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Usually the reason I pick up a book this days is to learn about subjects I'm personally interested in. My issue is that lots of times I finish a book and don't remember a lot about it. I have an idea of its basic structure and remember specific passages but even then if I go back and read the paragraphs I'll probably discover I missed some important aspect of the text. Unlike many, to me, reading in itself is not a pleasurable experience. I enjoy and love specific books, I like learning, but not the action itself. I'm trying to figure out if I can change some of my reading habits to improve my understanding. This are some ideas and the potential problems: Book Club: I think probably this one would work best for me. Read the book and then discuss it with people, the downside is I would have to read stuff others selected. Make a blog post about it?: This looks like a lot of work and I'm a terrible writer. Read about subjects that are on the news: I think this would help me relate the stuff people talk about with the things I read but that would limit a lot the books I can select. Reread specific chapters: I'm doing this and I think it helps, I try to go back and read chapters that for some reason pop in my mind, but I don't like rereading a lot. Do you have some advise? What do you do?

AAAAAND the topic didnt load prorperly! Using reply to psot my orignal post. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Hey everyone, i am here seeking therapy. I’ve been brought humbly down after making some seriously bad assumptions about my own mental clarity and also about how much i do need outside help from specifically therapist. Needless to say i was wrong and have paid the consequences as i struggle to gain employment and do what i finally love after procrastinating for so long. It’s very painful due to having not done such earlier, though i am 100% committed to accepting this pain. And fear too incidentally as I’ve found. This is me owning my inaction and inaction to acknowledge the painful truth of avoiding the humiliation and pain associated with getting job, earning your own money and success. [Currently working on and making 3d models public, studying CAD software, studying building (and construction) physics, researching copyright, contacting companies left right and center and networking]. What are your experiences with therapy and what are the best people/places to seek for? I don’t have lot of money atm, so can’t afford the highest askers, but i will not cheapshot this i can pay something and whatever i have that i can pay, i will. Thoughts? #IfyoudontlearnbyReason...

My newest video. In it, James Hetfield from "Metallica" talks about his painful childhood, his relationship with his abusive parents, and how it influenced his music. I included my comments and observations in a form of hard-burned closed captions. Apologies for poor audio quality. These were the best clips I could find, and sound filters didn't help improve it, either. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6XD1MPzF_A

Hey guys, I'm not sure I understand what's going on with me here so I'm curious what you all think is the issue. I work with a web development company as a senior developer. I've been here 3 or 4 years and my happiness level with it has had its ups and downs, but never the kind of down I've experienced yesterday. The lead up to this event was that I had my team lead, whom I had a good connection to, leave for another job. Not so long afterward a new developer was hired and then after some time was promoted to team lead over me. He is an experienced individual with more time under his belt than me so it made sense. However, my connection with the new lead wasn't as active as it was with my previous lead. Then I decided to take on a project with a longer timeline. This ended up kind of isolating me from the rest of the group including my team lead. I thought things were fine though because my team lead and I would have one on one's roughly once a month and the conversations were lively and positive. He seemed ok with my isolation in light of my longer project duration expectations. Then one day I had missed my second morning stand up in a row. This wasn't professional of me, I know. It was due in part because of my nose being so deep in the project I was working on. My team lead's manager then expressed his dissatisfaction with my lack of attendance which was warranted. I agreed and told him that I would not isolate myself so much with this project anymore, especially since it was coming to an end soon. He further pushed the conversation into his dissatisfaction with my performance in general. I know I haven't been producing as quickly as I had liked but I didn't think it was a huge issue. So, I told him I would address my performance more directly and apologized. That was the end of the conversation. So at this point I am trying to get things done at a more urgent rate and trying to listen for feedback so I can react to it more sensitively. Then the next day I get called into HR's office with my team lead and my manager. I was told I had a fork in the road and that if I wanted to make my managers happy that I had to address the points on this sheet of paper they handed me. Most of the items on the paper outlined what my manager brought up in the previous conversation. Some items were related to my team lead's dissatisfaction with how I was during meetings. These were a surprise since we had one on one's that were very positive as I mentioned before. I leave HR's office rather confused and when I got home, I started having pains in my gut that wouldn't go away. It was almost as if I wanted to cry but my body wouldn't let me. I tried just talking out my stress, playing a video game and eating a good dinner. Still, pain. I went to bed early and I basically fell asleep due to pain exhaustion. When I woke up, it came back. What's going on here? I have an empirical understanding of what's happening but my gut won't stop hurting. The pain is almost like how you would describe heartbreak but in the gut instead. I.e. it doesn't feel like a physical emergency. The only thing that seems to have addressed the pain is literally filling out this spreadsheet of the status of my work they're having me fill out twice a day. Is it related to my body's need to please authority? Any feedback appreciated. I'd like to make sense of this. Thank you

When we think about happiness, I think people imagine the feeling that pleasure brings you, the uplifted mood, the quenching of some hunger, the relief that comes from being giving to yourself instead of denying yourself what it wants. Happiness is what occurs after one is done realizing the enriching flow of satisfaction, happiness lingers and is always there, its there when you are thinking more clearly because you got up out of bed, and made time for yourself to get some exercise, it is there when you have friends who genuinely love you for who you are, and it is especially there when being courageous leaves you stinging in the gut afterwards. You realize in these moments that happiness is continuous, the brighter path that one takes everyday because they did what was good, not only for themselves but for their loved ones, the ones they respect now and the ones they may never meet in the future, it is the effect of virtue. Happiness is waking up loving the fact that you are alive, it is all around respect for existence, and it pays off when you look around and see the world, dark as it may be, with cold people sleeping on the steps off of the street and cold people in the buildings as they lurch over them and shrug their shoulders. I imagine they live with that guilt, that realization, deep within themselves, it must be there, that they are somehow not living a life well lived. Happiness is the little things, its having the love of your life respect you, its also showing them that the world is not so lonely and hostile. But pleasure on the other hand is what tears us apart, it reaches into us like a spectre and becomes us, it is the addiction to happiness without the cause, the nihilistic notion that nothing else matters so we will be content, living shortly, briefly but without pause to consider what exactly does short term gain actually get us. canker sores, and loneliness, and beatings that are too many times done by ourselves, by that with is perceived as good and wholesome, the sheep in sheep's clothing that leaves one feeling alone, and vain and self destructive. A little bit of a rambling, I began writing and just let it flow, avoiding distraction. maybe happiness is rambling, on and on about the things you love and avoiding the distractions that tell you it cannot be so and that it is not worth it. ~Feel free to tell me what you think about what I wrote. If anything doesn't make sense, if you would care to expand of some of the concepts that you think I am getting at in this little description. By all means, expand upon this, someone else write a story about pleasure and happiness, a poem, a picture, (Philosophical) Quotes, anything really. I am interested very much so in the importance that this distinction has in living a good life. Is pleasure always bad? are there different types of pleasure? share some stories about how you became happier, share one of the happiest moments of your life...

What are some example that might make one susceptible to enjoy pain or enduring pain. For males its a little more obvious we are thought to "man up" and not show emotions. Im more interested in examples that apply to both sexes. Thank you Ivan

Hello fellow freedom lovers, It seems like an eternity since I was last on this site. I don't know what the 'topic' really is for what I want to say, but I would like to share my recent experiences with some relatively like minded people. The world can be a lonely place for an anarchist. So, in October I got married. I am super happy about my relationship with my wife. She is the best. And she herself is not the problem. The problem is that I committed the cardinal sin of marrying a rival gang member. You see, my wife is American, and I am Scottish. Not the original West Side Story, but you get the idea. To cut a long story short, the visa process in the UK is now extremely convoluted, expensive, and deliberately confusing. After months of reading the forums, reading the small print reading the forms, we started to make our application. Then as far as I can tell, the UK Border Agency changed a few details and forms. So we made our application online for a marriage visa. This would allow my wife to come and stay in the UK for 6 months so that we could be married, and then once she was here we would apply for her temporary residence status for 2 years. In theory that would allow her to live and work in the UK as my spouse. So this was always known as a 'fiancee' visa. It is now known as a marriage Visa. We didn't know that there are two types of Marriage Visa. They are stamped as 'Marriage', or 'Marriage-Visitor'. So we filled out the paperwork, made our appointments, paid our £1000 ($1600 USD) appointment fee, to make the application in person. So, we went to a prison style detention centre in Glasgow. It is literally crawling with thug like security guards, and all of the immigration officers were behind bullet proof glass, for obvious reasons. The incompetence of the guards was the first omen that struck me. We went through the pat down and metal detector just like at an airport. Except this guard who searched my bag removed a leatherman multi tool/knife from my bag. I thought 'great, here we go'. But to my astonishement, the guard said, 'oh wow, thats a nice tool, etc, and started showing to the other guards, before handing it back to me on the other side of the gate 'Great Leatherman Pal'. Unbelievable. Anyway, we were shoved from window, to window to be interrogated by various thug-aucrats. Nobody really cared about our marriage certificate (We had a beautiful god-free marriage, but we were forced to at least have a city registrar do our ceremony in Edinburgh. It hurt deeply for me, to ask any kind of permission to marry. Let alone, only be allowed to marry in 'city approved locations'. But I had no choice but to play the statist game.) Instead, they were more interested in me proving my income is greater than the 'legal minimum required to sponsor a spouse as a resident'. This is a recent requirement in the UK. In any case, I was not worrried because our marriage was legitimate in the eyes of the state, and my income is double the minimum requirement even after tax. So I brought my contracts of employment, and salary statements for the past 18 months as proof. But that wasn't enough. I had to leave the immigration centre, and run around town for an hour to get bank statement s for the last 2 years, stamped as authentic by the bank. Of course my question was 'why didn't you tell us that requirement on the form or on the website?'. She looked at me, like I was an idiot. Her reply was 'How else do I know that your payslips actually mean you are recieving money?'. Anyway, after an epic run around town, and coming back through security, they sat us down and told us, that because our fiance visa had one little word extra on it, my wife had to leave the country. We replied, 'but the fiance visa no longer exists. This is a marriage visit visa. Now we're married, she's applying to stay'. Imagine a Big 'Game-Show sty;e noise of incorrectness'. They started trying to explain to us like we were idiot children that 'you got the same visitor visa that madonna got when she visited Scotland for her wedding, what you need is the other one'. Rage building. So, what do we do now? Well, you leave the country and apply again. Which form do we fill out? The same one you have in your hand now. Right. How long does that take? Oh, nobody knows. What? Yeah, 2 months, up to 8 months, no guarantees. OK. So we have no way to appeal this? Here's an email address where you can complain, but the error was yours, so it's unlikely you have a valid complaint. Excuse me? Yes. OK, but your website specifically says 'we cannot tell you which form to fill out'. So how were we supposed to know? I'm sorry, thats all I can tell you. (THIS WAS THE MOST GALLING BIT:) "If it's any consolation, the marriage visa used to be the easiest one to get until quite recently, but now they're cracking down on dole (welfare) cheats" Right. So I said, 'but my wife has £12k in her checking acct, I have £6k, and my salary more than double meets your requirements. You are telling me that she will be kidnapped and forced away from her husband for getting one word wrong on a form, that you guys invented. So she and I have no right to be together, and even a government sponsored marriage certificate means nothing any more. 'I'm sorry, that's the rules', was the predictable reply. My wife was in tears, and I was shaking at this point. Rather than take someone hostage with my trusty Leatherman, as I apparently DID have the right to do, we dragged our Non-Aggressive arses off out the door. It was at this point my wife told me, that whilst I was running between banks trying to get evidence for my 'Application-Not-To-Be-Kidnapped' form, that a South African (White) woman was sitting in the window next to us explaining 'why she had been arrested so many times whilst she was here on a student visa'. Literally, her response was 'It wasnt my fault, they just came into my house and set me up. My wife was shaking and crying and saying 'I don't understand? If they government gives out welfare, but they don't want me to take welfare, then WHY DONT THEY JUST 'NOT GIVE ME WELFARE'? Exactly. And here is kind of my tralking point in this post. This was as clear an epiffany as I have ever had. They create all these bullshit departments, so that when they do something bad that causes you pain, they can call it 'Immigration'. When they do something you like, that gives you relief when you're in another form of pain, they call it 'The National Health Service', or 'Welfare', or 'Free Shit'. Just like Zeus blames Thor when it rains, or whatever. You get all these little subdivisions of government departments, to obfuscate the concept of 'Government / Governance by force'. Just like the bible bashers say, well I like this little bit of the bible, but ignore the rest of it, so I cannot question the concept. And none of it made any sense. My wife literally had her dream job, lined up and waiting for her in Edinburgh, managing a bridal store. There is some tax-paying economic value they are missing out on right now, because of their retarded policy. Anyway, I work offshore in North Sea Oil. This all happened on the Thursday of that week. I was due to go back to Sea on the Monday. My wife had to book a flight home for the sunday night. I had to strip down our apartment, and move everything into my folks house for storage. At the same time all weekend I had to look into a green card application for me to go the US now, since it is the only way my wife and I can both continue to work and earn money. She had abstained from working for over 12 months, so she could be with me in the UK. The stress of moving out of my apartment, and preparing to go back to Sea, in the middle of a North Sea winter, was so much for me, I had my first panic attack. I went to hospital, in Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. A prestigious looking building, until you get inside the emergency room of this Socialised healthcare hell-hole, and find bloody bandages under your seat in the waiting room, the hallways FULL of people in beds with no ward to go to, folk in wheelchairs pissing and shitting all over the floor, and the sound beeps turning to solid tones all around you. Truly, a bad fucking weekend for us. Get one word wrong on a form, and god help you. Anyway, my free market god-send of an employer is very kindly now paying for my flights to the US every month. I have the lofty privilege of 'Visitng' my wife, for up to three months at a time now, under the US Visa Waiver Program. Last week I sent in my application for a Green Card, and my wife has kindly spent half of her savings setting us up in a lovely apartment in Charleston. So now, I'm living without the right to 'work' in the same land as my wife. This obviously adds all kind of risks and stresses to our plans on having a baby at the moment. (Yes, Charleston, SC. My father btw is an Alex Jones fan, and even after knowing that I'd been hospitalised the night before with a strong panic attack, spent our last few hours together as we gutted my Scottish apartment, telling me exactly how, if I make it through the airport without being irradiated in the US, then I'm just gonna get Nuked in Charleston. Way to show some empathy Dad ) The upside of all of this trauma, is simply this: My wife officially posted on FB 'I'm now an Anarchist'. So that is my story. Here is my question. To what extent do our 'statist priestly class', use the ideals/tricks of polytheism, to manipulate our emotional attachments to government? And how does epistomology help us deal with this trauma, of threats of violence inflicted upon us at every turn in modern society? I think seeing violence and tax farming for what it truly is, has really helped salvage the first year of my marriage, and helped reassure my wife that we are not 'deserving' of such treatment. Knowing for sure, that injustice has been done to us, and what caused it all, was very little to do with our own actions, has truly, truly helped our emotional survival. Does Philosophy help you survive?

Hello everyone, new to the forums but I though I should post a very important topic of mine here, hopefully this is the right section. So here is my case: I feel very stressed and confused with all the libertarian videos and this includes Stefan’s. I find myself in quite a dilemma, for all the insightful and good information stef and other provide I find new information merely adding to my stress and pain and more I know and more I learn the less reason I see to care about certain things. Some might find this silly or even bizarre but I simply cannot see any reason to add to what I already accept and the moment I try to bring this information to the rest of the world threes nothing much other than stress and painful endless argumentation going on. I cannot convince anyone, every time I do try I get so stressed I can’t sleep until I get response and frankly all this negative doom and gloom (real events or/and fear of them) push my energy low and my apathy higher. Does it seem that I am just being over reactive to bad news? Or does it seem like case where I try FOOLISHLY to be the atlas and carry world’s troubles on my shoulders and eventually just collapse? I want to live my life but I don’t want to live in this endless cycle that 100'% wasteful and unnecessary. Please, if anyone has had similar experiences, any help would be appreciated. I naturally want good mental condition and good life as much possible but I do not want to feel like lazy bum for not trying to change people’s minds and being philosophically static. However I feel my sleep, health and just overall STUFF that happens in normal everyday life has alarmingly faded in place of worry and constant anger at peoples idiocy and ignorance. My thanks beforehand, Anssi J. However i feel my sleep, health and jsut overall STUFF that happen in normal everyday life has alarmingly faded in place of worry and constant anger at peoples idiocy and ignorance. My thanks beforehand, Anssi J. PS. Also even psoting this i find myself unable to do much at all but jsut wait and wait... for replies. I do not know if this speaks volumes of me or may even hint at possible answer that i just need time to relax and recover... :S