Saturday 26 December 2015

"The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum - even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate." - Noam Chomsky.

For Example: you are allowed to debate how much government we should have, and what kind of government that should be.... but the idea that no government should exist is never given any serious consideration in the mainstream.

Friday 6 November 2015

Concrete-Bound

A realisation from Ayn Rand which has really helped me understand the psychology of others is the concept of being "concrete-bound" which took me a while to understand. When I would debate with my dad for example, he would often say things like "well there are very well researched people, as intelligent as you are, who disagree with you" - or (my favourite) "if you ask 100 people the vast majority would disagree" ; not realising these were not actually arguments - never mind valid or sound.

When I would make as obvious reductio ad absurdum like "Well if you asked 100 people if the world was flat in 1066 ..." he would say things like "I don't like your analogies..." as though my example had nothing whatsoever to do with what he said. Ayn Rand helped me realise he was "concrete-bound" he didn't know how to move from a specific example such as "if you ask 100 people they will disagree with you (on this issue)" to the underlying principle of the assertion (the truth is what the majority says it is.) Have you any experiences of interacting with the "concrete-bound" ?

I have found a method of intervening in a way that helps explain the leap but it requires a bit more patience.

You have to first make explicit the principle, "are you saying that if most people believe something then that something is true?" - Wait for them to respond. They are unlikely to say yes, if they say "no - but..." listen to what they have to say and then respond, "But you accept that just because the majority of people say something is true that doesn't mean it is true?" and proceed in the same fashion without hostility so avoid provoking defensiveness.

In other words: don't skip steps in your reasoning, and don't use hidden premises. Take people through the argument stage by stage.

Afterwards you can explain the concept of the particular logical fallacy

Monday 26 October 2015

Why Government is Antithetical to Freedom

"When two people meet in a political discussion, regardless of the political affiliations, there are bound to be a number of issues that they agree on. For example, a socialist and a free-marketeer - despite having completely different opinions on how an economy should be run - are likely to agree on a dearth of issues including ending foreign military interventions, the war on drugs, reducing government surveillance into the private lives of citizens, and ending corporate welfare from the government to rich business issues. Nevertheless, under the political system which most people favour - parliamentary democracy of some description - both are almost completely powerless to fight back against these (real or perceived injustices) because they have to simply accept one of the "package deals" of policies offered by one of the parties that can win. If none of those parties offer the option of ceasing to sink state funds into nuclear weapons, for example, these supposed political enemies alike will both be forced to pay for them through the tax system - regardless of their personal values. It is the power to divest which is the real basis of political freedom. The power to say "no, I don't believe in this, I don't want to pay for it, and so I am going to spend my money elsewhere." That is the freedom that the non-state sectors of society (be they businesses, charities, cooperatives or other non-government organisations) offer, but the state does not, and fundamentally why the state is antithetical to freedom." - Antony Sammeroff

 I think if you use this argument when you get into political debates with statists, "even where we both agree - and there is lots of common ground - we are still powerless to make change under the system you support, which is parliamentary democracy" - the penny might drop.

It looks like this: "Both you and I agree on lots of issues, for example against the wars, against the war on drugs, against corporate welfare. But under the system you support, we are relatively powerless to change it because even if we vote - we can only vote for the package deals of party x or party y - if those issues are off the cards on both platforms, we will still have to pay for it whether we like it or not through the tax system - even if one is one platform, another one is not likely to be on the other platform. "

Saturday 24 October 2015

Get in Touch with your Heroes.... Now!!!

Really sorry to hear that my friend and colleague Peter Gerlach passed away at 77. I had the pleasure of interviewing him 4 times for YouTube, sadly one of the interviews did not record and was lost forever, but I was told that our last one included 'a lifetime of takeaways.' I was looking forwards to collaborating more when I finished my current projects... Silly me for waiting. His wisdom lives on in his work. I honour you Pete thank you for all you taught me. funnily enough look at my facebook status from the 12th of October: Hey if you like or admire someones work or writing or whatever they do you should send them an email before they croak. I have exchanged emails with most of the people who really influenced my thinking that were alive during my lifetime. Alfie Kohn, Warren Farrell, Stefan Molyneux, Pete Gerlach.... Nathaniel Branden, another hero, died December of last year - I had never bothered to even try emailing him. Marshall Rosenberg died this year. For ages I wanted to tell sci-fi author Brian Aldiss what I thought of his writing, and how much I loved his ability to build rich worlds - even just for one short story or a novel. He is 90 now! I finally emailed him today, almost 10 years after the thought of wanting to tell him first crossed my mind. Perhaps he is too busy to reply but at least I put it out there, we'll see. Get emailing your heroes they might croak like Nathaniel Branden and Marshall Rosenberg. Talk about timing!

Monday 19 October 2015

marriage

you know, my whole life I have taken it for granted that if I got married I would take the ladies name as well as her taking mine. So much so that the first time I realised it was when I mentioned a scenario that it was a feature of in passing to a flatmate around 6 years ago and rather than comment on the scenario he remarked that it was "very modern" of me to add a girls last name before my own. Isn't it weird? I never even regarded it as a thing, even although I knew that most people don't do that. Only problem is that if the tradition continues my descendants will have a massive long list of names.

Friday 16 October 2015

Friday 9 October 2015

Tax codes

Apparently Americans spend 6.1 billion a year complying with US tax codes. Wouldn't it be nice if they just replaced the 67,000 pages of tax regulations with the FAIR Tax and everyone could go out volunteering, spending the afternoon with their family, or making something that other people want for some extra cash?

Tuesday 6 October 2015

Posts on Education



I would not say that our society is one for bringing out the excellence in people
our education system for example only really focusses on learning things and writing them out again in exams
besides reading, writing and arithmetic (and memorisation) it does not teach people many skills
it is also very authoritarian and does not foster independent thought, initiative or critical thinking
so what we are really seeing when we look at humans are humans with one hand tied behind their back
I am all for education but a different kind of education that edifies people and helps them feel confident in taking on challenges and learning from mistakes (I was a piano tutor for 8 years or so and I have also been a classroom assistant)
then we will see a different kind of human being
in this day and age memorisation is really not a very important skill, because you can get all the info you need at the click of a mouse. People need skills if they want to live independent and self-responsible lives, if they want to have options instead of having to take what they can get (be it from employers, or the state.)


Higher Education is so screwed up right now that the stuff that should be considered a worthy hobby is seen as vocational; and the stuff that is actually vocational is considered to be an unworthy hobby! C'mon people we can do better in the 21st century lets teach about the Socratic question: how is a good life lived?


Monday 5 October 2015

"Work and love; love and work... that's all there is." - Freud

I think Freud was right when he said "Work and love; love and work... that's all there is." People obsess about sex, money and power, but none of those come close to either being occupied in fulfilling work or in the love of others - because those three things are all means to an ends, whereas fulfilling work and love are processes which are their own ends.

Sunday 4 October 2015

A Blessed Life

I live a blessed life. Sometimes I get down but not because anything is objectively

wrong with my life, it's just my own negativity and unprocessed shit. And whenever I go

a level up and see through my own bs I am just thankful to be alive. I live a life of

service and get to make a living helping others heal and grow. I'm immensely

intelligent, a good communicator, great writer and speaker, musical, and have cultivated

many talents. What more could you want? I love my life!

Monday 28 September 2015

Worst Justification for Circumcision

If anyone thinks it's ok to circumcise a child because they're too young to be self-aware and they won't remember it anyway, then you should be aware that that's exactly the pretext people used to give themselves for pederasty. It's time to stop this nonsense it's the 21st century people.

Sunday 27 September 2015

the value of therapy



In the unconscious = ruining your life. In the conscious = unlocking your gifts.

Thursday 24 September 2015

I was born

I was born with the umbilical chord wrapped around my neck. If I had died when I was born then I wouldn't have had this fucking amazing weird, terrifying, exhilarating, frustrating, educational, unspeakable, paradoxical life. So I am grateful to be alive. Thank you.

Sunday 6 September 2015

Confirmation Bias

Idiots can convince themselves that they are extremely smart and well informed by reading erudite people who agree with their already existing views.

Thursday 2 April 2015

Capitalism an inherently Statist system?

It has been alleged by persons on the left that capitalism is an inherently statist system. That there has never existed any kind of stateless capitalism or "free market" in any real sense, and that therefore 'to contrast the state with "the market" is just silly.' That under capitalism, statism and the market economy are just two facets of the same hierarchical, totalising system of class rule.

I have heard those propositions put forwards before and I would urge you to reconsider: are the actually - or necessarily - true?

Firstly, I agree that "there are not free markets," but to say there never existed any kind of stateless capitalism or "free market" in any real sense is of no substance really. There had, perhaps, once never been a slave-free statist society, or one where women had the same rights and responsibilities under the law, or one that was not feudal, or a monarchy. So what? Society is a garden where we reap what we sow.

What is silly is not to contrast the state with "the market" but define the free market and the complete opposite of the free market capitalism at the same time! I point, naturally, to corporate welfare, legislations that offer preferential treatment to one service provider over another, subsidisation of domestic producers or protectionist tariffs – all interventions in the market that are not based on the market forces of supply and demand. The state is responsible for almost 50% of the spending in the economy in the UK, and 19% of the population is employed in the public sector. The state controls the money supply, sets the interest rates, and is responsible for regulating each and every facet of the economy from the provision of energy, to the conditions under which someone can employ another person. The state runs the schools, and a great deal of the hospitals. It decides when a road is to be built, and when we are to build a railway. It hands subsidies to tobacco farmers, then taxes the tobacco we smoke. It hands welfare to the wealthy in the form of contracts and preferential legislation, and to the poor in the form of entitlements, free services and food stamps.

The state does not exist because of capitalism, but because the state exists then capitalists are going to exploit it - it would be irrational for them not to do so if it provided more value than serving their customers, just as it would be irrational not to claim housing benefit if you were eligible - but to define the free market (the voluntary exchange of goods and services) and the complete opposite of the free market (state interference in the market) is simply rhetorical sophistry.

It is fallacious to conflate economic power with political power, they are not the same thing. Economic power does not equate to the ability to use force with impunity to achieve your goals. Otherwise Starbucks would lobby McDonalds, and McDonalds would lobby Coca Cola, who were at the same time lobbying Microsoft and Apple. They do not do this. Why? Because the state is the only institution that is able to pass preferential legislations, hand out subsidies and use force and the tax system to enforce them.

If you have a lot of economic power, then even absent the state you can buy a lot things from voluntary sellers: property, factories, machines, natural resources, products, services... but you will soon run low on assets if you are not also creating things that other people want to voluntarily purchase from you. If people are voluntarily purchasing things you produce then you are providing value to them. You are making them better off. Otherwise they would not purchase your goods voluntarily, you would have to coerce them to do so. This is one of the reasons why we voluntarists, anarcho-capitalists, or libertarians (call us what you will) do not want the state. In the market, if you don't like a service you have the power to simply stop buying that service: you don't have to vote for anyone, you don't need to get everyone to agree with you - you just buy something else instead. Not so with government - because you've already bought it. You don't have any choice in the matter. The state it has the power to violate your conscience and force you to pay for it through the tax system, while claiming that you tacitly consent to this violation of your free will to support those causes that you support and divest from those that you do not simply by virtue of living in a particular geographical area.

Monday 30 March 2015

Helping

The best forms of therapy, in my opinion, are the ones where the clients are enabled to have most of the revelations themselves, rather than deferring to the insight of the practitioner for "wow"ing.

From someone who follows my work:



"I am honored to be a husband and the father of two wonderful girls, ages 14 & 4. I work full time while my wife works part-time and grows an online business. We really like your work. Your interview with Bonnie Harris has changed our lives. Thank you! "

Get my FREE CD on improving communication skills: https://beyourselfandloveit.leadpages.co/ultimate-communication-power/

Thursday 12 March 2015

A Touching Testimonial

"I'm very grateful for how things turned out last night. I absolutely enjoyed the conversation and I felt a very strong connection. It amazing to think about that I have known people for decades, and never even been close to anything like this with them.

I also enjoyed going outside, and looking at the stars. It was a great thing to do, which I will certainly remember. Anyway, I would love to talk to you more, and I see it as a great investment.
I`ll initiate the payment now, so please let me know when you have received the payment.

Also, I will be going on a weekend trip leaving tomorrow so I wont be available for another session until next week.

Looking forward to talk to you soon.

And, thanks a lot for your help Antony."

Monday 9 March 2015

Avoiding Unpleasant Emotions



If you are always trying to avoid unpleasant emotions you will not be an honest person and you will probably not create anything fantastic either. Face up to your anxiety and deal with it now - make it fun! This is what you have to do now if you want to have a fulfilling life in the now to come.

Robin Balsiger: 'How do you mean "Make it fun"? Isn't that just another way of not really facing up to it and trying to make it into something else, because you wanna avoid the unpleasentness?'

 hmmm interesting what I mean is get into the spirit of the challenge , and see looking at your anxiety as part of an adventure of self knowledge. Sometimes when you do great things there are difficulties, but part of what makes those things so great is that the difficulties sharpened you for the challenge. Something like that, it's hard for me to put clearly. Great question!

Saturday 7 March 2015

My Vulgar Hatred of The '90s

I was glad to hear that I am not the only person I know who hates the 90s.

I don't know what I find more annoying about the pop music of the 90s, the fact that they constantly shat out lyrics that would be insulting to the intelligence of even the ditzy 14 year old girls that bought it, cases in point: 
  • "oh baby you're so fine, I'm gonna make you mine, your lips they taste so sweet," 
  • "you are my fire, the one desire, believe when I say, I want it that way," 
  • "you drive me crazy, I just can't sleep, I'm so excited, I'm in too deep, crazy, but it feels alright, baby thinking of you keeps me up all night" 
  • and etc. ad infinitum. 
Or rather, the fact that all these idiots went out an bought copies of this crap by the millions. I mean what does that say about the level of sophistication of our culture? 

The 2000s was definitely better. People who played their own instruments dominated the charts even if it was boy-band-metal such as Linkin Park or pop punk stars such as Sum 41 and Bowling for Soup.

At least the 2010s risque and unashamedly id, hedonistic and indulgent (Gaga, Kesha, Nicky Minaj, et al.) All right, most of the pop music of our era it is a bag of balls, but at least it isn't the "oh we are so nice and innocent and sweet, and completely asexual" which was the staple of the 90s, and of course, completely disingenuous. There was nothing more satisfying than when these good little boys and girls were exposed for taking recreational drugs at parties or behaving indecently. It broke the façade. 

Much of the disco music of the 90s was simply 70s disco music less the typically well arranged horn and string elements, or 80s disco music less the variety of synth or which was by this point considered "cheesy." We also said goodbye to the overblown rockist power-ballad with attendant guitar solo in pop, also to be considered mawkish and dated. I remember remarking once that M People's single One Night sounded remarkably 70s, only later to discover that it bore a striking resemblance to 1975 number Highwire by Linda Carr and The Love Squad. Likewise One For Sorrow, a track by an innately disposable and all but forgotten 90s band, Steps, is a dead ringer for The Winner Takes It All by Abba. 

Of course  was a lot of great music in the 90s outside of the charts, although I have thought compared to 60s and 70s and to a lesser degree 80s it was on "The Downward Spiral."  For each Nine Inch Nails there were a dozen Stabbing Westwards, for each Nirvana there were six hundred Silverchairs, a thousand clone bands who tried and failed to carry the movement forwards by replicating the sound of what they liked. For each Alanis Morisette or Cheryl Crow a thousand chart-topping acoustic acts have to have been forgotten in time, and you really have to shake your head in dismay.  

I don't really listen to contemporary rock so I don't know what it going on with it, but nothing I have heard so far has really grabbed my attention so maybe I have simply stopped paying attention. The crucial difference is, thanks to the advent of the internet, I can listen to virtually anything I like the sound of, from anywhere in the world, at any time - and from any time. Regardless of whether you happen love or hate the music of the 90s, you have one distinct advantage over your 1990s counter-part (or former self.) You can always get access to whatever music floats your boat!

Friday 16 January 2015

Complaining

Complaining about what is without working towards what could be is immature.


Most people think changing the world is more about changing other peoples habits than their own, but most people who make a positive impact in the world lead by example.

Thursday 15 January 2015

What is Islam?

So what is Islam? Is it what Muslims do?

No, otherwise eating pork or drinking alcohol could be considered Islamic, as some Muslims certainly do.  Clearly not all Muslims follow Islam, as not all Christians or Jews follow their religion. Actually what Islam is - is not all that open to interpretation. There are two statements that all Muslims agree with: "There is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is his profit." If you say that declaration in Arabic you become a Muslim.

Islam is the worship of Allah + the imitation of Mohammed as described in The Koran (of which there are two, one written in Medina and one in Mecca), the Siras, and the Haddith. The earlier Koran is not really a problem, it has the phrases about how "let there be no compulsion in religion", that "you have your religion and I have mine", &c. in it and was written by Mohammed when he was in Mecca. The later Koran is more problematic as it has the most intolerant and radical passages in it, "I shall cast terror into the hearts of the Kafirs. Strike of their heads, strike off the very tips of their fingers!" Unfortunately there is a notion in Islam that "later verses take priority of importance over earlier ones" (abrogation.)  Every tolerant verse in the Koran is later somewhere abrogated in the text.

Islam is a peculiar religion because you cannot actually practice Islam with its primary text, The Koran, alone. The Koran states in over ninety verses that every Muslim should live his life as Mohammed lived his life. If Islam were only the worship of Allah, then one could practice Islam simply by reading the Koran, however, because Islam is also the imitation of Mohammed we need to go to The Sira (an eight-hundred-page biography of Mohammed) and the Haddith - a collection of little stories about Mohammed called "The Traditions" - in order to find out how he lived.

Unfortunately, when we turn to these texts we find that Mohammed - who is meant to be emulated - was a conqueror who cut heads off and consummated a marriage with a 9 year old. In light of this the Islamic doctrine as a whole is not very friendly to non-Muslims or Muslim women. The Kafir can be tortured, raped, enslaved, deceived and murdered. Women are men’s “fields,” worth half what a man is; men can have sex with them whenever they want, marry them at a prepubescent age, or own them as sex slaves.  There is no notion of the golden rule in Islam, as pertains to non-Muslims, only other Muslims are under the protection of the doctrine.

While to us the "good Muslim" is the moderate Muslim, in Islam proper - the "good Muslim" is the one who best emulates Mohammed, therefore when we talk about radical Islam we are talking about a literal reading of the text (particularly the second Koran.) When we talk about "moderate Islam" that is actually also an accurate reading of the text - all those passages are in there. Both are true. It's not that one is right and the other is wrong. Open it up and you will find passages to support both interpretations.

Conservatives will say that radical Islam is caused by the doctrine, and Liberals that it is all the fault of Western foreign policy. Certainly, the US and its allies have regularly supported radical Islamists, certainly in Afghanistan against the Russians, Saudi Arabia being the most obvious example, president Reagan supported Zia ul-Haq, the most brutal of Pakistan's dictators who carried out a programme of radical Islamisation (with Saudi funding). America has also infuriated the Muslim world by supporting Israel, stationing troops on the Arabian Peninsula, and propping up its dictators in spite of movements in various countries towards democracy or the adoption of socialistic governments, and waging war on predominantly Muslim nations. Since our 2003 incursion into Iraq, at least 151,000 and possibly over a million Muslims have been killed in that country.

It is ignorant for conservatives to turn a blind eye to the history of Western Imperialism, and naive for liberals to imagine that the Islamic doctrine has nothing whatever to do with how Muslims behave. The truth about why Islamic people of the world are, on average, more radical than Western religionists is more likely to be a combination of both, as well as other factors - particularly the very authoritarian parenting styles which are prevalent in Islamic countries and even amongst many Muslim families in Western countries. (We not that in the "bible belt" where we encounter a far more radical form of Christianity, the parenting styles are more retrograde than in the more secular parts of America - in some states corporal punishment is legal in schools.)

Whenever an aspect of Islam is unpleasant people will say “That’s not the real Islam” - but there is only one authority on what Islam is, and that is Mohammed. That is to be found in The Koran (both of them), The Sira, and The Haddith.


I would like to acknowledge Dr. Bill Warner, Sam Harris, and Dr. Noam Chomsky for being my main sources of education on Islam.

Saturday 3 January 2015

Nietzsche

I think, like many continental philosophers, Nietzsche studied himself and his own inclinations and universalised them to the world. he found that his will to power was the dominant force in his psyche. To me the genealogy of morals is an interesting historical myth, through the lens of which we see one man's attempt to understand why his contemporaries so slavishly accepted the norms of their society without question or critical thought. It must have been hard for Nietzsche. In the introductory passages he acknowledges three, at most four, people who truly influenced and revolutionised his thinking. How lonely for a man so a head of his time to struggle to find mental stimulation and peers in a world that shone a flame so dull in comparison to an intellect that burned so bright.

For someone hailed as a nihilist, right-winger, or anti-humanist for me his writing is exceedingly humanitarian, exemplified - for me - by the first passages of the untimely meditation on the comparative advantages and disadvantages of history for life. He is a beautiful writer, and I love his secular myth - the Zarathustra.