Matthew Ed Moran

"We talked about it and I said I didn't want to be in a relationship with her if she were to take such a drug, and she then agreed it was a bad idea and her friend respected that." Were you curious about why she would be interested in taking such a drug? How did that conversation go?

Thanks for sharing, Kathryn. That's interesting. Do you know my question was curious and neutral, though? I have been thinking about the question I asked you and your response for an hour now, and I am not sure it was a completely honest question. I asked you, "if you are in therapy and journal every day, in what way are you not living up to your standards?" I think it's interesting I phrased it that way. I phrased it as if I had trouble imagining how your standards could go beyond journaling and therapy. But why shouldn't your standards include more than that? Who am I to say what you are doing is sufficient for you to meet your personal standards? I didn't ask what your standards are (which would have been a more curious question), and before this exchange we have never spoken before. So I actually apologize for phrasing my questions as if to decide your standards for you. I also find this questionable on my part because I do not journal often and I don't go to therapy (I do some self work but not a lot), and I do not feel proud of the standards I currently live by. I feel I subtly hinted that your standards should not be as high as they are, or that they are not just, and I regret that because I have no place to suggest what standards you should hold yourself to. At worst, I felt like my inner-mom crept into my post to subtly undermine your ambition. I apologize for this and am going to reflect more before I post on the board in general so as to be as honest with myself and others as possible. P.S. I do see how you could have read it that way. I do not think it is an honestly phrased question, so consider that before you conclude you were projecting. I think a more productive and honest thing to ask you would have been "how can you better achieve living by your standards?" I appreciate you sharing what you did because I am not sure I would have taken the opportunity to introspect about my question unless you responded in the honest fashion that you did.

"I'm in therapy twice a week and journal about this everyday, but I'm not living up to the standards I want to set for myself and others. This feels frustrating and defeating, and I don't feel good enough to be around good people." If you are in therapy twice a week and journal everyday, in what way are you not living up to your standards?

It is not a virtuous thing to do. Since religions are not evidence based, they must rely on other tactics to sway you. So since your mother and father could not explain religion to you in a factual manner, they must rely on their "inherent" authority as parents, or on the charisma of their fictional stories, or on scaring the shit out of you. I'm sure there are many varieties of tactics to get kids to believe, but the main point is that threats of hell are just one of many dishonest tactics used to get children to believe things without relying on empiricism and internal consistency. Indoctrination is not the same thing as a socratic discussion for a reason. One is aiming at compliance and subordination, while the other is aiming at the uncovering of truth.

"however austrians (I think) define economics as the study of purposeful action, so based on that, the trivial system would be one of inaction, i.e. slavery (where individuals can't pursue their own goals)." I think Austrian make a distinction between praxeology and economics. Praxeology is the general study of human action, where as economics is the study of exchange. So therefore, we can say something about a man in isolation on an island - why he acts, and how he can accumulate capital at the expense of present consumption, etc. But we would not say there is an economy there. An economy forms when there is exchange (and exchange can only happen I would argue between conscious actors). So the idea that there is such a thing as an economy where no one acts.. If that's not a complete contradiction in terms, then I think that can at most only be a hypothetical model, not an empirical economy which exists objectively. Even slaves act, but they are acting under coercion. Does that make sense? I'm not sure if that 100% answers your question, but if it doesn't, maybe you can tell me more about what you mean by the word "trivial."

I would strip naked to hear that call. .. Wait, that might actually prevent the call from ever happening

Support? Why did you chose that word? I am not sure I am interested in what you "support," but maybe you can expand upon this. He has written so much that I am not sure what you are referring to, but am interested in what you meant because we haven't had much female input in this thread (other than Delightful Mind if I'm not mistaken). Thanks.

What are the "egregious offences" you spank your kids for? Also, do you raise your voice at them or otherwise try to intimidate them to change their behavior? I understand parenting is difficult, especially if you have not been given the best arguments for peaceful parenting until later in life it can be hard to change, but I think it is really important for you to bring your reasons for spanking up on the boards. Maybe we can convince you not to spank your kids and provide better alternatives. Are you the type of person who will bow to reason and evidence and is willing to change your actions in accordance with new-found truths? If so, I think this board can offer you a lot - for you and your kids. So please don't hesitate to bring your difficulties (which all parents have) to the boards. There is a lot to gain in the long run, when your kids are grown and think about their past, how they were treated, and how their treatment aligns with the values they chose as adults. I hope to see you post about the spanking, it would really impress me!

A male second opinion here. I like your profile. I think the best thing it communicates is that you are honest and reliable. That you have a strong sense of self, know what you want out of a relationship, and therefore are very mature. I think if there are any girls out there who share these characteristics, they will be drawn to you. You definitely will scare away the girls who completely lack self knowledge or self esteem. I do agree a bit more excitement would be appealing. You have started a business and a humanist group, so I assume you have a lot of energy and passion, but I am not sure that is communicated as best it could be from your profile. If I were a girl (which I'm totally not, so this is just speculation) I think I would really be drawn to your maturity, but I also would want to understand what a delightful life I would have with you because of your strong values and your ability to be emotionally intimate. I think I can sum up this point actually by noticing that your profile is a bit "me, me, me." Not in a narcissistic way or anything. It gives good insight into "your world." But what I think a girl is really looking for is how she will fit into your world, how she will benefit from it, and how she will be an irreplaceable addition to it. A simple showcase of humor in your profile would indicate that you are empathetic to providing joy unselfishly to someone in a more exciting, visceral and intimate way than talking about your business and humanist group, which I think is great on the whole, but dry and less intimate in comparison. Hope my opinion helped! It is offered humbly, please let me know if you disagree with anything I said.

Hopefully someone else has research at their hands, but appealing to their innate sense of love and justice might do some good. Tell them children are incredibly perceptive and digest all information accessible to them about their environment to understand how secure they are. Tell them secure children are those who feel strongly attached, who do not have doubts about being loved, and who therefore are able to express their truest, most artistic and sophisticated thoughts and feelings without "blockage" or worry about the fact that they are vulnerable. Let them know that love is not just a saying, and that a child will not be convinced that they are loved merely by hearing the words stated to them over and over. Children want and need to exchange feelings and ideals with their parents, to exchange laughs, love, to offer their curiosity. Tell them that these interactions pave the way for the child to become open and honest, and that when they face difficulties later in life, they will come back to the parents for knowledge and perspective. Tell them the opposite of this - the opposite of a child who has the security to be honest and open - is a child who is timid, anxious, and prone to emotional repression and rebellion. If the child is with caregivers who are not the parents, they will not develop the trust to be open and honest with their parents, because they will perceive, quite astutely, that the parents do not see the value in their honesty and openness, and would rather substitute a stranger to look over them to actually avoid these honest exchanges of emotions and ideas. Tell them this will lead to great suffering for the child, who wants desperately to have the security to be honest. Tell them the child, once grown, will act on the momentum of the past and internalize the notion that they must go elsewhere for their connection, and this will lead to peer-bonding and dysfunctional relationships, and the parent will be able to do little to influence otherwise, because they presented for years that they were not the people to go to for wisdom and honesty when they substituted a nanny for themselves in their child's most critical years. Okay, those are just some ideas that I wrote free-flow. I hope they are at least mildly useful. I think provoking their conscience, their sense of morality and empathy might be effective, though. If you can make them feel guilty at the idea of leaving their child with a nanny for hours upon hours, maybe this will increase the costs for them, and even if they are selfish, it at least might point out the difficulties they will face if they do not bond with their children and thus appeal to their self interest in a productive way.

Thanks for your reply. I didn't notice that misstatement, and I agree with you that abuse is not a necessary consequence of being small and powerless. It could be guilt, that is possible. Did anything else besides that statement strike you as guilty? I did also mean to say that children cannot chose to be financially independent, where as an adult can. Yet some, or at least I, still find a lot of difficulty taking steps towards becoming financially independent. I fear moving out and living on very minimal wages, but I also fear the prospect of trying to learn a skill while living in a verbally abusive household, and I debate what is realistic for me to undertake. But I guess being fearful isn't going to get me much. I agree this is something that would be useful to bring up to a therapist, and I plan to. I have no plans to stay with abusive people, and will never accept that as an option. But I am worried about my practical situation, and how I will get from here to there. I plan to make a thread about careers that accessible with self-study, which is a more practical question, where as you may be correct this post was more about expressing guilt and helplessness, maybe without me even realizing at first.

Most of us have years of experience being dependent on abusive caregivers. As children, this is not chosen, but a consequence of being small, fragile, and powerless. However as adults, I believe it is a choice to remain dependent on abusive former-caregivers. I think there is reason why we are influenced to make this decision to remain dependent. I will speak primarily of my own experience in this regard. I have had over two decades of experience being financially and emotionally dependent on my abusive mother. A primary theme in our relationship has been verbal and physical conflict. This was present from my earliest memories, and persists today. There are more than a handful of these conflicts that I can look back on and say "I cannot imagine how this could have gotten worse." I feel I have "seen it all" when it comes to the extremes of how a conflict could escalate between us. What comes with this two-decade long experience is a certain set of skills. I have enormously more experience managing abuse than I have had developing any other skill. Therefore, despite being traumatic and emotionally unhealthy, my continued chosen exposure to abuse contains a vast familiarity, predictability, and ability to manage. And what is worse, the development of these skills has come at a huge cost of developing the opposite skills necessary to flourish in a life without abuse - some of which are negotiation, patience, sobriety, and mindfulness. Therefore, I feel that abuse is predictable, and can therefore seem comfortable and alluring, while a rejection of abuse is unpredictable, challenging, and therefore uncomfortable and frightening. TL;DR My question is this: what is your experience in manifesting the courage needed to reject and move on from a state of dependency on abusive care-givers? What precautions did you take? How did you manage the anxiety? Did your independence come slowly, or did you make deliberate, powerful decisions which you knew would make you very uncomfortable in the short term for the benefit of the long term? I personally want to move on from my state of dependency, but I realize the allure of being comfortable can distort my decisions and my plans to become independent. I am wondering what time horizon I should expect of myself, whether I make rapid decisions to leave my abuse ASAP, or whether I should take relatively more time to make sure when I leave, that I will be able to sustain myself for good. Any personal experiences you share are much appreciated.

@ 4 Minutes "While I would love to think this campaign and the result of it are a result of my incredible speech writing skills; I know it is not. It is because... I am fertile" Fixed

What specifically do you mean QM does not make sense to us? Are you saying that logical laws such as the law of identity "break down" at the quantum level? I have heard this phrase used before, and I have a problem with the epistemology I think it implies. As I understand it, the purpose of science is to attempt to form true theories of cause and effect about the external world. A theory contains premises, and deductions from those premises. A theory is true when it is both internally consistent (valid) and has true premises. A theory can be proven false when it is shown to be internally inconsistent (all invalid theories are false), or when any premise which is not the result of prior deductions is contradicted by empirical evidence. Therefore, any valid theory whose conclusions are false must contain one or more false premises. I am guessing you know this, but I just wanted to lay it out. My logic says that if the mathematics of QM are valid, and if a conclusion of QM is that the law of identity is false, then one ore more premises of QM must be false. Because the law of identity is a necessary premise of all valid scientific inquiry, for any theory to conclude that that the law of identity were false would prove that theory internally inconsistent. It would have a conclusion which is inconsistent with a premise of the theory. Does that make sense? I am not a physicist, but I am curious how a theory could "prove" the law of identity false (even if it were just in the instance of the observations of that particular theory) without self-detonating, since all scientific inquiry necessarily relies on the law of identity for its validity and therefore its truth content as an explanation of empirical reality. Since you said that "scientifically, all that matters is that QM makes sense on a mathematical level" I am not sure you are aware of the difference between validity and truth in this instance, because the math of a theory could very well be valid, but if a premise of the theory were untrue or in contradiction with another premise or the conclusion, then the theory would still be false. My points would be true regardless of the predictive power of QM, because a false theory could still have predictive power (and this would likely mean there is something useful about the theory). Last thing: "Classical mechanics makes plenty of sense because it deals with a lot of concepts that we evolved to understand" What do you mean by this? It sounds as if you think there are some set of concepts which are "out there" in a platonic sense, which we evolve to understand, when it would seem concepts are a product of our mind, not external reality. Thanks for taking the time to read my post.

This statement is self-contradicting, because you are telling someone what to do, while saying he/she shouldn't tell people what to do. Also, it is not clear OP merely told someone what to do. Maybe he said "you should not do x because of y," which I think is an appeal to reason rather than his authority, and still been responded to the way he was.

This is retarded. Her premises do not lead to her conclusion. Premises: The government produces the money The government backs the money by their “full faith and credit” The government decides how much money will be circulating in the economy at any given time. Therefore, all circulating money printed by the government belongs to the government. So by this logic: Apple produces ipods. Apple backs ipods with their "full faith and credit" Apple decides how many ipods will be circulating the economy at any given time Therefore, if you have an Apple ipod, and you think you have earned it, you are wrong. It belongs to Apple, and the amount of ipods Apple lets people keep is simply contingent upon how generous Apple wants to be. Money enters the economy as a result of "open market" interactions. The Fed essentially sells the money into private hands. This means the ownership of the commodity transfers (and of course it is only a commodity because of coercive central planning in the first place). And when the money leaves the hands of the banksters in the form of loans, then ownership has transferred once again. Just like if I sell an ipod I bought to someone else, it is now their ipod (even though neither I nor the person I sold the ipod produced it). I wonder if I am missing something, or if this lady is really just drowning in a sea of kool-aid (Stockholm syndrome flavor). I guess both could be true, but please let me know if my analysis is wrong!

He is so suave... I thought I was heterosexual, but the uncomfortable lack of space between my linen and my crotch is telling me otherwise.

If you take a stand against child abuse in the black community, you are going to be making a lot of enemies, and are going to differentiate yourself a lot from your social circles. It seems (to me, a white guy) especially in the black community that you are expected to take pride in your race, congregate, talk about hitting your children a lot, and bad-mouth anybody who criticizes your culture and superstitions and victim-hood. I'm sure this exists to varying degrees depending within the black community, but to me it seems the black community is still very vocal about keeping their tribe homogeneous and shaming/abusing those who break out of this tribal mentality. I think this starts in childhood, but continues through adulthood, where the threat is ostracism and shame for those blacks who go against what they were born into. Where as in the white community, there is much more room to find those who are willing to break tradition and create their own tradition. This breaking of tradition has probably been happening for a long time within the white community, which is why there are already well established circles of anti-spanking and atheism, which I do not see in the black community. That doesn't mean they aren't there, but I've never heard of them.

How often do you and your son discuss your views and his views on religion? Have you been honest about your views and what you find convincing about atheism? If you think he has an illogical view about religion, do you state your disagreement and try to help him understand why you think his argument is invalid? To me, the idea that you can promise not to have an influence over your son about something is a bit absurd. You are his father, and by being this, you are basically the most influential person in his life for the first two decades he is alive, along with his mother. You bring him into the world, you teach him, he learns basically the most important ideas about relationships and love and philosophy from you as he grows up. The idea that you can abdicate yourself from this role to me sounds absurd - if there are certain areas you aren't honest with him about, and are withholding your opinions on, it almost highlights the issue and says "don't be honest about this." Kids are very perceptual and sensitive to information about their parents. To me it seems like you have taught him to make promises to satisfy the comfort of others, at the sacrifice of being honest to the ones you love and have created obligations towards. It seems you have appeased your wife at the expense of offering what is a very important perspective about a very important topic to your son. Now it seems he might be replicating that example with his girlfriend, by diving into religious superstitions for the sake of eggs. I don't know what you should say or how you should bring this up (probably should find a way to make sure it is about him and his feelings), but I think you threaten to lose the respect of your son if you do not bring this up. It seems his respect for you has already taken a hit given that he is going towards religion and knows you are an atheist, but that doesn't mean there is nothing you can do. Maybe a counselor can help you through this. Also, you might want to call up Stef. Best wishes

"What is the underlying theory behind the arguments you would put forth if someone were to put a gun to your temple and you were trying to convince them not to pull the trigger? How are those different from the arguments one can put forth to defend the lives of other species?" I am trying to understand your perspective since you started this thread and since it is your moral stance that humans should voluntarily exterminate themselves. I am trying to understand how you came to that conclusion, and if it is an argument from effect, such as: humans going extinct means more bio-diversity, so therefore humans should go extinct. or humans kill more species than any other species, and if humans were extinct less species would go extinct total, so therefore humans should go extinct or humans cause the most suffering among living things, and there would be less suffering if humans were extinct, so therefore humans should go extinct ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ I am trying to understand if your argument is something like this, and I am trying to understand according to what standard you think your argument is to be judged by. If you could try to answer my question without a loaded question in your response, I think this would help me understand your position better and I would appreciate it. I was not trying to lead you anywhere with my questions, just better understand your position. Thank you

"I am certainly aware of there being a hole in me or something that actively keeps me from being the person I feel I could be. There is a lot of shame and pain around this area and exploring it further is not something my emotional brain would even consider at this point. A sense of fear and foreboding surfaces when I'm observing this issue in my mind. There is a feeling of no matter what I would do, there is no way that I could ever do anything about this problem and so I will always remain broken. A kind of forbidden area inside me that doesn't even belong to me so I have no business of trying to deal with it or engage with it." I am a bit confused by this. I understand the idea that "something is just not right." I have "felt" that before (felt in quotes because I do not think it is an emotion, but is more like an abstract idea) and it definitely is not pleasant. And it also leaves me unsure of what to do about it. After all, if something is not right and there is nothing more to it, that can be perplexing and really leaves you nowhere to go be definition. It leaves you in a kind of stasis in that moment of feeling without a way to comprehend the feeling intellectually, to compare it to childhood experiences, and to process and be able to let it inform your future actions. Am I making any sense so far? Hope so. But also, I am confused because you say it is something you cannot explore, which would seem to indicate there is knowledge you're lacking about this state of being; some important information that you'd like to uncover. But how does this idea that you need to explore this state come to terms with your certainty about this state. If you don't understand exactly what is going on when you feel this way, it seems contradictory to say you are so certain that there is nothing you can do about this, that it is "forbidden" territory, that you will always have this part that will hold you back, but which you will be unable to understand or reach some sort of resolution about. Does that make sense? Now in terms of your emotional brain not considering it.. I actually get the opposite impression from your post, for whatever that is worth. Because it seems you do have some concrete feelings to work with - fear, shame, pain, and perhaps hopelessness(?). But it seems that your intellect is say no - don't go there. Don't go there, there is no point. So maybe it is a strong unwillingness that has developed to explore this feeling, to process it and attempt to find some resolution about it. I empathize with the mental catch 22 though - I have been there before. Sometimes when I am journaling and I encounter that feeling, I call it resistance, and I try my best to think about what this resistance is trying to accomplish, where it might come from, and where and when I have felt similar in the past. But it can be so tough. Sometimes I will have to walk away from the feeling and try to see it in a larger field of view after the fact. Sometimes I think the resistance is exactly what you have described - it is sort of a self-attack/reality distortion for going into territory a part of me is uncomfortable with. I am going to stop my reply at this point because I don't want law of diminishing returns to catch up with my amateur opinion, but one thing I would say is that it does seem you do have some emotions to work with, and that a therapist could probably be a great help and provide you a sense of security in further exploring this. Hope this helps and thank you for being open, it gives me and I'm sure others an opportunity to relate your experiences in my own attempts to understand myself.

Dude, you're awesome! Also, I am not sure I am convinced by the argument that shaming is ineffective (for what that's worth). Maybe someone has elaborated on the anti-shame argument in a blog post or forum post? I'm not sure anything will change people like this in the grand scheme of things besides if we make it really costly for them to hit their children (which would require more people doing this sort of thing than just you, Joel). They don't have empathy, after all! So what you did at least makes them fear confrontation, the annoyance of it, the possibility of other white people joining in with your shaming.. at the very least you made her waste a few minutes, and that is an annoyance she might want to avoid next time, maybe by not hitting him or not bringing him to the store at all. Overall, I'm really not sure the best way to handle these situations, but I am curious what the argument is as to why shaming isn't the best option with people like this.I'll do my own research, but if anything is on anyone's fingertips, I'd be interested! Also, great defense, Kevin! I might need you for some bad shit I'm bound to do in the future, so keep a posting in the phone book, will ya?

I was just browsing different threads and don't have much to add in terms of your question, but I did want to say that I was really struck emotionally by how terrible your parents and upbringing was. For a young girl to be raised in such an environment requires nothing less than evil on the part of your parents and anyone else who refused to intervene. Your parents comes across as complete sociopaths with not a fiber of goodness or virtue in them. I am so impressed and astonished by your bravery and the path you took to deal with such darkness and tragedy. Kudos to you, I hope it gets increasingly better for you. I think the example you set is so strong and powerful.

Isn't this an argument from effect? What is the underlying theory which you are basing this conclusion on, mr1001nights? Is it utilitarianism?

"But my interpretation was they were so certain of her negative qualities and were being sarcastic about how great she was." I actually re-listened since it was posted on Youtube. I am not sure he was being sarcastic. What he appeared to actually be saying was that "he has an amazing cat woman in his life," referring to his mother. So it seems his mother is in his life and that he thinks she is amazing. Tell me if you interpret it differently (the oddity of it is a bit confusing in itself, but I think he was being serious). I have time-stamped the part in the link below. https://youtu.be/z4rrKt7OPFk?t=35m48s