Your Journey to FDR

[Mishelle]

I'd love to hear how you found your way to FDR, the whole story! 

 

I'd like to know not just how you found Stef, but when and how your first realized you were libertarian/anarchist, was it a solo journey, who else influenced you, what was easiest/most difficult, what specific life events propelled you along, how many in your life before that were "awake", and so on?!

 

Any takers?  I'm going to work on it myself right now.

 

[PatrickC]

I'm guessing my journey orginated with Atheism. I used to listen and read a lot of Hitchins and Dawkins for a few years. I then found myself getting more interested in politics, because the govt were basically outlawing all kinds of things that had been pretty much taken for granted in the past. I saw this was a theme that stemmed from the UN across the whole of the world. It became fairly apparent that voting had no influence over this. The game was rigged I began to tell.

 

I then came across some Rothbard videos and reading more about Libertarianism. This led inevitably to Ron Paul who I saw on The Daily Show I think (2007). Anyway, within 3 weeks I stumbled across Stefan's channel. And well it was all downhill from there on.

 

Despite all the really good stuff about liberty and personal freedom. This insight just brought me enormous intellectual strength I thought I could never possess. It's like the kind of thinking I used before, just had no clue what the 'ef' it was I trying to say. Perhaps my journey into athiesm was where the thinking started to improve. Having considered myself an agnostic for several years. Athiesm challenged me in the one area where agnostism had attempted to give me solace, my religious family. This precipitated some difficult conversations with my father, which went on for about a year or so. So, despite what some critics say of FDR or Stefan, I was challenging my family well before I heard of either you see.

[Carl Green]

After I got an AppleTV I finally started listening to podcasts and I first heard Stefan on the Joe Rogan Experience.

 

As to arriving at AnCap, I was a good little US patriot until I watched the TZM docs and found out about some of the sinister foreign policies and fractional reserve banking and fiat currency and such.  A couple months later I heard Stefan on JRE and have been listening to as much FDR content as I can since.

[Wesley]

Something like my life stages:

 

1. Christian Republican with a slight libertarian bend, talked politics and economics as dinner table conversation.

2. Joined political discussion group

3. Many debates, became president of political discussion group, did a debate camp, more concerned with winning but starting to find some issues and moving more libertarian

4. Brother got me into Ron Paul after the 2008 campaign- in like 2009

5. A year or so of watching every Ron Paul video twice or something

6. Then the sampling plate of Andrew Napalitano, Tom Woods, Lew Rockwell, Adam Kokesh, etc, etc - whatever I could find that linked me along

7. Somewhere started watching some FDR videos in the mix of the others.

8. Friend at work who I was going through the sampler plate of libertarian videos also listened to them

9. Small hiatus to peculate and many discussions/ debates about the ideas

10 Listened to the UPB audio book a few times at work and paused/ debated many times

11. Finally crossed over to anarchism after over a year into FDR stuff

12. Religion was easy then to realize it was crap.

13. Joined the boards, started getting into the psychology stuff with the arguments of dealing with things I could control

14. Broke up with girlfriend of several years

15. Depression as my old life had pretty much been overturned at this point

16. Started looking into options to improve things and not let what happened to me happen again

17. Started becoming more active on the boards

18. Therapy

19. Somewhere around now? I would have trouble expressing exactly what stage I am in. Some sort of manic stage where I feel driven to push forward in several areas of my life and feeling like I am not where I want to be.

 

I think that is a good enough quick summary of events.

[Lians]

I was somewhat of a history buff from a very young age, which gave me a perspective on the destructive and seemingly random power of the State. Going over the history of the world, I was amazed that anyone could claim any certainty about politics. My father further pushed me towards becoming apolitical by mocking my lack of knowledge about contemporary politics. History and contempt for my father made the intellectual acceptance of anarchism quite an easy step for me.

 

My parents weren't particularly religious and I pretty much became an atheist after reading a children's bible. I prayed once and didn't get what I wanted. Eventually, I realized I had to get up and put in the work necessary to achieve something. In that moment, God was no more. I was too young and inexperienced to articulate what I felt was wrong with religion, so I decided to look for logical arguments supporting atheism.

 

Fast forward a few years later, and I'm watching the first Zeitgeist documentary. Alex Jones made an appearance in it. At the time, I was very angry and anxious. I had a growing feeling that something was terribly wrong with the world and I didn't know why. Moreover, things were, once again, starting to escalate at home (I was a "rebellious kid," you see). The angry Alex made me think the following: "He's angry. I'm angry. Maybe he's got something figured out." That was about three and a half years ago. I became disillusioned after listening to his show for a few months. He didn't understand the root causes of the problem, hence why he couldn't offer any solutions. Putting all the religiosity and conspiracy theories aside, all he did was point fingers at arbitrary groups of people and spit saliva into a camera. Stef made his first appearance on the Alex Jones show and I haven't looked back ever since.

 

I was really into logic and debating prior to finding FDR, so the philosophy portion was quite easy for me to assimilate. Coming to terms with self-knowledge took a lot longer. Applying this newly discovered knowledge to my life was, undoubtedly, the hardest thing for me to do. It took a few years, but I got there eventually. I'm currently excited and fearful of the possibilities that lie ahead. As I once wrote, I'll keep chipping away at the unknown self until the path forward is revealed.

[Mishelle]

Here we go loves, thanks for playing!

 

I started listening to Chomsky in college, because I studied linguistics.  Enter Anarchy.  Then I joined the Peace Corps, enter serious Left-wing.

 

I became interested in politics a bit in high school during Iran-Contra and oddly enough found myself living in Mena, AR many years later.  This is the small town of 5,000 where they were running the drugs/weapons through.  My dad had a plane in the hangar and I lived in the trailer park across the street.  Mena is a dry county, and pilots are notoriously big drinkers, so they hung out at the private Elk’s Lodge.   Clinton was running for President and talk about those active days at the tiny airport was common.  And so confusing, because these guys wanted him to win, knowing exactly what he’d done and what kind of person he was.  Enter nihilism in small doses for many years to come.

 

Then I was in New Orleans for Hurricane Katrina and got a huge dose of nihilism when I realized Naomi Klein was spot on—Disaster Capitalism was very real and keeping me out of my living room!  I lost my teaching contract after being strung along for months, as did loads of other faculty, some with tenure, as they just randomly began to close departments and restructure everything at Tulane University.  The city was a total bloody mess and I saw very clearly that it was not incompetence, it was very deliberate.  Enter Conspiracy Theory.

 

Then three years later, after having lost in that time my grandparents, two uncles to cancer and still without a permanent residence, we moved to Galveston, six months before Hurricane Ike.  Another 100-year evacuation and my first real descent into the rabbit hole.  Total Nihilism, capital N.  I considered tattooing “Fuck IT!” to my forehead.  I stopped watching the news and turned to self-help books.  I think I read about 50 of them.

 

Still, it was not enough.  Not enough to escape the nihilism and not enough to get me to take serious action against the system.  It’s embarrassing for me to say, but I needed direct experience of the bullshit, to be deeply personal affected by the growing fascism to really GET IT already.  That happened at the airport when someone pointed out, after I complained about getting double-screened and pat down and luggage sifted through, as usual, that I was on “The List.”  I was like, What List?  Whatever dude.

 

And still it took another year.  When I was flying again and it happened again.  That time I actually went home and Googled this damn list, and WOW, that was it, that was the very last straw.  I started bitching to people about it, especially in my family, and they SOOO did not get it.  “There’s a LIST!”  I kept repeating.  There’s a fucking list of terror suspects that an unknown number of people are privy to, that you don’t know how you got on or how to get off, everyone knows about it it seems, and OMG I’m ON IT!  This is like Soviet Union, don’t you see?!  And I kept hearing the little old ladies in Czechoslovakia, where I was in the Peace Corps, repeating:  “We had no idea what they were capable of!”  I choked down the red pill once again, and this time kept it down.

 

I got pissed off enough to take real action, which no one I knew approved of in the least, I boycotted TSA, and started bitching about the Fascist state every chance I could whether or not it was appropriate or anyone was listening.

 

I finally found Stef through the Thrive movement website, where I was reading through the Worldview section.

Someone was finally saying everything I was thinking.  It was like a lifeboat because at that time I was trying to get into Ron Paul and “forcing” myself into thinking the way to change it all was through politics.  I had the motivation, the energy, the drive to commit to waking others up, but it didn’t feel right the way I was going about it all because it felt kind of abusive.  When Stef spoke about drawing people in, not shoving it down their throats, I knew I was not doing it right and I really started listening to how to do that.  To hear Stef say politics is not the way to transform the world was like someone breaking my chains—it made such sense and felt so liberating.

 

I feel like I’ve really been around the block, like I’ve searched and found little crumbs all my life, but that I couldn’t see the forest for the trees until I started listening to Stef.

 

And the people in this community have taught me a lot too and I find y’all very interesting and inspiring!

 

[Jer]

I was a republican who believed what I was taught in school about the gov being benevolent. My first intro to philosophy was in college but unfortunately my teacher was pretty terrible and I was turned off when I got a bad grade on a paper because I disagreed with her. I still think it was the best paper I've ever written.

 

Joined the military and realized how wasteful and corrupt it is. I supported Ron Paul and learned about the NAP from him. I hadn't heard of Stefan until he was on the Joe Rogan exp, but l downloaded some podcasts the next day and started calling myself an anarchist the day after that.

Still, it was not enough.  Not enough to escape the nihilism and not enough to get me to take serious action against the system.  It’s embarrassing for me to say, but I needed direct experience of the bullshit, to be deeply personal affected by the growing fascism to really GET IT already.  That happened at the airport when someone pointed out, after I complained about getting double-screened and pat down and luggage sifted through, as usual, that I was on “The List.”  I was like, What List?  Whatever dude.

 

I can relate to much of your post. I was supporting my family playing internet poker and in 2011 the us gov forced the shut down of the sites. It was plainly obvious that the powerful brick and mortar casinos were using government guns to suppress the competition. That was certainly a turning point for me.

[Mishelle]

xelent, interesting!  And how did you get to Atheism from your religious background?

Jer, "but l downloaded some podcasts the next day and started calling myself an anarchist the day after that." I LOVE IT!

"I was a good little US patriot until I watched the TZM docs and found out about some of the sinister foreign policies and fractional reserve banking and fiat currency and such."

 

Yes this was big for me too. Carl.  Lots of guys coming from JRE, so interesting, cause i don't find him that interesting! lol

Wesley interesting journey!  I only learned of Adam Kokesh after Stef, seems seriously cool!  But, there is no one I know who comes close to Stef's scope.  what do you think? 

[wdiaz03]

I lived communism for little over a decade. My mother was never into it or religion so we got to see how they didn't work first hand.

We managed to immigrate to the US thanks to family we had in the States.

I didn't want anything to do with politics.

 

Then, things got rolling, back in college when I met a good friend at a part time job. Really smart guy and I was just sailing along not paying attention to much. But This guy was reading books and making sense.

I started reading about evolution from books he would lend me "selfish gene" "The ancestors tale" etc.

 

Then he started lending me books on economics. "Economics in one lesson" and things started to click.

Everything we do revolves around economics. and Austrian Economics seemed to make the most sense.

 

We started to download all the lectures we could from Mises.org. I remember taking trip to Vegas and listening to hours and hours of this stuff.

 

Ron Paul was being talked about at Mises as the lone ranger from Texas and when he ran for president we where excited. He lost.

 

By this time I started to get into Philosophy "Ayn Rand" made the most sense. My friend was not sold on Rand. We also read Peter Schiff

 

Ron Paul was back on the news and nothing happens again.

 

By this time I'm listening to Peter Shiff radio show. and I bump into Stef on youtube and from hearing my friend mention his name as people making a difference. He was interested on Stef political views.

 

When I started listening to Stef and he seemed to pickup where Rand left off, I was sold, the circle felt complete.

 

My friend is still stuck in the political loop and we don't see eye to eye as far as Stef  but I will forever be grateful to have come across him so many years ago.

[Wesley]

Wesley interesting journey!  I only learned of Adam Kokesh after Stef, seems seriously cool!  But, there is no one I know who comes close to Stef's scope.  what do you think? 

I would still listen to Adam if he gets his show up and running. I listen to him because he gets into technology and agorism and does a ton of interviews with anyone he can find that would vaguely be of interest to libertarians and it can be very fun and interesting stuff.

 

I also enjoy his times when he talks to the "uninformed" of our ideas and either shows how dumb people are or shows how "everyone is a libertarian, they just don't know it yet".

 

I think of it as different, but I have not found anything else like FDR, which is why I support it and got much more involved than other things.

[Jer]

Jer, "but l downloaded some podcasts the next day and started calling myself an anarchist the day after that." I LOVE IT!

 

Yes this was big for me too. Carl.  Lots of guys coming from JRE, so interesting, cause i don't find him that interesting! lol

I was bullied/abused as a kid and took up Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu to learn self defense. I trained in the 90s with some guys who ended up fairly well known in the UFC and I still find it interesting. I also got into conspiracy theories a lot as I was realizing the government doesn't always tell us the truth (lol) and Joe talks about a lot of that type of stuff.

 

I've kind of moved beyond that now and I think that was me convincing myself that government is not our friend. For example, the other day a friend read an article to me that was suggesting Obama is secretly a muslim trying to undermine the US. I replied that we don't need to speculate about unverifiable nonsense when we have his own words admitting to evil. Anwar Al-Awlaki was a US citizen who O claimed the right to assassinate because the guy hated the US even though he was never accused of any crime. If that's not bad enough, they droned his 16 year old son who was also never charged with any crime and the usual bystanders (don't call them innocent, they were near a "bad" guy) because they expected the son to hate the US for killing his dad.

[Emanuel]

I grew up in an apolitical and religious household.

 

When I began high school, I defined myself as a communist. As time went on, I found Ron Paul and started calling myself a Libertarian.

I read Ayn Rand, and I was inspired to be a great man, like Henry Rearden. But these ideas weren't strong enough to get me out of religion, and as a result of that, I drew away from freedom, and began to call myself a Fascist. 

 

I wanted people to act in the way that I wanted. I wanted people to be united by one common idea. After a while, I began to read some Austrian Econ stuff and I realized that I was an anarcho-capitalist. 

High School ended, and I stopped going to church, considering myself an agnostic. I began to smoke marijuana with some people from high school. I did it every day, and this lasted for over a year and a half. 

 

While I was still taking the drug, I found Stefan's channel and it was really interesting to me, he explained the views that I had, but in a rational and philosophical light. But when he began to talk about childhood, and self-knowledge, I knew there was something wrong.

I was trying to get away from that by taking drugs every single day. I moved away from my mother's house, and stopped seeing my father altogether. 

 

I went to live at one of my friend's mom's house. I worked a lot, and did a lot of marijuana while I lived there. But after 4 months there, I decided to go back to my mother's, and stop smoking. Since then, I'm getting to know myself better and am planning for my own future, and it feels great to have all this knowledge backing me up.

[PatrickC]

xelent, interesting!  And how did you get to Atheism from your religious background?

 

Oh boy, well that was a long and arduous journey I shan't bore you with.. Needless to say, the long and the short of it, was I explored all other religions, got no insight from any of them (inc Budhism). So decided to remain agonstic. I now realise that was just an excuse for my family dogma and I was attempting (poorly) to protect them. I kind of got this after reading Hitchins polemic, 'God is not Great'. A bit of a slap in the face to wake me up, I must say.

[Carl Green]

Yes this was big for me too. Carl.  Lots of guys coming from JRE, so interesting, cause i don't find him that interesting! lol

 

Well it's more so that he has very interesting guests probably.

 

Had I met Stefan in person (or anyone talking about ancap or NAP or whatever) I think I would have been one of those rare people that said "hey you know you might be right. I might have been thinking about things all wrong this whole time. PLEASE TELL ME MORE!" because it just clicked instantly for me.  I too considered myself and anarchocapitalist after hearing about it.

 

Like Stefan, consistency just gives me a nice warm fuzzy feeling so maybe I picked up on that subconsciously or something.  I have a very keen attention to detail so finding consistency can be tough at times.

 

I was raised loosely as a christian and wasn't forced to attend church so I rejected the bible pretty early.  Somewhere in my 20s I came to the conclusion that if someone were to live peacefully but not believe in god, and god then sent them to hell, than that wasn't any god I wanted to believe in, so I'd say I was agnostic for a good while there but now I find atheism to make the most sense.

[Mishelle]

Oh boy, well that was a long and arduous journey I shan't bore you with.. Needless to say, the long and the short of it, was I explored all other religions, got no insight from any of them (inc Budhism). So decided to remain agonstic. I now realise that was just an excuse for my family dogma and I was attempting (poorly) to protect them. I kind of got this after reading Hitchins polemic, 'God is not Great'. A bit of a slap in the face to wake me up, I must say.

 

I think you haven't quite yet picked up on what bores me!  This is the journey that most fascinates, and more than once now I've seen your propensity to abbreviate, so I will not try to excavate. lol

 

Seriously though, nothing is less boring to me. If small talk is left aside then I am thrilled.  Just, fyi.

[PatrickC]

I think you haven't quite yet picked up on what bores me!  This is the journey that most fascinates, and more than once now I've seen your propensity to abbreviate, so I will not try to excavate. lol

 

Seriously though, nothing is less boring to me. If small talk is left aside then I am thrilled.  Just, fyi.

 

Yes, perhaps I shouldn't have used the word, 'bore you'. I'm sure to many it would be quite interesting. I am conscious mind that this is a public forum, with the all seeing eye of Google. Not that I'm paranoid, just conscious that I prefer to keep some of my more personal life free of prying eyes.

 

But thanks for picking me up on my poor choice of vocabulary.

[Mishelle]

Understandable!  I've decided to become an exhibitionist myself, doesn't pay well, but it's fun.

[Wesley]

Understandable!  I've decided to become an exhibitionist myself, doesn't pay well, but it's fun.

Best time to enter the conversation ever!

[Mishelle]

Who here did not get into conspiracy theory to some degree first before finding Stef?

[Wesley]

(crickets chirping)

[MysterionMuffles]

Who here did not get into conspiracy theory to some degree first before finding Stef?

 

Me. I always found conspiracies interesting, but I never really bought into them.

 

Anyways, my journey to FDR went like this:

 

I believe it was either 2009 or 2010 Rememberance Day and my brother shared a video on Facebook called Freedom, War and Soldiers that he shared from one of his friends. I watched it and even though it was 20 minutes of just some bald dude vlogging, I invested all of my attention into it. At that point I wasn't easily entertained, but I think it was one of the first few times that I didn't watch something just to be entertained, rather informed. 

 

I connected deeply with what he was saying about how we cannot build a world on blood, and also felt sadness where at some point in the video Stef started to cry a little about. He was talking about how soldiers are propagandized to believe that murder for money and prestige was immoral to the point where they're rolling hand grenades into children's rooms.

 

I was always confused as to why my classmates could watch war footage with watery hopeful eyes being told that these people died for our freedom. What the hell does that even mean? Those Rememberance Day assemblies that left me feeling alone were finally put into perspective thanks to this video. It wasn't me who was insane all this time, it was my peers. I would always get back to class with them and ask "what's the point of getting other people to kill other people for you? If you're a world leader, why can't you just meet with other world leaders to talk things out?" And I'd always just get ignored or something statist propaganda response.

 

At that point I tried to get into all the other political and economical stuff Stef talked about with other experts in their fields. I dunno, as much as I loved that one video, I couldn't get into any of the other ones for a while except for Putting of Procrastination. That one changed my life forever when I watched it. He made a good and logical case, that I think is valid, as to what causes procrastination. Basically it's a re-enactment of being bossed around and you internalize that master-slave relationship your parents teach you (if they were that way) and you just treat yourself the same way. That you have to inflict obligations on yourself to do anything but that takes away from having the natural desire to do anything.

 

I started listening to a few call in shows or listener conversations off iTunes and particularly liked the ones about love and whatnot. I always thought philosophy could deal more with personal stuff rather than the abstract. Then it got really heavy for me as some of these calls involved diving into the caller's childhoods. It caused me to start thinking about my own and even MORE so when I downloaded the five original Philosophical Parenting podcasts. But then it got too heavy for me as I completely forgot about the cases made for Anarchy as I started delving into the personal topics.

 

I started thinking about my childhood and remembering all the horrible things my parents did, mainly my mom. Long story short, she has stumped me emotionally and financially, so after all the angst and realizations as to why I was the way I was, my mom actually helped me find a job at her office, and for a while I thought that was enough to make up for her shortcomings. I spent about a year heavily investing time with destructive people and letting them step all over my preferences and boundaries, all the while still trying to argue about the government and stuff to people.

 

It wasn't until last year around this time that I started listening to FDR again and having more respect for all the broad amount of topics covered here. And uhh here I am now, a very active member on the boards and chatroom, as well as an avid listener to most of the stuff released now. This past year has put everything else in my life into perspective as I am now well equipped with a well trained eye (and ear) to recognize reflections of the coercive paradigm in which the government operates at. It was easy to see THEIR corruption as I have always been an Anarchist all my life, but now I have that paradigm recognition when it comes to people and family dynamics, and that, I think, is much more important and much more easy to deal with than the Fed.

 

As a side note, I was also a very weak agnostic. I spent a few years still believing in God in my own way, all the while thinking religion just misinterpreted him. Then I saw Stef's video on Philosophically Disproving the Existence of God (think I might have the wrong title, not sure) and basically I just went full Atheist after hearing his arguments. I wasn't that keen on believing in God anymore anyway, and my self help and new spirituality stuff was starting to lose its edge. I still retain some of the daily applicable stuff I learned from them, but philosophy has helped it all come full circle.

[Jami]

I found stefs videos this past September. I was researching facts about spanking because I work in childcare and came upon his "bomb in the brain" series. It really raised my eyebrows. After checking his sources, and taking the test for myself. I started to realize why it is I am this way. It gave me the slap in the face I was looking for. So, I posted a question on the forum and got some really good insight. I'm at the beginning of this journey. I don't know where it's going to take me. All I know is on this forum, I've found nothing but love and kindness. It's shocking really. I didn't know this type of thing existed until now. My hats off to all of you for how far you've come as people. May I, one day, join you.

[powder]

-always been a restless, questioning, challenging, history (alternative) buff, what's the bottom line kind of person

 

-brought up RC and spit out the dogma when I reached age of formal operations.  

 

-spent years studying alternative spiritual traditions and dove into the new age movement stuff.

 

-started loosing too much $ in the financial markets and began to study economic and monetary stuff, which led me into conspiracy stuff and Ron Paul and Peter Joeseph's movies and Alex Jones, David Icke, etc.  

 

-never a fan of politics and have never participated in the voting nonsense in my life so anarchy was no stretch for me.  

 

-heard Larken Rose on Red Ice radio, I really like his approach to anarchy.

 

-hated those philosophy classes in university where we spent all the time discussing random 'what if' stuff, so I am still trying to get used to the concept that anything practical has anything to do with philosophy so I am learning about that.  

 

-can't remember where I first heard Stef but he is as close to my own way of thinking of anyone I have ever heard.  he also cured me of the conspiracy bug, not that a lot of it isn't valid, but with a single quote from a video about 911 he dismissed it all and put it into perspective...

 

"So what?  Even if the theories are true, its like giving a speeding ticket to a serial killer"  

[dsayers]

I'd love to hear how you found your way to FDR, the whole story! 

 

For me, it began with an abusive childhood where I was taught that force and manipulation (not negotiation) was the way to interact with the world around you. I was severely hurt by a 3rd party to the point of actually wanting... very bad things. My state allows for legal concealed carry and handgun purchase, so I decided to pursue it. As luck would have it, the trainer I got for the classroom requirement of the licensing was such a gentle man sharing his love of firearms that I was convinced to respect the responsibility and never do anything to risk losing that "right."

 

From there, I joined Ohioans for Concealed Carry and began to study freedom, American history, the legal system, etc. As a lifelong anti-authoritarian, I was particularly interested in stories of police abuse and eventually became the center of one myself. A man who owned his own security company, who saw a young himself in me, took me under his wing for guidance/protection. All this eventually led me to copblock.org, where Pete Eyre shared materials analyzing the (lack of) validity of the state, the incentive issue with the institution of coercive government/police, etc. This took me to Larken Rose. Which took me to Stefan Molyneux.

 

That was a year ago and I've spent much of that time studying Stef's work and pursuing self-knowledge. I've grown more as a person in any two month window of the past year than I have in the 36 yrs prior combined!

[Daxinth]

I'll just apologize for the length of my posts now. I am really bad for typing to fast and adding too much details.  Enjoy.

 

 

The major influences have been:

 

Father's military service

My uncles death when I was 7.

Dungeons & Dragons starting back in 1994. I was ten

Learned about computers and played more D&D, and console games. I was 14

My school had arrived in the information age, and we were taught how to establish emails, and took typing courses. I was 15

My experience in high school should have driven me to be more violent but it never manifested, and I was given the option to leave the school district and live with my sister. I was 16-17

 

Living with my sister and working during my school year wasn't bad at first, but Sept 11th happened, I had been required to take government class again, it was an introduction to the structure and scope of the government, but unlike missouri I paid attention. I was 17-18  My instructor essentially gave me the first introduction into a strict constitutional framework, At the time I was impressed, and proud.  So I sought to join the military, but after an encounter with my sisters husband, he was stressed because my sister was pregnant and upset about me speaking to a Marine recruiter. He threatened to kill me if she lost the baby, so I didn't join.  It created a division, that made the next part, where my sister and brother in law manipulated my (suffering but undiagnosed bipolar schizophrenic mother) using the grandchildren as leverage and accusing my father of rape.  It tore my entire family apart. The animosity I have for them is ridiculous now, but I still cannot believe that they would be that selfish. (I have learned that neither my father at the time, nor my mother would have split without assistance.) My father was then diagnosed with clinical depression, but not just at the time, he had been suffering for 20 years. (I know there was a significant amount of abuse while he was growing up).   Then I left. 

I returned to where I had graduated 700 miles away from anyone in my family. I reconnected with a girl that had very much caught my attention and wanted to attend college. So after bumming shelter from some ex-friends to my sister for 9 months. I moved into a house with a family that began me on the path to find liberty. The husband had taught me that my time and my money and my skills were mine, and what I did with them produced value. And for the first month and a half rent, I did landscaping projects. Then I met my first atheist, a russian immigrant, nationalized, and attending schools to pursue physics and science.  He sparked my curiosity in the natural world and encouraged me to attend community college. Intercollegiate debate, introduction to philosophy, and macro economics, were my first three classes, but seeing the time as not fast enough I joined the National Guard to get school paid for because my interests had expanded. This was when I encountered my own demons, suffered for a year or so with drugs, and found a light, some crappy self-help books that helped me continue digging until I found cognitive behavioral therapy. And I was cured.  Understanding the self-talk that undermines my goals, and really helped push me to do more, so between d&d, gaming, CBT, and the national guard. I woke up only to be instantly distracted, I had been getting tutored by my russian friend to fill the gaps in my education. Rounding it out in history, world religions, math, sciences, and a great introduction to libertarian thought. Then Ron Paul came up, and I spent the next 3 years crawling out of my coma. My last hurdle was being stuck without a good argument to fall off the fence between libertarians and minarchism, had I just known why that wouldn't happen.  That is where Stefan comes in, yesterday I watched 18 of the videos for philosophy and have read two books. I am generally very socially self conscious, overly critical, and have some odd fear of failure. I am still working through that but have found this very inspirational.The explanation and then use on facebook, of some of the philosophical arguments has already helped me see those on my friends list as they truly are, or at least politically.  (since that encompasses 95% of my friends list) (mixed between ron paul supporters, ows protestors, 3%'rs, voluntaryists, and republicans.)  I am self conscious because I get comfortable and have a very non-existent filter when it comes to details about my observations of reality.

 

I wrote a paper that I will be reviewing and hopefully reposting here to help me with my fear of being judged socially, and found out to be less intelligent that I think I am.

(I started writing this 2 hours ago and have gone through at least 3 different versions. I tried not to add too many irrelevant details but it just comes out when I start typing.) I am open about some of my weaknesses as more of an assistant to myself so that I am less awkward and anxious when I get my web cam going and maybe even call in. I believe I would see if my reasoning about the philosophy of perception holds. 

[Mishelle]

I was always confused as to why my classmates could watch war footage with watery hopeful eyes being told that these people died for our freedom. What the hell does that even mean? 

 

So interesting MM, you were spared the conspiracy side-track, v nice!  I so resonate with what you write here about war.  I remember when I first realized that we still go to war, I was maybe 7.  Before that I thought it was history, like stories you watch on tv, or the boogey man you know is not really real.  I vividly remember being crushed, and had repeated dreams about actually being crushed by horses.  I also vividly remember thinking, "oh no, no-no-no-no-no, this can't be, this can't be the world, I can't possibly be expected to play along with this."

Powder:

"-can't remember where I first heard Stef but he is as close to my own way of thinking of anyone I have ever heard.  he also cured me of the conspiracy bug, not that a lot of it isn't valid, but with a single quote from a video about 911 he dismissed it all and put it into perspective...

 

"So what?  Even if the theories are true, its like giving a speeding ticket to a serial killer"  

 

I LOVE this!

[Holo Cene]

Funny thing is this current trajectory started with a health problem. I had developed a bad candida problem and went to doctors who did nothing for me. Then I started to research online about how to deal with the problems of health. Ultimately this lead to revelations about the health industry, central being the government doesn't want you to be healthy. I had always had a deep skepticism about the government since I had devoured all of the obligatory knowledge in order to be considered well educated, including the new scientists like Dawkins, Hawking, Pinker etc. This was on a different level entirely though, as it was sociopathic the way they designed medicine and health that got me to understand that things were really skewed.

 

After that, I became addicted to conspiracy theories starting with TZM and Loose Change. Then peak oil, Alex Jones, Jesse Ventura and David Icke. The world just seemed to be completely illusory and these people pretended to pull back the curtain, though even then I knew David Icke was insane with his whole lizard people thing, it was funny. Then from there it was Peter Schiff, Gerald Celente and all of the Economic Crash stuff. Started to prepare for that, then I watched There will be no Recovery, Prepare Yourself Accordingly by Stefan Molyneux and it was like someone had opened up my brain and was saying things that made absolute sense. The funny thing is it sounded exactly like I already knew it, but someone was articulating it. As if my unconscious already knew what was being said was true before a word was uttered. Then I began devouring as much of his podcasts as I could, slowing down at times to digest the intellectual nutrients. There have been a lot of changes in my life since, broke up with 4 year girlfriend, stopped talking to all of my friends, and am working on trying to realign my familial relationships. It has been the best and worst thing that has ever happened to me, if that makes any sense .

[Mishelle]

Daxinth

"This was when I encountered my own demons, suffered for a year or so with drugs, and found a light, some crappy self-help books that helped me continue digging until I found cognitive behavioral therapy. And I was cured.  Understanding the self-talk that undermines my goals, and really helped push me to do more, so between d&d, gaming, CBT, and the national guard. I woke up only to be instantly distracted, I had been getting tutored by my russian friend to fill the gaps in my education. Rounding it out in history, world religions, math, sciences, and a great introduction to libertarian thought. Then Ron Paul came up, and I spent the next 3 years crawling out of my coma. My last hurdle was being stuck without a good argument to fall off the fence between libertarians and minarchism, had I just known why that wouldn't happen.  That is where Stefan comes in, yesterday I watched 18 of the videos for philosophy and have read two books. I am generally very socially self conscious, overly critical, and have some odd fear of failure. I am still working through that but have found this very inspirational.

 

I wrote a paper that I will be reviewing and hopefully reposting here to help me with my fear of being judged socially, and found out to be less intelligent that I think I am."

 

Fascinating dear thanks for sharing!  I can see you are a very thoughtful and insightful person and funny too, I just adore funny and sensitive combined!  I also had similar issues around drugs and very negative self-talk and the self-help books did help quite a bit with that.  I swing still quite dramatically between a kind of exhibitionism, I might call it, and a desire to hide away in a corner with great books and pretend those are the people I really know.

After that, I became addicted to conspiracy theories starting with TZM and Loose Change. Then peak oil, Alex Jones, Jesse Ventura and David Icke. The world just seemed to be completely illusory and these people pretended to pull back the curtain, though even then I knew David Icke was insane with his whole lizard people thing, it was funny. Then from there it was Peter Schiff, Gerald Celente and all of the Economic Crash stuff. Started to prepare for that, then I watched There will be no Recovery, Prepare Yourself Accordingly by Stefan Molyneux and it was like someone had opened up my brain and was saying things that made absolute sense. The funny thing is it sounded exactly like I already knew it, but someone was articulating it. As if my unconscious already knew what was being said was true before a word was uttered. Then I began devouring as much of his podcasts as I could, slowing down at times to digest the intellectual nutrients. There have been a lot of changes in my life since, broke up with 4 year girlfriend, stopped talking to all of my friends, and am working on trying to realign my familial relationships. It has been the best and worst thing that has ever happened to me, if that makes any sense .

Wow! Bravo Holo Cene!  Yes this makes total sense. And I had the same experience hearing Stef for the first time, it's like I felt we were related, seriously, like siblings in a past life, LOL! 

 

I also must admit, I still have a penchant for conspiracy theory. Short of the reptilian crap I think there's a lot of truth in the social engineering stuff especially, and this is what most pisses me off--you only have to read Tragedy and Hope to know there is a basis for good argument.