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Currently 19 years old, deciding whether or not I should set myself up for the possibility of a family later on, or whether I should set myself up for being single for the rest of my life. Thoughts? Pros and Cons for each? I'm an Omega male so getting laid isn't an option.

We all know how rare it is to come across healthy individuals, let alone healthy families. I find it very fascinating to see healthy people interacting, especially when that joy of living is shared across the generations. I want to create this kind of positive familial environment, too, and given how hard this is to achieve when coming from a dysfunctional background, it is good to see it existing in another place. Imagine growing up as one of those children! The video below is by the successful YouTuber Wranglerstar, which is a homesteading channel.

This problem's bugged me on and off so I wanna run past you guys before I'm 30 and panicking. I'm gay and I want to have children some day. Lots of them preferably, all raised peacefully. The problems I foresee are lack of female influence, conflict in who's child should be given birth to, and if we both have a child the problem of favoritism by genes (racism kinda). 1. Female influence. A stable nuclear family is crucial to the healthy development of children. Both fathers and mothers bring characteristics that acclimatize kids to the sexes and help balance each other out. Also women have boobs which helps with breastfeeding and IQ. (I think breastfeeding boosts IQ. Don't know if that's true.) 2. Who has the kid. Adoption is out of the question. Has to be my genes and has to start from square one. If I decided to have one kid with my partner, conflict may arise with who's sperm gets into the egg. This is a non-issue with a nuclear family. Which leads to... 3. Genetic favoritism. If both of us have surrogate children, favoritism by genetic origin could cause conflict. This I have second thoughts on, because virtue trumps bloodline, and children raised virtuously can't help but mirror that virtue. Has anyone else had thoughts about this situation? Any gay guys on here had this dilemma? I don't wanna raise a kid in a naturally dysfunctional environment and I wanna take care of this concern now. I feel like the answer is right in front of me but I can't see it through my caution. I feel like I'm operating on broken biology.

I wanted to share this clip of Adam Carolla arguing for the integrity of the family unit in front of congress:

Hi all, this is first post here - I am looking for advise from like - minded peope who have been in similar situation. Any tips are greatly appreciated. Thank you. It's been a year since I have been in thereapy and discovered FreedomainRadio - it's been the best year of my life and I never felt more alive. However, with self knowledge come dealing with toxic people in my life (including my family). Especially dealing with my parents is tough and I woudl be greatful for your support and insight. Here is some background that I think is important: My father: he was brought up in communist era, his mother was working since he was 3 months-old and he was put into a daycare ever since. His parents cared about him, but didnt really know him. They preised him for his academic and sport achievements. He always had to be him + some sort of success. There was verbal abuse in the family. Financially, they were doing really well and had a good socio-ekonomic status in their society. My father is very inteligent and succesfull man, however he struggles with proximity. If there is important topic to discuss, he often gets annoyed and agressive - he must win the discussion. He is not used to negotiate in peaceful way. Lately he tries, but the topic / issue is not opened unless someone else brings it up. My mother: was born into family with 8 other children (she was the youngest). Her family was very poor and abusive to the point that my mother was taken away from them (not sure at what age exactly but I think she was about 4-7). Since then she grew up in a childcare facilities. Until this day I am not sure how bad her abuse was (I am aware that she had been beaten / had had cigarete burns and I am not sure if the abuse was of sexuall nature as well, but its possible). She doesnt like to talk about anything realted to her early childhood before she was taken away from her family. She also claims that her past is not important because she is not in touch with her parents or siblings (note, that we have never met or seen any of them and I think she hasnt seen them since she was a teenager). She says that she had a great time in those childcare facilities! and that it has not affected her at all! Its hard to get any sort of inforamtion from her about her past. She can not admit she is/was wrong in anything- ever. Its very difficult for her to apologize. My mother always cared about me and my siblings in terms of having enought food, clean clothes, playing with us and preparing us for school, however, this lasted only until we became teenagers and had our own opinions and created our own personality. She had no idea how to deal with us once we were not dependent infants. She cant deal with anoyone disagreeing with her. The relationship of my parents wasn't good. Their argues got rather agressive, they were not able to communicate and solve issues and in addition, they were cheating on each other. They got divorced eventually (I was 13 at that time). The divorce was not discussed very much and we simply moved out with our mother. My father paid child support and we saw him every other weekend (or more) - he was happy in his new relationship (woman he later married and are still together). In the meantime, the situation home with my mother escalated. Our mother was very nervous and constantly complaining about not having enough money. We started to argue a lot - at one point she told me she hated me and that I was the same as my father (mind: the man she married and had 3 children with)! She started to physically attack me - this confuse me a lot, it seems the parents stop hitting their children when they grow up, but she started to beat me when I was 13 - 15. At that time I knew I could attahk her back but I was afraid that I woudl hurt her! Obviously, she didnt have the same concern about hurting me. Seeing how little empathy she had towards me really hurts my feelings. I havent had much contact with my mother since I was 19 (its about 10 years of very little contact / close to none). Last time I talked to her was about 5 months ago and I tried to discuss what I learned in therapy. She eventually apologized, but it wasnt genuine and she keeps saying I just need to move forward and dont bring the past up. She is quite a bully and doesnt want to work on herself. In her mind, something is wrong with me to bring issues from the past up. I never said anything to my father about the beating and argues with my mother. I think deep down I knew he wouldnt get involved to fix it. Recently I told him and his answer was quite shocking - he said: "I thought something was going on between you and your mother"! He didnt know how bad it was, but he didnt even ask! This makes me angry. On one hand, i woudl like to have relationship with at least one parent but on the other, how can you not care about your children when they are being hurt? My father has done some work on himself and he is able and willing to discuss things. He will be comming over soon. I woudl like discuss it with him. Do you think I am hypocrat for talking to my father but not my mother? Does any of you have similar issue and how you approached it? Did this sort of discussion helped you? Thank you so much - any feedback welcomed.

It sounds funny written that way but it's actually really sad... I'm the oldest I have two brothers and one sister. My first brother knocked up his long-term girlfriend who I met at their wedding and then weirdly they got divorced about 6 months later. I tried to convince him to get a prenup and he didn't. There's another single mother, family courts trainwreck for you America! He voted for Hillary; he was really convinced she was the lesser of two evils despite a fairly rigorous series of back and forth emails we had debating it. He seems to worry about wealth inequality and climate change a lot despite my efforts to convince him to worry about other things a little more. My second brother... Couldn't be convinced to vote Trump. I tried to share some of Stefan's videos with him and he refused to watch them. Just calling it white nationalist propaganda. Since a trip to Africa, he seems to have become quiet the social justice warrior. Talking about white privilege, Black Lives Matter and made fun of my affinity for Ayn Rand. I noticed recently on social media he mentioned that he donated to Planned Parenthood. Fucking who voluntarily donated to Planned Parenthood?? Still trying to wrap my head around that one... My mom is a nice old Christian lady. She didn't like Trump because he was too scandalous a candidate. My dad hates Trump. He voted for Clinton, Bush and Obama, he's your stereotypical baby boomer and a New York Times subscriber. My sister actually seems pretty normal. She hasn't expressed any significant affection for the cultural Marxism that the rest seem to be embracing. I've been living in Kiev, Ukraine for the last couple of months and I asked them not to vote for Hillary Clinton because Kiev would have maybe been a not so safe place in the event of a showdown between President Clinton and Putin. I gave them a bunch of other pragmatic reasons to vote Trump but they all voted for HRC. It's weird because we all grew up Christian. Me and my brothers are pretty normal straight, white males; ever since we were young we all liked guns, fast cars, adventure, pretty girls, etc. My brothers - who are both pretty successful self-employed entrepreneurs now - are just the last people I would expect to turn into social justice warriors. There's an important detail I left them for nearly 5 years I lived in Latin America for several years and have been in Europe 2 years. I wonder if I had been there for them if it would have made a difference. Although, I stayed in touch via Skype. My options are a) I could just cut off contact. Sometimes it's best to just cut things off with people you really disagree with. Although, I do actually like my family other than our ideological differences we get along quiet well without any crazy dysfunction. b) I'm a pretty persuasive guy and the fact that I couldn't convince any of my family to vote Trump would seem to indicate that I'm not going to be convincing any of them of anything anytime soon. So holidays and family reunions for the foreseeable future are going to be ideological WW1 between us. c) We could just make it a family rule that at reunions, Thanksgivings or fake weddings we never touch anything related to politics. No none first date friendly conversational topics. I like to think that your family is your tribe that you share fundamental values with but it's looking like my immediate family is just some more people that I need to be politically correct around. d) I will give them an ultimatum; that one day when I'm starting my own family, if they are all still so mired in cultural Marxism I'm going to forbade them from contacting my family - at some point that I start my own family I wouldn't want them infected by their fake liberalism. We have a vacation together scheduled next year. I think this would be a good time to have this difficult talk. Has anyone on here had a similar dilemma of ideological dysfunction within their immediate family? How did you handle it?

I've been dating a girl upwards of three years now. We generally get along very well but I have some huge problems with her family and we both agree that they're not great and we'd like to reduce their influence on our lives in the long run. They're pretty authoritarian and I watch how the mom constantly tells her brother to do things like chores and schoolwork in a borderline yelling way pointing fingers several inches from his face. There's not a lot of back and forth communication in the family - it's hierarchical. I just turned 25. She's just shy of 21 and currently in the 2nd half of her undergraduate college and her parents would not permit us to live together until marriage. I don't strongly disagree with the importance of a committed relationship but my fear is that they will always be a presence in our life going forward. Meanwhile, I've already stopped talking to my own family (~1 year ago) because of the way the treated me during my childhood with no genuine apology or reparations to date yet based on what I've seen in the family and heard from her, I imagine that she and her brother had it even worse in her household. We've already discussed possible answers to the problem. Currently it would involve giving her parents the marriage their looking for (involves inviting them to the wedding as well as many of her relatives), then telling them that we would like to reduce their presence in our life. This would be more of a soft break as opposed to a hard one where we go against their wishes and break ties after something like a verbal argument. One problem I have with the soft approach is that I'm not sure that would be enough to really remove them and also that in the long run it does little to make the situation better. A family that got told offhandedly to shove it would feel more or less the same as a family where you walked out the door and stopped taking phone calls, right? In addition, giving them the privilefge of dictating wedding terms and how our relationship goes does seem a bit self-defeating. We've talked about it a handful of times to various lengths but when I bring it up now, she tends to get annoyed. She points out that there's no point in talking about something that we've already reached our solution on. She doesn't want to keep them close in the long run but admits that there's little that we could do about it now without stirring up a hornets nest. Am I right to keep bringing up something that I have a problem with when I don't have any other solution (since basically it's get married or she has to stay with her family)? Values wise I clearly have an internal problem stomaching having her family in my life. In a way, I think when I keep bringing it up it's a plead for her to cut ties but it would be incredibly discomforting for her to do that in her life at the moment (if at all). Probably worth mentioning that the same kind of frustration and annoyance seems to come out from her when I rant too heavily about the state of the world and politics which I've been pretty passionate about lately.

I took the title from the front page of the Globe & Mail today. I was once an illegal immigrant who was deported over the southern border, refiled and came back legally. I now hold permanent residence for where I was once deported. I hate to begin an argument with the phrase; "as a ______." Fortunately I didn't get around to forming an argument.. so here is my life story- raw facts as unemotional as I can present it Introduction This situation is going to sound complicated due to my parents avoiding the proper system, then even further complicated by immigration red tape. My parents moved to Canada before I was born, they are both Americans. They ran a family business, got a home and created family there. Ironically while living in Canada my mother went through the trouble of making sure my brother and I would be born in Michigan like the rest of the family... so we could be presidents... This would of required a considerable amount of planning, so it is understandable why when having her final child as mother to two kids already, one seven and in school she stayed at the home in Canada. We made fun of my sister a lot growing up as being the sole Canadian in the family... then like karma when I was 17 I got deported for not being Canadian and she got to stay.... Since moving to Canada for temporary work they had settled down and decided they wanted to make home there now. This is where chaos ensues. Up until that point everything was fine, my classmates would always insist I was just like them but I would contend we were very different. I would like to explore these feelings of kinship later, but lets get back to the plot. My parents decided that moving forward the best step would be to hire a family immigration attorney. The lawyer then determined the best option was to apply for status from within Canada... apparently this set off a red flag that notified Canadian authorities that we were in the country illegally. Other attorneys have since said we should of applied for status from outside of Canada and would of been fine. The immigration racket is very corrupt and dirty, it is an open secret by everyone in it that you must abuse the options- and that only a fool would do everything properly.... well my parents hired a fool. This triggered a long series of delaying judgement while filing for whatever was viable, humanitarian compassion and aid, family reunification, anything that works is on the table. These forms costs thousands, sometimes in the tens of thousands to get done. As the parent is must be frustrating doing all of this... and then coming up with an answer to the kids when they ask what is up with our status, am I going to be able to get a job finally? I had a coop at a bank for school I couldn't proceed with cause it was going to "just a couple more weeks till our papers came in," little more than a year later I was being deported. The judgement took many years. By the time we finally did all get status my brother was over the age to be included as a dependent for the family migration... he was maybe in middle school, at least still in high school when it began... a few months later I would be in the same boat and like him still without status today. The judgement was that we were illegal immigrants or something, I'm not sure... I always thought of myself as a foreign national. The process went down like this... our immigration was rejected, at this point we were given a removal order. Two months into my last year of high school I had to go with my parents to the immigration office in Niagara Falls, they were waiting to receive, and process us. We were escorted over the bridge and handed off to the American border patrol. The removal order was placed on my two parents and me forcing us to leave the country by the date given, an additional exclusion order was put on my parents barring them from entry for 1 year. My brother was not included as he had been dropped from the family migration at this point, and was living in Michigan. my sister- the Canadian didn't have to go with us, there was no immigration hassle for her... I mean other than losing her family and having to move around from house to house to family friends like the kids from 'the series of unfortunate events' Now ask me anything so we can make a thread outta this.

I'm a male, 21 years old. Living in Sweden where I grew up with my mom and dad, older brother who is mentally and physically handicapped (dyskinetic cerebral palsy + mental disability I do not know the name for), and younger sister. At 13-14 I cut myself, and at 15 I started doing drugs. Things were all right as far as my earliest memories go, maybe that's because there aren't that many of them. The ones of my brother are happy and with parts of our extended family around helping out. My brother can not talk with words, he does not have that kind of control over his muscles. He does communicate though, like an infant. Crying when upset, making sounds to hint at something, blinking for yes and almost pronouncing a "no" when he means "no". As I grew past him I never realized the situation, my parents never talked about it. It was 100% normal until I started being away from my family and hanging out in friends houses without wheelchairs at around age 7-8. That's when I first noticed things were off in our family. I never had trouble with kids teasing me or him for it, but I would be scared having girls over when it came to that. My friends got to know who he was but they never got close. He was mostly in another room if we were playing in our house. They never/very rarely asked about him. If there was an option to play at someone elses house, I would fight for that. When my brother was around 14 years old and I was about 10, he started having problems with his hips and back. There were many surgeries and trips to hospitals in different cities for many years. We never talked about it. We went there, said comforting things to my brother like "it's going to be better soon" "you can go home soon" etc. He understands these things to an extent... After 10 minutes he'll be asking "when can I go home?". Very annoying for parents who does not want to talk about anything. My parents never asked me or my sister about our experiences of any of this. My brother stopped eating around this time. My parents would mix "regular food" into a mush like the ones for babies because chewing was hard, but even this got too hard for my brother to eat. So naturally, my mother got mad. It escalates quickly and soon she is full on yelling at his face, he's crying and there me and my sister are sitting across the table, watching. So is dad. In these intense moments of action he's passive. My brother has gotten nutrition through gavage ever since (I'm not sure if that's the right word. Food through feeding tube in stomach to bypass the throat). Then he stopped sleeping. So now my mothers screaming would not end after dinner, it would carry on into most of the nights when I was around 13-19 years old, until I moved out. I asked my sister earlier today how the nights are now, she said "he still wakes up, but I guess mom is less mad". She would scream so loud, and so would he. "You have to sleep, don't you understand?! I'm tired of this, it's *enough*!". The worst thing she ever said was "if you don't shut up I'll throw you out of this window". That stuck with me, you could say. Then the next morning, she and dad is acting like nothing has happened, smiling and ready for the day. My brother was happy too, but he can't really help it. I thought I was going insane, I obviously couldn't process reality. There's lots more, but I guess that is enough. I've been to counseling for a few months, once every 2 weeks which is not enough for me I feel. I've told my parents all of this, how I feel they abused all of us. But they do not get it. Just today I told my mother that I do not want to come to the birthday dinner, because I'm afraid I will burst into tears. She replies with the usual "but I've said I'm sorry already! What do you want me to do? It's in the past... I can't go back in time, and change what is done! I'm sorry!". I've invited them to a meeting with my counsler in 2 weeks, looking forward to that. I work as a personal assistant for my brother, have done for 2 years. He didn't have anyone else at the "daycare" he went to after school. My parents report good times in school, and when he left at age 19 for something called "day center" (roughly translated) he was miserable. He cried every morning, he did not want to go. He would cry until he puked. Right, I forgot to mention he would average vomiting something like 2-3 times a day for the later half of his life. I have a lot of gross memories of him and vomit running down his chest, me and my sister panicking yelling for mom or dad to help... He's 26 now and I believe it's getting better on that aspect. To be honest I think it's my communication with him that has made this improvment (among other things, like going out for wheelchair dances and hanging out at a café for handicapped people). He is always looking forward to going there with me, he has lots of friends who want to be with him, I help him communicate through translating his body language to others, and he has only puked 3-4 times during my 2 years working with him. I have to start the day with going home to him, and he still lives with my parents. Then we take a taxi to the Day Center, when the day is done we take a taxi back and my parents take over the role of "personal assistant". This makes me very sad. I don't want them to take care of him, and I don't want to meet them every day. I don't know why I made this post. I originally called it "feeling guilt over not going to dads birthday dinner" but it turned out a lot bigger than that. Don't think I have a question for anyone to answer, I just wanted to express how I feel and maybe have someone listen.

Joy (2015). Jennifer Lawrence, Robert De Niro, Bradley Cooper. I saw this movie recently. It is good. There are fantastic philosophical topics raised but not addressed. If you have someone in your life with whom you discuss (or would like to introduce to) RTR, peaceful parenting, ethics, feminism, or capitalism watch it together. Joy provides a firm context for conversation, but because it is a fictional setting it provides a safe context for talking about principles. The editing is a great melange of styles with the story context the only guide. The person I saw the film with didn't notice this, you might not either. For me it doesn't detract it adds greatly. I won't go into it more. The story is about Joy and her family. Joy is inventive and brilliant, brave, and highly productive woman in her mid thirties. She is surrounded by what initially appear to be eccentric extended family members all living under one roof in the late 1980's Pennsylvania. The film focus is on the invention, manufacture, marketing, and security of a labor saving device invented by Joy. It is very loosely based on the life of Joy Mangano. Despite a few misplaced and confused metaphors the movie is quite good and well worth your time and money. Beyond this paragraph I will be writing about a few specifics of the movie. Spoilers. The opening is all about establishing Joy and the extended family she permits around her. It opens with a scene from a fictional soap opera, a thematic element that will be used throughout Act 1 and 2. Danica says to Clarinda, "When someone sees a weakness in me I turn that weakness into a strength." This one minute scene is a summary of the entire movie. Clarinda is an analogue for Joy, Danica for Jackie, Ridge as her ex-husband Tony, Bartholomew for the yet unrevealed villain, yet who resembles Joy's father (more on that later). Throughout this movie the gun is used as a blunt obviation for assertiveness and determination. I really wish they'd deleted all the firearm scenes due to superfluity. Also not needed is the young Joy stating "this is my special power, that I don't need a prince" while the camera stays on an origami bird. This, despite clearly stating seconds before that her value was based on "the things that she make". Since this theme only returns in the final minutes of the movie and only by inference (the origami bird is again shown in context) it is a forgivable nod to Feminists. That Joy's family is dysfunctional is clear. What isn't is for how long. Joy is the candle, whose light is concealed by the bushel of her family oppressive needs. Or as put forth in the exposition of the gift of the cicada book by Jackie to Joy's daughter: a cicada nymph who has been living underground for 17 years and is about to emerge in noisy cacophony. Joy becomes irrationally upset and angry because of the book. Again unstated is for how long Jackie had been trying to rekindle the spark of Joy's drive. How many conversations met by equivocations, gifts not understood. It is possible Jackie had almost given up on Joy and was working to enrich the daughter instead. Jackie is a philosophical preparer, an assistant. She isn't a primary. She lacks the ability, but recognizes, appreciates, and craves the ability of others. Unlike the members of Joy's family she desperately wants Joy to succeed. It is unknown why Joy and Tony divorced after perhaps a decade of marriage. Likely the reason is Joy not consciously understanding the stressors she accepted by not living a lifestyle consistent with her philosophy. And Tony is rather one dimensional, but that dimension is virtue. Joy's mother and father are... evil. Her mother hobbles Joy with psychological powerlessness and projection of her fantasy and non-acknowledgement of reality. Her father is a serial monogamist who secretly hates Joy. Triggered by the cicada book Joy emerges. Her noise is to inconvenience her family by asserting her values and needs. She makes prototype drawings of her invention. Her family can't or claim not to understand. The invention doesn't exist in the crude drawings it exists in the mind - and they haven't any. Instead of being able to procure investment from her family on the basis of the virtue of the idea she has to resort to a distasteful guilt trip. That being the language understood should say a lot. Her family doesn't understand virtue but does understand manipulation. From this moment she is in a fight to produce her product. At first it seems that her family is nominally helping her. In reality they are using it as a leash. Her fathers girlfriend, and her mostly nonsense four questions. But in the practical things all they do is hinder her and isolate her from those who are share her philosophical values. In the guise of helping her they just continue doing what they have been doing for the last two decades of her life. But now, she is indebted to them in money not just by way of an unjust morality of family loyalty. They want her to try - and fail. Her failure indicating the death of her virtue and her productiveness forever bridled to the reins of familial control. Her efforts and persistence alarm them and when she is devastated by the death of her beloved grandmother they pounce. In immediate and purposeful countermanding her they treat with Joy's business enemies and try to forge a deal that would both kill the business but also Joy's spirit. In the end, Joy wins. But does she? She never pays her treacherous family in the coin they deserve, instead letting them maintain as dead weight, hangers on, jealous of her productiveness and acuity, seeking ever her downfall. Thematically the movie treats them as the tempering required to forge the strength in Joy. But this is actually never the case. Their actions in fact annealed her consistently, making obvious things obscure. This ultimately is what saves them: she is weakened just enough that they may parasitically feed off her, secure that she will never cast them off. Thanks for reading.

I just wanted everyone to know that I have reached that moment where you look at all your hard work and finally find yourself feeling that it was all worth it instead of having to tell yourself it WILL be all worth it eventually. I was on the bus and I just started thinking about my family and how I have, for the most part, dealt with them, and how excited I am to start my new family with the most amazing man on this entire planet! We've been together for 5 years and we are completely committed, and have such a great, loving, honest, compassionate, and nurturing relationship. He is actually the one that introduced me to FDR. And let me tell you, we were going down such a dangerous path because we let our parents and our pasts speak through us and dictate our actions and irrational behavior. And don't get me wrong, it was really tough going there for a while. But we both confronted our pasts, no matter how painful and uncomfortable and we talked, and still do. We have taken so many steps to rid our lives of people who aren't virtuous and moral. That includes family, friends, and basically everyone. We pretty much only have each other. We will continue to work everyday to make our lives together, and our future children's lives, better. I know better is pretty vague, but if we have such a great relationship right now, and strive to "better" ourselves everyday, by the time our children get here, I'm going to be a wonderful mother, and he will be a wonderful father. I couldn't think of a better father, husband, or friend than him. Anyways, I know this was really mushy and all that, but I just had to express how happy I am right now and how excited I am for the future.

This appalling article came across my FB feed. The tin foil hat side of me thinks "trial balloon." Any way you cut it though, god damn.... Welcome back Plato. Please read and share your thoughts: http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/philosopherszone/new-family-values/6437058

So I'm currently trying to DeFOO but I'm not sure how to go about it. I remember Stefan mentioning a few times that talking to your parents about your childhood is very helpful but to be honest, I couldn't be bothered. I've been seeing a therapist for over a year and we're discussing the options of either writing a letter to them or confronting them in person. Let me give you some background to better understand my situation. I'll try to keep it short: I have an ACE score of 7. I've never been close to my parents and they've never taken any interest in me, the youngest, or my 3 other brothers. We've never, ever had a meaningful conversation as far as I know - it's only ever superficial like "how's work?" or "how's the weather?". I think I've been depressed most of my life. School was hell with being bullied about my weight, feeling like an alien and my mother managed to make things worse. In my teens I was self-harming, almost committed suicide, became a truant and eventually moved out at 17 when I graduated from the shit pit that was high school. I was really messed up at 17 but getting away from home was probably the smartest thing I've ever done. My childhood: I have a lot of memories of violence in my family. My two eldest brothers are around 10 years my senior and I have memories of my father beating the shit out of them and choking them against the wall while my mother screamed and threw plates. With the rest of my siblings, I was spanked and hit on a regular basis; anything from once a week to once a month. Until I was 17 I suppressed the memories of being sexually abused at around 5 or 6 by my second eldest brother (Let's call him Dave). Only recently I started remembering more details of sadistic behaviour from Dave, such as pinning me to the ground and spitting in my face while I screamed, or he would pick me up by the ankles and purposely swing me around close to the wall of our house outside, making me believe he was trying to smash my face in, or even kill me. My parents blamed me for his behaviour by saying shit like "you shouldn't be playing with him then". As for the sexual abuse, my parents knew about it. I have a memory where my mother walked in on Dave manipulating me to touch him inappropriately and she didn't do anything about it. Instead she pretended nothing was wrong and even thought that leaving me in Dave's care ALONE was an okay thing to do. Recently I realised that I started piling on weight and started a very long war with eating disorders after the sexual abuse. In my teens my mother saw the scars on my arm from self-harming and instead of talking to me or getting me help, she pointed an accusatory finger at me and, of course, I would completely shut down and lock myself in my room. If she heard me crying in my room, she would get angry. I spent the next 10 years moving further and further away. My parents live in the arse-crack of nowhere in south-west Ireland and I ended up moving to the Netherlands 4 and a half years ago. I spent the past 10 years feeling guilty about not seeing my family enough and spent a lot of money on travelling back and forth. Not once have my parents bothered to visit me, and they never had a mortgage and don't have any debt as far as I know. I have thought about confronting them in person but at this point I don't see why I should spend so much time and money and resources on people who never loved me and never protected me. I know for sure that I will never get a satisfying answer and I will never be able to repair this relationship. Am I justified in just writing them just a letter telling them that I never want contact again? The idea of confronting them physically is terrifying so I sometimes wonder if I am just chickening out or not? I've thought about calling into the show but I feel like I'm all over the place and I would just be wasting Stefan and Mike's time. Thanks in advance and sorry for the lack of structure in my post. I'm having a hard time putting my thoughts and feelings together.

Part 1: A Comparison of Common Objections https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkfg0L-bEgU&feature=youtu.be Illusions of the State Voters have a choice If you don't like this country you can leave it or go live in the woods Government is the price you pay to live in a civilized society Has anarchy ever worked? Problem of the commons But there would be crime everywhere Is this because you're angry at your family? Myths of the Family Parents didn't have a choice Parents can't move or change jobs to protect their kid Don't you dare tell me how to raise my kid! Stop focusing on all the bad stuff and ignoring the good stuff They fed you and gave you shelter, didn't they? So you think that everything is abuse, huh? Stop psychoanalyzing me!

Hi there! I am an unschooling mama to a bright, creative, and ENERGETIC (almost) four year-old. So... that's how I spend most of my time. But in my 'downtime' (like when I'm nursing her to sleep) I listen to a lot of podcasts, watch Youtube videos, and am always learning something new. I am an intactivist, breastfeeding, birth, and children's advocate, as well as being very outspoken about our corrupt school system. We are very health-conscious, love riding our bikes, hiking, enjoying the sun and water, and exploring together. Even though I have lived in/around Seattle for most of my life, I am very affected by the rain, clouds, and general dreariness. Stefan Molyneux didn't show up on my radar until I watched a video of his on circumcision which I shared around on facebook (when I was on there) and then later shared one on spanking. Some of my husband's coworkers listen to the show and recommended them to me. So for the last month I have been listening as much as I can. My husband and I (and his coworkers) have been sharing episodes back and forth. (And a few times my husband and I have been able to listen to the show together.) The shows offer a lot of challenging information that I am happy to soak up... and process. The topics brought up in the shows have springboarded us into a lot of new conversations, or have revisited old ones. While I am interested in anarchy (just listened to one of Stefan's books), general philosophy, and other political issues, it's the parenting, feminist, and personal development issues that have really resonated with me. For example, my husband and I became pregnant out of wedlock (stupid, I know!) and decided to move in together, get married quickly, and figure out how to make it all work. We did not have enough money to live on with just his income so I took a part-time job where I figured I could leave my little girl with my friends (no family available nearby) and go to work at six weeks post-partum. What I hadn't planned on was the needs of my child. She's extremely 'spirited' (high needs), would not take pumped milk, nor was she comforted by anyone but me. So I started taking her to work with me - which was only a little less miserable, but at least we were together. I totally agree with Stefan when he says that you can make it work for one parent to be with the child/ren - it does take a lot of sacrifices, but it is possible. Anyway, the job only lasted one year and by that time my husband (began to take his career more seriously and) received a raise almost equal to what I was contributing with my job. And to make a long story short, he would not be where he is today in his career if we had both been working full-time jobs. Even though we were home-birthing and everything, we didn't know about 'attachment parenting,' 'peaceful parenting,' or anything like that until after she was born. I am just so thankful we did come across these ideas so we could become sensitive and respond appropriately to our little one's needs. Something that struck me last year was that even within the intactivist movement - where we'd shout about how awful genital mutilation is all day long - there seemed to be a split whenever anyone spoke out about other harmful acts against children like spanking, cry-it-out, or the school system. So as I have been listening, I am impressed with is Stefan's consistency. OK I don't want to go overboard sharing, but wanted to share enough for you all to get an idea of who I am and if we have something in common or you'd like to share new information with me, that'd be awesome Also, go easy on me, like I said, I am a new listener, eager to learn more, and feel like I'm doing a lot of catching-up with ideas, philosophies, and terms you all use frequently.

What We Lose, and Gain, When a Family Separates Imagine that... DeFOOing is proper. As a person that did my best to DeFoo many years ago, prior to knowing what it was, I've been offended by those that believe that no matter what you stick with your family.

Hello FDR, First time poster here. I was debating with a friend recently about the definition of a family and I came up with the following because I don't believe in the typical definitions or even most anthropological definitions. I couldn't really find a good one in my brief online search, so I made one. It's kind of long, but please let me know your thoughts/ suggestions. Thanks in advance! "A family is a group of individuals who a) voluntarily collect, share and consume a pool of resources to fulfill the physiological and future needs of the group b) are together because they share similar values, mainly trust and honesty, and c) fulfill each others emotional needs." The need for a new definition was necessary because my friend was conflating the "family" with the "tribe".

This thread is for information regarding a presentation on "The Fall of Germany - Coming Catastrophes in the German Economy". Please feel free to post interesting facts/statistics (preferably in bullet form) with links to the source material below. Michael asked me if I would like to put the presentation together, and I am happy to do so. Michael: “Basically, it's just a massive overview of the entire economic and social landscape of the various countries, the positives, the negatives and a future forecast based on current trends. Germany is our 5th biggest market, and we've already done videos on the top four markets.”

Hi there, I'd like to get some of your feedback on a pressing matter, I have been procrastinating about calling my brother after completely terminating my communication with our parents. I want to extend an invitation to talk if he would like, about why I will not converse with our parents any longer and what effects their parenting has had on me. I want to share this with him because he is a new father, and I fear he will unknowingly pass our parents abuse and neglect on to his daughter. He knows our father is abusive but he would not call it that, but our mother is completely off the hook and works hard to maintain her ignorance. We have talked about my recent experience finding myself, taking the time to think about our past and the strong emotions that I unearthed, but he maintains it's not worth thinking about and I can predict will become more deflective if I get off the topic of myself. From what I have worked hard to understand, and using my own personality as indicator, my mother was neglectful and apathetic to me. She has an almost complete lack of empathy towards me and is passive aggressive and manipulative which I was able to observe when I tried to re-connect with her several times over the phone (I live on the other side of the country) and put my self in a very vulnerable state. The conversations each were subject to her denial, minimizing, criticising, demanding forgiveness, disowning any responsibility and then aggression in text messages followed by complete disrespect towards me and a simple request to stop texting me and to call me instead. I was expected to move on and go back to the "way it was before." I now believe she was a functioning alcoholic as I remember most evenings there would be a wineglass in her hand. I have no memories of her companionship when I was a small child, although I know she was around the home. I can remember feeling alone for a very long time, and empty rooms... It was painful writing this line and I am continuing to process everything with a councillor. Our dad sucks. I'm sure his parents were terrible as my mother will state and he will admit that his abusive parenting is all he knows. He is very sadistic in that he creates dependent victims which he can abuse. I am just seeing it wholly as I read more into psychology and unravel my history but I get that he feels impotent and seeks power over others. Verbal abuse is commonplace with him ever since my brother and I grew larger than him in our mid teens even though we were skinny as twigs. He is quite short, thank god for that. He claims he sacrificed his whole life for us. I've once herd him speak of how much he despises us to an absolute stranger when he thought no one else would hear. Thats a basic profile of the negative aspects of my parents....but onto what I would like to hear your feedback on, My brother is 27. He lives across the country. His to be wife just had a baby girl in November of 2014. He is completely enmeshed in my father's business and is dependent on my father now for his livelihood. My father put the money down for the house my brother bought. My brother works for my father managing a fast food restaurant. My brother's to be wife I can't say I know much about, avoids eye contact with me. My brother experiences tremendous migraines that render him immobile from time to time. I am not aware of how frequent they are now but he does refer to them as still being present. He had a brain scan several years ago and it was diagnosed as not a physical ailment. I am implying that he has experienced similar trauma growing up from our parents and is unwise to it like I was. I think my relationship with my brother is worth salvaging or at least attempting to salvage but I could not handle this knowledge under the circumstance he is in. I cannot pretend there isn't a high risk he will continue the cycle of abuse if he remains unaware. I am torn because this sounds like the attempted rescue which can't be done. Any serious conversations we have about family are met with deflection or topic changes. I am finding it hard to act on this presumption that a child I have never met can have a better life because I do something or share something with her parents. I think it's worth trying so but I don't want to miscalculate my intent. I want my brother to be happy and experience the joy raising his daughter can provide. I think there is another way to approach this other than what I am hesitant to do, which is to just tell him to let me know if he wants to talk about it, because I think he already told me he doesn't. But I think that is all I can do. I would appreciate hearing what you think on the matter.

Hi everyone, This is my first post. I am in something of a quandary. A month ago I reconnected with a cousin of mine, after eight years of no contact. He turns 18 this year, I am 27. I had nagging guilt about not being more in touch with him over the years. When he was younger he would come stay at my house, but when he was around 10 this stopped. I didn't ask myself why this was, and I feel shame about giving up contact so easily, now looking back. If I can keep this as short as possible, here are the facts: When I finally did reach out, he was in the midst of massive depression. We spoke on the phone for a couple of hours, two days in a row. He told me he had been depressed for a long time, miserable at home, awful relationship with his mom and dad. And he seemed totally lost. He told me he wanted to get help, which he got a few days later. He put his foot down at home and said he needed professional help. So he was voluntarily committed to a psychiatric hospital, for two weeks, where he was treated for depression. I had time to meet him and talk to him, and got a lot of information on what had gone on with him for the past eight years, and what was troubling him at home. Now, this is the thrust of what I'm trying to figure out: I am related to my cousin through his father, they haven't seen each other since my cousin was five. So he grew up with his mom and his stepfather. From what I've gathered, his mom has been grinding his feelings and emotions into dust, and lying to him about why he doesn't get to see his father. I have heard information about why they stopped seeing each other, I believe he deserves to know that information, but I don't know if I should be the one to tell him. His father, my uncle, has expressed wishes of getting back in touch - if he is willing. Does anyone have experience with these sort of delicate matters. How do I get my cousin the information that he deserves to know? Help, please.

Let me start by saying that I am 21 and my brother is only 17 years old. He has been in and out of local police stations for the past two years and just got out of a juvenile detention center that practiced military style "teaching" as it was also a place where kids could finish high school courses if they dropped out of school prior to being thrown in there. It makes me sick every time I think about him being in there. My brother, Anthony, was always the shy quiet kid that would only say something when he felt he really needed to add something to the conversation. He was incredibly bright, he still is in my opinion, and funny as well which really made our childhoods a tiny bit more bearable. In my modest opinion, Anthony and I are very similar in that we have perfected the "humor to get out of uncomfortable situations" type thing that I know a lot of people also experience, so we have always had our humor to comfort us and find us a lot of friends. And for a long time us joking around with each other was the only thing we had and the only way that we could bond. We were never really "close" but we would try to find tiny moments to be comforted by each other. Feel free to ask any questions about that if you want. More to the point, a couple years ago he kind of lost it. He started failing all of his classes (not that I care much for public school), he began to act very much like our dad, he stopped caring about virtually everything, and he started smoking pot. Like constantly. The worst part about it for me was that I could see him slowly becoming my dad in the way he would just stare blankly at you when you tried to talk to him about serious things, the way he would just completely give up any sense of empathy, or the worst of all was the way he would talk down to, scream at, threaten and totally degrade my mother to the point where I was the only person she could actually talk to. And boy did she talk to me.... I mean for hours at a time sometimes she would just get on these rants about how dad is horrible or how Anthony is going down the "wrong path" or how her boss at work is incompetent and makes her life miserable. And I would be stuck there not being able to leave or tell her that I really don't have the emotional capacity to hold all of my crap let alone with all her crap. Anyway, off the tangent now please. So the whole pot smoking phase didn't alarm me as much as it did with my mom of course, because to her it was only about my brother breaking the law, but with me I knew why he was doing it and that was when I really tried to connect with him more so he could have someone to talk to. I know it was kind of late for me to do that, but I will admit this right up front, I was not the best sister to him. I never did anything bad to him, but I do feel like I should have been there more for him emotionally and physically. But you have to understand, everything in my brain was constantly telling me to find ways to get out of the house and away from the craziness by sleeping over at friend's houses or finding things to do at school or I even took church activities over my family. Yep that's right, we were raised Christian, imagine that. As if that didn't help my brother's insane childhood. He got into some pretty deep shit putting it mildly. He was constantly breaking parole and always going out getting stoned and coming home smelling like alcohol or wandering the streets with his friends. I got pretty worried about him when I began to notice it was escalating to the point where he was being picked up my cops or having to do summer school. Finally it came to him breaking into his high school with his friends and stealing food from the concession stands and smoking in the cafeteria. He was thrown into the detention center and I couldn't see him for close to 8 months... My brother. I wasn't allowed to see my own brother for 8 months. Now my parents were able to see him, but not me. He got out this past month and I was finally able to take off from work to go back down to my home town and see him. I brought games because games always made us happier and because he couldn't leave the house. He still had his ankle bracelet on so he was confined. And when I called him about one week prior, he sounded really excited to see me. He said, "I don't care what we do, I just want to hang with you. We could just stare at the stars for all I care, just as long as you come down". I remember that because it made me feel so happy and hopeful about forming an actual sibling relationship with him at some point down the road. So I get all excited driving down there because my mom just called me and told me Anthony keeps asking about when I was coming down. Of course when she told me he'd been up since like 6 am(that's what time his officers woke him up every day, so he just naturally wakes up that early and I didn't think about that) and has been waiting for me to get there for so long it made me feel like I failed him yet again and wasn't a good sister to him. It was around noon when my mom called and if I had thought about him waking up so early, I would have gotten there by like 9 or so. So the second I open the door he is sitting on the couch and I say hi and smile and all that and he gave me a slight grin of sorts; nothing that says he was truly happy to see me. I was a little hurt by his lack of enthusiasm but I figured he was a little upset by how late I got there. So I walked over to him and sat down on the couch next to him and tried to talk to him but he couldn't take his eyes away from his phone long enough to give me an actual greeting. He continued with this cold and indifferent sentiment virtually the entire time I was there. I asked him if he wanted to play a game with me and he said no. So I asked him if he wanted to go outside and he said no. He turned down every single one of my ideas. Finally when I asked him if he had any ideas, he sounded really annoyed and told me that there's nothing to do in the house. He sounded depressed. I was pretty understandable about his emotional state. What he was doing and how he was treating me was extremely hurtful since that's exactly the way my dad used to treat me, like he'd rather just not have me there or something. So I asked my mom if she wanted to play, hoping that if Anthony saw us playing and having a good time, he'd loosen up a bit and come join us. And there was a moment when he leaned off the couch to get a better look and his expression lightened so I asked him if he'd like to join since the game is better played with three people instead of two but he immediately leaned back in his seat and said no. Then my mom caught the disappointment on my face and asked him why I even came down if he wasn't going to interact with me. And that I came down just to see and spend time with him. Then his reply was "I don't know why she came down, she should just go home I guess." It pretty much killed me. I cried all the way home and had a very emotional conversation with my boyfriend about it as well. I was hoping for some advice on how to handle this complex "relationship", if you can call it that. I am going down to my house again in a week and I honestly don't know if I should just keep plugging away at improving our relationship or if I should just let it be for now. If anyone has a similar situation that could help me figure things out it would be most helpful. Thank you for reading all of this. It is very personal and I appreciate you taking the time to listen to me.

Hi there! In the podcast 'Paid to Not Masturbate - Sunday Call In Show December 15th, 2013' Stefan said that such thing as a contract is needed when there is no trust between parties. And if there is trust in people's relationship, contract is not necessary. I totally agree with that. Indeed, I do not have a contract with my English teacher, for example. I know him very well, I want to study English and therefore I do not miss the lessons and pay for them on time. He also knows me, loves teaching and shows up at work every day. The contract is redundant. This led me to think about marriage, since it is a social contract where two people promise to be together, love each other, etc. Let's assume that we live in a stateless atheistic society. Would we still have marriage? Obviously, romantic relationships are the strongest and most important relationships in our life. If the less important relationship between a student and a teacher does not need a contract, why would a couple need it? What would change when I get married? I will be able to call my girlfriend my wife, she will have my last name and… that's probably it. Is the purpose of marriage to only change names and make the family tree easier to follow? What do you think? Am I missing something? I'd appreciate your thoughts.

I posted Steph's video about Robin Williams and my cousin posted a "::jerking off::" motion in my comments. I feel so angry that being Anarcho-Capitalist means friends and family refuse to debate and would rather attack my character than discuss or defend the opposite positions. The implications mean I lose more and more of my old circle but then I realize I never had friends to begin with and I feel sadness and anger that I had ever had loyalty to people when they end up just having a lack of compassion like my mother is with me. I have anxiety because during the holidays I will see my cousin and I don't want to see my family now.

My newest video; an example of a narcissistic father and a narcissistic person in general: http://vimeo.com/selfarcheology/father

I asked my mother today why she wears makeup, mainly to see what she would say. Her and my grandmother both said they wear it to feel good about themselves. So I proposed a scenario where they're the only people in the world and they held their position and said they would still put on the make up. I pointed that this is illogical because make up is used to make yourself more attractive and with no one to appreciate it there's no point in putting it on. At which point my grandma snaps in at my moms rescue with some bullshit about how we each have our separate opinions. About a month ago I had a similar conversation with an attractive tattooed girl who also claims that if she were the only person alive she would still get tattoos (provided of course there is some magic machine that can do the tattooing). This is also illogical I think, tattooing is painful and tedious, so with no one but herself to appreciate the art you may as well put it on a piece of paper instead of your body, right? In both conversations I was easily frustrated because I thought they were lying to avoid admitting they do things to get attention. But now I think they honestly believed what they said. I still don't buy it but I am not a girl and I don't use makeup. Why is it so hard for most women to admit their real reasons and motives? Is there anyone who can confirm what I'm saying?