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Here's a slightly out-there proposal. Should people feel responsible for bad things that may have occurred due to a seemingly unrelated act? For example: Bob is driving home one night. Bob drives 10 miles over the limit and accidentally hits a deer and kills it. Bob is responsible for killing the deer. Same situation, but Bob doesn't stop quick enough to not bump the deer's leg. The deer limps off into the woods, bob is responsible for hitting the deer. Now that deer 2 weeks later is crossing another road. A car is going the speed limit but the deer bolts out, not fast enough to get away due to its hurt leg. The car crashes into the deer, the deer goes through the windshield and kills the driver. Is Bob responsible for the death of the driver? If Bob wouldn't have been going so fast he wouldn't have hit the deer's leg and so on. Is this a legitimate way to assign responsibility, or are there degrees? This argument is really interesting and I don't see a way to refute it because nowhere between Bob hitting the deer and the deer killing the driver is there another fork in the road of free will.

I've been thinking about this for a while, I'd like to hear your input. If a man doesn't want children (or the financial responsibility of one) he has two choices; 1. Abstain. And if that fails: 2. Pre-intercourse protection such as a condom. If the condom breaks, he is at the mercy of the woman he slept with. A woman, on the other hand, has five. She can: 1. Abstain. And if that fails: 2. Use pre-intercourse protection such as condoms, hormone spiral, or birth control pills. If any of these methods fails for whatever reason: 3. Post-intercourse protection, like the morning after pill. If that also fails: 4. Abortion. And if she doesn't go through with one: 5. Put the baby up for adoption. As demonstrated, women have more "lifelines" in this scenario than men do. They have more than double the reproductive power and the possibilities of planned Parenthood. My argument is that the woman therefore holds most of the responsibility of any child's existence. If a two strangers, a man and a woman has sex together and the condom breaks (resulting in childbirth), it is mostly due to the decisions (or lack of decisions) of the woman that is the cause for the fact that the child does not have a father. She could've prevented if after the incident occurred but she didn't. The man couldn't so naturally he didn't. My argument is not that men are all free from responsibility, but that women by nature are more responsible (in most cases) for a child's birth. There are obviously exceptions to everything, such as if the woman was held captive and raped by a man. I'd like to hear your input. Are both parties really equal in the creation of a child?

Stefan has previously said that the best thing you can do for a women is to hold them responsible for their actions. He usually uses this argument for when a woman does something wrong then blames it on everyone but herself. Have any of you considered that maybe women are actually right? Perhaps women blame everyone but themselves because - they know but will never admit that - they are indecisive, low agency, cannot own their actions or their results, and therefore, require the approval and wisdom of a man for all things? EDIT: My central argument is that "They eat, wear, go, talk to, and say, whatever women perceive is not a threat to them, due to their conflict avoidant nature (agreeableness). [snip] they are unable to act as though they are not being coerced into doing things."

In the Bible, it is written that "a workman is worthy of his hire." In other words, pay people who work on your behalf. The amount of work that Stefan does to prepare his lectures is massive. Even with the amount of resources now available on the Internet, putting together a topic and presenting is a lot of work. As I am directly benefiting from this work, I feel an obligation to pay. This is the essence of the market. Nobody forced me to pay. As my wife and I are presently in challenging financial circumstances after my heart attacks and other illnesses pushing me into disability and us into bankruptcy, my generosity towards Stefan is limited. However, a small and monthly amount is being freely given. I believe that it is important for as many people as possible to make a MONTHLY commitment and here is why. The one-time donation is easily forgotten by the giver and is impossible to forecast by Stefan. By we listeners giving a regular, monthly donation, we enable Stefan to predict his cash flow and to use the funds in a structured way such as hiring associates to help him. For us the givers, the monthly note in our payment is a gentle reminder that we are invested in this great work. Of course, if you cannot give or you can give only 1 time, this is a matter for your own heart. For those who just haven't gotten around to it yet, please join me. It will make you feel good as I now feel good seeing the notice from Paypal. Bill

My post on Donald Trump's position on eminent domain and the Kelo v The City of New London case started a dialog on voting for the lesser of two evils. I thought I'd start a thread here to continue that discussion. On one hand, the act of casting a vote for the politician you believe will do the least harm helps insure that the least harm will be done. On the other hand, low voter turnout demonstrates a lack of faith in the system and could be used in arguments for reform -- hopefully towards a more libertarian system -- or as a welcoming signal for new ideas. As far as presidential elections go, I've usually chosen the second option, except when Ron Paul or Gary Johnson were candidates. But in current events, I'm leaning more towards the first because the United States is drifting closer towards socialism. Do either of these positions have merit? What are their flaws? What's your position on voting and why?

The second episode of our podcast is here! In it, I and my co-host Jackie talk about the concepts of hope, passivity, (self-)responsibility, boundaries, and more. Get cozy and join us for an hour of self-archeology.

My newest article for this holiday season. "Contrary to some people’s expectation, this article will not be a jolly, ho-ho-holiday read, despite it having both "holiday" and "hope" in its title. It will be about the reality of how a lot of people perceive holidays and their life in general, and about a possible alternative to that." Full article here: http://blog.selfarcheology.com/2015/12/holiday-hope.html

Does anyone have any experience dealing with psychological and social neglect from families of origin? There is a lot of discussion about overt abuse on these forums, but negligence seems more difficult to pin down and achieve any kind of certainty. I've been trying to discuss my longstanding childhood social isolation and drugging (Ritalin, antidepressants, and the occasional sedative) with my parents and younger sibling, and they've mainly been saying "We did the best we could with the information we had", "We don't understand why you're so upset", and "It's your biology" lines with me. I feel enraged and contempt towards my parents, and disappointed in my sibling. They have never asked me any unprompted questions or done any research on the topics that I brought up. My father compared the show to a cult and me to an actual mass shooter in the news last year (I have never shown any inclinations towards violence). The drugs seemed to have made me dissociated and caused problems with my short term memory, the latter of which affected me into my late twenties. I also had the social skills of a child when I went away to college at the age of 18, and it took me many years to learn how to make friends and get a date. I have also struggled with finding my footing career wise. Despite bringing these topics up with my therapist and girlfriend, I still feel a bit of doubt as to what's going on. I'm mostly leaning towards saying "fuck them all" with regards to my immediate family, but would that be a failure to take responsibility for my life in some way? I'm now in my early 30's, so I've obviously been responsible for my decisions for a number of years now. I am making great progress in my social and romantic life, and am training in a new career that shows promise. It's just my family that is really bothering me at present, and some outside perspective might help in finally putting this to rest. I know this might be a bit general, but I'll elaborate as necessary if anyone wants any specifics.

For years now my mom and I have had a strained relationship due to her parenting methods while I was growing up. My mom was a screamer. On top of that, she was emotional and intellectually unavailable and did not play with me as child or talk to me about anything important during my development. These methods have left me with a lot of problems as an adult, such as social anxiety and some rather extreme introversion at times. Before FDR I never even identified these problems, I just assumed that was my intrinsic character. Through introspection and working on self knowledge on why I do the things I do, I was able to identify my issues and their root in my childhood. However, I also did discover that this parenting method provided me with huge benefits to my professional success and level of comfort today. Being alone as a child, I grew an extreme defense mechanism for survival, and particularly self-sufficient survival. Anything I have done in my whole life I have approached with the character of Howard Roark, nothing could stop me and me alone. My lone wolf self survival skills had me working all through university just because I never wanted to be in a position where money was a problem. Ever since I graduated university, money has never been an issue. Even now, I live below my means, with good savings because I have the emotional need to be prepared for anything that comes across, on my own. I am a professional civil engineer, well known and respected in my industry for my ability to solve problems and deliver complex projects. Every manager, boss, and now clients I have ever had has been blown away by what they viewed as my natural talent. Through self-knowledge I have discovered this natural talent initially came from a deep sub-conscious fear where failure was death, which I believe is a direct result of my mom’s parenting styles. I have grown a lot in the years, and I believe that I have been able to get rid of a lot of the fear, and am able to work for the sheer joy of what I do professionally (which I would recommend to anyone who wants an exciting diverse career). However, without the momentum that launched me from childhood I know that I wouldn’t have been able to compete and get to where I am in my career without the very powerful success or death false dichotomy planted deep into my subconscious. I am mentally average (at least for engineers), so there is no other reason why I should be so successful, professionally rising above all my peers. These are empirical facts. Until recently, I was not able to identify the beneficial consequences of my mom’s parenting methods. Through us trying to talk through these issues, I have never given her any credit for this, and have only talked about how bad it was for me as a child and how that impacted my early adulthood. It is strange to me that such a bad methodology could lead to such great results in certain realms. Given my new understanding of these facts, should I apologize to her for not stating the good? Obviously, there is still the bad, but I am wondering if I should take responsibility for not being aware of the empirically good results. If philosophy is about empiricism, it seems like that would be the correct, and consistent, thing to do. Thanks in advance for the feedback.

How can we decipher the media propaganda around Indiana's Religious Freedom Restoration Act? In my opinion, the media reaction demonstrates a recurring pattern of finding a scapegoat for wrongdoers. It goes something like this: "Hey look! Someone is doing bad things with their property... we need a war on drugs, a war on guns, a war on free speech, or a war on freedom because bad people are actually not the ones responsible for their actions." Check out my videocast below for more ranting. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VW2jREocMA&feature=youtu.be

This morning I was triggered by something, which provoked much anxiety within me. I came very close to getting up and eating something to sooth myself, but decided to eat two bananas instead. I'm not overweight, in fact I'm quite slender and I exercise daily, but I have gained a bit of fat around the sides of my lower belly from not eating as I should. I'm worth a healthy and energetic body. When I eat junk I feel lethargic, guilty, and overall not good about myself. Sometimes, I overeat and go to bed on a full stomach, only to wake up the next day with a full stomach, which makes it difficult for me to get the most out of my morning workout. It isn't a pleasant way to start out the day. I don't want to keep sending this message to my unconscious that, "I don't deserve a good body". I want to commit to eating better, to love myself enough to stop eating junk. The short benefits of sugar and carbs are not worth the long term, or even the daily stress for that matter, of not getting getting the most out of this precious life, which we are all lucky to be a part of. I want to feel good. I want to look good. i want to live with integrity, so when I talk to people about serious issues, my words have more weight to them. I want that confidence, so I am making a commitment to eating better right now. Although, I am eager to understand how I ended up where I am today in terms of health. I use to be far more committed. I avoided sugar like the plague and I would always order the healthiest item on the menu when out with friends. I took health very seriously and regularly rejected food that was offered to me by others if it was unhealthy. Even if it was a family gathering or a friend’s family gathering, if their food was unhealthy, it didn’t matter how free, unique, or special it was, I refused to compromise my values. My health was more important than their traditions.Was I being too “Anal” about what I ate? This might sound like a disparaging and loaded question to ask myself, but I assure you that’s only because it is. And if you think it’s unfair for me to ask myself questions like that, I agree. What is even more disagreeable is that these are the kinds of questions I would get asked by people who claimed to be my friend. I’m feeling really angry right now thinking about it. I remember being asked this by an old friend while I was in the passenger seat of his car. This occurred shortly after we had both mentioned that we were hungry. Why would he ask a question like this? Control. He wanted to control me. A loaded question is by definition “a rhetorical tool that attempts to limit direct replies to be those that serve the questioners agenda.” So, what was his agenda? Well, he wanted to eat Popeye’s Fried Chicken and knew that I prefered to stay away from that kind of food. But, you see, he didn’t want to have to drive to the grocery store so I could purchase me some fresh produce. You see, that would involve extra driving and he wanted to get his food and go home. So, what he cleverly did was embed false premises in the question and frame it with a negative connotation attached to it. That way, I would be more likely to say no. “Are you feeling anal about food today?”, in other words translates to, “are you feeling your neurotic compulsion to annoyingly obsess over what you eat today and thus willing to become an inconvenience?”. It’s as subtle as it is cruel. And it’s as abusive as it is brilliant, which is why it’s always always worth slowing down and pointing this kind of stuff out. This undoubtedly qualifies as verbal abuse. It’s no wonder I felt so depressed and self loathing when I was around this guy. It really is astounding when you think about it. I wasn’t expressing anything nearly as emotional volatile and explosive as topics such as religion, the state, or family dysfunction. I was receiving this hostility because of my desire to eat plants instead of poultry. Admittedly, it probably does deeper than that. When a person grows and decides to make better, more challenging and rewarding choices in life, there becomes an implicit obligation for the people around him to change as well, if they want to remain friends. I mean, let’s face it, you either grow with or away from people. What this guy in the car was probably experiencing was that obligation. He felt anxious and tense, which is okay to feel. But, he did not take ownership for his feelings and instead interpreted this impetus to change as something that was being imposed upon him. He felt controlled, he did not acknowledged it, so he inflicted this feeling on me. It’s also worth mentioning that this guy was not religious or statist. Intellectually, he accepted that god doesn’t exist and that the state is an institution of violence. Yet, despite this intellectual understanding between us, we could not connect. The lesson that I take from this is that conclusions aren’t enough. Having the “same beliefs”, for a lack of better words, is not a stable foundation for an intimate relationship, nor does it entail that the other person has empathy. The reason I share is not to lecture, but to use my mistakes as a way to warn people away from making the assumptions I did. As surely as physics, in the absence of a strong foundation of honesty, empathy, and curiosity, there can be no sturdy relationship.I was going to give more examples of old friends and family rejecting me in similar ways because of my eating, but I think you get the point. What was originally going to be a list of examples for the purpose of venting, I think has transformed into something more. I’m becoming more aware on an emotional level of the importance of responsibility. Yes, it’s true these people made it very difficult for me to reach my goals by creating an association in my mind that, “committing to goals = the pain of rejection”(or something like that). Also, I think it’s true that we can only be as great as the people we choose to have around us let us be. And I chose to surround myself with these drag downers and to avoid being honest, even after intellectually understanding a number of books and podcasts I had listened to by Stefan Molyneux. I stress the importance of responsibility now, not as a way to castigate myself, but to empower myself and others to bring consciousness to the choices they make so that you can avoid suffering the consequences like I did. Prevention is always better than cure. In other words, remember to eat your bananas.As always, take care.- Joel

I keep a blog with a minimal following that serves doubly as a weekly writing exercise and as a repository for my thoughts. In that blog, I've talked about Men's Issues and the need for a better, more expansive narrative surrounding the raising of boys and young men. I guess I'm looking to crowdsource the general array of opinions and perspectives here with regard to attempting to answer the question: "what does it mean to be a man/woman?" Thanks, Matt Henke

My newest article on the difficulties and consequences of being raised in a controlling environment: http://blog.selfarcheology.com/2014/04/the-burden-of-being-over-controlled-as.html

Hi philosophers, I was thinking about the question if it is possible to logically deduce positive responsibilities from reality. I came up with the following reasoning: All humans are biologically similar Each human being has similar importance Each human being has similar needs in order to live It is of similar importance that the needs of each person is fulfilled, because the importance of each person is similar Human beings should have beliefs that correspond to reality, and act accordingly The vast majority of people regard it as very important that their basic needs are met Those people should regard it as important that the basic needs of others are met, and they should act accordingly Compared to UPB, the argumentation above is based on shared preferences, while UPB is based on universal preferences. The argumentation could applied to a specific case of giving to the poor: Suppose there is a poor man that has lack of food. He knocks on the door of a rich man and asks for a gift of food. Suppose the rich man does not give it. Is this morally valid, invalid, or neutral? The rich man has eaten food regularly to keep himself alive. By doing so, he has affirmed the importance for humans to have access to sufficient food. The rich and poor man are biologically similar, so they have similar needs with regard to food. When refusing to give food to the poor man, the rich man is implicitly making the statement that it is not important that the poor man has enough food to eat. This is a contradictory attitude towards the necessity of food, inconsistent with reality, and therefore morally invalid. So it is his responsibility to give something to the poor man. Do you see an error in the argumentation, or do you think it is valid? Could it be that the lack of emphasis on responsibility to help others as a moral non-enforced rule, is one of the main reasons people are reluctant to accept a free society? Looking forward to your comments.

Hello everyone.I'm currently 22 years old and I've got problem. I'm not sure how to go about carrying on into the future of adult life. My parents are causing a great deal of frustration for me, but because of how I've learned to communicate with them, it's impossible for me to be verbally persuasive about my feelings and my needs. It's very important to me that I make the right decision so I'm going to detail this situation in the best way that I can. I've been unemployed for 3 years, and I've never had a non-temporary job. The process of applying for jobs inspires nothing but apathy in me, to the point where, even if I got an interview, I've already stopped caring. I want to chase my passions in life and try to earn money that way. I've chosen that I'd most love to become a blacksmith (more specifically an armor smith) and to sell my works. There is a market for these products so that's not even relevant to this topic. The perdicament I have right now is how I choose to go about reaching that point.Currently I have no formal education. I have a GED, and I'm not particularly good at anything in life aside from the ability to retain lots of knowledge. I have no professional skills yet. My family is supportive of my career choice and is willing to financially support me in acquiring the education and tools necessary to make a living that way on my own.However, my parents absolutely refuse to take responsibility for the way that they have raised me. They blame all of my problems, and all of their parenting mistakes, on the claim that I have aspergers syndrome (or some kind of mental disability), a notion which I strongly disagree with, and feel is a massive cop out. There are huge voids in my relationship with my parents. My father is abusive, and though my mother didn't let him physically and verbally abuse me very much as a child, she completely enables him to do so now, with the mentality that I have no right to have my feelings considered because i am a grown man who is still dependent on his parents. They never taught me how to be self-reliant. They never gave me the skills for that, as they argue that it's something I was supposed to just automatically know.My mother thinks that the reason why I don't have a job and stay at home all day is because she failed to "discipline" me, but she thinks that discipline is not compatible with peaceful parenting, which is what she claimed to have tried.My memory of my childhood is very limited, but I never had any friends, and I was extremely anti-social beginning from my 3rd year at least. I used to bite people constantly, especially other children. Not seemingly for any reason, it would just sorta happen, but it earned my family a bad reputation with other parents, and it earned me nobody to socialize with. My parents refuse to believe that they have anything to do with my nature as a child, or any of the ways in which I psychologically developed. So if I stay with my family for a couple more years, I will have the support i need to become a very capable blacksmith, but at the expense of living with people who make me feel extremely frustrated, and extremely angry.My father is going into counceling, and I'm thinking about giving counceling a chance because he wants to fix the relationship he has with me (because it really wasn't a relationship at all) but I am very doubtful that he will ever apologize for any evils that he made me suffer. If I confronted him about these things verbally right now, he would literally scream at me and threaten me with violence for disrespecting his authority as my caregiver. If I defend myself verbally or physically, he will think he is completely morally justified in battering and bruising me, and then literally throwing my limp body out of the house afterwards. He has done it before and he would do it again. He is basically a slave to his emotions, and would disown me as a member of his family if I didn't appeal to his preconceived notions of "respect" which he apparently deserves for providing for me. I have no money and no friends or relatives to fall back on, so my only other option besides living with my parents is becoming homeless and then trying to find a job in that state of living. Is there anything I'm missing here? I feel incredibly distressed.