Reddit mentions: The best psychology & counseling books

Even if this is supposed to be a part of something larger, it should have its own arc. You know what's supposed to happen as the author, so maybe to you, it seems like its fine. But you need to look and craft these things from the perspective of the audience.

I'll use, say, Cowboy Bebop as an example. It's almost entirely a series of self-contained episodes, save for a few episodes that touch on this relationship between Spike and Vicious. But, the self-contained episodes are often iterating and riffing on some of the same overall themes that these connected episodes are built on. Or, when they aren't, they're carried on pure entertainment value. They feel good. They're flat out fun to watch. Or they revel in the absurd, which ties into the show thematically and also rides pure entertainment value.

Fallout: New Vegas does this as well. Side-quests seem self-contained, more or less, but they build on your understanding of the world and they often build on this theme of nostalgia for the Old World, or Old World Blues, as the game eventually puts it. All of the companion character side-quests riff on this theme of clinging to the past or moving forward, the factions all follow in this theme (whether its the major factions modeling their selves after Old World powers or the Brotherhood of Steel finding that they don't belong in the world anymore, so they either need to adapt or cling to the past and die). All of these side quests are self-contained, thus having their own arc and feel satisfying to complete, but also they build on the overarching theme of the game and give the player something to think about once everything is said and done.

You can do this with your own work. You can figure out what it is that you want it to be about and make build on those themes, even just from the start. If you have ideas and themes you want to explore, you can explore them from the start in whatever way you want, and tie it all into something more grand later if you're telling an overall story, or just keep riffing on them in different self-contained scenarios. The main, best thing to keep in mind though is that if this is intended for an audience, you need to write it with the audience experience in mind. Your ideas could be incredible, but the audience would never know it if you've written it to be impenetrable to them, or just so boring that it's unlikely they'll continue to read to get to the good parts.

As an example, I love the show Eureka Seven. Somewhere towards the middle of its run, it has a small arc with a couple of characters named Ray and Charles that culminates in some of the best TV I've ever had the pleasure of seeing. But, I can almost never recommend this show to anyone. The first ~10 to 15ish episodes are a chore. The show sort of acts like you should know who all the characters are already, or doesn't give you a whole lot to work with in terms of giving you something to come back for. For this reason, it took me from when it aired back in 2005 all the way until 2014 to finally finish the show from front to back. There was a ton of good there, but it was so, so difficult to get to it through the start of the show.

So, Entertainment value. Have you read Fiona Staples' and Brian K Vaughan's Saga? The very first panel of the very first page oozes entertainment value, while also giving some great banter to help establish the characters and introduce us to the world. This is a strong opening, and even if there is some lull to the comic afterwards (which there may or may not be depending on your tastes), its given you a taste of what it is and a promise of what its capable of delivering. This is a really great thing to have. If you're aware of Homestuck, it's the GameFAQs FAQ that serves as the end of the comic's first Act that suddenly shows you how the comic will format itself: Lots of nonsensical goofing around until hitting an emotional climax that re-contextualizes the events you had just seen. This isn't at the start of the comic, but entertainment value carries the comic until that point, assuming you're into programming jokes and goofball shenanigans. But, this scene comes so comparatively late that it's likely you've already dropped the comic before getting to the "good part" if these jokes didn't carry the comic for you.

Actual Advice and Critique

Comics are hard, because, unless you have a writer or have an artist to partner with, you're doing both jobs, and the quality of the thing depends both on being well-written and well drawn (or at least some balance between the two that makes it palatable to read). I think that if you think in an actual episodic way, you could improve your writing a ton. With this comic, the arc would be "how did Lasereye become Lasereye?" It's potentially a pretty good premise, right? You'll establish a character and have plenty of chances to create entertaining scenarios because... It's your story! Lasereye became Lasereye in whatever way you decide he did. Go crazy, tell us a story! How did some young, bright-eyed, bushy-tailed kid turn into some dude in a slum with one eye glowing brighter than ever and the other dim and jaded? Telling this in three pages would actually be a great exercise.

Your art is rough in that it looks like you could use learning some base fundamental things like human anatomy. Your palette and the food stand itself reminds me of Kill Six Billion Demons though, which is great. You've created a good atmosphere in panels 1, 2, and the last panel on the last page, despite the artwork itself being rough. That's great! You know how a thing should feel. That's a great thing to have down pat that will only continue to be a boon as your technical skill improves (and it will if you work at it!). I think that if you buckle down and grind through learning how to draw, you could make very great, visually appealing work.

There's a problem in page flow on Page 2. Here I've shown how your page directs the eye with red lines. The way the page is laid out, you end up reading the fifth panel before you read the fourth panel, which will cause a reader to have to double back to read things in order. You don't want that. You'll wanna keep an eye out for how your pages read in the future. Just give them a once-over and ask where the eye would naturally go following the lines on the page.

So, if you aren't currently, learning human anatomy would be a great place to start placing effort. If you have access, figure drawing classes and the such would be a great way to start working on that. It helps immensely to have others around who can help you if you aren't sure what you're doing at first. Books on comics in general would be a good place to go as well. Understanding Comics and Making Comics, both by by Scott McCloud, are good introductory texts. Graphic Storytelling and Visual Narrative by Will Eisner and Comics and Sequential Art: Principles and Practices from the Legendary Cartoonist also by Will Eisner would be good as well.

For writing, Dan Harmon's Channel 101 guides will be great tutorials as he's one of the best working writers today in episodic TV. I'm aware this isn't directly comics, but the best writing advice is rarely going to come from a comics-focused book. Will Eisner will tell you how to use visuals to your advantage in telling a story, but the nitty-gritty of actually writing will have to come from somewhere else. The Hero of a Thousand Faces by Joseph Cambell may help you understand structure further. This is what Dan Harmon is riffing on and working off of with his Story Circles, but adapted slightly for the sake of episodic television. Film Crit Hulk, an online movie critic/ the Incredible Hulk has a screenwriting book called Screenwriting 101. It's invaluable. I highly recommend it, even if it isn't directly about comic writing. You'll be able to adapt the advice as you work in your own medium.

IM BLUE DA BA DEE It is called blue and the artwork is blue! what more could you want!!! its the bluest thing in the world! da ba dee da ba diiii

Summer Rae Her wwe ring name is Summer Rae, which is like summer rays which are what tan us whilst chilling in the summer. She is also hot like the summer!

Watermelon Slicer its like an apple slicer but freaking massive!!! not seen anyone ever use them but i need one in my life for the perfect melons

Elvis Searcher CD this would be for my dad, we havent always had the best of relationships but we are starting to really get along right now, would be nice to treat him with the newest album of his favourite artist that we both love, after all he has done for me recently

Karl Pilkington Book this series was one of the funniest tv shows i have ever seen and this book is just as funny, its a diary of the events and its just so stupid in places that it is sidesplitting!!!

Guitar Picks They are the best pick because they literally are picks ;)

Star Wars Doggo Costume! This is a costume for dogs and fits all sizes! You know it will be funny and cute to see the doggo walk around with a stormtrooper on him!!! ( or her)

Banana Armour I think this is useless because who puts bananas in positions where they are unarmed and need to be protected! i do need it tho

Mulan It is one of the greatest films in the world, it promotes feminism, there is romance, guilt, family honour and values, the moral of not judging a book by its cover as well as you being able to achieve anything you want, its soundtrack is a masterpiece and helped launch the career of Christina Aguilera AND it has Stevie Wonder and Donny Osmond, a panda, a cricket, batman references, a homosexual subplot, and a talking fucking dragon voiced by Eddie Murphy... what more do you want

DIY Enema kit it would be helpful because not only can it make sure your bowel movements are okay, it can be used for sexual pleasure, to help with drug or alcohol intake, it can be used for a punishment on someone who has wronged you and im 90% sure it can be used in some way to benefit the population and aid in childbirth

Nutribullet!!! to help me get healthier and lose weight before my university graduation and cousins wedding in india

Pesky Penguin Bottle Opener Its an add on and its something that Benedrillt Cumberpatch cannot say!

Tottenham Hotspur Scarf! THEY ARE THE BEST AND I LOVE THEM!!! im going to guess you are a fan of the spurs! because tottenham are also called spurs! get it?! sorry im bad at this stuff aha dont know any american teams really

Some rare pokemon haloween plush for this price i hope this is super rare and something that is signed by pikachu himself

Unicorn Poop This is special candy! real unicorn poop, trust me, its real... i promise... i think... i lied

Sweet Candies Yankee Candle this is my fav scent! its what i imagine the wonka factory smells like!!!

Pokedex!!! pokemon was my fav growing up and i used one of these bad boys to go round and try to hunt them down!

The Hero with a thousand faces book this is a book that really shows the basic outline and plot for most films and characters that the world loves! it hellped my dad and his friend when they were writing a screenplay and i feel like its a great place to start and look at !

WWE Seth Freaking Rollins Funko Pop! this is a combination of 2! i love wwe and wrestling and Seth Rollins is my current favourite wrestler! i actually wanan try to become a wrestler! and also funko pops! i am a huge collector and obsessed with them!

Random Ass Bollywood Vinyl This is one of my fav bollywood films and has a banging sountrack, just is funny that it is on vinyl!

This was a lot of fun! thankyou for this!

EDIT: Sorry still getting used to this new reddit and didnt realise the linking has changed!

Yeah, I was atheist for ~ 4-5 years during college. I'm 23 now and consider myself a nonaffiliated theist.

I grew up vaguely Christian. My father and mother had, respectively, been raised in Protestant and Catholic churches and had had issues with their practices. My brother and I were never raised in any church, but were told that God exists.

I also had a number of "spooky" experiences growing up. Ghosts. A dead great-aunt maybe visiting me before family deaths. These mainly occurred during my high school years. They make me strongly believe in some sort of afterlife. I describe them here.

In college, I grew skeptical of God -- Problem of Evil, the incompatibility of free will and "a divine plan", and whatnot. I adopted a materialistic worldview, and my spooky past experiences were essentially ignored because they couldn't be reconciled. But they humbled me and made me a bit skeptical of my own worldview.

I graduated this year in March with a BA in philosophy. I needed some sort of direction/purpose, but, after reading Change of Heart and Predictably Irrational I grew skeptical of human reasoning. And of course our senses and memories are flawed. Of all the animals in the world, from worms to cows, with all their limited perceptions of the world, why do we humans assume that we have a correct perception of the world?

I concluded that we can't have a firm, certain grasp on anything. And so my endeavor to live the best life was impossible. And my reliance on science and reasoning were shattered because humans and their reasoning are flawed.

• Note that science is built upon theories/principles of knowledge founded in empiricism, a school of metaphysics. Science uses metaphysical and epistemological principles and applies them to the world. But science isn't capable of looking at its foundational principles. That's a job for philosophers.
  
  
• And science makes only objective observations, not normative ones. Science can't make moral claims. It can inform morality, but it can't arrive at moral conclusions alone.
  
  
• On top of that, we have no fucking clue what consciousness is or how it arises. The Problem of Other Minds reminds us that we can't be sure of who or what is also conscious. We just do our best to make sense of how something acts and how much its anatomy resembles ours (because I know that at least I'm conscious.)
  
  On top of that, as a graduate, I no longer had college professors telling me what to do. I had no clear goals in life to work towards. And so now, post-college, all the responsibility was on my shoulders to choose what to do and pursue with my life. That's a big responsibility. But how do I make decisions if I have no certain grasp on anything? I spiraled into depression.
  
  So I sought wisdom.
  
  I talked to friends and family about wisdom. I looked at the Greek philosophers who spoke of wisdom and virtue.
  
  I looked at all the major religions to see what wisdom they might hold. I looked for patterns between them in hopes of finding something universal that they all described.
  
  I also became increasingly focused on immediate sensory and intuitive knowledge as opposed to the theory and abstract nature of science and philosophy. I started reading from NDERF's archives of self-reported near-death experiences to look for patterns.
  
  -----
  
  ....
  
  Anywho, I've arrived at the conclusion that everyone does their best to make sense of the world. I try not to judge others. Even if they're Mormons or Scientologists or Wiccans. I have my spooky history. I've come to believe that an afterlife exists. I see what others think about the supernatural, and I see if it appeals to me. I think Sikhism is pretty reasonable and beautiful, and I think my attachment to the afterlife belief almost obligates me to believe in a higher power. Sikhs seek to create and maintain chardi kala, a happiness in life by being content and thankful, which greatly appeals to me. But Sikhism does have a fair bit of ritual (albeit with legitimate purpose) and some guru praise which, given my history, seems a bit too much of a commitment.
  
  What I can say with some certainty is that it's good to live a life of virtue. It is good and feels good to help others. It's good to enjoy life and not take it for granted. Everyday, I consciously make an effort to be virtuous and to be thankful for my blessings. Veganism and activism are obvious applications of virtue and helping others. If God exists, I thank It everyday for all the good I experience. I thank it for the beauty in the world. As flawed as the world is, it's certainly more wonderful than horrible.

Thanks for the thoughtful comment! I'll try to address all your points.

> My problem here is that I find some aspects of Conservative culture contemptible, having been directly exposed to them. I expect I'm likely to get some nods from social conservatives - I know they feel the same way about me and I'm suprisingly ok with that. I know why they feel as they do. But the reasons are not interchangeable nor do I find the reasons equally compelling.

I was raised in a very conservative area myself so I know exactly what you mean. If you're like me, you've seen an environment openly hostile to gay people, racial minorities, and ceaselessly preoccuppied with others' reproductive rights. Trust me, I know what you mean and I do think that a big problem is that rural/conservative America has not been held accountable for the way it creates the necessity for people to agitate for their rights.

But the reason you do not find them equally compelling is because you have a differing moral palette from a social conservative. I don't share them, either, but reading Jonathan Haidt's book The Righteous Mind opened me up a lot to the possibility that there's more to it than just closed-mindedness.

This is not to say that I think homophobia and racism have value. More that I think if we are to adequately ensure the equal treatment of all people, those who do not prioritize that goal need to understand why others think the way they do.

Unfortunately there's nothing to say that social conservatives must understand the way others think. Is that fair to liberals? No. But it's work anyone must do if they want their ideas to be made material. But persuasion and slow change are incredibly important tools in a democracy.

> Since I do believe in individual liberty, I tend to respond to social conservatives saying that "liberals are trying to redefine male and female" for everybody with a derisive snort. I'm in fairly good touch with that sort of liberal - and it's all about being allowed to define your own self. That's a conclusion that is trivially established by asking a few people.

I wish I could agree with you that the goal is about personal liberty, but in a world where Obama's reinterpretation of Title IX materially changes the experience of women and children in bathrooms and locker rooms, it is regrettably not so. Trans people should of course be free of violence, harassment, employment, and housing discrimination. But redefining male/female to be subjective identities rather than material conditions impacts everybody in a huge way. It can take away the right of a woman to eject a male (regardless of gender identity) from her changing area simply because an internal gender identity cannot be proven or disproven. There are non-conservative reasons to rankle at this, that have a lot to do with liberty.

> My childhood brand of Conservatism meshes will with that. But then, it took Classical Liberalism as a given. Individual liberties are sacred and government exists to enforce them against those who would take them from us. Those who violate them are wrong. To the extent that any small trespass is needed in order to achieve some goal, compensation is due.
> It's not a violation of anyone's liberty to respect the needs of the transgendered. If anything, it's a universal increase of liberty.
> Attempts to force other people into a gender binary are being judged harshly. But then, IMHO, force is bad. I cite the Non-Aggression Principle. Nobody is being judged for being gender-conforming and heteronormative. Most people are, to the extent that it's silly to think that the exceptions could be any threat to the general rule.
> This is gay marrage redoux - the idea that gays getting married somehow "ruins" marriage, when all it does is allow another group of people to exercise their individual rights fully.

I understand the comparison between feeling threatened over "redefining marriage" and being skeptical of attempts to "redefine male/female." But marriage has been defined and redefined by the government with a bunch of laws before. There's precedence. Expanding the legal definition to include same-sex consenting adults doesn't change what marriage is (a contractual agreement between consenting adults).

Redefining male/female to be a subjective identity rather than a physical reality is much more complicated. On the grounds of individual liberty, adults should absolutely have the right to dress themselves however they want, and request that others address them how they desire. Absolutely.

But Obama's Title IX letter openly makes clear that sex protections are actually reflective of gender identity. That is redefining male/female in a way that is essentially reflective of a religious belief. And it's not one that everyone shares, or should have to share.

You are entitled to behave and dress and act and think however you want in terms of gendered presentation. That is the right of all people. Females should absolutely be able to be assertive, dress in trousers, and occupy positions of power. Males should absolutely be able to be delicate, wear frilly dresses, and do all the housework they please without being harassed or discriminated against.

You are entitled to all these things. But you are not entitled to your own facts, and there is no scientific proof that internal, innate subjective gender identity exists beyond people saying "I am male/female." Acknowledgment of this claim people have of themselves should not be legislated in the same way acknowledging God should not be legislated. As with religion, it would be absurd if people should be forced to cooperate. The saying goes, "your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins." Consider that there is a nose here you're not seeing-- a woman or girl's right to facilities free of penis isn't just uppity, bigoted Christians with an irrational fear. Women fought hard for sex-segregated public facilities. Before them, they were much less able to access the public sphere.

Bear in mind that passing trans people (or those with consent from their communities) have always been able to use the facilities of their identity. But to put into writing that subjective identity trumps all regardless of other factors is redefining male/female for everybody.

> But clearly, this is a clash of moral visions. And clearly, I feel that my consequentialist ethical foundation is far more defensible than a Deontological "Because God Said So."

> I support the right of individual self-determination and reject the notion that I can be expected to sacrifice my own best interest in the name of supporting a social vision I fundamentally object to. I also support those who feel that god says something quite different than what Pat Robertson says they say. I find it difficult to conceive of a god worth knowing that would give Pat Roberson the time of day.
> I should point out that with a few radical exceptions, liberals are not demanding the same thing. They are perfectly willing to accept Conservative self-descriptions. Speaking for myself, I may not believe them, but I'll accept them. It's no more difficult than accepting and tolerating those people who believe they are transpeciated.

I will, too. But not as their gender identity. I might on a case-by-case basis. But that is not the current stated political goal and it is not what the Title IX letter did.

You might accept, love, and want all human rights and housing/employment discrimination protections for a person who believes, with 100% conviction, that they are a dog. But if a great number of dog-folk start lobbying to change the legal definition of a dog to be a subjective state that has nothing to do with bodies? There are far-reaching implications. A lot of noses, so to speak.

> My response is a simple "if you say so." It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg. Now, I don't have to think of them as strangely compelling either. Nobody is asking me to. If I do, that's my issue and since it is - it's not something I can blame on "liberals."

In many situations, what you're saying applies. I don't think people should be mean to transgender people. I just also do not think that legal definitions of male and female should be changed to reflect their beliefs.

Acknowledging someone's preferred subjective identity is easy and ideal in passing! But it's a bit different when there's an obvious male in your wife's gym's locker room, armed with legislation that prevents her from using common sense to deduce that this person is a man with a fetish. Or an obviously male teenager dominating your daughter's female athletics division.

These may seem like petty concerns, but things like these don't affect you until they do. I encourage you to think about having no recourse if you were in these situations. There's a big difference between being accepting of gender-non-conforming people and redefining male and female to be subjective identities, and that is exactly what the Title IX letter sought to do.

Again, none of this is to say trans people are bad and deserve any sort of harm. It's just to say there are perfectly valid reasons to find some of the recent specific legislation pertaining to gender identity to impinge upon their rights.

Not all of these are "parenting" books, but they get at various aspects of what you might be looking for/need to help you prepare (in no particular order):

• Bringing up Bebe - Tells the parenting story of an American expat. living in Paris, and how she observed different parenting techniques between American and French families, and how that plays out in children's behavior. It is a fun "experience" story and I think it lends some interesting insights.
  
  
• Pregnancy, childbirth, and the newborn - I think this is the most informative, neutral, pregnancy book out there. It really tries to present all sides of any issues. I can't recommend this book enough. From here, you could explore the options that best fit your needs (e.g. natural birth, etc.)
  
  
• Taking Charge of Your Fertility - Look into this if you find you are having trouble conceiving, or if you want to conceive right away. Really great tips on monitoring the body to pinpoint the most fertile times and stay healthy before becoming pregnant.
  
  
• The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding - This is published by Le Leche League and really has everything you need to know about breastfeeding, pumping, etc. After baby is born, kellymom.com is a good resource for quickly referring to for breastfeeding questions later, but seriously don't skip this book - it is great!
  
  
• Dr. Spock's Baby and Childcare - Really comprehensive and probably the most widely read book about every aspect of child health and development (and also a lot of what to expect as parents.)
  
  
• NurtureShock - by far the most interesting book I've ever read in my life. Basically sums up research on child development to illuminate how many parents and educators ignore research based evidence on what works well for raising children. If you read nothing else in this book, at least read the sleep chapter!
  
  
• What's Going on in There? - This book was written by a neuroscientist after becoming a mom about brain development from pregnancy through about age 5. It has some of the same research as NurtureShock but goes way more in depth. I found it fascinating, but warning, I could see how it could scare some people with how much detail it goes into (like how many people feel that "What to Expect When Expecting" is scary.)
  
  
• Happiest Baby on the Block - There is a book, but really you can/should just watch the DVD. It has 5 very specific techniques for calming a fussy baby. Here are some recent reddit comments about it. Someday I will buy Dr. Karp a drink - love that man!
  
  
• The Wholesome Baby Food Guide - this book is based on a website which has some of the same information, but the book goes way more in depth about how to introduce food, with particular steps, to set baby up for a lifetime of good (non picky) eating habits.
  
  
• A variety of sleep books, so you can decide which method you might be comfortable with (I believe the Baby Whisperer and Healthy Sleep Habits Happy Child are pretty middle of the road, but you can look into bedsharing (The Dr. Sear's books) or the other end (Babywise) as discussed in other comments already here, etc. - these last two links I am letting my personal bias show - sorry, but I just think it is good to know all sides of an issue.)
  
  
• Huffington Post Parents section often has "experience" articles, and browsing subs like this can help with that too.
  
  
• A lot of people love the Bill Cosby Fatherhood book too, but my husband and I haven't read it, so I can't say for sure what is in it, but I imagine it is "experiences" based
  
  
• The Wonder Weeks - describes when and how babies reach developmental milestones, what to expect from those, and how to help your baby with them.
  
  Edit: I wanted to add brief descriptions and links (I was on my phone yesterday when I posted this.) I also added in the last book listed.
  
  I have literally read hundreds of parenting/child dev. books. I consider these to be the best of the best in terms of books that cover each of their respective topics in depth, from almost all perspectives, in as neutral of a way as possible, so that you can then make decisions about which more extreme (I don't mean that in a bad way) parenting styles might work for you and your family (e.g. attachment parenting, natural vs. medicated birth, etc.)
  

I'm going to sound like a broken record on this site when it comes to sleeping, but everyone whose ever told me about the sleeping problems of their child gets a copy of "Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child."

Here: http://www.amazon.com/Healthy-Sleep-Habits-Happy-Child/dp/0449004023

The problem you have sounds like one our friends were having when the child was seven. The book explains sleep, the importance of sleep, and the evolution of healthy sleep habits that has helped literally everyone I know who has read the book and followed through. Your situation was solved by my friend in seven days after five years of frustration. I personally think her victory came because she was given a very educated explanation of why it would work and she stuck with it. Process was a lot of it, but the real lesson is, stick to what you find working until it works. Don't give up. It may take two weeks, but then you are done forever.

For your particular sleep routine, I believe the book would recommend sitting in a chair right beside the child's bed until they fall asleep. No talking to them, just gentle putting them back in bed when they try to 'escape'; no real interaction other than a gentle 're-tucking-in' to mimic your initial tuck and establish the continuity for later when your child finally gets it.

My friend's child was seven and she sat by the bed 2.5 hours the first night reading (today we would have an ipad and reddit vs. a book, times change). Something quiet and out of sight (and interest) to the child. The next night, she did the same thing for about an hour and a half; less the third and fourth night but I remember her showing amazing resolve for four nights. On the fifth, sixth, and seventh nights respectively, she was staying in the room less and moving the chair closer to the door. Night Eight, she was outside the room with the door cracked for about twenty silent uneventful minutes and the child dozed off. Night nine, she got a good nights sleep and my wife and I got two comp'd airline tickets anywhere in the continental US. Woot!

I have recommended/given this book to perhaps thirty couples. Some get offended at the thought of getting a book to rear a child, but I really champion sleep habits as I've seen the impacts on the families who try the book; the relationships between parent and child and the interpersonal relationships between spouses. We've seen 'tough' children take a toll on everyone involved including grandparents who won't watch the kids and friends who avoid another's house around bedtime, dinner time, eating out, etc. The beauty of the book is the "quick tips" sections at the end of each chapter so you can start in minutes and 'catch up'. We were behind with my first child and literally by the book with our second. We spent a grand total of six nights on developing the sleep habits of two children that are still strong today at ages 8 and 9.

One thing that I hear a lot, and not trying to instigate in anyway, but it is an underlying theme of the book that I observe to be true in all families: "we've tried everything". Children are taught AND parents are taught. The child wants attention at bedtime and that is what you have to be disciplined enough to remove. No interaction. The friend I described above had the oldest child I've known these lessons to work on. He was seven, and I think she had the toughest challenge I've seen and showed the best discipline in 'ignoring' the child. When her child resisted initially, she would firmly and gently hold him in place until he stopped. The woman was a saint.

The "total meltdown" you describe is the payoff for the child. They don't infer victory, but there is an innate need that is fulfilled by that attention and if it never comes, it does subside. Remember that you've been taught how you are going to act at bedtime by your child for two and a half years and it may take a bit of reprogramming for both of you, but each time you stray from the continuity of the lesson, you are actually succeeding in teaching a different lesson. I really hope this helps. You need some rest!! (this will work for /u/underthewisteria as well, I believe) Good luck all!

Here's another side of the coin. Not necessarily to drag you out of the cult, but just some very awesome, beautiful truths. If you've seen me post this before, i apologize. I don't like to assume everyone reads every thread.

Take some time to learn about the history of the bible. For example, you can take the Open Yale Courses on Religious Studies for free.

Read Who Wrote the Bible by Richard Elliott Friedman

Also read A History of God by Karen Armstrong

Next, learn some actual science. For example - spoiler alert: evolution is true. Visit Berkeley's excellent Understanding Evolution Website.. Or, if you're pressed for time, watch this cartoon.

Read Why Evolution is True by Jerry Coyne

Read The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins

Learn about the origin of the universe. For example, you could read works by Stephen Hawking

Read A Briefer History of Time by Stephen Hawking

Learn about critical thinking from people like Michael Shermer, and how to spot logical fallacies.


For good measure, use actual data and facts to learn the we are NOT living in some biblical "last days". Things have gotten remarkably better as man has progressed in knowledge. For example, watch this cartoon explaining how war is on the decline..

Read The Better Angels of Our Nature by Steven Pinker

Another great source is the youtube series debunking 1914 being the start of the last days.

I wish you the best. There is a whole world of legitimate information out there based on actual evidence that you can use to become a more knowledgeable person.

You may still wonder how you can be a good human without "the truth." Here is a good discussion on how one can be good without god. --Replace where he talks about hell with armageddon, and heaven with paradise--

Start to help yourself begin to live a life where, as Matt Dillahunty puts it, you'll "believe as many true things, and as few false things as possible."

Just a few things that come to mind:

Self-Awareness> There are a lot of ways to work on this and most of them are worth trying. An effective goal might be to find some things that work for awhile, and prepare yourself to seek out other options when those don’t offer the same effectiveness. I’m pretty sure that when we dedicate the time to it, we provide ourselves with information that empowers us to make the decisions that bring about our idea of success.

Expectations> Most of us don’t want to fail. A lot of us feel like if we don’t meet the expectations that we’ve set for ourselves then we’re failures. This often causes some of us to avoid things that we feel we won’t “succeed” at. Hey, I’m not saying we shouldn’t set high goals for ourselves... but when we don't meet our expectations, maybe we could slowly get better at treating ourselves with the kind of love and encouragement that we would extend to our most loved of loved ones when they "fail."

Exercise> God damn it I hate exercise. I wore a button in fifth grade that said: I’m too out of shape to exercise. I’m thirty-nine now and I’ve still never had a consistent workout regimen. For a lot of us, this shit is probably harder than everything else we’ll consider in this thread. But there’s plenty of evidence to show that when the rest of our body is functioning at a more optimal level that we have more tools to work with, and that our tools are more effective. I hate exercise.

Group Discussion> Last year I attended an intensive outpatient group therapy program. This was my first experience with group therapy and I freaking love that shit. I learned that the gems to mine from this experience have very little to do with whoever is leading the group or which organization is providing the facility... as long as you feel like everyone is given the opportunity to share without reproach. Empathy is what it’s all about. The more courageous you are about sharing your struggles, the more empowered your fellow group members will be to do the same. When empathy is flowing freely most people are able to recognize some of their own cognitive distortions, AND help others find their own. Not every group is going to function well, but I think it’s well worth the effort to find on that does. You might start with looking into a DBSA group near you. My advice would be to look for one with 10-15 attendees. If you've got insurance that will cover it, you might check into an Intensive Outpatient Group Therapy program offered by a local hospital.

Books> These are just a few that have offered me some help—and a few that I just acquired but haven’t read yet.

Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength

Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain

Tribe of Mentors: Short Life Advice from the Best in the World

Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy



Also, this is me patting you on the back lovingly and then turning it into a hug:



Did you feel it?



Disclaimer: I’m currently doing pretty poorly at all of these things.

Hello and welcome! Indoctrination in most cults can leave a person bitter about the world around them. Learning the actual facts about reality, the universe, and humanity is a good way to counter those negative feelings in my experience. Not sure how much of this applies to you, but here are my recommendations for de-indoctrinating yourself:

Take some time to learn about the history of the bible. For example, you can take the Open Yale Courses on Religious Studies for free.

Read Who Wrote the Bible by Richard Elliott Friedman

Also read A History of God by Karen Armstrong

Watch this talk from Sam Harris where he explains why "free will" is likely an illusion, which debunks the entire premise of "the fall of man" as presented by most Christian religions.

Watch this video on the Cordial Curiosity channel that teaches how the "Socratic Method" works, which essentially is a way to question why we believe what we believe. Do we have good reasons to believe them? If not, should we believe them?

Watch this video by Theramin Trees that explains why we fall for the beliefs of manipulative groups in the first place.

This video explains why and how childhood indoctrination works, for those of us born-in to a high-control group.

Another great source is this youtube series debunking 1914 being the start of the last days.

Next, learn some science. For example - spoiler alert: evolution is true. Visit Berkeley's excellent Understanding Evolution Website. Or, if you're pressed for time, watch this cartoon.

Read Why Evolution is True by Jerry Coyne.

Read The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins.

Watch this series where Aron Ra explains in great detail how all life is connected in a giant family tree.

Learn about the origin of the universe. For example, you could read A Briefer History of Time by Stephen Hawking.

Learn about critical thinking from people like [Michael Shermer] (http://www.ted.com/talks/michael_shermer_on_believing_strange_things?language=en), and how to spot logical fallacies.

For good measure, use actual data and facts to learn the we are NOT living in some biblical "last days". Things have gotten remarkably better as man has progressed in knowledge. For example, watch this cartoon explaining how war is on the decline.

Read The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined by Steven Pinker.

Watch this Ted Talk by Hans Rosling, the late Swedish Statistician, where he shows more evidence that the world is indeed becoming a better place, and why we tend to wrongly convince ourselves otherwise.

I wish you the best. There is a whole world of legitimate information out there based on actual evidence that you can use to become a more knowledgeable person.

You may still wonder how you can be a good human without "the truth." Here is a good discussion on how one can be good without god. --Replace where he talks about hell with armageddon, and heaven with paradise--

Start to help yourself begin to live a life where, as Matt Dillahunty puts it, you'll "believe as many true things, and as few false things as possible."

Hey BamBam! :-)

Usually, with my critiques, I tend to separate things that can be improved on and things that I like in different segments. But because there are so many things that I liked about it, but at the same time can be improved on, it's hard to split them.

1)
>The fire before him blazed high and bright, a beacon in the dark of night. Derek only hoped it attracted whom he wanted.

As interesting as this intro is, I'd feel it could be revised. For example: "The fire before him blazed high and bright, a beacon in the dark of night." doesn't show me any mood of the story. It just gives me a very... sterile image of a torch at night.

2)
Then goes on,
> A host of beings, man and beast, prowled the rolling hills...

I felt the entire first paragraph and even a good bit of the first page don't really convey any fear or doubts. Right now, he's in the middle of a beast nest with a torch. Is he wiping his clammy hands on his wolf pelt? Is he looking left and right? Is he having doubts about being there? I want to feel the story, BamBam.

3) I feel the dialogue at the beginning of page 2 could be a just a bit more lively. It's noted that Bruin is sarcastic, so it would be great to hear just a smidge bit more sarcasm and snappy come-backs. It would make a cute contrast between DEREK THE RUGGED RANGER and Bruin the pest. :P
But this opinion is purely personal.

4)
>“I think that’s what worries her. You a man, and one now womanless. She said a woman keeps a man from doing foolish things.”
Derek guffawed, nearly falling back with laughter.

Hehe. I just love me some good humor. :-) But one thing that seemed odd is how Derek reacted with humor when just a few paragraphs earlier, he was reflecting on fond memories with his wife and daughter.

At seeing him laugh when reminded of his dead wife, I felt a pang of annoyance and didn't like Derek as much. Perhaps... he could be laughing on the outside but on the inside he's sickened with painful memories. This outer and inner of Derek can give his character a lot of depth. But that's just a suggestion. :-)

5)
>“I should go.”
“Too late for that now, boy.

My heart lurched at this. Really, it did. In paragraph one, you talked of monsters, guys on horseback, being seen miles away, then of the town not being safe. You built up to this point beautifully, BamBam. I have a sickening feeling that Bruin might die.

6)
>“You’re about to find out. Keep your mouth shut. Speak only when spoken too.”

How does Bruin react to this? I was hoping for a snappy comeback from him.

7)
>They mean to surround us.

How does Derek emotionally react to this? Is Bruin going white with fear? Is Derek thinking about protecting himself or is he racking his brain, wondering how to keep Bruin safe? Is he doubting his choice coming out here?

8) I really like the way you portray the horsemen at page 3.
>we hill men are more interested in women.” A thunderous laugh rose from the clansmen.

Just in that bit of dialogue spoke volumes about the men and their lack of morality. Instead of saying: "they're rapists and bad people" you showed me it. Good job. :-)

9)
> Gon rushed him. “How do you know that name? Are you an ally of his?”
“Enemy,” Derek said.

Right around at this point, I'm wondering how Bruin is taking all this in. Is he shifting awkwardly from foot to foot? Is he still standing tall or is he shrinking away, intimidated by the information and the clansmen?

10)
>“Don’t worry, Bruin.” I’ll figure something out. “I thank my mother for sending you. The Lord works through her. Without you as a hostage I doubt I would be able to make this deal, now go. Karbok has honor. You will be safe.”

Seeing this Derek's insensitivity to Bruin's fear makes me not like him. Derek is willing to risk Bruin's life for a trade.

Maybe try this same sort of thing, but have it be different. Perhaps, one of the horsemen swoops in and grabs Bruin. When Derek tries to get him back, other horsemen come in.

11) I really liked the duel in the beginning of chapter 2. It gave insight to the culture of the tribe and introduced another tribe member. I also love Bruins' snappy comments about Oda's wife.

12) On page 9, the dialogue in Tarrik's tent is a bit lacking. Not so much in words but more in feeling. Is Tarrik glaring at Oda for suggesting war? Is Oda stepping back at Tarrik's annoyance? In that scene, I don't feel much tension between tribesman and tribes master.

13) I really like Oda's character. I get the sense that he's a traitor which makes the plot... just as juicy as the lamb he just ate. Well done!

Overall I felt it was very well-written. You did a good job of giving context only when it was relevant and not just random info-dumps. There are some descriptions that can be a bit more detailed, but that can be changed.
But there are two big things I didn't like about it. First is Derek's insensitivity. Sure, some insensitivity can be forgiven, but this... willing to risk Bruin's life is unforgiveable. I also feel there is a overall lack of emotion, mood, and tone in most of the story. But just zooming in a bit more on showing how the characters feel can help.

Another thing... as much as I liked this part of the story, I feel these two chapters could be the middle. Personally, I'd think the best beginning would be a nice bit of daily life before hell breaks lose. It would be cool to see Derek, his daughter, and his wife being chill, I start to like them, then... BOOM! They're dead. It would be amazing to see Derek's grief and growing thirst for vengeance.
But it's just a suggestion. :-)

I'd also highly recommend The Hero With A Thousand Faces to give a hand with story structure. :-)

But yeah, assuming from the up votes, you've been PMed other critiques. So I'm really curious to see how it's updated and goes on! Just wondering, how long have you been writing, BamBam?

Anyway, you did an amazing job building up tension. I like how you began with a strong conflict and made me ask wonder what's going to happen right off the bat. Sometimes, when I read unpublished work, I get bored quickly... but no, your writing kept me very interested. For every one thing that I felt could be improved on, there were many more tidbits that I loved about your work. You have some serious potential as a writer, BamBam! :D

Hey OP! Just wanted to touch on a couple of things that I don't think other people have mentioned.

First off, on the subject of therapists... Here's a bunch of lists of them in various US states, compiled by other trans folks: [New England](http://t-vox.org/index.php?title=Therapists_in_New_England "CT, MA, ME, NH, RI, VT"), [Mid-Atlantic](http://t-vox.org/index.php?title=Therapists_in_the_Mid-Atlantic_States "NJ, NY, PA"), [East North Central](http://t-vox.org/index.php?title=Therapists_in_the_East_North_Central_States "IL, IN, MI, OH, WI"), [West North Central](http://t-vox.org/index.php?title=Therapists_in_the_West_North_Central_States "IA, KS, MO, MN, ND, NE, SD"), [South Atlantic](http://t-vox.org/index.php?title=Therapists_in_the_South_Atlantic_States "DC, DE, FL, GA, MD, NC, SC, VA, WV"), [East South Central](http://t-vox.org/index.php?title=Therapists_in_the_East_South_Central_States "AL, KY, MS, TN"), [West South Central](http://t-vox.org/index.php?title=Therapists_in_the_West_South_Central_States "AR, LA, OK, TX"), [Mountain](http://t-vox.org/index.php?title=Therapists_in_the_Mountain_States "AZ, CO, ID, MT, NM, NV, UT, WY"), [Pacific](http://t-vox.org/index.php?title=Therapists_in_the_Pacific_States "AK, CA, HI, OR, WA")

Some therapists bill insurance, some work on a fee-for-service model, and some operate on a sliding scale based on your ability to pay. There are also some therapists that work online, like this one and this one - for some discussion of this, you can do a Google search for "gender therapist online", which for example brought up this thread.

As far as processing things goes, I have a standard list of thought experiments that I like to offer people, that I think can help to think about this stuff. Take these questions with a grain of salt, and consider them a tool, not anything ironclad or anything that needs to determine your fate (and remember that at the end of the day, what's most important is what you want or need to do). You can respond here if you feel like it, but you don't have to - just some things to think about. :)

• If I had a magic button that you could press that would make you wake up tomorrow as a woman, with everyone else understanding you and relating to you as a woman, irrevocably but painlessly, would you press it? ("Yes", "no", "I don't know", "I'd want to but I'd be scared" - all valid answers.)
  
  
• Alternatively, if I had a magic button that you could press that would make you wake up tomorrow still as a man, but without any of the gender issues you've been having, not questioning your gender, and able to live happily as a man with zero dysphoria, would you press it?
  
  
• If I had both of those buttons, which one would you rather press, all other things being equal?
  
  
• If I had a test that could tell you if you were a man or a woman, which answer would you be hoping for as you took it? Which way would you try to skew your answers, if you did (consciously or not) try to skew them in either direction?
  
  
• If you washed up on a desert island, by yourself, but with any amount of both male and female clothing, with no hope of rescue but otherwise everything that you needed for a relatively healthy and happy life, would you choose to present as male? female? neither? a mix of the two? one way some of the time, the other way the rest? If for some bizarre reason a lifetime supply of hormones washed up with you as well, do you think you'd take them? What if you washed up with the button from the first thought experiment - in a situation where you were by yourself, would you press it?
  
  
• Let's say I had a test that asked about all of the things, very thorough, and at the end it would tell you, with 100% accuracy, whether or not you were trans. So you take it, and it tells you, "Well, you've got some mild gender confusion, but you're definitely not trans, and you shouldn't transition." How would that make you feel? "Sad", "disappointed", or "relieved" are all reactions that suggest that seeing the aforementioned therapist might be a good idea.
  
  
• On the other hand, what if the test told you "Yup, you're definitely trans all right, and you should probably start planning your transition." - how would you feel about that?
  
  
• When posting threads like this, I think a lot of people are hoping that others will be able to tell them whether or not they're trans (speaking personally, at least, I sure did). I suspect that you might have expected people would draw conclusions or at least make guesses one way or the other. If so, which possibility were you hoping people's responses would suggest or support (and, I suppose, why)?
  
  Penultimate point: if you want some further reading, I hiiiiiiiighly recommend Julia Serano's book Whipping Girl.
  
  Last point, relevant to that book and also any other lurking, talking, asking questions about other people's experiences, and whatever - I want to caution you that as easy as it is to get caught up in comparing yourself to other people, and to the Standard Trans Narrative ("I've always known, I've wanted to transition since I knew what that was, I hate hate hate everything about my body, I want SRS as soon as possible", etc. etc...) - you should know that there as many trans narratives as there are trans people, and to the extent that your story differs from the stories of others (and it will, since everyone else's differ too!), that does not invalidate anything about you or your needs or desires.
  
  Oh! I lied. ONE MORE THING
  
  As far as your relationship with your fiancée, my girlfriend sort of already told her this, but I want to emphasize it because I think it bears repeating: communicate. We went through a really, really rough period after I came out to her, in part because she reacted kind of negatively and so I pulled away, hiding everything from her and just not talking about stuff... finally one day in the midst of a fight of sorts she told me that a big part of the problem was that she didn't know what was going on in my head, didn't have any idea what I was thinking - and when I let her read the journal I'd been keeping, everything made a lot more sense to her and she felt a lot more comfortable about things. It sounds like your level of communication is way better than ours was, but I just want to reiterate that it's important to keep that up.
  
  Anyway, good luck to you - I hope things continue to sort themselves out in your head, that your relationship stays on a pretty even keel, and that things go well for you overall. :)

I'm glad it helps. :)

Actually, this is mildly cathartic, having an outlet for all those "should've, could've" thoughts...

Involve others with more experience.

• If you need to choose a school, ask on /r/lgbt.
  
• When it's time to find a therapist, ask on /r/asktransgender.
  
• When you need to tell your parents, or even just need to decide whether to tell your parents, find a local peer group (GSA) with whom to practice the discussion.
  
  Learn about your community.
  
  
• Read "The nearest exit may be behind you", "Gender Outlaws: TNG", "Whipping Girl", "Transgender History". These will not be your problems, or necessarily your life, but you will find your people in them and a connection to an otherwise foreign community. (It sucks to be trans, nobody understands.)
  
• Find opportunities to participate in queer culture. Being T is not the same as being LGB. It's tempting to pull away, since yours is an issue of identity and not one of sexuality (and they really are extraordinarily different). Resist the temptation, be a part of something, force your way in and tolerate the inconsistencies, it will be worth it.
  
  Heal thyself.
  
  
• Your attitude and self-awareness is awesome, but your background and environment is not. I had a virtually identical home life (one fewer younger siblings, but the rest aligns right down to the lawyer parent!), and even after I "got over" it, it took years to really put the internalized prejudices of my youth away. Don't rationalize it away, don't be hard on yourself when you can't just get over it.
  
• Go to therapy. Find someone you really click with, and who you feel understands you, and invest the time and trust in that relationship to make the most of it. Don't tell them what they want to hear, tell them what you feel, and remember that they fully expect you to be totally wrong about your own feelings the first few times. Figure it out together. You should be able to get this nearly for free at the right college, make the most of it.
  
• If it feels awkward, you're doing it right. Cut yourself some slack, everyone has a hell of a time growing up and finding themselves, and thanks to your situation you'll be doing at 19 what most work out at 12. It's ok. Laugh at yourself, reflect and learn, and move on.
  
• Find a fringe benefit. If you dwell on gender dysphoria, it can seem pretty shitty. If you mire yourself in transition, it can seem like a thankless, endless slog. Find something to be excited about, find a part of yourself to enjoy, and don't feel guilty about it. :)
  
  
  Finally, and most importantly, you do belong.
  You don't have to be presenting in your preferred gender to go to a support group. You don't have to start HRT to comment on a board. There's a pervasive sense among trans folk that there are real trans people out there and we're not they. But the moment you recognize this part of yourself you're a part of our world whether you like it or not, and all of us feel just as different. Smile, introduce yourself, and share aspects of yourself among friends who have those same parts and who are just bursting for the opportunity to talk about it with anyone who understands.
  
  Sigh, I could ramble on, but I need to get back to work... I guess I can sum it up in promising, cross my heart, the world is a beautiful and wonderful place, and you're going to love it out here. :)

>A predicted a couple of things when I posted my previous reply. One was that you would only respond to my last point. And the other was that that point would trigger you to no end.
>
>Look, you're just one of those people who thinks their views are universal. The things your pointing out as evidence of a morally degrading society aren't anything new. There is evidence that we're living in the best time ever in the history of mankind.
>
>Let's look at you points:

You probably thought Hillary would win the election too, because of all the scientific polls done to prove she would win..

There is no arguing that we live in the best time to be alive, the entire point of my post, was that as we lose sight of religion we lose the actions that provided all of the prosperity you are pointing to. What is the source?

You are tearing down the building, then trying to use the bricks of that building to make a house..on sand....

>Has that happened? Has Miley Cyrus been nude on TV? But that's not important. Almost 70 years ago, people were saying "Marilyn Monroe is showing her cooter!" (who talks like that anyway?).

Have you seen any of her live performances at award shows? She might as well be fully naked...I mean come on could you be any more pedantic?

>Horrible, or course. But not new. Remember when people used to drag people behind their truck until they were dead?

I won't need to remember, because I will be seeing it again in this lifetime the way things are going...

>Not true, but poverty isn't new.
>
>You can't be older than me, and I'm not even close to "kids these days" as you are. Here's a relevant quote:
>
>“The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.”
>
>Who know who said that? Socrates. 2500 years ago.

You know the funny thing about Socrates right? He didn't have Jesus either! So funny the problems he was encountering then in a rational advanced society without Jesus, is the same things happening to us as we lose Jesus! Super cool point thanks for making that.

Great thing all those Greek people converted to....Christianity!!! here is a wonderful excerpt from the Urantia book. The Greek Scholar Rodan of Alexandria. I suggest you read the entire chapter on him in the book, and then the next chapter titled "Further discussions with Rodan"

But the greatest of all methods of problem solving I have learned from Jesus, your Master. I refer to that which he so consistently practices, and which he has so faithfully taught you, the isolation of worshipful meditation. In this habit of Jesus’ going off so frequently by himself to commune with the Father in heaven is to be found the technique, not only of gathering strength and wisdom for the ordinary conflicts of living, but also of appropriating the energy for the solution of the higher problems of a moral and spiritual nature. But even correct methods of solving problems will not compensate for inherent defects of personality or atone for the absence of the hunger and thirst for true righteousness.

160:1.11 (1774.3) I am deeply impressed with the custom of Jesus in going apart by himself to engage in these seasons of solitary survey of the problems of living; to seek for new stores of wisdom and energy for meeting the manifold demands of social service; to quicken and deepen the supreme purpose of living by actually subjecting the total personality to the consciousness of contacting with divinity; to grasp for possession of new and better methods of adjusting oneself to the ever-changing situations of living existence; to effect those vital reconstructions and readjustments of one’s personal attitudes which are so essential to enhanced insight into everything worth while and real; and to do all of this with an eye single to the glory of God—to breathe in sincerity your Master’s favorite prayer, “Not my will, but yours, be done.”

You know I predicted a few things too.

1. You wouldn't be able to see any sense in anything I say because your reality is crooked.
   
2. You would argue even the most basic simple obvious worldly truths, or try and conflate them to meet your narrative.
   
   Edited to reference who was talking in the quote.

Please don't take this post from me as aggressive, I just wanted to point out a few things about your post.

You make a few mistakes early in your post. One is you're making the No True Scotsman argument. Essentially you're arguing that the bad Christians you assume we've met or are the cause for us leaving the church, aren't real Christians anyway. I think we need to trust people. If they say they're a Christian, I believe them.

Also, things aren't that bad here on the Earth. We've got some issues, but the things you mention are actually better now than at any point in history. Allow me to point you toward a great, great book about this, Steven Pinker's Better Angels of Our Nature. It's a great book about this exact topic, I think it may allay some of your fears.

Also, why is this life not enough? Why do you deserve more than this life? You're saying that unless you have the potential at eternity, this life isn't worth living. Why not? I've got an amazing wife, and I choose to spend some of my limited time with her. She's so great, that makes it worthwhile. I've got two great kids, my daughter is going to turn 5 in a few weeks and she's super fun to be around. I've got a 1.5 year-old son. He's crazy, no fear, always wants me to pick him up and throw him around through the air. I like to do woodworking and make really, really nice pieces for my family and friends that I just give away. I love looking at the beauty in the world. There's no intent behind it, but that doesn't make it any less beautiful and awesome. Why is that not enough? Why do you need more?

You also forget that your third option also includes a place of eternal torment for people like me. You sincerely believe that I am going to burn in Hell forever. I try to be a good person, I put a TON of effort into thinking about ethics and philosophy. I like to help people, give away my time, and just generally do what I can. But as I'm sure you know, the Bible says that we aren't saved by works. So in spite of all my efforts, because I am unable to have faith, I have eternal torment to look forward to.

It isn't Christians that made me an ex-Christian. They were largely just people where I grew up. It's the religion that I reject and everything about it. Just food for thought.

Hey there. I'm not trans, but my girlfriend is, so while I cant personally relate to your situation, I hope I can offer some good advice/perspective.

My girlfriend transitioned about 3 years ago, and while her family had a really hard time at first, and are still not 100% cool with it, they are using the right names and pronouns around her and still enjoy spending time with her, whatever that's worth. They are slowly coming around, and for a couple of republicans, that's a huge deal. To her, transitioning was the single best decision of her life.

My advice is, you're an adult, and you should do what makes you happy, and its really hard to be happy if you're not happy with who you are. I know it must be really hard to do something your family might not like, but your well being and self esteem is more important than their judgment. My parents hoped my lesbianism was a phase at first, but they've come around. I wouldn't trade the love I share with my girlfriend for the complete love and acceptance of my parents any day.

If you are not financially dependent on your parents, you hold the bargaining chips, you can decide how much a part of your life you want them to have. You can pass without hormones, which shouldn't be a deciding factor if you're trans, on whether you should transition or not, but it really does help. I hope whatever you decide to do, it makes you happy.

Here's my advice: Read as much as you can, research, find some voices you can relate to and some advice that seems right for you. I highly reccommend "Whipping Girl" by Julia Serrano. There are plenty of great folks down at r/transgender and r/lgbt who have been in your shoes and are more than willing to spend some time chatting with you. Good luck.

If I was going to provide someone with a list of books that best expressed my current thinking on the Political Economy these would be my top ones:

1. The Law - While over a century old this books stands as the perfect intro to the ideas of Classical Liberalism. When you understand the core message of this book you understand why people oppose so many aspects of government action.
   
2. Seeing Like A State - The idea that society can be rebuilt from the top down is well demolished in this dense but important read. The concept of Legibility was a game changer for my brain.
   
3. Stubborn Attachments - This books presents a compelling philosophical argument for the importance of economic growth. It's hard to overstate how important getting the balance of economic growth vs other considerations actually is.
   
4. The Breakdown of Nations - A classic text on why the trend toward "bigger" isn't a good thing. While various nits can be picked with this book I think its general thesis is holding up well in our increasingly bifurcated age.
   
5. The Joy of Freedom - Lots of books, many objectively better, could have gone here but this book was my personal pivot point which sent me away from Socialism and towards capitalism. This introduction to "Libertarian Capitalism" is a bit dated now but it was powerful.
   
   There are, of course many more books that could go on this list. But the above list is a good sampling of my personal philosophy of political economy. It is not meant as a list of books to change your mind but simply as a list of books that are descriptive of my current belief that we should be orientated towards high (sustainable) economic growth & more decentralization.
   
   Some honorable mentions:
   
   As a self proclaimed "Libertarian Crunchy Con" I have to add The Quest for Community & Crunchy Cons
   
   The book The Fourth Economy fundamentally changed my professional direction in life.
   
   Anti-Fragile was another book full of mind blowing ideas and shifted my approach to many things.
   
   The End of Jobs is a great combination of The Fourth Economy & Anti-Fragile (among other concepts) into a more real-world useful set of ideas.
   
   Markets Not Capitalism is a powerful reminder that it is not Capitalism per se that is important but the transformational power of markets that need be unleashed.
   
   You will note that I left out pure economic books, this was on purpose. There are tons of good intro to econ type books and any non-trained economist should read a bunch from a bunch of different perspectives. With that said I am currently working my way through the book Choice and if it stays as good as it has started that will probably get added to my core list.
   
   So many more I could I list like The Left, The Right, & The State or The Problem of Political Authority and on it goes...
   I am still looking for a "manifesto" of sorts for the broad movement towards decentralization (I have a few possibilities on my 'to read list') so if you know of any that might fit that description let me know.

There are lots of great techniques (like these) to help you remember specific things, but if you want to train your brain to remember things better, you have to work daily on this effort. I've been using Lumosity for the last few months for this reason. I'm not sure yet whether it's actually improving my memory, but at the very least it's a nice way to get your brain going in the morning and brush up on a few basic skills.

There are different games focused on various "brain skills" (memory, focus, spatial recognition, etc...) - I love the games that help you remember names and faces. Thus far the only research about this was sponsored by the company- hopefully others will dig into this interesting topic soon. Still, everything I've read about brain plasticity suggests these kinds of activities do improve your thinking skills.

I signed up for the 30 day free trial and set a calendar reminder to cancel it by the end of the trial, but after 15 days of using it I was hooked. I get to work and do this for the first half hour or so instead of obsessively checking Facebook and it wakes up my brain and makes me feel productive without having to do real work before the coffee kicks in. There's at least one other website doing the same kind of thing called Posit Science, but I haven't tried it.

You could get a similar result by playing free games that use your memory every day, like matching games, but I like that Lumosity training programs give you different games to play each day so you don't burn out. I just click "Start Training" and it will give me 5 games to play. I also like the ability to track my progress.

If you join, add me- I have the same screenname on there. :)

</theyshouldpayme>

I posted this a few days ago. Hope it might be helpful for someone else. :)

> I'm a planner and a plotter by nature...so when I wanted to come out to people, I wanted to have this big speech laid out and a massive carpet bomb of information ready for everyone once I told them. I even wanted to tell people at the right time...not around anyone's birthday or holidays or anything, but when the moment was just right. It was just hindering me coming out. So, first tip: RELAX. Some planning is nice, but don't overdo things. You can take notes in, but don't write a letter or an essay. :)

> The good points I'd take from my experience thus far:

> let your family members know you wanna talk to them before you do. It's a thing they need to make 15-20 minutes of time for and not something you may wanna just casually throw in after dinner while watching TV.

> divide and conquer. Separate out the family members you think will be most comfortable (for me, it was my mother and sister over the phone) and speak with them first in private about it. It's a lot harder to come out to several people than just one.

> when you talk, talk to them about how you've felt first. Tell them it may be an awkward conversation, tell them that you're nervous talking to them, tell them how you've felt uncomfortable or dysphoric or how this has manifested in you. Put the 'I'm trans' near the middle/end.

> they may ask questions about it. You may not know all the answers just yet. That's fine. Stand firm, it's okay to not know everything or where things will end up.

> give them some time to wrap their head around things and don't push them.

> If everything goes well...bootstrap. ask the people you've told to help you with the people you haven't. I told my father and brothers, who helped me talk with my aunt, who helped me talk with my grandparents.

Addendum - good resources on trans stuff that I found:

The Praeger handbook of transsexuality. I was so lucky to have a copy in my local library, has some of the few studies/surveys i've seen, covers a lot of ground, trans guys and trans gals. Kinda technical though and a few years old, but I loved it. Learned so much!


Whipping Girl by Julia Serano. I think it really helps you understand society's fascination with trans ladies, but more mtf and activism focused of course.

PFLAG booklet I think it covers the basics okay for friends and family.

WPATH v7 standards of care Lots of fancy documentation about treatment of trans* individuals, expectations of HRT, etc.

I also read She's not there by jennifer finney boylan. i thought it was okay and I think it provides a more personal narrative to the whole thing, especially for me and my family because she's a fellow Mainer. Also mtf focused. Sorry trans guys, hopefully someone else can get you some cool resources. :(

edit: added some links. Also remember that while books are expensive, library cards are usually free and interlibrary loan is the coolest thing ever. :)

So... you're a baby-puppy beginning on this journey, had a revelation of some kind, realized your parent's religion may not be for you, and started doing drugs. Now you're seeking spirituality like it's some kind of buzz or high.

Spirituality of any stripe is a journey, not a destination you land at. You must find and develop a practice and work at that practice.

You say you need to find a mentor... that's now how things work in the modern age. There are people who set themselves up as 'gurus and spiritual teachers' who use their position to take advantage of their students, financially, sexually, emotionally. There's lots of information out there, good and bad. So consider this a warning to not jump into something just because it feels good, and watch for snake oil salesmen (in books or in person) that promise you nirvana and shambhala and great power and wisdom.

What I would suggest is you start reading. Where to start will depend on what exactly you want to know. But I would suggest reading about meditation, ritual and magic. Lots of people start reading about Wicca because it's an easy structure to study, but most move on. I would also suggest you start reading about mythology, all of them not just greek... whatever captures your interest. For you I would especially suggest Joseph Campbell's Hero of a Thousand Faces as a place to start. Check the suggested books under this title as well.

You can also look at local groups, see if there are meditation groups or anything that has open rituals. Zen, Tao groups are good and usually let in all kinds of folk. Yoga practices often have meditations and teach a bit about energy work and may also help you.

You mention seeing a Native American in your spiritual realm. So, a way spirit can communicate with us is by using symbols we understand, this is why 'symbol translation books are generally bullshit. They're fine if you want to understand the cultural significance of something but to understand what something in a dream or vision means, you're better off meditating on it and figuring that out on your own. My dream and your dream may have a same symbol, but it can mean something completely different to each of us. The reason I'm pointing out that dude you saw is that NA spirituality has been romanticized in Western culture. Each First Nation has their own mythology, traditions, and culture, and unless you are a part of that tribe as a card carrying member that's not a rabbit hole that's for you. Again watch out for snake oil salesmen. When I was your age I got really into Tom Brown Jr, who is this white dude who claims when he and a friend were taught how to track and survive in the woods and spiritual lessons by this guy he calls 'Grandfather', Stalking Wolf who was Apache. I was really into his books, but found later that there's no evidence that Stalking Wolf ever existed, and the more books he produced the more outlandish they became in predicting the end of the world and all kinds of left field nonsense (here's a thread that discusses that). This is what I'm talking about when I say beware of snake oil. Don't be afraid to question your sources, and especially watch out for anyone who claims NA spirituality teachings, especially for money.

You can find what is now called shamanic traditions all over the world. I myself am am member of OBOD, which I like because they have an emphasis on philosophy vs dogma. So read read read. Some books you'll find are going to be crap but that's how it goes.

One more footnote, watch the drugs. Yeah they can seem to open pathways and ideas, but they aren't a cure-all, or a fast track to enlightenment. Using them without training and ritual is fine but it's just partying really. Doing them too much can burn you out. At 19 your brain isn't done developing yet, you're in the latter stages of puberty and that's something you should really respect. It's tempting when you first find psychedelics to want to do them often, but that's not healthy. Get yourself educated. A group that may have meetings near you is http://www.maps.org/ Start there

Enjoy falling down the rabbit hole Alice. Good Luck!

HP follows the path laid out for lots of great stories, as identified in Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces. As summarized in wikipedia, Campbell explores the idea that all the great myths which have survived share certain common tropes:

> Campbell describes a number of stages or steps along this journey. The hero starts in the ordinary world, and receives a call to enter an unusual world of strange powers and events (a call to adventure). If the hero accepts the call to enter this strange world, the hero must face tasks and trials (a road of trials), and may have to face these trials alone, or may have assistance. At its most intense, the hero must survive a severe challenge, often with help earned along the journey. If the hero survives, the hero may achieve a great gift (the goal or "boon"), which often results in the discovery of important self-knowledge. The hero must then decide whether to return with this boon (the return to the ordinary world), often facing challenges on the return journey. If the hero is successful in returning, the boon or gift may be used to improve the world (the application of the boon).

This formula is a proven winner used time and again, whether in Star Wars or in Frank Herbert's Dune or in numerous other stories.

All of them, really. Absolutely no harm will come from reading all the books out there (for a while). At worst, you'll learn ways of doing things that DON'T work for you but it's still good knowledge to have.

After a while, eventually, you'll start noticing though that all the new books out are just copying and rephrasing the books that came before them. That's when it's time to stop.

Some of the popular ones are syd field's book, Robert McKee's book, Joseph Campbell's book (and imo a book called The Writer's Journey by Christopher something that analyzes Campbell's book and puts it into modern story telling terms). That'll get you started. I have varying opinions of each of those books and none of them should be adhered to by law, but they ALL contain concepts and theories that, as a professional writer, you'd do well to expose yourself to. If for no other reason than that you can be aware of the concepts when others talk about them.

Tangentially, Stephen king's On Writing and William Goldman's books are great reads but don't necessarily apply to the craft of screen writing directly. Also useful to read any interviews or collections of interviews with screen writers. You may also want to check out some podcasts, Jeff goldsmith's interviews with screen writers is great and I have no idea if it's still available or even what it's called but I used to listen to one titled something like Sam and Jim Go to Hollywood (I am positive I got those names wrong) about two guys who up and quit their careers as restaurant owners and moved to Hollywood to become writers and share what they've learned. Ted Rossio and Terry Elliot also run, or ran, a website with forums (which are eh) and and a collection of articles about screen writing which are fantastic.

This was all stuff I was into years ago, so I don't know how much of it is still relevant, because like I said when you get to a certain point you've kind of read everything out there and it all starts repeating itself, and you realize all that's left is to read screenplays and write a ton.

Good luck.

e: back on my computer, here are some links:

Syd Field's Sreenplay (he has several books out, that's the one you should start with as it lays the foundation for basic story structure of nearly all modern movies. IMO, it's also the best one out there because he never says these are rules in any way, he simply analyzed a bunch of movies and lays out his findings for you to do with as you wish)

Robert McKee's Story

Joseph Campbell's Hero with a Thousand Faces

and Christopher Vogler's The Writer's Journey

Stephen King's On Writing which describes his writing style and, while I don't prefer it, is a very interesting style similar to the Cohen Brothers

William Goldman's Adventures in the Screen Trade and Which Lie did I Tell? two accounts of William Goldman's experiences as one of the top writers in Hollywood, and dealing with the business. Writer of The Princess Bride, Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid, and many others. Dude's a legend.

Jeff Goldsmith's Q&A podcast he also did the same style podcast while working for a screenwriting magazine, though the name escapes me right now

Sam and Jim Go to Hollywood holy shit I got their names right I can't believe it. Seems to be dead for a few years but it looks like their podcasts are still up.

Wordplay, Ted & Terry's website read every single one of those articles

e: BONUS! Not that useful as an educational resource, but it's fun to read Ken Levine's blog, writer on MASH and Cheers Ken's blog (no, not the guy who made BioShock)

There are two books I recommend to everyone who is frustrated and/or saddened by the state of the world and has lost hope for a better future.

The first is The Better Angels of Our Nature by Stephen Pinker. It lays out how violence in human societies has been decreasing for centuries and is still declining.

Despite the prevalence of war and crime in our media, human beings are less likely to suffer violence today than at any point in our prior history. The west suffered an upswing in social violence from the 1970s -1990s, which has since been linked to lead levels, but violence in the west has been declining since the early 90s.

Put simply the world is a better place than most media coverage would have you believe and it's getting better year by year.

The second book I recomend is The Singularity is Near by Ray Kurzweil. It explains how technology has been improving at an accelerating rate.

Technological advances have already had major positive impacts on society, and those effects will become increasingly powerful over the next few decades. Artificial intelligence is already revolutionizing our economy. The average human life span is increasing every year. Advances in medicine are offering hope for previously untreatable diseases.

Basically, there is a lot of good tech coming which will significantly improve our quality of life, if we can just hang on long enough.

Between those two forces, decreasing violence and rapidly advancing technology, the future looks pretty bright for humanity. We just don't hear that message often, because doom-saying gets better ratings.

I don't know what disability you're struggling with but most people have some marketable skills, i.e. they aren't "worthless". Based on your post, you clearly have good writing/communicating skills. That's a rare and valuable trait. You could look into a career leveraging those skills (e.g. as a technical writer or transcriptionist) which your disability wouldn't interfere with to badly (or which an employer would be willing to accommodate).

As for being powerless to change the world, many people feel that way because most of us are fairly powerless on an individual level. We are all in the grip of powerful forces (social, political, historical, environmental, etc.) which exert far more influence over our lives than our own desires and dreams.

The books I recommended post convincing arguments that those forces have us on a positive trend line, so a little optimism is not unreasonable. We may just be dust on the wind, but the wind is blowing in the right direction. That means the best move may simply be to relax and enjoy the ride as best we can.

I'm not sure if this would work or not, but I would try redirecting people who have conservative or right-wing leaning views at least toward better thinkers than Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson and toward optimistic views of the future of society, to cull some of the us-vs-them and zero-sum thinking that plagues these discussions.

Sometimes it feels like men, especially, feel existentially threatened by other modes of thought, so being at least sympathetic to the good bits of their ideas and offering something similar but that promotes openness and liberal ideas may help.

Hans Rosling's Factfulness presents a pretty optimistic view of the world. It's all getting better! Seriously!

Jonathan Haidt (and Greg Lukianoff for the first book)

• The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure
  
• The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion
  
  I had worried that the first book would be a reiteration of right-wing talking points around safe spaces, but I was surprised to find it a good listen so far. It mentions several cognitive distortions and how cognitive behavioral therapy can overcome them as well. The second book is sympathetic to conservative views and gives a good tour of moral psychology. Really recommend.
  
  Steven Pinker's The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined is also good. Seriously, the world is getting better! Pinker is heavier on the nature side that most lefties, so knowing that may make people more receptive if they won't receive an gender argument without some mention of biology.

>> The problems of morality and meaning are atheism's bitter pills to swallow.
>Meh, not really.
Are you telling me that you don't mind at all that you have no real way of convincing others they should share your core values if they do not, or that everything we have ever known or valued is destined to end as the universe goes cold? Bollocks. Those are hard truths we might be forced to accept, but nobody likes them.

> Morality is a subjective social construct based on biological altruism[1] , which is observed in high abundance in nature- and not just with high intelligence species, but simpler ones as well.

Perhaps you would be interested in looking up moral psychology: Our inbuilt sense of morality is much more nuanced than you seem to think. The Righteous Mind and Moral Tribes are great popular level books on the topic.

Explaining why we have the moral impulses we have is the easy part. The real problem of morality I care about is about is that of proscriptive morality: I want to live in a society that is actively promoting the flourishing of all people using evidence based policies. How can I convince people like Roger Ailes and the Koch brothers that they should stop actively thwarting those goals? With no proscriptive morality I'm left with appealing to their own self interest, and while that might get me somewhere with some billionaires, with those people in particular it's just not, because their death defying ideologies contradict mine.

I agree with you that we have a great chance to instantiate many of our largely shared values in the near future, but I'd be lying if I wouldn't still love to be able to shut down Fox News because God said so and then go on to live forever, or at least have my accomplishments live forever... For the great majority of us, our lives have at most an effect about 3 generations into the future before they are washed out by the rest of the influences of the culture around us. Them's some uncomfortable facts.

A really detailed analysis of the most common 4-digit pin numbers. More than 10 percent of all passwords are 1234.

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This four-square graph plants Slatestarcodex in the realm of “insightful/serious” and places Reddit at “boring/trolling.” So, where does that place a subreddit devoted to SSC, then?

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At the recommendation of several people in this sub, I bought James C. Scott’s Seeing Like the State and wow, it is indeed fantastic.

A good review by J Bradford Delong here

Some highlights for me so far:

• At about 1500, just six names were the first names of 90 percent of all English men. Can you name those six names that comprised 90 percent of all Englishmen’s names? Answer
  
  
• In the 1700s and 1800s, houses in England, Scotland, and France were built with fewer and fewer windows. Why? Answer
  
  
• The Spanish colonial government of the Philippines insisted the citizens have last names. Thus [the edict] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat%C3%A1logo_alfab%C3%A9tico_de_apellidos) went out and chaos ensued. Strangely, in some towns, nearly everyone in the village had their new last names start with the same letter! Why? Answer
  
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  I haven't made up my mind as to whether this post about "egregores" is profoundly insightful or silly or something else.
  
  
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  Subjects are surprisingly bad at judging their own proficiency in recognizing faces
  
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  The medieval oaks of Blenheim
  
  Bonus: Why so many English taverns are called “The Royal Oak"
  
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  Study: Human changes, especially fire suppression, have had greater impact on Eastern forest than climate change.
  
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  Study: Student evaluations are poor measures of teaching effectiveness.
  
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  "Baby Hands May Belong to Lizards"
  
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  Noam Chomsky's new book on language is drawing skepticism.
  
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  A crash course on black science fiction
  
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  I know that Scott is a fan of the Civilization PC strategy series, as am I. Here’s [a good article on Sid Meiers] (http://www.polygon.com/features/2016/3/4/11158134/the-man-who-made-a-million-empires), the man behind the Civilization series.
  
  
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  George Martin died last week. [Does he deserve more credit than being just the so-called “fifth Beatle”?] (http://www.nationalpost.com/m/wp/blog.html?b=news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/colby-cosh-dont-call-george-martin-the-fifth-beatle-he-might-have-been-more-than-that)
  
  
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  The people who cannot stop making puns. There’s another name for folks who cannot resist puns…
  
  
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  This is a long quiz about music preferences. It starts out a bit bland but it gets interesting.
  
  
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  This 10-part series about destroyed items of cultural significance is good albeit depressing.
  
  
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  Milton Friedman’s thermostat.
  
  >It’s not even a very complicated idea. You can explain the gist of it using words and simple examples.
  
  >But it's a really really important idea. Both theoretically important, and practically important.
  
  >So why does such an important idea need to keep on being reinvented? Why are (almost all) economists unaware of this idea?
  
  >It's not as though Milton Friedman were some no-name economist that everybody ignored. Every economist is very aware of lots of Milton Friedman's other ideas. Those other ideas are taught to all economics students. Why not this idea?
  
  
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  The mysterious iconography of the 2000-year-old Portland Vase, the best known piece of Roman cameo glass.
  
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  The time that existentialist Jean Paul Sartre wrote a French-language film version of Arthur's Miller The Crucible.
  
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  In the 1850s, along the banks of the Delaware there was a floating church.
  
  
  Article
  
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  European buildings on the (literal) edge.
  
  
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  1910. Nine kings sitting for a photo. No word as to whether they were given rings of power.
  
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  An impressive work-in-progress: a taxonomy of space opera cliches
  
  
  
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  Don’t trust the pretty people. Short version and long.
  
  
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  Moloch! Moloch!
  
  
  
  Moloch! Moloch!
  
  
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  What professions are most attractive on Tinder?
  
  
  -----
  
  Oklahoma now has more <3.0 earthquakes than California.
  
  
  I have a prediction that a fracking-induced earthquake is going to cause a major lawsuit in the next five years.
  
  
  
  
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  Tips for doing a PhD efficiently.
  
  
  
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  This historical homerun hitters gif is mesmerizing and reinforces to me what an phenomenon Babe Ruth was.
  
  
  -----
  
  Washington Post had a fun quiz that tries to determine your marital status, age, and income by the apps you have on your phone. The quiz thought I was much younger than I am, so I am kindly disposed towards it.
  
  
  -----
  The story of Saint Wilgefortis, the bearded lady saint, is all sorts of fascinating. Experts surmise that crucified images of Jesus depicted in a tunic that, through various corrupted and crude reproductions, eventually made Christ look like a bearded woman in a dress. Mystified believers then came up with a story to explain this figure:
  
  >According to the narrative of the legend, sometimes set in Portugal, a teen-aged noblewoman named Wilgefortis had been promised in marriage by her father to a pagan king. To thwart the unwanted wedding, she had taken a vow of virginity, and prayed that she would be made repulsive. In answer to her prayers she sprouted a beard, which ended the engagement. In anger, Wilgefortis's father had her crucified.
  
  
  
  
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  A very detailed graphic exploring the question: why is my TV bill so high?
  
  
  
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  A good post exploring unpaid parking tickets in NYC by diplomats to the United Nations. The post also explains why the number of unpaid tickets by diplomats plunged dramatically in 2003.
  
  
  -----
  May 16 is the 50-year anniversary of Pet Sounds, which for my money is the best pop music album of all time. Good retrospective interview with the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson here.
  
  
  Listen to the album.
  
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  Why upscale retailers are hiding their cash registers from customers.
  
  
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  “Why Deadpool in X-Men Origins: Wolverine is Actually Way Better Than The 2016 Deadpool“. Heh.
  
  
  
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  The design evolution of soda cans since 1948 Neat.
  
  
  
  

Personally I think a better questions is 'how should one read Jung?' I have a friend who studied psychology with a neuroscience concentration, and that area doesn't tend to take Jung or most psychoanalysts seriously, and while that's not my background, I can see why. I used to be someone who took those methods of self-description and analysis very seriously, but in addition to occasionally taking me some weird places, it's really not taken seriously by most professionals in the fields of, say, psychology.

That said, there are a couple reasons to still study psychoanalytics. One is if you're interested in things like art, film or literature, which were all hugely influenced by ideas about the subconscious. I read a lot of James Joyce and Marcel Proust, and those writers can't be fully understood without some decent understanding of the understandings of psychology that fed into those authors works (Joyce even had his daughter be analyzed by Jung). Artists like Picasso and Pollock were heavily inspired by psychoanalysis, and much can be said for numerous filmmakers, and even some interesting religious study has been done with their work (Joseph Campbell comes to mind here). So if you're interested in that angle, I'd say go for it, as they've got a lot of interesting insights into how art, literature and even religion work.

Another way you can read them is for personal growth, rather than as a transmission of analytic information (I'm not sure I'm phrasing that very well; apologies). I have a few authors that I love to read, but would hesitate to use them to back up some assertion made in an academic paper, unless it was for a very specific purpose, or maybe just finding some flowery quote that I put at the front of a chapter to be pretentious. Jung's been great for me to understand myself, but I would be wary of using him in some academic setting (outside of some where it makes specific sense). I read him like I do Joseph Campbell, Peter Sloterdijk and Allan Watts.

TLDR: Yes, but only sorta. Expect personal growth, but not rigorous psychology, and you should find a lot of value in his work. I'd also recommend Joseph Campbell, since he developed a lot of psychoanalytic stuff into some somewhat more accessible work, and even edited some of Jung's work into an anthology.

If you haven’t read Malcolm Gladwell’s books those are good; he reads his own audiobooks and I like his speaking style. He also has a podcast called revisionist history that I really like.

Tetlock’s superforecasting is a bit long-winded but good; it’s a lay-person’s book on his research for IARPA (intelligence research) to improve intelligence assessments. His intro mentions Kahneman and Duckworth’s grit. I haven’t read it yet, but Nate Silver’s signal and the noise is in a similar vein to Tetlock’s book and is also recommended by IARPA.

Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind was really eye-opening to me to understand the differences in the way that liberals and conservatives (both in the political and cultural sense) view the world around them and how that affects social cohesion. He has a few TED talks if you’d like to get an idea of his research. Related, if you’re interested in an application of Kahneman’s research in politics, the Rationalizing Voter was a good book.

As a “be a better person” book, I really liked 7 habits of highly effective people by Stephen Covey (recommend it on audiobook). Particularly, unlike other business-style self-help about positive thinking and manipulating people—this book really makes you examine your core values, what’s truly important to you and gives you some tools to help refocus your efforts in those directions. Though, as I’m typing this I’m thinking about the time I’m spending on reddit and not reading the book I’ve been meaning to all night =p

General

• The Righteous Mind - OP, if you only choose one book, it's gotta be this one. Trust me.
  
• The Fractured Republic - Written by a committed conservative, but very fair. Critical of his own side and empathetic of the positive traits on the left. Also one of the best writers in political history/theory imo.
  
  Conservative - I'm keenly interested in the intellectual history of American Conservatism and could make this this list could go on forever. I'll keep it to three, but if you want more suggestions feel free to ask.
  
  
• 10 Conservative Principles - Not a book, but essential to understanding conservatism
  
• Conservatism in America Since 1930 - A reader that guides you along a chronological and ideological path of conservatism in America.
  
• Hillbilly Elegy - Less academic, but very well written and explains the support of Trump from the rural white working class perfectly
  
  Liberal - You may get a better liberal reading list from another user, but I'll give it a shot.
  
  
• On Liberty - Modern political dialog from the left still echos Mill's classic defense of cultural liberty. A must read for all Americans.
  
• American Progressivism: A Reader - As you can tell, I'm a big fan of reading political giants in their own words.
  
• The Affluent Society - The controversial classic that underpins progressive economic policy.

What you are talking about is overcoming your internal belief system, and that is a long struggle and tremendously difficult for so many people. Please don't give up!

Have you read The God Virus, by Dr. Darrel Ray? There's also a really awesome book about overcoming that internal belief system called: Taming Your Gremlin, A Surprisingly Simple Method for Getting Out of your Own Way

Both of those, I think, would really give you some awesome tools to overcoming this stalled stumbling blocks you're talking about. You mention reinventing yourself, but the thing is...you might just need to figure out who you really have been this whole time.

Think of it this way, if you know the superstitions aren't real, then your morality was based on being good for goodness' sake in the first place. Cloaking it in superstition didn't make superstition more real, it just felt that way for the time being.

As for the "if you have the ability to get out, you were never all the way in", I hope you consider that recovery can, for some people, be a lifelong experience. We can't predict when you specifically will feel "over it", and categorizing anyone who feels comfortable in their place on their journey as "never all the way in" discounts their experience as much as it does yours.

Best of luck to you, I do hope you stick around. I appreciate your perspective and empathize with your struggle. Let me know what you think of the books, if you're interested in giving them a whirl :)

Take care of you!
Sarah

> I wonder if humanities curious nature towards mysticism is inevitable and that all paths, no matter how diverse, will always use the same formats and formulas to tell their tales.

This is one of the central tenants of Jung's research (well you know "research") and Joseph Cambell basically wrote the book about it... https://www.amazon.com/Thousand-Faces-Collected-Joseph-Campbell/dp/1577315936 sorry if Im being didactic/eg if you already knew that... its a really facinating question/idea. As far as "Embedded in our DNA" eg for a more scientific approach this book is AMAZING https://www.amazon.com/Origin-Consciousness-Breakdown-Bicameral-Mind/dp/0618057072, even though it does veer from the purely scientific, the idea is that our brains have certain regions which act on our spiritual relationship to our "gods" which manifested themselves as voices in our earlier evolutionary states and that as we became more rational our brains still retained these functional but at the same time "disfunctional" anatomy leading to experiances that result for some in uncontrollable states, like schizophrenics for example ... the way he "proves" all of this stuff is a comparison of his experiments in neuroscience with historical texts, legends, sagas, and other implements of earlier humanity like archeological finds. if you are interested in this topic this is an absolutely Mindblowing book right here just saying!


Finally:
"Is this part of our evolutionary growth or yearning for divinity?
Our ego's thirst for magical power or trying to step out of our physical limitations?" I think you are right in that we yearn because, I beleive at least, our evolutionary state has one foot in the past and one in the future, we have evolved beyond our normal need for mere survival and we now use our brains for complex creation and navigation of human institutions but we dont really know "why", we dont really know what meaning is becuase "meaning" is a brand new thing! and without it the universe seems devoid of purpose and therefore I beleive we fill in those gaps with these notions and art, music etc, art and literature helps us define ourselves and music helps us 'engage' with the harmonics/vibrations of the universe on deeper levels (as it is really the only category here that actually relies on the schientific make up of the universe i.e. the ways that ratios of harmonic waves sound pleasing or displeasing based on their relationships in time...). I just love this stuff, am also agnostic but love to celebrate all ideas no matter how objectively "wrong" they may be, thats of c why Im on this sub! Love your questions/keep on searching!!!

You have talent, keep working and you'll be fine.

The harshness,

You're making simple verb-tense errors all over your piece. Is it taking place in past-tense? he fed small grapes into her mouth
Or is it taking place in present-tense? she pouts to him, before he looks to her with an icy scowl

Both are acceptable. I personally prefer present-tense because I feel it adds immediacy and tension, but that's entirely a personal thing and should have no bearing on your own choices, but you need to make a choice and stick with it.

You need to format your writing properly before you show it to people. Things like paragraph breaks and indentations for lines of dialogue, and there are a couple of sentences where meaning completely breaks down, To an outside observer, he might seem slightly schizophrenic with his self affection, and quite considerably moronic of Strel, there was an observer. I have no idea what the second part of this sentence is supposed to convey.

There are a few points where your sentence construction gets a little clumsy, where the words get in the way of meaning or feeling, Strel made a vicious grin as a robed and turban-bound being huddled where it once was. (Made a vicious grin? Where what once was?)

wild were the actions of the people enamored with it (Enamoured with the market? How were their actions wild?)

However, there is a clear sense of creativity in your writing and a sense of determination to put words together in interesting ways that is impressive for someone of your age. If I were your English teacher, and I teach High School English, I'd be encouraging the hell out of you to keep writing because I think there is a lot of potential here.

Right now my suggestions would be to read everything you can. In particular, look beyond fantasy to books which are highly regarded for their literary merit. I'd strongly recommend Salman Rushdie (The Satanic Verses), Orhan Pamuk (My Name is Red), and Hillary Mantel (Wolf Hall).

As a fantasy fan there are things to really like in all of these books, and they're all examples of what writers at the absolute peak of the craft are capable of doing with language.

The second thing I'd suggest is to practice writing short pieces. It's all well and good to leap into a novel, but the ability to structure a beginning, middle, and end to a story is vital. If you can get classic story-structure skills mastered at a young age you're way, way, way ahead of the curve.

Finally, read The Hero With a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell. It's a non-fiction book about what Campbell calls "The Monomyth." A classic mythical story-structure repeated over and over and over again in mythic tales from around the world, and utterly essential reading for anyone who wants to write Fantasy.

Here are some of the resources I've read, and what I think about them:

• Transgender 101: A good introduction covering a lot of what you mention above. It's more focused on the transsexual experience, though. Non-binary identities and others under the "transgender" umbrella get their own chapter, but it's stuck at the back of the book. Chapter 6 has a really good section on whether transgender should be considered a mental disorder, and talks about the insurance issue.
  
  
• Whipping Girl: Although it's not too hard to get through, I'd consider this to be "advanced reading" for those who already have a grounding in basic trans thinking/terminology. I really enjoyed it and agree with many of Serano's arguments, but it's less textbook and more opinion piece (although Serano has also written a number of academic papers for respected journals). It's mainly focused on the MTF transsexual experience.
  
  
• True Selves: You might hear this one mentioned in lists of good trans books, but it's now 20 years old, is very heavily weighted toward a limited view of the transexual experience, and it defends the gatekeeper mentality. I'd honestly avoid it, unless you're interested in reading about how things used to be, in which case I'd highly recommend Harry Benjamin's The Transsexual Phenomenon (who knew that people used to be arrested just for crossdressing?). Don't show that one to your professor!
  
  
• WPATH Standards of Care v7: Presents a good overview of gender non-conformity and dysphoria with references to contemporary research. Written for a medical/academic audience but easy enough for a general audience to understand too. Focuses significantly on mental health aspects of transgender and medical transition options. The standards of care seem to have become more liberal with each new version, to the extent that they're now presented as guidelines rather than hard rules and are approaching the "informed consent" approach. Still, they're an example of the gatekeeping approach, which some people are dead against.
  
  
• National Geographic magazine gender special edition: Has some good stories covering the whole range of transgender people (i.e. talks about non-binary identities as well as the traditional transsexual experience). Also interesting is the wide discussion of gender issues in various world cultures, although this is of less relevance to what you're looking for.
  
  Obviously there's a lot more out there, and I'm sure others can add to this and/or argue with my take on the above list. This is just some of my admittedly limited reading - please don't take this in any way as an authoritative list of the best resources!
  
  I'd be careful relying on websites and blog posts for information. You need to be critical of the authors' credibility and biases, and there is a lot of poorly-researched, poorly-written stuff out there, some of which is downright wrong, made-up, nonsensical or hateful (I've read a lot on Blanchard's typology and the paraphillia/fetish view of transsexualism, and I'd advise you to avoid it at all costs!). On the other hand, I'd say don't stick entirely to books and academic papers, because there are a lot of interesting thoughts/perspectives from those in the community who don't write books or publish papers.

>I don’t regret having one, just extremely ashamed of being sexual and communicating it to girls and also showing it to the world. Attracting girls’ attention and whatnot isn’t very hard but progressing things to dating, holding hands and eventually sex is impossible. I can’t even call them or message them on Facebook or Whatsapp because I just feel like an idiot for doing so. Making a move in clubs and bars is also difficult although I once got close to leaving with a girl but she didn't want to. I got made fun of a lot growing up for not having a girlfriend and this made me feel like i do not deserve one. It doesn't matter if I've got the green light to go ahead I just feel really ashamed do it. Even something like looking at a fit girl wearing a short skirt makes me feel bad for checking her out and that I shouldn’t be doing it.


I know what you mean. I've been there myself, but even when I was there I was entirely self-aware of my shame and I was skeptical of the validity of my emotional reactions; I realized they were ingrained. Being aware of your emotional reactions allows you to be emotionally proactive. Your sex-negative problem is mostly an emotional issue, and not much else, right? I've been there. I wouldn't doubt that you are also decent looking and have both latent and actualized social skills. Most intelligent introverts have a lot of potential to be who they want to be because they know themselves more deeply than others. You must use your introverted nature to your advantage and recognize the differences in others and yourself. In all honesty, there are an infinite number of unwritten rules; everyone's abstract/emotional logic is different. Many of them are foundational and predictable, however; including yours and mine. Like anything else, being emotionally predictable is not a black/white issue. It is a grey area, and you have to balance your reliability with creativity.


Being made fun of for not having a girlfriend is just as sexist as being made fun of for not having a boyfriend; gender equal too. Were you ever shamed for not having a boyfriend? It's clearly a matter of groupthink and extroverted style; not for everyone. Dating relationships, for extroverts especially, are often attention-getting and showy. They wear their relationships like trophies won. Usually introverts prefer a more private relationship because they have less social desire and are often shamed because of it. Introverts are “themselves” more often in private. Extroverts are “themselves” more often in public. There is no shame deserved either way, regardless of popular opinion. Both styles have their strengths and weaknesses, and you should try to introject some of the traits that you enjoy in others; regardless of type. That is how you become balanced.


>I’m receiving counselling from a pastor who advocates the whole “no sex before marriage” thing and believes that people should only date to get married and sex is only for making kids which is stupid IMO because I do not plan on getting married anytime soon.


Counseling from a Catholic pastor? Watch out, that is one of the most notorious sex-negative societies out there. They own the abstinence-only charade while they parade horribles. Marriage is not the answer to anything; it is an institution of the state. Anything else attached is sentimental.


If you haven't already, I recommend doing an in-depth study of animal sexual behaviors; especially the most intelligent animals. All animals have sex for pleasure, but some animals are only driven to have sex at certain times of the year; humans are on a 24/7 system.


>I’ve tried the no fap route and gotten very high days counts but that hasn’t really helped me at all.


Sexual frustration doesn't help anyone. If you are mindful, then you can use your libido to further your goals, but it is not an all-cure.


>Got any sources to help overcome sex-negative perspectives? I’m interested in recreational sex not baby making sex.


Absolutely. I recommend starting with actual sex science and learning about male and female psychology and neurology. Then work your way into reading about sex culture. You should also study developmental psychology as you will probably need the clinical context in order to objectively self-evaluate your childhood influences; it is necessary for self-therapy. The best therapy will always be self-therapy; no one will ever know you better than yourself.


Evolutionary Science and Morals Philosophy:

The Selfish Gene

The Moral Landscape

The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined

Justice: What's The Right Thing To Do?


Sex Psychology, Science, and Neurology:

Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex

The Female Brain

The Male Brain

Why Men Want Sex and Women Need Love

What Do Women Want

Why Women Have Sex: Understanding Sexual Motivations from Adventure to Revenge (and Everything in Between)

Sex: The world's favorite pastime fully revealed


Behavioral Psychology and Abstract Economics:

How Pleasure Works

Freakonomics

Quiet: The Power of Introverts In A World That Can't Stop Talking

Thinking Fast And Slow

We Are All Weird


Developmental Psychology:

Nurture Shock

Hauntings: Dispelling The Ghosts That Run Our Lives


Empathy Building:


Half The Sky

The House On Mango Street

Me Before You

The Fault In Our Stars

Also check out James Hollis' Understanding The Psychology of Men lecture if you can find it.



Movies: XXY, Tom Boy, Dogtooth, Shame, Secretary, Nymphomaniac, Juno, Beautiful Creatures, and The Man From Earth.



All of these things are related, but it is up to you to make the connections; pick and choose which material suits your interests best. These are the things that came to mind first, and they have all influenced my perspectives.

It helps to tell others that you were one like them, so you understand their lifestyle, however, having become aware of the ethical problems with eating meat and animal products you made a shift to more plant based way of living.

This helps to promote a more understanding approach and less of a "us against them."

Don't be afraid to give them resources where they can look for themselves. You need to make people feel like they came to conlusions on their own (based on psychology studies) and to do that, you sometimes have to simply offer the info and walk away to let them think about it. I hand out vegan outreach pamphlets, and I think it's a great way to advocate without being so confrontational and argumentative with people. Undoubtedly you can still get into arguments with people, but the key is to make THEM think about their actions, not simply tell that that they're wrong.

A famous method used by Socartes was to get people to realize that they already believe what he does, they just aren't acting on it. Most people already don't want to harm animals (or at least they don't want to be seen as a person that would, but their actions support that, and connecting them to that fact is vital)

A book you might like is "Why We love Dogs, eat pigs, and wear cows." by Melanie Joy it explains why we view different animals the way we do and how hard it can be to change people's perceptions.

A good follow up to this book is "change of heart: The psychology of spreading social change." where you can then apply psychological study implications to real world situations. The writer focuses on animal rights concerns a lot and how to get the most people engaged in this more ethical way of living. A good tip from this book is to realize that people make up rationalizations to justify their actions, rather than as we would normally think that many people make u a rational reason for doing something and then do it. If we can simply encourage more people to take the first step into eating more veg meals and it becomes more natural for them, they'd take to the reasons more heartedly.

It takes time. At one point I was like you, down, frustrated, and irritable. But when you seek for knowledge on how to become a better advocate for animals, you may get some happiness once more and more people come to you telling you they eat more veg meals or have gone vegetarian. When leafletting at my college, one girl told us that she had gotten a pamphlet last semester and then went vegan. Some people DO get it, but you have to be the connecting thread between people and the animals.

Tips for animal advocacy from Animal rights conference http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-c6886_GXyg

Steven Pinker shares this article that challenges some of Peterson's assumptions.

An excerpt:

​

>
>
>Dostoevsky Distraction — Abandon Judeo-Christianity at your peril:
>
>“Crime and Punishment is the best investigation, I know, of what happens if you take the notion that there’s nothing divine about the individual seriously.”
>
>Deconstruction #1 — Jordan repeatedly cites the character Raskolnikov as being the poster child for what happens when a person gives up a belief in the divinity of other humans; or, as he and Dostoevsky define it, an atheist. Except, and as a psychologist, he knows that someone who determines other people have no intrinsic value “is the psychopath’s viewpoint.” That he conflates atheism with psychopathy is disingenuous, intellectually dishonest, and professionally irresponsible.
>
>Deconstruction #2 — Like Jordan, Dostoevsky was a committed Christian who viewed the abandonment of Judeo-Christian values as an ill omen, and sounded the warning. However, Jordan omitted the inconvenient truth that his literary hero was an avowed Christian socialist who proclaimed: “If everyone were actively Christian, not a single social question would come up.”



Moral Atheist Mystification — If you act in a moral way, you’re acting out religious values:

>“As I said at the beginning, the atheist types act out a religious structure.”

Deconstruction #1 — As pointed out in the Deuteronomistic Paradigm, moral values preceded their codification in religious texts, and in the Dostoevsky Distraction, that Jordan has his own, unique, definition of what atheist means, it is irresponsible for Jordan to fuel the flawed perception that atheists are immoral.

Deconstruction #2 — Despite Jordan’s ominous warnings that leaving religion behind is bad for society, there is a clear correlation between countries with increasingly secular tendencies and the happiness of its citizens.

Deconstruction #3 — Again, also despite Jordan’s warning of putting the Judeo-Christian traditions out to pasture, is the idea that atheists are calling for anarchy and immoral behaviour. In conjunction with this perspective, is Jordan’s wholesale ignoring of the immoral acts listed in the Bible (drowning the planet, Abraham’s willingness to murder his child, the Passover slaughter of innocent Egyptians to make a point, Job, etc.); and the fact that most parishioners do not read these stories metaphorically, as Jordan claims religious passages should be understood — not literally, but figuratively — for the morals of the story.

Deconstruction #4 — Jordan’s obsession with the nihilism of Nietzsche is unwarranted, and, indeed, bordering on Chicken Little; especially in light of the facts of deconstruction #2.

It appears contradictory, to me anyway, that if the values contained within the Judeo-Christian tradition preceded the tradition (part 4), then why should Jordan be worried if people are simply abandoning the vehicle which, successfully, conveyed the values? The values are the important factor, the ones that emerged from the unconscious, not the transmission mechanism. “Adamant anti-religious thinkers” are not advocating that we abandon morality, or “our immersement in the underlying dream,” so the values themselves will remain intact. Another Canadian psychologist, Steven Pinker, makes this point in Enlightenment Now:

>“If the positive contributions of religious institutions come from their role as humanistic associations in civil society, then we would expect those benefits not to be tied to theistic belief, and that is indeed the case.”

Steven, as the subtitle of the book alludes, made “The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress,” that society is not in any danger — contrary to Jordan’s dire warnings — from increasing secularization:

>“Evolution helps explain another foundation of secular morality: our capacity for sympathy (or, as the Enlightenment writers variously referred to it, benevolence, pity, imagination, or commiseration). Even if a rational agent deduces that it’s in everyone’s long-term interests to be moral, it’s hard to imagine him sticking his neck out to make a sacrifice for another’s benefit unless something gives him a nudge. The nudge needn’t come from an angel on one shoulder; evolutionary psychology explains how it comes from the emotions that make us social animals…Evolution thus selects for the moral sentiments: sympathy, trust, gratitude, guilt, shame, forgiveness, and righteous anger. With sympathy installed in our psychological makeup, it can be expanded by reason and experience to encompass all sentient beings…
>
>A viable moral philosophy for a cosmopolitan world cannot be constructed from layers of intricate argumentation or rest on deep metaphysical or religious convictions. It must draw on simple, transparent principles that everyone can understand and agree upon. The ideal of human flourishing — that it’s good for people to lead long, healthy, happy, rich, and stimulating lives — is just such a principle, since it’s based on nothing more (and nothing less) than our common humanity.
>
>History confirms that when diverse cultures have to find common ground, they converge toward humanism.”

Lots to unpack here! I think you've done an excellent job of listing all the things that are contributing. With this list, it is no surprise that sex is suffering. Sex/intimacy can often be an early indicator (canary in the coal mine) that something is wrong.

It really feels like you both need some help with body, mind, and soul. I could post what I use, but that's a novel.

I know that when finances are rough, it effects everything and makes everything much harder. Maybe you can both work as partners to address this as the highest priority--with the statement that you will work on more than one thing, but bills gotta get paid.

The other part of this is that we all need a purpose. Can he get a $15/hr job and really work on showing up and keeping that job? It can have a massive mental boost.

35? I highly suggest that you put whatever you were in the past...in the past. It doesn't matter if you were HL or if he was. Our bodies change, our responsibilities change, and our New Relationship Energy for our partner goes away. We're left with having to figure out how to be real adults and actualize our best self, and figure out how to long term couple.

I recommend (a lot) a few experts to watch and read up on. One might have a voice that speaks best to you. None of these links are long, but they all can make it clear that it is not hopeless, and what you are going through is common.

I'm very optimistic because of the positive changes I've experienced. I'm happy to discuss more if needed.

Recommendations:

• On what marriage really is.
  
• On how our view of sex is often wrong. This and This.
  
• On women's sex issues particularly.
  
• On him growing into an actual adult. This book can be a bit hard to understand, so here is a pretty good overview of the concepts....which should resonate with you as what you want from him
  
  

Okay, so there are a lot of people who say there's "No real guide to writing." I understand why they say that but they're not factually correct. A lot of the best writers I follow all recommend a few key books. I started writing my book with no guides, which was fun, but I set myself up for a TON of rewrites because I didn't know what I was doing. I'm now deep in revisions and V2, and the only reason I'm finding success is I got my hands on some excellent books that showed me where to go from "You have a cool idea that might make a good book."


First, My Story Can Beat Up Your Story. Really good, basic, zero-fluff guide to writing (tailored to screenplays but it works just as well for novels.) I went from a mess of a first draft to a rock solid 10-page outline with this book alone. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00696HIYA/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

​

Second, The Writer's Journey. People like Dan Harmon (Community, Rick and Morty) swear by this book. Little more fluff (by which I mean philosophical mumbo jumbo) but still an excellent resource for getting to know your characters, plot, structure, and what makes a story good as opposed to bad. https://www.amazon.com/Writers-Journey-Structure-Storytellers-Screenwriters/dp/0941188132


But all of these are basically just introductory texts to reading the Holy Grail of writing, The Hero With A Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell. I started here and realized I was way out of my depth in terms of understanding why this book is important for writers, so I'm now backing myself down to Writing 101 rather than the masterclass.


https://www.amazon.com/Thousand-Faces-Collected-Joseph-Campbell/dp/1577315936/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1549390571&sr=1-1&keywords=hero+with+a+thousand+faces

The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature - evolutionary psychology, behavioral genetics. (probably most interesting from a Freudian perspective, deals with many of our unconscious instincts)

Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces The Shape Our Decisions - Unconscious decision-making, behavioral economics, consumer psychology. Fun read.

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion - Most popular book on the psychology of persuasion, covers all the main principles. Very popular among business crowds.

Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships - Social neuroscience, mirror neurons, empathy, practical stuff mixed with easy to understand brain science.

Authentic Happiness - Positive Psychology, happiness, increasing life satisfaction.

Feeling Good - A good primer on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. Also widely considered one of the best self-help books by mental health practitioners.

The Brain That Changes Itself - Neuroplasticity, how experience shapes our brains. Some really remarkable case studies that get you wondering how powerful our brains really are.

The Buddhist Brain - The practical neuroscience of happiness, love, and wisdom from a Buddhist perspective.

That should give you more than enough to chew on.

My recommendations from books I read in the last year or so (yes, these are all VERY STRONG recommends curated from ~100 books in the last year) -

​

Science fiction-

Derek Kunsken's The Quantum Magician (I would describe it as a cross between Oceans Eleven with some not-too-Hard Science Fiction. Apparently will be a series, but is perfectly fine as a standalone novel).

Cixin Lu's very popular Three Body Problem series (Mixes cleverly politics, sociology, psychology and science fiction)

James A Corey's The Expanse Series (which has been made into the best sci fi tv series ever!)

Hannu Rajaniemi's Quantum Thief series (Hard science fiction. WARNING - A lot of the early stuff is intentionally mystifying with endless terminology that’s only slowly explained since the main character himself has lost his memories. Put piecing it all together is part of the charm.)

​

Fantasy-

James Islington's Shadow of What was Lost series (a deep series which makes you think - deep magic, politics, religion all intertwined)

Will Wight's Cradle series (has my vote for one of the best fantasy series ever written)

Brandon Sanderson Legion series (Brandon Sanderson. Nuff said. Creative as always)

​

Manga -

Yukito Kishiro's Alita, Battle Angel series (the manga on what the movie was based)

​

Non-Fiction-

Jonathan Haidt's The Righteous Mind - Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion (and how we are not as rational as we believe we are, and how passion works in tandem with rationality in decision making and is actually required for good decisionmaking)

Rothery's Geology - A Complete Introduction (as per title)

Joseph Krauskopf's A Rabbi's Impressions of the Oberammergau Passion Play, available to read online for free, including a fabulous supplementary of Talmud Parallels to the NT (a Rabbi in 1901 explains why he is not a Christian)

​

Audiobooks -

Bob Brier's The History of Ancient Egypt (as per title - 25 hrs of the best audiobook lectures. Incredible)

​

Academic biblical studies-

Richard Elliot Friedman's Who Wrote The Bible and The Exodus (best academic biblical introductory books into the Documentary Hypothesis and Qenite/Midian hypothesis)

Israel Finkelstein's The Bible Unearthed (how archaelogy relates to the bible)

E.P. Sander's Judaism: Practice and Belief, 63BCE-66CE ​(most detailed book of what Judaism is and their beliefs, and one can see from this balanced [Christian] scholar how Christianity has colored our perspectives of what Jews and Pharisees were really like)

Avigdor Shinan's From gods to God (how Israel transitioned from polytheism to monotheism)

Mark S Smith's The Early History of God (early history of Israel, Canaanites, and YHWH)

James D Tabor's Paul and Jesus: How the Apostle Transformed Christianity (as per title)

Tom Dykstra's Mark Canonizer of Paul (engrossing - will make you view the gospel of Mark with new eyes)

Jacob L Wright's King David and His Reign Revisited (enhanced ibook - most readable book ever on King David)

Jacob Dunn's thesis on the Midianite/Kenite hypothesis (free pdf download - warning - highly technical but also extremely well referenced)

Man or woman?

Man or woman?

Man or woman?

Man or woman?

Man or woman?

Hint! They are all men. Men who learned to write stylish, flowing, neat letters. Beautiful script and prose. A time when both men and women (educated) were expected to have exemplary writing skills. That is not to say that there wasn't people with bad writing...but these men are not going against the cultural grain...they are with the cultural expectations of that time period.

> but I think most people would understand what's being talked about and be able to picture it in their heads.

Would a man from India have the same image? A woman from rural China? A boy from Russia? A girl from Peru? The image in your head of what is "girls writing" is culturally derived. Other cultures will have other ideas of what constitutes a male or female writing style...or perhaps none at all (e.g. there is no gender/sex divide).

> Children usually display "boyish" or "girlish" behavior from a very young age (e.g. favoring toy trucks over dolls) independently of parenting style.

You forget that parents only form a part of what influences a child as they grow. Media, culture, friends, family, teachers are all avenues for promoting cultural stereotypes.

> I think the simplest explanation here is that young girls are more likely to be concerned with having attractive handwriting and so they make an effort to improve it, typically by borrowing from the writing style of other girls, who happen to favor neat, round, and pretty shapes.

Where is that concern derived from? Do all girls inherently want neat writing? What would be the biological mechanism - a specific gene, neurotransmitter? Is it simply because girls develop fine-motor skills earlier on? Are those early years really that formative, we can't teach a dog new tricks?


I really recommend the book Delusions of Gender by Cordelia Fine as an introduction this topic. "Drawing on the latest research in neuroscience and psychology, Cordelia Fine debunks the myth of hardwired differences between men’s and women’s brains, unraveling the evidence behind such claims as men’s brains aren’t wired for empathy and women’s brains aren’t made to fix cars. She then goes one step further, offering a very different explanation of the dissimilarities between men’s and women’s behavior. Instead of a “male brain” and a “female brain,” Fine gives us a glimpse of plastic, mutable minds that are continuously influenced by cultural assumptions about gender."

Babies don't eat pizza!!?? Oh yes they do! - I gave my baby girl some crust when she was teething and she loved it. But she REALLY likes food.

Here's my advice, in no particular order:

1. Cut yourself some slack. Like a lot of it. The first baby is a huge adjustment and you're not going to be perfect and that's ok. Love him/her and do your best.
   
   
2. Take care of yourself! Do whatever makes you happy when you have a minute - paint your nails, watch tv, whatever. You will be taking care of baby 24/7 so give yourself as much YOU time as you can.
   
   
3. Babies and kids go through phases. So when you're in the middle of a rough patch, know that it will end. You have no idea when, but eventually it will end. Likewise, when your baby is being super sweet and cute and everything is sunshine and roses, enjoy every second of it cause that too will end!
   
   
4. Buy this book, read it and follow the advice. Many moms recommended it to me over the years, and I didn't buy it until we started having major sleep problems with my 3 1/2 year old. I've been using the techniques on him AND my 9 month old daughter and I so wish I'd used it on him since the beginning. Sleep is such a big deal in parenting and this book made it really pretty simple.
   
   
5. Cradle cap - rub olive oil on babies head, let sit for 10 minutes, scrub off with a comb while baby is sleeping. Works.
   
   
6. Here is a hand drawn chalk drawing by my son of himself and his baby sister. Notice his war wound - sliced his earlobe open last week and got 4 stitches.

This is so normal, so common place, that I'm willing to say you are going through a very normal ( albeit an uncomfortable) phase.

This might sound a bit cliche, but the second you find direction...everything falls into place. Finding said direction is the hard part. But once you get it, it's almost magical how easier things become. Speaking from experience, I'd say that that should be your primary focus if you want to get out of this rut. Look for a place you want to be or a person you want to be and work towards it (give yourself a 203 year plan to get there so you don't beat yourself up when you fall short).

I have a few tips to help you on this trip.

• Stick with good friends. People who make you "feel better" are NOT good friends. People who challenge you, motivate you, and make your life richer are good friends.
  
  
• Throw people you don't like to the curb and never look back. "Nice" is the death of boldness. Be bold, even if it means letting people down, even if it means flat out pissing some people off. Obviously don't go looking for a fight, but if a genuine rotten person enters your life, tell them to go fuck themselves or flat out walk away. Doing this to bullies and assholes makes you feel vastly more confident.
  
  
• Walk in the woods. This clears you head so quickly that it's kind of odd.
  
  
• Hang out with people who are different than you, if only to get a taste of how others live. This includes members of the opposite sex platonically.
  
  
• Do something creative once a week. Write, paint, speak in public, whatever. I personally like to cook.
  
  
• Travel to a place you'd never think to go, annually if you can. Getting out of your town and seeing the world can really, really alter how you see the world. And it'll help you figure out what your major priorities are quickly.
  
  
• Avoid video games. I defend those as much as I can as entertainment pieces, but they are overall not good for you emotionally or socially. And no, online play is not social play. I'm not saying don't play them ever, but you should never consider video games to be a big part of your life or identity. And on that note, avoid "gamers" and people who call themselves that. You don't need that in your life.
  
  I'm assuming you're guy because it's reddit and I know how to work odds, so I'd recommend this book right away. It helped me through my funk and it's a great guide to channeling positive masculinity. I also recommend 'Men are from Mars; Women are from Venus' as a tool to help understand yourself and women, and the book Siddhartha (fucking excellent story of self discovery).
  
  

I'm currently reading Jonathan Haidt's The Righteous Mind which I was introduced to on a similar thread on /r/conservative.

Haidt is a social psychologist who is researching the psychological foundations of morality and how those foundations influence politics. He himself is very liberal though in the course of his research you can see him becoming more and more sympathetic to conservative ideas and coming to share many of their concerns.

His theory is that there are (at least) six basic foundations of morality: care, fairness, liberty, loyalty, authority, sanctity and that these foundations are an innate part of human psychology. In his research he found that liberals are concerned with care above the other five foundations. Fairness & liberty still rank fairly high, but loyalty, authority and sanctity rank very low for liberals. As you move to the right on the political spectrum care trends slightly down while all other moral foundations trend up until all six are of roughly equal concern to conservatives. It's not so much that conservatives care less than liberals (though they do... but just a little) It's more that conservatives balance care against several other moral concerns.

Haidt thinks this gives conservatives a political advantage since liberals in their fixation on care end up violating people's moral sensibilities on the other five foundations. More than that he sees the social benefits of those other foundations and that they are all required for a healthy society. Even though he remains extremely liberal himself he concedes that conservatives are right about the value they place on those other competing moral foundations. Haidt advocates that liberals start to value some of the other moral foundations more though I'm not sure how that is any different from saying they should become more conservative (or maybe neo-conservative in the original sense of that word).

Moral Foundations Theory keeps confirming itself.

In short, leftist folk care exclusively about the moral virtues of justice and care. Those on the right have a wider palette of virtues including justice, care, loyalty, purity, and authority, giving these five roughly equal weight.

To the left, the right appears to be uncaring, because the right prioritizes virtues the left disregards.

To the right, the left appears to be ignorant of other legitimate virtues, because, well, it is.

I think this has probably always been so. I would prefer a world where a right-leaning person could value the left's deeper commitment to care, with the left appreciating how successful human societies require the employment of all five virtues. But, we live in a time where more political power can be derived from division than unity, and here we are.

I feel like Mega Man would work only if they took noted from Alita in terms of action and characterization.

For those who have complaints about Alita, the movie is great considering it took the OVA's and Mangas pacing and packed it into the movie as faithful as possible. It took most of the emotional beats and spirit of the source material and emphasized the characters nicely.

Having Mega Man take a similar approach to the ever growing child like yet positive can-do-ness that Alita has would make him an easier character to take. Dr. Light takes a more old wise man role in the Hero's Journey, and Wiley being this shadow version of Light (Shadow Magician archetype from [King, Warrior, Magician, Lover Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine by Douglas Gillette and Robert L. Moore](King, Warrior, Magician, Lover: Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine https://www.amazon.com/dp/0062506064/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_EgVtDbNWBE4WC).)

And then add a tragic foil to Megaman that is Protoman and you have your self a very solid story for families about Fathers and Sons, becoming a real boy, and adapting to one's reality as well as what defines the call of duty.

Thanks for attending my ted talk. Please direct me to the nearest movie writing nerd subreddit.

I'm glad this was interesting! Foucault was pretty aware of religion and what was in the Bible, hence why my account is a bit inaccurate for the sake of simplicity. But Christianity actually plays a pretty prominent role in most of his books. In Sexuality, for example, he is especially interested in the "confession" and how it transforms from a religious idea to an everyday one. I'm not sure what my personal thoughts are on Foucault and whether or not I agree. But if you wanna give him a fair shake I recommend reading one of his books, maybe Discipline and Punishment, because my summary doesn't do him justice.

I'm an outsider to the field also (an enthusiast), but so was Foucault. And I'm doing research in an entirely unrelated field. That said, Foucault has been applied to many other fields. Some are obvious: Critical Race Theory, Gender Studies, Gay/Lesbian Studies, etc. But, here are a few examples of fairly recent books that either use him directly or gently draw on him:

The Will to Improve: Governmentality, Development, and the Practice of Politics by Tania Murray Li: an interesting in-depth study on Indonesia

Only Hope: Coming of Age Under China’s One-Child Policy by Vanessa Fong: another study focusing on a particular state, this type how China's One-Child Policy shapes children and families. She probably draws more on Bourdieu than Foucault, but both are in there.

Bad Boys: Public Schools in the Making of Black Masculinity by Ann Ferguson: for those in the education field, Ferguson analyzes how schools are part of the system creating and reinforcing the idea of the Black, male criminal. Note, it's not that schools perpetuate stereotypes, nor that school policies are discriminatory because of the image black males have in American society. She argues that schools CREATE this identity, straight from Foucault.

Seeing like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed by James C. Scott: This one is pretty well known (relative to the others) and it's a pretty fun read. He doesn't draw exclusively on Foucault, but it is a big part.

> My friend from Hunnan province told me that he would never support China being a democracy since then 80% of the country would vote for an extremist hawk-party that would send nukes on America first chance they got.

This is exactly why I can understand some of the party's tight control on media.

Anyway,

Been reading this optimistic book:

https://www.amazon.com/Enlightenment-Now-Science-Humanism-Progress/dp/0525427570/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8

thought i'd share to a self proclaimed pessimist :D

Also recently read more deeply into China's more recent leaders like jian zemin (disgusting, corrupt as fuck) and hu jintao (pretty amazing). I was very surprised at Hu's contributions, people dont' really seem to talk about him.

In Hu’s words, "A Harmonious Socialist Society should feature democracy." Such a society, he says, will give full scope to people's talent and creativity, enable all the people to share the social wealth brought by reform and development, and forge an ever-closer relationship between the people and government.

Seems he also greatly increased transparency between the party and the public.

Who knows what xi and the future brings. Xi's father has an interesting background, Dali Lama met him and fondly recalled him as "very friendly, comparatively open-minded, very nice.". He was also responsible for the economic liberalisation in Guangdong, so I'm somewhat hopeful that his son, is comparatively (putin/erdogan) more considerate about his own people than profiting from exploitation.

One book that may be helpful for answering your questions is Self Made Man. The author spent about 18 months living as a man, in some all-male spaces (the monastery seems cool, but I'm positive that if I went to one of those Iron John camps, I'd be murdered). In the end, she had a nervous breakdown. Along the way she learned totally positively that she is neither a transvestite nor transgender. If Norah (the author) ever comes to Denver, I'd like to buy her a drink.

Two previous links on this subject that I've saved are:

http://www.reddit.com/r/asktransgender/comments/271fnm/changing_sides_in_a_sexist_world_share_your/
http://www.reddit.com/r/asktransgender/comments/2797ax/ftms_how_jarring_is_the_switch_to_the_male_social/
I'm certain that there are others. But I think these anecdotes from people who have been both genders, and the jarring differences that they experience might be something you ought to read. Things like:

> I wouldn't call it the better gender, though things are much easier in a lot of respects. I was recently promoted to electronics at Target. My boss basically said, "you're a guy so you must know a lot about electronics". My female coworker, who obviously knows more about electronics, had to fight tooth and nail to get the same position. She and our boss still but heads occasionally because he treats her as if she is incompetent. I think that's it really. When you're a guy, for the most part you are assumed competent until proven otherwise. With women, the opposite happens. You have to prove yourself competent before you're offered anything.

Another good book that I think you might be interested in is Whipping Girl.

This Melanie Joy lecture should be essential viewing for all activists.

There are a lot of different philosophies to vegan activism. read up on them from Animal Liberation Front to open rescues to Gary Francione's pacifism and his loathing of single issue campaigns to Nick Cooney's psychology-informed approach. There's a lot more, and don't feel like you have to be a professor in it or 'pick a side' before you do anything, but you'll find a lot of food for thought.

Also, of course, keep learning the facts about how animals are used, the philosophies of animal rights, how the environment is affected, etc. so you can speak with confidence and answer people's questions.

Podcasts are a great way to get insights to what other activists are doing and why they are doing it. I'm currently following The Bearded Vegans, Which Side, Vegan Warrior Princesses Attack, Not Your Milk, and Our Hen House.

The best thing to do is keep looking for others, facebook is a good resource. If there's not a group started, see if you can find other vegans to start one with.

There are small things you can do, like order business cards with positive messages and links to resources to stick under the sleeves of meat packaging or in egg cartons in supermarkets.

If you can't find others around you, it's possible that if you take a strong, uncompromising stance people will come and join you. See how Anita Kranjc started the Toronto Pig Save, she would persist often standing alone or with just a couple of others, and now there are hundreds that attend. However, you must be aware of how emotionally draining (but also rewarding!) being an activist can be, even when you are surrounded by a support network. So if you go down that road, be kind and look after yourself and remember that even if you do not have support where you are, around the world there are lots of us who admire you just for taking the steps you have taken so far.

Yeah no worries happy to help, definitely PM me. I'm happy to offer you suggestions if that's useful to you.

If you're at all curious about the mechanics of what you're trying to work with your audience, it might help you to understand it based on brain science. The problem with forcing a symbol onto a character or a character into a symbol sets up a battle between your right and left hemispheres of the brain.

The right hemisphere lacks language so it largely works in meaning, symbols, images, and lives in the moment. The left hemisphere (specifically the portion behind your left eye) is constantly trying to generate a story of what it's seeing and make predictions of what will happen next based on what happened before. It also seems to contain language primarily.

So, in my opinion, symbols ideally should be generated by your right hemisphere which is responding to reality but unable to coin it words. From there, your left hemisphere should gather that up and codify it into a storyline. However, by trying to craft the symbol first, that's likely how you got a blockage. You're telling your left hemisphere to create the symbol which is disconnected by meaning because the left hemisphere doesn't really care if things are meaningful or not. It just wants to generate a story to cover it's ass.

There's a good writeup about how they learned all of this mentioned in Jonathan Gottschall's book The Storytelling Animal. Basically, in the early 1960s, a man's corpus callosum (the median between his two hemispheres) was severed and so his hemispheres couldn't talk to each other. Then, they gave the man a divider and began to show each of his eyes different things. So they might show his left eye a picture of chickens and his right eye a field of snow. They'd offer him objects and his immediate reaction came from his right hemisphere, so he'd grab a snow shovel. However, his left hemisphere had to justify why it had done that and so when questioned why he went for the snow shovel, he said "To pick up the chicken poop!"

The point is the right hemisphere is the center you want to trigger deeply in your audience. That's why peculiar symbols and mythic motifs stir people in deep ways. It's the right hemisphere that wants to swing a light saber for example, or responds to conversations in Tarantino films about food. The problem with a lot of screenplays is there's a lack of understanding of these core ideas and as a result, some people just let their left hemisphere generate story thread garbage that doesn't really make sense or work.

Now that's not to say that you have to have an insane understanding of symbolism to write a good screenplay. You don't. We all understand these things deeply in our own right hemispheres. You should, however, be aiming to be inspired by your own deeper meaningfulness but also willing to share your ideas with others to polish your storytelling. This is why oral storytellers are constantly re-working their stories.

The shortcut of course, is to utilize standard mythological motifs. However, there's problems with this as anyone who learned Joseph Campbell's Hero Journey can see. Just because you're using a mythological motif doesn't mean you're utilizing meaningful symbolism. The Hero's Journey is a collection of 12 or so motifs that Campbell saw. Well those aren't the only motifs out there. Vladimir Propp's version has about 31 core motifs (he calls functions) and Stith Thompson's collection has over 46,000 motifs and are quite useful for story generation if you develop an eye for updating old storyforms. (I've done quite a few story creation experiments using Thompson's stuff).

If you don't work from an understanding of meaning and symbolism, it's like creating a person whose bones are all dislocated from each other and therefore can't move. If your story can't move, it definitely can't move your audience. You need meaningful symbolism to pull that off, and it doesn't take much to be honest. Stanley Kubrick would write his films around 6 to 8 meaningful symbolic ideas, which he termed "non submersible units" and then craft the story around that. Ray Bradbury in his book Zen in the Art of Writing describes hiding meaningful moments from his childhood into his stories in order to give them soul as well. You get the idea.

OK. Great. So, embedded in what you're saying is a bunch of assumptions that aren't specific to this particular argument but are much more meta - they have to do with what counts as evidence, who gets standing, and even what kinds of values are important. For instance, you refer to "the basic idea of freedom in letting consenting adults choose their own private life." That frame is one that a lot of people would actually object to because the idea of "adults having maximum freedom to choose what they want" isn't how they frame issues having to do with family and marriage. In fact, framing it that way is a very contemporary/educated/western way to frame this sort of thing - another way of talking about these issues would be to reference values like personal autonomy way less, and you'd end up with different conclusions if you did that.
There's a lot to go into here, and (luckily) a lot of other people have already done it. I think it'll be helpful to get a better understanding of the values/assumption/narrative that lead to different views about marriage, in addition to reading specifically about this.
Some places to start include the "simple rules for simple people" discussion in Diverging Family Structure and 'Rational' Behavior: The Decline in Marriage as a Disorder of Choice. I'd also recommend Jonathon Haidt's Moral Foundations Theory work - I liked his book, but I'm sure you can find it packaged in smaller things. For work specifically on sexual ethics, I'd recommend Eve Tushnet and Rod Dreher, but they're both going to be a lot to get into initially, because, as bloggers, they're not really listing their assumptions each and every time they write.
With all of this stuff, you're going to be able to make counterarguments. But they can make counterarguments, too - it's never that hard. I would suggest that to understand other people's arguments, you apply the Principle of Charity. In this case in particular, because your argument seems foreign and clearly wrong to the majority of humans, I think it's especially important to understand their arguments.

Gender Identity Disorder is still listed in the DSM as a mental disorder. I think there are arguments to be made both ways about whether that's more a good thing or more a bad thing (realistically it's probably some of both).

As far as I understand, it's not at all a disorder in the sense that most psychological disorders are. The issue is that the "disorder" (the dysphoria - a sense of overwhelming wrongness and badness, contrast with "euphoria") is generally caused by a mismatch between a psychological property (the individual's gender) and a set of physical properties (the individual primary and/or secondary sex characteristics) as well as a social property (how the individual is seen and treated by society at large).

So, there is a disorder in the sense that, and to the extent that, this mismatch causes a great deal of suffering in someone's life. But let's take a hypothetical person who was assigned male at birth, who has a penis and male secondary sex characteristics, but who has a female gender. Again, the psychological component of this "disorder" is the female gender - but can we really call having a female gender a mental illness? (Of course, as sexist as our culture can be, perhaps some would like to.. but that's sort of tangential.) And the difference between this "disorder" and at least the vast majority of psychological disorders is that it is, I believe, largely fixable - my understanding is that most trans folks who transition experience are much, much happier afterward; the "disorder" is pretty much solved. And it's important to note that the fix for this is a physical fix, not a mental one - from what I've seen, if you asked most trans people "Hey, if you had a magic wand that would allow you to live your life comfortably as the gender you were assigned at birth, would you use it?" the most common answer would probably be something like "No - why would I want to change who I am?".

Further factors of course include the fact that "mental disorder" is a pretty stigmatizing term, and has a set of connotations that don't really make sense for this issue, and the history of access to hormones and surgery being contingent on the diagnoses of psychologists, some of whom would (and in some places still do) dick people around if they don't hear exactly the narrative they're expecting to hear. On the other hand, I've heard concerns voiced that were it removed from the DSM, it might be harder for trans individuals to get the treatments that they needed, for insurance reasons.

(You can read more on this subject here.)

> Anyway, I was hoping maybe someone could shed a light on what exactly it means to be a "girl" or a "boy"? Is it based on likes/interests/personality/tendencies? I mean, personhood is pretty hard to define already, so how do you define a female person?

That's a tough one to get at, because I think you pretty much have to rely on people's own self-reported experiences, and nobody can get at what other people's experiences are. I can't really answer this one clearly (shit, I'm struggling with my own gender identity as it is), but I can highly recommend to you, if you're interested in reading further on the subject, the book Whipping Girl by Julia Serano. It gets into a lot of stuff about trans issues, the way our culture defines and interacts with gender, the "scapegoating of femininity" (as she puts it), etc. It's also available in Kindle form if you want to pay a little bit less or if you're worried about people asking awkward questions about what you're reading (I read it on my phone, personally, for that reason).

> Will we eventually be recognizing people with multiple personality disorder as multiple people stuck in one body in society?

I doubt it. As far as I've heard, psychology in general isn't even really sure that Dissociative Identity Disorder is a thing at all - it's sort of elusive and hard to demonstrate, and some (maybe a lot?) of people who ostensibly had it turned out to be faking it (see Wikipedia).. On the other hand, if it is a legit thing? Yeah, I think that would be a fair way to treat it. (If that's a subject that interests you, and if you're into hard, gritty sci-fi, allow me to recommend Peter Watts's excellent book Blindsight, which features among other things a character who does indeed have multiple personalities, who are pretty much distinct people.)

Edit: downvotes, eh? I'm not sure how to take that! :) I didn't expect it from this community. The gist of what I was trying to say is said better by Pres. Hinckley in a different talk.

>"Women who make a house a home make a far greater contribution to society than those who command large armies or stand at the head of impressive corporations."
-Gordon B. Hinckley


--------------------------
My original comment:

The talk is beautiful; though I think you're confusing what he's saying with the modern dogma of "equality" that has become so popular.

The modern equality movement argues for equal roles that assumes that individuals are the most important players in society; this line of thinking typically leads to calls to get more women into traditionally male roles. While I personally will encourage my daughters to pursue their goals, whatever they may be, I'm hesitant to argue for equality in the way it's currently understood: equality of roles in one's career.

The reality is that the family unit is much more important, for society as a whole, as well as for the individuals who are influenced and raised by said families.

Often, having a strong family unit means having (at least) one person responsible for full-time teaching/training/loving of the little people in the home. My personal opinion is that it can be a man or a woman (though typically women are more willing and more able to fulfill this vital role).

American individualism can make this all seem very cloudy; I was recently reminded of this when I read this book, The Righteous Mind, by Jonathan Haidt, which I highly recommend.

Read the book if you haven't; I'm not sure I can do it justice. The basic idea is that there are three moral categories: the divinity ethic, the autonomy ethic, and the family ethic.

For many secular Americans, the only kind of morality that is "allowed" is the ethic of autonomy, which asks "is it fair? Does it harm any individual?"

But there is a much richer moral fabric, that includes divinity (ie allowing some things to be sacred) and family (ie putting the needs of the family/tribe before individual needs).

Also see a TLDR slideshare on the book edit: removed the Colbert video because it doesn't touch on the ideas from the book that were relevant.

Yes, that would be amazing! But, the whole problem is that any kind of "certification" of such people is bound to fail in two ways: it will end up certifying inauthentic people, and it will end up failing to certify authentic people. This is because the "eyes of the State" cannot see the crucial factor which is Dao but can only see aspects which can be lineared/imaged ("thou shalt not worship graven images" = "the Dao that can be spoken is not the eternal Dao"). In other words, false positives and false negatives in the certification process—which is already the problem we have, prevasively, with people certiified as psychiatrists and therapists.

The thing about regalia is that it really doesn't matter which mythic figure you dress up as—as I mentioned, a "mythic human" figure such as Wizard or Alchemist is really your best bet for reaching someone in a psychotic mode. The reason is that real trick not dressing up as a mythic figure, but dressing down to prevent the accumulation of projected archetypes upon one's person by the psychotic individual. In other words, authenticity or appearing as a unique, mundane individual is the key to being able to reach someone trapped in an altered state. The donning of cold-blooded attire like white lab coats, business suits, or scrubs only serves to evoke the archetypes of the medical establishment: the alienating/ed psychiatrist, the sadistic surgeon, or Nurse Ratched. The real trick is appearing to the suffering individual as a self-actualized human—this is whom the psychotic naturally trust, and you can't fake that. Furthermore, those attempting to be authentic individuals must not use this power to support a system of imprisonment and abuse of the psychologically disenfranchised—this is why you don't see many authentic people (dressed as themselves) in psychiatric institutions. The best ones usually simply refuse to participate. And the even bester ones sometimes go "into the Death Star" to do their best on the inside—and these are the ones who can most benefit from the thought of Regalia.

"Dressing as yourself" simply means not letting the uniform get you down. A few personal touches—a necklace, or a ring, or an eyebrow piercing—can undo the whole attire and subvert the uniform to the eyes of the psychotic person. This is because, ironically, it is our donning of impersonal, eternal symbols which marks us as unique individuals. More precisely, it is our mastery of the dialogue between us and these numinous symbols in our attire which identify us as such. The doctor who wears nothing but a lab coat, button-up shirt, black pants and shoes is owned by his uniform; but add an earring (for a man) or a non-cliche tattoo and you have someone who has subtly subverted the bland authority of the costume. Of course, these touches must be unique and authentic, freely-chosen—if perhaps inherently, slightly exaggerated—expressions of the individual. Thus, the best costume is not costume but the choosing of one's own attire, with an eye to its evocation of subtle intensities. In other words, regalia is in good taste.

I remember two pieces of regalia which flagged their owners as solid and concrete individuals despite their placement within an inhuman system: one nurse I met had a very interesting belt buckle—and was the only person who really listened to me for the whole month I was imprisoned. In another instance, a psychiatrist wore a stethoscope, which seemed somewhat humorous to me since, as a psychiatrist, he probably didn't really need it—and he ended up also being the most humanizing individual I met in the circumstances. Even the props of the medical establishment can be used as reassuring regalia, if détourned into a disruptive context.

Thus, the signal which is being sent is real a collusion with the subversion of the oppressive institution which is, for the imprisoned psychotic, everywhere present. A marker of distinction which separates out the surface of the individual from the oppressive monotony of fascist engagement which is the flatness of the surface imposed in his surroundings. This is why you do not see programs of regalia in psychotherapy: their very presence subverts or critiques the uniform, and the institution of a program of "official" regalia would also make it invalid as an individual form of expression.

This is why I don't think a certification of regalia-approved practioners would be very helpful: it is not very different from a certification of "authentic individuals" and this is not something that can be judged accurately by an institution or systematic process: only, perhaps, by other authentic individuals or those in a mode of perception particularly sensitive to inauthenticity (psychosis).

Thus, the ability to don regalia is a marker of a true shaman: the ability to, with the same costume, both banish and evoke the numinous archetypes which might be attracted to the surface of that individual. To say, "I am more" and "I am merely human" in the same gesture—this is what reassures people in the belly of the beast, and what instantly confirms you are on their side. In the way that Sophia is said to follow you to the deepest dungeon and then, lifting her metal helmet, suddenly appear and help you out, it is the people who take on this mythic role who must, to fulfill that role, most clearly assert their individual will to help and their rejection of the alterior intentions which have brought them to your presence.

I second the reading idea! Ask your history or science teachers for suggestions of accessible books. I'm going to list some that I found interesting or want to read, and add more as I think of them.

A short history of nearly everything by Bill Bryson. Title explains it all. It is very beginner friendly, and has some very entertaining stories. Bryson is very heavy on the history and it's rather long but you should definitely make every effort to finish it.

Lies my teacher told me

The greatest stories never told (This is a whole series, there are books on Presidents, science, and war as well).

There's a series by Edward Rutherfurd that tells history stories that are loosely based on fact. There are books on London and ancient England, Ireland, Russia, and one on New York

I read this book a while ago and loved it- Autobiography of a Tibetan Monk It's about a monk who was imprisoned for 30 years by the Chinese.

The Grapes of Wrath.

Les Misérables. I linked to the unabridged one on purpose. It's SO WORTH IT. One of my favorite books of all time, and there's a lot of French history in it. It's also the first book that made me bawl at the end.

You'll also want the Adventures of Tom Sawyer, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Great Gatsby, The Federalist Papers.

I'm not sure what you have covered in history, but you'll definitely want to find stuff on all the major wars, slavery, the Bubonic Plague, the French Revolution, & ancient Greek and Roman history.

As for science, find these two if you have any interest in how the brain works (and they're pretty approachable).
Phantoms in the brain
The man who mistook his wife for a hat

Alex and Me The story of a scientist and the incredibly intelligent parrot she studied.

For a background in evolution, you could go with The ancestor's tale

A biography of Marie Curie

The Wild Trees by Richard Preston is a quick and easy read, and very heavy on the adventure. You'll also want to read his other book The Hot Zone about Ebola. Absolutely fascinating, I couldn't put this one down.

The Devil's Teeth About sharks and the scientists who study them. What's not to like?

The book itself it a hack-job hit piece on men, and Ben Sixsmith's review – which is what's linked – is a great takedown of Plank's "work."

If anyone is interested in further reading regarding actual masculinity and what men face today, here's a small reading list:

• King, Warrior, Magician, Lover: Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine, by Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette [Both of these two gentlemen work is generally worth reading but this is the best breakdown of the positive and negative sides of masculinity that I've found. It also equipped me to start tackling my own masculinity in earnest; especially once I had the "immature masculine" models laid out before me in this book.]
  
• The Boy Crisis: Why Our Boys Are Struggling and What We Can Do About It, by Warren Farrell PhD and John Gray PhD. [Don't let the title mislead you; Farrell does an excellent job of identifying the overarching issues facing men today and from where they seem to stem. His use of "you're son" in the place of a proverbial "you" takes some getting used to, but it is every bit an eve-opening, depressing, motivating, and forthright read. This was tied for the top of this list with 'KWML. The importance of a present and engaged father cannot be ignored any longer.']
  
• The Myth of Male Power, by Warren Pharrell PhD. [Another hard-hitting contribution from Farrell, this entry challenges the dogma of the entire concept of a patriarchy an does so well-armed with stats, studies, and facts. Men being indoctrinated into being expendable with the illusion of gaining/having power could be (I believe it's VERY likely) a huge contributor to the increasing plight of men in western societies, despite the deluge of rhetoric claiming men are so powerful they oppress everyone else.]
  
  I may even make a separate post for this because it's very important to me. I am in the middle of researching and writing a book that, I hope, does what Plank's drivel claimed to do. The materials here are just a few selections I've come across in my research. Maybe I can elaborate more on my work if I make a more comprehensive 'recommended reading' post re: masculinity. I'd love to see more discussion around this as I believe it's exactly the kind of thing to tackle in a community like this.

I think a great deal of unnecessary trouble is caused by people on both sides being unable or unwilling to try to understand where those they disagree are coming from. (I'm speaking generally here, not about your particular situation—I'm not accusing you of a lack of empathy!) Understanding people's reasons for holding views that you disagree with won't necessarily make you agree with them (and nor necessarily should it), but it might let a more meaningful discussion take place, instead of people just talking over each other.

I recommend reading stuff by the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt on this subject, in particular his recent book The Righteous Mind which explores the psychology behind political difference. His main thesis is that conservative types base their worldview on different foundations than do liberals. For example, they tend to consider things like obedience to authority, ideas of purity/sanctity, and loyalty/patriotism to be far more important than do liberals. Both groups care about fairness, but they have different conceptions of it: roughly, liberals are more concerned with equality of outcome whereas conservatives care more about a more "sporting" sense of fairness: if you've earned it you get to keep it, pull yourself up by your bootstraps and so on.

So it might be that your colleague might have had that conception of fairness: he might have considered it "unfair" for the government to take away his money to help people he might feel don't "deserve" it. I personally disagree pretty strongly with this viewpoint—it seems to ignore the role luck plays in people's success, as well as narrowly aligning a person's worth with how much they earn for example—but it's interesting and I think very worthwhile to try to understand where people you disagree with are coming from.

Alternatively of course he might just have been a run-of-the-mill bonehead. And apologies for the long post and/or telling you shit you already knew!

Pretty much all historical civilizations were sexist, since women were denied fundamental rights in them based on gender. Even if one were to agree with everything else you've written, your final conclusion/suggestion does not follow. I can't think of any significant, historical civilization that might be called non-sexist.

Biology is a fact of nature; you cannot "fight biology". That would be like fighting physics. No matter what you did, the laws of physics would still apply. What you are talking about, such as "scholarships for women only, to get them into areas of technology, engineering", and "specialized programs for boys only to help them in reading & writing" do not in any way fight biology, they leave biology just as it is. However, they do change society. Scholarships are societal creations designed to redistribute access to education, which is another societal creation. Education doesn't grow on trees; human beings artificially created the system of education. Hence, the educational system is an aspect of society, not biology.

The fact that there are some gender differences in the brain, statistically speaking, should be no big surprise. But many popularized studies tend to exaggerate or misinterpret these differences. I would suggest you read Delusions of Gender by Cordelia Fine, or Brain Storm: The Flaws in the Science of Sex Differences for a deeper look at these topics. Broadly, a study that shows no differences in how men and womens' brains, on average, perceive a topic won't make a good headline or blog post, so it will be unlikely to be reported compared to one that finds a difference.

Secondly, it's not clear what these differences have to do with social roles. For example, what does the fact that men have more spatial reasoning, on average, mean for social roles exactly? Since there are many intelligent and successful women in programming and engineering fields, and many men who suck in these areas, it does not follow that there is a casual relation between gender and STEM fields. On the other hand, engineering is clearly coded as a masculine profession in society, and girls may be turned away from studying engineering for fear of being seen as unfeminine. Scholarships that seek to counteract that would then be playing a positive role.

Finally, I see an assumption through your post that what is "nature" is automatically good and must be accepted by society. However, the whole point of civilization and society is go beyond nature itself to build something for ourselves, as humans. Is medicine natural? We are programmed to die from birth, yet we still use the medical system to prolong life. Since men are physically stronger than women, should men then dominate women and impose our wishes on them? No, we created a system of laws where all citizens are equal before it because we recognize the equal moral worth of each person. Freedom is the fundamental issue. Humanity as a whole, and individual people for their own lives, must have the freedom to define its own path and create its own society without being told that a certain path is required due to unnecessary extrapolations from natural facts.

I don't know why people on this thread are telling you to wait. I mean if you're OK waiting, well then whatever, go ahead and wait. But it doesn't sound like you're OK with that. If it were me, I'd think about fighting, using reason and information as my weapons. But if you want to use those tools, you need to learn first, and that can take time. You need to educate yourself on what it means to be transgender. That means a lot of reading and information seeking. You need to listen to the stories of other people who have been in your position - and there have been people in your position. You need to learn about techniques they used to get out and find techniques that will work for you.

When I hear trans kids say things like they wish they were dead, it really worries me. I wish that I could do more to help you fight for your life, but all I can really do is point to the path. I hope you take it.

• Pausing puberty aged 12 saved my life: Transgender beauty queen praises her amazing family ahead of BBC documentary on her mission to become Miss England
  
  
• Transsexual Teen, Beauty Queen
  
  
• How Norman Spack transformed the way we treat transgender children
  
  
• WPATH Standards of Care v.7 (2011)
  
  
• Gender Orientation: Intersex Conditions Within The Transsexual Brain
  
  
• The Gender Variant Phenomenon--A Developmental Review
  By Anne Vitale Ph.D. 2003
  
  
• Biased-Interaction Theory of Psychosexual Development: “How Does One Know if One is Male or Female?” (Diamond 2006)
  
  
• Surviving a Gender Variant Childhood: The views of transgender adults on the needs of gender variant children and their parents. Riley 2012
  
  
• The Needs of Gender-Variant Children and Their Parents According to Health Professionals. Riley 2012
  
  
• Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity, Serano 2007

To unequivocally debunk the feminist myth would take an entire book, which would require years to research. You're going to have to be very neutral and balanced and as fact-orientated as possible, which most mrm stuff imo falls short of. "Positive discrimination" and false accusations are what feminists WANT you to complain about - not that they're not valid complaints, but things like the gender empathy/victimhood gap, men's lives being valued less, maternal superiority, male moral inferiority etc. which fit into traditionalism and can be put forward as the other side of the coin are much better imo.

Janice Fiamengo's youtube series "The Fiamengo File" (Season 1, Season 2) is a much watch (she's also coincidentally an English proffessor). Her video : "what's wrong with women's studies" is also very good (this lecture was protested, had fire alarms pulled etc.).

Christina Hoff Sommers' channel "The Factual Feminist" is also very good. These videos (1, 2 by Karen Straughan are good, but her other stuff tends to be more sensationalist.

As for books, Warren Farrell's "The myth of male power" and Roy Baumeister's "Is there anything good about men" are essential reading. This paper (on sexual repression) also by Roy Baumeister is also extremely important.

This article touches on a lot about the childcare/domestic vs workplace spheres, also this one on maternal gatekeeping - which you could could add domestic gatekeeping in aswell - basically that a lot of women still see the traditionally female realm as "theirs" (despite wanting into the traditional male realm) and although they probably say they want equality, in reality they want a helpmate rather than a full equal, taking on a managerial/directorial role to which a lot of men might react to by dragging their heels (not that some guys aren't genuinely selfish) - things like fathers looking after their kids being described as "babysitting" tie into this. Of course guys in these situations have very little preparation for this because feminism has resulted in a situation where for decades egalitarian roles have been pushed with a positive encouraging message for women and girls and a negative shaming message for men and boys, as a gain in power for women and girls and a loss in power for men and boys. It has also resulted in tons of messages of traditionally "masculine" things being reconciled with positive/aspirational feminine social value, while the reverse has not been the case remotely near as much (I've only ever seen housework being portrayed as compatible with positive/aspirational masculine value once - in movie Don Jon).

I'd write you a second post about gender roles (and the context they need to be looked at within) throughout history and in the developing world, but there's a lot and I'm tired. Maybe tomorrow morning!

That's called "biotruths", friend, and those are fairly strongly debunked by science. A decent basis in psychology, anthropology, or any of the other social sciences will lead you to notice that nearly all differences in men and women are based in social conditions and the society they are raised in than based on physical differences or hormones. Men are not naturally prone to violence, this is based upon cultural assumptions of gender normatives which forces the penchant for violence upon the child, regardless of the personal family environment of the child.

Remember that there are far greater differences between individuals within a single gender than there are between individuals in separate genders. A good way of thinking of this is to imagine that we have put numerical differences upon the traits and men score around 1 - 85 and women score around 15 - 100. Sure, there are differences, but there's so much variety within the genders that the differences are basically irrelevant. Most people are a smattering of "masculine" and "feminine" traits.

You should engage the social sciences, friend. There's a lot of interesting and exciting data coming out of the field of gender studies!

Suggested Reading:

Hyde (2009) The Gender Similarities Hypothesis

Cordelia Fine (2011) Delusions of Gender

Peterson and Hyde (1997 - 2007) A Meta-Analytic Review of Research on Gender Differences in Sexuality

Article: There really is no difference in men and women's math abilities

Article: Transsexual differences caught on brain scan

EDIT: A good place to learn and discuss Trans issues is /r/SRSDiscussion. There's a large variety of different users on there with deep knowledge of the topic at hand. I highly suggest you post any questions you have regarding Trans issues there with them. If you think that "some kind of cis-sexism may be based in biological reality, not culture", then I'm sorry friend, but you have very little understanding of what Cissexism is and have a lot to learn about gender. Start there and read more into the topic. It's a fascinating topic. I think you'll enjoy it!

>If President Trump is ideologically Conservative, why do his positions change so frequently?

Nobody makes decisions ideologically. This is why it is seemingly so difficult to convince people to change their minds with just information. You only change people's minds by influencing them socially / appealing to morality, etc.

Trump tapped into a moral framework (like most conservatives candidates) that covers the things that people than lean conservative care about. Conservatives, even people that are super far right, or super religious, voted for Trump and sincerely trust Trump because he appeals to the things they care about. This is why many conservatives will openly say that they will never vote for a Democratic candidate -- they don't feel that Democrats care about the things they care about (and they are right)

>My understanding is that he doesn't support any ideology

He certainly leans conservative but he is generally pretty moderate and does things based on what his supporters want.

>is there an implied hierarchy in the numbering?

Nope, all 6 are equal. But Liberals literally only care about (1) and (2) while conservatives tend to care about all of them relatively equally.

If you want to read a book entirely about this:

The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion. Really fascinating read, especially in today's political climate. It humanizes the other side because right now liberals think conservatives are evil and conservatives think liberals are insane. But if you realize that they are just working with different starting materials you can understand why they value the things that they value, and why it is so difficult to change a person's mind with facts.

> I recognize that your view of God is set in stone

... only until someone shows me a single shred of hard scientific evidence that there is such a being.

> and so I won’t waste our time trying to convince you that God is God.

God is a tautology??!!? You don't have anything more positive to say about him that YHVH, He is? Wow.

> He can’t make any wrong moves he is absolute and so we puny humans can’t even begin to understand and as a result judge him.

Interesting. So, you don't claim to know whether God is good or evil? I claim the fictional character described in both the Torah and the New Testament is demonstrably evil. I do so by pointing to the words of the Bible. You claim not to even know if you're worshiping and following a force for good or evil. What if God is evil? Would you still follow?

> But while your opinion of God is grim don’t you at least agree with the teachings of Jesus many of which are the foundations of western society morals?

This is a loaded question. Your assumption that western society is built on the teachings of Jesus is false, see part B of my answer below.

A) No. I don't agree with the teachings of Jesus. Of course, I'm posting deliberately cherry-picked statements from the Bible. But, these are all legitimate statements in the Bible.

Scroll down to the list at the following link starting with number 1158, which should be the start of the New Testament's cruelty, unless anyone has edited the list since the time I am typing this.

http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/cruelty/long.html

Here's a list of intolerance in the Bible. Scroll down to Matthew again started at 538, for instances of intolerance in the New Testament.

http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/int/long.html

And, this is a list of misogyny. Scroll down to number 330 for the start of the New Testament here.

http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/women/long.html

Here's a list of some of the wonderful family values of which the Bible speaks. Start at number 360 for the New Testament.

http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/fv/long.html

Here are some interesting Biblical views on sex. The N.T. stuff starts at number 231 this time.

http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/sex/long.html

B) No. Western civilization is actually founded on views from the period of the enlightenment.

From wikipedia (emphasis mine): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Enlightenment

>> The Enlightenment (also known as the Age of Enlightenment or the Age of Reason; in French: le Siècle des Lumières, lit. '"the Century of Lights"'; and in German: Aufklärung, "Enlightenment") was an intellectual and philosophical movement that dominated the world of ideas in Europe during the 18th century, "The Century of Philosophy".

>> The Enlightenment included a range of ideas centered on reason as the primary source of authority and legitimacy and came to advance ideals like liberty, progress, tolerance, fraternity, constitutional government and separation of church and state.[4][5] In France, the central doctrines of the Enlightenment philosophers were individual liberty and religious tolerance, in opposition to an absolute monarchy and the fixed dogmas of the Roman Catholic Church. The Enlightenment was marked by an emphasis on the scientific method and reductionism, along with increased questioning of religious orthodoxy—an attitude captured by the phrase Sapere aude, "Dare to know".

Compare the Bill of Rights to the Ten Commandments. Which one gives rights? Which one takes them away?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Bill_of_Rights

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Commandments

If western society is founded on Christian values, why is it that only 3 of the 10 commandments are actually illegal?

> is there any other reason for compassion other than Jesus telling us to be servants and to love others as yourself and to do to the lowest as we would to Jesus?

Yes. The reasons are the same ones that caused Jesus to say what he said. We evolved as a social species. All social species have morals.

Humans have performed some horribly cruel experiments on animals. One of them was performed on rats. They taught rat #1 to press a lever to receive food pellets. This is easy to do. Rats are quite smart and have no trouble at all making the connection to pressing a lever for food. Then, they put a cage with rat #2 (a rat that rat #1 does not even know) in sight of rat #1. When rat #1 presses the lever, s/he continues to receive food. But, rat #2 receives an electric shock. Seeing that the lever visibly causes pain to rat #2, rat #1 stops pressing the lever and may even starve him/herself to death.

Not all humans are so caring and empathetic.

But, the point is that morals exist to varying degrees in all social species. These are an evolved trait. Even social fish have morals. This is far from unique to humans. And, it sure as hell didn't begin with Jesus.

https://www.livescience.com/24802-animals-have-morals-book.html

> I’m sure you know of all the great missionaries of the last centuries that under the threat of death flew to the most hostile to western civilization countries and helped the people there not only with the good news but also with material goods.

And also with homophobia within the last century.

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-kaoma-uganda-gays-american-ministers-20140323-story.html

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/18/us-evangelicals-africa-charity-missionaries-homosexuality

When African wackadoodles say that homosexuals "eat da poo poo", they're getting that crap from American missionaries.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Ssempa

> I myself as a child spent five years with my family in Haiti helping the people that had previously suffered from the earthquake 2010.

That is truly wonderful and I applaud your efforts. Not all Christians are so nice. Many vote Republican!

> There is no moral or social reason to do anything out of selflessness in today’s society.

That is false. The reason is that we evolved as a social species, as noted above, and that all social species have morals and whatever it is you're calling social reason.

> In the end there is no moral ground at all, everything is subject to people’s opinions at the time.

There is tons of moral ground that evolved over hundreds of millions of years! That this moral ground is changing and improving over time is a good thing. I'm proud that my morals are not dictated by my sheepshagging ancestors who wrote the book on genocide. My morals reflect the improved moral zeitgeist of western society that has been improving morality for centuries.

Good book on our improving morals: The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined Paperback by Steven Pinker

For fairy tales, I recommend the following:

• The Victorian Fairy Tales Book
  
• Norton's The Classic Fairy Tales
  
• Norton's The Great Fairy Tale Tradition
  
• The Oxford Book of Modern Fairy Tales
  
• My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me
  
• Any and all of Andrew Lang's Colored Fairy Books (the first two focus on collections of well-known tales, but most of them are sort of themed/grouped geographically and have fairy tales from all over the world)
  
• The Complete Fairy Tales of George MacDonald
  
• The Names Upon the Harp: Irish Myth and Legend
  
• I'm a big fan of the various "Annotated" Fairy Tale collections, like the Annotated Brothers Grimm, Annotated Classic Fairy Tales, and Annotated Hans Christen Andersen, though I don't always agree with the editorializing. It's a whole series, so I'm only going to link to a couple.
  
• On that note, look for book collections put together and/or edited by Maria Tatar and Jack Zipes. They're the two most prominent fairy tale scholars at the moment and basically have an unofficial duopoly on the fairy tale academic criticism market.
  
• Also, a special shout-out to P.J. Lynch's illustrated version of East of the Sun and West of the Moon, and really all of the fairy tales books that Lynch illustrates. They're beautiful.
  
  
  For mythology and classical studies, there are a couple that are basically required reading for any Mythology or Classics class. Since several people have already recommended anthologies of Greek myths, I'm going to err more on the "Classics" side of the conversation:
  
  
• Hero with a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell
  
• The Odyssey, Homer (I recommend the Fagles translation due to its prominence in academia and its status as one of the best translations of the work)
  
• The Illiad, Homer (again, Fagles translation)
  
• The Aeneid, Virgil (again, Fagles has a translation that's very good). My bias as a Latin student, however, leads me to also recommend Pharr, which has no real use to you if you don't know Latin but it's the most popular all-time textbook version of the Aeneid)
  
• Metamorpheses, Ovid
  
• You also probably want to look at some Greek plays like the Sophoclean Tragedies/Three Thebian Plays

Psychologist Jonathan Haidt has done a lot of research on the ideas of religion, morality, empathy, biases, villifying others, etc. He approaches morality from an evolutionary perspective. Watching and reading his work really helped me have more compassion and diffuse some of the anger I've felt. Haidt is a liberal atheist, but he acknowledges the value that can be gained from certain conservative ideals and traditions. I felt like he validated my Mormon experience and the experiences of my loved, while at the same time deconstructing them.

Book:
The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion

http://www.amazon.com/The-Righteous-Mind-Politics-Religion/dp/0307455777

TED talks:

http://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind?language=en

http://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_humanity_s_stairway_to_self_transcendence?language=en

http://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_how_common_threats_can_make_common_political_ground


In any case, I've gained a lot of empathy from this stuff. It probably saved my marriage and family relationships. It made me feel OK with my family as they are, even if they never change.

(page 2)



Question (BigRedHair):

> First - wow. You're pretty damn lucky to be alive - and I was so glad you were wearing a helmet!
> Did you recognize your ex-step mother when she came in? Did you know that the people visiting were family/friends?
> I may have missed this, but how long is this guy's jail sentence?
>

Answer (PRTetu):

> I think he got six months.
>
> I recognized my ex-stepmother, but that didn't change the fact that it felt like my first memory. I don't remember anyone else visiting besides my dad's wife who came to grab me when I was released.



Question (chiro_throw):

> Please take your own medical care seriously: http://www.skepdic.com/chiro.html
>
> Chiropractic services are not based on science. At worst they can leave dead, or paralyzed for life. Don't take my word for it; educate yourself on any treatment you are looking to or currently receiving.
>
> Rather than read the link above, which is quite lengthy - I will admit, wikipedia has a good section on the risk-benift of chiro here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiropractic#Risk-benefit

Answer (PRTetu):

> What is the alternative?



Question (qazplu33):

> >The second time, I had to take the stand and testify against him. I once again refused to look at the evidence photos and was asked things like what I thought his punishment should be.
>
> What did you say? I'm not here to criticise anything you say, I'm just curious what you thought. I know I'd want to do... illegal things to him, especially after he half-assed his apology. What a dick.

Answer (PRTetu):

> There was a lot I really wanted to say. He should be castrated without anesthesia so as not to continue to pollute the gene pool and in a very painful way. He should pay me every cent he ever makes. His children should be taken away. He should have to spend all six months of his sentence in solitary confinement with the nyan cat looping on a small speaker barely audibly. I should get to hit him on my bicycle with his truck.
>
> What I ended up saying was that he should never drive again and probably spend some time in jail.



Question (jwolf227):

> The driver did turn himself in an hour later. His thoughts were probably oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck I just killed a guy. And often when you get in that highly panicked mindset, the first thing you think is to return to routine, something familiar. He probably went home, calmed down, and realized he needed to account for what he had done.

Answer (PRTetu):

> From the biking blog I linked:
>
> "In a sign of the sheer stupidity demonstrated by some drivers — especially those foolish enough to flee the scene of a collision — Travers called police to report he may have been in a collision, after apparently seeing the story on the news. But swore he wasn’t the one who hit the cyclist.
>
> Needless to say, police investigators found evidence connecting him to the crime. Which they may never have found if Travers hadn’t attempted to craft a case of implausible deniability."



Question (I_LOVE_ASPARTAME):

> I was attacked in my neighborhood before and don't remember anything from that day and two days before. My body is probably doing me a favor by blocking everything out, but it has been crazy hard dealing with the curiosity of trying to bring the memory forward. i've now come to terms with it and let my defenses shut it out. Yay ptsd

Answer (PRTetu):

> lol yaaaayyyy.



Question (whodafukisethanembry):

> Do you see yourself, someday, returning to biking as a means of transportation?

Answer (PRTetu):

> To this point, I had thought absolutely not. There are some exceptions, but absolutely not on public streets with vehicle access. At least not anytime soon.



Question (jewcebox95):

> I remember hearing about this on the news, I live in Dena. Glad you're doing better and hope everything turns out alright.

Answer (PRTetu):

> Thank you for that.



Question (iheartfirefly):

> Be healthy, physically and mentally. Do good things for yourself. I had some head trauma after an accident a few years ago and the first 18 months was hard...I couldn't remember words, anxiety was BAD, lots of hermit-y stuff but it got easier as I settled into the meds and started living how I envisioned my life (even tho it wasn't comfortable to do.) Good luck, don't be a hero and suffer through the pain - talk to people about it, get help, let your friends be friends, ya know?

Answer (PRTetu):

> Good advice. Thank you.



Question (badluckgod13):

> Holy shit man this sucks. I live right off of foothill boulevard in la Canada I'm so sorry this happened.

Answer (PRTetu):

> I went to LCHS. My father teaches there/coaches golf.



Question (P1h3r1e3d13):

> You may be interested in Phantoms in the Brain. It covers some of that weird, mind-body disconnect stuff.

Answer (PRTetu):

> I will definitely check that out.



Question (yummyfrenchfry):

> glad your ok my friend unfortunately was killed on thursday - http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/story?section=news/local/inland_empire&id=8736771

Answer (PRTetu):

> It breaks my heart every time I read another one of those.
>
> The "Why me?" question as to why I was either hit or survived is kinda out of my head now, but it does come up when I see something like that.
>
> Stay strong.



Question (cukabara7047):

> I was struck by a driver last fall who left me with some pretty bad hand injuries, (as my right arm went through his left headlight) but nothing too lasting. He sped off the second I hit the ground, too, but unfortunately there were no witnesses so there were no repercussions.
> Glad to hear your feelin better man, stay safe out there

Answer (PRTetu):

> Glad to hear you weren't more seriously injured.
>
> Thanks for the positive vibes.



Question (GimmieMore):

> It went from bad to worse... But there were a lot of factors involved...
>
> She actually ended up threatening me with violence for very minimal reasons... regularly.
>
> Head injuries are a bitch.

Answer (PRTetu):

> I'm assuming the relationship ended not long after the accident?



Question (antisocialmedic):

> Yeesh. I am sorry to hear that happened to you my friend. Here is hoping to a fast and thorough recovery!
>
> Also, do you find the road rash to be as awful as I do? I got hit by a car and dragged for a bit when I was a kid, no broken bones but a ton of road rash. It was pretty awful. I can't imagine having to go through what you did.

Answer (PRTetu):

> To be honest, the road rash wasn't as bad as the joint pain and rampant bruising.
>
> Had it just been road rash, I'm sure it would've sucked pretty hard itself. I had some (slight understatement) experience with road rashes as a young care-free skateboarder.



Question (Juliet2yourRomeo):

> Did you have a Significant other at the time of the accident? If so did the dynamic of the relationship change? Have any of your relationships changed in regards to u feeling like a totally new person? Do u have new interests than before ? Haha sorry for the million questions but this is interesting and I'm very glad you survived and I wish you the best in your recovery :)

Answer (PRTetu):

> I did not have a significant other and wasn't dating anyone... that I can recall.
>
> I can't really speak to how much relationships have changed as I can't really remember what they were like before. I'm sure if I got a couple friends to hop on here, they could be a little more insightful as far as that goes. As far as the interests, just being interested in social activity is definitely new and not having any interest in MMO's is also a polar shift. I also have an affinity for old movies from the 40s-60s now which I can't ever recall having a remote interest in.



(continued below)

Wait a sec. From the article:

> The survey included two statements to measure sexism: "On the whole, men make better political leaders than women do" and "On the whole, men make better business executives than women do."

From a purely scientific perspective, isn't this a biasing assumption. What if, on the whole (i.e., statistically speaking), men are better at these things. I'm not saying they are, but there are certainly equality-based theories and frameworks that make this entirely plausible. For example, Roy Baumeister's research (and book Is There Anything Good About Men demonstrates how men have a wider variance in many innate drivers (motivations, perhaps capabilities though not necessary), and provides the evolutionary math to show why this could be the case. Men are more at the top and bottom, and innately driven by different strategic goals than women (statistically speaking), such as higher risk and return activities and competition in larger social structures than collaboration in smaller ones. (Again, with good evolutionary explanation and data to back it up.) The research shows how the different strategies address trade-offs given the nature of our different behaviours that maximize reproductive success, and hence every "better than" for one sex has a corresponding "better than" in the other.

Without judging that work, just supposing it could be true would invalidate that these above questions as being sexist. Making decisions on who to hire or work with based on it would be sexist, as a statistical trend doesn't make all cases true. But that's not what it says.

I call scientific foul on this one.

I'm 35years old and have recently been diagnosed with mild sleep apnea ~10 AHI. I've bought an auto CPAP and have been on treatment for around one week. I feel better so far although I'll need months to quantify the improvement.

Prior to this I was on a 1 month trial where I couldn't identify how crucial CPAP was until the trial ended (which I've been told is common for mild sufferers). It was around 2 months without treatment between the end of the trial and when I bought the machine a week ago.

Like you I suffered from chronic fatigue, anxiety, depression, memory issues, brain fog etc. After treatment it was clear to me that many of the fears I had were based on cognitive patterns developed while under the effect of a physiological anxiety and depression.

So in plain english, things aren't likely to be as bad as you perceive them to be. I'm not trying to downplay the potential need for rehabilitation because now that I'm on CPAP I intend to create a brain rehabilitation plan that includes the items below.

For you in particular I would do the following:

• Read a few books on Neuroplasticity. (Eg The Brain that Changes Itself, The Power of Neuroplasticity)
  
  
• Get therapy to fix any maladaptive cognitive behaviours you've developed while under the influence of apnea created anxiety. You want a therapist specialised or familiar in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. If you can't afford a therapist, get a self-help book like Feeling Good. Frankly, I think everyone should undertake some CBT sometime in early adulthood anyway, but I think you could use it in particular.
  
  
• Fix your habits now that your mind is working again. Create good sleep hygiene by cutting out blue light (f.lux app for computers/phones) and turning off electroncs an hour before you sleep (which should be ~10-10:30pm). Eat a balanced diet and supplement with Omega 3 fish oil for healthy brain function. Exercise ~ 3 times a week (preferably weights, but otherwise cardio/sport). Consider cutting down or eliminating alcohol and other drugs that may cause cognitive impairment.
  
  
• Take up Meditation which has been shown to improve executive function. 20 minutes per day concentrating on your breathing, nothing fancy. There are guides to simple forms of breath meditation all over the place.
  
  
• Non-electronic based brain teasers. Get a big book of puzzles and fit it into your routine. I recommend non-electronic because the semi-dissociative state induced by videogames doesn't activate all areas of your mind.
  
  
• Find a good memory training program. I don't have much experience with this yet, but I've heard there are some good books on this.
  
  
• If you have easy access to medical care, consider getting a referral to a neurologist for an MRI and talk your concerns over with him. Maybe there is little to no atrophy of your brain. You can't really tell from the inside except for poor memory/brain fog. Try getting another MRI in 6 months to a years time on your recovery regime to see how things have changed.
  
  Beyond all this I think its important to just do the best you can with the resources and knowledge you have available and not beat yourself up for what might have been and things beyond your control.
  
  Good luck.
  
  edit: broken links the bane of my life

Ah I didn't really mean it like that. I meant that having advanced technology is a sign of being around a long time which would've given them time to transition out of primitive behavior -- like we are slowly doing. But maybe their technology progressed at a more exponential rate than ours and their social evolution wasn't as fast. This is all so speculative and we only have one example (us) so it's really just a fun guessing game.

You make a good point about how long it takes us to advance morally. But the key idea is that we ARE advancing. A great book on this is The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined by Stephen Pinker. Things now are immensely better than they were even 100 years ago.

One unnerving thought is how little our treatment of animals has progressed. Arguably, it has gotten worth with our factory farming methods. Perhaps this is insight into how we would treat other species. We have a threshold for what we deem as worthy of protection laws based on our interpretation of intelligence. Will that threshold be raised if we advance our intelligence through artificial means? Do beings of lesser intelligence deserve and equal chance at life as those of higher intelligence?

I second The Hero With a Thousand Faces as a semi-philosophical but very interesting and indirectly spiritual book. Very accessible, and a great gift (I've gifted Campbell numerous times by now).

Pascal's Pensees would be great, being very spiritually oriented and all. Kierkegaard's a bit more dense, but also has a lot of interesting things to say on sprituality. Try Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing.

I don't think there will ever be a perfect rule that can be applied across all possibilities without fail, but for me one of the major things I look for is whether the author is a respected scientist actively working in the field (or, if they're retired, had an active history in the field).

So your Gazzaniga and Brown books I wouldn't even hesitate to recommend to others, without even having read them. It helps that I've read other books by those authors and their research, but their names alone are enough for me to give them a tick. Of course that doesn't guarantee that they're good books, but if you're asking for a rule on how to judge a book before reading it, then that's probably going to result in more success than failure.

The second thing I look for is whether the author has a history of writing polemics and intentionally controversial books in order to increase sales (a sort of "clickbait" approach to books), and whether their names are associated with criticism for misrepresenting basic issues in the areas they discuss. As such, people like Gladwell and Pinker would be ruled out by this.

>I'd also love to hear /r/skeptic 's suggestions for reading specifically about learning, drive, motivation, discipline...

My personal suggestions would be:

Understanding Behaviorism - William Baum (touches a little more on rigorous academic work rather than being a purely pop work, but still has some good pop chapters).

The Science of Self-Control - Howard Rachlin

Breakdown of Will - George Ainslie

Some related books but not directly on those topics:

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat - Oliver Sacks (It's a cliche suggestion but still a good book).

Brainwashed: The Seductive Appeal of Mindless Neuroscience - Sally Satel and Scott Lilienfeld (More methodological issues with neuroscience research and reporting).

Delusion of Gender - Cordelia Fine (Critical look at some of the research on gender differences).

Not a problem! Ah yes, I was wondering if, since you did a fairly extensive reno, you did some soundproofing in the ceiling/floor.

For what it's worth, we just moved into a new home and did some renos, all of the doors are hollow. Downstairs we have a combo mud/laundry room that is directly across the hall from the stairs that lead upstairs and our living room upstairs is adjacent to those stairs. The washer and dryer are fairly old and noisy. If laundry room door is open, the sound just travels right up the stairs and we can clearly hear the washer and/or dryer running. But when that door is closed, there is a slight noise if you listen carefully, but even with a hollow door, the sound is significantly reduced. We don't have any insulation between floors. Then, in our master (upstairs down the hall), if both the laundry room door and master doors are closed, we don't hear a thing.

So, my two cents, ya you probably want a solid door for that electrical closet just to cut down that noise for general living as well as your situation. But I think you could get away with hollow for your other doors. And hopefully any remaining residual noise would just be of the white/muffled variety.

Actually speaking of white noise, you/your wife may want to think about getting a white noise set-up. It would totally block out any residual noise coming from below. Then once kiddo arrives, you have white noise to help them sleep. When we had our twin boys 5.5 years ago, white noise was a great help in allowing them undisturbed sleep when we were in a much smaller house. We just used a old ipod nano with some ocean sounds plugged into one of those cheap iPod players... actually we're still using it now!

And, sorry getting off topic a bit here... but if you don't have it yet, please buy this book - http://www.amazon.com/Healthy-Sleep-Habits-Happy-Child/dp/0449004023. Trust me on this, buy it and do what it says... it's really short and simple, but it's indispensable. Because if it (well, the special twin version), our kids are sleeping champions.

Weight is a combination of diet and exercise, but that doesn't mean that they share an equal part. Most of your weight gain or loss is going to be governed by your diet (think 80%). Keep in mind, you can't outrun your fork.

That's okay though, as eating well is frugal. Start here.

If you don't know what your goals are, you'll likely never change your behavior. Find your maintenance calorie intake, eat at or below this while fulfilling nutritional requirements (MyFitnessPal isn't a bad way to track this), and then use exercise (body weight or otherwise) to increase your calorie deficit even more.

Keep in mind that lean body mass (LBM) will burn more calories than that fatty stuff, so doing body weight or dumbell exercises is always a good path to take. Head over to /r/fitness for some good workout advice that will meet your goals and budget.

Good luck, and if you need a little extra help and motivation, /r/loseit isn't a bad subreddit to frequent.

>I'm not surprised everything we thought was incorrect. Every time anyone has a discussion about this stuff at my school it turns into a circlejerky who is the most PC contest and I think most of these people get their information from tumblr

Probably. There's nothing wrong with asking questions - it's healthy and wanting to learn is never a bad thing.

>You've lost me a little. I don't understand the difference between gender identity and gender roles. I can understand wanting to identify as another role, but I don't understand what gender identity is without sex or roles.

Okay so to really simplify -

Gender identity: whether you're a man or a woman

Gender role: how society says men and women should act

They're entirely separate and unrelated, although there is obviously a strong correlation between people who are men and people who like to act masculine, and between people who are women and people who like to act feminine. But that's all it is - a correlation. There are plenty of people who are men who don't like to be masculine but do like to be feminine, just as there are plenty of people who are women who don't like to be feminine but do like to be masculine. And there are masculine trans women and feminine trans men. At the end of the day, though, a feminine man is still a man and and a masculine woman is still a woman. Preferring a particular socially constructed gender role doesn't change your innate gender identity. Liking dresses doesn't make a man not a man, you know?

This would be much easier to understand, I think, if we didn't use the term "gender identity". It leads to far too much confusion of exactly this type and I think something else would be a better term (Julia Serano - who writes brilliantly - uses the term "subconscious sex" as in the sex of your subconscious, which I quite like), but the important thing to take away is that although they happen to be similar phrases they're very much not the same thing, or even similar. One is who you are, the other is how society says you should act based on that.

(Also in terms of gender identity there are non-binary people who don't feel themselves to be men or women but something else or both, and there are agender people who don't feel any gender at all)

>Okay you're starting to make me think this is where I lie. I really don't understand feeling a certain gender in context outside of social roles or genetics. I hate periods/the ability to get pregnant/having a uterus in general. I hate that my friendships with males always fall apart when I don't want to fuck them. I hate feeling unsafe walking around at night. I hate feeling worth less than male and socially would definitely DEFINITELY rather be a dude. But all of this is just out of convenience. I'd never transition because if I did, I'd never be treated like a cis dude

You probably would, though. Most people greatly underestimate the power of hormones (and other things such as surgery) and their potential to change someone's appearance from undeniably female to undeniably male (or vice versa). Most trans people end up blending back into society eventually and being treated just as cis men or women. Trans people that you see who are obviously or visibly trans are usually early in transition (or are just unfortunate) and aren't representative of trans people generally.

>and half the inconveniences would still be there + new ones would be created. Basically, how I feel about this is basically "let's do whatever is most beneficial/convenient". In the same way everyone wants to be rich instead of poor since it's simply the better option. IDK.

In an ideal world would you rather be male or female? Or neither, maybe?

If you started growing thick facial hair tomorrow how would you feel about it? If your voice dropped how would you feel about it?

>I just don't think I'm going to understand, as much as I'd like to. I feel like a lot of that comes from being a cis female though.

No, I don't think this is the case. A lot of or even most cis (or nominally cis) people - I think those with a stronger sense of their own maleness or femaleness - get it instinctively when it's explained to them, some don't. The latter tend to either be people who have just never thought about it and can't imagine that it would cause any problems to just switch sex because they don't know what they're talking about, or people who - like you, I think - just maybe don't have a particularly strong sense of their gender, or even might have no gender at all.

It might be really helpful for you to read about non-binary identities or agender people - if they don't resonate then fair enough, but you might find they do. You might even find out that you're not quite as cis as you thought you were. But that's entirely up to you.

> For some reason I just can't wrap my head around genders having feelings though

So it's not like genders have feelings, it's that you innately know and understand yourself to be one gender rather than another.

When I think about myself I think "woman" or "girl" or "female". When I look around at other people I subconsciously group myself with the other women rather than the men. I want to fit in and be accepted as a woman not as a man. When people mistake me for a man it makes me uncomfortable. Having a body that is more female feels right in a way that having a body that was more male never did. That's how it works for me, roughly, if such an abstract concept as gender identity can ever be put into words. It's kind of like trying to describe hunger to someone who doesn't need to eat, it's always going to be difficult to properly get it across.

Seems to be fake - the profile ID doesn't come up, nor does the name. There's no proof of this anywhere else, is there?

Even if so - who cares? This is the reason this sub gets a bad reputation, because of garbage posts like this.

I mainly lurk here (and get criticized for subscribing, which I find hilarious) but felt compelled enough to comment on this, considering I see it so often.

When you want to claim you're a man going his own way, and that you want nothing to do with women, you only show just how much you still care about them by harping on the bullshit they do all the time. It's a circle-jerk, and anyone who doesn't see that is deluded in the fog of pack mentality.

Take a step back and think for a moment, because this isn't meant to be an attack on the user who posted the thread, or any individual. It's about the general atmosphere of this subreddit, this community, this brotherhood, whatever the fuck we decide to label ourselves as (except a fucking movement, christ).

Don't give them the cerebral real estate by dwelling on how they can be, on their nature; it only weighs you down. The point of being "MGTOW" at its core is doing your own thing. Turn this sub into a discussion about interesting things that you do with your time, see who has the same hobbies as you, motivate one another in your endeavors, in your pursuits which have a positive impact on your wellbeing.

In other words - take care of yourselves. Focus on the good things. Positive psychology is a thing. For anyone who is unfamiliar with the term and wants something good to read in the layman tongue (popscience books), check out:

Learned Optimism

Other books that I believe could help encourage or inspire people in this thread are:

Mindfulness In Plain English

Flow

The Brain That Changes Itself

1. The press environment in the US is very free. That does not mean that there are no serious challenges to press freedom here, especially on specific national security issues. However, several indices on the subject tend to fairly seriously under-represent important elements bolstering US press freedom. Some of these are: strong underlying freedom of information law at state/local as well as federal level, very aggressive judicial protection in First Amendment cases, and an effective and still-burgeoning system of recourse to counter strategic lawsuits against public participation. The three isolated examples you gave are not even good ones. With regard to the Snowden saga, the actual journalists working on the story have actually enjoyed much more legal leeway and suffered much less harassment in the US than in the UK and some other places. And while a better statutory defense should be available for Snowden with regard to presenting justification for the crimes he committed, the lack of one is not any kind of distinguishing feature of the US system. Similarly, Chelsea Manning and Barrett Brown's actions would have been considered serious crimes in every country on the planet. The idea of Barrett Brown being a press hero is laughable, and it's especially ironic given that the Stratfor hack was essentially an attack on the privacy of an independent media company and its readership. [Full disclosure, I worked at Stratfor for a bit in the mid-2000s and still know people there, and the paranoia people have about that company never ceases to amaze].
   
   
2. Your point about lobbying has some technical merit, but it's really just another version of the same misconception. There are really separate ideas here: bribery, campaign donations, and persuasive lobbying. Straight-up bribery involves a politician getting personal, pecuniary benefit in exchange for policy. Bribery renders people less free, since they are no longer able to effectively control government through voting. It happens, and it's a problem in all governments, but America doesn't especially stand out from its peers in this area. Campaign donations are of course problematic and also often discussed as a form of "bribery". But, as I pointed out above, this muddles an important difference. When the campaign money is just being spent on dumb ads, it does not really reduce the voters' freedom. Your reply is that a ton of money is also spent on lobbyists. However, (1) much of this is the same money -- lobbyists do a lot of work sourcing campaign donations; and (2) to the extent that lobbyists are actually lobbying, this is just putting politicians in the same shoes as voters. And, frankly, many of those conversations are also about how much campaign money could be raised to unseat them if they do the "wrong" thing. Access can be important to the forming of impressions, but politicians have a ton of tools at their disposal to manage to whom they listen and for how long. Politicians that are stuck in the culture of lobbying-cash-fear are guilty of cowardice, but they aren't "not free" and neither are their constituents.
   
   
3. The way you make this argument, your point of view is never falsifiable. If a poor person votes Republican, you can just say it's because their society must be so "not free" that they were mind-controlled / brainwashed into voting against their interests. If only they were better educated, they would be "free" to vote for the things that you think are in their interests rather than the things that they think are in their interests. This perspective just dehumanizes the very people that you are trying to claim are being robbed of their agency by American society. Of course I think it should be made even easier for Americans to be better-informed and even easier to participate in political life. But surely freedom has to be recognized for what it is regardless. Nobody can force voters with stupid ideas to go out and correct them. But the practical barriers to any voter doing so -- even a voter with low education and no personal wealth -- are remarkably low in the US.
   
   
4. (5) The GPI is not a good measure at all of "how safe the streets are", which was your original point. It includes lots of variables that have nothing to do with that. The US homicide rate is on par with the Baltics; the US assault rate compares pretty well to many of its peers. But the larger point is lost in these snapshot comparisons. Pretty much all current OECD societies are on the sharp tip of a very dramatic decline in violence. Yes, there are some places in America that are blighted and dangerous. And we still have more violent crime than we should have. But in general, I absolutely stand by the statement that America is a very safe place by any rational standard. Having double the murder rate of 2012 Finland is like doubling your risk of being struck by lightning or exposing yourself to double the normal level of background radiation. It's more dangerous, but it isn't not safe.
   
   To your last point: there are significant threats to important freedoms in the US. Personally, I am especially concerned about not only surveillance in particular but the general attitude in successive federal administrations about the rule of law in general. And I am not alone in that at all. But, especially when it comes to essential political liberties and the freedom of conscience, our underlying legal and social protections remain very strong. And they are just now being given the opportunity to more directly confront the latest threats. We have a long way to fall before it would start to make sense to talk about being "not free".

Here is a graphical representation that is easy to share

Some highlights from the article (didn't realize how short it is, this is basically the whole article):

> The economy added an average of 181,000 jobs a month in Obama's last six months in office compared to an average of 179,000 a month in President Trump's first six months. That's a statistically insignificant difference — and a negative one at that — which shows that Trump hasn't made a diffference on the economy. And why would he have? He hasn't cut taxes or increased infrastructure spending or done anything else that would meaningfully boost GDP. (Going golfing and tweeting #MAGA a lot don't count.)

===

> This, in a lot of ways, is the archetypal Trump story: trying to take credit for something he inherited. [...] It's been the same with the economy. Trump hasn't actually done anything other than cut a few regulations, but he's made it sound like he's passed a new New Deal. (“No administration has accomplished more in the first 90 days,” he rather ludicrously claimed.) He brags about a “surging economy and jobs,” despite the fact that the economy and jobs are growing at exactly the same rate as before he took office. And, after disparaging the official unemployment rate as being “fake” and “phony” and “totally fiction” while Obama was president, he has apparently decided that it's “very real now.” In other words, Trump has done nothing and has congratulated himself for the economy Obama left behind.

===

> Well, it's not just him doing the praising. Trump's new propaganda channel is, too. Those, at least, are jobs he really can take credit for.

---

Edit: Also want plug Jonathan Haidt's book, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Religion and Politics because it is extremely relevant to what is going on. A central theme in the book is that intuition (emotion being a large part of intuition) comes first, reasoning second: that we have not evolved reason to arrive at truth, but rather as a means of justifying our behavior to others and persuading them to join our side. Thus reason is a strategic mechanism that we employ to justify the opinion we already have-- there are exceptions, of course, but this is the general case.

===

This helps to explain why people hold even more strongly to their opinions in light of disconfirmatory evidence. In this case, Trump supporters are not going to be moved by these facts and figures when employed in arguments. I have not yet finished the book, but this video does a good job explaining one of the main tactics to overcome this problem: speak to the elephant (a person's intuitions) first.

Hey guys, producer for Star Nation here. Justin just got back from Europe a couple weeks ago shooting Dream Hack and a lot of footage with WhiteRa. On arriving back into town, he's been putting together a short doc for Complexity because they helped to get us out to MLG Anaheim. Keep an eye out for that. Some of that footage will be good for the feature.

I've been wanting to post a blog on our website about the issue of "relevancy." Numbers-wise, I believe that the majority of documentaries shoot long before release, and most of the time the subject matters are fairly niche. Star Nation isn't a documentary about current politics, so timeliness is less of an issue. We're also not a journalism organization, so it's not critical to have "breaking news" nor release our film immediately after an event.

Take the documentary Anvil: The Story of Anvil as an example. I'm not sure that their story would be any worse if released any later, and we also hope to be able to find a timeless story for our doc. You may argue that Anvil's topic matter isn't getting as much media coverage as StarCraft/eSports to make it irrelevant. Maybe. If that were true, then I would then point you to the last feature documentary I produced, DMT: The Spirit Molecule.

CASE STUDY

DMT is one of the strongest known psychedelics, and it was also relatively unknown even in the drug community when my director first started shooting the doc in 2005. While we produced the film, ayahuasca (active chemical being DMT) started becoming a huge topic in general media being covered by CNN, TIME, Hustler, reddit, and many more (don't have time to link them all). While a lot of people were discovering DMT in their everyday news and entertainment sources, it absolutely wasn't making the topic matter irrelevant. In fact, it was making DMT all the more relevant to more people. More and more people became fans of our doc's Facebook page as they became aware of our film and topic matter through the media and through fans of our film. Our film didn't particularly have that much more information than was already available to the public especially since it was based around a book, but the film format is just much more easily consumed than other formats (books, articles, etc.).

Since irrelevancy wasn't an issue, DMT:TSM got picked up in 2011 by Gravitas and sublicensed to Warner Bros to get in 100M homes. We become third most popular documentary on iTunes for about 3 weeks. We also became the top most streamed film on NetFlix for a little over 3 days. I regret not screen capping those bits, so you'll have to trust me on those figures. However, I hope that we can get Star Nation in front of that many eyes also.

That said, I agree with HRvi that the pure eSports information in Star Nation may not be news to you guys, but hopefully the documentary footage and story will show you another perspective that you will enjoy while we push eSports out to a much broader audience.

you sound young a naive, not receiving or perhaps accepting the respect and acknowledgment of your families love - not realizing it yet, that love of the self and life. Really loving life. Maybe because you have not come close to death, I mean really close to cold, dark, death. More so, you sound like all fresh and stupid young boys do right when they leave high school; assured of their understanding of the world, an understanding that drastically changes every three to five years. Until one day, thirty years from now you look back and say, "I knew nothing when I was young". It's then that you realize this was all a feeling. One long feeling you had, that lasted days and years, as time seemed to slip by so painfully slow. Where a gut feeling of needed mobility took over and forced your fate into a position that only forgiveness and toughing it out can save for. A feeling of longing; Longing for adventure and a chance to prove oneself - a man's journey or hero quest. This feeling in men (and women) has been known since ancient times, only they had positive ways of promoting such innate human drives. Today, we have fraternities and the military, the factory or gangs. All shadow concepts of masculinity, all captivities shaded in brotherhood and silly concepts of sacrifice.

This is what the US military hopes for, besides all the other young and stupid children who knocked up a girlfriend and need money, or inner city kids who need a direction outside of gang life. The world you live in has been designed this way. To take the poor and wanting, and to place them in the machine. You're not going to fight for freedom, that fight belongs at a poll, and in protest, in letters to senators and special interest groups. The only freedom you'll find toting a gun in some foreign land is the same freedom men from constitutional nations always find, a small stipend to spend while corporations colonize foreign markets and people who would never sit by you at a table bank on your ignorance and hard work. You will be yelled at and broken, all for bits of ribbon or a tab. Told you're finally a man now, that you have found discipline, that you gained 'leadership skills'. All the while these traits were inside you, never on the outside, waiting to be emboldened and brought out of you; waiting for a moment of maturity and expression.

The only thing you seek in the military is a chance at expression, for something that is already there, just waiting for an outlet. If you don't want to die, don't be a soldier. If you're patriotic, then your nearest fight for liberty is at home against corruption and greed. If you want to be a man, become one of peace - because I assure you wholeheartedly, there are plenty of ex soldiers who are now men in pieces. Broken, berated and disturbed by the horrors that is war and a tighter bottom line.

Coast guard, if you must. But remember, all your life you will be searching for some semblance of inner peace, and that will never be found holding a weapon.

Works to consider: http://www.amazon.com/King-Warrior-Magician-Lover-Rediscovering/dp/0062506064

http://www.amazon.com/Fire-Belly-Being-Sam-Keen/dp/0553351370/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1373858243&sr=1-1&keywords=fire+in+the+belly

http://www.amazon.com/Iron-John-Book-About-Men/dp/0306813769/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1373858269&sr=1-1&keywords=iron+john

http://www.amazon.com/Killing-Psychological-Cost-Learning-Society/dp/0316040932/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1373858285&sr=1-1&keywords=on+killing

> I think there's not enough writing out there taking a look at the totally understandable emotional reasons why people engage in identity politics.

You're looking for Jonathan Haidt. There's also a TED talk.

Haidt points out that there are six moral "receptors", similar to senses, and that conservatives experience all six, while liberals focus primarily experience only two.

Each of these moral receptors can be exploited. We are hard-wired to respond to these set-points and base our decisions on those gut feelings. We use our intellect (especially on Reddit!) to justify those emotional decisions, not to question them.

Liberals are not going to change their settings. However, they can become better at this game and learn to trigger the four missing receptors to better bring conservatives over to their pet causes.

For example, why don't conservatives respond to the statement: "Trump should release his taxes?" Liberals see this as an issue of fairness and pretty much only fairness - everyone else did it, it's good for the majority to have the information, why is this even a question?

Conservatives bring in a whole host of other moral flavors. They are loyal to Trump. They respect his authority. They believe fairness is about proportionality, so because Trump is rich, he must also be good (those with the most assets have earned a right to lead). All of these cross-currents prevent them from supporting something that is obviously beneficial to society.

Until liberal learn to trigger those switches, they will continue to lose elections. We are ultimately still monkeys.

I'm a pretty well-confirmed athiest at this point. I tend to view the current manifestations of religion as following in a long tradition of mythmaking by human cultures.

With that in mind, you might look into some psychology in addition to your religious research. I'm a writer, which is how I came by Jung and Campbell and Booker -- but I think the idea of underlying patterns of thought that guide our own mythmaking is of broader use than simply helping me understand storytelling better.

I've read the following, and suggest you do as well!

Jung

The Basic Writings of CG Jung

Man and His Symbols

The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious

Psychology and Religion

Campbell

The Hero With A Thousand Faces

The Masks of God (Vols. 1 - 3)

Myths to Live By

Booker

The Seven Basic Plots

There are a lot more, but those are the ones I'd start with. As an undergrad, I majored in English and Rhetoric, and minored in both Religion and Poetry -- this cultural storytelling stuff is important to me.

As a library science graduate student, I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that you can get all of these books from your local library -- and can enlist the aid of the reference desk in finding more material for your research. Believe me, there's nothing a reference worker likes more than an interesting topic -- i.e. something that doesn't involve directing people to the bathroom, or helping people find books on filing their taxes. We're trained to help with real research! Use us!

For anyone else saving this for future reference I'd like to add Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child to your reading list.

We did gentle CIO the first time and it worked great, but as Dr. Weissbluth points out in the book all kinds of stuff happens (vacations, colds, dropping a nap) where you kind of have to start again, although it's far easier each progressive time. I've reread sections of that book a dozen times and each time they make the process far smoother.

CIO is so hard, but truly my baby is happier and more alert when she gets good sleep. It IS for her benefit and it's probably far harder on me than it is on her.

Obviously there is zero evidence to support the theory, it just is interesting. I took a lot of theology classes and almost have a minor in the field, but I am in no means qualified to speak about Eastern religions without butchering the actual beliefs. I strongly believe that their world-view and perception of the self is different than my American Catholic upbringing, but I can try and ELY5 and not feel like I'm doing some injustice..

Basically, there are hundreds of variations of Hinduism and Buddhism that can be vastly different, but a common theme in them is mediation and the concept of Om. Om is the sound of the universe and the point of repeating the mantra during mediation is that it's a way of "melting" back into the great cosmic soup. They think (and are right) that everything in existence is part of everything else. You and I are both made out of stars. You share atoms with dinosaurs. All that good stuff.

Simply put: They think that the sound Om is the sound of the universe. the sound at which everything '"vibrates." String theory is the idea that all of the matter in the universe is connected by "vibrating strings."

I can't recall where I read that, but I am pretty sure it was in Dr. Rick Strassman's book, DMT: The Spirit Molecule.. I am fascinated the link between psychedelics, science and spirituality. If you are too, I recommend the book.

There is a really good book, Whipping Girl by Julia Serano, that would answer your questions. You could probably just read the first couple of chapters.

It's a bit of an oversimplification to say that gender is a social construct. We tend to use gender to mean anything that is not physical, anatomical sex, but to get to the root of what it means to be or feel like a man or a woman, we need more specificity than that.

Gender roles are societal expectations for how people of a certain gender should look, act, and live. These are relative to the culture and can be man/woman, or three genders, or six, depending on the society.

Gender expression is the personal choices people make to signal to themselves and to other people what gender they are. The specifics of gender expression also vary depending on the culture. So, one culture might see pink as a "girl" color, one might see it as a "boy" color, or the same culture might even change its mind. It's all relative.

Gender identity is a person's sense of which gender category in their society is right for them based on their own relationship to their body, and to other people. The ways in which people talk about gender identity vary from culture to culture (for example, Native Americans refer to gender fluidity or being dual gender as being Two Spirited).

Nevertheless, every culture has had to answer the question "what does it mean that there are males and females?" The specifics of that question and its answers may vary, but the question itself is based in humanity confronting its own biology.

The vast majority of people never really feel a disconnect between the sex their society designates them to be and the gender they see themselves to be, as you probably know. Some people don't have a problem with their biological sex, but they do have a problem with the gender roles that are expected of them. Other people have no issue with either, but they like to have an atypical gender expression because it feels authentic to their sense of self. So, there's a vast number of ways people can relate to gender without it coming into direct conflict with their sex assigned at birth.

Regarding people who are transgender, genderfluid, etc, this often refers to a specific relationship between physical sex and gender identity that goes beyond roles and expectations that society has of different genders. Usually there is a feeling of disconnect or dissonance with the gender identity assigned to you based on your sex. It just "feels wrong," so people who are transgender do a lot of exploration to figure out what feels right, and that has lead to a proliferation of terms for different gender identities because our own society hasn't been very accepting of gender diverse people and our language hasn't caught up yet. So people are trying out a lot of terminology trying to figure out what this all means.

I can't speak for agender or genderfluid people since I am not one.

I can only speak for myself as a transgender man who is also somewhat gender non-conforming. My sense of "being a man" or "being male" is the best language I have to describe the feeling that my body is supposed to be physically male and I am like other people who are male. It's like my brain expects a male body to be there and sometimes perceives it anyway despite what my biology is like. But my sense of what it means to be a man is definitely shaped by the culture I grew up in. I look at other men and women and locate myself within the spectrum of gender laid out for me in my social world. I compare myself to others and through self-exploration realize that it feels more authentic for me to align myself with other men than with women or non-binary people. This doesn't mean that I imitate them, just that it feels more natural for me to move through the world with others perceiving me as a man. So, the socially constructed parts of gender are ways I can live my gender with other people as opposed to just feeling it as this private thing.

[Edit: going back to the whole identity vs. expression vs. roles thing: One of the first things I did when I transitioned was go out and buy a pink men's shirt. I could never wear the color pink before because people saw me as a girl wearing pink. I did not want to be a girl wearing pink. I am a guy who likes the color pink. I found it uncomfortable to express myself through signals of femininity because people saw my role as female/woman and my identity was male. But once I had a male social role, I found it much easier to express my gender with things traditionally associated with femininity. I wanted the feminine expression to be seen in relation to my maleness, not to my perceived femaleness. I know that's convoluted! In practice it just means I stress out a lot less over the color of my clothing than before.]

For you, I would suggest you probably feel more male than you realize, it's just not at the forefront of your consciousness because it is not in conflict with anything. An analogy...When you are lonely, you become acutely aware of your individuality, your longing, your desires, and the various obstacles to ridding yourself of loneliness. When you are with loved ones, that individuality does not disappear, but you no longer feel lonely. Feeling yourself to fall outside of society's gender constructs of man vs. woman is like a type of gender loneliness. If you've always been in the company of people who validate your gender and are in agreement with you about your sex, you're probably not going to dwell on it much.

Your observations are bang on, the extreme conservative values they hold are self defeating in the face of today's progressive societies. I'll get back to this.

The how: they're intentionally manipulated by people with an agenda who seek power. Either political power or physical dominance by force. They feel safe in their group because of the hive-switch. Jonathan Haidt goes into this pretty heavily in his book The Righteous Mind.

As for helping, you have to talk with them. I know it's easier said than done. I myself get nervous and intimidated when I come across someone with that mentality. They're scary. But they're also people. They sleep, snore, eat, laugh. They had a first kiss and experienced deaths in their families. See, I'm being empathetic. It's what allows me to understand other's viewpoints and put things into perspective. It's also what they lack. But that doesn't mean it can't be learned.

So the societies thing: imagine for a minute that the alt-right magically gets their demands: all "immigrants" leave North America and head back to their mother land. Also, no outsourcing of labor. This is the part when they rub their fingers in delight right? I mean, look at all the land with natural resources they're left with! Look at the potential. Well, let's just say the economy will collapse. It may be obvious but: major companies will have lost their talent, also their customer base. The labor force will have to be massively redistributed, new skills learned (which is already a big challenge for fixed-mindset people, whom from my observation are predisposed to being alt-right) to get essential services back in working order, Trade with other countries will suffer (for obvious reasons) so the nation will have to be self reliant. In the meantime progress WILL CONTINUE in other countries and will outpace this regressive, uncooperative and undiplomatic nation.

Seriously just writing this feels ridiculous. Okay, let's back track. "Let the immigrants stay but they'll be living by our rules, values and beliefs. I like my way of life, it suits me good and I sure as hell don't see a reason to change. And they sure as hell better be okay with being second class citizens. This here is not a meritocracy."

And there's that detail about the First Nations. Yeah the First Nations. When they demand all immigrants vacate, they don't include themselves. Is it really a matter of sovereignty or who came here first? Because... never mind. For arguments sake, let's say it's instead a matter of contribution to the making of modern society. Nation building if you will. Europeans came to this land on the premise of commerce. The Canadian fur trade. But these Europeans had associates in this business. Where the natives not contributors to the fur trade? Did they not help these newcomers with food, warmth, information? By the way this is completely ignoring their already existing society and way of life which, had someone asked them at the time, they might have said something along the lines of "Let the immigrants stay but they'll be living by our rules, values and beliefs. I like my way of life, it suits me good and I sure as hell don't see a reason to change." Probably.

I'll leave you with a fantastic book that will hopefully illuminate this topic better than I ever could: The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Religion and Politics Check out Jonathan Haidt's TED Talks for a glimpse on what he covers in the book. The real bombshell I took away from his book is that: conservatism isn't exclusive to any one nation and it exhibits itself similarly across the globe. The real tragedy is that conservative groups hate each other when they belong to different nations, despite how much they have in common as far as the values they hold dear.

>I too thought it was normal, up until I found out that some people actually think about little to nothing sometimes..

Ha! Exactly! It was hard for me to grasp this for the longest time. I would get almost annoyed when I asked my wife what she was thinking about and she would say "nothing really". I'd be like... WHAT?... what do you mean?

I think it was hard too because I have a strong sense of empathy. So when I absolutely could not understand the concept of not thinking, it was very confusing. I could NOT relate, at all. Sad? Angry? Happy? I get all that. Not thinking though..... is that even possible?!?!?

The only reason I understand now is because I looked into ADHD, then it smacked me in the face, hard. What a realization after all of these years. WOW!

>Is distracting yourself the healthy thing to do?

If you are able to replace a negative thought that you don't want in the first place, then yes. If you neglect something that actually needs attention, then that's bad.

I read about the strategy in a book about the brain. Long story short, it's been successful in treating OCD. When someone has an urge to wash their hands, they instead FORCE themselves to go garden etc. Eventually the desire to wash will go away (if successful, duh).

The book: http://www.amazon.com/The-Mind-Brain-Neuroplasticity-Mental/dp/0060988479

If you are interested in the subject overall, this book was actually better imo: http://www.amazon.com/Brain-That-Changes-Itself-Frontiers/dp/0143113100/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1426110863&sr=1-1&keywords=the+brain+that+changes+itself

>How do you do it?

I'm definitely not a pro, but when I actually do have success, it usually starts with talking to someone close to me and comparing thought processes. Or sometimes I imagine a friend coming to me and asking for help, but I pretend they are using the same arguments I use in my own head. When I do this, I realize that if a friend came to me speaking like I do, I would instantly realize they are being irrational.

Those two things sometimes allow me enough wiggle room to focus on another subject. And if you get this wiggle room, you might have more luck doing something physical that requires attention. I've found that my brain can start acting up very easily if I just explore my own thoughts.

>And don't you get extra fidgety? I get so restless if I try to ignore it.

Sometimes, yes. When it doesn't work, I get very restless. It feels like there is a bunch of energy that wants to release. Very uncomfortable.

get in good shape, take care of yourself.
Get rest
I wouldn't really be angling for a promotion right now

When the baby is born, and this may be a couple of months in. If possible, through bottle feeding or pump - and - serve, try to find a way to go 2 nights on 2 nights off when it comes to waking with the baby in the middle of the night.

This isn't possible for everyone, but my wife and I did it with both of our kids, and I think we were better for it.

Read Healthy Sleep Habits Happy Child www.amazon.com/Healthy-Sleep-Habits-Happy-Child/dp/0449004023 or at least the summaries.

Happiest baby on the block by Harvy Karp was helpful as well. "Treat first 3 months as 4th tri-mester" is the general idea.

Please don't cheapen that word "consensus" with frivolous usage. The origins of religion is a highly contentious topic, and those who study it are absolutely not in full agreement with each other. You are trying to prop up your arguments with the authority of science while denigrating my intelligence. You don't convince people by arguing that way; you only satisfy your urge to crush an opponent.

Here's where we agree, and where you think we disagree:

1. Religion is a natural phenomenon.
   
2. Religion has been a part of human behaviour for tens of thousands of years.
   
   There. Half your post wasn't necessary, Mr./Ms. Read-More-Carefully.
   
   Where we disagree:
   You think religion... "exists because people believe the immaterial intentional entities (minds without bodies, gods.)" In a related concept, you indicate that we naturally ascribe agency to the natural world.
   
   Just so this is abundantly clear: I was arguing that gods are not required for religion. You misread Buddhism is but one example. "Most" Buddhists isn't "all" Buddhists, and "involves" is a far cry from "being the central element of the religion that defines its existence." Many totemic religions from tribal societies also lack gods. You end up having to redefine "gods" to "any supernatural agent" just to get this idea to work.
   
   But let's focus on the idea that it's natural for us to impose agency to things in the natural world, and this leading to the formation of religion. This also is not done in every religion. When it is done, it isn't relevant to every aspect of the religion in question. Even among Christianity, a great deal of worship is devoted to the saints, who were entirely human. Ditto with ancestor worship in Taoism.
   
   We have also seen the rise of new religions, and we know for a fact this idea of ascribing agency to the natural world was not involved in the creation of many of them: Scientology, or the various cults that are centred around extra terrestrials, or people from the future, or not eating (seriously!)
   
   Finally, it doesn't explain why we have the ability to feel transcendence; that feeling we get when our individuality melts away and we "give ourselves" to something greater. Where does that come from? How does that evolve?
   
   But for the sake of completeness, you would likely need to hear an alternative, so here is where I'm coming from. I ascribe to Emile Durkheim's theory of religion. He's a classic sociologist, and formally founded the field of sociology itself.
   
   Just to provide the brief gist:
   
   His definition of religion: "A religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden—beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called a Church, all those who adhere to them."
   
   The faithful believe in a force that is outside of themselves, and greater than themselves that enters into them usually during moments of collective ritual, giving them the feeling of transcendence. All religions have this force. It is often called a "god," though other terms are used (mana, ch'i, etc.) This force is the "energy," if you will, of the society of the faithful. In other words, god and society... are one and the same. Society is exterior to the individual, and greater than him. If you denigrate this symbol of their society, you are denigrating the society itself, and they will react accordingly. The morals preached by the religion are the morals that the society unifies under. They hold rituals to reinforce this collective bond, and that is really its purpose. Some things are made sacred (objects, values, people), and the community collects around those things, which become a sort of emblem. Rationality will serve the purpose of the community's religion. And, as I initially stated in my first post, the religion of the day will change as the needs of the society changes. Sometimes the religion itself alters, and other times it is simply abandoned for another one.
   
   We see religious behaviour in cruder moments all the time. The feeling of transcendence occurs among soldiers that fight and die together. They often describe their individuality melting away and becoming "whole" with their brothers in arms. They create a small system of morals and beliefs that are specific just to them. And they even sometimes have rituals.
   
   The same religious behaviour can be seen in revolutionaries who rationalize their oppressors as the ultimate evil. Or in nationalistic patriotism (why does a flag make someone cry? Why does it matter what the founding fathers thought?). Or college fraternities with their initiations and pledges. Or the obsession with all things natural and organic, and neo druidism, and Gwenyth Paltrow getting people to stick odd things up their vaginas. Or Trump supports who see Donald Trump as their saviour from the evils that plague them.
   
   We have evolved the innate ability to unite under an emblem and operate as a cohesive whole. That is religion, and no other animal seems to have it. It's the evolutionary trick that made us the dominant species on earth. It's utter shit for finding the truth of things, but it massively serves the purpose of our survival.
   
   Now, if you want religion to just go away so we can have a purely secular society based on reason, then what you want to believe is that religion is just some kind of fluke originally made to explain the world (and it clearly does a poor job of that). I admire that cause, but I doubt it's viability, and I certainly doubt the premise that's justifying it. Or perhaps I'm just making assumptions about your point of view. A purely rational society is one that I think a lot of skeptics dream of, and you are in this subreddit.
   
   Further reading, if you're interested: Emile Durkheim's "The Elementary Forms of Religious LIfe." Also, Jonathan Haidt's "The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion."

Ideas:

1. Have kiddo watch Signing Time on Netflix. It is an amazing show that will help with his language development. No guilt.
   
   
2. Get the book Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child. http://www.amazon.com/Healthy-Sleep-Habits-Happy-Child/dp/0449004023 Our 2 year old sleeps from 5pm to 7am every day, and our 6 month old just started doing the same thing with only one wake up overnight. There are, of course, several naps throughout the day. Yes, my son and daughter sleep around 14 hours each night and with naps they sleep a total of around 17 (2 yo) to 18-20 (6mo) hours PER DAY. More kid sleeping time means more relax time for mommy and you.
   
   
3. Give her every Friday night off. Tell her to get out of the house. Find a friend of hers, make plans if you have to, send her to dinner or a movie or SOMETHING.
   
   
4. Do you have a spare room? Arrange to let a nanny live rent free (room and board) in exchange for assistance 20-30 hours a week.
   
   
5. Pick a whole WEEK where each person is on overnight duty. One week you are on duty. You feed little one every time. Next week she is on duty. I read a study that showed doing this week by week made a HUGE difference in the amount of sleep each partner got and their ability to function. Do not take "no" for an answer here. She needs to be able to sleep. Have her pump her breastmilk into bottles and so you can help feed the little one overnight that way.
   
   
6. Do you have a spare room? Put the baby in there immediately. My wife was unable to sleep with our baby in our bedroom because when she made the tiniest noise it would wake my wife up. Putting the baby in the other room allowed both of them to sleep MUCH better.
   
   
7. Is she depressed? Post Partum Depression is real. My wife got put on some meds and it made a world of difference. (For the record, I am anti-meds unless it's really necessary ... and these were amazing.) Have her talk to a doctor, it can improve her quality of life DRAMATICALLY.
   
   Divorce doesn't seem like a wise option. Are you going to take care of the kids? Don't be silly!

There are not enough research papers specifically on gaming addiction because gaming addiction together with social media and pornography falls under the umbrella of internet addiction - Like you said a rather new field. Some breakthroughs are being made in the last years to have it recognized as an addiction per se (at least in Europe) the problem with conducting enough research is that there are no funds and insurance companies have no wish having another area of responsibility to potentially give away money to people suffering from it. If gaming addiction become completely recognized by international bodies of medicine then insurance companies might have to pay preexisting clients for passed and current treatments ---> something they definitely do not want to do.
Nonetheless here are some videos of legit men of science (not some random ex gamer) that research the field.

"Here is a short interview with Dr. David Greenfield talking about some of the mental and physical applications of gaming and internet addiction"


There are also longer talks on his channel like this one.
Dr. Greenfield has been researching Internet addiction since the 90's.


"Dr. Klaus Woelfling, from the University of Mainz. Germany is taking steps in treating Internet addiction and especially gaming addiction" - this one is a difficult watch primarily because the speaker is very uncharismatic (try watching with the speed setting on 1.5).

Last but definitely not least is "Your Brain on Porn"
Yes, yes I know, you might not want to hear that another of your favorite pastimes is bad for you, but this video covers on a very scientific basis the damages that watching excessive pornography causes to the brain, and no this is not some kind of NoFap cult propaganda, it speaks only on the subject of internet porn. Like I said before, porn together with gaming fall under the umbrella of internet addiction because the reaction we receive from these negative habits has the same structure. If you actually watch the Your Brain on Porn video you will hear him mention numerous times that the damages caused to dopamine receptors is similar to the ones cause from gaming and extensive internet use.

This is just some of the evidence done by men of medicine and science from the top of my head. If you want to go deeper I'd recommend The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains By Nicholas Carr an American author and Pulitzer Prize winner (for that book), witch contains truly numerous examples of scientific studies and references you might want in the bibliography.


Also The Brain That Changes Itself by Norman Doidge M.D that talks mainly about brain plasticity and how different behaviors and habits cause the brain to form new cells , create new neural pathways etc etc . He also gives lots of examples how positive and negative behaviors causes various changes IN THE BRAIN, Internet addiction stuff included.

If you really want proof and not just searching for a reason to dismiss things you dont like the sound of then I hope this comment will serve you. If you do nothing less at least watch the first interview with Dr. David Greenfield. It is only 6 minutes long.

Hope this post that took me 50 minutes to put together and find all the links, will be of service to somebody.
Peace.

Edit: Grammar and formatting

Your life isn't pointless. Right now you may be at a low point, even the lowest point you have been in. I believe that struggling in some way, or being sad/depressed/angry/hurt/etc means that you care about something. Something feels like it's not right to you and you want it to be better. Even if it's a vague feeling, or you are struggling because you actually feel nothing at all, this says something. I'm not sure what you are going through since you didn't post many details (which is totally fine), but I wanted to let you know that there have been many times that I have struggled greatly. Due to my past trauma I've had terrible physical problems, emotional problems, dissociation, anxiety, depression, difficulty making and maintaining friendship and connection with others....and on and on. There were times when I was in so much pain (either mentally, emotionally or physically) that I couldn't get out of bed or even barely move for long periods of time. That is a very desperate feeling. I have felt utterly and completely alone in this world, as if I had nothing and no one, and that I would be broken forever.

One thing that really helps me is reading. It was a long journey for me to learn to recognize my own thoughts, feelings, and emotions. There are still some areas where I can struggle with this, but I have made so, so much progress it's almost unbelievable to me when I think back to the person I once was. I couldn't identify my own emotions or thoughts, but when I read about scenarios and other peoples emotions/thoughts in certain situations, I could tell when it felt right. Like, "Yes! That is how I felt when _____ happened to me." A few books that really helped me are The Body Keeps Score, and Running On Empty. Other resources that have helped me immensely are hypnosis (one in particular was Michael Mahoney's IBS Audio Program 100 (this cured the IBS I had had for ~25 years, since I was a child)), and Annie Hopper's Dynamic Neural Retraining System. The very first book that I read that gave me hope that I could change my life was The Brain that Changes Itself. I read that book 9 years ago and it set me on a path of real change. It gave me inspiration and hope and the belief that I could really change and improve my life. If you want any other book recommendations let me know, I've read a lot of books and I have even more favorites that have helped me.

There are still areas of my life that I am working to improve, but I am nowhere near the person I was before I started reading and learning. Working through this stuff, and figuring out how to even do it, are very challenging and difficult tasks. But it is so, so worth it. I wish I could really show you and explain to you the profound changes we can make as people. Every epiphany I've had about myself and my life has been amazing and life changing. To me it almost feels like the essence of what it means to be human. I'm not sure if people who don't go through trauma get the chance to experience such profound epiphanies, realization, and change. Maybe I'm just rambling now, but I want you to know that there is hope. You may not have it, but I have it for both of us right now. Read. See a therapist. Learn. Practice. Journal. Seek support. Seek out ways to make a change. It doesn't have to be profound or monumental. Go at your own pace, just be sure that you are going.

The Marxist explanation is the simplest I think: They wish to control (and regulate) the means of production. Specifically the means of production of more hosts for the god virus.

Also, by making something that all humans can't help to avoid a sin... they ensure that sin is committed, guilt and furtherance of their control over them through that guilt.

These two together I believe form powerful reasoning.

I'll add that in the case of women, virginity is valued because traditionally, especially in the time period the bible was written, they were considered property. Therefore... in an awful way a product that has been opened and used is less valuable than one that is still in the packaging. There is of course the old, more practical consideration that a woman who isn't a virgin may be bearing another man's children, thus her husband would expend resources raising children that weren't his and didn't advance his line.

I mean there are so many things at work here it is ridiculous. Original intent is one thing, but over time it gained other advantages. Still, you have to notice that the burden and pressure on women is much greater than men, it's about controlling women.

If you want an in-depth explanation I would suggest the great book "The God Virus" by Darrel Ray. He also has a podcast called secular sexuality, but that's more about exploring sexual behavior(s) than explaining the religious effect on it. If you don't want to buy it, check it out from a library, it really is enlightening when you examine religion in the way he does. (And in fact is one of my top book recommendations for atheist literature after "The God Delusion" and "God is Not Great")

https://www.amazon.com/God-Virus-Religion-Infects-Culture/dp/0970950519/

I highly recommend reading "The righteous Mind" by Johathan Haidt available here. It does a really good job of explaining why we justify the religion while we're in and why we're so angry when we get out. I found it useful in processing what's going through my mind now as well as what is going through my TBM wife's mind. In the end, our "rational" minds aren't very rational at all. We are all very good at justifying decisions, but rarely do we objectively make these decisions. It may give you some needed perspective.

If you're shy of 30, I say you have a very good shot at making it out as a family and enjoying some great years whether or not your spouse makes it out. Look back to understand, but don't forget to look ahead and live the amazing life in front of you.

The end of Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger is really good. It's a short book, worth a read.

Mindfulness in Plain English is a really useful book.

I recommend some Robert Bly. His classic book is Iron John. He writes about being a man beautifully.

King Warrior Lover Magician is a great book for men. http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/0062506064?pc_redir=1410530189&robot_redir=1

There are some great talks with Robert Bly in audible. I listen to them at least once a year. http://www.amazon.com/s?ie=UTF8&page=1&rh=n%3A283155%2Cp_27%3ARobert%20Bly%2Cp_n_feature_browse-bin%3A1240885011

I posted a whole response, but based on what else you've said it sounds as though any amount of crying is a no go for you. Lots of people feel this way and go with it, but there are no magic bullets. If you don't want a baby that fusses even a little at night then you'll have to wait until baby is ready to sleep through the night.

It's a perfectly legitimate way to do it, but from your post you sounded like you were looking for advice, not support. I think it may be a little bit confusing. The advice is either wait until baby sleeps through the night, or work on sleep training baby which will involve some amount of fussing. u/counterfitfake had a pretty gentle method for CIO (which was too gentle for us when we tried something similar as we couldn't be in the room at bedtime at all, but awesome that it worked for them!)


If you really do get to your wit's end with the wakeups I highly recommend Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child. Some crying required, but if you believe (as I do) that a baby that wakes up repeatedly through the night is not well rested then the trade off may become worth it.

This may help

A helpful way to visualize it might also be to consider it this way. Sexuality is a spectrum, similarly gender identity, and gender expression are also two different spectrums. While these three spectrums influence each other, no single one is completely influenced by another. One can even make the arguement that physical sex is also a spectrum given intersex people and other variations in physical sex.

A person who is Transgender is someone whose gender identity doesn't align with their physical sex

Transsexual is more of a medical term to describe transgender folk who have made steps or are making steps to change their physical sex to correlate with their gender identity, whether through hormones or surgery.

While all people who are transsexuals are transgender, it is not the case that all people who are transgender are transsexuals. Given that being transsexual is essentially a medical status it is often more useful for us to simply go with a shorthand when describing ourselves and say that we are trans. After all you wouldn't go around telling people about whatever medical procedures or treatments you might be going through.

Now a Cisgendered person is someone whose gender identity matches up with their physical sex. Being cisgendered is to being transgender as being heterosexual is to being homosexual, just different spectrums.

What your describing in your post isn't necessarily transgender behavior so much as a deviation from the norm of gender expression. You may enjoy stereotypically female behaviors, but you probably still identify as male, prefer male pronouns, present yourself as a male to others ect, ect.
Variations in gender expression is why we can have butch ladies and effeminate dudes, they're not trans necessarily they are just in different areas on the gender expression spectrum. Keep in mind though that since gender expression and gender identity are two separate spectrums you can have people like a butch trans-woman, or an effeminate trans-man, but trans and cis pretty much exclusively describes the relationship between physical sex and gender identity.

If you're looking to do a bit of reading I highly recommend Julia Serano's Whipping Girl for a pretty in depth analysis of these topics, and a fantastic read on top of that.

I think what you are planning to say is pretty good. Be aware that you aren't going to be able to use a one size fits all answer for every situation you encounter (but there are probably less than a dozen answers that will fit 90% of your encounters with omnivores).

I want to correct your use of the term "door-in-the-face". The Door-in-the-face technique is a tactic for getting someone to agree to a moderate request by first asking them for something significantly larger that they are unlikely to agree to. An example of this would be asking someone to go entirely vegan right away and then when they reject that request asking if they'd at least be willing to eat no meat on Mondays. Using this strategy is often much more effective for getting people to avoid meat on Mondays than simply asking them if they'd be willing to do that.

Your use of the foot-in-the-door technique is also a bit off. This is a strategy for getting someone to agree to a large request by first asking them for something small that they would be much more likely to agree to. For example you could ask people to put up a small sticker in their window that says "I support animal rights" then return a month later and ask them to give up meat. They'd be much more likely to give up meat using this strategy than had you asked them upfront.

The book Change of Heart by Nick Cooney (the founder of the Humane League) discusses many more strategies like this for being an effective activist. Another excellent book that I read on the subject of compliance tactics is Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion although this one isn't specifically about animal rights activism.

Honestly, as convenient as it is to point to studies showing brain differences and claim its a biological difference, there are also studies that indicate there isn't much brain difference between men and women to begin with. I don't believe that being trans is determined solely by biology, even if that does turn out to be a factor for some people.

The real truth is that no one is 100% sure why some people are trans and some people who present and act almost the same way are not. There's no way to tell who will be trans and who won't.

Think about a quiet person, who is sitting on their own in a busy coffee shop. They could identify themself any number of ways - maybe they are shy and anxious and wish they could reach out to people. Maybe they are introverted and enjoy being there on their own. Maybe they are just waiting for someone. But their behaviour looks the same to an outsider regardless of their internal identity. Only they know the truth of the matter.

Gender identity is a combination of many factors. It can be related to sex, sexual orientation, or behaviour for some people, and for some people it has nothing to do with any of those things. Gender identity is the personal relationship that you have to your body (i.e. to your biology), your relationship to the way other people view your body as a gendered body (i.e. to society's ideas about your assigned gender), and your relationship to your own thoughts and feelings about gender (i.e. how you have incorporated ideas about gender from society). If you grow up and all of these things align in a positive way, you are cisgender - you feel that your internal thoughts and feelings about your gender, the way society sees your gender, and how your body looks to you all match up. If one or more of these things don't gel with you, you might be trans or you might just play around with gender.

It's really something that most people have to explore for themselves to figure out - while there are some trans people who just inherently know they are actually a different gender than people say they are from a young age, there are also many trans people who have to experiment until they find out what works best with them and then base their identity off that. There are cisgender (non-trans) people who experiment with gender presentation but still feel most comfortable identifying as the gender they were assigned at birth.

Basically, what it means when someone says they are 'male' or 'a man' means that they identify as and are a man. Just think about the immense amount of difference between cisgender men. There are feminine cisgender men, masculine cisgender men, androgynous cisgender men, cisgender stay at home dads, cisgender businessmen, every possible variation under the sun. Almost half our population is made up of cis men. What does it mean to belong to such a huge population? Well, it's dependent on what that man's culture says being a man is, and how that man relates to that, and how that man relates to himself. It's entirely determined by us, whether we are cisgender or transgender.

(edited to add links to an article about Cordelia Fine's research and the amazon page for her book, Delusions of Gender)

>it's just that pink princesses who need the approval of men and overbearing female family members to have any self-worth...

No kidding!

I do think some of this is developmental (for ex., the chapter in Nurtureshock on race has some really interesting stuff on how social science research shows kids gravitate to very clear-cut 'us vs them' groups at around your daughter's age). I was discussing the 'princess' thing with some friends who have girls older than mine, and they say their twins & their friends all went through the phase for a couple of years before elementary school, then after awhile all decided the princess stuff was awful and switched to black clothing and tomboy activities (also both phases). So there's at least some reason to think that some parts of this will resolve with time as she matures.

No question, though, that the underlying girls vs boys ideology is disturbing. You can't do anything about your co-parent's living situation or family dynamic, but you can promote your own positive view of a 'girl power' agenda that doesn't put down boys. Maybe you could take the 'girl power' thing and run with it in a direction that fits your values? The site "A Mighty Girl" has reviewed & suggested a lot of toys, books, etc., to promote some positive and more empowered ways of being a girl than simply "I love princesses / boys steal girl power." For starters, you could start working some of that stuff into the book/toy collection you have for your daughter.

Read better books. Stop watching the local news and definitely don’t believe what Mormons say about “the world”.

Read this

https://www.amazon.com/Enlightenment-Now-Science-Humanism-Progress/dp/0525427570


Nobody is coming to save us. But what would they save us from? You see, on the whole, we’re doing a pretty good job of making our lives better. Objectively speaking. At the individual level a person feeling terrified when they actually live in a very safe environment and are extremely well protected ... well that to me sounds like something the individual needs to understand and deal with.

Well, I strongly identify as a trans-feminist, and I am often hesitant of feminist spaces that aren't queer-centric for the very reasons that you list. However, for me it is important to educate those feminists who are transphobic or cissexist etc to help broaden feminist thought into a more intersectional frame of thought that addresses the sexism of all different identities.

I personally really care about LGBT+ things (and as you can see the LGB movements have not always been trans friendly either), and feminism as well. I assure you that not all feminists are like those individuals your friends experienced, and I am sorry they both had to go through that. It sounds like what they experienced is what Julia Serano has called "cissexism" or, "the belief that transsexuals' identified genders are inferior to, or less authentic than, those of cissexuals." This sort of sexism is something that I think the feminist movements would benefit from addressing.

I know that it can get really depressing reading and experiencing feminists being transphobic and cissexist etc, but one author (and really great speaker) who I have really enjoyed reading is Julia Serano, who is a trans woman and a feminist. You can check out her book "Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity" and I am looking forward to her new book coming out called "Excluded: Making Feminist and Queer Movements More Inclusive" which I think is something you might be interested in looking into.

Yeah, we have all been brought up to see those people as self-righteous assholes, but transportation engineers have determined that a zipper merge, occurring as close to the point of obstruction as possible, is most efficient (40-50% more efficient than current practice). The Minnesota DOT recently adopted this practice and began a campaign of awareness.

If traffic interests you, check out the book Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us) by Tom Vanderbilt. Super interesting quick read, and you'll learn a lot about interacting with urban traffic efficiently.

Michigan DOT Citations 1 2.pdf

Not that this helps - but my daughter used to drink 64oz+ of formula a day, about half at night until we switched to food when She cut down to 40ish ounces. The pediatrician always thought it should be less but we never got there. She's skinny for her age but we share meals and she usually eats a bigger breakfast, lunch and dinner than I do plus 3 or 4 healthy snacks (cheese, nuts, hummus, fruit, etc)

I give her a sippy full of water every night and she usually finishes it. I personally wouldn't be freaked about diabetes/whatever unless she's drinking that much water at night. Kids are different, and some eat way more than others.

I'd get rid of milk, cold turkey and just offer water. My daughter never accepted water in a bottle so we just put a non-leaky sippy in her crib with her at night. It seems to me like the milk is how she's soothing herself back to sleep and she's just going to have to learn to do that part on her own, minus the milk. It's tough and there's a lot of differing opinions, but I'm (now) a big believer in cry it out. I like this book and it's gotten us through everything so far.

As far as neighbors, I'd be really honest and really nice. Go down, tell them you are trying, the next 3-4 days will be rough. Maybe bring them cookies and ear plugs as well. We lived in an apartment when my daugher sleep trained and my neighbors were surprisingly nice about it when I gave them a head's up on what was happening and apologized both before and after.

OK.

The single best evo-psych book I can think of is

The Blank Slate by Stephen Pinker. It's extremely readable as well as very informative.

Where you'd want to go next depends on what you'd like to learn more about, and whether you liked Stephen Pinker as an author.

If you'd like to know more about the genetics that underlying the evo-psych then you want.

The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins

If you're interested specifically in what evo-psych has to say about human sexuality you want

The Evolution of Desire by David Buss

And if you really like Stephen Pinker and want to know what evo psych means for human societies I'd recommend

The Angels of our Better Nature by Stephen Pinker

or (if you don't like Pinker)

Origins of Virtue by Matt Ridley.

I've given you US Amazon links, and no. I don't get a cut :(

• A small introduction by Joe Rogan.
  
  
• The book he references in his talk.
  
  
• Wikipedia,
  
  
• And Science!
  
  DMT is a neurotransmitter that fools the brain by taking the place of Seratonin when active, altering the way neurons interact. The WikiPedia article goes more in-depth on this. According to Wikipedia it's core function is undetermined. It may or may not be released in large quantities before death, and may or may not play a significant role in dreaming. My speculation lower down is based on it performing both those functions as, if it does neither, there is nothing really to speculate about. I have not tried it, and highly doubt that I ever will. I would at the very least wait until some proper science on the subject is performed and you can read some more reliable information about it, there is a lot of speculation at this point.
  
  As the last article explains, there are physiological explanations available for the common geometric hallucinations associated with DMT (and described by Joe Rogan). I expect that in order to explain the more complex illusions such as visions of religious figures or what have you the explanations needed are more psychological than neurological (insofar as the two are separate). There have been testimonies denying this, but it is unfortunately hopelessly anecdotal. However, we can safely assume that if DMT is what produces our dreaming effects, that trying to find wisdom or truth from a hallucination is about as sensible as trying to read your dreams for answers on life.
  
  
• Because I love to speculate, the rest of this post will pretty much be pure conjecture. I do not hold any beliefs as to the validity of any of this, until there is more information on the subject the right thing to do is suspend judgment. That isn't any fun though, so for the sake of argument, here we go:
  
  If there is an "alternate reality" that you can only perceive through the intake of extremely heavy hallucinogens, that is different from the reality in which we spend the majority of our time, then it is not likely that the drug-induced reality is the one that corresponds the most closely with physical reality. That's just not an evolutionary advantage - if DMT gave the benefit of penetrating a deeper layer of reality and increased perception, and our brain is capable of producing that neurotransmitter, it seems likely that we'd be doing that while awake and the other thing while sleeping if at all. Just like our observable reality is really constructed by our brain, so is this hallucinatory construction, although the functions involved in producing this reality are different - perhaps because the main input in the case of REM sleep seems to be the assimilation and dissemination of memories collected during the waking hours. The reality you perceive when you are awake and not on DMT in turn corresponds to sensory input from your sensory organs, and is more likely to be correlative to what is actually going on outside of you. If you want to figure stuff out about how your brain works, it's not completely impossible that a controlled trip might glean some insight. However, if you want to find out real stuff about how reality works, I think you are better off staying sober. If I had to guess, I would say it might be one stage in the process your brain uses to filter, organize and store the information it collects. You don't remember it, because the observable phenomena of the whole affair really isn't that important and may even be disruptive to the clear perception of actual reality.

'How Not to Achieve Freedom' is an entire book on libertarian infighting by Stef. Just sayin'.

I try to keep libertarian infighting to an minimum that I possibly can although I probably take more potshots than I should (although I try to be fair in the shots that I take).

Divorce rates by faith group according to the Barna report [1]:

All adults 33% 3792

Evangelical Christians: 26%

Non-evangelical born again Christians: 33%
Notional Christians: 33%
Associated with non Christian faith: 38%
Atheist or agnostic: 30%
All born again Christians : 32%
All non born again Christians: 33%

Protestant 34%
Catholic 28%

Upscale 22%
Downscale 39%

White 32% 2641
African-American 36%
Hispanic 31%
Asian 20%

Conservative 28%
Moderate 33%
Liberal 37%

Also

>In addition to finding that four out of every five adults (78%) have been married at least once, the Barna study revealed that an even higher proportion of born again Christians (84%) tie the knot. That eclipses the proportion among people aligned with non-Christian faiths (74%) and among atheists and agnostics (65%).

OK I generally agree with this video, even if I don't entirely agree with the methods.

According to this very weak study from a biased source, families who practice Natural Family Planning have a 5% divorce rate [2], substantially lower than the typical rate even among Conservatives.

If you want to lower your chances of divorce, be an Asian Catholic who is also conservative and doesn't use contraception. Are Asian Catholics who don't use contraception the most influential demographic in America? No not really.

It's funny that Stefan strongly criticizes the demographic with the lowest divorce rate while also saying that libertarians should move towards being the population with a low divorce rate that forms strong families, while simultaneously encouraging people to join the demographic with the lowest marriage rate (by far) with a moderately high divorce rate.

I think that not spanking children is preferable. However, many families that do practice spanking lack the sophistication, IQ, and cultural cachet to otherwise raise their children. It's like commanding innately incapable people of being smart enough to have high paying jobs. "You really should not be dumb, you person who is not capable of being intelligent." It's a nice sentiment but the people who need to hear the message the most aren't going to be the ones capable of acting on it.

Libertarians or anarcho-capitalists don't need to be THE strongest faction in the world to thrive and survive according to sets of rules that make us happy. We just have to be strong ENOUGH. We don't have to be 100% unified on every single issue that's conceivable. We just have to be unified sufficiently to reach a threshold that makes independence feasible. A lot of hopelessness arrives from setting goals that are unrealistic or too high or deferred too far into the future.

You're not going to convince 220m Indonesians to stop spanking their children. It's also not entirely clear to me that spanking has the same effects across all cultures in all contexts. This book, 'Nurtureshock,' sold a lot of copies and raised a substantial debate about it. [3] Science is a complicated back-and-forth of debate and experimentation. It's incredibly hard to divine ironclad moral norms based on isolated studies that make a naive connection between spanking and IQ.

[1]https://www.barna.org/barna-update/article/15-familykids/42-new-marriage-and-divorce-statistics-released#.UgLq8pJJPXU
[2]http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/natural-family-planning-builds-a-culture-of-life/
[3]http://www.amazon.com/NurtureShock-New-Thinking-About-Children/dp/0446504130

As long as you put your desire and hope in the act of writing itself, as opposed to the desire of wanting to have written something, you will do well.

I would suggest a few pieces of light reading, a few pieces of heavy reading, and some listening for you too.

Light reading:

Stephen King's "On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft" This book is not meant as a book of lessons so much as the formula that assembled one writer. It's short, it's heartfelt, and it has some wisdom in it.

The Elements of Style, by Strunk and White. - This is a short book, it gives a good starter set of rules that we accept for communicating with one another in the English language.

Heavy Reading:

Hero with a Thousand Faces, by Joseph Campbell. - This is a short book but it is very thick with information and esoteric names from all cultures. Why is that? Because it deals with, very succinctly, the fundamental core of nearly all human storytelling, Campbell's "Monomyth" premise can inform you all the way from the Epic of Gilgamesh to Star Wars a New Hope

Writing Excuses This is a Podcast about writing by Brandon Sanderson, of "Mistborn," "Way of Kings," and "Wheel of Time" fame, Howard Taylor, the writer and artist of Schlock Mercenary, a webcomic that hasn't missed a day for a long while, Mary Robinette Kowol, a Puppeteer and Author of "Shades of Milk and Honey" and Dan Wells, from the "I am not a Serial Killer" series It has been going on for more than a decade, and nearly every episode is a wonderful bit of knowledge.

I've definitely done a lot of exploring; I am trans, after all. I buried my femininity under many layers of repression and denial, and couldn't properly embrace it until I learned to understand it in positive terms. For a long time I thought "if femininity is a social construction, then my desire for it must be artificial and flawed", and this way of thinking held me back from transition. Once I learned to view femininity as both natural and positive, I easily gravitated towards it.

You can certainly feel free to spread this way of visualizing gender tendencies, and I should also mention that I got this explanation from Whipping Girl, which is an excellent book that I highly recommend.

First, with your statement about the biological gender distinctions:

>So your statement "there are only two sexes because for time beyond time, humans have said there are only two sexes", could be true with gender, but is not true with our definition on sex.

I would debunk this, but it's been done better by trans women before me, an easy-to-digest and sited example of with can be found here.

The study you refer to in particular by Simon Baron-Cohen was actually the subject of some controversy. It was strongly panned in Cordelia Fine's Delusions of Gender a book about the bad science behind the neuroscience of sexual dimorphism. Simon Baron Cohen responded and they had a bit of a back and forth about it in The Psychologist from which I will pull this:

>This study departed from the best standards of methodology for this kind of work in a number of ways. One concern was that, since attention is very fluid in the first days of life, it is usual to present the two stimuli simultaneously. Baron-Cohen dismisses this on the grounds that stimulus order was counter-balanced. However, the published report refers only to stimulus order being “randomized”. There was a drop-out rate of about a third, and no information is provided to reassure that stimulus order was not a confounding variable. ... inadequate measures were made to blind the experimenter (who was also the first author) to the babies’ sex, so as to avoid experimenter-expectancy effects. (For example, the mobile might have been unintentionally moved more for boys.)

As for the Trond Diseth play test: I sat through a crummy documentary which was the only place I could find any indication of his discussion of the play test, which actually ended up being quite useful in understanding the task and immediately seeing issues. The toys are in gendered colors. Regardless of a baby's understanding of language, a baby whose toys are pink is probably going to quickly develop a "pink" preference. Furthermore, I cannot find a peer-reviewed publication by Dr. Diseth that addresses the this test. Please tell me if you can find it on his list of publications. One of his papers sites an actual study of a play test with the findings you attribute to Dr. Diseth. Authors of this study? First, second, third, fourth, AND final author? All female scientists, by the way. Their study is of CAH children 1-10. Still no support for the test being appropriate for infants, or the statement Dr. Diseth made in Hjernevask (the documentary which is the place where I assume you pull this claim "one study done by a Professor Trond Diseth, found differences between what toys boys and girls choose to play with at nine months of age"). This statement made by Dr. Diseth seems to only be referenced on MRA websites… curious.

You follow with "This is before children have developed a comprehension of speech (so the cultural gender influence is still very low)." I don't know where you pull this supposition parental that influence on sex-typed toy play behavior in infants is purely verbal. Infant behavior is affected by parental interaction from birth, verbal or not. This reinforces again my theory (equally as unsupported by evidence as yours is) that IF a sex-typed toy preference exists (which there is no evidence for) there is an equally viable explanation that toy preference is caused by the gendered toys already in the infant's possession.

Are you starting to see now that you can basically make up any explanation you want with the evidence that is currently available to us?

You say these differences, which may or may not exist but for which there is no empirical evidence, come from hormonal differences in pre-natal development, but provide no direct evidence of this link between pre-natal hormones and gender role behavior. Nor does anybody else. If you would like to provide a source for this statement, I would gladly review it because whoever is currently providing your sources lacks the ability to put things in context for you as a non-scientist.

It is true that we do not have all the information empirically about gender role behavior developmental differences. This means that the evidence we do have can be and is interpreted wildly. Throughout your response, you conflate "gender role behavior" and "gender identity," (amusingly you use sex and gender interchangeably until this post where you use this as the thing that makes your opponent wrong) mis-attribute and de-contextualize "studies," and make an incredible amount of completely and entirely unsupported statements. Yet you somehow feel comfortable in claiming that you have scientific evidence that states that feminist claims are "over the top." Your claims that somehow the unsupported preference of nine-month-old infants to play with dolls or action figures are different because of prenatal hormones can be generalized to "some gender stereotypes may come from nature and should not always be labelled sexist or harmful" is over the top. You're the one being silly here.

You sound like a really closeminded person who could benefit from a nice DMT dose. Or at least a good read maybe.

DMT: The Spirit Molecule: A Doctor's Revolutionary Research into the Biology of Near-Death and Mystical Experiences
by Rick Straussman, MD



>A clinical psychiatrist explores the effects of DMT, one of the most powerful psychedelics known.
>
>
>• A behind-the-scenes look at the cutting edge of psychedelic research.
>
>
>• Provides a unique scientific explanation for the phenomenon of alien abduction experiences.
>
>
>From 1990 to 1995 Dr. Rick Strassman conducted U.S. Government-approved and funded clinical research at the University of New Mexico in which he injected sixty volunteers with DMT, one of the most powerful psychedelics known. His detailed account of those sessions is an extraordinarily riveting inquiry into the nature of the human mind and the therapeutic potential of psychedelics. DMT, a plant-derived chemical found in the psychedelic Amazon brew, ayahuasca, is also manufactured by the human brain. In Strassman's volunteers, it consistently produced near-death and mystical experiences. Many reported convincing encounters with intelligent nonhuman presences, aliens, angels, and spirits. Nearly all felt that the sessions were among the most profound experiences of their lives.
>
>Strassman's research connects DMT with the pineal gland, considered by Hindus to be the site of the seventh chakra and by Rene Descartes to be the seat of the soul. DMT: The Spirit Molecule makes the bold case that DMT, naturally released by the pineal gland, facilitates the soul's movement in and out of the body and is an integral part of the birth and death experiences, as well as the highest states of meditation and even sexual transcendence. Strassman also believes that "alien abduction experiences" are brought on by accidental releases of DMT. If used wisely, DMT could trigger a period of remarkable progress in the scientific exploration of the most mystical regions of the human mind and soul."

> It ends there?

On our end? Yes, the whole plan is: be honest. Period. End plan.

From then on it's up to them, the Muslims. Can the peaceful minority of Muslims convince the violent majority to change? I hope they can, and historical evidence tell us that they will. Given time and proper transparency. People like Reza Aslan, instead of telling atheists to lie about Islam, should be telling Muslims to stop stoning gay people.

On Better Angels of our Nature, Steven Pinker thoroughly demonstrate that spread of information and reason are, by far, the greatest causes of the reduction of violence. So the best thing we can do to accelerate the process is: tell the truth, be honest, stop lying about it.

Great book, I highly recommend that you read it: http://www.amazon.com/The-Better-Angels-Our-Nature/dp/0143122010

Plenty of atheists feel spiritual. Watch this TED talk by atheist author Jonathan Haidt: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MYsx6WArKY (key point: the feelings are a part of human nature, and there are many ways to pursue and explore them, not all of them religious.)

I loved Haidt's book "The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion" too -- as a caveat, I'm not completely sold on the 'group selection' theory of evolution that he sounded somewhat sympathetic to in the book, but he's not a die-hard about it like E.O.Wilson either, and in a few places he seemed to mis-characterize some points by Richard Dawkins, but overall Haidt is an original thinker who has a different perspective on several issues than some more prominent atheist writers, and certainly a sensitivity to the key imporance of spirituality in humans.

You might also consider Sam Harris's book "Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion" which is mostly a how-to manual about how you might achieve the meditation techniques that he likes. His understanding of the word "spirituality" seems to be more Buddhist (nurturing and exploring the self, alleviating suffering) rather than groupish collective-feeling as Haidt uses the term, but it too was an interesting perspective.

Just finished reading a book on this, http://www.amazon.com/Righteous-Mind-Divided-Politics-Religion/dp/0307455777

In a nutshell, one of the things discussed is that when you look overall, there's 6 qualities people use when defining morality. Care, fairness, liberty, loyalty, authority, and sanctity.

When you look at a very narrow subset, like, say, progressives, you find that they only consider 3 of those important (and even then, primarily care). So much so that they don't comprehend that there could be any other values beyond that, and when experiments have been run, they simply don't know how to answer as if they're conservative. While moderates and conservatives can evaluate questions the way a liberal would pretty well.

Also does a really good job of looking at the biological motivations for this stuff.

First, here is a map of which states are most interested in incest porn. Arkansas, Kentucky and West Virginia don't surprise me, but Kansas and Alaska does surprise me. My wife from Alaska says it's because there are so many small towns that people don't have many options in partners, so then they think "hmmm, how about my cousin? They are looking good."

But on the further point of incest. I find it fascinating as a society when we try and create moral norms without agreeing to a guiding ethos that we all follow. Right now we are moving towards the "consenting adult" standard. If consenting adults want to do it, then why not? That is often the prevailing sentiment among liberals. Since we don't all share a holy book or something that lays out a moral code, then we have to grapple with our basic ideas of what is morally acceptable. For many of us incest will always be unthinkable. I have a cousin my age and I couldn't begin to imagine a relationship, even though first cousin marriage was not only acceptable but in many cultures encouraged to maintain family wealth. For me it is as taboo as eating a dead pet.

It is a fascinating discussion to be had, because there are so many diverse ideas on what should or shouldn't be accepted. There is a fascinating book that deals with this called The Righteous Mind. A Ted talk of his introduces these ideas and how they influence us.

tl;dr Great post, OP! Everyone, no matter what "side" you might or might not be on, check out Jonathan Haidt's work on moral foundations, either in his book The Righteous Mind, or via his websites or TED talks.

Not going to read all the comments; just skimmed over a selection. My thoughts? First, I really like what OP posted. I think his assessments of each side are relatively accurate, and I agree that (not only with this issue, but with any issue, whether it's political or not, whether it's a "moral issue" or not) it's always a good idea to understand what someone who disagrees with you believes, to understand how they view the situation, and to understand why they view it that way.

The primary hurdle, though, is that people generally do not arrive at positions on political issues (especially if they're seen as "moral issues") by a nice, sound, rational, logical process of starting with data and axioms and reasoning their way to a nice, sound conclusion. This fact is something that has driven me nuts for most of my 50 years. Fortunately, last year I read Jonathan Haidt's book The Righteous Mind. Read it. Seriuosly. Everyone on this subreddit, everyone who wants to discuss political issues, must read it. (Or, at the very least, watch Haidt's TED talks.) But the gist of his argument, as relevant to this post/this issue, goes like this:

• There is a set of "moral foundations" that we humans developed along the way, presumably via evolution and the societies we created as early humans. (Although there's nothing wrong with believing that we instead received those moral foundations from God or someone/thing similar.)
  
• These moral foundations don't work at the rational level; they work at the subconscious level, at the emotional level, at the "gut" level.
  
• Typically, we think we're using reason and logic and data to come to our political or other opinions. However, what we're really doing is deciding on the position based on our emotional/subconscious/"gut" set of moral foundations, and then afterwards using reason and logic (and careful selection of which data to include and which to ignore) to explain, ex post facto, why we came to that decision. (Haidt suggests that our emotional/subconscious/"gut" reasoning is like an elephant, and our reason is like one who is riding on the elephant, and pretending to guide and direct the elephant. In fact, the elephant goes where it damn well pleases, and so the rider is instead left to explain why the elephant turned left here or turned right there; the rider isn't in control of the elephant, the rider is essentially the elephant's PR representative.)
  
• There are 6 moral foundations. People who self-identify as "conservative" tend to rely on all six roughly equally: Care/harm, Fairness/cheating, Liberty/oppression, Loyalty/betrayal, Authority/subversion, and Sanctity/degradation. People who self-identify as "liberal", however, tend to rely only on the Care/harm, Liberty/oppression, and Fairness/cheating foundations.
  
• And just to confuse things, self-identified liberals and conservatives often see and use the Fairness/cheating moral foundation differently. For example, a liberal might say "It's not fair to make it difficult for wannabe immigrants from Latin America to enter the US legally, and it's not fair to persecute and prosecute them once they're here," while a conservative might say "It's not fair for illegal immigrants to sneak in to the US when so many others follow the law and do it legally."
  
  Anyhow. Not just on this issue, but on any issue, examining it from the point of view of the moral foundations is a very good way to understand those who disagree with you. If you want to learn more, go to either or both of Haidt's websites moralfoundations.org -- which talks about moral foundations theory -- and yourmorals.org -- which has a number of tests you can take to understand your own moral foundations.

Two great books on this very topic, but the short answer is you have the best chance to change someone's mind when they see you as someone "on their side" or in their group/tribe. If they perceive you as someone from the "opposition" then they will get defensive and no amount of convincing, facts, or persuasion is likely to have an impact on their point of view.

The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0052FF7YM/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003WEAI4E/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

Babies under 4 months have no set sleep pattern at all. Waking every 2-3 hours at night is perfectly normal. Hell, my son didn't even sleep through the night completely until like 18 months, I think. My daughter started doing it at 1 month, but I think it is because she pretty much didn't nap all day long. Every kid is totally different.

I highly suggest picking up Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child. It's a really great book and goes into detail about the sleep habits of kids at various ages, as well as how to get them on a set sleep routine. It was invaluable for my wife and I. 4 months is a good time to start sleep training.

Also, in case you're wondering where the thought process against this sort of MTX design of video games comes from; mine comes from "The Hero with a thousand faces"
https://www.amazon.com/Thousand-Faces-Collected-Joseph-Campbell/dp/1577315936

Actually, it comes from a knock off book that I read in college, but they're the same thing.
All video games are journeys. Those journeys have specific events and attributes that define themselves. Many MTX designs seek to undermine the narrative or value of a story for monetization. I'll give an example.

Let's say you're playing a game called "Jesus Christ lord and savior". This game goes over the journey of Jesus and you play Jesus. You're carrying your cross on your way to be crucified and a popup comes up. 2.99$ to increase progression and become god faster. 1.99$ for a loot box with cool Jesus swag. Don't forget to preorder the first DLC, Mormon expansion.

In the narrative of Jesus Christ those sort of MTX directly undermine the journey Jesus was on. We can no more separate the progression model of a game from the hero journey, than we can separate the single player campaign. By doing so we compromise the key elements of immersion and undermine the return value of the hero journey. The "sense of pride and accomplishment" we feel is normally in response to a well thought out journey. Cheapening the experience with counter narrative monetization undermines the core tenants of our species story telling and own personal journey.

Matt's comment about the White House, (paraphrasing) "people want the same end result but just have different ideas about how to get there" made me think of this book I just listened to.

It's not the easiest read in the world, but I really enjoyed it and learned a lot.

And of course, it fits very well with the NDQ attitude.

It's by Jonathan Haidt.

The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0307455777/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_NbC0DbWTAKPA9

Check it out and enjoy! And most importantly, share it with people who need to hear it.

>This doesn't make you not racist.

That's just semantics.

> And what are those racial differences?

Let's start with the obvious. Clearly, given the sheer size of the population, Chinese and Indians ought to dominate the Olympics 100m-dash. But they do not. Almost all of the medalists have come from descendants of West Africa. Interestingly, as of late, Jamaicans have outperformed African-Americans despite coming from poverty-stricken environment with inferior training infrastructure. Same story with long distance running and marathons, where East Africans have dominated. These people are at a severe environmental disadvantage, so the case for cultural difference doesn't make sense in this case. So what is the reason? Well, a gene called ACTN3 - sometimes called a "sprint gene" - which is expressed primarily in fast-twich muscle fibers, were found in high frequency among the West-Africans. So, more ACTN3 genes you have, the more likely you will run faster in short distance. On the other hand, slow-twitch fibers aid you in endurance sports - such as distance running - and East Africans tend to have more of them than fast-twich fibers.

If you are interested, have a look at "The Sports Gene" by David Epstein, where he goes into depth on this topic.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Sports-Gene-Extraordinary-Performance/dp/161723012X

The science is already pretty clear on this issue : There are meaningful, statistically significant differences between varying ethnic/racial groups. And this is common sense, if you think about it. The reason Japanese are shorter on average than Dinka people of Sudan is not because they are more poor and nutritionally deficient.

So, the burden is on you to explain to me why there can't be any differences in terms of mental capacity or personality traits between races - of which there are some scientific evidence, although not as conclusive - when there are clear differences regarding physical makeup and ability. If you take animals of the same species and let them evolve in separate environments for centuries, exposed to varying degrees and kinds of selection pressure, they will show significant differences in physical strength and temperaments. Why shouldn't the same law of nature apply to human beings? Not all scientific facts are in favor of liberal/leftist ideology. Just as right-wingers are in denial about climate change, liberals have their fair share when it comes to scientific blind spot.

>I don't think it's so much that the west are the only ones who have done it. It's that the west has done it to far greater effect and has done far greater damage with it than anyone else. And sure, I'll bet if Southeast Asia was in a position to colonize Europe, they would have. I don't see why that should matter, though.

>You're not supposed to "feel sorry" for Southeast Asia as though the region itself has feelings. Individual people were harmed by colonialism, and are still by its lingering effects.

That's just sheer display of ignorance.

You can easily make a case that Mongol Invasion of Europe and other continents in 13th century were more devastating in terms of the number of people died as a proportion of the world population at that time. Do you also feel sorry for all the casualty deaths incurred by Muslim invasion of the West that happened throughout Middle Ages and up until 19th century by the Ottoman Empire? If you do not, you have very partial understanding and biased view of world history.

Yes, the West has done some damage to the world in recent times. At the same time, a lot of great modern scientific breakthroughs and technological innovation of the Western civilization have brought about unprecedented amounts of wealth to this world. People are living longer than ever due to advances in medicine, and we are living in one of the most safest, peaceful, prosperous, and most egalitarian (with regards to human rights) time period than ever before.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Better-Angels-Our-Nature/dp/0143122010

Well as far as the humor, I think this is part of the answer:

http://research.vtc.vt.edu/news/2014/oct/29/liberal-or-conservative-brain-responses-disgusting/

Basically you have the establishment comedy set who tells jokes like The Aristocrats (extreme example, but relevant). These are late night comedy hosts and if you look at the above research and listen to this highly NSFW joke, you'll get the disconnect.

I also recommend The Righteous Mind as a component of the answer, which is part of but expands on the 'disgust' angle. It's an excellent bit of research and Jon Haidt is worth listening to. He's got Ted Talks, etc.

• The Eight Characters of Comedy: A Guide to Sitcom Acting and Writing by Scott Sedita
  
• As I said, I read it but wouldn't put it on my recommend list. I think it's more applicable to actors in a Sitcom than as a writing tool.
  
  
  
• Into The Woods by John Yorke
  
• I pointed out how it wasn't for me, because it is a focus on Five Acts, while American Television's acts are decided by the number of commercial breaks.
  
  
• Story by Robert McGee
  
• It's recommended so often that it doesn't make sense on my list. My list is normally a comment on other's posts asking for book suggestions. I assume someone will reference this book.
  
  
• The Hero with a Thousand Faces (The Collected Works of Joseph Campbell) by Joseph Campbell
  
• I didn't say anything about the book. Just my belief in the protomyth. I say later in the thread that ultimately reading anything will help you, as long as it doesn't distract you from writing.
  
  
  ------
  
  I don't find my list derivative and pedantic. But you're very well entitled to your thoughts.

I'm not sure of all the things this person believes, obviously, but there is a certain level of credibility to this post. An interesting read, based on documented science experiments and the pineal gland could be found here: DMT: The Spirit Molecule. It is very well done and very neutral in its balance. Worth a read.

Again, not saying that all that glimmers is gold, but that dismissing all of this without a second thought could be a mistake. The advice about having positive friends, eating healthy, exercising, and generally being a well balanced person is certainly sound advice for anyone.

The fluoride thing, however, I've never been sure on. I know that at higher levels fluoride can be dangerous, but I'm not sure what levels those are versus the levels of fluoride in our drinking water.

Well, if you can sink as much time into Wikipedia as I can, that's a good start. And don't skip the references and links at the bottom; that's 90% of the fun!

There are a lot of good, popular-audience books on these topics. I don't know any about BCI in particular, but check out The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat (and other stuff by Oliver Sacks) and Phantoms in the Brain. Those are the ones we read in COGS 1 and they're great. Right now I'm reading Jonah Lehrer's Proust Was a Neuroscientist; How We Decide was also good. Also, don't shy away from academic literature. It's not really so hard to read if you're interested.

Are you or could you be in college? Check my advice here. If you at least live near a college, sit in on some classes. Write to a professor and see if there's lab work to do, maybe as a volunteer. That could get your foot in the door.

That's a difficult question for me to answer. Someone working in career placement (or whatever it's called - someone who helps you chose a career) could probably give you a better general answer.

In terms of games, you could try playing OpenTTD (Open Transport Tycoon Deluxe) or Cities in Motion 2 (the game Colossal Order made before Cities: Skylines). Both have a much stronger transportation focus, with a good deal more micromanagement and therefore a steeper learning curve, and are a notch closer to what I do IRL. If you can play either/both for days without getting bored, you might want to be a traffic engineer.

If you'd rather read, you could get Traffic: Why we drive the way we do. I think it's a good read for anyone who lives on a street. If you read that and think "I wish this was 10 times longer and also my life", you might want to be a traffic engineer.

If you want to dive into some more technical stuff, wikipedia has some good articles, e.g. on the Braess paradox (the math is interesting, but you can probably skip over it since it's pretty high-level, abstract stuff). If you get to the bottom of that and start clicking all the "See also" links, you might want to be a traffic engineer.

If you have any other questions, don't hesitate to ask :)

Yes, I listened to the podcast. It was good albeit, as Chris said, a bit harrowing.

The best book I have read on the psychology piece is Don't Even Think About It: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Ignore Climate Change. I highly recommend it. Fascinating and devastating in equal measure.

It's also definitely worth reading The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion as a backgrounder on moral psychology.

After reading these, I found that my sense of humans as uniquely rational and intelligent was pretty much entirely put to one side... Now I rather see us as apes with technology and pretensions of greatness...

I think that the problem with non-monogamy is not just the act itself, but principally the effect of dishonesty with one's partner. Being transparent about what and why one holds a specific diet and acknowledging its effects addresses a similar, if more minor, concern.

When Peter Singer talks about the "Paris exception", he isn't describing an epicurean whim as a moral good, but rather arguing that the moral criticism should be grounded not in a purity principal but with respect to animal welfare. In the same way, there is a puritanical ethical argument against non-monogamy that while nearly (but not entirely) universal, is less cogent than a critique of the likelihood of an affair impairing one's family's happiness.

Ethical feelings are grounded in evolutionary traits, the purity principle is grounded in taboos around what is healthy. Jonathan Haidt, author of The Righteous Mind acknowledges that vegans have a similar response to eating animals, as many conservatives to do homosexuality or Orthodox Jews do to eating pigs. While this purity principle isn't necessarily wrong, grounding ones ethics in Utilitarianism and animal welfare allows veganism to have a much more universal ethical appeal.

I personally would argue a different logic. But that isn’t to say your direction is wrong. In the end I believe we’d have the same understanding, but using different syntax. It also seems you’re really centered around duality where there’s a perfection and it’s anthesis. Where the archetypes are more of a spectrum. But again, to me, both are trying to explain the same phenomena. It all just depends on how you shape the argument.

Have you read “King Warrior Magician Loved”? Which directly dives into the spectrum of each archetype? That might help to see where your idea of forms fit in. (Amazon link at end)

Fun fact: did you know Plato’s forms might have been an inhibiting reason why it took so long for science to discover evolution?

King, Warrior, Magician, Lover: Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine https://www.amazon.com/dp/0062506064/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_ZeIIDbF5DA2J8

I don't know. I think certain parts of a society need to be pulled into modern ethical norms.

I know this is anti-libertarian but I think the state needs to implement certain laws to help society behave more ethically.

I say this based on the data found in Steven Pinker's book Enlightenment Now. I highly recommend it and he does a far superior job articulating the importance of the state.

I don't want this to expand into a slippery slope argument. I think there need to be strong limits on government power.

Edit: Added Link

lets see...

• Bill Byrson's The Mother Tongue
  
• Korea, old and new: A history
  
• Sandman Slim
  
• Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software
  
• How to Win Friends & Influence People
  
• The Design of Everyday Things
  
• The Hero with a Thousand Faces
  
  I've been interested in the development of the english language, and I like Bryson's writing style. I met someone from Korea, and as per my usual habit, when I meet someone out of country I try to learn some of their native history, thus the history book. I like urban fantasy, so Sandman slim looked interesting. I'm a CompE major, so code and The design of everyday things is relevant to me. The others are just things that have been recommended to me.
  
  I think I might get get through half of them at most, especially since I also have a Steam library calling me like the whore it is. This is the first year I have access to a large university library during break, so I'm going to take advantage of it.l

It depends on what types of things you're interested in!

Over time, you'll come to know certain people who research in different areas and you can go to their personal webpages and access their Curriculum Vitae. Through that, you can find all the work they've done and many times they link to PDF copies of their papers.

But psychology is a very broad field. Here are some suggestions I can come up with:

For dealings with moral political psychology (the psychology of how people on the right and people on the left feel about moral decisions - includes religions and other aspects to our deeply-rooted conceptions of 'self'), see Jonathan Haidt - He just wrote a new book called The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion

For dealings with the extent and limits of human rationality, I'd suggest Daniel Kahneman. He also just wrote a new book called Thinking Fast and Slow.

Stuffisnice suggested William James. James' Principles of Psychology is remarkable and very fun to read. It's quite dated both in science and in language, but his writing is impeccable.


In fact, James didn't just do psychology. He did philosophy as well. His later philosophy was at odds with the picture provided by most mainstream psychology that takes the brain as the source of our mental experience. These philosophical aspects have recently been brought into the empirical realm in the branch of Ecological psychology. This is my personal preference for psychology reading as I feel it is much more willing to ask harder questions than traditional psychology; it is willing to do away with assumptions and premises that are generally taken for granted.

This ecological framework deals more with perception and the role of the animal's action in perception. Instead of the traditional way of looking at perception (cells react to stimuli in the environment, feed this encoded stimuli into the brain, the brain processes things and makes sense of them, recreating a picture of the world through its activity, and finally sending out directions to the body to move), the ecological perspective focuses more on how the animal perceives the world directly and does not require internal processing to make sense of the world. It's much cleaner and much simpler. The brain is still crucial for the lived experience, but it is not the whole story.

For readings in ecological psychology, I would recommend Ed Reed's Encountering the World and Eleanor Gibson's An Ecological Approach to Perceptual Learning and Development.

After you get your bearings, then you can get into some really deep stuff that tries to synthesize biology, psychology, and the essence of human/animal experience (phenomenology). For that, Evan Thompson is my go to guy. His work is heavily philosophical and is sometimes overly dense, but you may find it interesting.

PM me if you have any questions!

Wow, that was epic. I can see how it got to the end, there, as thought it was typed all in one breath. Visually, in my head, you had turned totally "blue" by the last sentence!

Just to be clear, I am not saying that mushrooms or LSD or whatever imbue some sort of salvation, forgiveness, or justification. What I am saying is, however, that "underneath" our everyday "objective, deterministic, relativistic" (if I'm reading you right) realities, there lies an alternate reality of experience which is seemingly not based on these pillars of thought. And that's my point. Even taken subjectively, in a rigorously scientific laboratory setting, one has to acknowledge a simple fact: Subjects A, B, and C, ad infinitum, returned from a carefully monitored psychedelic experience with similar reports.

And that tells us something. Objectively. Rationally. This actually is empirically researched (check out Richard Strassman's work, for instance.

In other words, I think that much of this discussion (that's what I'm striving for, man) hinges on this: At some point, examined as data, experiences, taken as a whole, becomes objective. I contend that this world can, with the right approach and mindset, be explored objectively, scientifically, and rationally. On this level, the "information" gleaned in this approach must be either integrated in some fashion, or ultimately discarded—but, as such, it cannot be discarded merely for being unscientific.

I hope I'm not insulting you if I read from what you're saying that it seems very important to you to approach these experiences in this way.

I would argue that consensus does not define consciousness. It is important to recognize and actively acknowledge that consciousness as we know it is not universally uniform. For instance, for me, on DMT, I experienced a profoundly sexual trip, whereas a different friend of mine was literally zoomed, "spatially", to the edge of the universe and back. We are all different.

I assure you that fact grates on me as much as it may you. :D

It often seems to me that, in the Western mindset, until something is discovered or proven, it does not exist. Did X-rays exist before they were discovered? A stupid question. If someone developed cancer from exposure to X-rays, would that be a subjective experience?

The psychedelic trip is in fact the opposite of a "synthesis of known concepts or a rearrangement of current knowledge," as you say here. It is called that because, seemingly to the mind (I have to acknowledge that), it seems to impart new wisdom from elsewhere, outside of the self.

It seems as though you view the psychedelic experience as a mosquito in your tent (I apologize if that sounds like I'm "declaring" something—I don't know you, so don't let me put words in your mouth, here!). But the psychedelic experience is an integral and daily part of the human experience. During sleep, for instance, the brain's pineal gland excretes large amounts of DMT. And the pineal gland is actually one of the strangest (and least studied) glands in the body. For instance, it is the only part of the brain that is protected by the "blood/brain barrier" that is not actually part of the brain. During gestation, the gland develops from specialized tissues in the roof of the fetal mouth and, at seven weeks, 'ascends' to its seat at the base of the brain. In fact, one could say that the pineal sits at the "throne" of the brain: No other gland is better situated for more direct access to the spinal column and cerebro-spinal fluids. So I'd ask: From, a purely evolutionary standpoint... why?

Anyway, I hear what you are saying. And yes, we agree in that, actually, we both rail against the masturbatory, mystical bullshit. That does not, however, automatically eliminate mystic experiences, mysticism, or, thank God, masturbation. :D

Good question that needs several books to answer. As /u/Soycrates points out in a different comment, there is an important distinction between activism and advocacy. I have only ever tried activism once and it went really poorly. I now advocate on reddit and that's the extent to which I do anything. I do not believe that I can be an effective activist until I am able to give a better answer to your question.

I can share two things that have helped me to advocate, though. They are PETA's guide to effective advocacy and this quote:

>A long time environmentalist was speaking to an enthusiastic group of young environmentalists at a rally. He warned of the precarious situation the environment was in, the toll that corporate greed had taken on forests, and the dire consequences that lay ahead if serious changes were not made.

>He then shouted out to the crowd, “Are you ready to get out there and fight for the environment?”

>To which they answered an enthusiastic, “Yeah!”

>“Are you ready to get arrested and go to jail for the environment?”

>“Yeah!!”

>“Are you ready to give your life for the environment?”

>“Yeah!!!”

>“Are you willing to cut your hair and put on a suit for the environment?”

>The crowd fell silent.

>Whether this is a true story or a colorful fable, the lesson is one we should all take to heart.

Hey dude! Glad to see you're interested. DMT is a very mysterious psychedelic. Not much is known about it but I'll provide some cool links for you to check out!

DMT Nexus - If DMT had a website for itself, this would be it. Personally, I love to read trip reports here!

[DMT: The Spirit Molecule: A Doctor's Revolutionary Research into the Biology of Near-Death and Mystical Experiences](DMT: The Spirit Molecule: A Doctor's Revolutionary Research into the Biology of Near-Death and Mystical Experiences https://www.amazon.com/dp/0892819278/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_hpoIyb8R265WS) - A book by Rick Strassman that I highly recommend.

Yes, they have more power than their seats suggest, I agree with that, but the monumental chance of having this backfire when voters are told you are the problem because of sabotaging the big party (and can be blamed for the shortcomings of the coalition) is a risk that has to be considered low enough to make it worthwhile. Because, then not only, will the current voters believe the bigger party did their best, but will have an easy scapegoat to blame all the problems on (even if it wouldn't be true, people go through amazing lengths to find "explanations" after the fact, I recommend The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt that shows this phenomenon).

Besides that, NVA avoids controversy (as best as possible), Forza happily provokes it (and seemingly acts incredulous afterwards). A coalition between the two would mean NVA would have to defend itself against the controversy created by Forza. Even if Forza does this accidentally, NVA isn't exactly prepared to deal with it judging by how De Wever has responded to Forza's controversies, which I can understand and is their right.

If you find the video interesting, I highly recommend the book on the same subject. I'm reading it right now, and if offers a pretty good case (so far) that we should be optimistic about the future, largely by showing that humanity and life has been consistently getting better throughout history so far. We have a natural tendency to assume the past was better than it really was.

I'm reading a really interesting book right now that talks about the origins of morality, and how they likely have come about because to flourish we need to be a society, and to be a society, we need to think about the greater good.

I know that probably wouldn't go over well with some religious folks, but I'd take it back WAY past prehistory (which some religious folks might also find objectionable), and talk about early man working in groups.

I really enjoy trying to come up with a reasonable and rational argument that at the same time isn't offensive. It's a unique challenge, but I find the results pretty beneficial for my own thought.

Edit: Dur, the name of the book is The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion

"Brain Rules for Babies" by John Medina may be of interest to you. I haven't read "Expecting Better," but based on the blurb it seems the two books have similar goals: providing peer-reviewed information and avoiding the propagation of myths.


At the beginning of my pregnancy, I worried I wasn't doing enough to optimize fetal development. There's so much information to be found on pregnancy and child care, I kept wondering, "Which advice should I follow? What helps and what hinders?" It was overwhelming! I'm a FTM, and I've never been around babies, so I was clueless. The pregnancy chapter in "Brain Rules" really simplified it for me: take care of yourself physically and mentally and let the fetus do it's thing. The book continues to cover relationships, brain development, emotional development, and moral development with similar clarity.


I have a few other books such as "What to Expect the First Year" but I just keep them around for reference, haven't actually read all the way through them. Other books I've considered buying are "Mind in the Making" and "NurtureShock."

Read the newly released "Testosterone Rex: Myths of Sex, Science, and Society" by Dr. Cordelia Fine for an introduction to this topic. It's very entertaining and easy to read, and also very informative - about the last 50 pages are notes and citations of the studies she mentions that you can investigate further if you wish.

>“Goodbye, beliefs in sex differences disguised as evolutionary facts. Welcome the dragon slayer: Cordelia Fine wittily but meticulously lays bare the irrational arguments that we use to justify gender politics.”―Uta Frith, emeritus professor of cognitive development, University College London

>Many people believe that, at its core, biological sex is a fundamental, diverging force in human development. According to this overly familiar story, differences between the sexes are shaped by past evolutionary pressures?women are more cautious and parenting-focused, while men seek status to attract more mates. In each succeeding generation, sex hormones and male and female brains are thought to continue to reinforce these unbreachable distinctions, making for entrenched inequalities in modern society.

>In Testosterone Rex, psychologist Cordelia Fine wittily explains why past and present sex roles are only serving suggestions for the future, revealing a much more dynamic situation through an entertaining and well-documented exploration of the latest research that draws on evolutionary science, psychology, neuroscience, endocrinology, and philosophy. She uses stories from daily life, scientific research, and common sense to break through the din of cultural assumptions. Testosterone, for instance, is not the potent hormonal essence of masculinity; the presumed, built-in preferences of each sex, from toys to financial risk taking, are turned on their heads.

>Moving beyond the old “nature versus nurture” debates, Testosterone Rex disproves ingrained myths and calls for a more equal society based on both sexes’ full, human potential.

Her previous book "Delusions of Gender" is also quite good.

Babies are resilient. Don't get too worked up on making sure everything is perfect. When your baby is an infant, make sure you are taking care of yourselves; a frazzled, sleep-deprived parent isn't what your baby need.

As your child grows, don't over-protect them and don't do for them what they can do for themselves. Sure they'll get a few bumps along the way but they will grow into a much more confident and secure person.

DO NOT, I repeat, do not read the book "What to Expect in Your First Year". We got that one, as well as "What to Expect When You're Expecting" as gifts. They should be called: "What Are All The Extremely Unlikely, Horrible Things That Could Possibly Go Wrong"

On the other hand, I highly recommend: NurtureShock. It is not specifically about infants but it does have a chapter that discusses the latest research on the downside of the "Baby Einstein" type videos. Also, it is full of advice for every stage of development from baby through adolescence. Sure wish I had it 10 years ago.

You have to read (or at least look up) this book https://www.amazon.com/Righteous-Mind-Divided-Politics-Religion/dp/0307455777 If you haven't used the audible free trial I recommend the audio book. It's read by the author

There's also this interview with the author. FANTASTIC http://billmoyers.com/segment/jonathan-haidt-explains-our-contentious-culture/

I recommend it all over Reddit every chance I get. It explains everything you're talking about here, but from a scientific standpoint. It's also really extremely enlightening. I just know you'll love it.

> Crazy to see how many people arent interested in watching a 42 minute video where someone disproves allegations on them, but would happy read and believe short twitter posts with cherrypicked evidence.

Yeah, this is one of the big points of the book I'm reading right now: The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion.

Here's a relevant quote from the book:

>“Reasoning can take us to almost any conclusion we want to reach because we ask “can I believe it” when we want to believe something, but “must I believe it” when we don’t want to believe. The answer is almost always “yes” to the first question, and “no” to the second.”

I've still got a few chapters to go, but the overarching theme seems to be that we, as humans, operate primarily on implicit associations/preferences/biases, which we are mostly unaware of. We then use reasoning to justify our automatic reactions to various stimuli.

Did you catch that? The book suggests that, in general, our reasoning is not responsible for our positions on various subjects, such as moral beliefs. Our reasoning is a post-hoc justification for the subconscious and automatic reactions that we have to those things. Chew on that for awhile.

Bonus: Extreme partisanship may, literally, be addictive (you get a dopamine hit when a member of the opposing party is found to be a hypocrite, for example).

Well this is a very dear topic to me, as schizophrenia has completely shaped my life. My dad was diagnosed paranoid shizophrenic when I was very young and my relationship with him was mostly via periodic long distance phone calls. His story is basically the same as A Beautiful Mind, just a different Ivy League school. Most of my life has been consumed by the fear that one day my brain would turn on me, feeling like a ticking time bomb that could go off any moment, particularly when I smoked a lot of THC I went to very bad places in my head and could literally see the line, if not crossing it for moments.

Having vomited all that out, a few questions:

• One of the major issues with paranoid schizophrenia is that taking pills from doctors (who may or may not be double secret government agents) is a major fear inherent in the delusion, so the medication often isn't taken. Do you think family members should be given more authority in these situations and the person suffering needs to have their rights to refuse treatment overrided?
  
  
• When I heard Joe Rogan talk about DMT, and subsequently read the book by Dr. Rick Strassman it, to me, completely explained schizophrenia. If this endogenous chemical is indeed what causes dreams as the evidence seems to point to, then blurring that line makes a lot more sense. Have you read up on DMT and do you think with focused studies it could lead to a cure?
  
  In the book, Dr. Strassman explains studies were making headway in the 60's before a ban on all hallucinogenics shut down the research, even though it occurs naturally in the human body.
  
  I like to think of it as like a valve to the dream world, if you do too many hallucinogens, or simply have shortages of regulatory brain chemicals to keep the DMT under control, I feel this is the most logical explanation. For example, when your brain releases it while you are asleep, your mind and body are prepared so this is normal... but if that same chemical was leaking into your mind while you're awake, couldn't that explain the hallucinations occuring and how they seem so real?
  
  NOTE: I know virtually nothing about chemistry, brain chemistry, biology, psychology or anything, so I'm sure some of this stuff can be easily dismissed, these are just the best explanations I've been able to come up with in my own research. Would love to hear from someone more knowledgable from a science perspective as well.
  
  

i love that story he/she made, and have read almost all of the source material he/she cited! I liked the fact that the story was almost entirely free of speculation of society/culture (beyond augmented employers wanting augmented employees). By sticking to the philosophical quandary itself, it was very believable and understandable as a "how we get there" story. To know more about human "consciousness" and what we call free will, I'd suggest reading Incognito, by David Eagleman.

Another quote about the singularity I enjoy is by Justin B. Rye:

>"As I see it, the main problem in designing a plausible 23rd century these days isn't lack of grandeur, it's the imminence of changes so fundamental and unpredictable they're likely to make the dramas of 2298 as unintelligible to us as the Microsoft Anti-Trust Suit would be to Joan of Arc."

And just to keep away the near-religious fervor that begins to brew up inside of my optimistic brain, i tend to either imagine scenarios of how the Singularity could be a bad thing (I love drawing and writing), and watch Bruce Sterling's "Your Future as a Black Hole".

Remember to keep your cautiously optimistic wits about you on this subject!