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Hi guys. I felt like this was the right thing to do because this could possibly help others going through the same thing. Some of you may be going through your history, and bad things may be popping up. Stuff that you'd rather forget that you did, or more honestly stuff you wish you could change/fix. I am dealing with a few things of my own, but I wanted to firstly apologize to anyone who may have read my post on JohnnyBoy's last topic a few months ago. In it I stated that "as long as you haven't done any un-restitutable harm, you can still have love". This was incredibly irresponsible of me. For someone going through a hard time, reading that and applying it to their specific situation (considering their potential lack of knowledge about this kind of stuff) may have sapped them of the drive to keep digging through their history to better understand and empathize with themselves at a younger age, or even stuff they did recently. This could have left those who saw it in a really dark place, and I don't wanna leave people in dark places. This isn't the rock-solid rule. You never know what connections you can make in therapy. You never know what insight you can hear that makes it all come into focus and makes everything clear. If you are dealing with this type of stuff, do not give up. The fact that you're here, that your true self is alive, that means something. Keep searching until you find that bit of information that makes it all understandable because your true self survived, and that is a fact that should not be over-looked. To quote/paraphrase Stefan in a podcast called Restitution and The Future: "You said we can't do anything about the past. And I don't think you understand what a thing that was to say to me, someone who has spent a lot of time focusing on the past. The truth is that there is something that we can do about the past. And that is to understand the truth about it." I hope this can help some of you or inspire others to keep pushing the bar in therapy. The answers are somewhere in your head and you owe it to yourself and your future to keep digging. IN ADDITION: If you could, could you send this post out to some of your friends on this board? I want to try to get this message out to as many people as possible. I can't do anything about those that may have seen it while browsing and not logged in (there's no way to tell how many people saw it) and that's something I have to deal with but I want as many people to see it as possible, so if you could boost the message I would greatly appreciate it.

Emotional labels and how they do harm. The Mary Problem. Very few people tried to solve the Mary problem, because I think they felt is was an artificial question or, that I was trying to prove a point about contextual ethics, and they didn't want to give any ground. I really didn't think the problem was all that hard, and it should be consistent with UPB, if you have a healthy understanding of ethics. But are biases always come back to haunt us don’t they? The reason I came up with the problem, was to see how members of the forum apply their understanding of ethics, and then work from their. What was suppose to be a starting point is looking more and more like an ending point. But I am getting ahead of myself. So here is what I would do as the social worker. “Mary I am glad you realize what you did is not healthy and you told me of your own free will, that is a very healthy response. So I will not violate your trust in me, yes, society views this as a serious crime, but most important we need to understand how John is dealing with it. I have a friend Nancy she is a private psychologist that works with this type of issue. What is in the past is in the past we can’t change that, the the only thing we can do is change what is in the future, that fact that you know you are on a bad path is what we need to be concern with. Laws are to protect and serve, and should never be used to punish for punishment’s sake, at least in my opinion. You are taking responsibility for your actions, and that’s what we need in society, Elinn needs you, and cares about you, and as far as I can tell you are doing a good job, in other aspects of your life, so lets build on what you are doing right, and fix what you're not doing right. Lets don’t let the tragedy in your life, prevent you and your son from leading healthy lives” You might say I am making an excuse for marry, but I am not, you might say that this story is statist propaganda, but how is that true, if that is true, I would turn her into the police causing devastating damage to Johns support network. So I would be punishing john, for what Mary did. In the case of surgery I do a momentary harm for a long lasting good. At least in theory, would that be true in this case? I don’t think so. This is Arkansas their family services blows chunks. You can only base an action on what you know, one thing I know is that I can not change the past, no matter how much I might want to. What does punishment accomplish? Ethics has nothing to do with punishing people, if your system of ethic requires it, then I would have to ask what god are you sacrificing too? Because the only effect of punishment that I am aware of is harm. A deterrent? that seems like a path to statism to me. The way I see it is you have two option kill, or Help. I am assuming killing is not a viable option right? So you have to help, and as such throwing Merry in Jail is not helping john. If you assume merry is evil, you are wrong, and no nothing about human psychology. Evil is to act for the sole purpose of doing harm, evil is when you enjoy the pain of others. When you want to see someone suffer, for something they did, that is where evil comes from. Don’t go there, it’s not a happy productive place. Nothing Good comes from punishment for punishment's sake. Thank you for those that tried to answer this question, I have no idea who understand my point, and why I believe it to be important starting point for talking about Ethics. Here is too new beginnings. Refer to for background: http://board.freedomainradio.com/topic/39735-how-flexible-are-your-ethics-and-how-flexible-should-they-be-moral-scenario-exercise/#entry363963

Something I feel strongly about, and I put it in my introduction post, is the idea the Ethics is context sensitive. To lie is a bad idea, but if you lie to protect someone it maybe the best idea. Actions are not moral, reasons are. The question of morality and ethics is why? We can ask who did what, we can ask where it happened, but if we don’t ask why, then we are not asking the moral question. “So in a chat Yesterday someone asked does it matter why your wife was raped? She want be unraped. “ Yes it matters, and, yes she maybe unraped” The difference between rape, and making love is context: A) A 30 year old woman have intercourse with a 13 year old boy is Rape by definition. What if they were in love? B) A 30 year old man is having intercourse with a 13 year old girl, is Rape by definition. But what if they were in love? If you are being honest with yourself most people feel differently about those to situations. Should we? Well that is a question of Harm. Rape is ultimately a question of harm, we can be harmed stepping off the sidewalk. Now we can sue the engineer for following specifications of how sidewalks should be constructed, or we can take responsibility for talking on are cell phone and not paying attention. “A wife that is having an affair and then claimed she was raped, when she ends up pregnant, is not a wife raped.” The rape of a woman is some culture is seen as a harm to a Husband or a Father, and the woman is held accountable for getting into the situation. Your first instinct maybe as is mine is that this is crazy, as crazy as it is, to ignore the context of culture could result in more harm. But saying you were raped and being raped can be a matter of semantics, it is also a matter of legal definition in the above cases. A person that is raped, may have no physical damaged to them, yet they may also be extremely emotionally traumatized. The worse thing we can do with rape is make it worse then it is. We make matters far worse when we assume that a 13 year old girl will be traumatized by her experience with an old man and vise a versa. Harm should never be assumed, and not doing more harm should be the response of a free society. If we value marriage their maybe harm in having too many premarital partners. However, if you don’t value the concept of monogamous marriage then it’s a different question. There is harm in allowing adults to have sex with children. However, Harm is contextual to values, and perceptions, and too often we try to project our values and perceptions onto children, causing them more harm. Projecting are emotions on children only causes emotional confusion. It is not a question of how you think they should feel it is only a question of how they feel.