with integrity in this instance. For example, she is not honest about her feelings around this issue – "I feel irritation and anger when we talk about philosophy" – but instead jumps to conclusions and creates mythologies, like saying you follow a cult (which is a terrible insult). It is also apparent that you are passionate about philosophical thinking and philosophical conversations and that this will always be a part of your life. I don’t doubt that she is a good person who you love to hang out with! The basic question as I see it really is whether she truly wants to change her ways or not. She is acting out her False Self – the dishonest, irrational, unloving self – and thus it becomes the matter of interest whether she chooses to let go of her False Self given enough consciousness about the truth of the conflict. It could be, for example, that she is unconsciously protecting her internalized mother because philosophy would expose uncomfortable truths about her. It could be that she has made decisions based on false beliefs that she would be too terrified to admit to herself, and thus unconsciously acts out in order to protect her (false) sense of self-worth. The only way to find that out is, in my view, to dedicate both of yourself to the curious exploration of the underlying web of emotions that comes up when you talk about these topics. This sounds very simple – and it is – but, talking from experience, takes quite a lot of training and courage. I am, of course, talking about "RTRing" as it is described in Real-Time Relationships. Have you read that book? RTRing – being honest about your feelings in the moment without the "because" (conclusion) – is the only way to get to the truth of any relationship.

I have the same problem and I am almost certain that I at one point clicked on the opt-out link in an email. Too bad for me

Excuse me? Can you please provide evidence for this extraordinary claim? I couldn’t find any story on an assassination.

Welcome, Matty!

Great work and website! What a fantastic idea!

I think what it's really about is to focus on the methodology instead of the conclusions as Stef always emphasizes. It's not really about whether someone is pro-Trump or an atheist that makes someone worthy of your respect and admiration. It's integrity towards someone's deepest personal values, and thus it's much more effective and meaningful to find out about with what kind of fundamental beliefs a person experiences his or her life. What makes you think this or that is good? Why do you consider yourself a this or that? I'm curious, why do you do this exactly this way? A person worthy of your respect will be delighted to answer! On another note, as a twenty-four-year-young complete virgin with lots of self knowledge and a wonderful life as a solitary man, I want to emphasize how important it is for people who are - in these ways - very precious, to be very aware of how few people will ever be worthy of a relationship with you. For precious people, it is easy to forget how few people have, say, had great parents (god bless!), or, spend hundreds of hours introspecting, or, have done the work necessary to connect plain rationality with vulnerability and curiosity, because we ourselves live in only this world. It is not normal! It is exceptionally rare. That's why honesty and curiosity is so vital for self protection. The more precious you are, the more reserved you have to be, and I can only second other people's remarks on how rapidly you developed feelings for this lair, which I fully, fully sympathize with! It's so easy to fall into, I have been guilty of it myself (though of course without feeling ashamed of it ). It's so easy to slip into desperation - unconsciously of course -, thinking if it's not 'that' person "I'll never find a suiting one"... Well, here is a guaranteed way of getting to know this person: Become it yourself Then, paths will cross with the like-minded. You are to be applauded for your honesty and integrity yourself, for sure. You are doing great!

Regarding the food reserves I want to emphasize the point Algernon has been making. As someone who has a decent food storage since about two years, I can only attest that our grocery business around the world is absolutely not equipped to handle disruptions. Consider that as soon as there is serious economic trouble people will rush out to buy food supplies, within hours. They’ll not go out and buy for another three days, but for weeks. The few hundred kilos of staple foods that supermarkets keep on the shelves will be gone within a few hours at most I would estimate. If economic disruption continues, the markets will be on constant short supply and eventually serious shortages can develop where certain food items are hard to get or are simply not available for weeks. My food supply consists of pasta, rice and sugar. All these items have a virtually indefinite shelf life and are extremely cheap. I’m talking about less than a dollar per day to meet caloric needs!

Wow, I am seriously impressed by this dream. It entails a lot, I find, and is great that you have written it down. I find your interpretation quite convincing. Though, I think you made a slight interesting error. You wrote that there was a hole in the wall which showed a beautiful tranquil world. But then you equated 'the arena' for the world. The world is not an arena of you don't want it to be one. The world can be the beautiful tranquil place you glanced at in the end. I personally don't find myself in an arena at all. I rarely engage in comment sections and if I do, I do it with awareness of the limits and dangers. I also don't shoot as a hobby, but did enjoy watching some airsoft videos. I play First Person Shooters, though I don't find that counts towards an 'arena feel' because it's so unreal and playful. I don't have bad people in my life and I don't interact with irrational people more than necessary. I definitely think this dream is trying to show you where you stand in your journey, like you have said. According to the dream, there are many bad people in your life (fellow players shooting at you), there is much uncertainty and insecurity (picking up magazines), there is trauma to be resolved (the dead child), and the beautiful life is in sight but you're not there. It's a binary choice. You can choose the arena, or the beautiful life.

It's originally by Futurama: Thanks for sharing