J-William

I read an article a year two ago about a study that had been done that helped victims of child abuse overcome some of the emotional trauma from their abuse by writing about it. I guess I didn't think much of it at the time, or thought they were just talking about journaling or whatever. But reading it again recently I realized it might actually be pretty helpful. I recall some years ago trying to put together a story of my childhood to help me recall things that had happened and dramatic events traumatic events. I didn't get very far with the project partially because I type very slowly and partially because I couldn't emotionally connect with anything I was writing about. According to research that they have done at the University of Texas writing provides a means to externalize traumatic experience and make it less overwhelming. So this evening with the help of this article I wrote about some traumatic experiences from my childhood. One of being very scared by my father telling me about the boogie man when I was about three and then having a fever dream and seeing the boogie man's footprints on the ceiling. And another experience of being abandoned and lost at about the same age in a park when I was out walking with my parents. It really amazed me how much those experiences still triggered genuine emotions even though they happens nearly 30 years ago. I think that writing about the feelings that you had about traumatic events in your childhood and how you feel about them now can be immensely helpful. I'm now thinking that I will continue this project until I can get a firm grasp on much of the traumatic events that happened in my childhood. There's only so far that abstract understanding can get you. I've often wondered where Stef gets such clarity on the traumatic events of his childhood, and it's no doubts because he did a lot of therapy and journaling. I mean just this evening I've discovered that my father is a sadist or at least leans in that direction because he thinks it's a good idea or funny to tell a three-year-old about the boogie man who is going to come and get him. I have a daughter who is almost 3, and I would never tell her a malicious story of that kind. But beyond that I also realize that there are some things that will scare a child that's the parent cannot control. So for instance my wife brought home some live crabs and tried to cook them. Being inexperienced with live crabs she let them escape the pot and they ran all over the kitchen and scared my daughter when she saw them. My daughter was scared for weeks afterwards and had bad dreams about the crabs. Even now many months later she was very scared by a crab toy and we had to show her that it was just a toy and not scary. The points in telling that story is that my daughter was scared of the crabs but because she had caring and empathetic parents she has been able to deal with that, and we have not tried cooking more live crabs in the house so we are not re-inflict in any kind of scares on her. But with parents who delight in the idea of telling a child that a scary monster is coming to get them I had no one to help me process my fear or to help me feel safe. Anyhow that was a fairly long-winded way of saying that you should really look into writing about your traumatic experiences if you are having trouble processing them or if you want to gain some more self-knowledge.

The writer says "hmm" to that... But I'd put that as one of the few flaws in her parenting, she's making them go to school. Reading the totality of this article it sounds like she's doing a really good job and is on the 99% right path for what's best for her children.. I'm actually glad to see this kind of article in the media even if there is a sensationalist headline attached to it. From what I can tell in the article it's just another name for peaceful parenting. And they she uses "yes" in the same way that an improv group treats the word "yes". I'm impressed with her dedication especially given how lovely her extended family must be given that they are British. Now the comments wow comments are different story entirely if you don't want to see some vile bullshit hatred of children and all of the best parts of assholes on the Internet then I think you should avoid those comments.

I'm pretty sure that most pretty girls can get away with saying whatever they want to say because there are so many men would like to sleep with them. Very few people will call them on their nonsense.

I think I am going to donate just so that I can give you a reputation point for that comment wowee! that's pretty awesome. She must have been really pretty because ugly people don't get away with saying things that stupid.

And it's only a worry because the countries where there is rain-forest are invariably statist nightmares.

Ah yes obvious contradictions are not examples of the writer's inability to reason or use logic (and therefore think). They just mean that he thinks in a different way... Thinking is the ability to apply reason and evidence. Logic is a part of reason, and non-contradiction is a part of logic. If someone makes an obvious contradiction and does not seem to notice the contradiction then there are two possibilities. One the person does not know he is starting his argument with something logically unsound and can therefore be said to be unable to think. Or two, he knows he slipped in a contradiction, but hopes you won't notice, which makes him a liar. In neither the case of the fool or the liar is it worth my time to continue reading the argument when I could be doing much more edifying things like having some ice-cream.

That may be true but do you have the time to evaluate all of the arguments made every day on the Internet? Of course you don't. If you can look at the first line or the first paragraph of an article and realize that the writer cannot think then that will save you a tremendous amount of time.

No thank you FDR board, I don't think I want to.

I know I've always felt that that confusion is the worst part because it can be hard to understand yourself what is real and what's not real. For years I would struggle with these kind of people who were very good at writing lots of words without a coherent argument. It's very effective that's why all of the arguments against Ayn Rand are full of bullshit. Someday people will learn to think as a standard part of childhood, and that will be a beautiful day. It is liberating in its own way to learn how to think and learn how to spot people who cannot think. I have a book on psychology that I read back in 2006 or perhaps earlier that at the time I thought was very good and had many useful things to say, but going back to it now I see that much of what it had to say was not of value and in fact made the important issues of psychology a little bit more hard to understand.

You've clearly thought long and hard about this topic. It is certainly hard to find friends who are interested in self-knowledge and philosophy. I am a straight male and have had girl friends who were not into self-knowledge and philosophy, they are no longer my friends. I think this topic is about guys who want pretty girls and pretty girls who don't want unattractive guys. The key is self-knowledge if you lack self-knowledge than sexual attraction will be very confusing.

I thought it was just ridiculous when she said that the children understand. I mean did they understand at seven weeks when their mother left them with someone else to take care of them? Honestly I thought the whole show was superbly done on Stefs part. I don't think there's any way you could inspire me to spend my time sitting on my computer working when I could be spending time with my daughter. I mean if the caller is happy with the quality of people in the world today then I guess it would make no sense for her to strive to make her children the kind of people that she wants in the world. But for me I don't like most of the people in the world, and raising a beautiful wonderful daughter that doesn't even know what abuse is makes the world a much better place.

I can't see the video because I'm in China. But I think I can pretty much guess what the video is about and it's pretty lame. I mean seriously a mom doesn't risk life and limb on a daily basis. And in fact if you have cultivated a good relationship with your children then being a mom should be a very fun and fulfilling "job". This is just straight propaganda, if people wanted to not be mothers they don't have to be mothers. And thinking that somehow you deserve a medal because you manage to send your kids off to a public school for the day and then do whatever else it is that you would be doing with your day while that's just ridiculous. If the vast majority of moms were staying home and not hitting their children and doing a good job of being there and emotionally supportive for their children then no one would need this kind of propaganda. But in a world with public schools and 90% of parents hitting their children this kind of propaganda is all that so-called "moms" have to fall back on.

This is just a quick short story I wrote today. It is a silly and political take on three little pigs. I recently got Dragon NaturallySpeaking and was curious how well the voice recognition went. This is my first attempt at writing a story using the voice-recognition software. I think it turned out well, you can see for yourself there are a few mistakes that it made. And it's miserable at punctuation. Or to be more accurate it doesn't do punctuation at all and I have yet to learn to smoothly say the punctuation that I want it to use. But as you can see it does a remarkably good job of recognizing what I want to say. I think Stephan made a good recommendation on this. Except it can't spell Stephan correctly. Ha ha ha ha I am posting this here for your enjoyment. I think it's worth a laugh or two. once upon a time there was a mother pink pig who had three little baby pigs and families and when these baby pigs got old enough the mother pink decided it was time to send them out into the world and she told them to go out into the world and start their own families now these three little pigs they believe in democracy and the power of one person I mean one pig to have a vote and to make a difference so on the road they met a Wolf in this big bad Wolf wanted to eat them now these pigs being very smart pigs decided that it be best to run away and build some houses now the oldest pink he was very hard-working pink and whenever he set his mind to something he always did it very well the middle pink was not quite as hard-working he sometimes let his mind wander and would stopped play some games and the last pink he never completed anything he always did things the easiest way possible but had a unique fascination with guns. Now these three little pigs decided that the best way for them to survive with a Wolf around was to take a vote and therefore decide what they should do now the oldest little pig thought that they should all build their own houses and perhaps help out the other pigs when they were had the chance the youngest and laziest pig thought that's the other pigs should help out that all pigs should help the poor pigs to get a leg up so they put the decision to a vote the three little pigs voted on first on whether they should all go their own ways and build their own houses now the first little pig the oldest one thought it was a grand idea and so he voted that they should all go their own direction and build their own houses the middle little pig he wasn't so sure so he went with everyone helping each other because not help each other and the youngest little pig voted they all must help each other. After counting votes to votes for helping each other and one vote for going their own ways the littlest pig exclaimed "well that settles it will all help each other"but the biggest pig did not like this idea and he said"I don't like this idea was to make me help you what if I just decide to go and make my own house?" It was at this point that the littlest pig pulled out his gun and said to the oldest pig"look here we put this to a democratic vote and the people have decided so you're just going to have to go along with it do you understand?" At that the oldest pig understood finally. So they'd once started and since the littlest pig was the one with the gun they first started tilting the littlest pig's house. Now since the littlest pig was the laziest he spent much of the afternoon letting the others do his work for him and it wasn't long before they also became fairly lazy and stopped working altogether by dinner time. At dinnertime the house was not finished, in fact the house was nowhere near finished it still needed roof and two walls and windows and doors there were many things that was missing but none of the pigs really felt the need to finish the job properly and they all took a ferry very long dinner and when the very long dinner was finished they all sat down by the fire and fell asleep. During the night the big bad Wolf was on the prowl when he saw the pigs sleeping by the dying embers of the fire and the half built house. He was so excited by his good fortune that he forgot to be very cautious as he approached the pigs. And so the two older pigs who had not had much quite as much to eat or quite as much to drink as the youngest pig were able to wake up and run off into the forest the youngest pig unfortunately had far too much to drink and far much to eat and was very quickly gobbled up by the big bad Wolf. In the morning the two older pigs decided that democracy was not the way to make good decisions, and also that pointing a gun at people was not the best way to be good family members. And the older pig decided that it would be a good idea to help each other, and what better way to help them to teach the younger pig how to build a sturdy house. So that day the older pig and his younger brother spent their time building a strong sturdy house and the younger pig learned many things about how to build a dirty house. So that by the end of the day when they'd finished building the house of bricks the younger brother felt that he could build his own sturdy brick house. And that night the big bad Wolf came to the sturdy brick house with the two older pigs and said little pigs little pigs let me in and the pigs replied not by the hair of our chinny chin chin so the Wolf huffed and he puffed but he could not blow down the house that the two brothers had built. The end

That is really intensely sad but also fairly unsurprising. I might also questioned how well they've done their research to get such a high number of infants with strong parental attachments. I mean if you start off with a strong attachment to an infant I would think you'd find it hard to send your child to a public school when they got old enough.

Watching this movie with my 2 1/2-year-old daughter I can't help cry during the opening sequence where she sings "do you want to build a snowman" and up until the part where the parents die. It's a really emotionally affecting parts for me, I don't really know why. (It may not be that accurate to say "I don't know why" because I've been crying to "cat's cradle" as well recently and I would say I'm in a period of mourning for the FOO... 'course is also sobbing like a baby at the end of Toy story 3) To lend some credence to the part about Olaf being the inner child, I read somewhere that the creators of the movie had the most trouble with Olaf. I think they also at some point wanted to make him an evil, which is an interesting decision for the inner child especially if you have some left over belief that children are evil. Oh that's so sad. I guess on the bright side she doesn't have to build a snowman, her dad is already made of ice. I'm really sorry that you live with such awful people, I have found it so much fun to sing the line "do you want to build a snowman" to my daughter. We both really enjoy the movie.

I've got to say one of the things that most surprised me was jumping back into the common morass of people and seeing what ridiculous things they had to say about bitcoin. It's pretty easy to get stuck in a mindset where you don't even realize that most people can't think. When you go out into the world where these people are who can't think it really blows your mind to hear or read what they have to say.

Of course they did

What is your experience of people who can't think? I was up until recently somewhat uncertain of what Stef meant when he talked about people who can't think. Perhaps it was something of my own insecurity around my ability to think or some part of the conditioning to be small and not notice the when people are saying idiotic things. regardless of that. Just the other day I came across a post in a language blog that just felt off to me. I didn't even read it, but the title and first paragraph or so was enough to stick with me. "Why Are You Still Trying To Learn from Your Mistakes?" After spending some time thinking it over I realized that it was almost certainly wrong (for a variety of reasons that aren't particularly important in this context) and became curious as to what the writer's arguments were against learning from one's mistakes. Well, I should have guessed a little something from the title. Right there in the title the writer is playing on your insecurities, maybe you've been doing it all wrong! Reading deeper into the post I became aware that the writer was making no argument at all. He does not define mistake, he doesn't give examples of what kind of mistakes one might make and how those mistakes are not useful to learn from... and to cap it off, right in the title he puts out a big fat contradiction. If it's a mistake to learn from your mistakes then how am I supposed to learn from that mistake to not learn from my mistakes? Anyhow, it was time profitably spent learning that just because you have florid verbiage doesn't mean you can think.

Wow that looks awful... It was bad enough when I was in school, but this is another level of terrible. Also, how on earth can a growing kid eat that and be able to concentrate for the rest of the day? ... and to think that all these statists are so worried about kids going hungry...

Spanking is the swiss army knife of bad parenting...

As I like to say whenever I see the topic come up... I think this system is working perfectly!

That's sad... she does know that taking a little time now will save a lot of time when kids get older?

that's cute I like the black color scheme better than the white, I'm not sure an internet meme coin will really get noticed at a Nascarr event, but it's interesting to see nonetheless.

That's great! It sure would be better if the government wasn't standing in the way of therapies for potentially life threatening conditions... The pictures of cute kids killed by statism would make for the longest and most depressing slide-show ever.

I think it's alot like the US with dems and repubs, except in Ukraine it's pro-russian and pro-ukranian... so there's a large faction that will cheer Russia. I think there are also factions in favor of democracy, those opposed to the former leader, those opposed to the current leader, those opposed to foreign governments fighting over who should lead the country.... and a small contingent of people who would just rather all these statists would go away!