Kalden

I haven't dreamposted before, but I think this one will be very interesting. The dream felt like it lasted about 5 seconds, but it was very profound. I started out in dark, dreamless sleep, then all of a sudden I looked up, and found myself inside some kind of large sewage or storm water drainage pipe, which was covered at the end by a sturdy metal grill which was blocking my exit (image on the left). I looked out through the end of the pipe, and found it led to a murky swamp. Just a few metres in front of me in the swamp was a large crocodile sitting very still, watching me. Through some hills in the background I saw a huge city, glistening in the sunlight. I don't know why, but I felt like I had to get there. I decided to see if there was an exit behind me, and when I turned around, I saw a wall of water rushing towards me, which meant I was trapped and going to drown (image on the right). I woke up. I heard Stefan say in one of his podcasts, talking about a dream a listener had, that crawling through a tunnel or hole usually represents some kind of re-birth. p.s. apologies for my shoddy MS Paint skills

Recently I became a bronze donor to this wonderful experiment in philosophy, and I've been going through some of the bronze files. I came across this one recently: https://board.freedomainradio.com/files/file/115-preparing-for-launch/ (Can't access it? Donate! ) and Stefan said something which really got me thinking. About 1/4 of the way in, the listener speaks about how he is an introvert, which he thinks is a contributing factor as to why he can't get his life 'off the ground', so to speak, and Stefan replies, "if you are introverted, the last place you want to be is at home, because if you are introverted then it may have something to do with the way that you were raised. So if you're at home, you're going to be continually exposed to the same environment that contributed to your introversion." Stefan also later expresses his sympathy for the listener being an introvert, which implies that introversion is a negative thing (I'm not saying it isn't, that's what I'm asking about). So my question is this: are introversion and extroversion even real things? Or do all people who had decent childhoods naturally turn out as what we call extroverts, and what we call introversion is just a negative effect of a poor childhood? If this is the case, is childhood always the deciding factor? If this is not the case, is introversion necessarily a bad thing? I'm asking because I am what you might call an introvert myself. I abhor any kind of social interaction - I don't even answer my phone if some one is calling me, or answer the door when some one is knocking, so by asking this question I am trying to glean how broken I am in personality, how I might have turned out if I'd had a good childhood, and how to fix myself if I am indeed broken.

Hi forum, I've watched many of Stefan's videos about therapy and have been wondering about it for myself, but I have a few questions about it: How do I know if I need therapy? Is therapy worth the time and money required to find a good therapist and work through your issues? What could a therapist tell me that I don't already know or could more cheaply find out? And most importantly, does it even work? Any information will be greatly appreciated, thank you!

I don't think it really matters who the rod belongs to or what its usually used for. It says "if thou beatest him with the rod" which doesn't exactly sound like the pinnacle of peaceful parenting to me.

Obviously I realize that, but I don't think it is an appeal to authority. An appeal to authority would be, in my opinion, me trying to convey that the texts which I quoted are true because the "wisest man ever to have lived" said them, which I in no way was trying to do, and I apologize for the confusion. I was more questioning how Solomon remains on the pedestal of being the "wisest man ever to have lived" in Christian and Jewish communities despite advocating beating children with a rod. By "the effects of such things on children," I wasn't talking about how "useful" spanking/beating children is in "correcting" their behavior compared to other parenting methods, but rather the psychological and sociological effects which spanking itself has, such as higher criminality, lower IQ, etc. etc., which I think is the moral issue here.

Proverbs 22:15 (KJV) states: "Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child; but the rod of correction shall drive it far from him." Proverbs 23:13 (KJV) states: "Withhold not correction from the child: for if thou beatest him with the rod, he shall not die." Given that these words were written by supposedly the wisest man ever to have lived, king Solomon, how do Christians (and Jews) justify them despite all the evidence we now have about the effects of such things on children?

Thanks very much for all the responses. Apologies for not replying for so long. Thanks Ivann for the job offer, but recently I've had some realizations, chiefly, that I didn't really have a choice of what I wanted to study at uni, or even if I wanted to go to uni or not. I was kind of forced into it because its what my brother was already doing (he is a year older than me). I'm not sure yet if IT is what I want to spend my life doing, but I have only one year left until I get my golden-ticket-open-sesame-for-any-job (that's what people tell me anyway) degree, and apparently now is the worst time to quit. Basically I'd like to finish getting my golden ticket before I decide what to do next with my life, but thanks very much anyway - I appreciate the offer (I joined the FB group btw, but I probably wont be able to make it to any meetups as Sydney is a few hours away). Anyway, I have been reflecting on self-knowledge a lot over the last weeks, and Kevin and Ivann I think you were absolutely spot-on when you say that I need to get right away from my family and make my own way in life. I may have neglected to mention in my post that as I went straight from high school to uni, I am currently a Centrelink (welfare) leech. At the time I started getting welfare I was straight out of high school (AKA low-IQ-propaganda-camp-for-statists) I had not thought about fundamental philosophical concepts like taxation being theft, or the deferral of gratification. I was a little bothered that the same hard-earned tax dollars being handed to me were being handed out to illegal immigrants, but not enough to say no to free stuff! The way I saw it, the people were paying me to get an education so that I could provide value to them later on, which I now realize is a complete nonsense theory because its like forcing some one to pay for something twice. I think my primary problem now is that welfare is a lot easier to get on than off. Its not as simple as just getting a job. I currently have no marketable skills, because as I said before I didn't really want to do IT and hence am not very good at it (better than the average person but not competent enough to have a job in it). The only reason I want to finish getting my degree is because it might help me to get a job in a different area. I also have very poor communication skills which I think comes from all the physical and emotional abuse I suffered at school and at home for the first 17 years of my life. I could do what you did Kevin and take any low-paying work I could find, but I had a minimum-wage job in high school and because I am cursed with an IQ a couple of standard deviations above the norm, it was utter purgatory (as I'm sure you're all aware, people who have minimum wage jobs well into their 30s, 40s or 50s tend not to be the sharpest tools in the shed). I quit that job after a while because I literally (no, not figuratively) couldn't take it anymore, even though the money was great (my parents didn't make me pay board and they still paid all my expenses). I would come home completely mentally drained (for the average person, imagine being forced to read children's nursery rhymes for 3.5 hours straight, it felt a little bit like that). I am also morbidly obese, which rules out most physical-labor-intensive jobs because even if they did hire me, I wouldn't be nearly as efficient as a normal-sized person, and there could be health risks. So I am at a cross-road. On the one hand I want to get away from my family and make a living for myself, but on the other hand I feel like I need this degree to be able to get a proper job first, even though I find living off of other peoples' stolen money morally wrong.

Greetings Freedomain Radio forum. As this is my first post I think it might be appropriate for me to give a kind of (brief) background of myself. I am a 20 y/o male currently living in New South Wales, Australia, studying IT at university. I have an ACE score of 5. There was a LOT of yelling and passive-aggressive bitchiness between my parents and from my parents to my brother and I, although there were never any drugs, alcohol or physical violence (there was spanking however, maybe once or twice per week). They spanked my brother and I for our crimes against humanity and then again when my brother and I learned that a good way to resolve problems is to hit the other person (go figure). Though they never got divorced, it was on the table at one point when I was about 16, and even before that, when I was about 8 to 10 I remember constantly being terrified that they would get divorced and I would have to split my time between them, or that my mother would commit suicide (her way of winning any dispute was always to make her opponent feel sorry for her, which you can imagine the effect that would have on a child if repeated several times a week for several years). Through reasons which I won't mention here for the sake of your time taken to read this, although some of it has already been mentioned, I became obese as a child and eventually developed vastly different interests, hobbies and opinions to those in my family. For example, my brother (who is as thin as a rake, interestingly enough) is a self-identified communist, and my parents (who are amplified photocopies of their parents in their ideas) think that the big problem in society that causes all problems; violence, poverty etc. is not the state, poor childhood experiences or inherited overwhelming debt, NO, ITS THE F****ING DRUMS IN THE MUSIC. (yes, really) (their IQ is about 90-105, my IQ is 129-135 BTW). My cousins, uncles and aunties think a good way to spend a day (or more) is to sit and watch rugby or cricket on TV and cheer whenever the team whose members happened to be born in the same country as them score a goal (wait how does cricket work again? ). So my problem is basically this: even though I now live in a different country to my parents, I still live in quite close proximity to and frequently rely on my extended family (mothers parents and their family), who I have absolutely nothing in common with except that we live in the same country and are both warm-blooded organisms (although I do have my doubts about my grandmother ), and I kind of feel trapped here because I rely on them for meals at least once a week etc. What can be done?