Tim Moen

At the tender age of 15 Rehtaeh Parsons was allegedly raped by four boys about her age. As a father of two girls (aged 15 and 16) I doubt I'd be able to contain my rage or impulse to commit violence against those who harmed my children. I am, however extremely thankful that justice is not left to enraged fathers and lynch mobs, we aren't known for our reflective objectivity, our rationality, our dispassionate evaluation of the evidence. There is a process, in theory, that exists called justice, the rule of law which is to negate the rule of passion and impulse. In an ideal world justice would not be punitive, designed to inflict pain and discomfort in order to gain compliance, but rather restorative and healing. Rather than locking criminals in cages at the expense of taxpayers criminals would be held to account for their crimes. Being accountable means fixing what you broke, restoring a victim to a future you took from her, it means restoring your credibility as a citizen th...

The State is not something that exists in material reality. You can't point to something and say, "there is the State." So we know that the State is a concept, a narrative, a story we tell ourselves and each other, a belief system that has unhealthy consequences, it is a pattern of neuronal activity that one day we may be able to see with advanced imaging devices. The problem is how do we deal with this mind virus that prevents us from being free of violence and a sustainable, virtuous world? It occurred to me recently that it might be helpful to view the State through the lens of addiction.  New insights into addiction may help those of us who want freedom from superstitious violence to make some progress with battling the State. Gabor Mate a psychiatrist that has made a career of treating addicts in Vancouver's inner city has interesting things to say about addiction. Addictions fill a need in the addict. Substances in and of themselves do not create addiction....

This fathers day my kids took me to see the latest Superman movie and I was struck by the similarities between the Superman narrative and the Christian narrative. Here are the things I noticed: 1)       Heaven – Krypton is a designed and created Utopian paradise where Kryptonians seem to live forever. 2)       The Fall of Lucifer – General Zod was Kryptons top general and disagrees with the ultimate authority and battles for control and is ultimately cast out to another dimension, just like Lucifer and his minions. 3)       A Unique Birth – Jesus was born to a virgin (assuming Mary and Joe didn’t lie) and Superman was the first Kryptonian born through a vagina in Millenia, all others were birthed in a genesis chamber. 4)       Sent to Another World to Be its Savior – Jor’el pontificates that Superman could guide and lead the people of Earth to a better future and prevent ...

Carl Sagan popularized the phrase, “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” Skeptics of pseudoscience, paranormal activity, deities, snake-oil salesmen, psychics, Loch Ness Monster, and leprechauns often use it to explain to people that the onus is on the person making a claim so extraordinary that it exceeds everything we know of the natural world and the universe. So a person claiming, “I have a dog” requires far less evidence than a person claiming “I have a dragon.” In the former claim we all know people who own dogs, we know that dogs exist empirically and so when Bob shows us a picture of a dog we can justifiably believe him. The latter claim requires more evidence because there has never been evidence for dragons existing and it is incredibly likely that a fire breathing monster would have been seen and reported at some point in the past century if it exists, so when Bob shows us a picture of his dragon we cannot justifiably believe he's telling the truth kno...

Part I - Lessons Learned My graduate thesis looked at self-organizing emergency response teams. I wanted to look at things like firefighter team dynamics and effectiveness through the lens of self-organization and see what could be discerned about things like leadership and why some teams were more effective than others. I became interested in looking at this because I noticed that teams that were led by autocratic leaders seemed to run into far more problems and be far less effective than other teams. These are the lessons I learned about self-organizing systems and how leaders/change agents can create real change in systems. All Systems are Self-Organizing When I started researching my thesis I had a difficult time finding a clear definition of what a self-organizing system was among scholars. How would I know whether I idnetify a team to be self-organizing or behaving in a self-organizing fashion if I didn't know what criteria to use? In the end I identif...

Anarchy simply means "without rulers" and so all anarchists by definition agree with the non-aggression principle; the idea that people should not harm other people. I am writing this article because I continually run into arguments in liberty and anarchist circles between "left" anarchists and "right" anarchists. The problem is that as a so-called "right" anarchist, I rarely find I disagree with "left" anarchists when it gets right down to it. In fact more and more I am convinced that our positions are identical and we simply understand language differently and that the language we use when talking with each other prevents us from effectively communicating with one another. The main disagreement seems to be generated over the word "property". Leftists will often tell you that property is coercion. When I ask them to describe what property is and why its coercion I usually find myself in agreement with them. They might say ...

One Billion Rising is a noble movement that seeks to end violence against women. Violence against women is a terrible problem that needs to be addressed and many millions of men are raising their voices for this worthy cause. Where are the voices raised for men? Violence and trauma against men is arguably a much bigger problem than violence against women. Yes 1 in 6 American women will be sexaully assaulted compared to 1 in 10 American males, however this is only one type of violence. Males are murdered at a rate 3.2 X greater than women and commit suicide at a rate of 4 X greater than women. What about the fact that 75% of assault victims are men and 97% of workplace fatalities are men? Why is it that 90% of the homeless are male? Where are the voices raised in shock and outrage over the violence done to men? Why is it that between breast and prostate cancer, two diseases that take about the same amount of life, breast cancer gets twice the federal funding, four times the char...