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Hello FDR Community, I discovered FDR around 6 months ago and have listened to 200+ shows so far. I found that I agreed with many of the topics covered and learned about many things I had never considered before. I never realized how profoundly early childhood experiences effect adult personality traits and mental wellbeing, this caused me to think about my own situation and examine my personal history. I've had pretty severe social anxiety and depression for the last few years and have always had a hard time expressing myself emotionally. I'm beginning to realize that I grew up in an emotionally negligent environment and have finally started therapy thanks to the knowledge I received from the podcast. Due to the level of social anxiety/depression I am experiencing, I currently have no social support network so I thought I'd try making some friends in the FDR community. I've been lurking on the forums for the past few months but haven't posted till now. I'm looking forward to meeting other like minded individuals and furthering my understanding of self knowledge and philosophy and how to apply it in my life.

Well it's four in the morning and I'm functioning at half capacity like most research drones. You know, that half minded, can't even multitask anymore, drone-like state.Anyways, hello humanity. :3 Er- right. A little about the how to the why. I come from your typical lower-class american background. A soul without a container before Philosophy, FDR, and Mr. Molyneux. I've always had a craving for knowledge and perspective. I've even dabbled in abstract psychology.I'm just your average earthling, made of star dust like everyone else.

Hi, everyone, so I finally decided to participate in this great community and the greatest and most important philosophy discussion in the world, I hope that I find people here for a good exchange of ideas and value in all its forms possible, but first of course I'll let you all know who I am and my story up 'till here,first I'll give a general overview of who I am and what I do, and in the next parts I'll get into more details about myself and my personal history if anyone is interested General Bio: My name really is Rock (my father was a big fan of boxing fighter Rocky Marciano), I'm from Brazil (so sorry for any english mistakes) and I'm an ilustrator graduated in the State Arts College of here/ UFRGS ( wich means I've wasted 5 years of tax payer money for not much, because State college here is "free") I'm 28 years old I've worked in a brazilian animation movie production, (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pe-05WZSLl4 ) I've also made ilustrations for sketch cards for Marvel Comics, http://rocksilesbarcellos.deviantart.com/gallery/29249859 Lately I have been doing freelance work like illustrations for ads or other purposes, Im also a musician, and play in a rocknroll band, we do shows sometimes http://www.sintomaticos.com/ More recently I've started working in a company that helps public sector workers with laws and other things, they also give on line and regular classes to help with these things, I basically take care of any visual stuff they need,like ads, videos etc. I have been watching the freedomainradio show since about 2010 I think, my first one was the sunset of the State,but then I didn't got into the channel yet, I've subscribed after watching Stefan's debate with the zeitgeist guy he did in 2008, then I really got into it. And I must say it really made a tremendous diference in my life since then, only there I was first presented to free markets ideas, libertarianism, and of course the idea of a stateless society, but more importantly, after years watching the show I've finally got into self knowledge. I've started looking at myself, my life and my relations with my parents and therefore with others in general, and I've realized many, many things about it all, and that gave me what I hope to be a good guidance reference to make my decisions in life from now on my main source of income right now actually comes from my mother, unfortunately, I'm still living with her, and she's a retired accountant public sector worker with high paying retirement salary So basically, I’m in a moraly terrible situation, even though in theory I’m all for a stateless society and free markets and understand the fundamental immorality of the state, I am currently and have been most of my life almost completely dependent on it. But I'm looking forward to change that, the first step I took was to come out of my inercia that I had been and got any job that I was able to get after years not working, unfortunately it is still something related to the state as I mentioned before, coming here is another step I'm taking, I hope I can meet people and start something perhaps I hope promising and lucrative, I think now with bitcoin there's a bunch oportunities coming out thanks and I'm really glad to be here ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- My current situation and issues I’m 28 years old and I’m still living in my mom’s house, like I've mentioned before, it’s a long story on why that is (I’ll give details in the next segment) but after watching FDR, I started looking more seriously about my situation and why I am where I am,and the role my parents had on it. I’ll try to sum up here, my mom is now a retired high office public sector worker, she worked with accounting of the governments budget and spending, and now have a high paying retirement salary, and that’s basically why I have quite a comfortable life living with her, financially I mean... Very early in my life I got into kindergarten from when I was about 4 years old till when I was 6, my mom worked all day and my father too, I never felt I had a really deep relationship with either one of them, my mom always and to this day basically treat me not really like an individual but almost as if I was her own organ like a part of her own body, and I always felt not listen to in my preferences and about who I really was, she was always very affectionate and I liked that about her, but she always had this necessity of pushing her preferences on me and I hated that a lot, she always seemed to have the need to diminish my own personal taste and preferences(still do to this day), and also my own solutions to any problem that I would be trying to solve as a kid, and basically most of the times she would just solve it for me, she always was and is absurdly super protective, and that’s probably one of the main reasons I am now so dependenton her. A lot of times I would come up with a valid solution for some problem, either a purely logical one or maybe something like helping in the house kind of thing, but she basically didn’t paid attention or recognize, even when a lot of times I was right and she was wrong, she still wouldn’t recognize it, or even if she did, she would still wouldn’t give me credit, it was absolutely frustrating, so for me these kinds of things it was a real struggle, and no matter what happend I always felt like I lost either way, and the times I’d try to get angry and insist on my point she’d just ridicule me and even laugh. I think my mother is that way basically because her mother was harsh on her, but she blocaded that, and got very close to her father, who died of a heart attack in front of her when she was about 9 years old, she said she was very close to him and learned a lot by observing him deal with people, so when he died I think she sort of took his role for herself in some way, and that’s why she has a very strong will, and a very strong personality, and that’s why I think between my mom and my father, she was more dominant in the relation than my father, she was “the man of the house” morally, she had higher income than my father. My father was a chief of police department, and suffered from depression from early age, his mother was a very lousy mother, she would say in front of the kids that she hated having kids. My father was emotionally absent, he was very sensitive, but with a very closed type of personality, also he was quite aggressive, and screamed when I did something wrong, he screamed with my mom too a lot of times when they argued, he would do it sometimes to strangers too, like waiters or people like that. I resented him for these things I didn’t thought it was in any way necessary at all, so between both, I was closer to my mother. I didn’t played much with my father, we did a little bit when I was very little, but after that we got more distant, he taught me a bit of english though, and he knew a lot about history, and had a good baggage on general knowledge, I liked that about him, but still, our relationship was really poor as father and son. So I think, because of the dominant role my mom developed as a person and also in the relationship with my father, she simply was not able to be an adequate mother, she diminished me, and made me extremely dependent on her, and so I’ve always had and still have problems asserting myself and my own will in general. And the more I Iook at it today the more I get the sense that the real reason my mother married my father and had a son, was really for her pride, my father was a good looking man, but very closed emotionally, and neurotic, and very weak emotionally. With that poor background on emotional and social development at home, I had tremendous problems dealing with people in general from an early age, my mom negotiated with me to a certain extent even though she was somewhat negligeable on that too, she spanked me a few times with no regularity and stoped very early on, so I was quite a peaceful kid, actually I was too peaceful, (probably for being used to my mom solving things for me too much perhaps), wich annoyed other kids and they would hit and bite me and steal things from me and I didn’t defend myself, and I remember to this day one time I was crying and called for a caretaker there to help and the woman basically told me to go away. It took me almost a whole year for me to finally do something, I’ve finally reacted at one kid agressing me. From this early experience I promised myself I would never be like those kids, I would never lash out, or attack or humiliate anyone for no good reason, I resented them too much to let myself to become like them in anyway. My experiences later in school, weren’t so dramatic, but socially wasn’t so much better, I had quite a big trouble trying to interact with people and make friends, most of the time I would get a negative response and I couldn’t understand why, that basically killed my social life forever, I just became paranoid, and have problems with it to this day, even though now I’m finally took the commitment to try to solve it at last,before that I mainly tried to understand what happened, and FDR finally hit the nail for me, all now is coming together, and I hope I can come out of these old issues, and finally have a real life. I’ve finally talked to my mom about these things I’ve layed out here that always bothered me and I just never felt it would help to say anything, I felt it would be pointless, she even did listen now, and she actually is making an effort to do better, I’ve also talked to her about the notion of a stateless society and why governments are immoral and can’t work, and considering that she is a retired public sector worker she was quite open minded to the idea to some degree, but of course she’s definetely not planning to drop her retirement salary, and she also wants me to get a public sector job, to have a more secure life like she did. And so one of the reasons I also came here besides getting to know people and exchange ideas, it is to find ways to get out of this situation I'm in And the way I thought about how to do that is seting up my own project, aiming to get bitcoins, and so I'm interested in finding partnership for that. it basically would be a philosphy website, or perhaps an youtube channel, with arts and videos laying out a different perspective in all of the discussion about anarchy, and particularly the role of dealing with others in society and how does that relates to the state and why people felt the need to create it in the first place, I would like to explore that in an artistic narrative so people can really absorb the concept in different ways, if I can find someone interested here it would be awesome to join talents together and colaborate on something I’ll make some other post about this laying out the idea better in the appropriate section of the forum in the future More detailed personal history My mom came to Brazil from Bolivia in the 70's running away from a violent boyfriend, she made her life here as a high office public sector worker, as most people in higher classes in Brazil do to have a "safe life", my father was a chief of police, and was clinicaly deppressed, he told my mom once that he decided to kill himself when he was 18, but thought through and decided to live to see if maybe he could get better, he married my mom, she got pregnant but he didn't want to have children so he demanded her to make an abortion, so she aborted twice, in the third time she lied and carried out the pregnancy and so I was born in 3/8/1985, in 2005 my father after still living with depression decided to kill himself at last, which made my mom very desperate and got into a sort of state of denial, and very interestingly she also said she was "very angry with him", and she really did seemed more angry and frustrated than sad right after the fact, really Coming back to after I was born, my mom made written records of my development as a baby, in there it says that about the time I was already able to walk, when some stranger, or even a friend of hers tryed to come close to speak to me I would look down grab her legs and even through myself face to the floor to avoid it for some reason Growing up, I had problems socializing with people in general as long as I can remember, people around me seemed unnecessarily agressive and competitive for me, that really bothered me, because I couldn't understand what was the deal with that, also I thought everyone was so openly dishonest, I've developed quite a grudge about the process of socializing in general and anything that I associated with it and these early experiences, because to me it was pretty much tied with agression and intimidation, so I've became more of a loner and also quite a cynical person, sort of quiet and reserved kind of personality, in fact I think I can say I've became traumatized with my first years trying to socialize in any place at all, being kindengarten, school, or really anywhere, from my perspective and general feeling it felt like anything I would say or do would always get some form of negative response, either verbal abuse or just rejection, so because of that I've became very paranoid about being rejected, I developed a false self to go around and be accepted, also I've invented very strict rules that I’ve associated with my "success" in some situations. I remember when I was 5 years old I made myself a very strong promise to not ever act like those people were with me, to never lash out or be unnecessarily aggressive with people just because I felt like it without any reazonable justification, that became a formative stone in my personality, both for good and for bad. In my first years in schooI I just hated it so much, it was a expensive private school and children were agressive and competitive and seemed to want to humiliate me and put me down for no reason at all that I could figure, I've felt that from adults too, anywhere, anytime it seemed like that anything I would say atracted a negative response from other kids and even adults, while for me it was just reazonable questioning to others it seemed to be always inconvenient even if it was something that actually was relevant in the moment and even sometimes my point being proven to be correct or relevant people around me just didn't recognize it, that kind of thing also happend with relatives and also my own mother and father sometimes or any other adults so that pretty much made me grow to be very cynical and skeptical just about everything, and also made me extremely self conscious, paranoid and distant in social situations I can remember that only when I was about ten years old, when Ive changed into other less expensive private school that I've felt that I was able to successfully socialize, before that, I had only one or two real friends, but generally felt rejected or ignored, by either kids or adults. But when I was ten, having growing up watching a lot of TV and absorving a lot of stuff from there and also videogames, I was able to be funny, picking up from a lot of references,and also picked up knowledge for general conversations that before was pointless to try to engage, and that's how I socialized there, and for the first time I've felt I was able to make friends and also felt accepted, I was pretty happy, for a long time I've marked that year as the happiest of my life, I've became paranoid about not losing that, to not lose my status of "being accepted" and that's where problems started to grow for my personality development, for one year, I've felt everything was in place in a way I've never felt before, in the next year I began to worry to lose that, because I thought that at any moment my early ears could comeback somehow, or that if I got rejected there I would go back to my former situation as a friendless reject And so I've concentrated my energy in being funny, and began to get really worried if for some reason I'd made a bad joke that could get ridiculed, that was very important for me,so Ive became more and more someone that tryed to please others, and would get internal conflicts about breaking my own silly rules, deliberate things that I had marked as things I wouldn't do, like not talking in this or that situation, not to make a particular kind of joke, etc. My grades in school started to plumet, before that I did fine in grades. So because my grades were getting worse, my mom decided to put me in some other private school, going against my will, because I thought I wouldn't be able to adapt again, I was afraid of change. this new school I went to,reminded more of my early year's school, or at least I thought so. Starting classes there I found myself in a pretty big internal conflict, emotionally for me, being there was sort of like going back to my early stage entering school, so I grew this tremendous fear of being ridiculed, which made me take “safety” measures to not let that happened, I had the desire to make friends and to be the class clown, the funny guy like I was in my other school, but I just couldn’t deal with my fears, I couldn’t confront it, I’ve held the grudge and made myself not act in so many situations I knew I could do something funny or something relevant that would put me on the spot, I held back and kept myself out of attention as much as possible and avoided anything that I desired, I was 12 years old, and I was already interested in girls and all, I recognize that had to do with some social pressure too, because all the other did it quite easily it seemed but for me talking to girls was a pretty big issue, I’ve also experienced humiliation by them and things like that, and those early experiences made too traumatized to try again, I just thought it was impossible. I made a few friends there though, the outcast people you could say, we basically were more nerdy than the others, but I personally knew there was no necessity for a divide in class, but the divide happened anyway, but there was no fights or any direct conflict, but there was also no integration too. The whole situation was very stressive for me, I felt the desire to be a normal young person and make friends and get girls, but anything in that direction I just blocaded for fear of my early experiences, fear of getting to a point I no longer knew what to do or had a good frame of reference to guide myself on what to expect or how to act facing situations of conflict I’ve experienced before, I avoided situations I knew I actually could do something, always justifying myself something really bad could happened, even though I knew rationally not much could really happened, I had this strong desire and urge to understand what went wrong in the past, it really held me back, I wanted to understand it. I pretty much didn’t want to live, I wanted to understand, that of course was very stressive, because in the back of my head I got the sense that I was pretty much wasting my life, that I was throwing away my youth and all that romantic notion of those first early experiences with girls and all. All of that was when I was 12 years old, in that same year I’ve found in a medical exam that I had diabetes, I wasn’t obese or anything, and didn’t eat compulsively, I had a little bit of fat but nothing outside of normality. Strangely, when me and my family found about the diabetes, my mom seemed much more sad than me, she cried, I didn’t. So my years in school went on with that internal conflict, unresolved, I became a mixture of my two states I had been before: the rejected unpopular kid and the funny, popular one, neither of them fully in charge,I was the funny one with my circle of friends and some others, but completely shut for no real good reason in other situations, I think that represented in some way the situation I saw with adults and others that didn’t made sense for me. So I graduated in school and went to college, I got into Arts college because the only thing I could think of that I liked and knew how to do was drawing. So I went there carrying all these previous unresolved conflicts, but trying to present myself as a cool guy to be accepted even though I’d always remained skeptical about any true relationship with anyone, and also I would avoid anything I really desired, like excell in my artwork and stand out in the crowd, perhaps geting the girl I’d like to get, etc. But when I was 19, I just couldn’t bare anymore having not ever even touched a girl or anything, I was getting paranoid with the idea of maybe dying and not ever experiencing that, but I just couldn’t make myself to engage in talking to any girl in college, or anywhere at all, so I decided to lose my virginity with a prostitute. It was actually good, despite the whole situation being a bit sad After that, when I was 20, eventually at some party, with the help of my friends I was able to get a girl without paying. In that same year, also my father killed himself. In some other party in college I was able to get another girl, so in all 5 years of college I’ve managed to get at least one girl there, she was ok physically, sort of short and a bit overweight at the time, but she was a cool girl, and after sometime she started taking care of her looks and got really pretty,we went out just a few times and that was it. So I’ve graduated in college and pretty much didn’t know exactly what to do with my life, I was(and still am) living in my mothers house, I basically lived in a state of inercia, I didn’t have the drive to start or engage in anything meaningful, in fact, I kept myself avoiding anything in that sense, because I was hung in past issues, and I couldn’t move on, I’ve made courses in webdesigning, comics illustrations, got a few jobs like the one in animation studio and in a comic book studio, but sort of by luck and kindness of others, I still felt like I was in a state of failure to launch, but on purpose actually, since I wasn’t making any real effort to launch at all. So in the midst of all of my general state of confusion and lack of action in life in general, eventually I found out about the freedomain radio channel, and started following it. I’ve always liked to think critically and to rationalize about things, I also always liked science shows on tv, and science magazines, and so I was never afraid to face challenging ideas. After a few years watching and listening to the podcasts, I decided to do the right thing and started donating. Going back to the time after college, the next years I spent doing not much, a few free lance jobs and projects that didn’t went anywhere, did a webdesign course among other things, started playing in a rocknroll band. After all these things not developing into anything meaningfull, I decided to do something with my life. so having quite a lot of doubts I decided to start a grafic design college,and through there I got a job recently doing videos and folders in a company that offers assistance to public sector workers on dealing with the taxation of towns and helps writing laws. Lately also, I have been dating a girl at last, wich is very good. Watching FDR certainly had a big role in these improvements I’m making, so I’m really,really thankful for Stefan’s work, and I’m so sorry I can’t donate more, I’d like to, but unfortunately I really can’t for now. ---------------- thanks again for the attention and sorry for the long text