POXER Posted July 8, 2015 Posted July 8, 2015 Hello! My name is Martin. I'm from Norway and have been a donator and follower of FDR for a long while, but I rarely post anything. The reason for my sudden change of heart is Stefan's newest series on r/K-selective traits which really cleared up a lot of "missing" links in my understanding... I thought, but just for everything but my understanding of self. If you guys could help me out: Thanks!Introduction and childhood: After watching the first video, I thought I had strong K-selective traits with some r-selective attributes. I was brought up without violence and with conservative/open-minded parents. In Norway we have a children's song which goes like: "You shall never bother others, you shall be both fair and kind, and whatever else you do I shall not mind" - and this is what my lasting impression, of especially my father's, upbringing of me was.I have always been extremely talented in logics and mathematics and were mostly 2-4 years a head of my class mates (during 10 first years of school) - without proper stimuli from Norway's TERRIBLE "unity school" (What we call the public school here) except my dad's "private courses" (When not working 12 hours a day). I have always caught VERY fast, subconciously is more correct, if something is "off" or did not make logical sense. It almost gives me a feeling like a chill - hard to explain. This always came in handy as I have never really needed to study subjects involving logic - it just fell naturally. I also did some mock IQ-tests: And I scored sky-high on math/logic parts, but average at other categories. I didn't really have the right stimuli at school. I was intensely bored in school. To clarify: the soft sciences like language, society studies etc. I didn't excel at - they never made much sense to me (Though after we started getting grades in 8th grade it was mostly B's in those subjects). it was Trivia Pursuit, remembering dull facts.I was also a somewhat a bully and bullied myself - I was very rambunctious and was EASILY teased because I could explode and would always defend myself. I was a recluse in the open - I never really fit in (and felt like this - other people weren't the same as me) but I knew how to fit in somewhat - I learned the rules but didn't really get the "game". I am certain after video 2 I have a miniscule amygdala, is the point I'm trying to make. I became addicted to video games early, and it dominated my life completely during teen age years. I had almost no female contact (except my mom) before I was 20. No attention at all. I was very depressed, but "switched it off" for the most part. Though I did have some weird same-sex (and age) experimentation when I was around 8-10, which I really hated and supressed it like mad for A LOT of years. I could not even look in the direction I had done these things without invoking supressed shame. I have no idea how all this influences r/K-selective traits, but I guess it does because I became extremely good at supressing my feelings, and I can still handle them like a switch (even love, hate, sexual lust etc. - but not rage, I guess this is where it all comes out, eh?). I don't know when I started doing this; during the few years of bullying in school, not getting the stimuli I needed, or the lack of any real female attention during teen-years? I think I developed, together with the enourmous praise I got for my math/logic skills, some form of bizarre form of narcissism. As I mentioned, either I excelled, or I quickly abandoned every motivation to learn.As I have spent most of my afternoon's since my late teens reading and watching videoes of topics that intrigue me I am that pesky know-it-all. When I first get interested in a subject i consume EXTREME amounts of information until I'm satisfied. --- Some extra history:When I entered the last year of high school my interest for politics and rational thought (then channeled with intense focus on studying the irrationality of religion and social democratic politics) - this evolved into joining the most right-wing extremely soft libertarian political party (Progress Party) - which i gradually rose in the ranks of and became a County Advisor/Secretary - and also quit half way through my bachelor's degree in petroleum engineering to do that. The youth segment of this party was as always more radical than their mother party, and led me gradually down the path of libertarianism and rational politics - which landed me in no-man's land once again: the almost empty club of non-state believers. Result - self described personality today:My pre-frontal cortex is quite developed and forces K-traits/beliefs upon my r-selective brain. I am not depressed, I think, though I feel a great apathy towards the future (due to understanding of politics). When I watched video 2 I recogniced I'm all talk and no action - even though I really try my best to sort my shit out.What are your take on this FDR-community? Is there any way to mend a r-brain like mine?
MMX2010 Posted July 9, 2015 Posted July 9, 2015 What are your take on this FDR-community? Is there any way to mend a r-brain like mine? Of course. The Last Psychiatrist has two brilliant articles on doing just that. ----------------------- Here's the first one: http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2012/06/amy_schumer_offers_you_a_look.html The most important part of the first one is this: Say you yell every day at an/your eight year old girl for sloppy homework, admittedly a terrible thing to do but not uncommon, and eventually she thinks, "I'm terrible at everything" and gives up, so the standard interpretation of this is that she has lost self-confidence, she's been demoralized, and case by case you may be right, but there's another possibility which you should consider: she chooses to focus on "I'm terrible at everything" so that she can give up. "If I agree to hate myself I only need a 60? I'll be done in 10 minutes. " It is precisely at this instant that a parent fails or succeeds, i.e. fails: do they teach the kid to prefer (find reinforcement in) the drudgery of boring, difficult work with little daily evidence of improvement, or do they teach the kid to prefer (find reinforcement in) about 20 minutes of sobbing hysterically and then off to Facebook and a sandwich? Each human being is only able to learn to prefer one of those at a time. Which one does the parent incentivize? If you read this as laziness you have utterly missed the point. It's not laziness, because you're still working hard, but you are working purposelessly on purpose. The goal of your work is to be done the work, not to be better at work. For a great many people this leads to an unconscious, default hierarchy in the mind, I'm not an epidemiologist but you got it in you sometime between the ages of 5 and 10: Doing Awesome is better than Feeling Terrible About Yourself is better than The Mental Work of Change You should memorize this, it is running your life. "I'm constantly thinking about ways to improve myself." No, you're gunning the engine while you're up on blocks. Obsessing and ruminating is a skill at which we are all tremendously accomplished, and admittedly that feels like mental work because it's exhausting and unrewarding, but you can no more ruminate your way through a life crisis than a differential equation. So the parents unknowingly teach you to opt for Choice B, and after a few years of childhood insecurity, you'll choose the Blue Pill and begin the dreaming: someday and someplace you'll show someone how great you somehow are. And after a few months with that someone they will eventually turn to you, look deep into your eyes, and say, "look, I don't have a swimming pool, but if I did I'd drown myself in it. Holy Christ are you toxic." "Well, my parents were really strict, they made me--" Keep telling yourself that. Chances are if your parents are between 50 and 90 they were simply terrible. Great expectations; epic fail. Your parents were dutifully strict about their arbitrary and expedient rules, not about making you a better person. "Clean your plate! Go to college!" Words fail me. They weren't tough, they were rigidly self-aggrandizing. "They made me practice piano an hour every day!" as if the fact of practice was the whole point; what they did not teach you is to try and sound better every practice. They meant well, they loved you, but the generation that invented grade inflation is not also going to know about self-monitoring and paedeia, which is roughly translated, "making yourself better at piano." "You don't know how hard it is to raise kids," says someone whose main cultural influence in life was the Beatles. The fact that you will inevitably fail in creating Superman is not a reason not to try. Oh: I bet I know what you chose when you were 8. The mistake is in thinking that misery and self-loathing are the "bad" things you are trying to get away from with Ambien and Abilify or drinking or therapy or whatever, but you have this completely backwards. Self-loathing is the defense against change, self-loathing is preferable to Mental Work. You choose misery so that nothing changes, and the Ambien and the drinking and the therapy placate the misery so that you can go on not changing. That's why when you look in the mirror and don't like what you see, you don't immediately crank out 30 pushups, you open a bag of chips. You don't even try, you only plan to try. The appearance of mental work, aka masturbation. The goal of your ego is not to change, but what you don't realize is that time is moving on regardless. ------------------ Here's the second one: http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2012/10/the_story_of_narcissus.html The most important part of the second one is this: No one knows what Liriope and Cephisus did, but whatever they did, it worked: he didn't even recognize his own reflection. That's a man who doesn't know himself. That's a man who never had to look at himself from the outside. How do you make a child know himself? You surround him with mirrors. "This is what everyone else sees when you do what you do. This is who everyone thinks you are." You cause him to be tested: this is the kind of person you are, you are good at this but not that. This other person is better than you at this, but not better than you at that. These are the limits by which you are defined. Narcissus was never allowed to meet real danger, glory, struggle, honor, success, failure; only artificial versions manipulated by his parents. He was never allowed to ask, "am I a coward? Am I a fool?" To ensure his boring longevity his parents wouldn't have wanted a definite answer in either direction. He was allowed to live in a world of speculation, of fantasy, of "someday" and "what if". He never had to hear "too bad", "too little" and "too late." When you want a child to become something-- you first teach him how to master his impulses, how to live with frustration. But when a temptation arose Narcissus's parents either let him have it or hid it from him so he wouldn't be tempted, so they wouldn't have to tell him no. They didn't teach him how to resist temptation, how to deal with lack. And they most certainly didn't teach him how NOT to want what he couldn't have. They didn't teach him how to want. The result was that he stopped having desires and instead desired the feeling of desire. ----------------------------------- The third thing you can do is carefully study this diagram of what it means to be a great man. Without fail, I get two very extreme reactions whenever I show men that diagram. Extreme pleasure, as in, "Oh wow! That diagram is a god-send! Now I know what to do!" - (and they go to work, day after day, month after month, year after year - building their bodies, their fashion sense, their finances, and their ability to flirt). Extreme displeasure, as in, "Oh my god! That diagram is wrong! I'm already a good person! Fashion!?!? That's unimportant aesthetic nonsense!" - (and they refuse to go to work - day after day, month after month, year after year - they do not change; and nothing really changes). ---------------------------- On a personal note, you have an excellent grasp of why you have the difficulties that you have. But The Last Psychiatrist warns against focusing on why you are the way you are. He, instead, encourages you to replace the question of "Why" with the question, "Now What?" I hope those articles and that diagram help you know "Now What". Lastly, TheLastPsychiatrist is quite difficult to read, so if you'd like to Skype about his articles (or anything else), you can reach me by adding [email protected] into the Add A Contact window. 5
Slavik Posted July 9, 2015 Posted July 9, 2015 Hello! My name is Martin. I'm from Norway and have been a donator and follower of FDR for a long while, but I rarely post anything. The reason for my sudden change of heart is Stefan's newest series on r/K-selective traits which really cleared up a lot of "missing" links in my understanding... I thought, but just for everything but my understanding of self. If you guys could help me out: Thanks! Introduction and childhood: After watching the first video, I thought I had strong K-selective traits with some r-selective attributes. I was brought up without violence and with conservative/open-minded parents. In Norway we have a children's song which goes like: "You shall never bother others, you shall be both fair and kind, and whatever else you do I shall not mind" - and this is what my lasting impression, of especially my father's, upbringing of me was. I have always been extremely talented in logics and mathematics and were mostly 2-4 years a head of my class mates (during 10 first years of school) - without proper stimuli from Norway's TERRIBLE "unity school" (What we call the public school here) except my dad's "private courses" (When not working 12 hours a day). I have always caught VERY fast, subconciously is more correct, if something is "off" or did not make logical sense. It almost gives me a feeling like a chill - hard to explain. This always came in handy as I have never really needed to study subjects involving logic - it just fell naturally. I also did some mock IQ-tests: And I scored sky-high on math/logic parts, but average at other categories. I didn't really have the right stimuli at school. I was intensely bored in school. To clarify: the soft sciences like language, society studies etc. I didn't excel at - they never made much sense to me (Though after we started getting grades in 8th grade it was mostly B's in those subjects). it was Trivia Pursuit, remembering dull facts. I was also a somewhat a bully and bullied myself - I was very rambunctious and was EASILY teased because I could explode and would always defend myself. I was a recluse in the open - I never really fit in (and felt like this - other people weren't the same as me) but I knew how to fit in somewhat - I learned the rules but didn't really get the "game". I am certain after video 2 I have a miniscule amygdala, is the point I'm trying to make. I became addicted to video games early, and it dominated my life completely during teen age years. I had almost no female contact (except my mom) before I was 20. No attention at all. I was very depressed, but "switched it off" for the most part. Though I did have some weird same-sex (and age) experimentation when I was around 8-10, which I really hated and supressed it like mad for A LOT of years. I could not even look in the direction I had done these things without invoking supressed shame. I have no idea how all this influences r/K-selective traits, but I guess it does because I became extremely good at supressing my feelings, and I can still handle them like a switch (even love, hate, sexual lust etc. - but not rage, I guess this is where it all comes out, eh?). I don't know when I started doing this; during the few years of bullying in school, not getting the stimuli I needed, or the lack of any real female attention during teen-years? I think I developed, together with the enourmous praise I got for my math/logic skills, some form of bizarre form of narcissism. As I mentioned, either I excelled, or I quickly abandoned every motivation to learn. As I have spent most of my afternoon's since my late teens reading and watching videoes of topics that intrigue me I am that pesky know-it-all. When I first get interested in a subject i consume EXTREME amounts of information until I'm satisfied. --- Some extra history: When I entered the last year of high school my interest for politics and rational thought (then channeled with intense focus on studying the irrationality of religion and social democratic politics) - this evolved into joining the most right-wing extremely soft libertarian political party (Progress Party) - which i gradually rose in the ranks of and became a County Advisor/Secretary - and also quit half way through my bachelor's degree in petroleum engineering to do that. The youth segment of this party was as always more radical than their mother party, and led me gradually down the path of libertarianism and rational politics - which landed me in no-man's land once again: the almost empty club of non-state believers. Result - self described personality today: My pre-frontal cortex is quite developed and forces K-traits/beliefs upon my r-selective brain. I am not depressed, I think, though I feel a great apathy towards the future (due to understanding of politics). When I watched video 2 I recogniced I'm all talk and no action - even though I really try my best to sort my shit out. What are your take on this FDR-community? Is there any way to mend a r-brain like mine? Hi POXER, thank you for sharing some of your story. From what I understand so far, epigenetics play a great role in adapting to environment, brain plasticity and the rest that indeed indicates that if looked for and worked on, many traits can be "mended." Changing environment which may include working on your "mind." With that said, using Stefan as an example. Stefan has mentioned a few times that he was between the R/K lifestyle and approach to life, all of which has changed when he has done tremendous amount of work on himself with he help of therapists. The change in persons behavior is shown statistically with talk therapy. Not all behaviors change, not all people guaranteed to change as the main want and the work itself largely needs your will. Hope this helps 1
MMX2010 Posted July 9, 2015 Posted July 9, 2015 The change in persons behavior is shown statistically with talk therapy. Not all behaviors change, not all people guaranteed to change as the main want and the work itself largely needs your will. Hope this helps It won't help. Poxer's life-story clearly indicates the typical r-selected path, "I only do what I'm exceptionally good at. If I'm not exceptionally good at it, then I won't even bother." As well as, "I only do what is exceptionally stimulating and fun. If it's not exceptionally stimulating and fun, then I won't bother." Talk therapy is excellent at telling you why you've gotten to where you've arrived - (bad parents, lack of social support, lack of empathetic support) - but it's horribly inefficient at telling you Now what? And it's even worse at driving home the point, "Look, man. You're a guy. And as a guy you're surrounded by people who will never emotionally support you, because you're a guy! So you'd better learn to emotionally support yourself through the process of daily, boring, scary, and essential work." 1 1
Slavik Posted July 9, 2015 Posted July 9, 2015 Just to add a little bit since the point was raised by MMX, the various types of therapies that are in existence and widely practiced today address the point very well. The discovery process is well done with Dynamic Therapy (and some other types), the what now part is absolutely addressed in most of modern therapies, but in CBT it is the primary focus.
MMX2010 Posted July 9, 2015 Posted July 9, 2015 Just to add a little bit since the point was raised by MMX, the various types of therapies that are in existence and widely practiced today address the point very well. The discovery process is well done with Dynamic Therapy (and some other types), the what now part is absolutely addressed in most of modern therapies, but in CBT it is the primary focus. There is also REBT (Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy) which is both scientifically-supported and endorsed by members of the Roosh V Forum. But Slavik, do you disagree with any of the following: (1) Finding the right therapist is a long, arduous process that often isn't covered by medical insurance. (2) Finding the wrong therapist and experiencing bad therapy can produce negative setbacks that take months or years to prepare. (3) Improving your wardrobe and starting an exercise program is both something that POXER can do today (right now!) and something that carries absolutely no negative risks associated with bad therapy? If you disagree with any of the following, please say so and explain why. If you agree with all of the following, then please explain why you're leading POXER on a much more expensive and risky path than the one I propose. Just to add a little bit since the point was raised by MMX, the various types of therapies that are in existence and widely practiced today address the point very well. The discovery process is well done with Dynamic Therapy (and some other types), the what now part is absolutely addressed in most of modern therapies, but in CBT it is the primary focus. Forgot to mention, the book that best explains Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy is called "The Guide to Rational Living" by Albert Ellis. 1 1
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