Read Raising Cain if you want a fascinating analysis of how boys and young men are socialized into embracing the worst forms of poisonous masculinity.

Edit: PBS did a documentary about this as well.

Do that, plus read Raising Cain. The books tl;dr is that boys have complex emotional lives, even if the don't often express that in obvious ways. It gave me huge amounts of insight during the 4 years I spent as a summer camp counselor.

My boy's only 2, but so far, the father protips I've learned are:

• When your baby's very small (like, the first three months), they'll likely hate sleeping alone and love cuddling. You can use this to your videogaming advantage. When baby's fussy late at night, tell your wife, "I've got this." Secure your baby on your chest in something like a Moby or Ergobaby, then go play the Xbox for for a few hours. Baby gets cuddles, your wife thinks you're some kind of superdad and you get to play videogames. It's a win win win situation, and the way I beat Fable II and Gears of War II.
  
• Don't feel bad if you're not deeply in love with your child the moment he exits the womb. When he was born, I loved my son in the "This is my son so I will love him" sort of way. But around the time he turned 1 and became less of a little crying thing and more of a mini-person, I feel deeply in love.
  
• You will never have a better excuse to buy photography or video equipment, so take advantage of this moment. In my experience, mothers are unable to resist the logic of, "I really need a better camera to make sure we have lasting memories or our baby's 1st year." It's like a license to kill. Only instead of killing, you get to go out and spend money on whatever DSLR you've been lusting after.
  
  Congratulations!
  
  
  

I'm guessing the book that the documentary is based on.

There is no way of exactly knowing if an animal has theory of mind yet we can try to find out by using carefully constructed behavioural tests as well as including observational data on day to day behaviours of individuals. One example might be the mirror test: "to determine whether an animal possesses the ability to recognize itself in a mirror. It is the primary indicator of self-awareness in non-human animals and marks entrance to the mirror stage by human children in developmental psychology." However, the mirror test is biased in that it really only works for animals whose primary sense is vision. The previous wiki page provides a good starting point but I would also recommend other books by a number of scientists such as Age of Empathy or "Our Inner Ape" by Frans de Waal, "The Moral Lives of Animals" by Peterson. More specifically books like Primate origins of human cognition and behaviour or Animal Wise: where the author "explores how this rapidly evolving, controversial field has only recently overturned old notions about why animals behave as they do. She probes the moral and ethical dilemmas of recognizing that even “lesser animals” have cognitive abilities such as memory, feelings, personality, and self-awareness–traits that many in the twentieth century felt were unique to human beings.
By standing behaviorism on its head, Morell brings the world of nature brilliantly alive in a nuanced, deeply felt appreciation of the human-animal bond, and she shares her admiration for the men and women who have simultaneously chipped away at what we think makes us distinctive while offering a glimpse of where our own abilities come from."

First, it may be highly controversial to say this even here on r/askscience but humans are not the only animal on this planet to have theory of mind. Other animals can approximate the mental states of other individuals within their groups and can also understand the difference between the self and others. This effects how we view animals in a profound way, no longer is there a clear and defining "us" vs. "them". I can go into more detail but these previous books do a way better job of thoroughly exploring the subject from a laymans point of view. Consequently, humans seem to acquire these abilities sometime around 18 months of age. I also know that there is extensive literature on theory of mind in humans with autism, although I am not familiar with the details of this literature.

>What are the prerequisites for sentience, for example clothing or hunting techniques?

There is no one single "recipe" for having or acquiring theory of mind. I can tell you it has little to nothing to do with anything you see that is modern around you (i.e. cars, clothing, tools or hunting). This is because people (or groups of people) and other animals without these things still have theory of mind. Even oral or written language as we know it today is not likely a necessary precursor to theory of mind. We can still have complex thought or processing without the need for complex language. Does oral or written language enable us to communicate in a more efficient way? Yes. I still don't think you can equate the two - perhaps (human) language requires complex thought, but complex thought does not require language. Many scientists hypothesize that "theory of mind must have preceded language use, based on evidence of use of the following characteristics: intentional communication, repairing failed communication, teaching, intentional persuasion, intentional deception, building shared plans and goals, intentional sharing of focus or topic, and pretending." - all of these precede language and we see many of them expressed in animals, especially within the primate order. So first cognition then language.

However, animals that do have theory of mind tend to be highly social. Being social requires a lot of brain power in the sense that you have to be able to keep track of a number of individuals and your relationship to them. Long lived species need to keep track of these relationships through time. You also need to keep track of others relationship to other members of your group and you need to keep track of "outsiders" and "insiders". This stuff gets pretty complex. In order to navigate a complex social environment being able to tell yourself apart from others and even one individual from another is pretty critical.

> What differentiates homo sapiens from homo neanderthalensis in terms of intelligence?

First I would ask you to define intelligence. It's not so easy, so what I can do is explain the differences in behaviour based on what we have found in the archeolgical record:

• Neanderthals were able to use tools, well tools had been used by Hominins for millions of years by the time Neanderthals evolved and tool use isn't even unique to our lineage. But I digress, the tools used by neanderthals remained relatively consistent in design and use for their entire existence (from about 600,000 years ago to 24,000 years ago). On the other hand, human tool cultures were much more varied and were adapted to new environments. So humans have been described as better [tool] innovators than neanderthals.
  
  
• We lived in many different kinds of habitats and moved around a lot where as Neanderthals stuck to Europe. Therefore we have come to the conclusion that humans were better able to change our behaviour in order to survive in a variety of environments (tropics to temperate, deserts to alpine). We also had long-distance trade whereas neanderthal populations seemed pretty isolated from one another. Another indication that human oral communication may have been fast out-pacing the oral communication abilities of neanderthals (if they had them at all - some think that gestures played an important role in pre-language hominids, including early humans, in that they used gestures rather than words to communicate.)
  
  
• Neanderthals had jewellery, buried their dead, and probably made cave art etc. So they had some pretty complex cultures. But around 50,000 years ago human cultural activities exploded. There are statues, symbolic art, more complex burials etc. indicating a shift in our collective behaviour. This is known as behavioural modernity: "It is the point at which Homo sapiens began to demonstrate an ability to use complex symbolic thought and express cultural creativity. These developments are often thought to be associated with the origin of [modern] language...One theory holds that behavioral modernity occurred as a sudden event some 50 kya possibly as a result of a major genetic mutation or as a result of a biological reorganization of the brain that led to the emergence of modern human natural languages".
  
  
• The control of fire and cooking date back between 500,000 and 1.2 million years with H. erectus. Fire is not unique to humans (Homo sapiens) or neanderthals.

I think part of the problem is really that people are looking at only granular parts of problems today and don't have enough historical context. Its useless to follow every story about everyone and every little thing. There are lots of ups and downs in politics and there's no reason to be so reactionary to every single new and probably manufactured "scandal".... that's what's exhausting. I like to keep updated on a few big issues, I follow the careers of a few people I find inspiring (and follow a few that do things that worry me), and spend the rest of the time reading up on topics in book form... they have the advantage of being written over time, and with more vigorous standards for accuracy. The news, while still important where immediate info is necessary, is essentially click bait now. You don't need to get caught in the rip tides that pull you everywhere constantly, just understand the general trajectory of the important things.

edit: to those curious about some book recommendations: I'm by no means an expert in anything really, and the books you read should really be about the topics you personally are interested in, so don't take my word as gospel (or any author's). I like American history, ancient history, international relations, and though I think they're more boring I force myself to read about the health care system and the American education system because I feel they're important. I'm also looking to read some books on the military industrial complex and cyber security/ big data because I don't really know anything about them other than the stuff I see in passing on the news or here on Reddit. So if anyone knows a good overview of those issues, feel free to let me know.

• For a good start on human history and the beginnings of modern economics/ intl relations (basically why the West has historically dominated), try Guns, Germs, and Steel I believe there's also a documentary if the book is too dense for your taste (it is pretty dense).
  
  
• Perhaps if you're interested in why people get so damn heated talking politics, The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation
  
  
• If you wonder why people vote against their own social and economic interest: What's the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America Full disclosure: I liked this book, but I lean left. I'm not sure if it matters, the point of the book is just to track how the Republican party went from being the party of elites, to the party of blue collar workers.
  
  
• If the Supreme Court interests you at all, I liked Jeffrey Toobin's, The Nine
  
  
• The achievement gap? Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria
  
  
• Health care? There's a lot, but this one is an easy read and it compares the systems of Britain, Japan, Germany, and I believe Cuba (which is very good for their GDP!) and the US's. The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care by T.R. Reid
  
  This is just some stuff I've listed off the top of my head. Another thing that I find helpful to better understanding intl relations are books about the major genocides of the past few decades, which are hard to get through (because of the brutal content) but... What is the What (Sudan), First they killed my father (Cambodian genocide), Girl at War (more of a autobiography, but still chilling) there's a couple of others I've read that I can't remember now.
  
  Anyway, just go to Good Reads and look at Contemporary Politics. Perhaps Great Courses has a political philosophy course too that you can draw from if you wanna go even farther back into the origins of society's structure and political thought.
  
  Also podcasts! I've just discovered these but there's a lot of audio content (FREE!) that you can listen to on your commute and whatnot. I like Abe Lincoln's Top Hat right now.
  
  Edit edit: wow thanks for the gold!!

If you're interested, there are two books that answer your question:

• Obedience to Authority by Stanley Milgram (More info...), and
  
• The Lucifer Effect by Philip Zimbardo (More info...)
  
  TL;DR
  
  
• the further you are removed from your victims, the more likely you'll obey unchallenged authority figures to do anything
  
• you play the roles you're given, breaking previous social contracts
  
  You don't have to go far to see modern-day examples. While we can blame ISIS as some far-away, backwards group of people, we have no such excuse for what happened in Abu Ghraib.

When my son was born, I read a book called "Raising Cain" by Dan Kindlon and Michael Thompson. It was shocking to read because it so succinctly covers everything that, as a boy, you think you're the only one to feel. It's helped my parenting a lot, and I would recommend it to anyone who has a son.

This was discussed in Joe Korts Book who is a Therapist. By the way I suggest exploring this with a therapist as it has much deeper roots (there are low cost options - aka sliding scale, or ir your in school often they have a free department, LGBTQ Centers also have resources). Your using the sex as a validation to work through some issue your dealing with that might stem from your past. It sounds like you want to ignore those you see for the sex as a use of domination and being wanted. The therapist can work with whatever issue including being ignored as a child or not feeling loved, etc... This also happens when men often have sex with those they are not interested in and can't control themselves to avoid these instances. Some gay men have constantly have "1" time hookups because like a drug their brain produces new neuro chemicals of a natural high every time they meet someone (also called infatuation), this is strongest with the first person you fall in love with, once it fades men get annoyed and loose the infatuated bliss and instead stress over the actual work a real relationship takes to build something great. Sex is a powerful tool, some use it as a self esteem boost and a sign they are wanted. When it is done to quickly it looses the other characteristics that create desire and long term bonding. Your judging these relationships by the sex, which often evolves and gets better with a deeper intimacy. I suggest not having sex with men too soon and build a bond with other form of connection (have sex with a FB until things are solid) then you can truly get to know them.

http://www.amazon.com/Smart-Things-Find-Real-Love/dp/193683331X

http://www.amazon.com/The-Velvet-Rage-Overcoming-Straight/dp/1611746450

What comes to mind is The Velvet Rage by Alan Downs.

From the Amazon page,
>The most important issue in a gay man’s life is not “coming out,” but coming to terms with the invalidating past. Despite the progress made in recent years, many gay men still wonder, “Are we better off?” The byproduct of growing up gay in a straight world continues to be the internalization of shame, rejection, and anger—a toxic cocktail that can lead to drug abuse, promiscuity, alcoholism, depression, and suicide. Drawing on contemporary psychological research, the author’s own journey, and the stories of many of his friends and clients, Velvet Rage addresses the myth of gay pride and outlines three stages to emotional well-being for gay men. The revised and expanded edition covers issues related to gay marriage, a broader range of examples that extend beyond middle-class gay men in America, and expansion of the original discussion on living authentically as a gay man.

Take it with a grain of salt, of course, as it may be a little dated and it does not dissect every personality trait and life situation, but I think it has some conversational value.

That's a bit misleading. There are indeed people born psychopaths based on genes and/or in utero development. I highly recommend Simon Baron-Cohen's book, The Science of Evil on this topic.

Another key factor in this kind of evil is our innate tendency toward in-group and out-group behaviour, something we all seem programmed with, and can be activated by putting people in groups and into conflict with each other. For most of us it is dormant when we tend to identify with each other, instead of "them" as an enemy, and when there's no basis for conflict.

In many ways it is our vile biology. Where the experiences and hatred come into play is typically the activation of that innate "us vs them" tendency. That can easily grow into violence even between otherwise "normal" people with no ultimate problem with "them".

We have a very good understanding of their intelligence. They are probably some of the most well studied species in terms of behaviour and cognitive abilities on this planet. In ELI5/TLDR* most researchers would characterize their intelligence of being equivalent to a 2-3 year old human child. Just a short list of things that characterize these species:

• They form long-term social bonds and remember individuals
  
  
• They are able to recognize self from other
  
  
• They are able to lie
  
  
• They are able to understand fairness
  
  
• They are able to make, modify and use tools
  
  
• They have culture and tradition
  
  
• They are able to demonstrate empathy
  
  
• They feel the same or similar emotions to humans
  
  
• They have morals
  
  
• They mourn the dead
  
  
• They are able to solve multi-step problems
  
  ...
  
  I suppose another way of looking at this is what do we have that they lack. What makes humans unique?
  
  We know of some factors that contributed to our awareness and unique intelligence as compared to other living species. It is important to know that this is a very active area of study in many different disciplines (psychology, biology, animal behaviour, psychiatry, physiology, anthropology, neurology, linguistics, genetics, archeology...).
  
  
• Traits we inherited from our distant ancestors. Obviously all species are a cumulation of inherited traits. Who we are today is largely due to who "we" were in the distant past. We inherited a strong tendency to be a very social species from our mammalian ancestry. Mammals are social beings, humans included. We inherited opposable thumbs from our early primate ancestors. Humans are not the only species with opposable thumbs so it is not a trait that is unique to our species. However, the inheritance of thumbs enabled us and the other primates to develop fine motor skills like precision grip. This enables us to manipulate objects, and make/modify tools. Humans also inherited an upright bipedal posture from our early ancestors. Humans are not the only bipedal species (after all, all birds are bipedal!) but our upright posture has given us many advantages, namely that it frees our hands to do other tasks.
  
  
• Brain/body size ratio & exceptional brain gyrification is a somewhat useful indicator of how intelligence a species is. The correlation is decent among related mammal species, but it breaks down when applied to distantly related animals. It underestimates intelligence in heavy animals like horses and overestimates small animals like mice and birds. You also have to consider what the animal's brain has evolved for. Bird's typically have very large brains for their body but may not be exceptionally smart. A lot of that large bird brain is used for flight calculations and isn't available for higher level processing. Fruit flies have enormous brains compared to their mass, but that brain is simply too small to have any real thought processes. Humans are highly intelligent because they have an extremely large brain for their normal body mass and that brain has evolved specifically to perform complex thought. Size isn't the only factor, scientists also consider the degree of specialization, complexity of neural connections, and degree of brain gyrification. Humans score high on all these physical qualifiers associated with increased intelligence.
  
  
• Two cognitive traits thought to be unique to humans - shared intentionality and cumulative culture. Shared intentionality goes one step further than being able to solve problems as a group, it involves anticipating the needs of others and the situation in order to solve a common goal. This requires incredible foresight, flexibility, and problem solving skills. It requires an almost hyper-sociality group structure. We couldn't stick 100 chimpanzees on a plane and expect it to land in one piece...but you can stick 100 human strangers and all, for the most part, get along just fine. This level of cooperation is rarely seen among other animals (save for the Eusocial insects, naked mole rats, and perhaps Callitrichid monkeys)...my point is we have a shared intentionality that allows us to be hyper-social and cooperative. Cumulative culture goes beyond the cultures exhibited by other animals. Other animals have culture where [non-essential] traditions are passed on from one generation to the next and can be modified slowly over many generations. Humans also have traditions, but these are past on much more easily between individuals. Moreover, these traditions are quickly modified, almost unlimited times within a generation. We are able to rapidly build upon the ideas of others and modify these ideas to suit new problems. Moreover, our adults, as compared to the adults of other species, are much better at learning and retaining new skills or traditions. Generally speaking, the age old adage "you can't teach an old dog new tricks" applies well to the non-human animal kingdom.
  
  These two traits, shared intentionality and cumulative culture, led to the development of other aspects of our being which are unique (e.g language). Everything else that we can do is just a happy by-product of these two traits: being able to go to the moon, or build a super dam, or create art, or think in the abstract, maths, industrial agriculture...Those things are by-products of our level of cognition. Our uniqueness is derived from shared intentionality and cumulative culture plus a couple of random physical traits that we were lucky enough to inherit from our distant ancestors - a big brain, bipedalism, and opposable thumbs. We are not the only species with a large brain-to-body ratio, we are not the only bipedal species, and we are certainly not the only species with opposable thumbs - these are physical characteristics that we inherited from our distant primate ancestors. These traits built the foundation for what was to come.
  
  Whatever the pressure around 40,000-50,000 years ago we notice a significant shift in the archeological record. All of a sudden humans are making cave art, our hunting tools are changing rapidly, we began to engage in long distant trade, we made jewellery and we even had symbolic figures - perhaps the seeds of language. This is known as the period of behavioural modernity. Not only did these humans look like us, they acted like us too. Its hypothesized that an infant from this time could be raised in a modern context with little to no intellectual deficit...we wouldn't be able to pick them out of a crowd. Humans haven't gotten more intelligent over time. It is hypothesized that a human from 50,000 years ago is anatomically and behaviourally modern.
  
  So, if we aren't any smarter - why do we have cell phones and galaxy print jeggings and people didn't way back then? Increasing complexity - we know more than people in the past because we've built upon what they've learned. Humans have always been smart, and our great benefit is that we build on other people's discoveries. Someone figured out how to domesticate plants, someone figured out how to sew cloth, someone figured out how to weave materials, someone figured out synthetic materials and dyes, someone put it all together in those jeggings. We just build on what other people have found out. This is cumulative culture in action. Humans today are not more intelligent than humans living 50,000 years ago - we both have the same potential. The difference between us and them is we have a wealth of shared knowledge to draw upon, and they did not. Humans 5000 years from now could be asking the very same question..."Why didn't they invent warp travel, its so easy!"...well we don't have the wealth of another 5000 years of experience and scientific study to draw upon. We only have what our ancestors gave us. As more and more knowledge is accumulated we should in theory progress faster and faster.
  
  Some interesting books on the subject:
  
  Age of Empathy
  
  Our inner ape
  
  Moral lives of animals
  
  Affective neuroscience
  
  Mothers and others
  
  

My PhD thesis was on some of the core challenges with integrating a model of emotion (based on appraisal theory) with general AI like cognitive architectures.

Yes! The first two points reflect what others have stated that (and I think are spot on) and I'll introduce a 3rd point.

1. There's no reason to believe any process of the human brain cannot be captured as AI. This would only be challenged by ideas such as dualism, which most of modern neuroscience has abandoned.
   
   
2. Intelligence is useless without emotion - An important reason for this that has been mentioend is motivation. It doesn't stop there though. Based on Antonio Damasio's Somatic Marker Hypothesis, we believe emotions are fundamental to all rational thought, serving as a mechanic for dealing with limitless information to process. Think of it as generalized +/- information that serves as a heuristic to other rational processes.
   
   The exact nature of this is still under active investigation, but it's at least worth noting that evolution has developed emotion as a central aspect of our thinking for some reason. It also appears to be present in many other animals (though if that's true is up for debate), and its clear that those with impaired emotional processes cannot make complex decisions rationally.
   
   
3. What doesn't seem mentioned yet is a work done by the Affective Computing group at MIT's Media Lab: http://affect.media.mit.edu/ . In contrast to my work which seeks to synthesize emotions in AI first, they're more focused on giving computers the ability to perceive and display emotions. One of the major roles of emotion happens to be social communication (i.e., we don't just have emotion, but we also express it as a way of communicating information to others).
   
   In the simplest of cases, perhaps AI should understand when it does something you don't like by being able to detect when you're pissed off. More broadly, having an ability to understand and express emotion will do things like allow for an emotionally visceral experience while speaking with a robot, allow an automated customer service robot to understand when you are angry and thus change strategy (like route you to a live manager), or help older lonely patients feel like they're still needed in the world.
   
   ---
   
   In summary how it affects us is 2 ways:
   
   
4. Enable more general intelligent robots to be embedded in our world
   
   
5. Impove AI and human interactions

A General Theory of Love is a reasonable, readable place to start.
Or anything by Oliver Sacks (Dr. Sacks was a neurologist and one of my favorite writers).


"Psychology" is a gargantuan subject with myriad options. Is there an area you are interested in?

Ever read any R.D. Laing?

>With guidance from the department, I became quite prominent in linguistic, ethnographic, and ritual studies with an inclination towards utilizing Marx/Bell and Geertz as my models for interpreting religious concepts and behaviors.

Got any books/papers you would recommend?

> ...I sometimes see others, especially those who are stressed or defeated, as suffering in a similar way to the way in which I suffered when I was under the delusion of being helpless.

It's amazing how these thoughts come with such weight. Do you have any strategies for casting the weight off or does it just come with practice? What kind of practice? Do you investigate individual thoughts to see if they hold up? Do you try to understand all phenomena as illusory? Are there setbacks to this approach? Do you sometimes emphasize the reality and 'apparentness' of phenomena?

If you've never read Obedience to Authority, you really should make time for it. The book details the years of research that unpacked the many nuances of the power of authority, things like its power relative to proximity, gender differences, obedience and empathy, the influence of cooperative or non-cooperative peers, any so much more. One of the most important psychology books I read in graduate school.

Anything from Oliver Sacks always worth reading imo.

• Neuroscience: Exploring the Brain!
  
  
• The Compassionate Brain: A Revolutionary Guide to Developing Your Intelligence to Its Full Potential: How Empathy Creates Intelligence!
  
  
• Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain!
  
  
• Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions!
  
  
• In Search of Memory: The Emergence of a New Science of Mind!
  
  
• The Man with a Shattered World: The History of a Brain Wound!
  
  not really neuroscience, but interesting imho:
  
  
• How the Mind Works!
  
  
  *(hopes formatting works)

Anime is always weird when it talks about "emotions" or "emotionless" people; they usually still do obviously have "emotions", just not very strong or socially disruptive ones. Scientifically speaking, any actual failure of the brain systems that produce emotion would make rational decision making and value judgment impossible.

So I don't know if the word they use connotes something different in Japanese than it does in English.

There's a great book about how boys are raised this way, to be "emotionally illiterate." It's marketed as a parenting book but has been SO interesting to me in analyzing the adult men in my life as well. Highly recommend for anyone who loves/lives with/interacts with men!

https://www.amazon.com/Raising-Cain-Protecting-Emotional-Life/dp/0345434854

From the reflection and other visible letters, The Science of Evil

Everyone on the left should read 'The Political Brain'. It explains the importance of emotions in how people decide to vote.

Basically, when it comes down to emotional brain vs rational brain, people will always side with their emotions.

People don't sit down and study manifestos before they decide who to vote for, they use the values of the party, leader, and a few key policies the party articulates to decide which party matches their values most closely.

TL;DR: People are emotional creatures and we need to learn how to appeal to that.

The Velvet Rage- Alan Downs
https://www.amazon.com/Velvet-Rage-Overcoming-Growing-Straight/dp/1611746450

I Am Not Myself These Days-Josh Kilmer-Purcell
https://www.amazon.com/Am-Not-Myself-These-Days/dp/0060817321/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1509556002&sr=8-1&keywords=i+am+not+myself+these+days

Human action and behavior (aka human nature) CHANGES based on the form of socially authoritative system they find themselves bound to. To learn about the varying features of human nature, I highly recommend reading Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View by Stanley Milgram.

> What is consciousness?

"Consciousness is the state or quality of awareness, or, of being aware of an external object or something within oneself. It has been defined as: sentience, awareness, subjectivity, the ability to experience or to feel, wakefulness, having a sense of selfhood, and the executive control system of the mind... In the majority of experiments that are specifically about consciousness, the subjects are human, and the criterion that is used is verbal report: in other words, subjects are asked to describe their experiences, and their descriptions are treated as observations of the contents of consciousness." These methods are obviously heavily biased towards humans, we can't just ask a chimpanzee if it self aware, we must infer it from their behaviours and how they interact with their physical and social worlds. Easier said than done.

> Are single celled organisms like bacteria, conscious?

No.

> How much up the evolutionary ladder do we have to go to start finding consciousness?

Evolution is not a ladder, there is no best species at the top of this ladder. Its more like a tree. In evolution, there can be many solutions to one problem. Take flight for example, insects, birds, and bats have all solved the problem of flight in different ways, with different combinations of traits, with different kinds of genes. The same is very likely true for consciousness and higher cognitive intelligence. We may very well find the exact gene(s) that make use conscious that does not mean that other species need those exact genes in order to be conscious too. Other species may solve the problem of consciousness in a different way than we have. If we look for species with characteristics that are exactly our own, well its like just looking for species with feathers and assuming they are the only ones that fly - you miss the bats and insects.

> How are humans able to make another conscious being?

We are not born conscious, it is a series of skills, traits, and abilities that develop during infancy and early childhood that lead to our conscious abilities. For example, children learn between the ages of 3-5 how to lie. Before this time period their brains are not developed enough to make the connection that their thoughts are distinct and different from other individuals thoughts. They think everyone knows what they are thinking, they can't lie. Some humans never develop the ability to be fully conscious, like severely autistic individuals. "Deficits occur in people with autism spectrum disorders, schizophrenia, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, as well as neurotoxicity due to alcohol abuse."

Other animals can lie, and deceive if they want to. Are they conscious? its really hard to say. We have a couple of tests that give us a pretty good idea that other species exhibit consciousness. For example, the mirror test. You place an individual in front of a mirror with a dot on their body that they can only see looking through the mirror. If they touch the dot or look for the dot on their own bodies then they are making the link that the image in the mirror is themselves. Infants older than 18 months usually pass the mirror test, infants under 18 months don't. Other higher cognitive skills that have been observed in some species include object manipulation, tool making, multi-step problem solving, lying, sense of fairness, morals, ethics, and mourning the dead.

These animals in no particular order are: elephants, dolphins, birds like crows, ravens, or pigeons, pigs, all of the great apes, and some monkeys. Obviously we are talking about a really diverse group of species, species from many different and distinct evolutionary paths that are able to solve complex problems, communicate in complex ways, form complex social bonds, and importantly show signs of theory of mind, or consciousness. Generally speaking these animals function at a cognitive level similar to a 3-5 year old child.

The ethical question then becomes, if a chimpanzee can pass a mirror test, can be shown to have higher cognitive functions why do we deny them the basic rights we give to humans, when some humans including infants lack these skills? Should we keep these animals for our own amusement or instrument, we don't with ourselves but why is it ok with them? I won't comment on my opinion, but these are important ethical questions worth thinking about.

I recommend:

• The bonobo and the atheist.
  
  
• Age of empathy
  
  
• Beyond the brain.

> I've heard it described as boys being handled like they are defective girls.

Yep.

> “Girl behavior is the gold standard in schools,” says psychologist Michael Thompson. “Boys are treated like defective girls.”

http://ideas.time.com/2013/10/28/what-schools-can-do-to-help-boys-succeed/

I also suffer from mental illness, which I believe the bigotry of my upbringing contributed. I don't blame my sexuality, I blame a heteronormative society. The Velvet Rage by Alan Downs, PhD is an excellent narrative on "overcoming the pain of growing up in a straight man's world." It was recommended by one my therapists. Reading this book was cathartic experience and revealed the shared experience of my own struggle. It was very helpful in starting my journey of overcoming anger and shame.

Fellow smart kid here. Being gifted or in the upper levels of intelligence carries a LOT of downsides. Please educate yourself and be aware. Mental illness risks are a lot higher as they get older.

One of our children had suicidal thoughts in the third grade. Thankfully she talked to us about it and we got her help. It starts early. Prepare yourself and try and enjoy the ride.

Living With Intensity: Understanding the Sensitivity, Excitability, and the Emotional Development of Gifted Children, Adolescents, and Adults https://www.amazon.com/dp/0910707898/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_XBlkDbR122PWY

That book helped me understand myself as well as other gifted people. There are other books on Amazon specifically aimed at parenting gifted kids.

Body issues affect men loads more than anyone cares to discuss and gay men are hit particularity hard. For example, "straight-guy thin" is "gay fat". Guys of all ages tear themselves apart and other gay men are happy to help. In an ever-more image focused culture, it is a struggle to not fall into this trap of trying to live up to everyone else's highlight reel when you're living your b-roll.

I struggled with being a chubby kid forever. I was called 'fatty-faggot' my entire childhood. I am a normal weight now at 29 but my self-image has never caught up. When I am stressed or upset, I feel like that chubby little boy who just wants to hide. That said, what helped me was working on myself inside and out and setting incremental goals rather than grand, long-term goals. Easier said than done, but here is what I did.

The first thing I did was clean up my diet and portion sizes. That is 80% of the battle on the weight front. Figure out your TDE for calories, eat a deficit, lose weight. It really is that simple. I track using the app MyFitnessPal. You can eat anything but a a balanced diet of protein, fat and carbs with minimally processed foods will keep you from feeling hungry and give you steady energy. I always pack my lunch for work and if I forget, I keep Soylent at my desk so I don't eat out. When I can, I research where I'll be eating out so I know what I want to order and don't get tempted by things that'll blow up my daily intake. I know what is not-awful at fast-food joints. I drink but track the cals. And sometimes, I say fuck it and eat a big fat meal...but eating excessively has to be the exception, NOT A RULE. What helps me is not seeing every meal as a pleasure cruise but as me just refueling to do my work and live my life.

Drastic diets do not work. It'll take some trial and error but you will find out a lifestyle of eating that suites you. Remember, this is a long game of changing your habits and your relationship with food. It does not matter what you eat between Thanksgiving and Christmas but rather that you eat between New Years ans Thanksgiving.

I committed to a 'no zero days' approach to exercise. Everyday, I do something for 30 mins that gets me off my ass. Even if my day is crazy, I walk my pups for 30 mins. I use my Apple Watch to track. Often, I eat my lunch at my desk while I work and use my lunch hour to get moving. You don't have to spend 3 hours a day in the gym to build exercise in. If you wanna give your cleaned up diet a boost, this is how you do it.

Finally, learn to start loving yourself being more mindful about how you consider yourself. To this day, I have an automatic negative self-image and when I catch myself being hard on myself, I ask "Well, what have I done today or ever to make this better?" or "who says I need to be this way or look this way?" You can motivate yourself and still be gentle with you. Read some self-help books and if you feel you need it, consider therapy. There is no shame in asking for help.

These helped me shift my thinking:

https://www.amazon.com/Velvet-Rage-Overcoming-Growing-Straight/dp/1611746450

https://www.amazon.com/Daring-Greatly-Courage-Vulnerable-Transforms/dp/1592408419

I hope this helps buddy.

The best exploration thus far that I've found of why we've developed many of our unique social patterns/traits can be found in "The Velvet Rage".

It's a really good book that IMO every gay man should read for many reasons beyond the question in this thread. Granted, some of the patterns highlighted in the book have since receded, but the book is incredibly insightful even in 2017. Similarly, an even older book "The Best Little Boy in the World", may be interesting to check out too.

Basically the author would argue this sort of behaviour stems from the experiences many of us have growing up, while learning how to come to terms with our sexualities. We're often subjected to a different experience than other boys. We're often taught to be ashamed of ourselves, even if it was never intentional on the part of those around us.

To compensate, many of us learn to behave in ways that constantly bring us affirmation despite a nagging feeling that we are somehow undeserving of affection. For some, this takes the form of becoming hyper-masculine, being homophobic, being a straight A student, going to the gym, etc. For others this may take the form of becoming more feminine, more sassy, more sensitive, more creative, or more caring. It may depend substantially on the people around them during those times. Due to the different experience of being gay, young gay boys may find different routes of attaining affirmation than their straight peers (e.g., by hanging around with girls who may be more likely to accept them — or at least less likely to remind them that other boys are different). The idea is the same for both "masc" and "femme" gays though: do something to set oneself apart as exceptional in order to collect affirmation and avoid feeling uncomfortable with oneself.

Later into life, even after coming out of the closet and been "out" for years, this can evolve into acting outrageously (or, alternatively, it can evolve into a facade of "masc"/"not a bitchy queen"/"non-scene"/"straight acting"). The author argues this is a way of compensating for lingering shame, and protecting oneself from getting hurt, even after being out for years or decades — and it can lead to all sorts of harmful problems in ones life like relationship problems, depression, etc.

To be honest, I'm only part way through the book, but I'm assuming that probably after that the author will get into a later stage where people can let go of the need to constantly prove to themselves that they are loveable.

I should say that I honestly doubt the author is suggesting that guys who use the term "girl" are always doing so out of shame. I think the central thesis is more that these types of behaviours, which set us apart from other men, are often shaped by those early experiences of feeling "different" and seeking affirmation to avoid dealing with shame. So in some of us, those behaviours may begin there. After that it's more like a part of our history and development as a person, and may be something we continue even after letting go of shame.

Those last two paragraphs are extrapolation, so YMMV.

So in the case of your neighbour, maybe they grew up in an environment that made them feel different. Maybe it caused them to feel ashamed. Maybe their father became distant after noticing something was "not normal". Maybe they found affirmation from girls in their lives, who told them they also found men attractive — or by a female adult in their lives who helped them feel better about themselves.

Or maybe after coming out of the closet, they lost many friends. Maybe they found comfort and acceptance by playing the role of "gay best friend". Maybe that's how they survived high school. Maybe they found that by embracing the unexpected — by poking fun at gender in a tongue and cheek manner — they could garner affection and admiration from their peers. Or, maybe they found that it helped them filter out homophobic acquaintances before they could get close enough to do more damage than a stranger could.

And maybe they've also come to terms with it. Maybe now it's simply become a part of who they are — something they say to acknowledge where they've been. Something they say to let other gay men know "girl[, I've been there too]". Even if other gay men have handled their shame differently (e.g., by being the best at sports or lowering their voice to seem more "masc"), perhaps there are commonalities among the experience that this person acknowledges with "girl".

Of course, it's pretty much impossible to know just how this particular person came to use the word in the way that they do. I don't think that's really the point though. The word signals "hey, me too", which, if we're being honest, is something I don't think most of us heard enough of growing up.

>I strongly believe consciousness is like a WiFi signal, our personalities are like software and our bodies are the computer. I reject with all my being that consciousness is only a program the computer runs.

I'd suggest (and there's good science supporting this) that the body IS the mind, the computer IS the software. I can highly recommend the book Descartes' Error by Antonio Damasio.

>For anyone to say they know for certain is a lier.

Science doesn't deal in certainties. It forms theories (models of reality) that can make accurate predictions given the evidence we have at the time. When new evidence comes to light, old theories can always be disproven. While it cannot provide certainties, it does provide far more accurate predictions about the universe we live in than any system of knowledge we had before science.

Lots of good advice here already. I'd recommend reading Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys, by Dan Kindlon and Michael Thompson. As a parent myself, it really helped me understand some of the root causes for behavioral issues in boys. Maybe you'll find it helpful as well.

I read a (dated) book for my class that highlights this problem. If anyone's interested - Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys. It's really an eye-opener.

The Velvet Rage: Overcoming the Pain of Growing Up Gay in a Straight Man's World, Second Edition https://www.amazon.com/dp/0738215678/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_XN41BbPSAYHHD

Not sure if this link will work when I post this. I’m new to Reddit. You need to read this book. The author Alan Downs, a psychologist, who is also gay, talks a lot about validation and where we seek validation. I could tell you what I think, but I’d rather you read the book and discover it for yourself.

With the caveat that I haven't read any of these yet, but when I found out I was having a boy I looked for similar recommendations and this is my reading list:

• Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men
  
• Real Boys: Rescuing Our Sons from the Myths of Boyhood
  
• Boys Adrift
  
• Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys
  
• The Trouble with Boys: A Surprising Report Card on Our Sons, Their Problems at School, and What Parents and Educators Must Do
  
• It's a Boy!: Your Son's Development from Birth to Age 18
  
  (I got caught up in reading childbirth and infant care books, which seem more pressing. If anyone has actually read any of these, I'd love to hear your opinions, especially if it can help me prioritize them.)

You ought to consider reading some books on psychopathy. Might connect a few more dots. Here are a few:

• http://www.amazon.com/Sociopath-Next-Door-Martha-Stout/dp/0767915828
  
• http://www.amazon.com/The-Science-Evil-Empathy-Origins/dp/0465031420
  
• http://www.amazon.com/The-Psychopath-Whisperer-Science-Conscience/dp/077043584X
  
  

While I like the care you give to the subject, I would just like to fill in some cracks with a few resources. I have a background in AbPsych and one of my mentors did a lot of interesting work with real life psychopaths.

The baseline for psychopathy was first and best (so far) laid out by Robert Hare. This site has a nice explanation.

Two great books on the subject (non-fiction) are: The Anatomy of Evil and The Science of Evil. Something more in the popsci vein would also be Jon Ronson’s The Psychopath Test, though I have some personal qualms with Ronson’s view.

For fiction, there’s of course any of the works mentioned in the original post, as well as American Psycho and We Need to Talk about Kevin.

Gays are statistically more intelligent, and as the book The Velvet Rage describes, they frequently channel their frustrations into becoming high achievers, so they often get good jobs that pay a lot of money and thus can afford CA/NY.

​

Lots and lots of therapy. The Velvet Rage was essential reading. Knowing lots of other gay men have had similar problems helps. There are peer support groups also--there absolutely is profound trauma we experience growing up in a world that doesn't accept us, even if some have it a bit better. Be kind to yourself--the coping mechanisms you developed back then just aren't serving you now. I fell into addiction because I internalized all the negative messaging churches and schoolmates told me. I think it helps also to be the person you wish you had back then for someone else in that situation right now. You know firsthand what it's like, and by supporting someone else going through it, I think you can be that person for yourself at the same time.

I would highly recommend Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy, as it's really helped me with getting in touch with my body and releasing emotion. The book 'Reclaiming Your Body' by Suzanne Scurlock-Durana is also very good, and comes with a password that gives you access to some great guided meditations that could really help you. It's very inexpensive on Kindle.

The Language of Emotions by Karla McLaren may be helpful too though the exercises listed in the book seem to be best suited to people who are very good at visualisation.

Another option that has really helped me is using EFT tapping to process emotions and traumatic events. Other therapies that could really help include somatic practice, somatic experiencing, and sensorimotor psychotherapy. I hope you find something that works for you!

Journalling about my emotions and listening to sad music can also help a lot in this area. All the best with it!

I recommend some books on body language.

I'm currently reading The Definitive Book of Body Language

I have also read What Every BODY is Saying

I recommend both of them.

The first book is more about general body language, body language in business, and body language is courting. The second book is about lying and catching people lie.

There is also this book: Unmasking the Face: A Guide to Recognizing Emotions From Facial Expressions which I haven't read yet, but it looks good.

I was a sorta late bloomer, coming out in the later part of college. I didn't really have people to talk to, most people didn't suspect so it wasn't ever brought up. When I decided to start coming out, I wanted to prepare with stories and experiences from others, but really I didn't know where to look. At that age, the internet had slim pickings for what I was looking for. The book The Velvet Rage offered some reasoning to the way I was feeling. In retrospect, I disagree with some of the author's perspectives, but at that time, it helped.

When I actually started telling people, I would get really tired, and go to bed. The following morning I always woke up with nausea and would puke. No drinking involved, but it was a weird psychosomatic response I experienced.

I guess in a way, your sadness comes from a mixture of things; in a way, it's a mourning of no longer having to be a person that repressed a certain part of their life. It's also an overwhelming sadness of knowing that you've missed out on things in life if it hadn't been for the burden of hiding. I experienced A LOT of rage, not with myself, but with the conditions of the world around me. Things didn't make sense for a while, and when they did, they always felt "fresh." Like not knowing when I could start telling friends about the guys I thought were hot. Always thinking "Oh god, am I being 'too gay' now or have I always felt this way?"
Having your situation be an "open secret" can make this process harder as it raises questions about trust and suspicion. But overall, just know that this takes time, it takes a lot of time. Be patient. Listen to yourself, and think things through.

>In '87 we knew stormy weather was on the way, she would have known where her house was (presumably an exposed position), she may have even have known her roof wasn't in good condition. The subconscious is quite capable of putting all that together and once that happens it can end up in a dream.

I thought we were told that there was going to be no storm. Rather famously.

>She trusts her gut-instinct, which means she trusts the reasoning of her subconscious which can include dreams.

Interesting. I wonder what the ratio is between her bullshit dreams and the actual practical premonitions?

On that note, how far early did she dream? Was it that night or a week earlier? Why did she not take any action? Was she sure of it?

Has she entertained that her feeling of a dream may be deja vu? Does dreaming of a possible future have any benefits?

What is the difference of dreaming her roof might come off as it is weakened, knowing that there are storms coming, and someone worrying that their roof is not secure and knowing there are storms coming?

It seems the only real difference is the difference between conscious ability to think clearly, and some half assed ability to think about something abstract when you're asleep.

>Normally people balance subconscious reasoning against concious reasoning, and look for a concordance. If she's good at one and bad at the other, trusting her "gut" may even be the rational thing to do, but only if she doesn't have a rational explanation for it. From all the evidence in that blog post, that does seem to be the case.

Subconscious reasoning? It's not reasoning if it's subconscious. It's a different process entirely.

>She's only a local councillor, the decisions she's making are relatively simple. For a councillor I'd rather have an honest person who goes with their gut than a corrupt statistician.

Yeah. It's a funny thing going with your gut. Look at the wiki list of logical fallacies, that's thinking with your gut and it leads to wrongness. I read an interesting book on irrationality

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Irrationality-Stuart-Sutherland/dp/1905177070

It's funny how people's instincts can be so utterly wrong so often.

Nah, I don't want a councillor who's got tells her that' where there's smoke their's fire' or that someone looked dodgy because their eyes were too close together or that 'It's all these croatians innit?'

Not saying that's what she thinks.
But my gut tells me she's an ignorant fucking loon and my gut is never wrong about stuff like that.

>At the National Policy Institute conference, the writer F. Roger Devlin gave a talk on why young Norwegian women in Groruddalen, outside Oslo, preferred dating Somali and Pakistani gang members to ethnic Norwegian boys-next-door. “The female instinct is to mate with socially dominant men,” he explained, “and it does not matter how such dominance is achieved.”

There is something surprising here though. The native Norwegians are wealthier than the Somali/Pakistani immigrants, and all else equal wealth is generally associated with social dominance. If you look at history, in basically every case the group that's wealthier is considered socially dominant over the less wealthy group, and women go for wealthy men. So what gives?

My theory: In this case, wealth is associated with high-speed Internet, which leads to porn overuse, which leads to social awkwardness. There have been anecdotes about this online for a long time, but research is finally starting to come out. This is why "women like bad boys" has just recently become such a meme: the average male in our generation is much worse with women than the average male of previous generations. That leads to r-selected mating behavior among women who are targeting the fraction of the male population that managed to survive the introduction of high-speed internet porn unscathed.

I think there is a divide that is more general, and deeper, than the specific issue of banning.

I elaborated on this a few times before, so I will just quote and link a post describing what I think is the fundamental disagreement here (and advocating for "my side"):

> > That fucker you were pleased with in this very post said that "refusal to debate" is reactionary and/or authoritarian.
>
> Yes... and I don't care much for the exact phrasing (and in fact, I went on about the phrasing here).
>
> But it really is a simple fact that the refusal to debate, the use of pat answers and cliches with the air of finality, the shutting down of disagreement through mockery/abuse, etc., are characteristic of both the authoritarian personality, and of authoritarian societies.
>
> C.f.:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought_Reform_and_the_Psychology_of_Totalism
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authoritarian_personality
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eichmann_in_Jerusalem
>
> > Cis people are that fucking entitled.
>
> Do you really think it has anything to do with "cis people" feeling entitled? Actually I think most people in most circumstances feel entitled to receive justification for assertions given to them. Not to demand justification is actually an authoritarian trait, in a way -- the kind of thing that begins with a childhood of being told "because I said so" and ends with the "agent state" capacity described in Obedience to Authority.
>
> Personally I am trying to raise my daughter in such a way that she feels entitled to explanation in exactly this way. I do not want her to accept anything on a "because I said so" basis. So, I am always giving her the reasons for things (when I don't let her do things, for example), even if she won't understand, so that she will expect reasons. And when she is older I will tell her not to listen to anyone who can't explain why, and I will warn her about the many people who believe things without knowing why.
>
> That was a bit of a tangent, but the point is, I don't think this feeling of being entitled to explanation, debate, rationale, etc., has anything to do with "cis people," and I don't think it is a bad thing. I think it is a very good thing. I think it is the foundation of skepticism. I wish to see more of it, not less.
>
> Incidentally, I'm reminded of a relevant quote. I am sorry that it is so long, in addition to my already-long post with many links. But it is quite good, and there is no way to shorten it.
>
> > Paul Rabinow: Why is it that you don't engage in polemics ?
>
> > Michel Foucault: I like discussions, and when I am asked questions, I try to answer them. It's true that I don't like to get involved in polemics. If I open a book and see that the author is accusing an adversary of "infantile leftism" I shut it again right away. That's not my way of doing things; I don't belong to the world of people who do things that way. I insist on this difference as something essential: a whole morality is at stake, the one that concerns the search for truth and the relation to the other.
>
> > In the serious play of questions and answers, in the work of reciprocal elucidation, the rights of each person are in some sense immanent in the discussion. They depend only on the dialogue situation. The person asking the questions is merely exercising the right that has been given him: to remain unconvinced, to perceive a contradiction, to require more information, to emphasize different postulates, to point out faulty reasoning, and so on. As for the person answering the questions, he too exercises a right that does not go beyond the discussion itself; by the logic of his own discourse, he is tied to what he has said earlier, and by the acceptance of dialogue he is tied to the questioning of other. Questions and answers depend on a game — a game that is at once pleasant and difficult — in which each of the two partners takes pains to use only the rights given him by the other and by the accepted form of dialogue.
>
> > The polemicist , on the other hand, proceeds encased in privileges that he possesses in advance and will never agree to question. On principle, he possesses rights authorizing him to wage war and making that struggle a just undertaking; the person he confronts is not a partner in search for the truth but an adversary, an enemy who is wrong, who is armful, and whose very existence constitutes a threat. For him, then the game consists not of recognizing this person as a subject having the right to speak but of abolishing him as interlocutor, from any possible dialogue; and his final objective will be not to come as close as possible to a difficult truth but to bring about the triumph of the just cause he has been manifestly upholding from the beginning. The polemicist relies on a legitimacy that his adversary is by definition denied.

-----

Finally, for a bit of balance, I will quote /u/Voltairinede's defense of the opposite position, with emphasis added:

> >Is it acceptable to mock people for their assumed physical appearance/grooming?
>
> depends on whether their oppressed or not.
>
> >Is it acceptable to imply that other people have never experienced marginalization, while knowing nothing about them?
>
> its an odds game, but I get it right nearly all the time.
>
> >Does making light of "marginalization" in this way (bragging about the power to marginalize others) create the kind of atmosphere in which the marginalized become safer, or does it normalize marginalization itself?
>
> marginalising the non-marginalised makes safe spaces for the marginalised.
>
> >What kind of response is this type of behavior likely to provoke?
>
> Fear, confusion, anger, frustration.
>
> >What kind of social atmosphere follows from it?
>
> A hostile one for reactionaries, one where the war between oppressed and oppressor is in the open.
>
> > Does it produce the kind of social atmosphere that you would like to see characterize society as a whole?
>
> Yeah

(This may not be the strongest defense of that position, but I quote it as a clear statement of what that position is.)

I just wanted to add something that I felt would be fitting here. This is simply my perspective on the collective unconscious so take it as you will, but it seems relevant.

I see the collective unconscious as being a good basis for spiritual ideas, and I have my own beliefs based around it. The reason I see it as a good basis is 1.) much of it is empirically supported, and 2.) the idea of a collective unconscious itself to some extent implies a universal realm of existence.

First I would like to briefly cover relevant literature which substantiates the collective unconscious. The point of this is to show which aspects of this idea are supported enough to branch off of. The information I’m going to sum up is from the field of research called Affective Neuroscience, which was coined by Jakk Panksepp, who I believe is Jungian himself based on his reference to archetypes, and both Freud and Jung. I believe his book is a must read for all Jung enthusiasts and I’ll be linking it below. After this I’ll present my little theory of what this means from a spiritual perspective.

Summation of Relevant Literature

Affective Neuroscience is a field of study which combines three major disciplines of psychology: Cognitive, Behaviorial, and Neuroscience. What the study’s and experiments have generally shown is that there are distinct anatomical neural structures which illicit consistent patterns of behavior in animals when stimulated, and are shared to varying degrees by all species (the degree of variation becomes larger as species become farther apart on the phylogenetic tree, with the nervous system becoming more complex rostrally as it progresses through species). On top of this, due to the nature of the behavior patterns showing approach/avoidance tendencies, it’s reasonable to conclude that it is an emotional response which is evoked from stimulation that influences the corresponding pattern of behavior.

To simplify, this shows that organisms are preprogrammed with mechanisms to properly respond to environmental triggers. These systems were refined and passed down through millennia’s of adaptations. In a sense, these systems are an ancestral record or bank of knowledge, passed down through generations of offspring to better equip them for the obstacles presented by the physical world. These systems inspire organisms to hunt, forage, seek security, reproduce, as well as many other things.

To show an example of how it works in practice, one of these systems is responsible for dealing with danger; the fight or flight system (more broadly speaking, FEAR). This systems goal is to help organisms detect threats in the environment and react accordingly. Now imagine an archetypal situation: you are hiking through the woods when all of sudden you hear a suspicious crackle in the leaves not to far from you. Upon looking you notice your being stalked by a mountain lion. You freeze up and your heart beats faster as your body prepares to run or fight. What happened here? First, your perception was triggered by an environmental trigger, the mountain lion. Without you putting any effort, your body naturally prepares you to deal with this threat by altering your physiology to better facilitate active movement. On top of this, your phenomenologically struck by an overwhelming sense of fear, your body’s way of not letting you ignore the immediate threat your faced with; painting your perception with a relevant and meaningful narrative: the hunted.

The Parallels

I will now attempt to draw the connections between this information and Jung’s notion of the collective unconscious to show what aspects of it are empirically supported. First, you must understand the concept that brain and mind are intimately connected. Monism or dualism are not important here, just understand that when something occurs in the brain there is a reaction in the mind, and vice versa. Now for the connections:

1.) The neural systems detailed above are shared by all species to varying degrees. What this implies is that there is a template of mind, which is indeed true. All minds share these unconscious operating systems which interpret environmental events in a meaningful way, and evoke a proper response out of the organism. With these systems being homologous throughout species, we could reasonably conclude that these systems make up the neural/physical representation of the collective unconscious.

2.) These systems imbue our perception with meaning. The idea of meaning is almost indistinguishable from archetypes, with Jung describing how these unconscious contents are essentially the source of all meaning. And just as archetypes are all around us, the products of these neural systems are too. It seems these systems project archetypal narratives onto the world around us to allow us to move through the world in a meaningful way. This is seen in the mountain lion example, with the fight or flight system projecting the archetype of the beast onto the mountain lion. This could also be seen in the systems responsible for love projecting the archetype of the anima/animus onto the object of desire.

Spiritual Speculation (Creation Story)

Based on these parallels, the idea that the collective unconscious is universally shared and the source of all meaning is not at all unreasonable, and is empirically supported to a large degree. So we now have a base to branch off of: there exists and aspect of consciousness that is universal and home to all which is meaningful. On the other hand, we have physical reality which exists independent of this realm of consciousness.

From this we can form a sort of story. There exists two worlds: an objective reality, cold and void; and a subjective realm, deep and rich with meaning. Objective reality is finite and exists in certainty, while the subjective realm is amorphous and infinite, being simultaneously beautiful and horrid. Between this chasm of worlds exists a bridge: organisms. The organism is a part of the objective world existing as a sort of vessel for the subjective realm to inhabit. As the subjective realm inhabits this vessel it takes on all its finities by conforming to the structure of its biological limitations (for example, sensory organs). In doing so, the subjective realm takes on the form of an individual, in a sense becoming a soul. The soul walks its path through the objective world, experiencing it from the shoes of its vessel, in the process turning the once cold dead world into a place of meaning and potential, leaving behind it stories of good and bad. But in the end all vessels face the inevitable faith of reality: death. And all souls return to there source, the heavens and hells of the collective unconscious.

Link to Jakk Panksepps Affective Neuroscience:

https://www.amazon.com/Affective-Neuroscience-Foundations-Emotions-Science/dp/019517805X

A General Theory of Love

I think this issue really falls onto what you consider to be "modern psychology". Researchers have much understanding via neuroscience, genetic behavior science, evolutionary psychology, and more traditional psychological research.

For example, Simon Baron-Cohen (Sasha's cousin) is a world renowned psychological researcher on behaviour, particularly related to children, autism, and empathy. His book, The Science of Evil and Origins of Cruelty does a great job of summarizing the understanding of various causes and effects related to empathy-related problems, including Borderline Personality Disorder, autism, narcissism, psychosis, and Asperger's, and includes multiple inputs from sources such as genetics, childhood abuse or neglect, injury, and intermediary descriptors such as the brain circuitry and chemistry. (You can get a summary from various videos as well.)

If you really want to get into the detailed subject, I highly recommend the video course Biology and the Human Behaviour: The Neurological Origin of Individuality, taught by Robert Sapolsky and produced by The Great Courses. Sapolsky is always brilliant and interesting, and you can get a lot of this info from free videos around the internet just by a Google Video search on "Robert Sapolsky".

One of the key things I like about Sapolsky's course is that he starts off talking about the different levels of what we mean by causation. What does even "root" cause mean? One level describes the stimulus that results in the response behaviour, another describes the brain activity, another describes the chemistry, another describes the brain structure and interactivity ("design"), another describes the evolutionary pressures that cause the brain to be that way, another describes the variations, mutations, injuries, and other causes that create differences from the statistical norms, and so forth. Much of it is incredibly well understood, both as described by Sapolsky and Baron-Cohen.

In this context, the "let's bleed out the excess blood with leeches" description is highly inaccurate. That sort of thing was due to a complete lack of understanding. We have the understanding to a great degree with much of psychological problems. Rather, it is more an issue of treatment technology and development. I think a simpler description is that it's the engineering that's lacking, not the physics.

This is an area Sapolsky goes into as well. He does a great job of describing, for example, of how a reduced amount of a chemicals and/or the number of receptors can cause a certain problem or behaviours (e.g., schizophrenia), and treating with that chemical and address the symptom. But then he'll refer back to an earlier part of the course where he also described the effect of that chemical in other areas of the brain, and you can easily understand how increasing it to solve a problem in one area can create a problem in the other. So the issue comes down to how do you either increase the chemical at only that location of the brain or how do you increase the sensitivity (receptors) in those neurons in that region, which may ultimately be the source of the problem. We don't really have the technology to do either. (I may be remembering some of the details incorrectly, and I am not a neuroscientist, but this is the gist of the message.)

That leaves us with no workable solution even though we fully understand the root cause, and means we have no choice but to treat using these imperfect methods like addressing symptoms and trading off one problem for another (side effects).

Of course this whole description I give does not necessarily apply for all psychological illnesses, but then to be fair the same is true for many physical ones as well, often not understanding the source and limited by technology. Cancer is a great example, where we apply treatments that create major side effects and don't really "cure" the cancer. (We even refer to remission, at best, rather than cure.)

TL;DR: I think a better description is that we have pretty good understanding but currently lack sufficient technology to treat much better than we do at the moment.

Surprised to see Martha Nussbaum not mentioned yet. Here's some of her books to give you an idea of her thought.

Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions

> Starting with an account of her own mother's death, she argues that emotions are intelligent appraisals of a world that we do not control, in the light of our own most significant goals and plans. She then investigates the implications of this idea for normative issues, analyzing the role of compassion in private and public reasoning and the attempts of authors both philosophical and literary to purify or reform the emotion of erotic love. Ultimately, she illuminates the structure of emotions and argues that once we understand the complex intelligence of emotions we will also have new reasons to value works of literature as sources of ethical education.

Political Emotions: Why Love Matters for Justice

> Martha Nussbaum asks: How can we sustain a decent society that aspires to justice and inspires sacrifice for the common good? Amid negative emotions endemic even to good societies, public emotions rooted in love―intense attachments outside our control―can foster commitment to shared goals and keep at bay the forces of disgust and envy.

Anger and Forgiveness: Resentment, Generosity, Justice

> Studying anger in intimate relationships, casual daily interactions, the workplace, the criminal justice system, and movements for social transformation, Nussbaum shows that anger's core ideas are both infantile and harmful.

> Is forgiveness the best way of transcending anger? Nussbaum examines different conceptions of this much-sentimentalized notion, both in the Jewish and Christian traditions and in secular morality. Some forms of forgiveness are ethically promising, she claims, but others are subtle allies of retribution: those that exact a performance of contrition and abasement as a condition of waiving angry feelings. In general, she argues, a spirit of generosity (combined, in some cases, with a reliance on impartial welfare-oriented legal institutions) is the best way to respond to injury. Applied to the personal and the political realms, Nussbaum's profoundly insightful and erudite view of anger and forgiveness puts both in a startling new light.

Hiding from Humanity: Disgust, Shame, and the Law

> Nussbaum argues that the thought-content of disgust embodies "magical ideas of contamination, and impossible aspirations to purity that are just not in line with human life as we know it." She argues that disgust should never be the basis for criminalizing an act, or play either the aggravating or the mitigating role in criminal law it currently does. She writes that we should be similarly suspicious of what she calls "primitive shame," a shame "at the very fact of human imperfection," and she is harshly critical of the role that such shame plays in certain punishments.

>, why do people assume that simply because you can't prove something that it must not exist?

I don't know anyone who assumes that.

> I suppose a broader question is: is emotion a kind of knowledge?

I don't know if emotion is a kind of knowledge, but knowledge of your emotions (which is what you were talking about in your post) is a kind of self-knowledge.

These might be relevant readings:

http://www.amazon.com/Upheavals-Thought-The-Intelligence-Emotions/dp/0521531829

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/self-knowledge/

Absolutely:

Living With Intensity: Understanding the Sensitivity, Excitability, and the Emotional Development of Gifted Children, Adolescents and Adults

Emotional Intensity in Gifted Students: Helping Kids Cope with Explosive Feelings

Misdiagnosis and Dual Diagnoses of Gifted Children and Adults: ADHD, Bipolar, OCD, Asperger's, Depression, and Other Disorders

If your daughter also exhibits anxiety symptoms (mine sure does, and it's often tied in to giftedness because their little heads can think of things they're not emotionally ready to handle) there's also:

Freeing Your Child from Anxiety

Helping Your Anxious Child: A Step-by-Step Guide for Parents

And for executive function deficits, there's:

Coaching Students with Executive Skills Deficits

Smart but Scattered: The Revolutionary "Executive Skills" Approach to Helping Kids Reach Their Potential

Thanks for the suggestions, I'll definitely look into them. These books have been really helpful:

>"when prophecy fails" - its by the sociologists who came up with the concept of "cognitive dissonance", they followed a group that believed they were getting messages from outer space from "Sandana", and a flood was coming and flying saucers would pick them up [spoiler: no flood, but some still believed]

>"Obedience to Authority" - this is the famous Stanley Milgram experiment, and they found that religious people were the most likely to "obey authority" even when it was for things against their conscience, e.g. shocking people to death (actor played the part of the "student").

What people should keep in mind about the milgram experiment is that he did a lot of variables, and there were an specific set of variables that brought out the worst in people. Just FYI. His book Obedience to Authority covers every single variable and what it means.

I don't think the rationalist community frowns on intuition as long as it's getting feedback from more systemic analysis of evidence--look at Julia Galef's Straw Vulcan presentation for example (text summary here). And any realistic understanding of how rational thought works in the human brain has to acknowledge that intuition and emotion play an important role, see Descartes' Error by Damasio for some good evidence. Also, if you look into the history of how scientists have come up with important new theories that later turned out to fit the evidence well, they often talk about the important role of intuition (Einstein has many quotes about intuition and imagination on his wikiquote page). The key is just to not let intuition/emotion have the last words, to subject them to questioning and try to convert intuitions into more systemic arguments that are better for scrutinizing and testing.

> will never have them

I really wish I had time to write a lengthier comment, because this question is an interesting one that's the subject of a lot of active research.

Some books you might be interested in, all of which are accessible to the general reader (with a few scattered technical bits here and there):

https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/affective-computing
https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/vehicles
https://www.amazon.com/Descartes-Error-Emotion-Reason-Human/dp/014303622X

> No, people of all political positions come to hold their beliefs because of emotions, rather than rationality.

It's "rational" to pay workers as little as you can so that more profit can be made for shareholders. But I would argue that it's morally abhorrent. That's a political belief informed by ideology - even if it's rational.

I also think you're discounting emotion entirely - and that's really not something you should do.

Try this: https://www.amazon.com/Descartes-Error-Emotion-Reason-Human/dp/014303622X

And remember:

>You aren't allow to criticize something you haven't read.

Here is another good source of what Descartes got right and what he got wrong.

https://www.amazon.com/Descartes-Error-Emotion-Reason-Human/dp/014303622X

I'm finishing up a course on teaching social skills (which I will be putting all of the information together and creating a thread in the next week).

I'm reading two books currently: Twelve by Twelve and Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys

If you have boys, Raising Cain. I think the author has one about girls as well.

https://www.amazon.com/Raising-Cain-Protecting-Emotional-Life/dp/0345434854

I would either say A General Theory of Love or The Demon-Haunted World are books that I always recommend to people who want to expand themselves.

A General Theory of Love is the perfect message for those who think intelligence and self-mastery means an absence of emotions. For those of us who think being rational means not letting emotions into the decision making process, this book elucidates on why that is not healthy and also why you're probably lying to yourself if you think you are incapable of feeling emotions like "normal" people.

The Demon-Haunted World is a book for everybody. It is a philosophical book written by an astrophysicist using everyday language so nearly anybody can grasp its concepts. It brings the major philosophical question of why within the average person's conceptual grasp, without using any spiritual reasoning. I feel that when more people can contemplate that question, why, without immediately turning to the supernatural and shutting down the mundane, we will be a more level-headed species.

Eh, my two cents. ;-)

Ranciere is easy if you actually read it, i.e., read each word until you understand the sentence, before continuing to the next sentence, without skimming. His prose is so beautiful and clear that I had trouble reading it at first, because I was trying to read things into it when it actually just says exactly what it means. The "How to Read a Book" is also written to be easy to read.

A couple other lovely books that are easy reading is The Politics of Experience and The Politics of the Family by R. D. Laing.

But, you should be suspicious of philosophers who don't critique your question when you ask for "easy reading." Maybe they (unintentionally) want to keep you pliable and dumb, easy to instruct (which is the etymology of "docile").

> aspects of my abuse required me to extinguish my empathy and do things very far away from my core beliefs

The alters who handled that for you had a critical role in your survival. People who aren't able to dissociate and who experience this kind of abuse get pretty permanently messed up - meaning, think about the fact that if you didn't have those alters to step in, YOU would probably have become what they are. I think a persecutor generally IS a protector, the mindf*ck being that they learned the best way to protect you/others is by becoming the abuser. What they went through was trauma in the form of psychological torture, and I guarantee none of them see it that way. But as far as healing goes, that's how it ought to be approached with them.

The empathy piece is tricky. I read this book a while ago that really helped me understand more about how and why it can get shut off. It's called The Science of Evil: On Empathy and the Origins of Cruelty. At the time I read it I was struggling with my own (lack of?) empathy but also trying to get a handle on how our abuser(s) could behave like a normal human being in one setting but then carry out unspeakable abuse in another.

> Have read hundreds of books in the self help and eastern philosophy category, but these days they don't do anything for me.

It's very low quality literature.

Sounds like you would like Martha Nussbaum, she is a very well respected scholar and has written a lot on the Ancient philosophy (ethics mostly), including stoicism (somewhat critically) - in a manner that is also relevant for the person living today. I am thinking of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

> Would like to read something that was written by people who were severely depressed or overcame tragedy.

Then you should probably look at autobiographies or empirical research into depression (1, 2, the author is a clinical psychologist). Philosophy is aiming at maximally objective, reason based interpretation and argument, not interpretation of the past ethical theories based on their personal feelings.

Edit: also, I haven't read this myself, however, it crossed my mind as something that might interest you.

> consider that every single video game and every single popular story and every single everything on Earth is oriented towards heterosexuals. Every blockbuster film stars a heterosexual romance and every big new book is about a male and female lead tugging at each other's heartstrings.

Alan Downs talked about this extensively in The Velvet Rage - which is an amazingly powerful book. Especially for people who've been involved in queer community issues for a few years. But I'm not sure that the state of neglect toward GLBT audience members that was once so very painfully true, is still the catastrophe it once was. And catastrophisation beyond actual scope seems like it hinders activism more than it helps.

The L Word. Queer as Folk. Philadelphia. Brokeback Mountain. Will and Grace. Modern Family. All fairly popular pop culture things not really oriented towards heteronormative relationships.

The Doctor Who franchise, especially torchwood heavily references GLBT issues - although my favourite is "I speak horse. His name is Susan and he wants you to respect his life choices.

Transamerica and Dirty Sexy Money have some fairly extensive references to transgender characters...

GLBT characters in scifi/fantasy are borderline common place now. A number of fairly successful works have featured GLBT lead characters. Richard Morgans 'The Steel Remains' is awesome and a personal favorite.

Openly gay celebrities are barely noteworthy at this point. Being openly gay did wonders for Ellens career and certainly hasn't hurt Neil Patrick Harris. Openly gay musicians have been around for a while in certain genres, but Frank Ocean and Rob Halford are seeing their careers unphased by coming out despite being in typically incredibly homophobic genres. Top tier athletes and former athletes are open and out in a number of sports. Openly trans celebrities like Lana Wachowski and Chas Bono get plenty of positive airtime for their openness.

Things are still incredibly far away from good. But it's been a while since every single bit of pop culture available was heteronormative.

Man I'm sorry you're struggling. I went through exactly the same thing here in America. Like you I used to think of my sexuality as a disability. In hindsight that seems fucked up to me now, and really shows how conditioned we are to think that heterosexuality is the only way to be "normal".

Idk if you're a reader, but there's a great book about this exact subject (accepting yourself) called The Velvet Rage. I've seen it recommended before, but I really think it should be required reading for us gays. We all have to go through this process to become healthy emotionally.

It will take time, and personally I'm not finished yet after years of trying. Good friends are important. People that will listen and care about you. Ideally get counseling or therapy from someone who specializes in this if available.

If you can without endangering yourself, try to be "out" as much as you can to your friends, family, and coworkers. Not having to live a mental double life helps.

Whatever you do, don't kill yourself, no matter how hopeless you feel. If you get to that point please go to the hospital. Your situation may seem impossible sometimes, and you will have bad days, but there is always a way forward. Always.

I wish you the best ❤️

The Velvet Rage: Overcoming the Pain of Growing Up Gay in a Straight Man's World, Second Edition https://www.amazon.com/dp/0738215678/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_Dg1DCbQMDWC4C

Read "The Velvet Rage" for one thing.

Shame is something we all deal with -- and not in the obvious ways. The hardest part is that we don't get any emotional validation from our relationships (I mean, we do get compliments, expressions of friendship, affection, and even love... but we never accept it... like when your Mom tells you you're handsome... or if you're driving a friend's fancy car and get compliments; We've built up a facade since youth to hide what we really are, so what other people interact with, befriend, romance, etc... we don't own. It's the "friend's fancy car" and we can't take credit for it. We shrug off the good about us because deep down inside, we're afraid that by exposing our true self to anyone, they'll hate us.) So you're gonna need to come all the way out and start living your life. This is you. You are not flawed, you are worthy of love, and you are the only one whose validation matters in your life.

EDIT: Dude, I'm 33, came out at your age and it's been so much better ever since. So just saying. I did the half in, half out, and I hated it. Now that I can actually own myself, I've finally felt free.

I've found this book very helpful.

http://www.amazon.com/Living-With-Intensity-Understanding-Excitability/dp/0910707898

It's based on Dabrowski(sp?)'s work with gifted people. Covers the whole positive integration thing-a-ma-jig.

That's actually quite a fascinating topic - there's lots of good psychological research into it.

For example, take a group of people, and divide them in half (set A and set B).

To set A, pose the following question:

"You are considering buying a lottery ticket. The tickets are $1, the payout is $20. There are 10 tickets in total, of which 9 have been bought. Would you buy the ticket"

To set B, pose the following question:

"You are considering buying a lottery ticket. The tickets are $1, the payout is $20. There are 10 tickets in total, of which 9 have been bought by Tony, the person who came before you . Would you buy the ticket"

Most people in set A will purchase a ticket. Very few from set B will.

This is just one example, of which there are staggeringly many displaying human irrationality.

Very good introductions to this area can be found in irrationality by Stuart Sutherland, predictably irrational by Dan Ariely and many others.

This is a great book echoing the sentiment Culture of Fear: Why Americas Are Afraid of the Wrong Things

/u/manwithahatwithatan, this is definitely worth the read. It's a hard one, but also so very important. I also highly recommend taking the time to read a book called The Velvet Rage. The book is far therapeutic and will help you find the tools you need to get over this struggle.

These reads are important because they acknowledge hard truths you are talking about. The Velvet Rage goes into strategies on how to handle issues a lot of gay men face.

It is all about finding lasting happiness and self-worth. I actually think you are on the right track because you are taking the first and hardest step of acknowledging the problems. Getting to that place of self fulfillment will take time, but you can do it.

One key thing I want to note that there is absolutely nothing wrong with being single. In fact, if you struggle being happy while single, you will struggle with happiness in a relationship. I have so many gay friends (and straight) who are married and still feel incredibly lonely. Relationships do not fix this sort of thing.

I'd recommend the following resources:

https://drjudithorloff.com/empath-support/

https://www.amazon.com/Language-Emotions-What-Feelings-Trying/dp/1591797691

EFT tapping is also a great way to deal with overwhelming emotions and release them.

It's a worthy read, but kind of dull. If you're looking to improve yourself, I would recommend Irrationality by Stuart Sutherland. Worthy and surprising.

>with the rise of feminism and the normalization of female sexual agency, women are much more likely to seek out "alpha" males for casual sex — attractive, dominant men who don't necessarily have a provider vibe, but are good in the sack.

Sure, but there's also the widespread use of birth control, which influences women to prefer less masculine partners. So what gives?

I think a bigger issue is that the modern world is turning men in to wusses. See The Demise of Guys. A combination of porn and video games has rendered modern men anxious, distracted, and unable to pursue long term goals. Testosterone levels seem to be gradually dropping, possibly as a result of chemicals like BPA. (I suspect that anti-androgens like BPA are also responsible for the increase in assigned-male-at-birth people realizing that they're actually women. The rationalists are at the forefront of this wave because they're more introspective, nerds are lower testosterone in general, and the rationalist community isn't judgemental toward trans people.)

Most modern males read as "disgraced social outcast" to women because they have trouble maintaining eye contact and conversing naturally with them. Any man who doesn't have this problem is labeled an "alpha" by the PUA community. In the environment of evolutionary adaptedness, you'd need some honest signalling of high genetic quality (symmetrical face, superior hunting abilities, height, high verbal intelligence that allows you to easily make people laugh, etc.) in order to enjoy unusual success with women. (Note that the characteristics I mentioned correspond only loosely with the PUA notion of "alpha" behavior, which is supposedly of utmost importance with women. Also note that "alpha" behavior doesn't seem like an unusually honest signal of genetic quality. Lots of male wild animals behave in a very feral, "alpha" way. If human women really were programmed since time immemorial to value "alpha" behavior over all else, we probably never would have self-domesticated and formed civilization in the first place.)

I stopped watching ALL television back in 2002. I too watched news and investigative journalism. But I quit because:

• Local News is all about fear "are your children being molested at school? News at eleven!" and then at eleven they are all "of course not! where did you get that idea". A culture of fear is good for advertising.
  
• the death of 60 Minutes for me was the network alterations to the cigarette cancer stories
  
• the CONSTANT use by the media of the phrase "connected to Al Qaeda"; anything can be connected to anything, but they never trace those connections- just raise fear
  
• the lying and the sloganeering accompanying the aftermath of 911
  
• I read this book: http://www.amazon.com/The-Culture-Fear-Americans-Afraid/dp/B003R4ZBR8

a good resource for expressions

Its what the show "lie to me" is based on.

an example of how to use a grid to draw symmetrical eyes

http://www.amazon.com/The-Demise-Guys-Struggling-ebook/dp/B00850HTHO/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1337704658&sr=8-2

It sounds like you've been through some tough times. The beauty of life is you always have an opportunity to forge your own path. As cliche as it may be, after every storm there is a rainbow. This is your opportunity. Here is my road map for you:

1. The first thing you must do is talk to a psychologist. It is possible you have depression or underlying mental illness. They can give you techniques to combat that. Even if you do not have a mental illness, the techniques they can teach you, with Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, sound like they would be useful for you.
   
   
2. You need to make a schedule and, this is the hard part, follow it as well as you can. Find a diary or make an excel spreadsheet and fill your day with activities. Examples would be: 8am wake up, 9-10am go for a walk, 10-11am write resume, 11-12pm tidy house, 12-1pm lunch, 1-2pm reading, 2-3pm exercise, 3-4pm search for jobs, 4-5pm do online university course homework, 5-6pm free time, 6-7pm dinner, 7pm-9pm free time, 10pm go to sleep. Basically, fill it with tasks you think you can accomplish that are not so challenging that you are put off doing them. Even if you miss one or two scheduled activities, you will still be moving forward in the right direction.
   
   
3. There are some books you can read that may be of benefit/interest:
   
   

• Marty Seligman, Learned Optimism
  
  
• Philip Zimbardo, The Demise of Guys
  
  Good luck, let us know how you go.

While it's loosely related, what's your opinion on Philip Zimbardo's The Demise of Guys?

I listened to both of the emotion podcasts on there since yesterday. It blew my mind. I've been thinking about it a lot, even related to hunger as you mention as I'm pretty hungry today. I need to know more, so I might have to pick up the book they mentioned: https://www.amazon.com/How-Emotions-Are-Made-Secret-ebook/dp/B00QPHURT6

A neuronormative could have remembered to include link to the book.

I guess some would feel that the book is a tad too academic, but I find it pleasing to read (and to listen too, the narrator does terrific job in the audible version).

The concepts of constructing emotions described in the book have helped me to understand some aspects of my inner workings. Specially the role of the subconsciousness that feels to have major leaks to my conspicuousness. And also the influence of how I think I capture in much more detail my internal bodily feelings and changes in the environment.

Also the concept of Affective niche (what things and details get your attention) has been useful as it seems to differ occasionally from normies.

I'm in the same boat as you and the truth is these emo are often not really based on external circumstances. We just are in the habit of looking for external stuff to attract them to. Many negative emotions come from the brains failure to accurately predict an outcome. This explains more & might help you a great deal. https://www.amazon.com/How-Emotions-Are-Made-Secret-ebook/dp/B00QPHURT6

This is one of my favorites. Outlines very succinctly how voting decisions are emotional, not technical/rational.

https://www.amazon.com/Political-Brain-Emotion-Deciding-Nation/dp/1586485733

Wow! That's amazing. You know, there is a healthy way to be angry. Anger lights up our boundaries. It's a defense. If we use it in defense, it serves its rightful purpose. It's when we use it to attack that it fucks us up.

I had forgotten this. Thank you for reminding me. It's from a good book loaned to me by a friend. The Language of Emotions, by Karla Mclaren. It's time to go back to that book again.

Not related to tripping, but a resource for more information on C-PTSD: http://outofthefog.website/toolbox-1/2015/11/17/complex-post-traumatic-stress-disorder-c-ptsd

Understand that your symptoms came up to protect you. Through understanding you might even be able to thank them.
I'd heavly recommend reading up on emotions & trauma (contains some visualization exercises to work through each emotion & explains their role in the psyche): https://www.amazon.com/Language-Emotions-What-Feelings-Trying/dp/1591797691

I wish MDMA was legal with a therapist to work through repressed issues.
If you have any specific questions (i.e. ptsd symptoms, shrooms), I might be able help you a little. It's such a big topic I don't know where to start and where to go.


Remember shrooms are not a magic cure, not a "take once and be healed"-drug. Depending on your state (set & setting) they can be healing (like ~positive PTSD :D) or traumatize you further.
I don't advocate self-medicating and prefer to recommend 'sober' methods, but I believe they helped me little by little.

The Velvet Rage by Alan Downs. It may seem like an anachronism, but I feel it is still relevant in our heteronormative world.

A lot (not all) of TRP tries to teach you that LTR's are wrong and some try to berate you for the effort, however such isn't the case.

What you're experiencing is a form of oneitis, and a form of a lack of Abundance Mentality. Most of the things you will find on TRP do not deal with love - rather 99% of it is the plate theory. While I wont say such is wrong, it has little significance for someone not looking to fuck a different woman every night, and just wants to find someone suitable for companionship.

You need to realize that these "feelings" you have over this woman, could potentially happen with anyone, and there is nothing that makers her special from the rest of the female population. Once you start habitually and consciously retaining this information, your Abundance Mentality development will happen quickly. If you were as alpha and had such good luck with women as you make it seem, you would have no problem separating sex and emotion.

Plus, as other commentators said this lack of separation tends you to emit "beta" Like behaviors when you are entranced by a woman. So the problem here is more likely your behavior and the (probably) sudden change in how you treat a woman that scares her. Identify your actions, your habits and the things that you do that she does and doesn't like (and this is with all women, and learning body language can help with this. I recommend reading up on some Paul Eckman watching the Lie to Me Series on netflix might help with such too, It's a show I'd recommend everyone on this subreddit watch.
This is the type of thing I help figure out/deal with on my blog, so you can PM me if you have any questions or concerns.

Side note: I feel like you need to read the Bitch Hierarchy Guide that's stickied to this subreddit a few times, one thing he made important was this - sex does not affect a woman's level on the ladder - which I saw was a problem of yours.

This book would be a good place to start: https://smile.amazon.com/Obedience-Authority-Experimental-Perennial-Classics/dp/006176521X/ref=smi_www_rco2_go_smi_g2563698942?_encoding=UTF8&*Version*=1&*entries*=0&ie=UTF8

Strangers to Ourselves: Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious by Timothy Wilson is personally one of my favorites
Anything by Malcolm Gladwell (I really enjoyed Blink)
Anything by Robert Cialdini (He was my social psychology professor and one of my favorite authors / public speakers)
Whistling Vivaldi: How Stereotypes Affect Us and What We Can Do (Issues of Our Time) by Claude M. Steele (Who basically uncovered stereotype threat research)
The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil by Phillip Zimbaro (famous for the Stanford prison experiment)


Older books:
Mindfulness by Ellen Langer (about automatic processes and how mindless we can be)
When Prophecy Fails by Festinger, Riecken, & Schachter (To understand how cults work, a group of researchers infiltrate a join a cult. Mainly about cognitive dissonance but details what happens to a cult when the world doesn't end like predicted)
Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View by Stanley Milgram if you want to know all about the Milgram experiments

Sorry that is all that comes to mind now. . . (edited for formatting)

Probably this study. I knew somebody who said electricians refused to provide the shocks, but I have never confirmed that.

I may be in the minority but I don't think that Mills's Sociological Imagination is a good starting point for an introduction to sociology. While the first chapter (The Promise) may be worth a read, the rest of the book is very much an insider's critique of the subject and requires the reader to have a general understanding of sociology as it is being practiced post-WWII. I think that you will get the most out of Mills after familiarizing yourself with sociology more broadly.


As others have mentioned, Ritzer & Stepnisky's Sociological Theory is a very comprehensive overview of sociological thinking but it may be a bit overwhelming. While it isn't as encyclopedic as Ritzer & Stepnisky, I like Seidman's Contested Knowledge because it provides the reader with both a historical overview of sociological thinking and provides easy to read summaries of important thinkers.


I am not sure if you will find these too difficult but here are some other books that may expand your understanding of sociology:

• Outsiders: Studies In The Sociology Of Deviance by Howard Becker
  
• Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View by Stanley Milgram

I would recommend reading [Ordinary Men] (http://www.amazon.com/Ordinary-Men-Reserve-Battalion-Solution/dp/0060995068) a book that uses the narrative about a group of ordinary Germans from all walks of life committed some of the worst atrocities of the Holocaust: many Jews were not killed in chambers (the final solution) where their screams could be ignored. These "ordinary men" were forced to take jews out of villages and shoot them in cold blood, even infants.

The author uses it as a cautionary tale of the horrors of brainwashing propaganda and war; how average joes can be convinced that what they're doing is ok because it is sanctioned by a higher authority and therefor rationalize it to themselves. For more on that you can read about Milgram's psychological experiments, described in [Obedience to Authority] (http://www.amazon.com/Obedience-Authority-Experimental-Perennial-Classics/dp/006176521X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1342748841&sr=1-1&keywords=obedience+to+authority). In the 1950s people were insisting that the Holocaust was a strictly German thing, that it happened once and never again. Milgram proved that most Americans would be willing to inflict pain on others to the point of death (they truly thought the actor was being killed by shocks) as long as some authority sanctioned it. He showed that even in our "good country" if an authority figure tells you to do something, you place all responsibility on him and become willing to kill. Afterwards participants would say things like "I felt bad for hurting the guy so bad, but I wanted to do my job well" and things like that.


People have always been quick to deny involvement, or claim to be just doing their small part. It's complacency towards hate that leads to these atrocities, not millions of hateful people.

Here part 1

Part 2

http://www.amazon.com/Descartes-Error-Emotion-Reason-Human/dp/014303622X

I sometimes find it helpful to draw a mental line between the actual research on the one hand, and the researchers interpretations of their results on the other. One can often find many possible interpretations of a given experiment.

>What Im wondering about is if humans having little or no control over our actions is the standpoint scientists are generally taking now that a lot of new research exists to support it.

I can't comment as to whether the majority of neuroscientists would endorse this view, but I can see another interpretation that jibes well with the research I've read: we do have control over a number of factors and situations (e.g. ducking when somebody throws something at you shows control), but control amounts to a mishmash of both conscious and unconscious factors. Where others see research showing that we don't have control, I see research showing that conscious awareness has a more limited scope than was previously believed. I would not call conscious awareness an "illusion" as such, because clearly we have awareness, but I think we do have illusions about the scope of that awareness and we underestimate the importance and power of unconscious processes.

>I could add that the paper Im writing is on the emergence of Descartes dualistic theory and how it is proven or disproven in todays scientific and religious world.

You might check out Antonio Damasio's book Descartes' Error.

In the additional list in the article I really enjoyed Stephen Pinker's The Language Instinct

One of my own favorites; Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain by Antonio Damasio

The biggest thing to realize is that you have to realize that your body is the problem and is distorting your outlook, so you need to learn to
ignore and not trust your own judgement so much on a good manythings... in other words: Be skeptical of your own thoughts and feelings and challenge them by ignoring them and experimenting (doing things).

If you want to make your life better know that work is not really fulfilling most of the time and is just a grind, what makes your life fulfilling is the kinds of people you have around you and lack of debt...

So you want to get enough money to not be so stressed out and you want to find good people to hang around with... those should be primariy goals now to get there...

Knowing yourself and growing your vision of how to see the world is half the battle...

People are driven largely by unconscious biases and processes
they don't understand so to build up your confidence and how to see the world I would recommend learning about how people aren't
really in control of themselves (so you don't take anything personally)

First see this video (you can find the rest by googling "orwell comes to america")

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYmi0DLzBdQ

Most people operate under the assumption that when we talk logically and make rational arguments while we communicate via language other people will understand... this is NOT true and science says so, its good to know this just so you know that each persons mind is it's own universe and each persons interpretation of the world is limited to their own inner world defined by the structure of their biology.

These are good tests just to show you your own biases, and why trying to go against human biases (looks, etc) is a fools game because biases are unconscious

Bias tests:
https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/

If you really want to get a more informed view of the world and how much people have no clue about how they reason and function get and read this book (even if you don't understand all of it theres bound to be stuff you can learn about human beings just by reading it)

http://www.amazon.com/Descartes-Error-Emotion-Reason-Human/dp/014303622X/

Just sharing a bit of my own wisdom since I've been through the process of what you are going through.

Much of what you describe is just describing a basic take on human health and the life history of the person you see around you and interact with.

You would enjoy Sam harris I think:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ri_hruUhJUw

http://www.samharris.org/


Not to be a downer but I'd read up on neuroscience/research papers on human behavior. You should look for roots of instincts/feelings across species because if we have some instinct there most likely will be other examples in the history of life.

Just one example:

http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/features/rev-0000020.pdf

Also:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/014303622X/

On reason and emotion:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYmi0DLzBdQ

Here are some of my favorite popular books by academic researchers about consciousness:

• The Feeling of What Happens - Antonio Damasio
  
• Consciousness Explained - Daniel Dennett
  
  And for more of an inside-out view, I'd recommend a book on meditation by a former neuroscientist: The Mind Illuminated by Robert Yates

Affective Neuroscience, by Jaak Panksepp is a very heavy treatment of the topic, but very good.

The Feeling of What Happens, by Antonio Damasio is a little more coffee table/pop sciencey, but he's a very accomplished neuroscientist who is drawing on his clinical experiences.

Put simply, though, "affect," or emotion, is a subconscious body state. Hunger, fear, desire, rage, sadness, happiness/satisfaction are all collections of biological functions which place our organism in a state appropriate to its environment. Emotion is a fairly primitive degree of control over the entire biological system. Right above reflex.

Feeling is the conscious appreciation of your body experiencing one of these states, and attributing it to a specific perceptual stimulus, or abstracting one from experience.

We as humans also have a further degree of abstraction, where we can imagine ourselves feeling an emotion, and precipitate the physical response as if we were experiencing the stimulus. This is the basis for the emotional weight of things like art, music, and empathy.

I'll second all of the suggestions to meditate, but given that this is /r/philosophy it might be a good idea to point you towards some literature.

In my experience, reading a bit of the meditations of Marcus Aurelius always puts me in a mood of calm and control, although Buddhist sutras are probably just as good.

If you want to actually read about the cognitive science behind mood and affect, I've heard good things about Antonio Damasio's older books. (Looking for Spinoza and The Feeling of What Happens.) His more recent books have had a less favorable reception. For a book specifically focused on meditation and the brain, you can't beat Zen and the Brain by James Austin.

I know I'm late to this conversation, but I'd like to add that animals indeed do feel emotions. Dr. Jaak Panksepp has studied this in depth.

Thank you for looking after Tugboat. He's fortunate to have found his way to you. Raccoons are a very demanding animal so it takes a very dedicated individual to be able to have them in their life.

re: studies of animal emotions

>Jaak Panksepp (2004, 2005) has been conducting a research program that he calls “affective neuroscience” and that encompasses direct study of animal emotions (2004), exemplified for example in the experimental investigation of rats “laughing” and seeking further contact in response to tickling by humans (Panksepp & Burgdorf 2003). Over several decades, his work (reviewed in Panksepp 2005) has elucidated the neuro- and molecular-physiological bases of several ‘core emotional systems’ including ‘seeking’, ‘fear’, ‘rage’, ‘lust’, ‘care’, ‘play’, and ‘panic’. Panksepp argues that these are shared by all mammals, and may be more widely shared among vertebrates.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness-animal/#currsci-emotion

Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions

Affective consciousness: Core emotional feelings in animals and humans

'Laughing’ rats and the evolutionary antecedents of human joy? Physiology and Behavior

But yes, the subjective experiences of others, whether human or other kinds of animal are rather hidden from us, so we should withhold absolute credence concerning our beliefs about what's going upstairs in their minds. But, plausibly, morality obliges us to be careful in situations like these, not hazardous, so we shouldn't harm or kill these animals without good reason on the assumption that these animals lack what we may believe to be crucially morally relevant properties that we are actually barred from investigating fully at this time.

There's a book I got for a friend who is expecting a baby boy soon. It's called "Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys". Haven't read it myself yet but it comes well recommended. Maybe you can try and find a cheap copy of it and have a read? Anyway, good of you to try and be there for the kids. :)

PS You're barely out of childhood yourself. Do what you can to help, but first and foremost go out and enjoy life.

My boyfriend is a new special needs teacher/assistant with very little training and he's increasingly patient since he's started the job. He recommends the book Raising Cain to get an idea of what the students are going through and figure out easier ways to communicate with them.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/reviews/0345434854/ref=mw_dp_cr

If you want the book, I'll get it for you if you PM me contact info.

Sure thing:

Gestalt Therapy Verbatim: http://www.amazon.com/Gestalt-Therapy-Verbatim-Frederick-Perls/dp/0939266164/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1322174708&sr=1-1

Toward a Psychology of Being: http://www.amazon.com/Toward-Psychology-Being-Abraham-Maslow/dp/0471293091/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1322174747&sr=1-3

The Mass Psychology of Fascism: http://www.amazon.com/Mass-Psychology-Fascism-Wilhelm-Reich/dp/0374508844/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1322174790&sr=1-2

Politics of Experience: http://www.amazon.com/Politics-Experience-R-D-Laing/dp/039471475X/ref=pd_sim_b_23


These will definitely enhance your perception of other people and yourself.

The Politics of Experience by R.D. Laing

There are also psychopathic ENTJs... ;-)
When I was looking for information about the "evil" psychological disorders, there was no way around “The Science of Evil”. It deals with empathy and what people with a lag of it are like. It's awesome!
https://www.amazon.com/Science-Evil-Empathy-Origins-Cruelty/dp/0465031420/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1491643106&sr=8-1&keywords=the+science+of+evil

Besides that, I totally agree. Whenever I have a goal in mind, there is nothing I am not going to break through!

Currently working my way through The Science of Evil, although I haven't been much in the mood for it.

I also just grabbed the first two volumes of East of West as a Christmas gift for my nephew, so I'm going to read through those right away to make sure they're age appropriate.

What do you usually enjoy reading?

This is a very detailed working out of a kind of stoicism/epicureanism. I appreciate the thought you've put into this. Some books I've enjoyed on stoicism and philosophy of life:

• A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy
  
• Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions
  
• The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics
  
  Thought-provoking books that challenge naturalism from a secular perspective:
  
  
• Irreducible Mind: Toward a Psychology for the 21st Century
  
• Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False
  
• Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness are the Keys to Understanding the True Nature of the Universe

Pick up and read [The Velvet Rage] (http://www.amazon.com/The-Velvet-Rage-Overcoming-Straight/dp/0738215678). It can be a bit one dimensional at times, but it does a brilliant job of describing the different 'phases' gay men go through as their personalities evolve. At the very least it will help you navigate your friendship a bit better.

This is older than I am, but still has plenty to offer:

Facing Shame: Families in Recovery

Without knowing specifics, maybe some of these could be useful to you as well:

Shame Faced: The Road to Recovery

Counselling Skills for Working with Shame

Coming Out of Shame: Transforming Gay and Lesbian Lives

Healing the Shame that Binds You

Treating Sexual Shame: A New Map for Overcoming Dysfunction, Abuse, and Addiction

Asian Shame and Addiction: Suffering in Silence

The Velvet Rage: Overcoming the Pain of Growing Up Gay in a Straight Man's World, Second Edition

The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma

Healing Through the Dark Emotions: The Wisdom of Grief, Fear, and Despair

The book The Velvet Rage talks about this topic in a not very faltering light. The author Alan Downs' premise is that many gay men are over driven in other aspects of their lives to make up for the (often unconscious) shame they feel about their sexuality.

I personally don't think I would be as financially ambitious if I were straight. I basically had to really get me shit together to get out of the conservative place I grew up. The Velvet Rage is worth a read but in my openion it's a bit dated and may not be as applicable to gay men who grew up after the year 2000.

https://www.amazon.com/Velvet-Rage-Overcoming-Growing-Straight/dp/0738215678/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1464819731&sr=8-1&keywords=velvet+rage

I am going through a similar process and am still healing. Be gentle with yourself. Rest. Learn to forgive. Know that healing takes time and that there is a beginning, a middle, and an end. There is an end. You are alive, you will survive.

Some active things to do to heal that I've found useful.

• Choose which of your friends to talk to and tell about this carefully. Talk to ones who don't silver-line the relationship and tell you to heal. Don't talk to toxic friends. There are no absolutes in healing.
  
• Read self-help books. How To Survive The Loss of a Love and The Velvet Rage both have helped me.
  
• Meditate. Use Headspace. Lie down and listen to meditation for healing after a breakup
  
• Journal for as long as you have feelings in your head. Get them down. Make sure to include both positive and negative thoughts. Stop journaling when it feels like you aren't writing down anything new.
  

It's something I'm still working on myself. Indeed, it kept me in the closet until I was 48 years old and it's kept me from pursuing any relationships even after coming out. The first step, of course, is recognizing where those feeling are coming from. After that... Well, like I said, I'm still working on that part. Having friends in the LGBT community helps a lot. So far it hasn't been enough for me, though, so I'm considering changing counselors. My counselor has been tremendously helpful to me in helping me cope with anxiety and depression. However, she's rather hopelessly naive when it comes to anything LGBT related.

You might check on the book The Velvet Rage: Overcoming the Pain of Growing Up Gay in a Straight Man's World. Personally, I found the author was a bit over the top in places, interpreting absolutely everything through a lens of shame. Nevertheless, it was eye opening and helpful.

Hey man,
I'm sorry you're feeling this way. I'm Serbian-Slovenian, but born in Canada. I have visited Serbia and spent time with my cousins (Ivanjica + Beograd) . I know how conservative and anti-gay the culture is and can only imagine how lonely you must feel. So the first thing I'd say is it's great that you continue to reach out online about the way you're feeling. You've posted a few times about your feelings, even apologizing or indicating you're embarrassed for posting so often, but I think it's the best thing you can be doing for yourself so keep at it.

I'm 28 and privileged to live where I live and am able to be out and open about who I am and who I love. That being said, I've only recently begun to acknowledge my depression and how much being gay has perhaps contributed to that. I grew up in a small town in western Canada which is relatively conservative and didn't realize how much that experience affected me until I left when I was 18 for university across the country to Toronto and could live my life how I wanted instead of how everyone else expected me to be. That's as close as I'll come to saying 'stick it out, it gets better.' But note: it's not a "cliche" if it's actually the truth. But when you're in the thick of it it's impossible to recognize that as anything helpful, so I get it.

I read this book last summer and wish I could have read it when I was 14. https://www.amazon.ca/Velvet-Rage-Overcoming-Growing-Straight/dp/0738215678/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1521396766&sr=8-1&keywords=the+velvet+rage If the link doesn't work, it's called "The Velvet Rage" by Alan Downs. It's short, pretty easy read, but holy shit did it change the way I viewed myself, my actions, my feelings. Everything. Can't recommend it enough if you get a hold of a copy or find it online. I understand that having a book like that in your house might be dangerous for you. I recognize my Canadian privilege that I could walk into a bookstore openly and purchase it from the shelf without concern for my own safety.

I started talking with my doctor a few years ago about depression. I pick and bite the skin around my fingers until they are raw and bloody, and twirl my hair and pull it out. It's a form of OCD that's connected to anxiety and depression. I learned about CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy) (another user posted a link to it below/above I noticed, so it's not a novel contribution to this discussion) and the takeaway is that you can control your feelings much more than you think you can, it just takes practice and focus. I'm not the best at it yet, but it's a good starting place to learn about your own thought patterns etc. My doctor showed my this site: https://moodgym.com.au/ it's free, I encourage you to check it out.

My doctor also turned me on to mindfulness and yoga. I started doing it at home because I was too nervous to go to a class or something because I felt like I would look like a stupid idiot. So don't let that stop you from trying it at home. If you're in your room for hours on your computer or doing nothing anyway, it's a great thing to do anytime of day to strengthen your mind and body. It sounds hokey, but holy crap do you feel better after. I'm a believer now haha, and have started going to some classes, including a 'hot yoga' session last week which was fun. I started at home on youtube with this 40-minute introduction to yoga video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQ6NfFIr2jw&t=1197s I've shown a few people this and I've heard feedback that it was stressful, she goes to fast in some spots etc, which I appreciate especially the first time. But if you have to stop the video, go back, etc , especially the first time, do it, and then the second time, the third time, etc it gets much more enjoyable. Here I CAN safely say 'don't worry, it gets better' :P She has tons of other videos that are shorter/longer/specific to certain body parts etc.

An observation if I would: you seem like a very intelligent, introspective, analytical and reflective person who writes a lot. You say you have no interest in doing things, yet you continue to post long essay-type postings. So maybe recognize that writing is something you do enjoy doing, that you write very well, and maybe writing is your thing! Do you journal? Do you write fiction on your own? Do you comment on other things around the internet, like news stories, politics etc? Looking back, especially in my teenage years, I read tons of fiction and wrote a lot of short stories and I think that was how I dealt with my queer feelings. It's almost funny thinking back to those stories and how subtly gay themed they were, lots of themes of loneliness, feeling out of place, feeling different, the other, even one story was about a Vietnam war veteran who came home from the war and couldn't deal so he ended his life. My teacher had me read out that one to the entire class. It was clearly a cry for help, and instead of allowing me to wallow in my shame and self-hate, that teacher acknowledge my strong writing with a good grade (making me feel good about myself) and then sharing it with the class forced me to not be alone with my story/feelings. 10/10 teacher, I often wish I could find him now to tell him how much he meant to me. Actually maybe I'll write him a letter this week. You've inspired me!

Also on your writing and introspection etc, I think you'd enjoy philosophy if you're not already into it. I'm not, but my ex got into and it changed the way he interacted with the world and felt about himself, and I can totally see you enjoying it too. I don't have any recommendations, but I'm sure there's a philosophy thread on reddit/other dudes on here can give recommendations. You have no interest in things, I get it, but you continue to reach out, and so I'm hopeful that you're open to trying new things and finding something that you might discover you do like instead of just complaining that you don't care about anything. All you can ask for yourself is to try :)

It sucks when you have no interest in things, especially school, but DONT let that slip because if nothing else, strong grades IS your way out. There is life beyond the world immediately around you, outside of Serbia, outside of Eastern Europe. The world seems so shitty because the shitty people are often the loudest, and doom and gloom is what brings good ratings to the media, so they have incentive to report on the shitty things. I've worked as an HIV/AIDS counselor in a slum in Kenya, helping/working with people who have literally nothing but they somehow keep going with a hope is unbelievable given their circumstances. Recognizing how much you DO have, and being thankful for the smallest things you DO have, rather than focusing on the negatives of how shitty you have it and how you're feeling, is really all you can do until one day you might have something to actually actively feel happy about.

Going back to when I was 14, all I dreamed about was moving across the country to Toronto for university. It was all I had. Everything I did (school, part time work, extra curricular activities, sports (swimming)) was for that. And then I got accepted and moved away from my small-town life, and that joy, that accomplishment from completing that goal, probably saved my life. I lost my way a bit after that, but found it again at 26 when I was accepted to law school, and here I am now :)

Keep reaching out. Speak to a doctor if you can. I did end up going on antidepressants last year after things in my personal life broke down and my other efforts at self-help weren't enough (yoga, mindfulness, exercise (swimming, biking, running) healthy diet (so important omg. I'm a bottom with some IBS issues, fml right?. Fibre, fibre, fibre. But I digress!), social network, healthy hobbies, etc), and it really helped me. This year I recently had a bit of a mental breakdown (I'm still in law school and continue to have some personal issues relating to my ex and anxiety about my future, money, debt, etc) and was forced to re-evaluate everything again and accept that I have depression, it's okay that I have depression, and sometimes you need medical help in the form of medication to get you out of it. There is so much stigma still about mental health, and it's not accessible for so many people, but if you need it you need it. Think of chemical depression like the flu or a lung infection: you treat it with medication if you have to and then you get better over time. There's nothing wrong with getting antidepressants and using them until the rest of your life works itself out so that you have the structures and stability in place that you no longer need that chemical help. I'm not decided if I'll restart SSRIs this year or not (a doc gave me a prescription, I filled it, the pills are in my bag, but I'm still on the fence whether I need them or not. I likely will start them so I don't ruin the rest of my semester, and then see how things go) but yeah, fuck the stigma, sometimes you need it. It's okay to be depressed, there's a good chance it's a chemical imbalance combined with you being gay, but don't let it fuck up your future. Please. The world has lost too many amazing gay men to depression, shame, and anxiety, and even if you don't end your own life, being unable to do something with your clear amount of intellect would be an equal shame.

Good luck, dude.

For gay men, The Velvet Rage.

Some of the psychology is a little wonky and the perspective is more than a little college-educated/upper-middle-class, but it was a revelation the first time I read it a couple years ago, just for all the "Holy balls I have had this exact feeling and experienced this exact thing" moments.

This has come HIGHLY recommended to me, and it sounds like it might help you keep your sanity:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0910707898/

I think you might enjoy some books that often serve as a learning tool for many sociology students.

A Shopkeeper's Millennium by Paul E. Johnson.

Obedience to Authority by Stanley Milgram.

Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond.

War and Empire by Paul Atwood.

Each book is either a study to prove or present a hypothesis, so naturally tries to present evidence in a simple and clear way. No extended parts on boring sociological theory. The books are all easy to read and understand, and most importantly they are all a pretty good read.
One thing they all have in common is that their value or methodology is often controversial and highly debated in many crowds.

For instance, the Milgram book is the foundation for the famous Milgram Yale Shock Experiments in the 60's, so naturally there is the issue with ethics and methodology. If I remember correctly, this study is the reason any scientist today has to have his/her work approved by an Ethics Committee every time human subjects are involved.

War and Empire is a bit far-fetched at times, but is still very engaging, and at times hard to put away. Some might argue that it falls under 'History' more than 'Sociology', but because of how recent a lot of the topics are, I think there is real value there within sociology.

Guns, Germs and Steel is basically an overly simplified answer to a very complex and multidimensional question, but it's still a very fun idea to explore when you read it. Most people in the social sciences have heard of this book, and with it most people have also heard a lot of criticism.

The Shopkeeper's Millennium is probably the "best" of the four, as it often used as a "benchmark" for many sociology students on how historical research is conducted and used to present a study. The book is old, but it's still taught at many colleges to this day.

Based on your request, I think the Milgram book would be the most interesting for you to start with. Simply put the purpose of the study was to see if there is a correlation between obedience and the presence of authority.

I've also read a few books on poverty and unemployment in the Black and Latino communities. If that sounds interesting, let me know and I'll see if I can dig up some titles and names for you.

EDIT: Fixed some words.

Obedience to Authority by Stanley Milgram describes a classic experiment and is very readable.

For some really interesting studies about the nature of authority, I recommend:

The Lucifer Effect by Philip Zimbardo (the one responsible for the Stanford prison experiment)

Obedience to Authority by Stanley Milgram (of the Milgram experiment)

The Authoritarians by Bob Altemeyer. The book is freely available at his site.

I should have added that everyone believes things at least partially for non-smart reasons. There are no real life Dr. Spocks or Cmdr. Datas. As Damasio points out, all reasoning is partly emotional and those unfortunate individuals who have brain damage to the emotional areas involved in reasoning are actually terminally indecisive not super-rational.

>I'd argue that the idea that consciousness is non-material is our basic intuition.

And that is all you have to go on. Intuition is not a terribly reliable source of information about the nature of real reality. By intuition the sun rises in the east, travels across the heavens, and sets in the west while the earth remains stationary.

I pointed to books in links above that show the material basis for consciousness. I'm not going to be able to reproduce it here. But if you want to credit intuition there seems to be enough information about the universe being material and none about it being non-material to intuit that consciousness is also material.

Some Books:

I Am a Strange Loop; Godel, Escher, Bach; Philosophy in the Flesh; The Feeling of What Happens; Descartes' Error; Self Comes to Mind

>Holy shit, how many times do I have to say that I think that the physical brain plays a vital role in consciousness before you stop trying to argue as if I was asserting something to the contrary?

How many times do I have to say that physical brain is the only thing in evidence? If it is the physical brain and something, produce the "and something". I can produce the physical brain. So it seems my task is done and yours has yet to begin.

Do you have to demonstrate the non-material scientifically? Well of course you do. You say you can't, yet at the same time want it to be the controlling stuff. How can it do that with no connection? And if it has a connection to the material, then you should be able to study it scientifically.

Sorry but you don't understand that reasoning is unconscious it's been proven. That means that you don't literally understand what I'm saying you're attempting to reconstruct it using your own unconscious mind. This is why say religious people and secular people can't get along because they are using different dictionaries entirely.

That TED talk was made by a scientist, you do know that right? If you study the medical literature there are huge numbers of articles with regards to when our body breaks down that are statistically significant. i.e. repeated events regarding damage to that brain structure produce the same effects.

http://www.amazon.com/Descartes-Error-Emotion-Reason-Human/dp/014303622X/

Just face it, you lost. You're just not anywhere near informed enough to understand what I'm talking about, I've got years of read medical papers under my belt, you got none kid.

>Science on reasoning, I mean no offence but this the best link you can provide to information on cognitive thought process?

Go pick it up and have a read when you have the time.

​

https://www.amazon.com/Descartes-Error-Emotion-Reason-Human/dp/014303622X

​

> Studies relevance to the Canadian political system?

All capitalist states work the same, you have to understand that canada is a vassal state to the US empire, you don't seem to have any understanding of history, when trump was doing negotiations for the new agreement, do you really think justin and freeland were protecting Canadians? The reality is we are all in the US political sphere of influence because we buy and use products from companies headquartered in the US.

https://www.amazon.com/Descartes-Error-Emotion-Reason-Human/dp/014303622X

You might want to read more deeply into the notion that reason and emotion are "easily separated." See, e.g,

Robert Burton (neuroscientist), On Being Certain (see also this for a short intro to Burton's book)

Antonio Damasio (neuroscientist), Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain and The Feeling of What Happens

There really are a few people with neurological disorders or brain injuries who don't use any emotion or gut instinct to make decisions. They are totally rational people because they are disconnected from their emotions.

Rather than being Spock (or, I suppose, a full Vulcan), they are people who are paralyzed by decisions that the rest of us make quickly without thinking. Sure, it's one thing to try to make economic policy decisions without emotion, but try using pure rationality to choose between a blue tie and a red tie. They can't do it, and they get hamstrung by it.

If you are looking for something written for a popular/lay audience, a few good starting points:

Making up the Mind by Chris Frith:
http://www.amazon.com/Making-Mind-Brain-Creates-Mental/dp/1405160225

Older but particularly relevant for emotion and consciousness- "Descartes error"
http://www.amazon.com/Descartes-Error-Emotion-Reason-Human/dp/014303622X

If you want something from a less mainstream perspective dealing with embodiment and consciousness, you may enjoy Brainstorms by Shaun Gallagher:
http://www.amazon.com/Brainstorming-Views-Interviews-Shaun-Gallagher/dp/1845400232

Hope these help!

Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain

Sorry, I'm not willing to wade through another wall of text with so little punctuation.

But I got through this:

> I don't understand what other people mean by "feeling" in expressions such as "talking about feelings" and "talking about emotions" and "describing feelings" and "describing emotions." I just guess.

Which honestly doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me unless you're alexithymic. And even then, there's little mystery to what those things mean - even to someone who is.

Might try one of Damasio's books? Would probably start with this one: https://www.amazon.com/Feeling-What-Happens-Emotion-Consciousness/dp/0156010755

Thanks in advance! I'm a voracious reader and could always use some quality recommendations.

1. The Three Musketeers
   
2. Memoirs of a Geisha
   
3. The Poisonwood Bible
   
4. ASOIAF/Kingkiller Chronicles (EPIC! FANTASY! Not-crap writing (which plagues fantasy everywhere!)
   
5. A Prayer for Owen Meany
   
6. American Gods
   
7. Rebecca (Gothic! Gorgeous!)
   
8. The Lace Reader (WOOOOoooo, unreliable narrators!)
   
9. The Time Traveler's Wife
   
10. The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness (Cognitive Science!)

Hm. The website says it's from this book.
http://www.amazon.com/Affective-Neuroscience-Foundations-Emotions-Science/dp/019517805X?tag=quartz07-20
Jaak Panksepp

It was published in 2004. So that data is 2003 and earlier. This isn't new info at all.

Which made me wonder why it was posted, followed by an, "Oh..." I question whether rats are actually doing something like human seeking. On the human side, I think we're zapping ourselves because there's something there. We don't know what exactly but it does have some positive (and negative) effects. It's seeking something better, not just inflicting harm because there's nothing else left in the environment.

The same underlying physiological mechanisms that govern attachment in humans govern attachment in animals, even more so with mammals. That is to say we have the same hormonally driven attachment mechanisms. The way humans bond with our offspring is the same way that other mammals bond with theirs. The hormonal bonding can vary in intensity and duration of action. For some species once the weaning period is over that bonding process is broken as the hormones shift in the mother away from nurturing and towards mating. In these situations mothers will forget about their children because the stimulus is no longer there. These species live in the "here and now", and the adage "out of sight, out of mind" applies well. Once those babies grow up, or if they die, or are removed the mother the mother will go through a period of hormonal shifts. During this time she will be in distress looking for her infant because her hormones and experience tell her she should have a baby right now. But once that baby stops the cycle of stimulation, the mother (and her body) eventually forget and move on.

Animals that live in the same group their whole lives will end up forming life-long bonds with other group members. These attachments are driven by hormones but strengthened through shared experiences, like mutual grooming. So that a mother's relationship with their child will strengthened by hormones during the nurturing phase but will change as the baby goes through weaning into a relationship driven by experience. Because these species form longer bonds that last their whole lives its very likely that they never forget lost loved ones. A mother will remember her lost baby long after the stimulus of that baby is gone and long after her hormones have switched. This is because these species don't just live in the "here and now" but form long term memories and relationships of individuals within their social circle.

Affective Neuroscience.

>As of yet, we have not pinpointed exactly what morality is nor have we been able to provide definitive answers to some basic questions of morality

Sure about that?


https://www.amazon.com/Age-Empathy-Natures-Lessons-Society/dp/0307407772

Current hypotheses suggest altruism (ethics, morality) being a development originating from the maternal instinct.

Lots of non-human animals have morality. So either non-human animals have "abritrary vague social constructs" or morality is in-part biological. This isn't to suggest reductionism. There is a clear social aspect, and a clear social evolution in the development of ethics, but underneath those dynamic, evolving, constructs is biology.

I disagree that empathy is inadequate. Furthermore I would argue that empathy is the driving factor for human values. Empathy was not designed by human beings and had its start long before anything resembling humans walked this earth. Given the importance of empathy to the continued existence our species we can treat it as a meta-value system and derive other values and ethics from it. This argument is made more forcefully and in more detail can I ever hope to by Frans de wall. I would recommend you to read his short article The Evolution of Empathy and if your interest is piqued enough by his arguments to peruse his longer tome The Age of Empathy.

Let's go another layer and say that women may exhibit unhealthy behaviors towards other women within a toxic patriarchal society.

Women have to compete with other women for reputation-promoting male attention. And I don't mean primarily sexual, I'm talking about professional, romantic, and platonic attention as well. "One of the guys," especially if she is conventionally attractive, has better success in our society than women than don't conform to male expectations.

On top of all this, women are socialized to use their emotions, men are socialized to use their logic. Without combining to two, healthy communication is impossible. For this last bit, I suggest reading, "Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys." This book helped me parent both my kids better, boy and girl. It also helped me realize the quiet anguish of men.

I think that Brain Balance and Sylvan are completely different. Isn't Sylvan just a tutoring place? Idk. This Brain Balance center focuses on kids who have stronger left/right brain type of skills (I think) and then help then really integrate the two using strange repetitive activities (things including finger exercises and music, etc).

Like I said, the mom who I know was blown away by the difference it made in her kids life. I think they had to pay ~$6-8k for the sessions that spanned several weeks.

Although her son reads much much better, she says writing does continue to be more of a chore. His teachers don't mind if he types & they've considered letting him use dictation software for some of his more lengthy assignments, just so he can get his work done and not fall behind.

Kudos to you for recognizing that you've got "a pretty good kid." I hope you can find something to help him with his writing. The comic book suggestion sounds good for reading! Wouldn't it be great if he took an interest in that?

Oh - one last thing - have you read (or seen the documentary): Raising Cain, Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys? I just saw the documentary & they discuss quite a lot about the types of things that boys chose to read and write about (read: somewhat violent at times). It was so interesting to hear their perspective on this & it's relation to encouraging boys to read & write.

http://www.amazon.com/Raising-Cain-Protecting-Emotional-Life/dp/0345434854/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1322086525&sr=8-1

Well, the trick to making better children each generation is to not do the things you know your parents did wrong.

Like, we now know that being an emotionally unavailable dad is bad for kids. I strongly suggest this book.

http://www.amazon.com/Raising-Cain-Protecting-Emotional-Life/dp/0345434854

I recommend reading "A General Theory of Love" https://www.amazon.com/General-Theory-Love-Thomas-Lewis/dp/0375709223

One way to try to stop dating men is to try to figure out the dynamic and learn how to ID it early, and avoid those types of situations. But that doesn't change the fact that your status quo is to crave those situations that are unhealthy, but what you are most used to.

Another approach is to learn healthier attachment, to the point that what you want has fundamentally changed, and that the unhealthy patterns just don't do it for you any more.

The book I recommended is really great for getting an overview sense of how attachment works.

Then, trying to apply it to create situations where safe attachment can take place, and the other person(s) have a healthier, calmer limbic system than you. Therapy, healing friendships, healthy social situations--whatever situations can help "bring you up" to a more connected approach to the world.

You might like A General Theory of Love. It's the only book on the subject I've read, but I found it interesting and easy to follow.

I honestly have no idea (it could have been an article also) but this is good:
https://www.amazon.com/Myth-Multitasking-Doing-Gets-Nothing/dp/0470372257/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1494875493&sr=8-1&keywords=multitasking

Also two of my favorite pop pysch books (not 'laziness' related but great information just about how the brain works):
https://www.amazon.com/General-Theory-Love-Thomas-Lewis/dp/0375709223/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1494875459&sr=8-1&keywords=a+general+theory+of+love
https://www.amazon.com/Love-2-0-Finding-Happiness-Connection/dp/0142180475/ref=sr_1_19?ie=UTF8&qid=1494875385&sr=8-19&keywords=the+psychology+of+love

>But what about the oxitocine bond between child and mother?
The chemistry of maternal love is real. So is the feeling. And when the chemistry ceases the withdrawal syndromes are all too obvious.

Yes, I've read something that speaks to this poetically alongside physiological detail, in regards to the limbic brain also A General Theory of Love. But this is a specific kind of relational love.

>NO - the feeling of abandonment is precisely result of our experience, it is the very core of our natural identity.

Yet that is what he is meaning I believe, while proposing from and stating there is a condition beyond this. Have you read his work? It is perhaps being operatively aware in this 'beyond' condition that the activity of contraction as he calls it is perceived to be hallucinatory, state/stage conditional.

> That is why depression is the only truly effective state of individuation, the state of detachment from all cultural categories, the state of entirely submerging in the river of pure sorrow, where we can enter only alone, and from which we emerge as true individuals.

It is a necessary state and position-as-perspective to enter, I would agree. But there is more and/or other (transpersonal developments).

You're in luck! I have books for that!

Here's a good book on basic communication between men and women in relationships.

And if you're interested in the psychology and neurology behind how we develop our relationship to love in general, try this on for size.

Whether you have a diagnosis of social anxiety disorder or are just shy, this may help with some skill building. (In fact, just about any good book on social anxiety, as well as skill building for people on the autism spectrum, can be helpful even for people who are more psychologically middle of the road.)

And, not a book but a webpage, some good tips on dating in a more healthy manner. Note the first one especially in the context of our discussion on the seduction community.

A General Theory of Love

Not pedophiles specifically, but here are a few about deviant behaviors in general that might interest you:

• Anything from the guys behind the show Mindhunter
  
• The Science of Evil by Simon Baron-Cohen
  
• The Lucifer Effect by Philip Zimbardo
  
• The Anatomy of Evil by Michael Stone

A lot of us end up obsessed with external validation and need to keep 'achieving' to feel good enough - to silence the inner shame.

https://www.amazon.com/Velvet-Rage-Overcoming-Growing-Straight/dp/0738215678/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=the+velvet+rage&qid=1566700747&s=gateway&sr=8-1

The Velvet Rage. It's specifically for gaymos, but it revealed a lot about why I do some of the things I do. I re-read it every few years.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Velvet-Rage-Overcoming-Straight/dp/0738215678/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1373152873&sr=8-1&keywords=velvet+rage

If you're talking about stuff to read regarding self-acceptance, I've seen The Velvet Rage: Overcoming the Pain of Growing Up Gay in a Straight Man's World recommended a lot.

For LGBT history, I'd recommend the documentaries Before Stonewall and "After Stonewall." The latter used to be available for free on YouTube, but it has been taken down now.

>arguing with you over how "gifted" you think you are.

Dude. Read a fucking book: https://www.amazon.com/Living-Intensity-Understanding-Sensitivity-Excitability/dp/0910707898

Dabrowski's works are still very available on the internet. http://positivedisintegration.com/

​

You can also just type in "Dabrowski" on amazon.

​

I highly recommend the book "Living with Intensity", which contains a big picture view of gifted psychology and practical knowledge for parents, educators, employers etc.

​

https://www.amazon.com/Living-Intensity-Understanding-Sensitivity-Excitability/dp/0910707898/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Dabrowski&qid=1563657833&s=gateway&sr=8-1

​

Some papers...

Overexcitability and the highly gifted child

http://www.davidsongifted.org/Search-Database/entry/A10102

Tips for Parents: Beyond Overexcitabilities: A Crash Course in Dabrowski’s Theory of Positive Disintegration

http://www.davidsongifted.org/Search-Database/entry/A10858

This book may help you

A series is kicking off at the brains blog on Tom Cochrane's new book.

The presentation is a little clunky, but in Part-1 of the series we learn that he takes emotions to be "valent representations of situated concerns". These valent representations give emotions a functional role that is sensitive to "the wider context, and can accordingly serve [the individual's] interests more in a contextually sensitive way". He distinguishes emotions from feelings, taking "bodily feelings to represent the capacity of the body to deal with the situation".

It's a fairly abstract outline, but hopefully as the series continues I get a better sense of how his work relates to, say, Barrett's and Ledoux's recent work.

> First, acting dismissively hands the moral high ground on this existential issue to your adversary. Second, if you are a candidate from the left, it’s clearly strategic for your rivals to highlight your ambivalence, turning the election about an ideological crossroad. Third, Venezuelans in your country and back home, for whom this is just too personal and painful, will become suspicious of your silence and will start supporting the right. Fourth, these dynamics will nudge Venezuelan political leadersto ally with the Right and endorse their candidacies. Overall, you’ve allowed the Right the chance to define you in the worst possible light, lending credibility to accusations by alienating Venezuelans against you.
>
> So, say you are a center-left candidate who wants to see your country develop into a more prosperous and fair nation. While you would never think of going full-commie, you do think it’s important to expand public goods and services for everyone, especially the poor. You think what’s going on in Venezuela is appalling, yet you find yourself on the receiving end of these unfair and manipulative attacks.
>
> How do you go about it? Don’t dismiss the issue and own the attack head on. You might want to:
>
> 1. Be outspoken and specific about rejecting chavismo, about your stance on what your country and the region are doing about it, and about how you would deal with it if you become president. This would make it costly for your potential presidency to ally with chavismo, further lending reassurance to your voters and to Venezuelan observers;
> 2. Be outspoken and specific about how you’ll address the Venezuelan refugee crisis. Reshape the debate into an anti-discrimination issue. Show solidarity and empathy, which is a great way to get support from Venezuelans, and a credible way of implying that you would never do what chavismo did;
> 3. Try to build a consensus platform on Venezuela across campaigns, underscoring how the emergency calls for a unified stance agreed by all camps. This will allow you to regain control over the issue and insulate you from future attacks, letting the debate to flow into issues you want to address;
> 4. Rescind any campaign connections with chavismo’s allies within your country. This is key for credibility: these connections open a huge flank, because they underscore where your policy commitments will be as president. Letting these guys loose may shrink your initial base, but it will get you closer to the median voter. This was consequential in therecent Chilean race;
> 5. Accuse candidates that do indeed represent a threat. The Petros and AMLOs of your country shouldn’t agree with your consensus platform on Venezuela, so it should work as a credible mechanism to separate yourself from them.
>
> AsDrew Westen puts it, in politics, when reason and emotion collide, emotion invariably wins. The Venezuelan crisis presents the region with a deeply normative juncture that elicits some of the strongest human emotions: The sadness of loss on those of us who have lived through these last 20 years, and the fear of loss of those who worry about a similar future for their families. In this dramatic context, silence speaks louder than words.
>
> People vote for the character of candidates, and platforms should be signals of that character. Only a clear resolve on this sensitive topic will prevent your rivals from defining your character for you. Respect our loss, and respect the fear of your people – because, in the words of Master Yoda, “fear of loss is a path to the dark side.”

• • • • • -
          
          Owner | Source Code | Stats

Here is the mobile version of your link

Get therapy to help process these emotions, help heal and ensure this doesn't happen again. I myself did not go to therapy but I fully support it and think it's great advice--I'm just saying this as others here I'm sure can vouch for how helpful therapy was for them.


> why the hell am I still privately obsessing about someone who threw me out like a piece of trash?

Because, she threw you out like a piece of trash. A vicious discard is extremely tough to get through. It was meant to do the most damage to your psyche as possible. Toxic people have a lot of hate in them, and they break off some of this hate and inject it deep into your psyche, then cut you off to deal with the aftermath. So, you are having to process all of the hate she put into you, along with all the other issues you may have had before starting the relationship with her. This will take a long time to process. You've made it several months with full NC--this is an accomplishment!! You deserve applause for this. This alone is a big step, even though you still feel terrible this is a big step.

Also, you feel so bad right now because you've gone full NC. And the full reality of the situation is really settling in. It gets worse before it gets better because you can't lie to yourself anymore with false hope. Give yourself more time, a lot more time, and realize the emotions you are feeling now are normal and are actually a part of your healing.

If you were to drank a ton of hard liquor you could be sick for days. Your body would force you to vomit, you'd be incapacitated and feel horrible--but your body is protecting you. Getting rid of the toxin. And this feels worse than you felt while you were actually getting drunk, but you are actually getting healthier even though you feel extremely sick. Does this make sense? You've got to vomit and purge all the lies and the hate you accepted from this situation. It does not feel good, but it's necessary and is indicative that you are healing.


> I wish I was angry at her but the hurt is too deep at this point.

Excellent that you realize this! Your sadness and hurt are there for a reason. Depression and sadness are your body's way of telling you that you need to slow down and you need to let go of something. Ask yourself what you need to let go of and your body will tell you--whether it's her, or your false idea of who she is. Ask yourself and when you start to let go of the lie of who she is or the false hope you had during the relationship then your sadness will start to go away...

...And then, that's when the anger starts. Might be rage even. And this is difficult, but it's healthy as long as you don't take it out on others or let it get you in embarrassing situations. Because once you let go of these false ideals about her you are going to be rightfully pissed off about how you were treated. And your anger is there to protect you and tell you to never go back.

Check this book out yo, one of the best books I've read on the topic so that at least you understand what you're emotions are telling you and why you are having them:

The Language of Emotions / Karla McLaren

https://www.amazon.com/Velvet-Rage-Overcoming-Growing-Straight/dp/1611746450/ref=nodl_

You can move beyond your shame. I hope it happens for you one day 💗

fxvet: ^^original ^^reddit ^^link

I stopped watching ALL television back in 2002. I too watched news and investigative journalism. But I quit because:

• Local News is all about fear "are your children being molested at school? News at eleven!" and then at eleven they are all "of course not! where did you get that idea". A culture of fear is good for advertising.
  
• the death of 60 Minutes for me was the network alterations to the cigarette cancer stories
  
• the CONSTANT use by the media of the phrase "connected to Al Qaeda"; anything can be connected to anything, but they never trace those connections- just raise fear
  
• the lying and the sloganeering accompanying the aftermath of 911
  
• I read this book: http://www.amazon.com/The-Culture-Fear-Americans-Afraid/dp/B003R4ZBR8

Close. It's actually called Fear Culture, and it involves a hell of a lot more than parents protecting kids from illusory threats.

The Culture of Fear: Why Americans Are Afraid of the Wrong Things. Claro que a violência em alguns lugares aumenta, mas é o que dá notícia né? E pegando da review na Amazon:

1. Mass media creates panics & hysterias from a few isolated incidents.
   
2. Anecdotal evidence takes the place of hard scientific proof.
   
3. The experts that the media trots out to make comments really don't have the credentials to be considered an expert.
   
4. Entire categories of people are christened as "innately dangerous" (like the aforementioned teen moms and young black men)

Thanks for taking the time to respond to the now deleted post. I saw it and was too busy to reply. I feel this is an example of someone who listens to the media without putting any critical thought into what they are listening too. The media on the other site is only trying to increase audience and not reporting factual information (I feel their are some exceptions to this such as Democracy Now). I think the book The Culture of Fear does a good job of explaining this and how it impacts our society.

For more on this kind of thing I'd recommend Irrationality by Stuart Sutherland. It has some great examples of similar occurances. For example on numerous occasions a completed application form with an attached photo was placed in an envelope and left on a bench in a town centre. If the applicant was smiling in their photo a stranger who found the envelope would be more likely to post it.

> All of the behaviors of finding a mate is usually in high school. Passing notes in class holding hands while walking down the hall, going out on dates. Do you see what I am getting at? The gay guys in high school do not participate in these behaviors because they are in fear of their safety and protecting their secret from everyone.... Straight couples have professed their love from the rooftop, had sexual relations that everybody knew about and accepted. What do the gay guys have? Nothing but a blank slate and no clue how to rectify that.

Have you read The Velvet Rage? If not, highly recommended. http://www.amazon.com/The-Velvet-Rage-Overcoming-Straight/dp/1611746450

Edited to add link.

That's a great book, but if you want the mother-lode of individual and collective forms of irrational behaviour, I would recommend this book as well:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Irrationality-Stuart-Sutherland/dp/1905177070

Buy any book by Paul Ekman. The one I bought is here, now my friends call me "The Mentalist".

Do you have a source? There's a popular book on emotions that came out last year referencing a lot of research showing that emotion categories aren't inherent, and facial expressions don't always correspond across cultures. In fact, here's a quote from classics scholar Mary Beard:

>This is not to say that Romans never curled up the edges of their mouths in a formation that would look to us much like a smile; of course they did. But such curling did not mean very much in the range of significant social and cultural gestures in Rome. Conversely, other gestures, which would mean little to us, were much more heavily freighted with significance.

> even if the neuroscience he refers to is correct, his analysis seems flawed.

Nope, where do you think religion comes from? Religion is overwhelming evidence that people don't reason correctly. People live in an abstraction and emotion by and large not in reality, what you're seeing right now is an abstraction imposed on you by your unconscious processing. The noise you're hearing right now where you are is all generated for you by unconscious processes.

You can go get this book and look at the medical cases from science.

http://www.amazon.com/Descartes-Error-Emotion-Reason-Human/dp/014303622X/

Okay so basically, this could easily be a form of sexual harassment and bullying in the workplace - your best bet is to write a formal grievance and complaint to your manager about the co-worker, explaining what has been said about you.

However, there's not much legally you can do in this situation - it's not one that you'd call the Police for (unless he was telling your friends and family), and it's not something you'd really go to a Solicitor for. It's an internal employment issue.

>Since I was involuntarily outed I lost my dignity to an extent in the workplace and many people now treat me differently - not just because of implied homophobia but also because they cannot respect someone who was outed like that (i.e. a weakness).

I think you're overthinking this. I'm LGBT, for the record. Yes, people will change as they readjust to their new understanding of who you are, but it has nothing to do with not respecting you because of your sexuality.

What I might suggest is that it is in fact you who feels like you are not worth being respected, because of your sexuality or the method in which you've been outed. Your co-worker is an arsehole, there's no question about that, however, your own issues around self-identity are making this seem worse than it is.

You are the victim of gossip and you are projecting your insecurities onto them, you are (understandably) hypersensitive to what's going on - and that's okay normal - but you need to realistically take a breath, put in a formal complaint to the organisation, and just let things die down; and they will. In a few weeks, after the gossip has moved onto something else, nobody will care.

You might want to seek counselling for your issues to help deal with them - both overcoming the trauma of being outed against your will and the identity issues you otherwise have. I would also suggest having a read through The Velvet Rage to help understand yourself more in the wider context of being LGBT.

> Or misandry, even. Which is probably mostly what it is.

What is misandry?

> It's not the transness I'm finding offensive, really. It's mostly just the "masculinity" itself.

Actually, there's a name for this, it's called cisnormativity. Which is an extension to heteronormativity. It is an extension to the toxic, oppressive belief that men should be men, and women should be women, and men are masculine, women are feminine, and if you dare transition, you better follow the rules. The italicized part is the cisnormative extension of the heteronormativity that came first.

I hope you find a way to rid yourself of this. It's toxic to all those who hold on to it. There is absolutely nothing wrong with breaking the cisnormative and heteronormative "rules."

Sitting by my bedside is the book "Upheavels of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions" by Martha C. Nussbaum. It's a philosophy text concerning the philosophy of emotions. This is next up in my reading list of casual interests, because I find emotions to be fascinating, and since I like Artificial Intelligence, and the problem of imbuing AI with emotions is absolutely fascinating.

There are so many women who are writers out there. We emulate those who inspire us. We absorb that which surrounds us. It's a very human thing to do.

Some ideas in 4 categories:

Body Language:

• What Every BODY is Saying
  
• Unmasking The Face
  
  Speed Reading:
  
  
• Breakthrough Rapid Reading
  
  Evolutionary Psych / Behavior:
  
  
• The Blank Slate
  
• How The Mind Works
  
  PUA / Attraction:
  
  
• Bang
  
• Mystery Method