Molyneux: Donate to FDR - Find happiness (on sale now)

Number of posts: 1261 Registration date: 2007-12-11

FDR poster wrote:

Is there such a condition where someone comes over and over to FDR, posts on the board, listens to hundreds of podcasts, and spends a great deal of his personal time in the website; but his life is not moving towards happiness? It is in fact becoming harder, darker, lonelier and sour.Should Stef address this issue? Is this happening to anyone here?

(partial showing) FDR member response 122457 wrote:

I got into therapy, read every one of Stef's books, read an Alice Miller book, and then started living my values by removing corrupt people from my life. After that it was all uphill. I am finding that each day that I face my past and live my values, the happier and more free I become.

On Moving Toward happiness - Stef wrote:

Xy wrote:

This is eerie to me. Does donating to FDR buy happiness,jump start the path to happiness and improve the quality of your life?
Faith based or fact?
What is true - Donations jump start the path to happiness?
or
Claiming it is self serving?
Any takers?

Number of posts: 842 Registration date: 2008-03-25

Man, I read that post, too. I felt so sorry for those people. Especially poor Rod. It really is some kind of magical, religious thing for him, isn't it?

the odd thing is: I can actually see the point of both sides here. the first poster makes a good point re FDR involvement not being automatically linked to increase in happiness (with several FDR'ers as evidence), but I can also understand the point about making donations to something you truly value, putting your money where your mouth is, being an important part in increasing happiness, cuz it is a question of living your values. i felt better after donating and I don't think this was just an illusion. i felt better after donating to the Mises Institute, Scott Horton etc. as well. (the difference of course being is that I still highly the latter two)

Number of posts: 842 Registration date: 2008-03-25

Conrad wrote:

the odd thing is: I can actually see the point of both sides here. the first poster makes a good point re FDR involvement not being automatically linked to increase in happiness (with several FDR'ers as evidence), but I can also understand the point about making donations to something you truly value, putting your money where your mouth is, being an important part in increasing happiness, cuz it is a question of living your values. i felt better after donating and I don't think this was just an illusion. i felt better after donating to the Mises Institute, Scott Horton etc. as well. (the difference of course being is that I still highly the latter two)

I get your point completely. It's just that, coming into this as a complete outsider, I read this thread in a peculiar way.

To the first guy, I thought--"Well, of course you feel miserable. Someone has just told you that 'the only way to believe in my philosophy is to also believe that everyone who doesn't agree is corrupt, so you must chuck them off and associate only with me and my pals.' If I were you, buddy, I'd run as fast as you can."

The next three guys were kool-aid drinkers, but I guess you can't really say anything about it until you know their actual stories. I do understand if your parents are beating you or screaming at you daily that you're going to find peace somewhere else, but I suspect that is not even true for most FDRers. Instead, these guys seem to have kind of weird parental transference thing with Stef that I just don't understand.

Stef jumps in with his comment, which I do agree with you on. It does feel better to donate to things you truly believe in.

In fairness, I think I read Rod's comment too fast. At first, I thought it read like "the best things happened to me after I donated," which really would be a mystical, cultish thing to say. But what he actually says is "my most important actions came soon after donations," which I understand and agree with.

Still, if I analyze it as a Real-Time-Relationship, when I go to the forum on that site, I can't tell you why yet but I feel nervous and just a little scared. Here I just feel interested and happy.

Number of posts: 1261 Registration date: 2007-12-11

Conrad wrote:

the odd thing is: I can actually see the point of both sides here. the first poster makes a good point re FDR involvement not being automatically linked to increase in happiness (with several FDR'ers as evidence), but I can also understand the point about making donations to something you truly value, putting your money where your mouth is, being an important part in increasing happiness, cuz it is a question of living your values. i felt better after donating and I don't think this was just an illusion. i felt better after donating to the Mises Institute, Scott Horton etc. as well. (the difference of course being is that I still highly the latter two)

yes I can "dig" that. But the back story is there have been several posts about donating as it is month end and funds are down. Stef offered nothing less than donating (not adding to align yourself with your beliefs yadda yadda, which coincidentally is no different than the perspective of many churches) as a solution. I read the initiators of the threads post as criticism not so much as a cry for help. Which may have set the tone for me not sure.

People who tithe claim the same thing.
Fdr is perhaps one road to happiness for some. Donating may make us feel better just as volunteering does.

There is more and more about money, donating, booksales and hints for books as gifts at every turn on the site lately. Certainly far more than when I was involved. I suppose I was making a point about noticing Stef's motive and the "its true though" (true because I say it is) statement. FDR may be one of many paths to happiness for some but ultimately whether its investing at the gym, FDR, education, your kids or therapy, happiness is doing what matters. non?

Number of posts: 842 Registration date: 2008-03-25

ExyPhylo wrote:

There is more and more about money, donating, booksales and hints for books as gifts at every turn on the site lately. Certainly far more than when I was involved. I suppose I was making a point about noticing Stef's motive and the "its true though" (true because I say it is) statement. FDR may be one of many paths to happiness for some but ultimately whether its investing at the gym, FDR, education, your kids or therapy, happiness is doing what matters. non?

(Well, here I go questEoning again...)

Something very important happened to the site in 2007, and if you think about, it raises some (I think) very significant questions.

When we encounter Stef in his 2006 podcasts, we're hearing from a guy who has a job (and even talks about going to job interviews at the time) who ALSO has an interest in a wide range of areas related to governance, economics, truth, and philsophy.

A lot of people connected with Stef at that time, and from what I gather, had their healthiest relationships with him at or before that time.

Then he made the decision to have freedomainradio and activities related to it be his main source of income.

I believe that when your focus changes from pursuing the truth for its own sake to packaging and selling the truth for your own livelihood, everything changes. If for nothing else than the most important thing in the former is "the truth"; and the most important thing in the latter is "your livelihood."

In the former, it is a one-way, one-sided pursuit of something, irrespective of the emotional/financial cost. In the latter, it is a two-way transactional relationship--there must be something in the way the truth is served up that makes you want to pay for it. More important, Stef is no longer asking you to share the burden as you both engage in a mutual quest for the truth. He is asking you to support a profit-based enterprise designed to provide he and Christina with financial freedom. One thing that appears to have happened in the latter is that by necessity Stef himself appears to have become as or more important than the truth itself. If you did not believe that to be so at some level, why hand over your money?

This is vexing to me because I'm a hard-core capitalist. However, to what extent can truth truly be explored or delivered by Stef when we know there is an overarching financial motivation behind all he does?

For example, it is one thing to tell confused teens and 20-year-olds that they're not sad because they're growing up and it's something everyone goes through; they're actually sad because their families are corrupt and they should abandon them permanently (or at least until they're 30 and realize it really was the first thing.)

It's completely another thing if Stef does that because getting us to leave our families and cling to FDR potentially increases his donations, which is one thing the thread seems to be demonstrating. That's my big question here--does truth for money corrupt? At FDR, it sure seems to. On that issue, there are only razor-thin distinctions between freedomainradio and a religious cult.

Number of posts: 2159 Registration date: 2007-09-20

Well, he ran off all the adults who wish to have conversations with mutual respect and understanding, and is left with all the simpering suck-ups, disaffected teenagers who hate their parents as much as he hates his, internet addicted shut-ins who watch him on YouTube all day, and now that he's alienated all the "academic" philosophers who might be interested in his work by crapping all over Danny with his smug condescension and his assurances that he's not bothered at all by the criticism, no, he just needs to "address it" so that his regular readers don't get put off by a cogent, logical and thoroughgoing analysis of his philosophy by some "whippersnapper" (who probably still talks to his parents *gasp*), so now he's left with the dregs he hasn't offended, banned or alienated. Apparently none of whom are independently wealthy.

There are about $5000 worth of ex-donators here. While I only ever got to $25 (i did buy 2 books, but Stef is clear that that's not a donation), I know there's a few "Philosopher Kings" in our midst. Perhaps had he not banned us all, he'd not be struggling to make that mortgage payment. He sure wont be asking his folks for a loan. Wink

Number of posts: 2159 Registration date: 2007-09-20

QuestEon wrote:

Something very important happened to the site in 2007, and if you think about, it raises some (I think) very significant questions.

That.

QuestEon wrote:

When we encounter Stef in his 2006 podcasts, we're hearing from a guy who has a job (and even talks about going to job interviews at the time) who ALSO has an interest in a wide range of areas related to governance, economics, truth, and philsophy.

Then the wheels came off. Yep.

QuestEon wrote:

A lot of people connected with Stef at that time, and from what I gather, had their healthiest relationships with him at or before that time.

Then he made the decision to have freedomainradio and activities related to it be his main source of income.

Yeah, and he started to lash out at people, his martyr complex and his self-aggrandizing behavior ramped up, along with an intensity of attacks not on the family in general, but on specific listener's families in particular. It's where I started to doubt his sincerity and veracity.

QuestEon wrote:

It's completely another thing if Stef does that because getting us to leave our families and cling to FDR potentially increases his donations, which is one thing the thread seems to be demonstrating. That's my big question here--does truth for money corrupt? At FDR, it sure seems to. On that issue, there are only razor-thin distinctions between freedomainradio and a religious cult.

Make that microns-thin, sir.

Number of posts: 1261 Registration date: 2007-12-11

QuestEon wrote:

(Well, here I go questEoning again...)

Something very important happened to the site in 2007, and if you think about, it raises some (I think) very significant questions.

When we encounter Stef in his 2006 podcasts, we're hearing from a guy who has a job (and even talks about going to job interviews at the time) who ALSO has an interest in a wide range of areas related to governance, economics, truth, and philsophy.

A lot of people connected with Stef at that time, and from what I gather, had their healthiest relationships with him at or before that time.

Then he made the decision to have freedomainradio and activities related to it be his main source of income.

I believe that when your focus changes from pursuing the truth for its own sake to packaging and selling the truth for your own livelihood, everything changes. If for nothing else than the most important thing in the former is "the truth"; and the most important thing in the latter is "your livelihood."

In the former, it is a one-way, one-sided pursuit of something, irrespective of the emotional/financial cost. In the latter, it is a two-way transactional relationship--there must be something in the way the truth is served up that makes you want to pay for it. More important, Stef is no longer asking you to share the burden as you both engage in a mutual quest for the truth. He is asking you to support a profit-based enterprise designed to provide he and Christina with financial freedom. One thing that appears to have happened in the latter is that by necessity Stef himself appears to have become as or more important than the truth itself. If you did not believe that to be so at some level, why hand over your money?

This is vexing to me because I'm a hard-core capitalist. However, to what extent can truth truly be explored or delivered by Stef when we know there is an overarching financial motivation behind all he does?

For example, it is one thing to tell confused teens and 20-year-olds that they're not sad because they're growing up and it's something everyone goes through; they're actually sad because their families are corrupt and they should abandon them permanently (or at least until they're 30 and realize it really was the first thing.)

It's completely another thing if Stef does that because getting us to leave our families and cling to FDR potentially increases his donations, which is one thing the thread seems to be demonstrating. That's my big question here--does truth for money corrupt? At FDR, it sure seems to. On that issue, there are only razor-thin distinctions between freedomainradio and a religious cult.

nice break down again!
I am speculating but I get the inkling Stef reads our beloved site and what we post unveils some truth. I do find some coincidences odd. Namely this post on Stef and his need for money. Then the immediate release of a video ad for "on truth - FREE" and notifying his members where his donations go and how many books he gave away and qualifies it by stating how many he gave away even before the add.etc. There is a consistent pattern with Stef and what he puts emphasis on - he is pretty transparent.

A you tuber commented on the dishonesty of the title of his video noting he requested the members to give him some of the "media scares" in his forums. The title of the video is " All the media scares I could think of in 3 minutes". Even some fans have a hard time refuting and one even suggests he should change the name. The question of the poster is how is that misrepresentation any different. The poster touching on the truth gets "a though does protest too much answer; credits at the end would ruin the impact, the title was chosen for effect, (media scares in 3 breaths - wouldn't have enough effect). Then he gos on on calling down the poster.

I suppose I find the man fascinating like a science project or a good mystery novel. What made him this way. Why is he fueled by ego? Why the affinity to Dr. Phil? Did he have a speech impediment or lisp as a child where he was outcast and longs to regain his youth (by hanging with the young ins) and finally achieve the popularity he desired? What about his father?
Why does he have a hard time taking responsibility for his errors, apologizing or simply being wrong? etcetera, etcetera.

The mystery continues....

Number of posts: 2159 Registration date: 2007-09-20

His huge ego prevents him from NOT reading this site. He is incapable of admitting error, even if he destroys lives with his intransigence. One day, his chickens will come home to roost. I predict lawsuits. Or at least one internet website written as a breathless tell all that might be published through Lulu.

ExyPhylo wrote:

I suppose I find the man fascinating like a science project or a good mystery novel. What made him this way. Why is he fueled by ego? Why the affinity to Dr. Phil? Did he have a speech impediment or lisp as a child where he was outcast and longs to regain his youth (by hanging with the young ins) and finally achieve the popularity he desired? What about his father?
Why does he have a hard time taking responsibility for his errors, apologizing or simply being wrong? etcetera, etcetera.

The mystery continues....

excellently put, 'like a science project or a good mystery novel'... I feel the same way, it's just so very interesting.

I personally have to say though that when I'm feeling good I tend not to bother with FDR or Stef, only when I'm feeling a bit or more crappy do I listen to podcasts again or read the FDR board.
there's something unhealthy in that, I'm using FDR to avoid dealing with things about myself.

Number of posts: 1261 Registration date: 2007-12-11

Conrad wrote:

I personally have to say though that when I'm feeling good I tend not to bother with FDR or Stef, only when I'm feeling a bit or more crappy do I listen to podcasts again or read the FDR board.
there's something unhealthy in that, I'm using FDR to avoid dealing with things about myself.

There is truth in that. I usually go to fdr when I am looking for a brain shift since I work so much on the computer. It's like reading the tabloids in the grocery line up. Stef helps me appreciate those who came before and came after him. When my boss gets his ego spiked up, I say to my self, look he may be having a day- but he ain't no Molyneux.

Number of posts: 2159 Registration date: 2007-09-20

I'm just an angry man.

ExyPhylo wrote:

nice break down again!
I am speculating but I get the inkling Stef reads our beloved site and what we post unveils some truth. I do find some coincidences odd. Namely this post on Stef and his need for money. Then the immediate release of a video ad for "on truth - FREE" and notifying his members where his donations go and how many books he gave away and qualifies it by stating how many he gave away even before the add.etc. There is a consistent pattern with Stef and what he puts emphasis on - he is pretty transparent.

Hey Exy, does that mean we can make Stef do things?

Twisted Evil

Number of posts: 1261 Registration date: 2007-12-11

well no we would need a lock of his hair to do that..and we both know that ain't gonna happen Smile

» Where do you find the FS items??
» EPPP materials for sale
» used EPPP materials for sale
» Japanese together class - where you can find it!
» For Sale 10+ Years Homeschooling

Molyneux: Donate to FDR - Find happiness (on sale now)

Molyneux: Donate to FDR - Find happiness (on sale now)

Similar topics

Similar topics