Another interesting post on the board (I co-operated in writing it)

Stef’s behaviour on the board and in casts seems to have changed in a strange way since he took the brave decision to go full-time.

I don't understand why Stef attributes anger to R.

http://freedomainradio.com/board/forums/permalink/68612/68801/ShowThread.aspx#68801

First, R's post is completely rational and cogent. (Nobody who is angry can write so lucidly.) In listening to these last podcasts ( four on a single topic) , I’m struck by the fact that they consist of exclusively of invective, vitriol, logical fallacies, arguments solely from authority, psychology, etc., and are remarkably repetitive. In the casts, Stef claims that another interlocutor has gone "haywire," etc., and that he, Stef, has privileged knowledge of the interlocutor's mental life (!) and therefore that his arguments are discredited. This personal identification is odd in and of itself because Stef also claimed that in his cast he was not referring to an actual person but using an amalgam-- http://freedomainradio.com/board/forums/thread/68410.aspx. So Stef pays fleeting lip service to a professional scruple and then readily violates it. I can't help but feel that I was listening in these casts to a very extended, inventively elaborated case of the defense mechanism identified by Freud as "projection":



That is, that Stef was accusing his interlocutor of what he himself is "guilty" of, (evading the issues, investing his ego in certain positions, not answering arguments, eschewing introspection) ---externalizing those bad and intolerable feelings and characteristics by attributing them to a person he felt was besting him in the debate. Half a dozen podcasts, countless posts on the board and a two-hour conversation were devoted to the debate. In all of this, Stef at no point addressed the most fundamental arguments of his ‘opponents’ http://freedomainradio.com/board/forums/thread/68410.aspx . Instead he has reverted to pathologizing his ‘opponents’ in a four-part series of casts. To do this, he had to repeatedly and fundamentally misrepresent Conrad’s and others’ arguments and behaviour, create a straw man and then attack that, engage in defamation and slander, and so he did. Anybody who has followed the threads carefully will be aware of this.

And then Stef banned Conrad, with no prior warning or explanation of any kind. Why did Stef ban him? Because Christina suggested so, was the reason that was given. No more no less. But what were Christina’s reasons? We don’t know. Had Conrad been abusive? Had he insulted people and refused to apologize? Was Conrad banned because he had not completed his defoo process yet http://freedomainradio.com/board/forums/thread/66899.asp

and still, horror of horrors, had the nerve to want to discuss board behaviour and political and economical topics? Or because he was asking difficult questions that threatened Stef’s self-image and certainty? http://freedomainradio.com/board/forums/thread/68410.aspx

& http://freedomainradio.com/board/forums/permalink/68314/68353/ShowThread.aspx#68353 . We don’t know: people are just disappeared.


I also observe that after four casts only one person has joined the debate (R.). Where are the others? Have they abandoned the Board? Are they silenced? Afraid to engage Stef because they know that then * they * will be subject to defamation in a series of podcasts? Or are they just unaware?

Not only did no board member respond to the sudden ban, members were also strangely silent about other forms of rather bizarre behaviour displayed by Stef. Conrad referred to an odd and unsubstantiated statement that Stef made about the coming of an anarcho-capitalist society in 5 to 10 years. Stef then denied he had ever made that remark-- called it nonsense-, after which Conrad posted Stef’s remark (verbatim) as proof to the contrary. Either, then, Stef was lying or had a faulty memory, and/ or says anything that feels tactically shrewd at any passing point. Stef did not respond to this evidence of his switch. The fact that no one else did is strange and worrisome. http://freedomainradio.com/board/forums/permalink/68518/68566/ShowThread.aspx#68566



Another example: As the link below shows, Stef here makes a remark about principles, and then later attributes his own remark to Conrad and then ridicules it. This is simply bizarre behaviour and it should give one pause. But nobody seems to have noticed or at least nobody chose to talk about it. http://freedomainradio.com/board/forums/permalink/68314/68734/ShowThread.aspx#68734


Given Stef's determination to equate a convincing argument with a crazed, hostile, defensive stance (and that it is unclear whether he himself actually believes this or deploys it as a debating tactic), given that he keeps contradicting himself, and given the strange behaviour that mentioned above (displayed while at the same time he insists that he is being logical and virtuous) I would suggest this: that Stef look more deeply into his current psyche, that he pathologize himself.



He has said more than once how difficult it was for him to do FDR full-time; that he wept in casts because of the difficulty. Has Stef seemed happy since he went full-time? Not as happy as before, nor as someone who is making his dream come true, it seems. His behaviour is that of a man who feels cornered, beleaguered, harrowed-and who does not want to admit it to himself and others and lashes out, misrepresents, lies and evades. Does he feel that his position of nearly infallible teacher and therapist got threatened in debates he could not "win" and refused to engage in? But Stef and the work he has done with FDR is so absolutely brilliant and valuable that he should not mind being criticised on fundamental issues and behaviour, for this can only help him to get even better at what he is doing.



Is it possible that he has not taken the measure of how de-stabilizing that change in his life has been? And perhaps he might share with us, in a calm and direct way, the concomitants of his inner struggle.

For example, is it an anxiety about not making it financially, about not *actually* being able to do the math? Is it that he no longer has the structure and stabilizing external reference points of a work life outside the mind or self? Is his relationship with Christina changing? Perhaps she is less available to him? Or is it something else still?

He said in his cast that he decided to go full-time, a terribly difficult decision, when he realised that this work had to be done and that he was the only one who was able to do it. With great power comes great responsibility, as one contemporary Superhero says. Stef also talked about the roles of teacher and therapist he has on the board. In order to justify such roles has he * unwittingly * started to create an image of himself as seeing it all, as seeing *through* people, and as basically having become infallible with regards to the most fundamental questions? If this were so, then any fundamental criticism would threaten Stef’s position as a teacher and therapist, and therefore he panics when the critique comes too close-- hence the strange behaviours alluded to above--and these were just a few recent examples.

Rather than engaging in an argument, Stef feels free and almost obliged to pathologize his opponent’s behaviour. He then becomes indignant when the other person keeps asking for actual arguments and actual responses to his own arguments. He uses arguments from authority (‘I have studied and lived these principles for so many years and I have defooed. Trust me, I know these things.’) and from psychology (‘My opponents have not yet defooed and so they are repressing something and cannot yet see and admit what I and fellow defooers see’) but fails to take factual and logical and methodological arguments seriously.



The solitude that Stef must experience now that he has no colleagues at work, no daily life outside of the home, together with his role as a teacher/therapist to the people on the board and not as an * equal * among them, may have given him more opportunities to construct his own world, to tell his own story about himself as being infallible about his main ideas and to see any fundamental criticism as almost necessarily stemming from pathological conditions. This frees oneself of the burden to engage in argumentation and allows oneself the use of this formidable and dangerous weapon that we call pathologization-- and it ensures ever more ‘victories’.


I really myself of course do not know what the problem is, although I have some ideas. And the main reason I actually suggest questions in the service of renewed introspection on Stef's part is that he appears not to have thought to undertake this work of truth-seeking and revision, despite the radical change in his life circumstances.

Going to an office every day can be remarkably salutary for mental as well as fiscal health. Certainly, Mississagua has no attractions of natural or architectural beauty or interest. It is a kind of wasteland of malls and barrenness: Is mall-walking and eating bad Chinese food alone at a kiosk in a food court and cheering the cosmic congruence of self-belief in one's fortune-cookie fortune part of the wrenching experience of going full time on FDR?

I think, given the stridency--in fact I would say the clinical term is hysteria--of the last four casts that we need Stef to enlighten us. What is going on?


Full disclosure: I know Conrad personally and I have followed the boards and listened to the casts after Conrad talked about all the things he said he had learned from them. I became intrigued. And together with Conrad I also followed the recent developments and sensed that strange things were going on. After having listened to the third cast in the four-part series of character-assassinations, Conrad and I thought to ourselves ‘Stef is losing it… he is simply losing it… He spends three casts putting forward the exact same arguments from authority and from psychology… what is he doing?’ Now that the situation has come to a climax I thought it time to write this letter.

Stef can take this post as yet another attempt by a banned board member to re-emerge by using other people to post for him or defend him. And it is, he would be right about that. He is more than allowed to delete this post from what is his property, but if he feels confident about his position then it would be a sign of strength to openly discuss these matters rather than brush them aside or dismiss them as pathological. When I wrote the first draft of this letter, Conrad remarked that it would be just as impossible to change Stef as it is to change his own parents. I hope he is wrong...

what was the reaction?

Stef posted a short reaction saying that it looked like this post was somebody who he had banned from the board (which it half-was) and then he made a somewhat ridiculous attempt to refute 2 or 3 points in the post.

then others dismissed it and then it became silent.

I don't know why I'm wasting time with FDR... It's getting rotten from the core and there's no real way to fix that unless SM come to his senses. Which doesn't look likely so far. So why spend time and effort?

i think a lot of people wonder why they continue to be so drawn into the whole FDR thing after they got banned or voluntarily left. there are two threads about that topic on this forum. It's fascinating stuff.

Thanks. All Stef asked was for a Skype chat with David. He let his attack dogs do the dirty work.

ah sorry, I had two posts mixed up. David came in after the 'Double Standards' post, but the one I quoted above was the 'What's going on with Stef?' post. So if you search for 'going on with Stef' you'll likely find the one where Stef and others responded the way I wrote they did in my last post