Matthew Ed Moran

Hey there! I was just inspired to summarize the Austrian Business Cycle Theory as succinctly as possible for those in the community who may not be familiar, and who just want the essence: that which is really important about how the theory functions in empirical reality (but I repeat myself). Central Banks are a modern phenomena which reign control over the particular amount of money in the economy. At any given point in time, there is an amount of money which correlates to the distribution of goods in society, and this is reflected by prices. In a free market, the amount of money fluctuates as more or less of it enters the market over time according to the demand for money. Central Banks turn the typical intuition of how the money supply would fluctuate over time on its head. With a central bank, money can be printed on demand of political swindlers, and the money supply can be increased exponentially if so chosen by these pernicious scum. When money is printed by a politician, it is then handed out to a private actor. This is where the essence begins. The private actor who first is able to spend the newly created money accrues a special benefit. Since his money was not earned from production for consumers, but was gained by political fiat, it is essentially hidden from the economy. When it enters, it has the effect of being as fresh and powerful as any other money which was the result of valuable, market demanded production. It disguises itself to be just the same, but it is not, since no productive act was behind its creation. When it is first spent, it will accrue productive resources from others who are in vain of its disguise. If there is a lot of newly printed money to be spent, it will quickly chase and gather new resources until it is accounted for by everyone else. Only after much time will it be completely factored into the market prices, to reflect the increase in the money supply which had not been demanded, and which could not have been anticipated by other market actors. Political bandits have become masters of counterfeit, and so they know how to maximize their gains. They bring new money to bear into the market gradually over time, and by doing so they create economic bubbles. This is the last bit of the essence, so stay along with me for this. Since other economic actors who are not politically connected lose out by inflation as more and more money is printed over time, they are given incentive, if not coerced to use their money to chase whichever industry is getting the benefit of new, gradual monopolization of resources by the use of disguised money. Looking to limit their losses and gamble on gains, investors who are not politically connected invest, and they invest, and they invest into the disguised money monopoly industry. At some point there must be a relative slowing of the increase in money supply. It cannot go on forever, lest catastrophic inflation shows its face. This is when the disguised money disrobes itself to show its bloated body. What was thought to be economic production is now seen as a political shindig, and what prices were thought to be a reflection of real consumer demands are now seen as completely fraudulent. A picture is painted across the skyline, signaling to everyone the massive and horrifying scale of what was lost. Capital thought to be suckling at the teat of future wealth is now seen shattered and dispersed across the landscape in irrecoverable ways. Savings for years and years has dispersed into thin air it seems, and living standards which were anticipate to be much glorious are now faint and gloomy. The bust is the wake of what is lost. It is the market opening its eyes to what had been disguised to it, and its attempt to pick up the pieces and begin all over again, with full knowledge that some of what was lost will never be restored. As you can see, counterfeit is not just a criminal affair. It is the literal enslaving of millions of people, clueless to the fact that their lives have been wasted profiteering for politicians. Millions of people carrying on their backs a few men, to see their lives wasted and their accumulations ruined when the promises they have been told are revealed years later. That was fun, but I hope it was also clear. Let me know if there is anything I can add to complete the picture of what a boom/bust cycle really is. Or if I got it all wrong, please let me know that too!

"You can't oppose universally preferable behavior without preferring it" I think your use of the word "preferring" may not be justified here. To prefer something is different than to say something is preferable. The latter is a universal category, while the former is a particular instance. If someone rejects a theory because it is false, they are automatically saying it would be preferable for the theory to be true, and that if the theory were not false they would not reject it. If they have some other reason for rejecting the theory other than its falsehood, like rather how it makes them feel inside their tummy, then this would not be a rejection of the theory, but a rejection of the feeling in their tummy. Maybe that's not the clearest way for me to put it, but does it make some sense? Just to try and clarify some more, I don't think he has stated what you have put in your title. I think the statement would make more sense to say: you can not reject universally preferable behavior without simultaneously relying on universally preferable behavior to base your rejection. Any rejection of UPB which did not accept UPB would not actually be a rejection of UPB; rather it would be a rejection of a personal, subjective feeling that was associated with UPB. UPB could only be rejected if it were false, but since that leads to a contradiction, then it would be an invalid form of argument. I hope that made some sense

Okay here is my theory. Kevin was a rock star performing on tour, and this mad scientist Joel Kidnapped him and then placed a philosophical genius's brain inside his head. Now he is using him forevermore to create philosophical greatness but in the form of a sexy rockstar for all the world to enjoy. This explains Joel's sneaky smile at the end. Don't think I don't know what you're up to Joel! Great video

Thank you I appreciate the feedback.

I heard him make that analogy and I still like it. I also think you could analogize the high intelligence people you talk about as sort of drivers who never make it off the test track. They have this magnificent car, but they won't even take it on the real road. Instead they are satisfied to stay on the test track with a small group of their delusional buddies, complementing each other on how amazing they are at drifting on the test track, going at high speeds, doing donuts. But they never make it off course. They stay on their cozy little test track, going in circles, doing the same things over and over; and yet they think of themselves as some amazing drivers who are making real impact on the world. Where as people with self knowledge go beyond the test track, and they take their intelligence to a place which is new, uncomfortable, and when they take risks in this new environment it is actually scary. They use their driving to try new things which they can't anticipate at first what the outcome will be, they learn from it, and then they take on new more daring risks. They are courageous. The test track drivers are just cowards who are delusion-ally patting each other on the back for going in circles; when they hear of some guy doing new things outside the track, they get pissed off that someone notices what cowards they are for never leaving the test track where they are comfortable. They say, 'no, you're not supposed to be doing that! You're not actually driving the right way! The only real driving is here on the test track! It is sacrilegious to bring your drivings skills and performance towards outside of the test track which include new possibilities of risk and failure. You should just stay here on the track, and since you're not here on the test track which I have never left for 20 years, you're obviously just afraid of me and my 'driving skills,' and you're probably just lying about what you're doing out there anyway! I think what I am trying to say is some high IQ people are HUUUGE cowards.

In regards to the OP, the hesitation towards doing something like this I have is the opportunity cost of using a video as a litmus test instead of relying on your own genuine emotional reaction to what the other person is saying and doing in real time. The idea of forming some test beforehand to subject someone to sounds like it could cause more confusion than actually just stating the concerns you have in real time about the other person. I think in some cases tests like these which rely on a second hand source to communicate what you think and feel (which I guess by referencing a video would sort of be a way to say to the other person: this is what I care about. I care about truth, emotional availability, and integrity. I'm not saying it would always be a bad idea or even that it is a bad idea at all, and I think useful information could be extracted from how a person reacts to a video. In fact I know there would be useful information there. But I just wonder at what point it becomes less efficient and honest than just bringing up your own concerns directly to the other person. I'm not sure I agree with the thing about you know who's confidence. To me, stupid people are REALLY confident. Politicians can be REALLY confident. And people eat that up; they're dying for someone else to think for them. My own personal reaction to him was that I had a hard time accepting how hard of work it is to become someone capable of creating the kinds of videos he does. It was the most unique thing I had ever witnessed, and I was tempted to box him into a category. However, I think sometimes I would deal with projection on the part of my inner voices who had a hard time recognizing that someone wasn't using their charisma and intelligence to think for me, but to put responsibility on me to verify conclusions, to be honest and have integrity, and also to know how freaking hard work it is to become someone capable of shining the light of virtue and reason and at the same time being humble and subject to revision on the part of STRANGERS. I continue to struggle with the internal battle I have which is to remain cognizant of my own necessity to think for myself, and not rely on others to verify what I think, because that is an impossible task to substitute someone else's thought process for my own.

Wow! I was pretty in shock when I heard they have a single mom with 3 children in the plot. I would love to hear more about that! I would be interested in you talking about any differences they presented about 3 women taking care of 3 boys which may or may not be realistic to our present day era of single moms. I know there is a huge difference between widowed moms and divorced moms, so I guess I'm a little annoyed they didn't go the more controversial route if it meant being more true what is happening in the state of society we live in. That might an annoyance personal to me though. Do the kids ever rebel against doing chores? That is basically slave labor... Do you think it is a metaphor for the disposability of males? Their father dies at work, and then his children are used for slave labor by the females who are left in charge... Did the mother's encourage the father's dangerous job, or did they have reservations about the risk he was at to provide for the family? The last thing I would like is to hear more about how realistic the parenting is of the 3 boys by 3 women. I just want to know how they are empathized with, and how often it is brought up how important it would be for them to have a father around, and how irreplaceable male love is. Even if they are doing their best for the boys, it would be interesting to me how aware Full House is of the importance of male love. I personally don't mind spoilers at all, since I don't watch this show, but I know it is (or was?) a pretty big staple of American culture so that is why I'm interested Really good job on the video!

The only distinction I can make that helps me towards defining health, is to make a distinction between health and neglect. Health is the required maintenance of something so it runs at an optimal standard. I imagine health as a curve which starts off performing at its highest possible standard, and then diminishing slowly over time until it ceases to function. Neglect of the maintenance of this process so you ever under-perform or malfunction would constitute neglect of health. Therefore to prove neglect of health, one would need to be able to prove a process in the body is being harmed by some action being take of on the part of the person. I think people neglect their emotions, and this leads to diminished mental health. I think people also neglect their nutrition. I am not the one to say it is a moral obligation to become a vegan, because I am not one. But if I think if it will let me live longer and at the highest performance physically and mentally, then that is a change I will be willing to make. I am hesitant to make the moral case about what this means for parents, since I think that requires a whole lot more effort than I willing to think about right now. That said, I think the preference of the child if given a choice would be for a healthy parent physically and mentally. I'm not sure nutrition is a philosophical topic in term of ethics, since it does not involve the use of force. However, parents who neglect their children's health are equivalent to shooting them with toxins while they are sleeping.

I agree the focus should be on Jaeger's child hood, since that is the point of this thread. Sorry for losing notice of that, Jaeger. I plan on reading your latest post soon to see if there is any perspective that I can offer. I hope it is clear to everyone that neglect cannot be considered peaceful, since the child is dependent on the parent for survival. Neglect is the opposite of parenting. It would be like a nurse threatening to pull a plug on a patient, or not showing up when the patient needs attention, and calling it medical care.

This is really interesting to know, thank you. I don't understand where the option to to over-feed children ever enters the equation. If the child is abnormally hungry, it is an obvious sign of an issue (to anyone paying attention) which requires either emotional or medical care. I would argue it is infinitely more cruel to neglect the child's needs and facilitate his/her own drive to over-eat. Is there any legitimate medical evidence that over-feeding a child could ever be considered the right thing to do? If not, then I think the case that not over-feeding a child is cruel gets shredded. And if there were evidence of some medical condition which required additional eating than is normal for the child, a doctor would have to diagnose it. Acting towards a child as if you were able to make a medical diagnoses is completely insane about something so serious. I still think Kevin's analogy about alcoholism applies. I think it is accurate in this case, too. At no point should your child ever want to escape his or her body, whether it is through alcoholism, or whether it is through obesity (assuming there is a connection between this urge to over-eat and trauma/neglect experienced by the child). If there is a condition which requires attention, whether medical or emotional, it is cruel to neglect it and enable it to become unmanageable over time. I hope that made some sense to you.

Thanks a lot! I will be looking for some dead, rotting animals tomorrow to get my b12! I know a nearby trailer park, so I'm going to ask the lovely folk there where to find some. No, really that's all very useful information and now I have a lot to get started with. Today I bought lots of veggies shopping. To be honest I think I've always felt better eating more veggies than meats, but no meat at all is an interesting idea I will have to consider more. I bought lots of nuts too, because why not right?

Thank you for having the guts to say this. It helped me realize I have been doing the same thing. I think the single best alternative the show is your own skepticism (which includes verification of source material) and ability to think critically. I think the next best alternatives would be other allies who are familiar with the arguments provided here, and have a general sense of self knowledge; but who perhaps have come to different conclusions, with similar or the same information, as those expressed by Stefan.

Would it matter what race I am when considering what my nutritional needs are? I don't think I'm being overly skeptical, I was just curious what you might know about that. Thank you very much that is exactly the kind of introduction I was looking for.

Maybe he meant punished for the effects of intelligence. Intelligent children have to be put down hard when they rebel because the parent understands how wrong and unjustified the situation is, and they know the child sees how wrong and unjustified the situation is, so they must rely on significant escalations of abuse at times to put the child down. That is what I experienced; I had a very significant temper at an early age. Oh by the way I think this would actually be present specifically if the parent has a lower IQ than the child. I know all children put up a fight, and in fact I think how they are responded to decides exactly what path their anger will be carved into. I think it is a profound insight to notice how different the type of conflicts we see today, with single mothers and arguably a matriarchy, with how anger and the most murderous of intentions can be expressed through verbal manipulation (not including overt threats - but something like 'climate change' is advocating literally neglecting the lives of millions of people), and notice that it is something kind of particular to high IQ people (by high IQ I basically just mean 105+, but I think criminality peaks around 80 which would be the opposite spectrum of the kind of verbal assault I am talking about).

"The information is readily accessible and there is no excuse for not knowing how to eat well, contrary to popular opinion eating healthy can be very cheap." Would you mind pointing me towards this information? I just ate a Subway foot long and I noticed I felt tired after I ate it. I don't know if it was all the carbs in the bread, but I don't really want to have this experience again now that I'm paying attention more to my nutrition.

Note: This is off-topic At 15 you are still a child, and for your mother to do that to you is to punch you in the heart. It is not excusable, since she herself put you in a situation with divorced parents. She cannot claim that you rejecting her food is a bad thing, but you missing out on a two parent household is not. It's cruel to do that. It is not peaceful. I want to tell you how sorry I am for that, and that I wish you had more caring parents who would not resort to cruelty with their inherent authority as parents to get what they want. It's simply not excusable or moral in any way to resort to that kind of behavior. I think you do have good reason to feel anger about this. Hypocrisy in my life has always produced a lot of anger, and I respect my anger for pointing out when I was being shafted as a child by the adults around me. Since your parents had already inflicted you with far worse than rejecting a damn meal, then I reject their appeal to scorn and bully you so that you could not speak out about what was being done to you, and so that they could remain in denial of the problems which THEY caused. My sympathy is with you, because that bluntly is a fucked up way for your parents to treat you. They set the standard for how you expected to be treated, but they were so cold that they couldn't even have compassion for how long lasting the effect would be on you. I think it would be an insult to most peaceful parents who listen to the show to include your parents in that category (I am not saying you have insulted anybody I have complete compassion for how difficult it is to emotionally accept the true nature of your parents. I actually went through a phase where I thought my mom was an example of peaceful parenting and I thanked her for how I was raised. For anyone who doesn't know, my ACE was an 8, so now I spit in the face of that statement because she was anything but peaceful)

Thanks for the replies, guys. You're right about how geniuses blaze new trails for all of us, Rose. I wonder where I would be if I didn't hear the arguments from Stefan when I did about philosophy and self knowledge. I didn't fully understand them immediately, and even in school I was attracted to Existentialist philosophy. It makes me wonder how much more I would have pursued a 'discipline' like that if I didn't already hear Stefan's arguments prior. In my experience, Existentialist philosophy was pretty dangerous in how removed from self knowledge and logic that it was. Guys like Sarte were a complete mess in their personal lives, yet I wasn't told that in school. I was told he was this ground breaking philosopher with original ideas. I thought it was very deceptive how a philosopher can be passed off as profound to students, while not revealing that his personal life was a complete mess and waste and tragedy. It is such a misleading picture for a young person like me, without a father who was looking for guidance and truth, and philosophers to model myself after. I feel disdain for my teacher now, the feminist marxist that he was for not being more open about the dangers these so-called philosophers found themselves in personally. I am so thankful for hearing arguments about self knowledge because without it I worry what my intellect what have done with all the trauma I had.

I think I edited a bit more into my post after you wrote your response. I think IQ must lead to self knowledge in general, but I could be wrong. I think high IQ people who don't have any self knowledge are false positives, likely due to severe trauma. I just speculate that since they are smart, and since they aren't admitting how smart they are to themselves, that they provide themselves excuses to do immoral things for short term benefit. Doing this over and over will lead one further from self knowledge, but it does not mean they didn't have the ability to turn inwards and understand themselves with the same intelligence they understand the outside world. For instance, my mother had a relatively high IQ for a woman, yet she was very abusive. I think the fact that I perceived so strongly to try and pretend she didn't understand what she was doing effected my perception of intelligence. It was simply too painful to consider that my mother could perceive solutions to her problems which didn't involve impulsive anger towards me. But if she was as high IQ as I said, and she was not a false positive, then the truth would be something more like that she did perceive alternatives on occasions, but she chose not to pursue them.

Is IQ the single most important factor in determining what you should expect from yourself and others? The most common predictor how someone will behave towards me is whether they are high or low in IQ. I don't even think there is such a thing as self knowledge for people below a certain IQ, and therefore I think self knowledge is actually only a benefit of IQ. Self knowledge is problem solving. What one considers a solution is fundamentally a moral choice. I think the relation of choice and IQ is significant, since higher IQ people will perceive more potential solutions to problems, but it is not the determining factor in which solution they will chose. We see people with high IQs makes terrible choices, and we see people with low IQs to make wonderful choices. I know trauma plays a huge role, but I personally endured a lot of trauma without being completely turned into what my abusers were. I think my IQ and my moral choices had a lot to do with this. Trauma may in fact be a better predictor than IQ, but I guess I'm not sure. One thing that bothers me about society is how we have to ignore the differences between people in matters of intelligence. I think this is really unfair to higher IQ people, who then develop a sort of slave morality in response to their subjugation. Obviously it benefits lower IQ people if higher IQ people perceive them as more capable than they actually are. For instance, high IQ people think low IQ people can go on welfare for the short term, and then get off for the sake of not developing an addiction to free stuff. But the fact is the low IQ person will have a very hard time getting off welfare since they experience difficulty controlling impulses and deferring satisfaction in the present, for a long term goal. The low IQ person thinks they are better off on welfare, but that's only because they don't understand the possibility of a better alternative involving the deferring of gratification. So in this instance, since both high and low IQ people are lying to one another about their understanding of one another's capacity to solve problems, they both are made worse off in general. The high IQ people waste precious capital, and the low IQ people drown their ambition in free stuff. Sorry for such a hard break to end this post, but overall I think self knowledge begins with first understanding what you are capable of, and also what others are capable of towards you. If you do not understand that first, I think moving forward in pursuit of solutions when you don't acknowledge your or others' capacity to solve problems cannot reasonably be called the practice of self knowledge, since you would be ignoring a fundamental staple of your and their personality Is my point esoteric to follow, or am I perhaps pointing out something crucial here? Thanks for reading.

I also hate parents who fill children with their guilty conscience by feeding them until they are obese. It is a sickening display of creating something ugly to criticize, so you don't have to criticize yourself. And it is not just a "something." It is the person you claim to love and have the best intention towards, and yet you use them as a vacancy to pour your insecurities into. I can't fathom having respect for an adult who would do this, and I sympathize deeply for the child who is a victim of this but cannot even have the dignity to know he is a victim. Instead he is blamed and ridiculed for the putrid self hatred his parents are filling him with. I hate this with all my might and wish the children were not surrounded by a society of cowards who won't even tell them the truth; who cannot even speak up for them. I hate cowardice with a passion. It is pathetic to act like a coward towards a child. A child is immeasurably more weak than any adult, physically mentally and emotionally, and yet adults are too precious to endure some hurt or displeasure or risk for the benefit of the child. I hope this civilization of cowards is looked back on like pathetic mice who flee moral courage and pursue their inconsequential pop culture brain rot "reality" television as if they are the most obnoxious people in the world. I am talking about people who do this with no regret and no care about the immorality they have done. I am brought to tears for the children who have to endure the shame and humiliation of being raised by people who chose to be this way with all the available knowledge which they chose to ignore, because they are satisfied to treat their children as slaves of their vanity.

Can we not reform government and work towards getting rid of it at the same time? I'm not saying I think government reform is possible in any meaningful sense, and you can see throughout history that any government reform does not last for long; but I don't see how the two goals are always exclusive. Since government is the initiation of force, getting rid of it is universally preferable to reforming it. In the same way, getting rid of cancer is better than reforming it to be only less fatal. That said, saying something is "wishful thinking" does not reveal any logical reason to accept your position, but it only reveals your cynicism on the issue.

"and hitting enter every couple of rows would make it even better! ;)" I literally laughed out loud at this. Don't look at my recent posts! The amount of text wall barricade will scare you! I imagine it was a giant wall to keep the idiots out of FDR land in the same sense Donald Trump envisions keeping out illegal immigrants. Okay, just kidding I will remember to add in some breaks next time I think I see what you mean now in regards to how you were parented, Fred. Perhaps it was "peaceful" if that means only the absence of hitting and yelling, but I'm truly sorry about your parents splitting up. Also, neglect is a form of abuse so you might want to consider if a parent could be peaceful if they are also being neglectful in a punishing sort of way. Neglect can be used as punishment, and if that were the case then I think the idea that they were peaceful would be a use of the word that I am not entirely sure is accurate, to say the least. By the way if they did yell at you sometimes, that is also not completely peaceful. I definitely sympathize with what you shared about not being treated kindly or compassionately, and I am sorry that was not the case. Despite you being treated that way, you have developed a wonderful sense of kindness and compassion from what I see in your post, so all credit is due to you for achieving that. Another hot latte delivered by Stef for your accomplishments in virtue coming right up!

Planning to check out the video tomorrow. Dsayers I have a hard time seeing voting as the initiation of force, which does not mean you're wrong. But for voting to be the initiation of force, it would seem necessary that the alternative to voting would not lead to the initiation of force. But if it i practically certain that whether you vote or not, the initiation of force will be accomplished by the government, then there can be a consequentialist case made to vote if there is reason to believe it will lead to less initiation of force. I believe this is a terribly hard case to make since beyond really large numbers voting is irrelevant, and since voting will not provide any certainty the person receiving your vote will stay true to their principles. But I do not see how voting can reasonably be considered the initiation of force is the alternative to voting also implies the initiation of force. I am open to counter arguments, but just to be honest this is going to be a steep hill to climb with me if the alternative to voting does indeed imply the initiation of force from any reasonable view of situations where voting is an option. If it can be proven that not voting will have an identifiable effect on the amount of initiation of force in society, then I think you have a case to make Edit: I don't mean to hijack your thread, Matt. Dsayers I would start a thread on this, but before that can you point me towards where you may have argued this before?

Fantastic post Frederick. I admire your courage to say that. In fact I am in awe of how precisely written your post was about such a difficult topic. Jaeger I am appreciative of your comments. You decide if you would like to reply, but honestly I feel humbled to defer to Frederick after his post. He really seems to have connected with your childhood in a magnificent way. He went deep on this one for you

I was struggling to think what I wanted to say about your post. Your provided a lot of information and my emotions were having a tough time keeping up. That's not your fault, but it makes me wonder that if I was having a hard time being emotionally available with the amount of information you provided me, I wonder what it says about your own process of writing this post and how emotionally connected you were to your writing. That said, I think I have something of use to add which ties into this very theme. How many siblings did you have Jaeger? I think this may be really important for you. I know you have 8 children, which is incredible! But I think it is a basic fact that if you have 8 children, it must be a hassle to attend to them all in a manner which is not at least somewhat neglectful to each of their individual issues compared to if you had say 2 children. It must take a lot of structure. And that's fascinating to me because I that is the theme I see in what you have shared. From your early experiences with your own family, you were forced to adopt an inner critic. The inner critic is there to get your needs met, in a strange sort of way. It recognizes your impotence as a child, and it sees that you are facing needs which aren't being met, and which you think are practically impossible to be met. I think the need which was not met for you was emotional availability. This is interesting, because it does seem like your parents did provide at least some guidance. Perhaps it was guidance passed down to them. I think this is actually something you see in religious communities more than secular communities. Even if the parents are not invested to their children in an intense emotional way (because they in turn did not experience that in their child hoods), they still seem to have been smart enough to realize that they should not be overtly and horribly abusive to you. In lower IQ religious communities, the trend seems to be towards more abuse because they lack the intelligence to pass on their religion in a more successful manner. You parents were invested in you to become something, and you realizing that adopted a self critic to meet their expectations of you. This is a double edged sword unfortunately. It might mean that all the benefit you derived from your parents was not specifically for you and your value as an emotionally healthy and happy child as much as it was for you to fit their needs to become an image they saw necessary for you to become. That's a hard pill to swallow, so I understand if that is hard to connect with just yet. But perhaps it does explain your inner critic and how hard it is for you to have complete confidence in your child hood. The critic is there to keep you safe, and to keep you from questioning certain elements of your experience if it is dangerous to do so. It can be distressful to make the first few steps towards recognizing when your critic is being abusive towards you, since it does indicate you were abused as a child. That is what your critic is trying to mask if abuse was indeed present (and emotional neglect I think is reasonably considered abuse in all modern cases, since parents have such an unlimited capacity for choice in this modern era). This is where it becomes tricky, because for your critic to understand that you are no longer in an abusive situation is very difficult after you have spent years with your parents being masked inside your head. I have found that slowly removing the mask can be helpful. Or quickly. It is up to you how honest you want to be with yourself about the true nature of your childhood. It would involve contemplating how a child could possibly be responsible for the actions of his/her parents. You said you treated your parents miserably (something to that effect), but the truth is you were only an effect of your parents. You were born helpless compared to them, and they always had overwhelming authority over you. Even peaceful parents have overwhelming authority over their children, so that is why they are extremely delicate and careful not to control them with threats and authority which they naturally possess in the relationship. For the child to survive, it needs to conform to what the parents want. If you treated your parents miserably, they actually made you treat them that way. Again, a tough thing to swallow. It would be okay and even healthy to be angry about this. The anger is there already, but your critic is trying not to turn it on your parents, because that would have ended up really awful for you to really expose your parents as abusive to the fullest extent of the truth. It would have been a problem for them, because for them to change they would have to also undo decades of misunderstanding the nature of abuse from the point of view of a child. Empathy for the child is so important, but it is hard to achieve if you did not experience it. The child needs a secure bond. The extent to which there isn't a secure bond, there will be negative effects for emotional development that will have to be undone to re-learn what a secure bond is like. When you can learn what a secure bond is like, you can offer yourself the empathy and emotional availability towards your own self to mourn your childhood and acknowledge the difference in responsibility between you and your parents when you were a child. By doing this, you will be forming a more secure bond with your own critic from the ground up, and it will eventually produce a critic which will provide scintillating analysis that will help you in every aspect of your life as an adult. Instead of punishing yourself for thinking certain thoughts, you will be brave enough to take in information which is uncomfortable and utilize it to make your relationship with your children even better. If we want to do best for our children, this requires growth. What our children will respect in us is if we can acknowledge our mistakes and hep them understand the mistakes so they cannot repeat them. As I said before I admire the consideration you have given your children already. But I think a lot of motivation can be drawn from the fact that you still have considerable doubts about your own child hood. That is natural and healthy, and it is something we all go through. But I think your opportunity to increase your heroism is to tackle and understand the truth about your own child hood and how it may have been missing emotional availability, and how this may have produced a critic. If you passed any of that on to your children, I think it would be a helpful experience for them, for you to grow to understand the importance of emotional availability and how avoiding the root of emotion can cause distress and frustration. Your children will have the opportunity to learn from you and will have even less overall distress and frustration (which again is natural and healthy part of life) if you have the head start on understanding how to deal with it in an effective manner. I hope that is helpful. I also hope you are gentle with yourself reading this, since you have already done so much that is great in terms of deciding to school your children from home. Not many children are blessed with a parent who is willing to grow, and I hope you appreciate that. It's really an act of great pride and bravery that you would recognize the danger of public schools for your children, and your non-conformity to the masses of parents who lack your heartfelt considerations is something I respect deeply.