839
James Webb telescope confirms there is something seriously wrong with our understanding of the universe
(www.livescience.com)
this post was submitted on 16 Mar 2024
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Urgh it doesn't work 😭 I've tried searching for it and it doesn't come up, just random playlists named Authoritarianism that don't actually contain the video. I'll have to pirate it. Sorry John :(
That's odd - I wonder if it is actually blocked there. Take consolation that John Oliver would very much want you to, under those circumstances:-). Also, how much more of an impact is that video going to have on you as you see it enacted before your very eyes, if your nation did block it.
I think it's HBO who blocks it 😩. Lots of American TV networks block their content from being viewed outside the US.
That is weird. Does HBO block it even from their direct website? And then this video is 5 years old so it may not even be on there - so with little profits to gain from it, they still would block it regardless, b/c they are just that petty:-(. Yay "freedom"!:-P
Well, one last link in case it helps:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ximgPmJ9A5s
Or the Piped version is:
https://piped.video/watch?v=ximgPmJ9A5s
but I think that still streams from the YouTube so would not expect it to work, unless like YouTube itself a proxy could bypass it.
Urgh, I thought for a second that maybe the piped link was gonna work but no :(
I could get it to work with a proxy or vpn but fuck it. I pirated it 🏴☠️
John Oliver would be so proud:-). You will support him in other ways - e.g. by spreading the message in your own country. He makes a TON of money, so truly I believe that he will be fine, and would rather the message be not so artificially limited as that corporation has made it.
Now the real question: what did you think of it? And it's okay if you'd rather not answer right away, but if you wanted to, then I would enjoy hearing about it from you:-). After all, I cannot ever travel back in time to re-watch that video for the first time, but I can enjoy that feeling vicariously through you perhaps!?:-P
Hahah I will be back with some comments on it once I've had a chance to actually watch it. Gimme a couple hours, I haven't been up for long enough my brain is still a foggy maze :3
I might've also already seen it, but my memory is ummm... Well it's something.
Anyway I'm sure John would be happy that I've pirated his show, especially as a last resort. With the offer he's made to Clarence Thomas, I also don't think he really needs the pennies. I would rather support him but it is what it is.
I've also added it to my media server so all my friends will see it in their feed. They all also love John.
Edit: Also, I made the mistake of watching Noah Samsen's video on the starvation of the Palestinian people first thing after I woke up. I need a break 😭
Yeah this stuff is so tangled and difficult. I watched one of John Olivier's recent videos on chocolate production in places like Africa and it likewise messed me up a little - like, should I buy less chocolate, or more, which is doing less harm vs. good? Btw the answer, as you may have guessed it, is "yes". Yes buying chocolates helps the poor farmers, while also yes it supports their near-slave-labor conditions, both. And fair-trade seems to mean little if anything at all. :-(
Ultimately I came down on the side that since they are doing this to themselves, the alternatives to cacao farming must be even worse? e.g. hunting in the wilds, or farming something to sell locally. And while the corpo execs seem to me to be greedy MFers just doing hunting of their own, for profits, they nonetheless are doing some amount of service, if they are offering this option to the farmers that they would not otherwise have.
The sticking point is the price: regardless of intention, does lowering that cause more chocolate to be sold, thus help the farmers more than raising it would? (I have no idea btw, that's just what pops up in my mind) Also, I am so very far away from the situation that it is impossible to accurately judge anything - like John's video shows another video showing children walking through the fields harvesting cacao and "not wearing safety gear", but what is that gear, who actually needs it, is it always needed or only during certain seasons, so really how bad is it that these children, who importantly do this for fun, should have been wearing it?
It is good to ask these questions, but yes, dayum it is exhausting. Especially for every tiny little matter.
Though the authoritarianism video is a fairly central one in my mind, fwiw. Even your country, which we want to "escape" to when things go bad in the States, may turn to it, as seems to be the global trend.:-( Anyway, enjoy!:-)
Well. I just finished watching the episode on authoritarianism. It was pretty scary and frustrating to hear some of the people who support these things, as it usually is. I think John Oliver summed it up pretty well at the end. Saying how he understands that democracy can be frustrating with all the checks and balances but that removing those opens up the door for things that are much worse. These people really need to understand exactly what they are toying with.
Unfortunately people have a hard time seeing much further than the tip of their own noses and don't see the harm that they are causing as long as it doesn't directly affect them, which it won't until it is too late and the damage has been done.
I think the the problem we are having these days is an empathy problem. People have a really hard time feeling empathy for "others" and who can really blame them? There is so much wrong everywhere you look and everybody is struggling. Everybody is trying to survive and look out for their loved ones just like everybody else but they've been sold lies, given scapegoats and promised solutions to fictional problems.
Whatever happens next, it'll be interesting that's for sure.
They do not. They will not. They refuse to contemplate doing so - they want a fix NOW and that is all that they will entertain.
And actually, very often they DO have empathy - their hearts are quite often in the right place, it is their set of FACTS that they believe in that are incorrect. e.g. people who take the vaccine b/c they do not want it? Fine, I mean it is not ideal but it is your choice... but then they send their kids to school and that affects immuno-compromised children, and far more than that, they vote sometimes against allowing you to take the vaccine too!!
Or abortion: if you do not want one then do not get one, but to stop others from receiving proper medical care? That is the sickening part. They do it "for the children", except ofc refuse to lift a finger to actually adopt a child themselves.
So often those lies are sold using empathy as the very vehicle by which they enter the brain. Except ofc it is not "true empathy", in the sense of actions and especially for those actions to match the words used.
The people choosing those lies are quite good at what they do, actually. And if they fail, they focus-test their messages and try again, and again, and they've been doing this for decades now so... they got good at it. And since I don't really see anyone at all standing up against it - I mean, is Biden? did Obama? is Trudeau, or Sunak? - I think they have a good chance of winning. It is just a matter of time.
Either way, outside of Europe and especially Germany, I do not see people standing up to climate change. More than nuclear weapons, THAT has the potential to end all life on earth - or at least human and possibly most of the animal life as well. The true "Pro-Life" agenda would be to do whatever it takes to stop that... but instead, Trump spitefully withdrew from the Paris Climate Accord, just b/c Obama supported it. Biden put us back in it, on his very first day in office actually, but that's a lot of time lost, and there's a goodly chance at Trump winning again.
All this bipolar disorder, coupled with the lackluster performance even when conservatives do not win, has made me lose all faith in the democratic processes. Just like George Carlin in the past, except now it REALLY matters which side wins!! :-|
So yeah, I expect a bumpy and quite... "interesting" ride. Even in Canada, most likely, though as you say on a delayed basis.
Therefore I watch videos on how chocolate is made, and I recycle even though I know it will not make one tiniest difference, etc. It is something that I can do, therefore I offer that, at least.
Oh for sure. These things are complicated and it's really hard to come up with a simple conclusion.
Authoritarianism definitely seems to be on the rise everywhere, although I still believe that most people are against it. You can't really trust online sentiment and personally I haven't encountered that many people IRL that would support something like that. My fear is that some people might not realize what they're voting for and what it really means but I still believe that most people are good and that we can get out of this mess before it is too late.
We are definitely not safe from it here in Canada so yeah, your escape plan might not work out. Things that happen down south often end up happening up here as well, with a little bit of delay. Canadians aren't really that different from Americans and we consume the same type of media. Hopefully if shit does hit the fan, even the dumbest of voters will be smart enough to see that it is not something that they want and we can stop it before it runs rampant here.
I am curious: after having watched that video, do you still think most people are against it?
I think the opposite - people in cities tend to be, but a good 40-49% of this nation supported Trump in the last Presidential election, despite Biden ultimately winning and despite Trump having been impeached twice before that.
Countering that, the younger generations are more liberal, but we tend to eat our own, and e.g. the Gaza situation may generate a lot of "protest voting", the same as when Hillary Clinton was running and therefore while Trump did not "win" so much as she lost, it could all end up happening again.
Americans are fat and lazy - that's just our brand:-) - and to some extent the entire Western world is that way, but we do it to excess. By that same virtue, we are likely to convert into authoritarianism, possibly not even with a bang but with a whimper - not b/c of what we believe, but b/c we just don't fight back against those who do have firmer convictions (right or wrong).
Thus, I hope you don't take this the wrong way, but I hope that you lose your hope that "if shit does hit the fan, even the dumbest of voters will be smart enough to see that it is not something that they want and we can stop it before it runs rampant here", and start learning from our mistakes, by shoring up protections against it getting as far along with you. Which I guess you are doing, so I will hope that it works!:-)
Well that's where we differ, Americans and Canadians. Canadians are on average much more liberal than Americans. We also have a very different political system. We actually have more than two options to chose from! Crazy, I know! The political system doesn't control general sentiment of the population so things can still get hairy but nobody has started dismantling our checks and balances yet so at least we've got that?
Our conservative party isn't usually as bad as the American conservatives either. Although Bitcoin Milhouse and a couple other Conservative leaders are starting to spew some of the same ignorant bullshit, trying to get reactionary votes, I am way less scared about my future here than I would be in the US. We do have a part of the population that are getting sucked into it but it's really nowhere near as bad (yet, hopefully never). We've got Alberta that's very conservative and very loud, they're basically Little Texas but whatever, they've always been that way. They've never changed and they never will. Business as usual. Ontario is a bit scary with what Doug Ford is doing and even in my little province we have our own little conservative pissbaby, who is absolutely wrecking havoc but even other conservatives hate his ass so there's a decent chance he gets booted out next provincial election.
I'm from French Canada, not Quebec but still French. I'm probably sheltered from it a bit as we are super liberal, much more than English Canada. I don't really see that much insanity here, even in my tiny little fisherman village. Not to say everybody is cool. I have noticed a change in the way some people look at me in the past couple years, being a transwoman in such a small place where people have never really left their backyards and seen anything. Before it was mostly curiosity, surprise, whatever. Now I see people look at me in disgust and anger. I've seen a mother grab her kid and scuttle away to the other side of a store as if I could give them the trans. I've had someone spit in my sandwich at a fast food restaurant, although that happened in a neighbouring English city (Risky to do something like that here, I probably know your dad 😉).
Nothing anywhere near that kind of shit happened to me even just 2 years ago and I've been loudly trans here for over 7 years now. I 100% attribute that to the hateful and ignorant shit that's being spewed out by the right and the crazy religious folk being picked up here by people who don't know any better.
Shit, that was a rant. I don't even remember what we were talking about. Sorry hahah.
Sorry but I did lolz at this - as if!:-P Part of the funny is that the Bible says "Judge not, lest you be judged", even though it also has a whole list of judgements for leaders, who were supposed to be held to a much higher standard. So to ignore the latter - letting leaders touch little children who would rather not - while also ignoring the former... they aren't even reading their own book.:-(
Though I guess you see that it is not just Christianity. In some parts of the world it is Muslim, in others it is Hindu, in still others it could be Buddhism, or whatever. One day there will even be fundamentalist atheists I believe, despite how it promotes skeptical thought and so that is fairly rare for now, human nature is just that lazy!
Anyway I am proud of you. Stand up for yourself! That is definitely not my situation but who the fuq cares, b/c you need to be (free to) be you. And that's the problem with Authoritarianism (here's a another link to a whole other series on that if you want - this Innuendo Studies should have nothing whatsoever to do with HBO, and therefore you probably have seen it already:-P): they lack empathy and allow - even perform - the judgement onto others (except their leaders, who they conveniently exempt from all proper consequences of their actions), never dreaming that one day it will wrap back around to themselves. "First they came for..." That process demeans us all, and yeah, one day it may be too late to reverse course. How ironic that you are showing compassion to them even while they spit at you (as Jesus would, hehe:-P). Stay strong, my sister in empathy!:-)
Speaking of, I hope you never catch up to us:-). Though as you say, the English speaking part is a bit closer to us in that regard, highly unfortunately:-(. Though, you still having a somewhat functional government does mean that you should be alright:-).
Nah, it is absolutely not just Christianity. I see all religion as the same thing. It's the same people, just different stories. I include some atheists in there hahah. Fervent atheists and "believers" share many of the same traits. I don't think the particular religion has anything to do with it, it's probably that people who are susceptible to following a religion are more susceptible to fall for tricks and support authoritarianism. I don't wanna sound like I think I'm better than anyone who follows a religion. I think having some kind of belief system is essential and that we all have that built in us so it's kinda natural for people to gravitate towards religions. I have my own whacky belief system that I'm sure some people would scoff at but it's mine and it has served me well so far. I just think beliefs are a very personal thing and that's how it should've stayed. Religions are more about control than they are about beliefs and values.
Thank you! I am and I will continue doing so. I will not live in an authoritarian society. If you have but one ally in this fight against authoritarianism, it'll be us trans folk hahah. We will not be shoved back into the closet peacefully, this I can promise.
I don't remember it but apparently at some point I've watched the first two videos of the series. I'll try to give it another shot hahah
Yeah those are the ones that really scare me. Some people are just sociopaths and sycophants, they need to be recognized for what they are but people can't even tell what's real and what's not anymore. We've propped up these kinds of people for decades on TV and in the media and now people think that's normal. Today I look at some of your politicians bickering and I feel like I'm watching an episode of Jersey Shore. Similar thing is happening with the current conservatives in Canada, it's actually painfully cringy to see. It's like high school type of shit all over again. Not something we should be seeing in parliament.
HAHAH, yeah I am very far from being a Christ figure but many people have called me Jesus during my life. Mostly because of my hair, I did kinda look like your classic White Jesus™ 😂. I just have a really hard time abandoning anyone and I can't stay mad at anyone because it absolutely eats me inside if I do. I always try to find excuses for peoples behaviours. My compassion might also come from a bit of a selfish place as there was a time where I could've probably fallen for shit like that, hell, I have. I've been a piece of shit in the past but it all stemmed from a combination personal issues and growing up in a very secluded environment. I don't think I could've fallen as deep into hatred and ignorance as some seem to be these days but still, we're not that different. I know why I was that way, I may not know why others are but I know why I was, and in the end I was "redeemable". I think most people are and it's hard for me not to give everyone a chance.
For what it's worth, I think you guys will be alright too. Have some faith :3 (But don't stop doing what you do)
Spot on! Jesus Himself hated the religious hypocrites ("Karens") of His day, calling them vipers and white-washed tombs, full of rot and decay even if slapped with a fresh coat of paint on the outside. Some people hear that and say "naw, I think I, as a Bishop or Pope or whatever, know far better than Jesus what 'Christianity' should mean", and then proceed to fondle little humans, but others think the latter is detestable and enormously gross:-(. Humans gonna human I guess, but it's not all equally good or bad - some of it is INSANE, and inside of us all we know what's what. Like if it happened to us or to someone we care about and we get mad, then we KNOW WTF is up. So those rich old white dudes (or equivalent thereof) are not even consistent with themselves, in that the walk does not match the talk, ergo it is false.
Ngl though, controlling the masses may have had a use, back in the day, before most people could read, by providing incentives for them to not kill and rape and steal and such. Even so, who can blame people then for being angry at finding out that their leaders don't even belief the crap that they're preaching? Which ironically doesn't even mean that it is false, just that I am agreeing with you about the need to dissect the issue by separating the "belief system" from the "authoritarian religion" components. In any case, here in the USA the latter got hijacked and evangelical christians especially seem to almost equate "God = vote for guns & conservatism". I almost just said conservatism there except that itself is too bland for many of them, who want to continue pushing to ever more far-right schemes. "God" for them is in-group selection.
Switching topics a bit, most of my friends online have been gay men. I am a cis het male btw, not that it matters but I am saying that I am friends with them not b/c of those shared aspects but more, I think, b/c they have empathy. People who have been through some shit end up having more "character" than those who do not. Entitled/spoiled people are the types to spit in your food, never dreaming of what else you have been through, and then they go and add to that burden. THEY would not want that done to THEM, yet they do it to you. On the other hand, people who are heavily bullied may end up broken and mean to others, so I am not saying that exposure to trauma causes empathy, but I am saying that it is a necessary if not sufficient component, it seems to me. So you have had that opportunity that they did not, and chose to do something with it. And that is indeed something worth being proud of!:-)
If you like the videos then I am glad that I sent the link to remind you of them. They are not light fare, but I did so enjoy pouring through them slowly, digesting each one in turn. It's like a college course in the material!:-)
As for the media on the other side, well, let's just say that Russia works in mysterious ways. Sometimes it is poisoning, but other times far more subtle. These days they are not even trying to be subtle anymore - Republican conventions are held in literal Moscow, as well as places such as Hungary. They are like minds, and Russia would be a fool not to partner with them, e.g. in that recent Tucker Carlson video interviewing Putin, if it would help speed the conversion of the USA from a foe to an ally. People do not spot it through b/c they are GOOD at what they do! Like, they poin ted out how Hillary Clinton was "corrupt" - b/c she WAS! The Supreme Court asked her to send all of her emails to them, and she told them "lolz no, Im gonna delete the ones that I do not want you to see first". Nobody can say that the optics surrounding that are anything remotely close to good. In fact, I gotta be careful here or I will go full-on rant on you, but remember that Trump did not win that election so much as she lost it (likewise, he did not win the Republican nomination either, so much as Ted Cruz lost it, after JEB botched the job). Whoever leaked her emails did the real work in that election - but then it was her actual words that she actually said and her actual actions that doomed her. Trump was outright shocked to have won - he never planned on it, did not really want it even, and gave some very serious thoughts to turning it down even! And even when he took it, he still just wanted to do the TV show that he had planned previously, on top of the job of being president. He is like a child - it is the situation that put him there, not (so much) his own intentions. In fact, I even have a little empathy for him too - he didn't want it, but he did try, despite the job being well beyond his capacity, and that's actually the tiniest shadow of a little light there (1 out of 1000 but still... it is worth noting and giving him that much credit at least; along with the blame for you know, the actual genocide of Americans by e.g. telling them that the virus was not airbone when he KNEW that it was).
Anyway, it is not "just" the people that are broken, I agree, it is the SYSTEM. Although the system is made up out of people so... that's where I get lost. But that is also why I think what you are saying is good, about not abandoning people: b/c if enough people did THAT, then the system would not be the way it is today. Somewhere in there I do think that the carrot needs to be set down and the stick picked up, and I acknowledge that I have never figured out that the line that should distinguish between them, but I think that when you KNOW that the carrot is the thing to be done and you do it ANYWAY despite the cost, that is integrity. Which some few authoritarians that I have met personally I feel like also have, in that they turn to the stick too readily and without understanding it, but most - e.g. those who showed up at the capitol - do not, b/c how can you "protect" the Constitution if you haven't even so much as read it? A "coup" to overturn something is NOT the same thing as "saving" it, dummies!!!:-(
Which is why I have to admit that I have lost the faith: with ~80% of Americans being somewhere in the middle between the extreme left and right sides, and with good-hearted and honest people with some amount of integrity on both sides, yes and some child-like mindsets too, this isn't something that most of us even seem to want to fight about? However, our media sells fear and extremism, and our politicians too, and with all these parasites sucking up our attention, how then is someone supposed to rise up and actually GOVERN? As ironically Biden has been doing, or at least trying to, though Congress and the Supreme Court seem more responsible for a goodly fraction of the issues that most average Americans are experiencing right now (not Gaza, but that's a whole other thing, and frankly that doesn't directly affect most "average" Americans either). I hope something will restore my faith, but I am not optimistic about that:-(. Therefore I believe that I am living in a dying country, but I do whatever I can to help others in my vicinity and abroad nonetheless, not b/c I think I will necessarily accomplish anything truly great there, but simply b/c it is who I am and how I want to be. We all need to live out our authentic lives, being our true selves:-).
Oh yeah I 100% agree with that. Religion was basically a proto-government. It's funny, reminds me of when I was in high school. I was part of the student newspaper and at some point I had written an article about religion and how it is basically an antiquated form of government and how it has no real purpose anymore. Edgy I know. The next Monday in school I heard about how the town priest had read the article during Sunday mass. Apparently he was NOT happy about it. I was pretty proud of that one, not gonna lie 😂.
Yeah I think so too, but it can also easily go both ways, especially when you can't manage to get out of said shit. (Nvm I see now that I should read a bit further before starting to type bahah)
I do believe however that the ones who've inflicted the most pain on others as a result of their own pain have the potential to be the ones who try their hardest to make up for their mistakes, which is why I try hard to not discount anyone. I might be wearing rose-colored glasses but I have to keep them on.
Yeah the right associating with leaders such as Putin and Orbán is fucked up on so many levels. They definitely are good at what they do. That's one of the reasons I dislike how people on both sides treat each other like the other side is dumb. All sides have brilliant people and ignorant followers. And OF COURSE Hillary was corrupt, nobody who gets that far in politics has clean hands. They're all corrupted in some way or another but not necessarily equally. Centrist cunts fuck off.
One of my best friends, brilliant guy, doctor of philosophy. A couple of years ago he decided he wanted to get into politics so he started small. He decided to run for city council here and won. It didn't even take a year for him to absolutely hate the game. He said he could not sleep anymore, couldn't handle how corrupted even stupid little city council members could be. He said there was no way for him to stay there without getting his own hands dirty and he wanted no part of it. Within a year he quit, and left the town to go teach halfway across the world at the University of Liverpool where he still is now. He couldn't stand seeing these people anymore. It made sense then why our little town is dying. Even the tiniest amount of power is immense to tiny people. I'd like to see the day where we can offload a lot of these duties to some kind of AI, but that's a whole other can of worms that we are not ready to open.
Trump is someone I have a very hard time having any empathy for, but yeah, I also have a teeny tiny bit, because he really is nothing but a child. However I don't have any hope for him to ever turn around and do something good other than for his own selfish reasons. He is too old to grow up now.
Oh and on the subject of the Carlson-Putin interview. You wouldn't happen to have a link for a re-upload? I still haven't watched it because I refuse to even give it a single official view but I need to see it.
It is. We are all products of our environment. I don't think we actually have much control over anything, not even ourselves. That's definitely one of my wacky beliefs. I've never been able to shake off the idea that we live in a deterministic universe so it is hard for me to stay mad at a person or a group of people when I don't even believe they had any real control over their action. It would be like getting mad at the messenger. We still need to get mad and fight, but not the people. We need to fight ideas with better ideas. We need to love the people because they are us and we are them. Without them there is no us and vice versa. A world with no opposition is a world that would go sideways in no time.
In-fighting between humans has been a thing since forever and look where we are now. We are wayyyyy better off in most aspects than we were not that long ago. It's easy to forget that when we're forced to take a step backwards but we as a species will come back from this, we always have. At least, assuming we manage to heal our planet but unfortunately we can't do that if we don't somehow heal ourselves first.
Yeahhh.. I don't even know what to say about Jan 6th. That is such a messed up thing. I think that a lot of people who showed up at the Capitol didn't have bad intentions, they were misled. Although I'm sure there were plenty involved that absolutely had bad intentions. Most of them problably weren't there in person.
That's pretty much it. Most people don't want to fight but the news, the politicians, corporations, whatever, they've all figured out that pitting us against each other was very profitable. Not only do we have parasites at home, we have parasites on the outside as well trying to creep in and profit as well. At this point it feels like we can't trust anything or anyone, it's no surprise that there is a rise in conspiracy brains.
But you kinda are hahah, when have you ever seen something that is not dying in some way or another? All nations will eventually disappear or change into something completely unrecognizable. Either something new and better is born out of the seemingly rotting carcass that is the American empire, or something terrible to you will take it's place and that same cycle will repeat. It's terrifying to think that we could lose our way of life, I tend to talk like I'm not scared but really I'm terrified. It's the unknown part of it that is really scary.
Those who aspire for greatness often end up accomplishing nothing. You're doing the right thing. It's impossible for one person to change the big picture but you can absolutely change what is immediately around you and that is a very powerful thing. That is where we need to put our energy. I feel like the internet has done us a great disservice in that area. We are not ready to be so connected yet. We've lost the will to fight locally because we are way too overwhelmed with things that are happening where we are absolutely powerless to help. Take care of your close ones so that they can take of theirs. The rest will work itself out. This is no time for apathy.
(Are we going for the longest comment thread in Lemmy history or what?)
part 2 of 2 - read the other one first!
And moreover, who cares? If it helps you, go with it. Then again, definitely examine it, if you feel the capacity to, b/c I think True things tend to have nothing to fear from honest inquiry, only False ones, so I question EVERYTHING and don't worry, just leaving the outcome to the results of the investigation:-).
That said, I halfway agree in that I think people carry around so many strange things, that when you talk with someone you are only partway talking to them, and partway talking to all the stuff that they bring with them. That might also depend somewhat on the person, like if they have higher Mind (I really have no idea what that means, but somehow it might convey the point regardless... does that make any sense?) then perhaps they are more true versions of themselves. Whereas talking with e.g. Trump would be like talking with a puppet - he says whatever thoughts have been implanted into his brain just before seeing you. HE has no control, but perhaps *I* do? (like it or not even) Although... the flip side of that is that if *I* do, then why *not* him? That's the part I am still chewing over, slowly.
That... is such a beautiful perspective, thank you. I have thought that before, but can never seem to hold onto it - possibly b/c Lemmy and news keeps filling my head with doom & gloom, and it seems easier to just let the crowd have their way. But I will really try this time, b/c it seems worthwhile.
Oh my. My ADHD is on fire today so I'm gonna be slow to reply to this one hahah. I'm having a really hard time organizing my thoughts and writing them down is going to be difficult as every line I read just sends me into a absolute trainwreck of thoughts. So. Many. Thoughts. I will be back with a reply as soon as my brain is untangled.
I don't... think that I have ADHD (read as: I think that I might have some form of ADHD or something along those lines:-P) - or rather I think we all lie on the spectrum somewhere, and especially highly intelligent people tend to do things differently than the "average" ones. It may look disorganized to those outside, who prefer the more rigid disciplined attack-vector style, but inside that mindset we know better: it is creative, it is spontaneous, it is fun and... yeah, it gets tiring:-). It is fucking mathematical poetry is what it is! Or at least that is how I think of it.
So rest easy: I am not judging you, truly. I hope you will not forget me entirely, but you definitely should hold off on reading all of that huge wall of text until you have the capacity. :-) You already went so far above and beyond to report back on the video, and ~~maybe~~ I should have altered my own actions there to not lay such a heavy burden on you to feel "pressured" to respond quickly. Also I ~~could~~ really should have taken time on my own to re-word it significantly shorter, which would have helped a ton:-). Sorry if I was disrespectful in that manner.:-)
I do so very much enjoy hearing your thoughts though - keep preaching them sista! (if/when/as you want:-)
Oh no! I didn't mean anything about what you wrote or your writing style or anything. Sorry if I came across that way. I think we have a very similar writing style, no offence 😂
The autism spectrum is a strange and fascinating thing. I'm also not entirely convinced ADHD is really a separate thing, just ADHD being a set or subset of traits within the autism spectrum that we've decided to identify and label as ADHD instead of lumping it with autism. Autism and ADHD have very high rates of comorbidity, the major differentiating factor between the two is that ones traits/symptoms can be managed using stimulants.
It is easy to think that everybody must be on it a little bit but I'm not sure that's the case. I know for me it's something that has definitely crossed my mind but the more I thought about it, the closer I got to the conclusion that it is more likely that I have inadvertently surrounded myself with people who are also on the spectrum/neurodivergent. We kind of speak the same language and have many shared experiences/traumas so it would be no surprise that we would associate.
I do believe that many people we consider highly intelligent are/were on the spectrum. It does grant the "ability" to think in completely different ways and to view very different perspectives. It can be a blessing and/or a curse, very rarely a blessing alone.
Welp, I don't decide when I get going but when I do, I have a hard time stopping 💀. I'm gonna manually pull the brake here and cut off that rant right there 😅
I did read it though! Sorry I thought I mentioned that in my previous post but apparently I didn't hahah. I just wanted to let you know that I had seen and read your comment but I'm having a very low-functioning day today. The subjects brought up are not subjects I take lightly and even though we're not doing much more than shooting the shit on the internet, you've brought things up that I really want to ponder and explore before taking the time to reply. I appreciate the conversation with you and I know it takes time and energy to put thoughts on paper. Just wanted you to know it wasn't a waste, I am still listening.
Not at all. That's 100% on me, that's just how I am. There's probably (definitely 100%) trauma hiding somewhere behind that but that's another comment thread 😂
You have not been disrespectful in any way. I know how it is when you start writing and more and more stuff just keeps coming up, no reason not to share those thoughts. Pound away on that keyboard. I'll talk to you soon!
I will say this again down below but I like it so much that I want to repeat it to start out with as well, if you do not mind: Thank you for your kind words:-).
I tend to think of ADHD & autism as more chemical, whereas for me it is my trauma and decisions that have created this. I could be making stuff up and it is all that way. The brain is weird, and trauma is a bitch, on steroids:-P.
Moreover, I think everything that is an advantage is also a disadvantage, and vice versa. It is like the game rock-paper-scissors: nothing is "best", only good in certain contexts, but you never know what the next round will bring.
The ability to "shut out the world" and just CREATE - it can literally change the world, and also at the same time get you fired. It did for Steve Jobs, and then weirdly enough they brought him back! The execs reportedly hated that they had to do that, yet needed him b/c otherwise they could not create money out of thin air. It must have been so humiliating to them, to have to bow before the laws of economics and touch reality so directly, rather than simply impose their will and have everyone immediately say "yes!". Anyway I am proud to be neurodivergent, and went looking for ways to further break out of the mold. But then likewise after I left my last position, I am also looking to reign that in too, so that I can maintain a steady income as well as create:-P.
You too are getting better at that I see - and that's definitely a good thing:-). Whether we are ever truly the masters of our own fate or not, we can at least step up and attempt to grab the reigns, and I think that's a good thing (otherwise, the reigns wouldn't even need to be there?:-D).
I've said this to others too, and I will say it again: I prefer thoughtful replies. I reply to enough common stuff all across the Fediverse that I'm solid on the "banter", but it is so rare to have the TRULY thoughtful ones. Like cooking, it is worth the wait for the preparation time:-).
And I believe you about the trauma causing you to feel "anxiety" for not responding sooner. I... well let's just say that I ABSOLUTELY understand that (yes, you guessed it: I am the same way, and like you I fight that).
Thank you for your kind words:-).
Hey! Right back at you, friend!
Yeah they are very difficult to tell apart. Most of my traumas come from the fact that I was different, without understanding that I was different. I tried so hard to not be different my whole life that I've ended up with damage that I'm not sure I will ever be able to completely fix. Most of the symptoms that I display that stem from trauma would be indistinguishable from a neurotypical person with similar traumas.
That is also how I see it. It's actually such a beautiful thing too. You can't have anything if you don't have balance. I don't believe that there is a "wrong" kind of person, just maybe someone who is not suited for the current task at hand. It doesn't mean that they are useless. In a capitalistic society, yeah maybe but I'd rather argue that capitalism is useless (I don't think it is but I do think it's time for it to retire) than a person.
Yeah it is a double-edged sword for sure. It feels like a crippling superpower at times. Yes I can concentrate on a project for 24 hours straight, but I also can't feed myself during that time, I can't do anything but what's right in front of me. But still, I am also very proud to be neurodivergent. I wish I had known more about it earlier, but maybe I wouldn't have taken it the same way if I learned about it earlier, who knows.
I agree, but banter also serves to open the door to potentially thoughtful replies. I basically use it as a feeler, kind of like a "Hey how's it goin'" or "Hey, nice weather!". Funny how I only really learned what the purpose of that was a couple years ago. Sometimes you send out a quick quip and someone sends one right back that shows a "compatible thought-process". Also I just really enjoy saying stupid silly shit.
Yeah it's tough to fight it. Especially when you grew with with instant messaging. I've basically been in front of a computer with all my instant messengers opened at all times and now I regret it so much. I don't want to be accessible 24/7, I mean I kinda do but really I can't. It leaves you no time for you and in the end you can't be there for anyone if you're not there for yourself. I wish I had realized that sooner.
💜💜💜💜
Yeah, I feel like I can well understand. Obviously not ofc, especially your particulars - and this is no contest, leastwise not one that anyone would ever come close to "winning" - but in general. For example, the former sentence could be a HORRIBLE thing to say? Lacking empathy - like "I skinned my knee one time, so I know precisely what pain you are going through!" -or it could be... not, and I don't even know the difference!!! To me it sounds logical therefore I share it. And that is why I feel like I know what you mean: other people react, and I have little idea why, which leaves me constantly trying to second-guess every single tiny fucking thing. Maybe I am sighted and they are blind, thus lacking the ability to see as clearly as I do, they have a different set of facts, so react differently? But at the same time, I KNOW that I am blind, especially if I cannot "see clearly" enough to guess their reactions, so it cannot be as simple as that. In reality, it is both. And my trauma I suppose is some whole other thing entirely, related to neither, and yet since it interconnects with both... sigh, anyway, I halfway get what you mean:-).
Be careful about wishing for capitalism to retire. ~~We~~ you just might get your wish. Ngl, the wealthy look to be gearing up to replace society with something different, and it might leave the broken democracy and capitalism portions behind, replacing it with simply abject slavery - a form of communism where YOU work hard for THEIR gain (instead of your own as capitalism typifies), and thus "everyone is equal", except for the like 5 people at the top. Who at that point might not even be people anymore but rather AI robots, or even just plain & simple corporations, where even the CEO has no more rights than a janitor, just a few extra perks.
I do not think the exercise about what we all should want is entirely useless, but I do worry that we are getting so wrapped up in such thinking processes that we, collectively as society ofc, are forgetting that we may not get what we want, and rather that the evil ones may dangle some pretty bauble at us, but end up switching that bait with their own devious version of it as we try to grasp at it. Trump is a living example of that - despite making himself a butt-monkey puppet for Putin and thus not being the true "agency" doing the thinking himself, still he serves well enough as a name to call it - where he offered to his supporters to overthrow Biden in an effort to "save democracy and freedom". Ofc the January 6 rioters would not have ended up "saving democracy" AT ALL, and THEY are the ones taking away people's "freedoms"... which is why this is a perfect example of what I am saying here: what THEY "offer" is not necessarily a good thing, when they are predating upon our emotions and we (collectively, societally) are too dumb to realize that:-(.
Trump may also be a weirdly good example in another way: showing us that there truly CAN be a "wrong" type of person:-). I mean, what is wrong with hollowing yourself out to become a mouthpiece for someone who would rather choose to hide in the shadows? There are multiple ways to be correct, and MANY more ways to be incorrect, but there are some, very few things to be avoided. Except, and this is the part that gets weird, sometimes, at least on evolutionary timescales, sometimes that WORKS!? Like, literally avoid all the traps set for you, not b/c you were too smart to fall for them, but b/c you were too dumb to have fallen for them!!!!:-P Still, while there may not be a "right" and a "wrong" way, there are ways that tend to work better than others, and Trump's way seems wrong to me. But other things, like a lot of my own feelings, I have little control over, so I don't worry too much (hehe, that is an enormous lie just so you know:-P) about whether they are "right" or "wrong":-P. As the stoics said: only worry about what you can control!:-D
Holy crap are you my soulmate? J/k - I don't even believe in that - but... well, it sounded silly in my head, so I HAD TO SAY IT!:-P The weird part is, whenever I do say stuff like that, I tend to get down-voted. (I still do it though:-P - their reaction is on them, but I got my fun and moved on:-D)
About fighting against instant messaging: fwiw, I know my limitations, and therefore work around them. In this case, I only ever access Lemmy from a webpage - either mobile or desktop - and never allow notifications to be turned on. I hope that thought sparks something in you. Not that I am advocating for it mind you - that's your business and I do know if it would even work for you, but what I hope it will do is spark a thought process in you.:-) In turn, I would hope that thought process would either lead you to change something so that you felt more free, or else that you would stay the same but again, feel more free and settled in what you are doing:-).
And if it helps to hear from the other side, I would hate to be the cause of any pain for you. Though I am dumb as shit - in this respect at least (we all are smart in many but not all ways, okay so maybe not "all" but MANY people have various forms of intelligence, which are usually not entirely evenly distributed) - and might not know how to avoid that? Anyway, again it is obviously not a "directive" b/c I have zero rights to such, but just me sharing how I feel, when I say that I would hope that you take some time for yourself. I also hope you do not forget me!!! But like... in a way I guess I do then, if that would cause you undue strain? I feel like you more than most people will understand what I mean here... even though I do not, fully, myself:-).
Rest easy:-P. Until it is time to rise again:-).
Oh I know hahah. I'm always careful for what I wish for. I might not always chose the right words to put down but in my head my wish is pretty clear and simple. I wouldn't wanna be able to say exactly what it was though because then according to the rules of the universe and the wishing laws, it would never come true 🤪
Aw hahah don't say that, but I do understand what you mean as I am also dumb as shit. Oops, I said it too. I also believe that everybody has some kind of intelligence and wish more people could see that. Even someone who appears to be dumb as bricks will probably know way more than you in many areas. There's just so much knowledge to be amassed out there and everybody picks up different bits. Thinking that someone is just 100% stupid and doesn't know anything just shows a lack of insight or understanding.
I have! I've been feeling too good to stay cooped up at home these past couple days. I guess I haven't really been resting but the change of scenery has been really nice.
John Stewart (Daily Show) had a great message yesterday about what we were talking about wrt Trump: people around his orbit say one thing, but do the exact opposite irl, revealing how it is authoritarian BS and currying favor rather than reality. But he says it much better than I ever could so I will let you hear it from him.
I need to talk with you a lot more often - this is stuff I need to hear:-). Speaking of, I am glad to hear that your mental health is improving. I thought mine was too but it is hard to navigate the storms of life and my sense of self is still tied up in the wrong things.:-( Then again, I will meditate on it and it becomes an opportunity to do better and grow... so that's always a boon. Nobody enjoys those opportunities, but we do become so much better - less Monkey, more Mind - as a result:-).
Aw, that's just part of the ups and downs of life. Just don't let yourself fall too far down. Two steps forwards one step back is still one step forward. The last 2 days have been pretty shit for me in terms of mental health but at the same time I still realize that I am still doing MUCH better than I was just a month ago. It's always a bit painful when your mood and mental health takes a bit of a dive but it helps to try and keep things in perspective.
This is indeed a great perspective:-).
(There is a character limit for comments - or at least there was for Kbin.social and I assume for Lemmy as well? - so at the very least we are constrained in the length of each segment:-)
If you are interested, there is a book by the philosopher Daniel Dennett - who is a halfway decent author, e.g. of Darwin's Dangerous Idea, which is a DEEEEEEP look into evolution - called "Breaking the Spell", where he delves into the mechanics of studying religion with the same tools that you would study anything else. The latter is really boring so that book of his I normally do not so much recommend reading in-depth, but in your case perhaps you would, b/c in it he says things vaguely similar to what you are saying. Chiefly, that tribalism was adaptive to the evolution of mankind, and while nationalism helped lift us up beyond that, the next step was due to religion, which allowed us to cross national boundaries. Like, "HEY there fellow Pastafarian brutha/sistah - [Joey from Friend's voice] how you doin?"
So I would call it like a "meta-government", due to how it sits on top of existing governmental structures. Like in a lot of European countries - e.g. Spain - people that I have talked to that grew up there were angry b/c they paid one set of taxes to their government, and another set of taxes to the Catholic Church all the way in Rome, which like Americans they were subjected to "taxation without representation", and worse yet they simply had no choice in the matter at all - they did not "choose" that religion, but merely by being born there that choice was made for them.
Ngl, but the Catholic Church does do some good stuff - and whenever it e.g. feeds the hungry, visits the sick and constrained in prison, whenever it does as the Bible says and "takes care of widows and orphans", THAT is awesome and I support THOSE efforts 100%. Ofc when they lie and steal and cheat and murder and rape then THOSE efforts I am 100% against. I used to be very angry at the Catholic Church for a long time myself, though fortunately I healed, and now I see that the people inside of it do what they do not even just in spite of their religion, but sometimes because of it, though we are imperfect humans, and some are fairly deadly. It is just that with any political structure, or religious, or anything at all involving humans (and also chimpanzees, not only our closest living relative but also one of the only other species on earth that takes active delight in murder!), a close watch must be kept on it to ensure that it does not go astray.
And yeah, I keep hearing stories of people who step up to be that kind of old-school "statemen" rather than a "career politician", who cannot stand it and must leave. The literal DEATH THREATS offered to those people, by the most extremist among us, coupled ofc with the actual murders (like the Boeing whistleblower), have made me realize that the concept of "Illuminati" is absolutely real - maybe not as an actual irl society with a special ring and what-not, but obviously power corrupts, and obviously those who have it will concentrate the highest amount of resources to themselves - that's just ~~human~~ monkey nature.
I also quit something - a teaching position, not politics - and I have a great deal of sympathy with what he went through, it is not easy to just walk away, but ofc it would have been far worse if he had stayed and compromised himself. Everybody just said "try to do the best you can, and help those who you can"... implying to ignore everyone else, just take the money from the parents and run, never mind that one person physically cannot do the task justice, oh and then double the number of students on top of that, b/c why the fuck not, the computer will do all the "real work" anyway, right? :-| I would rather Epstein myself than heap such heavy burdens upon people though, saddling them with large debts while not helping them get ahead in life, and worse making them think they know something, by altering the externally-reviewed scores so that the school (I don't want to say which one) could avoid losing its accreditation, which it had already been warned about previously and was in danger of it happening again. You REALLY cannot help people, when the entire system is stacked against you to prevent that. Or perhaps I am naive and I should have stayed in, to be "one of the good ones", except I just am not that kind of person. It would have killed me, inside. So yeah, I GET IT. Somewhat, or at least think I do:-).
And yeah, maybe your town will die off then. Perhaps even... I doubt you will take this the wrong way so I will go ahead and say it: perhaps it should? Survival of the fittest and all, and that applies to towns just as well as species, and even the United States of America: if we do not "fit" into the existing world structure, then we might go down, at Putin's behest but also by our own stinking bloody hands, b/c we are too stupid to realize that the whispers he sent to us (e.g. "the vaccine is harmful") were not real nor even "our own".
AI will not be ready in time for us - maybe some future generation, but not us. Nor would we really want it to - shows such as Wall-E (and I have read similar stories for that identical concept written decades prior to that) have convinced me that when life gets comfortable enough, people will simply give up and allow "mommy"(/"daddy") to take care of them. Which is, to a large degree, the very thing that has put America into this mess we are in now? Laziness, more than any other singular factor.
Try to have empathy for Trump: fuck we all know that he does not deserve it, but it is not for him, it is for you. I don't care one bit about him, but I don't want you to have that monkey on your back, as the saying goes. He is a scared, whiney, piss baby who puts dumps into his diapers and then has trouble walking about. He acts that way out of fear, and b/c he knows no other way. In MANY ways, him being put in charge was not his fault, but rather those of people who are far more crafty (and have espionage capabilities) than he. He is a victim too - he is not just a symptom, mind you, being also a cause, but among the many things that he is, a victim is one of them. You or I possibly could have ended up there as well. Except, and this is the part I am learning more recently, we NEVER would - maybe if our entire backstory had been different, but as we are now and looking forward, we NEVER would have allowed that. There truly is a RIGHT and a WRONG, and Trump is all kinds of the latter. He is barely more than a monkey, while we have moved upwards by the power of Mind, and short of like dementia or some such, I cannot imagine anyone who has done that could ever turn back down. I used to shy away from that thought, b/c it seems not humble (in the midwestern USA that is YUGE to never appear anything other than humble:-P). But now I realize what true humility is: finding the Truth, whatever it is, and paying homage to that. Which makes him, and more importantly the system that put him there, my enemy. And even so, I still have empathy for the fucker... but I would still consign him to jail.
Likewise, I refused to watch the Tucker Carlson video too:-). But if you don't want to watch the whole thing - like me:-) - here is one with just the highlights and commentary from the GREATEST PERSON ALIVE ON THE PLANET EARTH RIGHT NOW, Jon Stewart: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oM2h3KnWAWY. It is The Daily Show, which I believe should not be HBO, so I hope you can see it.
Determinism: I also believe that. I cannot prove it though, so I don't hold to it too hard. Also, it doesn't really matter, to me, b/c even if things were fore-ordained, we don't know what those things are, so we must treat each new event as totally not that way, yes? :-P It's just an abstract idea in my head, consistent with there being 2 time dimensions (if I am remembering that correctly), or anyway if there is just the one, then it may be something along the lines of an exapanding wave of matter as it moves outwards from the Big Bang at constant velocity. If that were true, then time travel should be impossible, b/c once the wave passes, past times literally do not exist anymore, nor do future ones yet. An alternate formulation is that both past and present DO exist, and if we had the technology then we could travel along it, always "forward" but bucking the universal constant outwards pressure and instead returning to a "past" time/space continuum. Also, an outside observer could "see" our future. Then again, a "God" (like The Matrix computer), could foresee the future in other ways, not with foresight but simply with raw power, just like the Russian leader Gorbachev said "we will bury you"... and then decades later, it is happening - he meant it, he set things in motion to make it happen, nobody bothered to try to fight back, and, here we are). I think these thoughts are straight-forward from Einstein's theory that time & space are far more connected than people previously conceived. Ofc we do not "know", but is fun to conjecture nonetheless:-).
But then I read something from CS Lewis that entirely changed my thinking on that subject forever (one of his deep philosophy essays, I do not now recall which one). Yes, we may be pawns on a chessboard, but who is to say that WE are not ALSO the players!? If life is a video game, WE could be the characters, but "WE" could ALSO be coming down into our avatars from above. Truth tends to be stranger than fiction, and we truly don't know what's what, so any explanation could be the One. It could be just as likely that we are all "one", part of Gai and each having a dream of our own lives as if we are separated.
And moreover... damn I hit the character limit. Well, for now I will continue to a part 2, but I need to stop doing that at some point:-P.
Sheee's bAAAAaaaaack 😱
That does sound right up my alley I'll write it down. However my reading ability lately is not great. If I read 2 books in a year, that was a good year hahah. I already have a pile of books on my desk that has been there for about a year now and once in a while a book gets added on top but none get removed from the bottom 😭
I can relate to that a lot. I still feel guilty about how I used to be around religion. Particularly with my mom. She used to believe and for some reason I couldn't accept that. I would often talk shit about religion and her beliefs, try to convince her it was all just bullshit. Now I just ask myself why the fuck would I want to take that away from someone? Especially someone like my mom who basically just used religion as a way to calm her mind about the afterlife. Worst part, the most painful part, is that one of the reasons she probably believed so strongly was because it was a way for her to believe that she might be able to see my brother who died before I was born.
Ouch... I'm really sorry you've had to leave a teaching position. That is a tragedy, but don't bother second guessing your decision. Whatever you did was the right thing to do. You can still teach even though you aren't in a teaching position and I have a feeling you weren't in it for the fame and the fortune that comes with the official title of "Teacher".
Bahah none taken at all. It would be pretty hypocritical of me to take offense when I basically said the same thing about your country! It just is what it is sometimes. Maybe if we all understood that, we would take better care of what we have but no. Too many people take what we have for granted.
Agreed. There are no monkeys named Trump on my back at this point. In a way I don't really "care" anymore. I'd rather concentrate on the things that are happening rather than the people who we view as the cause of those things because it's never really just one person. Trump wouldn't have been able to do much if there wasn't a growing mass of people who somehow connected to the things he was saying. To put the blame on one person would be ignoring the true root of the issues. Do I believe he deserve every punishment he gets? Yes, 100%. What he does not deserve is my time and energy. I'd rather spend it on people who might end up voting for someone like him.
Hahah! Yaaaass! I wanted to watch the whole thing raw before I watched Jon Stewart on it though but I will probably end up just watching that instead.
Ahhhh yes. This is the part that really sent my brain into a death spiral 😂 It still does. It is just such a "fun" thing to think about. There is so much to think about when you know nothing. I see it as any other kind of belief. Since you can't prove it, it should only enter the equation when nothing else can help you make a decision. When there is no right or wrong, or all options are appear to be either right or wrong, to me that is when beliefs are useful. Then again, that is kind of why we're at this point in time right now. Ironic. Some beliefs are just more dangerous than others I guess, or maybe it's just the incompatibility between certain beliefs that is dangerous.
And yes, since we can't know whether we have free-will or not, we must treat it as if we did because our brain tells us we do but we still need to remember that our brain lies all the time. Well, maybe not as much lie as it omits a lot of information.
I like that thought. Inertia isn't only applicable to the physical world.
I have to apologize, I am having a hard time grasping your thoughts on space and time. If you want you can try to re-word that for me as I wouldn't mind having a clearer picture and toying with your ideas a bit.
Oh god yeah. That is something that I have thought about a lot. I also like the idea that we are all just one consciousness experiencing itself from within, or just a bunch of thoughts trying to sort themselves out in some sort of giant cosmic brain. I dunno hahah, these ideas can go pretty far and get pretty crazy. It's just so much fun to think about. I miss Timothy Leary, Terence McKenna and their crazy psychedelic-fueled ideas.
----PART 2----
Exactly.
Oh it is very rare that you will get to truly talk to someone. I think you're always interacting with a translation layer that sits between an interface and the actual mind.
I do believe there is a higher mind and that we all have it but that it can be buried and suffocated. It's very difficult to stay open-minded these days as we are constantly bombarded with crap coming from all directions. I can't blame anyone for closing that door after a while. I also think that you should never really be interacting with the same person twice. Healthy people grow and change constantly.
I know exactly what you mean. It is extremely difficult to hold on to. It takes a conscious effort to do so but it is absolutely worthwhile. To me it offloads a ton of weight from my shoulders.
This is part 2, space timey wimy goodness:
It is fundamentally difficult to grasp, yeah. CS Lewis has an illustration that I will ~~borrow~~ blatantly steal outright: imagine an outside entity who "sees" the entire trajectory of your life as a line, with all its twists and curves, and then, perhaps on a whim or to make it more beautiful art, decides to "outline" it, like maybe a highlighter or let us rather say one line "above"/to the left and another line "below"/to the right of it. From your perspective, your life appears "hemmed in", outlined, bordered by those two lines - as if you had no choices in the matter? Yet, that outside agent was the one who drew the lines, but following YOUR choices! That at least is the simplistic version, but it gets even weirder if, while the outside agent is drawing those outlining lines, your own lifeline changes in response. So if the agent starts drawing from the beginning of your life to the end, the final trajectory could change - according to YOUR choices, but in response to THEIR choices, which were themselves based on YOUR choices to begin with. Notice the caveat inherent in that: the "you" may change, from an alternate-reality you without interference from that outside agent, to now the "you" that has done so.
Even weirder, what if that "outside agent", who I mentioned earlier plays you like a chess piece pawn, isn't "God" or whatever, but YOU! In that case, "you" are the video game or storybook or whatever character, but in this formulation, the external agent is also YOU - moreover it would be the REAL you, whereas the one inside this reality is the lesser version. Ofc, here you must somehow have "forgotten" your true, higher self. And as you brought up, there may not be a 1:1 correlation between each of us down here vs. ourselves up there - all humans could come from just 1 or a few up there, or whatever. Anything is possible there, and we are only limited by our imaginations here. What we know for certain here is that what Religion tells us in this regard is fundamentally flawed and wrong - b/c it is inconsistent e.g. even the people saying so do not practice what they preach - but we do not necessarily know what the True reality is. Now we see only in part. I still like thinking along those lines b/c there are multiple ways to be wrong, and thereby thinking along several different lines could help lead us to Truth - e.g. we might not be "actually" one being (I sincerely doubt it, I see no evidence of it at least), but is there any doubt that we are all "connected" nonetheless?
This one hits me hard - my (autism-spectrumed?) brain constantly forgets this and wants to pick up right where it left off - more a reflection of my own reduced capacity to handle things than anything to do with reality. Speaking of, I had already forgotten that beautiful perspective that you had shared with me about nations changing. Stuff at my job, weird weather, for a few days my exercise schedule has been interrupted and I am just "off", and just like that it had already slipped through my fingers, again. Maybe, or at least I mean it did at the conscious level. That said, I tend not to try to hold onto anything too strongly, trusting that if it is good that it will find its way back to me in time. That... is nowhere close to true though:-(, and yet I know that I CANNOT hold onto things no matter how I try, so it is demotivating to even try.
And I think there is an evolutionary reason for this: community. No one person - a sage on a mountaintop lets say - can or even should really try to have it all, all the knowledge, all the wisdom, all the perfection. Rather, if we choose to surround ourselves with those who are worthwhile, and distance ourselves from idiots (it seems sad but what else can you do but that? they are hell-bent on their own destruction, and they will absolutely take you down with them!), then we can keep reminding ourselves of these beautiful Truths.
Or, so I say anyway, but then I don't actually DO it - oopsie, I guess I too am one of those who says one thing yet does the polar opposite, an "idiot" even. As too are we all, but one difference, not sure I can take "credit" for any of it but just saying it as a fact (or so it seems to me): some of us, for whatever reason, desire to know the Truth, and Reason, and Mind, while some of us, again for whatever reason, do not. THAT makes all the difference in the world, b/c I will eventually find what I seek, with effort + time, while they literally never will (and even if they stumbled upon it, they would set it back down again without realizing its significance). So I am grateful that I care, and therefore... almost grateful for the pain that I lived through that made me care. Most people would have no idea whatsoever what that means, but I don't even need to explain it further than that, b/c you already do.
I hope these thoughts are at least halfway entertaining:-D.
That is so relatable hahah. I think it's normal and that we all have those moments but I also do not know what normal is. I think that's where meditation and mindfulness can be really helpful. You sometimes must make a conscious effort to remind yourself of these things because the world we've built is just so overwhelming at times, it's easy to get caught up in it and forget. It's kind of like weightlifting for the mind/soul hahah. If you stop training you're gonna lose all them gainz!
Well of course. You are the sum of your experiences and if you are at a point where you are happy with who you are, then you must appreciate the pain you've had to endure to get there.
Absolutely! They have managed to take up an hour of what seemed to be the start of a pretty boring day.
Hehe, isn't it fun that we know nothing? Well, whether it is or not, that's just the way it is, so we adapt - it's what we are good at, and all that could ever possibly be done regardless:-P.
People that think (& act) as if their actions do not affect others do so as a result of that CHOICE to act exactly that way - just as those of us who do the opposite do as well. Facts may have little to nothing to do with that choice, except for some very few of us.
As you said also about the choice to be mindful - which is a separate aspect of the choice but that too is also a (meta-?) choice! I feel like I know, somewhat, how to excercise, but I really have no clue how people maintain their mental health. All the more so when it goes beyond "maintenance mode" into actively trying to heal from past wounds. Nor would I trust any resource that said that it knew, unfortunately. e.g., churches say that they know... and who knows, maybe they do? Like people, it would vary according to the individual one.
I do not know if I would say that I am "happy" with myself, but on the other hand I look at others who experience their own pains that are caused from the fruits of their own labors and... yeah, I see that. I often do not want to see that, but I do. I definitely see too much, yet also too little at the same time? As do we all.
Well, I am glad that my problems are amusing to you then - sheesh! (/s, I know you know but to be abundantly clear!:-P)
This is part 1, then space-time wonkiness in part 2:-).
She is absolutely the BEst biTCH!:-) (I really hope you take that as I meant it, in that I mean that you are awesome:-P)
Ngl, I think Darwin's Dangerous Idea took me a year to read through. Except that's got to be a lie - it surely took more:-P. And I never did finish the other one... - nor iirc did the person who ~~unloaded~~ gave it to me:-( Anyway I am glad that I read the former one at least, and have at least heard about the latter, b/c when I was young I was taught "young earth creationism" (as pretty much everyone in America is, despite how most people outside of the USA iirc pretty much never are), and that (first one) was perhaps the chief resource that helped me logic+reason my way out of that - not alone, but it helped. So it had personal significance to me to be worth that investment of time. I don't know if either of those books would have that kind of punch in your case, but I did want to share so that you could make that determination on your own, knowing that they exist:-).
Your example of Religion is perfect: real or not, it has enormous benefits, as too does the placebo effect. Jesus Himself used it, even as He commanded to redirect it - e.g. towards taking care of widows and orphans, which implies everything up to and short of that as well, e.g. paying workers their wages. That said, it can also become horribly corrupt, as can anything that People touch - e.g. Science+Technology can lead to nuclear war, genocidal tools, even experimentation upon being beings; Education can be twisted to become "re-education" in a totalitarian regime (see e.g. Uighurs); Math can... well I am sure it can somehow be used poorly as well, maybe by making numbers go brrr i.e. chasing after "efficiency" i.e. profits at the expense of the human beings involved:-(.
But if it can be used poorly, then surely it could be used well too, like you mentioned, to turn someone's life around by offering them a REASON to exist. We all need that. Fome some, atheism or agnosticism is enough, but not everyone - e.g. not me personally. That said, it can also be super great to break away from a poorly-used, poorly-run one, like an overbearing one that actively hurts people. Especially here - but really almost anywhere except the hardest of the hard sciences, like it happens in politics - there is a huge gulf between things like the real, actual, full Truth (which for religion nobody knows - e.g. the Christian Bible even explicitly says that it is impossible to know, like "now we see dimly, in part, as if a reflection from a dirty mirror..."), and then what we think is true, and then also distinct from both of those how people chasing after power use as their method to control others. e.g. when I am at my job, it is not Religion that is used to control me - all mention of personal beliefs is highly taboo - so there it is rather Authoritarianism that accomplishes that purpose for them. Relion is one tool of control over the masses, but it is not the only one, and it is not inherently either good or evil. (Arguably it is good when it says to e.g. "hold fast to what is true", but that can be bad when what it thought to be true is incorrect, and the people are willing to e.g. behead someone over a disagreement)
Moreover, even full "Logic", in the hands of a child - i.e. virtually everyone, especially those among us that choose to act that way, as in child-ish behaviors observed in adults - becomes mere "justification", to serve their ends, rather than being an end unto itself. This is why I place a lot of value on "stories" to help us see that - Isaac Asimov, Pinocchio, Star Trek TOS's Spock's emotional quest to gain parental & societal validation through (ironically) expunging his emotions by achieving Kolinahr (his motivations for that are explained much deeper in the book than the movie), and the converse of that in TNG Data's perfectly-logical quest to become more "human" by discarding logic when appropriate, e.g. to appreciate and be able to tell a joke.:-D So... even logic itself, becomes a mere tool to be used for some aim, in the hands of our monkey selves. Whether it "should" be this way or not is irrelevant, as it simply is.
So anyway, philosophy is so extremely central to these foundational aspects of our lives, and many can find their meaning in Religion, and in Logic, and I like that:-). It deepens us, which is good, but if used improperly, then just like a surgeon's scalpal or again like any tool at all, it can harm us just as if not all the more readily, by virtue of touching our lives in such a vulnerable spot.
Speaking of, if I can make a suggestion: PLEASE only think about these matters if and when they are fun for you. I want to enjoy your company, not add to your burdens:-), like if any of this would stress you out.:-D
And further along those lines, I hope that you take heart in that all of our relationships with our mothers are this way, it seems to me. From when you were the tiniest little baby all the way forward until now - e.g. you would kick and scream and spit up onto her, not even b/c it was "her", but then later especially, yeah, b/c it was specifically her. I am no child psychologist, but that is the "normal" state of affairs it seems. For all monkeys even. At the same time, I am glad that you grew out of it. Also fwiw, that seems unlikely to be the sole reason that anyone would "believe" something - surely it must have been a big one, but also if she grew up in it that would be another point towards it, the "sunk cost fallacy" you know, and so on. But everyone is different - e.g. for me I don't even necessarily "want" to believe (or if I do then I am deceiving myself - which is also a distinct possibility!), but I have to chase down wherever my investigations lead me, and if that causes me to ditch it one day then I will. On the other hand, the latter viewpoint of life is rather unusual, so I cannot project that onto everyone, and yeah maybe she actually was holding onto that thought for her own sake, plus whatever other background reasons, in which case I am glad that she had it - false or no. We do need our security blankets - I used to think the more solid they are the better, but the more I see how society is crumbling around us (and the corresponding suicide rates), the more I question my belief in that. To be clear, I still believe that for ME, and I would hope that others would STRIVE for the same, but I must accept that the vast majority of people will not do so.
I am not really a "teacher" at all I think - it was kind of a career path that people just "expect" for others to follow, but my problem is that I only care about helping people who WANT to be helped, so I think I am more of a "helper" at heart. So now I am a software engineer where I get to do that. I have lost some autonomy, but that could be good as well. I never had any ability to truly help people who REFUSE to be helped, and it would have killed me to keep trying and fail. In that sense, NOBODY who has that kind of "teacher" mindset should have a job where they have to actually TEACH in today's current capitalist societal framework. It self-selects otherwise.
YAAAASSSS QUEEN! Except... hrm, it will keep coming up, every few years and also rearing its ugly head. It is something that we cannot ignore, except for the sake of our mental health, we have to, even though we couldn't if we tried. Doesn't that just about sum it up!?!?
I also "feel like" I know what you mean there about predestination or whatever we are calling it - "fate". It is one of the most dangerous mindsets b/c it robs people of their agency - but we really do seem to also have that!?!? (Maybe?) So it's like there's a Truth there somewhere, but darned if I know what it is, and whether True or not, how does it even help me either way? This is why I like CS Lewis: he also talked like that, having lived it first. Like, if we had not believed that first, and then late in life learned it, that might have been more helpful for us. Instead, we (all three of us) stumbled upon it earlier, and now do not know how it fits in with the rest of the framework. I liken it to a mage/sorcerer type who learned some kind of arcane branch of magic, so while their buddies are going around doing all the cool, useful stuff like fireball, we basically got nothing to show for it, except that we happen to know (what might be, MAYBE) a deeper Truth. It could end up being the most powerful magic of all, but what good does that do for us, practically speaking, on a daily basis?!
If you were asking more about the Russia connection, Fox News is what has damaged America, and Russia funded/started Fox News. There is a documentary about it on Netflix, which I haven't watched, just piecing that together from other sources. But I am guessing that you rather meant the other thing:-).
But I will have to put the time/space thing in a separate part again due to space limitations.:-D
Bahah no worries, literally everybody calls me that. Ok I lied, my parents don't, but everybody else does!
Yeah you may be right about that. These days however I am working towards being friends with my mother instead of just being her child and that has been kind of a healing experience.
She really hasn't grown up in a religious family but still, everybody else around was. People were living and breathing in religion. My grandfather hated organized religion though. He stopped going to church very early in his life and never made his children attend which is kind of crazy for someone who grew up in the early 1900s. He saw religious people as sinners looking to be forgiven on Sunday just to start a whole new week of sinning. Dude was an absolute bad ass but he suffered from chronic depression his whole life. I really wish I had the chance to discuss with him more.
Aw, yeah, I understand what you mean. Jobs tend to suck the life and soul out of everything though. You can still be a teacher and not be in the teaching profession but the helper label still has a nice ring to it! I feel the same way though. I have a hard time throwing my energy at someone who can't be bothered to bounce that energy back at me. It is so exhausting.
Oh I know, but there is a point of diminishing return for time and energy spent on things like that and it comes on real quick. Just gotta realize when that happens and stop.
Hahah I like that comparison. We will probably never know in our lifetimes either, and that's ok. I have nothing impressive like fireballs to show but I know that people see something in me that I can't put my finger on. It's gonna sound like a weird brag but people fucking love me and I've never been able to figure out why. All my life I've never been able to go to any kind of gathering without having people just flock around me. I've always just kinda wanted to be left alone so at gatherings I would try to find a nice quiet corner and have maybe a couple close friends with me, but I would always end up being swarmed and overwhelmed. Maybe that's my power, people magnet. I have no clue how I would use such a power but I feel I'm getting closer to figuring it out.
EDIT: I will be back for part two at a later time! I'm currently in the process of buying a house and becoming something that I hate, a landlady 🤢. I'm currently having a wild internal battle about this but no matter which way I look at it, I have to do it. Gonna get back to that for a bit but I will be back.
We all have our traumas. For instance my grandfather had a similar story - he would not entertain the notion of us having any relion besides Catholicism, though he himself had not attended church in decades. He saw too much how the sausage was made, and could not stomache it, though he still believed, ostensibly, except he did not, but again would not allow us to go our own way without comment. I realize that came from his pain, though have too much of my own to really be able to fully set foot into his shoes there. I realized from all that - and later from reading the irl backstory of CS Lewis, who walked away from his puritanical upbringing to become atheist - that a lot of people have a made-up "god", and that quite frankly Jesus Himself not only "would be" but WAS fucking PISSED at that aspect of life. We all should be more atheistic - yes, this from the very words of Christ Himself!!!!! (hehe, my rather... "liberal" interpretation of them anyway:-P, e.g. "be ye either hot or cold, not just making up whatever the fuck you want and call it a day")
I feel like there is a Truth to the universe - this is what makes e.g. planes fly in (or in Boeing's case fall out of) the sky - and while we do not have to choose to live in Reality, preferring our fantasy dreamland adventures, it really is (probably) better to do so. So the real question is whether God exists or not, not whether we want him to. Ofc that proves a bit hard to answer, or to prove even if someone knew for certain. Like in The Matrix movie, if Neo himself introduced himself to you and you saw him fly, but did not record it on camera (or even if you did), how could you convey that? Similarly, how can smart people convey the complexities of mathematics, of physics, of philosophy, to people who literally cannot - as in do not have the capacity to uptake - understand even a fraction of wha t you speak of? How can people who KNOW convey that both the Left and the Right side of politics are both WRONG, having been bought out by corporate special interests (but that even so, one side is most definitely even more so in that regard lately...)? Ofc we cannot, and really, except the "hard sciences" one, how can we even be fully sure of what we DO happen to know? (and even there, physics is constantly over-turning old ideas - like the latest thought that there is no need for all that "dark matter" that the media has been throwing about for decades now, just poof, it's all gone now!? ofc most things are merely supplanted by a higher-resolution version, like Newtonian is not gone just relegated to a subset of Einsteinian mathematical formulations of our understanding of the universe)
Another thing I use the Bible for btw is as a repository of the "wisdom of the ages", as in even though I believe in a God, putting that aside and conjecturing at worst as if that were a false statement even, there is still some merit in its depictions of things. And I definitely looked through its verses regarding teaching... which convey that you just CAN'T force knowledge onto people, not b/c of stupidity but rather b/c of obstinancy. "You can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make it drink." I still would have offered them the benefits of my knowledge & experience regardless, except it was heartbroken to think that they were being saddled with generational levels of debt, for a degree that they probably would not even use, b/c they lacked the emotional maturity level to handle life beyond the (post-No Child Left Behind era) high school level.
Regrets: I actually have very few of those in my life, b/c I realize that the past me did not know what the current me does, so how could I have done any differently, and furthermore why bother thinking along the lines as if I somehow could? That said, like CS Lewis (this being the main reason why I like him, b/c I so very much "get" his struggles), I often arrive at the correct conclusion from the most bass-ackwards route, which highly ironically may thereby end up making it potentially the wrong thing, for me in my circumstances. So am I "ahead", or am I "behind"? Yes! I have a feeling that you, having experienced more than one major "transition" in your own life, may understand exactly what I mean there!:-P (others may be born there already, while you had to struggle to get there, and vice versa) But no matter how painful, those struggles are also what define us and give us character so... tbh I probably would have skipped them, but I am also grateful, in a tiny way, that I am who I am now, and can appreciate so much that I otherwise would not have been able to - if that makes any sense whatsoever?
I would guess that people love you b/c you seem to have genuine empathy + depth both. That seems... rare these days. It should NOT be, and you would not think it, but given how often people take advantage, it does seem to be like a beautiful flower that gets mowed over quickly as if it were some weed that people feel the need to stamp out quickly:-(. Especially on the interwebz. If you want, you can use that power to make people feel better - as you already do, but I mean consciously! - but ofc I hope you also hold it in check, so that you manage to meet your own needs as well (which are ofc interconnected to helping others, so it truly is a balance there, not just all one or all the other way). I feel like it is good to be Masters of ourselves rather than the other way around. Which ironically... I accomplish by giving in to my desires? But like, making sure that I acknowledge ALL of those, not hyper-fixate on just one at any given moment.
Bring on the part 2 then! When you are ready. I know what you mean about ownership - I have nothing now but one day if I ever could, the thought of needing to do that worries me. As it probably should:-). 💫
Funny, I was thinking about something similar last night. I'm not a very mathematically inclined person but for some reason last night I was thinking about it and how people who are "mathematically inclined" must see the world in a completely different way than I do. Kind of like how your average gamer and a game programmer might see a video game world differently. You can try to explain to the gamer who knows nothing of the complexities behind game programming and how it is really just all numbers, but they might not be able to see the numbers that make up that beautiful world you're playing in. This line of thinking can be applied to so many things. I sometimes feel like we may all be on the same planet but we all live in a completely different world.
Yes, that is how I see it too. I don't know if I had mentioned it in one of my previous replies, since I don't even remember when that was, but I actually found my grandmothers old bible a couple days ago and decided to start reading it. I read the Satanic bible so I figured I might as well give God's book a chance! I think it can definitely be a useful tool in that regard because things really haven't changed all that much. Humans are still the same.
I see it the same way you do. Were it possible, I might go back in time and tell my younger self to do some things differently, but I would effectively be killing my current self and I love this bitch. It wasn't always the case but now I think I'm actually kinda cool, I can see value in myself and I wouldn't want to be someone else. All roads lead to home, some are just longer than others but in the grand scheme of things I don't believe there is such a thing as wasted time.
Yeah, that is one thing that had made me grow a bit cold in the past, as a coping mechanism. Fortunately over the years I have learned to deal with these things a lot better. I can't avoid abusers but I can recognize them and limit their impact on me. When I say abusers I don't necessarily mean bad people either, although there have been some. Some people just don't realize just how much of their pain I soak up when they dump their trauma on me and some would basically only use me for that but I let it happen. I think it is just as much my fault as it is theirs, I simply overestimated what I could handle. I might've also been able to handle much more when I was younger but then as I grew older that shit started weighing really heavily on me.
That is something I have only recently realized I had to do, for the sake of all my loved ones I need to prioritize myself.
You may not be a fan of Kendrick Lamar but his song "Mirror" off his latest album (Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers) resonated with me SO strongly. I get the most intense "frissons" whenever I listen to it. The entire album is an absolute masterpiece, as is everything he does in my opinion. It all builds up to "Mirror", it might not be as impactful if you haven't listened to the whole album but it still is.
Absolutely, you need to do what you need to do to build a strong foundation for yourself. Only when you have that can you support others.
Some people can think in 7 dimensions at once, or so they say. For those of us who struggle to even contemplate a hypercube, we may not even begin to realize how impressive that must be. Then again, that is only one form of IQ, and EQ is still entirely separate. Still, how could an eagle even begin to describe to a turtle what life is like? Not that an eagle is "better" and a turtle "worse", but despite coinhabiting the same "world" as in physical space, they do experience that world according to SUCH different criteria that they essentially live in separate realities, like different dimensions of that "world".
As you said. Similarly in the USA, a white person can call out to a police officer and have some expectation of receiving immediate help, whereas a black person might get the literal opposite of help if they tried the same action. Rich or beautiful people likewise receive differential treatment - the same location, the same experiences, but received against a backdrop of a different lifestyle. Getting fired, or divorced, may just be laughed off by those who would be "set free" by such, vs. someone for whom that is their last thread. It is "the same"... yet so very, Very, VERY different! The tortise and the eagle, or the hare.
The irony there is that mathematics is pretty much the one universal constant. English, or French, or other languages may vary in their interpretation, and even Logic itself becomes subsumed by mere Justification in human hands. Even programming languages differ - identical syntax may be interpreted differently by C, C++, Java, etc. - though it does come fairly close when you specify all of the code, the language, and the receiving device, which together deterministically implements the mathematical instructions via the flow of electrons in the physical world. Math made real - pattern becomes substance (or something else even cooler-sounding, I dunno:-P).
Speaking of I have not read a Satanic one - surely there must be more than one type? - but I would give it a chance if I ever came across it. There's a lot to like there. Also a lot I do not like, but that is the same with literally everything. Not quite the same thing, but on a related note: most pagan religions "lost" the war against Christianity, which I feel like gives the latter some credence. Although... ofc it is not that Christianity "won", so much as that they "lost" - a HUGE distinction. Perhaps Christianity will lose someday as well... or maybe Jesus is a space/reality alien and when the energy beings come to enslave the human race, those of us who follow it will have been more properly prepared to serve the new overlords? (after all, if Might makes Right, especially for a being - like the owner of The Matrix - who literally can MAKE a Universe, then they do get to call the shots, whether we like it or not) Yeah, that's pretty out there, so I will bring us back to: who knows, really? Nobody, at least not perfectly, though we try to do the best we can, as far as we know at the time.
I do not believe in wasted time either... although just try telling that to a boss! Those with more authoritarian mindsets are not capable of accepting this aspect of the Universe, and I concede too that there must be a Balance. So wtf does that even mean - that it both is a waste of time, yet that waste was itself not a waste!? Yes. You get me. It is a contradiction, and within that paradox lies such beauty as to take our breaths away. Yin and Yang - not one or the other, but fucking both, always and never not that.
You also have a beautiful perspective on abusers: sometimes they do not mean it, sometimes they do but are not "evil", sometimes they are but... so what? We still gotta roll how we want to, not just always react to however others want, or even not want, us to. We chase after our goals, and they do whatever little thing they want, and we need not even break our stride as we press onwards. This point was REALLY driven home for me HARD when Trump won the 2016 election. Conservatives just did not give two fucks about "him", but they liked what he could do for them... it was quite strategic. Raw. Naked. Bleeding. Evil incarnate... and therefore beautiful for all of that? Like that movie Haunting of Hill House: a darkness that shines as bright as the stars themselves - and all the more deadly as a result of that. Jon Stewart tried to warn us, he foresaw that and said how "liberal media aims to be correct, but conservative media aims to be effective". This is why I have lost faith in democracy: it depends on presuppositions, specifically that the voting citizenry are aiming to vote correctly, and that errors are distributed randomly; however it is vulnerable to an outside attack that cause all the errors to bend in a single direction: towards the will of the evil ones (whoever they may be - Putin, Bezos, Musk, and others who prefer to hide deeper in the shadows). Oh well. Like everything else: I will enjoy it while I can.
But anyway, you were speaking of smaller-scale abuses, like a turtle crying over something to another turtle, never realizing that e.g. taking a long time to speak could be agonizing to an eagle (or the analogy works far better in reverse:-D). Many people do not realize it. Many others do realize it but do not care:-(. Some even realize it, care, and enjoy it:-|!? But if you get overwhelmed, you cannot help anyone else, least of all yourself, so yeah, guard your heart, most definitely. Literall nobody else can do it for you (well, they can help though:-).
I want to share with you a phrase that I have always hated: "If you see yourself in others, whom can you harm?" Whoever invented that must have had two loving parents, and can just fuck right off as far as I am concerned for rubbing that in the faces of those of us who did not. Setting that aside, part-way, even if you gave zero thought to your own welfare and cared exclusively for others, you STILL need to take care of yourself, or you will not be able to do that! (for very long) YOU ARE A PEOPLE TOO!!! I really like how the Bible portrays that: "the measuring procedure that you use to levy judgement upon others is the identical process by which you will use to judge yourself". People either suck, in which case you do, or they are worthwhile, in which case... say it with me... you are worthwhile too:-P. I have fought against this every hour of every day of my entire life, but it is True nonetheless. I HATE that thought... but I can't fight physics, or in this case the more relevant part is that it is just how human psychology works. I do not know much, but this is one that I do feel certain about, and I hope sharing these thoughts help you too (and by extension, perhaps me as well?:-P).
I am glad that you are going through such a time of change, to be able to get frissons!:-) I have been closing off so much lately that it will take some time to open up again:-(. But that too... is not a waste of time (except it is, but even so - it is what must be:-). I almost wonder why he says "I'm sorry", b/c it is the Right thing to do, though I get that he does feel guilt for it too, but still there is that nagging thought: is that a slight admission of doubt, that he is not entirely certain that it is the correct path? And like, he could have said "I need to choose Me", but instead he chose the other wording... so I wonder, what does that mean? I am probably over-thinking it, and quite frankly the intricacies hardly matter, b/c the main thing is what it means to you. I am SOOO glad that it gives you peace - b/c yes gurl you NEED to get that!:-)
About me saying that I accomplish Mastery of my Mind, I wanted to be sure that I conveyed that I feel like I cannot win when it becomes a "struggle" - even at best if one side or the other were to totally conquer the opponent, then I overall would lose. So by "giving in to my desires", I mean not fighting it, nor letting it win either, but striving to achieve that Yin/Yang balance of winning when and where most needs to happen at each given moment, the trick being to find what that is. Some things I have practiced enough to have a really good idea of precisely where that line is, while other things I severely struggle on a daily basis to even identify the factors involved. As I suspect we all do, at least those of us who allow ourselves to remain open to adventure rather than falling prey to stagnation.
Hehe, this music is good for other reasons too:-D.
Omg I have a couple minutes of free time today! I don't remember where I was at before life came at me 😅
Bahah I have definitely thought about that as well. Life is so crazy, I wouldn't even be that surprised if that was the actual truth. It's not as "out there" to me because I'm also out there but yes, it is out there. We do not know, we are not ready to know, we may not even want to know. All that I know is that the questions are wonderful and it's the only thing in life that never gets boring.
Amen! It's sometimes hard to deal with this reality but that's just how it has to be.
Yup. To be completely honest, I hate to say it but I was kind of one of those people in 2015. I was not a conservative, I've never been a conservative but I was miserable at the time, which I feel is his core demographic. Obviously I'm not even American so I couldn't and wouldn't have ended up voting for him but there was a time at the beginning where I participated in the Pro-Trump meme culture. I told myself, and I'm really sorry about that (oof I have a hard time typing it out because it's so fucking stupid and shameful.), I told myself that Trump could be a "good candidate" because he was so bad he could bring down the "American empire" and then maybe "things could change". Not thinking about what could end up replacing it, not even taking into consideration all the lives that could be affected or even ruined. I wasn't evil but I was lost. I feel actual guilt about the way things turned out, like I actually had a part in it and my beliefs tell me that I did. Now I am very careful what I wish for.
I feel that. It is vulnerable from outside attacks, and also from the inside. I don't know of a system that has no vulnerabilities though. As long as there are people involved, there are going to be vulnerabilities.
Yup! Life is much better with that mentality. It's cliché but it didn't get to become cliché for no reason. Enjoy things as they are and embrace the changes when they inevitably come. I'm not saying we should just accept everything that happens but we need to find enthusiasm and a "raison d'être" in the new paths we are thrown into.
Aw, I've never heard that phrase before. I can see the spirit in which it is intended but I can also see your point. It must be terrible to have less than great parents. Fortunately (and also unfortunately), I have been very lucky in that department so I can't even begin to truly understand how that must've been and I have tried.
It reminds me of something a friend told me a bit over 10 years ago that never left me. He basically said that whenever you dislike a person for the way they are, you're probably seeing reflections of yourself that you try to hide. I felt it was true then and the older I get the more I find it to be true. I've also noticed that a lot of the people that I've become very close friends with have been people I kinda disliked on first impressions. I think that said a lot about myself as well.
Yeah I know how that feels. It'll get better though and it is definitely not a waste of time.
The way I interpret it is just that he feels sorry for letting people down and not living up the the expectations people had of him, sorry for not actually being a saviour, even though he never said he was and it was something that was just dumped on him.
I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around that paragraph. What is it that you mean by a struggle in this context?
YES - THIS IS IT!!! Like, whether we have free will or not, I do not know,(but as we mentioned, it doesn't even matter b/c either way we need to act as if we do) but whether we SHOULD have free will is something that we could answer... if we knew for certain that there was an external entity. Star Trek is famous for exploring this. Like even if the actual Zeus did exist (they never met him iirc but Kirk did run into Apollo/Mercury at some point...), what "claim" would he have over humanity? Same with Arthur C. Clarke's (2001 A Space Odyssey) saga: just b/c they gave us our start (into sentience, or even seeding DNA & thus life itself?) doesn't necessarily mean that they should have agency over us...
Whereas on the other hand, whatever OS I am running on my computer (Mac OSX for me, though I hear that some people on Lemmy prefer Arch btw:-D) very much should obey my commands. e.g. when I tell it to reboot or to shut down a misbehaving program, I want it to do it NOW (or at least... soon, even if it needs a few moments to wrap things up, that's arguably far better b/c then it can do so safely). That, to me, seems to go beyond "might makes right", b/c we literally put in love, care, attention, and design into making that OS. The gulf b/t human sentience vs. like a worm or even a bacteria is far lesser than the gulf b/t us vs. the programs that we write, in terms of autonomy. We own it b/c we MADE it. (I am ignoring future AIs where we set up the system but then it kinda makes itself - a fascinating thought that very likely could qualify for an exemption, so here I am just bypassing that line of thinking entirely)
Anyway, I love thinking such thoughts:-D. I have no idea if doing so offers practical benefits (I kinda do not care!:-P), but it very well might. e.g. just how much agency / oversight did Elon Musk offer to building his Tesla cars? With all the crashes & potentially actually fatal consequences, it seems that even he did not put in the effort to truly know what those cars are all about. Thus if some hacker were to do so, would they "take ownership", and be able to bypass certain features & controls, in a manner that even Musk himself (& most of his engineers) has no idea exists - and in so doing, would they have that "right", or is that just another example of "might makes right", where they can & therefore they do? (which is a power that they could wield for good - e.g. go ahead and pay the subscription service, in order to help keep the company afloat, and yet still patch security vulnerabilities that the company itself never bothers to implement - so such a thought would not have to be solely due to piracy & stealing considerations)
According to such thinking then, if the Illuminati control the world, then can Anonymous help fix it, like Robin Hood? Except that Power Corrupts, and Absolutely Power... well the latter actually often turns around and converts to good, given enough time passing and the proclivities of the person, but even 99.99% Power corrupts nearly Absolutely, so it might end up being the other way around - perhaps they will merely join or subvert the Illuminati, or even become co-opted by them unknowingly? Trump presented himself as a style of "Robin Hood"-esque "savior" type, saying how he was going to "drain the swamp" and fix all the problems, but he did not work out so well. And while that attempt was blatantly obvious to anyone who has eyes, who is to say that the next attempt will be so readily detectable?
You do not need to apologize: Trump had a lot of us fooled, and I don't think your underlying idea - motivated by compassion - is wrong at all. I happened to not be fooled, at least in that same sense, but only b/c of my background having been similarly fooled by earlier events (so without those, I easily could have been), and even now I agree that he did a lot of good: by exposing the vulnerabilities inherent in our system, he may have done a lot better than Hilary Clinton would have to cause them to be fixed? She would have papered over the whole situation - her whole message was just "the status quo is absolutely fine" - but it is FUCKING NOT FINE!!!?!!! So I understand why people voted against her, even if that meant voting for him. Even now, I think her particular brand of insensitivity to people's needs is far more toxic & deadly than whatever Trump may have wrought for us - even if that leads to the death of America, it seems preferable to me to at least be honest about that death, rather than to keep claiming the "this is fine" meme (as in, "THIS IS FINE - OR ELSE!! Do not say that you are not fine, or you will be imprisoned!"). Unfortunately, Democrats seemed to have learned very little from the whole thing.:-(
Part of what I mean in that I am losing hope for democracy, is that I am wondering if I should be gaining hope in whatever may replace it? If this truly is a non-viable solution to begin with, then whatever we end up with later could potentially be better? Like, instead of a nation full of suicidal people who cannot afford housing and hate their jobs, what if we accepted that we are mere peasants and at least came to peaceful coexistence with that thought? I dunno, maybe I sound like a subversive there, but it is a thought that I cannot shake from my head. Is being a slave more "honest" than being a "free" employee, who nonetheless depends on their job for food/housing/medical care/existence? I guess you could say that I am questioning EVERYTHING - even just what our "freedom" may offer us? Unlike the earlier discussion points we mentioned, I despite these thoughts... but if they are coming at us regardless... then I at least want to struggle to open my eyes, regardless of whatever I might see:-(. In so doing, I am prepared to leave my religion, or double down harder on it, or shift it over to something else, or wherever the facts (as best as I can see them anyway) may take me. And that's good imho - I feel proud about that aspect of myself:-).
It is a common bumper sticker on vehicles that I saw a few years back, often alongside the words "Coexist". The latter phrase is fantastic, but the phrase I mentioned really rubs me the wrong way. I believe it is Buddhist? Anyway, as you picked up on, my reaction was not how it was meant to be interpreted:-D - and I get that, and don't even hold it against the statement itself, except... I still have my preferences about the whole affair, and I happen to hate it:-P, and I am okay with having that emotion about it. Life is a journey, not a destination, and all that.
Speaking of life being a journey, it seems to me that it was not meant for us to be comfortable 100% of the time, nor perhaps safe either. If we were hyper-diligent and did everything correctly, every time, would that be "good" - is that then our "goal"? Certainly the opposite cannot be true, b/c then we'd be dead, but is the goal then the opposite, or is that a fallacy of False Dilemma? Moreover, is there just one path through life, that a "perfect" person would have taken, let's say if they were in my situation, or are there many ways, and our flaws are what make us beautiful, in part? This is one area where religion has helped inform my thinking: the word "perfection" should (perhaps) rather not mean "lacking any flaw" so much as "being complete, lacking nothing (major)". Therefore I do not strive to eliminate my flaws as if this is some kind of war and my goal is to murderize my opponent, but rather I accept them, embrace them even, and thereby find my peace. And then I get up off my butt and do something about them, one at a time, and it never sticks, but still I keep moving forward - and you know what? That is enough for me. Perhaps Nirvana, for us, is not absence of pain - or in other words, even if it was, we are human beings and not meant to exist in such a state? Thus, I do not want Discipline to always win, nor Comfort to always win, but rather both, each as seems best in the current moment. Maybe that's stupid of me, but it's a thought.
Anyway, the context was that people love you, b/c you show care & attention to them - but I hope you also fail to do that sometimes as well too, so that you can take care of yourself as well? Yes, you read that correctly: I wish failure upon you ("muwha-ha, a pox upon thee!!", ahem no wait, not like that!:-P), when/where/as appropriate, if that helps you to ultimately succeed. e.g. if you have a job interview the next morning, and you are fairly nervous about it, and then someone calls you at 2am needing something - perhaps they got drunk and wanted a ride home from 2 towns over or something - maybe don't answer? Hopefully they'll be fine, but you also need to be fine as well? The "right" thing to do in that moment may not always be to continue to give of yourself selflessly, if doing so would cost you a big job (which perhaps the drunk friend may not have even remembered, b/c of their drunkeness, but when sober they may have even agreed with the decision?). Anyway, you (Kendrick Lamar) already said it: "I choose me, I'm sorry" (hopefully not always as in "solely", but at least sometimes it does need to be done!?).
Btw, good luck with your whole house situation - I am certain that cannot be trivially easy to handle:-).
Are you trying to tell me there are Linux users on Lemmy???
It's funny, recently I was thinking about electric car jailbreaking. It's something that I find very interesting as electric cars these days kinda remind me of the early iPhone days. There are definitely people working on such things as we speak which can be a scary thought as this could be used for evil as easily as it could be used for good.
Well, good and evil are human creations. Like we've talked about in our previous comments, one can not exist without the other. If there is an "illuminati" there is going to, at least eventually, be an equal opposing force. They will eventually mutually destroy each other, giving way to a new good and evil of our own creation. It is a never ending cycle. At least that is how I see it.
Agreed. There is always good to be found in any situation if you know where to look. We sometimes focus way too much on the bad things themselves to realize that they actually have a role to play in fostering good. Of course nobody wants to be stuck in a system where they're unhappy but if we're "happy" all the time we grow complacent. Sometimes we need a good slap in the face to wake up.
Absolutely. I don't think that means we should be pushing for the death of democracy, but if that's how you feel then by all means, do it. Your thoughts and feelings about the situation are valid, as are everybody elses. It just remains to see if there are enough people who feel the same way for them to have enough mass to actually move things. Whatever happens happens.
Bahah, absolutely valid. You've had experiences that have shaped the way you view things and you are not wrong to have those thoughts.
Ahhhh perfection lol. That is a fun concept. We have a broken definition of perfection because we do not understand that there is nothing that is "without flaw". "Flaws" are part of a perfect design. I consider myself a perfectionist which is why I never get anything done. How perfect is that? I find it laughable when people praise God, saying he makes no mistakes, but then go on and talk about things being abominations in the eyes of God. Like who the fuck do you think you are to say things like that? Again I'm not much of a "religion" person, but the older I get, the more I realize that life IS actually perfect and if there is actually a God it indeed makes no mistakes. It is mind-blowing to me the system of checks and balances that are built into life itself. Every error eventually corrects itself, which can spell catastrophe for us as a species but in the grand scheme of things it is absolutely beautiful.
Thank you, that is the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me 😭!!
For real though, I am choosing myself now. More than I ever have and it has had a positive impact on everyone around me so far. I'm still available to everyone when they really need me but I'm not scared to say no when it's not that important and I need to do my own things. If there are still abusers in my midst they will soon make themselves visible but so far so good.
Thank you, it has been absolute hell so far but I have some really good friends helping me with the things I'm not so good at and things are moving. I already have people lined up to rent the upstairs and I'm able to rent to them cheaper than all the other places they had looked at so I'm really happy about that. They seem like really good people too so I'm excited to have them as neighbors.
Linux users: I too might be one at heart:-). Maybe? Though I do so love my Mac... it has such a pwetty candy shell - and it is even more POSIX compliant than Linux! :-P
Thoughts v. Actions: Our rights are steadily being taken away, though more often we simply given them away. I mentioned Mac vs. Linux so perhaps that is a good example: iOS is horrible, having everything locked down and not able to connect to your own device to do anything with it. Then again, Android is becoming increasingly like that as well, ever since Google got its hooks in. And yet, it is possible to administer your own device, even if it gets harder & harder over time. Mac OSX isn't so bad, for a computer that you control, but iOS is, therefore that is where I draw the line.
For cars, what if like a police-person demanded access to your vehicle, and if their company override did not work, they could confiscate the car? Do you "own" your own vehicle? Worst of all, you have to pay the full price as if you did, so you do not even get the benefits of leasing - like if a hurricane destroyed it, who loses out - you or the company that leased it to you? (I don't even know, does leasing work that way!?:-P) - and yet you depend on "leasing" the software, in perpetuity. So one day, if someone gets the bright idea that "going green" means not doing anything at all to actually work towards saving the planet, but instead everyone has to buy Musk-brand EVs (others have not been pre-approved so do not qualify), then at that point yeah I'd consider jailbreaking a car. Though the risk could be that you could lose the whole vehicle - Might may not Make Right, but it sure can be a powerful jackboot to come down upon your neck, if it so chooses. So like everything else, it would be a cost-benefit tradeoff.:-|
I don't know if good & evil are human conventions - I mean obviously to some extent, definitely the part about what we "accept" is - but also, most people innately seem to feel certain things, so by virtue of being "natural", are those things that are in-grained and inherent in us (and also other animals as well) the Truth, that we need to discover and obey b/c that is what will generate maximal Happiness for us?
To clarify, I am not "pushing" for the death of democracy. I am worried sick that it is coming, regardless of my wishes either way. I do not control the Maga-hat-Repubs, nor the corporate-stooge-Democrats either, and it looks like both sides are in agreement that e.g. the bottom HALF of all of Americans "should" only have 2% of the entire wealth of this country. I did not make that figure up btw... (article 1, from 5 years ago, and updated article 2). Why that is relevant is that no matter who wins the next election, the "American Dream" (white picket fence, ability to afford a child, 2.3 dogs or whatever) has already died, at least for the simple majority of citizenry.
Perfection & mistakes: setting aside a God or even a rung further down to a mere Creator, if we had a perfect "Father" or "President" or some such, or even "boss" at work, then would they not allow us to make our own mistakes, as part of thier being perfect? How else could we possibly learn? How else could we possibly be happy, if we were all robots will no free will, or more precisely not even the illusion of thus? On the other hand, sheeple gonna sheep, and that's all there is to it: for many, what religion (or politics, or anything at all) "means" is that some book said it, hence it MUST be true - they don't bother to figure it out, or even to search for proper interpretations. B/c they are stupid... and we have to come to terms with that - they just do not have capacity to evaluate such things, therefore they do not. Especially a parent/couple spending all of their time raising kids. I find that irl I have much more in common with people of all religions who are thinkers, than I do with people who may just so happen to believe similar word-sounds as myself, but who don't have the faintest idea what those concepts even mean. Hehe, Jesus Himself agrees: "be ye either hot or cold, but for fucks sake, at least care about it one way or the other you f-ing plebes!?" (hehe, I may have modified that slightly:-D)
You are an awesome person and I love hearing how you think:-).
Yeah I might be one too. I really want to use Linux and I've tried it many times but I have had issues with it every single time. Now I only use Linux as a print server for my 3D printer, it's amazing for that.
I loved iOS back in the day, IF it was jailbroken but after the iPhone 4 I switched to Android and never looked back. I currently despise my Android phone though. I hate what Samsung has done with their flavour of Android. It feels SO invasive. Currently looking at Pixel phones so I can use GrapheneOS.
I wouldn't be surprised if one day things devolved that far but being the ODD-type person I am, that would just make me want to jailbreak it even more.
To me, leasing the operating system that your car runs on basically means you don't own your car and that is a major turn off. Automatic updates, having features one day and not having them the next, etc.
Bahah I really have no clue, I have never leased a car. Always bought used and I don't see that changing anytime soon.
I don't care about repercussions all that much, I'd rather deal with them if/when they come than stop myself from doing things just because I'm scared something may happen. Of course that depends on the situation but if we're talking about modifying a device that you bought and paid for then I will do what I want, as long as I'm not endangering anyone. If I'm costing a multi-billion dollar corporation a couple dollars than that's just something I'd be proud of.
I mean, I don't know either but yeah, I meant more like what we accept. I guess the way I see it is like, what if in the future, the only humans that are left to reproduce are the ones with psychopathic traits? They might have a whole other definition of what is good and what is bad/evil. I guess I don't really know what goes on in the mind of a psychopath either so that hypothetical is probably not worth much hahah. Some animals do things that would seem absolutely evil to us, but would they think of it that way? I guess we don't really know what they think about today or if they even think at all but whatever hahah.
It could very well be. We've evolved as a social species so it is in our best interest that everybody around us is happy and healthy. When things/people from outside our society threatens our health and happiness, we can commit great evils like it was nothing at all.
Oh I wasn't saying that you yourself actually were but more like, IF you were, I'd totally understand and respect it. Can't blame anyone for being sick of this shit. You can't get mad at a river for flowing where it does.
Yeah well that is a huge problem, but I doubt that most of the voters think that. That's all the corruption. We don't have a real choice anymore and it's going to take a lot to change that. I'm all for eating the ultra-wealthy. People will eventually realize that they're actually in an American Nightmare, wake up and demand their power back, at least I hope so. At that point, maybe the ruling class will loosen the leash a bit, or maybe they'll kill us all or just leave the continent and let the vultures come pick at our dying carcasses, who knows.
Well, maybe perfection includes accepting that mistakes are a part of getting to perfection. I guess it depends on how far we take "perfection" but if we were all born "perfect" for the world we are in, would we know how to deal with things that are unpredictable? Then again, absolute perfection could take away all the things that are unpredictable. I dunno, this whole line of thinking is breaking my brain at the moment hahah.
Well, some might not. Some were just indoctrinated so heavily from a young age that they can't even conceive that their religion is not the Truth. I wouldn't say they're all stupid, but they certainly don't waste time questioning these things like we do and I'm not sure that's 100% a bad thing. For me it's a bad thing because I enjoy thinking about these things and I do not want to blindly believe what a thousands of years old book is telling me about the nature of our existence. If I ended up at the same conclusion as my "Assigned Religion At Birth", I wouldn't be mad about wasting all that time thinking about it because that's the game I decided to play and I didn't want to just read the walkthrough.
Of course there's always gonna be people who only have the capacity to repeat the things that were said to them. Those are the dangerous ones, the ones who are ripe for use and abuse. It is our responsibility to take care of them.
Absolutely. I find I have much more in common with a religious thinker than I do with 99% of the people you'd find in Atheist communities even though you could easily think it'd be the opposite.
100% my favorite passage!
It is reciprocal.
Linux: I love the logic, the precision, the customizability... but I also like it when things werk, which it often has major issues with. Then again, I use Linux at my job on a daily basis, and even on my Unix Mac OSX I use things like the CLI and gVim, so I enjoy having that stability at home. Especially when I need to use a laptop - I need to be able to do things like connect to someone else's wifi without having to install package dependencies first.
I bought an Apple phone once, expecting to eventually jailbreak it. But they took that capability away, so when it died I switched back to Android and will never even consider going back. Now, I too have a Samsung S22+ - and it is the only phone I have ever had that I outright despise. Tbf, I consider that my own fault for not selling my soul to them - yes it is on them for asking such, but I knew who they were, and decided to roll the dice on them anyway. I really miss the days when flagship killers existed, like the most famous one of all time OnePlus 7 (before the co-founder left the company when they announced their new direction to use the ColorOS used on all those cheap Huawei phones), and before that the Nexus line. I might try a Fairphone next, maybe? Or just a cheap dumbphone even - "smart" ones are more like "smartass" these days:-(. Pixels would be great - especially if you want to replace the OS - but I hardly use my camera as it is, and the specs otherwise are not great unless you spend much more, and there seems no longer to be a way to turn that around and get a "high-end phone with a cheap-ass camera".
I thought - though I couldn't readily point to any and I could be wrong - that studies have shown that children seem to have some kind of innate sense of "right vs. wrong"? Like if you walk up and take their candy away from them, they scream "hey, that's not fair!", like that would have a chance of working (and why wouldn't it? but if the scene changed and these were gorillas instead of humans, then wouldn't that have a possibility of getting yourself literally killed, for daring to challenge the larger apes, as an object lesson of power and "know your place"?). So, at least at the early stages, Might vs. Right may be in opposition to that kind of preschool/kindergarten level of morality? And then everything after that is modified by societal pressures - like spoiled children are "spoiled" by teaching them that their wants & needs matter more to their parents than the wants & needs of others. Like maybe they go out to eat and the kid of wealthy parents sees the servants jump at every whim of the master, and by implication the child as well - not understanding yet that they are being paid+tipped to do so - and internalize that sense of "I am a higher being than those sort are".
So if morality changes in the future - as it 100% definitely will - it seems doubtful that the Nature side of it would be altered much, in a short period of time (in the evolutionary/geological timescale sense), and rather that the Nurture side would teach them differently. At which point I hope that they will be taught what works rather than what does not. In that sense, I like how the Bible - the collected wisdom of the ages - and basically every other revered tome like it from all religions across the globe acts to preserve what has been learned. e.g. adultery is bad (hurt feelings leading to all manner of problems), and unless under highly constrained circumstances, murder due to hot-headed feelings in the moment is bad, and stealing from someone is bad (it gets dicey when a rich fuck decides "this is mine now" - is it really stealing to simply take back what is yours? so having mentioned it, I will now promptly ignore it henceforth:-D), and so on. To the extent that these laws may capture something innate inside of us all, then it is good for us to have learned them. Perhaps in the future - or even now already - we can separate out the "religion" parts from what is truly good. As Jesus Himself offered: "be thou not dicks to one another, and instead be most excellent to one another, my dudes".
And this is why I am turning more to religious thoughts lately, though it could be any alternative to politics - non- or not-for-profits, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), or extremely rarely even inside of those, like the Mr. Rogers character was a MOST EXCELLENT human being, both on- and off-camera (and too Gene Rodenberry, creator of Star Trek). Anyway the goal is: how can we help people, even when the major trend of that river of society is trying to bend away from that goal (taking away people's livelihoods, making them work for literally DECADES to pay back student loans that are corruptly administered - i.e. a form of literal, actual, irl "slavery" if you will)? Occasionally I see a story that gives me hope (e.g. this one where he tries to fight against the trend), but they do seem to be coming much more rarely than in the past.:-| In any case, I need to create my own to attach meaning to in the more local sense of my own cares & wants & needs:-).
One problem with trying to define "perfection" is the age-old adage of what does the word "good" even mean? In the engineering sense, it means "good for something", like a spoon is good for eating one type of, more liquidy, foodstuffs, whereas a knife is good for an entirely different and while not totally at least partially nonoverlapping set of foodstuffs, and then a knife is quite a bit different still from either (and as that movie Wall-E perfectly illustrates: sporks have their own whole thing going on!:-P). If you wanted to eat a soup, either a fork or a knife - or chopsticks, etc. - would not be "good". And framed in that manner, we already immediately see that this is a whole non-starter, b/c paper > rock > scissors > ..., which invalidates the logical chain of transitory thinking that if A leads to B and B leads to C, then surely A must lead to C as well, right? (nope! b/c otherwise, paper would beat scissors too) So the best we could ever hope for is to say that item A is good for some particular purpose, not good in any kind of objective, overall sense. At which point... how would "perfection" have a chance there of being tied to something in the objective world, if even "good" does not? Hence it remains subjective, unless we switch the meaning to some kind of objective standard - as in "lacking nothing" i.e. has all components of set X as defined by...
Humans, really all mammals, then have this whole wonderful thing where we are not perfect, and that adaptability to change is what has gotten us this far, even when dinosaurs and cockroaches and fishes and such - as measured by length of evolutionary time - were much more of a "success". They were much more "attuned" to their specific circumstances, i.e. a highly defined set of parameters, whereas we are not, and therefore we are the only species that has even a ghost of a chance of possibly outlasting even our planet Earth instead (that we could create ourselves I mean - ofc whatever animals and such we took with us could go as well).
"Assigned Religion At Birth" -> I love that phrase, Imma have to steal it now!:-P I have already changed mine several times, and I absolutely see no reason to stick with things merely b/c they are old. Tbf, it does have some demonstrated value, but for those of us who can do better, we don't need that - e.g. whenever we see the hypocrisy (e.g. priest "on the take"... or much worse), we can simply nope out and move on to greener pastures.
I would argue that sheeple - precisely like zombies - are not all that dangerous, at least individually, though en mass they constitute a real force to be reconed with. Even there, the necromancer behind them (if present) controlling that force is the REAL danger, b/c even if they lose every single one of those sheeple-tools, they can still come at you with new ones (money gives them power). George Romero's Night of the Living Dead had several perfect examples, where like there were zero zombies present inside of a locked room, but then one of the living people died, and after that there was one zombie present. So it is not "the zombies" that were the chief danger, it was that space radiation or whatever in that case, that could continue to make more zombies. And in other genres like Resident Evil, the zombies were at the extreme low end of the spectrum of danger, which the company hid behind and continued to make MANY more, even more highly dangerous thingies and stuff and junk. And irl, Putin himself is no sheeple. Even if he were stripped of Fox News, and the entire nation of Russia, he still is iirc the literal top number 1 wealthiest person alive on the planet, plus his store of secrets that he could use to blackmail all the most powerful people, would make him (or whoever inherits all of that) quite a dangerous adversary indeed - entirely independent of unthinking Americans voting for conservative politicians. Especially if he also controls the liberal politicians too:-(.
I hope I am not straining your brain too awfully much - I trust you to say no though and slow down your responses, i.e. to take care of yourself first!
Yeah exactly, and it has happened to me way too many times where I install something, like system updates, only to reboot to find that my GUI doesn't work anymore. I do not have time for this.
RIGHT?! That's the same one I have. It's the WORSE phone I've ever had the displeasure of owning. I bought it because I thought the camera would be the best out of what was available at the time but it is TERRIBLE. I miss my old Huawei P20 Pro. Say what you want about the CCP but that phone was BY FAR the best phone I've ever had. I still use it every day as a camera but it has no SIM anymore.
Fairphone is definitely interesting. Until there's a whole new revolutionary mobile device that comes out, there's really no reason to go for flagships anymore, they don't offer anything new anymore, so why not go for something like the Fairphone. I feel like the Apple Vision Pro is the closest thing we've seen since the first iPhones. Of course it's way too big and cumbersome for now but nothing else has given me that feeling in my gut since I first laid my hands on the iPhone.
Not saying you're wrong at all here but, a lot of that could very well come from nurture and also you're literally taking something away from them it could be more about personally losing something than it not being fair. Would they react the same way had they not yet been taught the concept of fairness and just seen someone take candy from another child?
Yeah probably not. Nobody likes to be hurt (Unless...) and that is not about to change.
🙏 🙏 🙏 🙏 🙏
That is pretty much exactly why I am doing so as well. It just makes sense.
This has been my biggest revelation of my life. I can't exactly explain it in words, but my answer to the question "How can we help people?" is to just help people. There's always someone who needs help, no matter how big or small their problem might be. It feels to me like a lot of us have no sense of community anymore, at least outside of the internet. We need to rebuild this. Personally I've been doing it by changing the way I talk to people. I no longer just ask people "Hey how are you" as a meaningless greeting, I changed it to "How are you doing TODAY" to try and get a real answer out of them. Then if I can see an opening I will ask if there's anything I can help them with. I also try to smile at everyone I lock eyes with, at least when my mental state is good enough for it. I really dislike looking people in the eyes in the first place so it takes a lot out of me.
I used to judge people based on the way they look a lot because you can kiiinda tell when someone is gonna be "conservative" or whatever, it's a defense mechanism for me because I do not feel safe anywhere these days. However, by doing that, I'm doing exactly the same thing that people I'd call bigots would do. Judging someone on appearances. Sometimes I'm afraid that by doing so and letting my guard down, I might end up getting hurt. However, if I keep acting like random people are my enemy, I am perpetuating a cycle that must end.
I feel like that's just because those stories don't sell as well and/or they get immediately buried by ragebait.
I have to end this one here. I am so exhausted I can barely read, I keep catching myself re-reading the last sentence I just read hahah. I will be back.
I gave up on iOS entirely - I still love Mac OSX but I hate iOS, especially if I am constrained, b/c of work reasons, to still have to use a Google or Microsoft account. Apple just flat does not care what our needs are, out there irl, only what they want to provide. Now I am aware: if you sell your soul to them (by using exclusively their products), then they do take extremely good care of you. So long as you never even so much as dare to dream of venturing outside of their walled garden... you will be fine. But I just cannot live that way:-(. So I put up with the mess of Android, b/c it is still far better than the 1984-style "security" that iOS offers imho:-P.
Then again, I desperately do want a fairly stable daily driver, not an adventurous linux "experiment":-D.
Oh yeah 100% agree there - all of humanity, and most especially children, use justification rather than purely logical reasoning.
NO, I very much disagree, at least in my own sense. Then again, you did mention that it may not be phrased well, and your actual actions I 100% agree with so... there is that:-P. In general I think that such selfless act tend (even if not fully guaranteed) to be the better way, as in you help yourself and them at the same time - subject to your capacity ofc. A big issue there that I have agonized over in my mind is trans children. Since we know that younger humans use "justification" rather than pure "logic", is it really helpful then to allow them access to surgeries that are not designed for that, not well-tested, and have an enormous failure rate (isn't it like 50%?), where they can become crippled for life? Then again, I have no skin in that game really, and while I am mostly an ally in the sense that I think like "dare to be different" is a good thing, still I do wonder if those children are being taken advantage of by predatory doctors who are pushing expensive surgeries (like $100k USD a pop!), more than acting to help them be who they truly are. And some I believe truly are, but how do we know the difference b/t when it is helpful vs. harmful, and isn't that related to age, or at least some measure of emotional maturity? I have read (on Reddit) in trans forums that even older trans people (who I trust more than myself to be cognizent of the issues involved?) are themselves against allowing literal children to go through that. To clarify, in case I am sounding "conservative" here myself (dErP), I am talking solely about children here, whatever that cutoff might be, like 15-18 or some such, and the goal is how to help them, not how to tell them what they can or cannot do (maybe the surgery could be allowed but not like federally approved for safety, or worse yet have some label attached to it, like those warnings on cigarettes? Anyway, I don't mean to go deep into that issue per se, but rather to use it as an exemplar: "How can we help people?", for me, requires some knowledge as to what, exactly, that is.
But ofc I am probably over-thinking it.:-D And yet even in doing so, I am offering my love to society in terms of trying to find that "correct" path. Not that I would tell much of anyone, so I don't even know why really myself, except that it is in me to do so.
Anyway, when the answer seems more simple I just go for it - like I like to tip well, even putting in a dollar when I pick up food where no server is involved so it is not usual, and even if that could be 10-20% of the order cost. Those workers deserve their wages, and I need to be generous and that is one way to help support people who really are needing, wanting, and deserving of it!:-)
Sigh... yeah, everything seems to come back to money. There's probably a morality/philosophy point in there somehow, like it tends to reflect what we value the most, as a society. Truth isn't something we really care about, nor children, and for the most part we (the USA I mean) mostly care about healthcare when there are expensive drugs available for purchase, not so much at any other time.:-(
I applaud your efforts to remain open to experiences, possibilities, and loving one another - stay awesome gurl!:-D
I don't have much time today but I have to touch on the trans children part of your post.
Sorry you've agonized over that, because it just doesn't happen. Nobody wants children to have gender reassignment surgeries but that point has been used to attack transgender rights and healthcare over and over again and it's not even a real thing. Nobody is actually getting them because it makes absolutely no sense to do it. You can't do a surgeries like that on a body that is still growing, it will 100% turn out completely botched. The only surgery that could maybe make any sense on a minor may be the removal of breast tissue on transmasc people but that would only be required IF the child hasn't been put on puberty blockers in time AND is experiencing major distress because of it. Everything else can wait. Hell, a large number of, if not most, trans people will never even get a single surgery. Hormone Replacement Therapy alone is very often enough and it is completely safe.
If it has happened, it was 100% done by a quack surgeon who needs to have their license removed. Literally nobody is going to argue against that except maybe for bad actors/astroturfers or perhaps actually insane people. Believe none of what you hear and half of what you see, please. You don't even have to believe me but don't go repeating that shit because it is extremely harmful.
It absolutely infuriates me because people keep repeating that as if it happens and it is being used to deny trans care to children, which is not surgeries but puberty blockers and hormone replacement therapy. Puberty blockers are used to delay puberty in case the patient is not certain about their gender identity and it is 100% reversible. What isn't reversible is going through the "wrong puberty" and kids are now being forced to go through that in many states. Not only does going through the wrong puberty actually CREATES the need for more surgeries in the future, it is traumatic. Puberty is already really hard to go through once (Even worse if it's the wrong one), imagine having to do it twice. I've done it, would not recommend if it can be avoided. Especially later in life when the mental anguish, mood swings and everything else that comes with going through puberty are really not "acceptable behaviours" anymore because then you're an adult, you have way more responsibilities on your hands and by then people have forgotten exactly how crazy puberty was so they can't even relate in any way. It is very alienating.
Also I don't remember much of what I typed yesterday, I was basically half asleep but I should make it clear that what I meant by helping is only what I need to do and have been doing personally. It's going to be different for everyone but for me the number one thing to do right now is to try and heal the divide between people on different spectrums and it is something that I actually have some kind of power over. I believe we really ought to stop wasting time and energy on things we have absolutely no power over as individuals and concentrate on getting people back together. Since I'm trans, well, I feel like it's my responsibility now to forget about the divide and to be kind to everyone, even the ones who may not have kind thoughts about me so that we may have a chance to actually talk and find understanding. How are we supposed to tell people how things actually are for us if nobody even listens to us in the first place.
That's from my point of view and something that only really applies to trans people as we have been thrust into this position we never wanted to be in, but I'm sure we all have something "simple" we can do to start taking baby steps towards regaining our power as people. To me, everything else is counterproductive and only serves to create more divide as we are completely unable to find common ground anywhere. How are we to make big societal and political changes without it getting bloody if we can't agree on or even discuss the stupidest little things.
The saddest part is that in reality we all want the same thing but "They" have us fighting about manufactured issues and differences that don't actually matter at all.
Thank you for helping put my mind at ease:-). Sadly, I think there are quack doctors, especially in the USA, but as you say the entire issue is so super-charged b/c on the other side you have things like those literally torture camps where they electroshock little children, often leading to their actual death. I think multiple of the latter have been created and directed over by someone who a decade or two later in life came out as gay themselves, and one or perhaps two even killed themselves - i.e. they hated themselves, b/c of their pseudo-religious bullshit treating Christianity not as "love one another" but rather as "do as I say" aka Might Equals Right and Conformity Is All. So then hurting the children sprung forth from their own mental illness, but in the process they created a panic among parents who wanted to "beat out the gay" from their children, who they ended up killing instead:-(.
The parallels between those stories and the anti-vax movement are profound: each relates to ignorance, and each results in a huge risk and often death to the most innocent among us:-(. And THAT is why I keep saying that I am losing hope for democracy: why should "citizens" have a say, in such INORDINANTLY COMPLEX matters, that require specialist knowledge, especially when there is (often Russian-derived, intentional) misinformation polluting the whole topic?! Except how else could be done - the State (e.g. China) decides, and everyone just has to follow its lead? Which brings us back to: the only solution forward would be to ensure that people receive a basic edumacashiun, so that we are better prepared to deal with such attacks on our system(s), even as we try to move forward into the future. But Christofascists on the one side, and corporate-backed liberals on the other, do seem a daunting pair of adversaries.
Amen, sistah! That is the really odd thing I find about most aspects of life - like "Evangelical" Christianity in particular, isn't the goal there to "save" people, so then why go extremely out of your way to alienate them, via let's say passing anti-abortion laws? All that on top of the fact that the Bible not only never says that Christians are meant to regulate non-Christians, but in fact it says the polar opposite of that! Christians are to judge "Christians" - e.g. when a priest diddles a child, THAT is something that should be judged! And also, Christians are specifically never ever to judge "non-Christians", who have been granted freedom to live however they wish. The only grace I can manage to come up with for people who think like that - even though it included me for many of my early years - is that sheeple aren't known for their ability to perform acts of higher thought. They are vulnerable. As are we all, just differently, is all.:-|
That said, there really is a line there, and that is when you step up to take away the rights of other people - properly warn them, yeah, maybe go so far as to require an extra consent form or some such, but when you actively prevent someone from doing as they please, that generates resentment. How the hell are people supposed to "evangelize" to someone who has just e.g. been tortured, perhaps to literal death? (successfully anyway) It makes them a hypocrite.
I agree so hard I can't even throw in a nice phrase here about it, maybe I'll just say "gulp". Among well-meaning individuals, we can discuss ANYTHING at all, no matter how difficult, and if there's something we don't quite "get", we can look it up. Maybe put our money where our mouths are and hire an expert to explain it to us. But we can get it done. However, among people who are not well-meaning, we can discuss NOTHING, b/c every single topic is merely being used as another avenue to preach their belief at someone, not merely virtue-signalling b/c they actually do mean it (sometimes), but still not all the way over to the other side in terms of being actually authentic. They must be quite lonely I imagine, and not comfortable in their own skin/heads, to need to resort to borrowing the actual thoughts of others rather than stare bravely at their own, following wherever they may lead. Take pity on them, but don't let them be in charge!
It is not my place to tell you what to do, but I do hope that you get a chance to rest before replying to me - as much as I enjoy hearing from you, I want you to be happy even more:-).