I grew up in the country that calls itself the land of the free, but after traveling around the world I have learned that there are other places where there is much more freedom.

Here are some more things I learned

- Most people are nice, friendly and helpful

- Children are born to be helpful, empathetic and cooperative. (Many adults say that children are selfish, egotistical, greedy, and competitive but I disagree. I believe that if they are, then society makes them that way. Gabor Maté is one person who agrees with this.)

- Adults corrupt children by trying to make them serve the needs of a corrupt system.

More about me

I made "good" grades at school, I went to a university, I got an MBA degree. I had my own business and made enough money to stop working before I was 30 years old. Some people might think I was very "successful" but I have been divorced twice, have no children and have come close to killing myself. If you meet me you might think I am happy, but I am not always that way. So I want to help you in a way that no one helped me when I was young. I believe that the sooner you realize that governments and schools and corporations don't care about you, the better your chances of escaping the system.

I also believe that love is more important than money and more important than education. It is not enough to fall in love though, you need to relationship skills like listening and conflict resolution skills. You need to be able to express your feelings in a constructive way, not destroy the relationship. But this is something else you won't learn in school. Maybe by the time you have children they will be teaching this but now they don't in most places. The reason they don't is because it doesn't serve our materialistic, capitalistic system. If people were really in love they wouldn't have to buy so many things to "prove" they love someone, for example.

I plan to add more on relationship skills, but until then if you want more info on them please write me at the contact below.

May 26, 2015

Today I met a guy named Rafael who works in a hostel in Sao Paulo. He is a very nice guy. He told me he worked for 3.5 years without a vacation. Now he plans to start traveling around the world by working on a cruise ship. You don't need a university education for that, by the way. I have become disillusioned and disenchanted with university degrees. I met a lot of young people who got a degree and then couldn't find a job and had to work in a coffee shop or something similar. And many young people who got a job in their field can't afford to buy their own house. So they will have to rent from someone who already has more money than they do. I believe those with money should be helping young people, not taking advantage of them and profiting from them.

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June 17 - Today I am riding the bike that my friend Palmas loaned me. I am visiting more hostels. I went to Garua and Hey hostels. At Hey I met Caio who is a very interesting guy. He quit going to the university and is working at 2 hostels now. We had a lot of time to talk because it was very quiet in the hostel. He was on an exchange program in Arlington.Texas which is very near where I used to live in Dallas. He is reading a book called Work about Capitalism, Economics and Resistance. C also works at Limetime

1:35 PM At FNAC Fran's cafe using wifi.

Earlier I met Guillame from France who gives private French lessons and is thinking of opening a small business teaching French because he has more students than he can manage.

2:50 At O... hostel - Talked to Victor - he said Santts is out.

3:30 At Laboriosa89 - Met Camila who told me about http://www.cinese.me/usuarios/entrar and who has a friend that has a platform for volunteers and vol. organizations

4:15 - Still at Lab89 - Met someone who is working on a reforestation project. They are using the space in the basement.

4:45 Met two sisters who have this website http://www.radiko.com.br/ Michelle and Nicole Here is their FB page

https://www.facebook.com/michele.zatz?fref=ts

6:00 Met Camila on the street when I was asking directions. She lived in Canada - Alberta. She told me about the King of the Fork bike cafe. Now I am there talking to another Camila, who lived in England for 7 years. Architect who started this place. We are talking about me doing a workshop here. She has nice little space in the back.

Noam Chomsky

Howard Zinn

John Taylor Gatto

Gabor Maté https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66cYcSak6nE

Other videos

Zeitgiest

Don't stay in school - Boy in a band

Websites

School-survival.net

Couchsurfing,com

https://Airbnb.com

https://Warmshowers.org

Here is my writing about what are called "Good grades"

I have listened to hundreds of teenagers who have been depressed or thought about or even tried suicide. They told me their stories about what was happening to them at home and at school.

From them and from my own experience with depression and thoughts of suicide I have come to the conclusion that society causes depression. Society causes depression because our needs for freedom, for acceptance, for trust, for love, for caring, for understanding, for empathy are not being met. Society values money, clothes, appearances, grades more than friendships and love. If you are a sensitive person and you don't have the support of your parents, you will suffer while you are young.

Traveling is one of the best ways to recover from an unhealthy environment.

Here are some links for teenagers

http://www.eqi.org/teen.htm

http://www.eqi.org/ts/p2

Relationships are the most important thing in life. When people get old and they are asked what was the most important thing in your life, the answer is "relationships."

It is much easier to start a relationship than it is to maintain it. To keep a relationship together the emotional needs of each person must be met. Some of these needs are to feel accepted, to feel cared about, to feel understood, to feel respected, to feel valued, to feel important.

The best way I have found of knowing if the emotional needs of your partner are being filled is to ask them direct questions like this

How accepted do you feel by me, from 0 to 10? How cared about? How understood?

Then listen carefully and don't argue or debate with whatever they say. Learn from what they say and try to raise the number till it is near 10. You may need to get someone else to help you with this because it is hard to listen to someone when they try to explain a low number. It hurts to know that they don't feel as cared about or accepted, for example, as you think they "should." But rather than defend yourself, find a friend or someone else to help you, sort of like a mediator.

You can learn a lot of things with formal education, but you probably won't learn anything useful about relationships. But this doesn't mean it isn't important. To me, what it means is that the people who earn their money by teaching you things don't really care that much about you. They all know that it is possible to be highly "educated" and "successful", but still get divorced or get depressed or even kill yourself if your life gets bad enough one day. Education doesn't prevent divorce, but relationship skills do.

Later I plan to write about parenting. If you are already a young parent, please let me know so I can add you to the mailing list.

One of the most important things I have learned is the value of being a good listener. This is a skill that you can learn. Many people have a big need to talk. They will tell you many things if you are a good listener. You will be able to solve problems and help people better if you are a good listener. In fact, often all someone really needs is someone to listen to them. A police officer who worked on the most famous bridge in the world, the Golden Gate bridge in San Francisco, said that the best way to save someone's life who was thinking of jumping off the bridge to their death was to listen to them.

jpsfourteen (but use the number 14)

at

gmx.com

Teen prison

How they train dolphins and how dolphins are treated better than children and teenagers

Domestication