Leo Gura

Today's socialists are neo-marxists, or neo-comms

Of course whenever and wherever a large mob of people arises, some degree of devilry will be done. This is a law of human nature. But also, when the political system is such that democracy isn't working well because one person one vote is corrupted, then mobs have no choice but to break out. So the ultimate cause of these mobs is a lack of government responsiveness. If we had better leadership with more compassion, responsiveness, and vision, these mobs wouldn't be necessary and would self-dispurse. Trump and the Republicans are fueling these mobs by twiddling their thumbs while they look the other way on many popular issues. Republicans are refusing to take responsibility for these mobs. Instead they demonize them as that is far more convenient.

Let's pull together a list of the best books on politics and governance. I'm noticing that one of the biggest challenges with politics is that people (including myself) are just damn ignorant of the historical facts of governance and geo-politics from around the world. We spend way too much time debating culture war issues and partisan demonization vs actually studying how societies around the world have been managed. Politics and governance is not my area of expertise, but I want expand into it more. I want you guys to become more educated about it too. To do that I feel we need to build a foundation with books. So search the web for the best political book lists. I'm talking about non-partisan, non-ideological stuff. Well-researched stuff. Stuff that goes into the details of how government works. For example, I want a list of books that Michael Brooks from the Majority Report was reading. See what you can find. It shouldn't just be about American politics but international politics.

@datamonster I don't see the systemtic racism issue having a legit second side. I see that people who argue against systemic racism are just in denial about it because they subscribe to American exceptionalism. Similar to climate change denial. I don't see this guy as more biased than any other major progressive YT channel like Kyle, TYT, Majority Report, etc. Of course they are all biased. But you can factor that in as you watch.

Yes, we have a double standard here for thoughtfulness vs ignorance/dogma. You can express conservative positions but you must do so in a thoughtful and non-dogmatic matter. If you are just here parroting pro-Trump talking points you will get banned because we are sick of hearing it and it adds nothing of value to our discussions. It just so happens that most Trumpists are not very thoughtful -- surprise, surprise. But that's not the Mod's problem. I am happy to see intelligently expressed conservative positions that make me think well of conservatives. But they tend to be rarer than hen's teeth.

One day you will realize the most obvious thing ever: experience is Absolute Truth.

It can't be explained to you.

Probably not. But Blue doesn't have to be fundamentalist. The solution is healthy Blue.

Sagaar is a neo-neo-con. The millenial/zoomer conservative. It's fascinating to watch how conservativism evolves to make itself tennable for younger generations. It can't be homophobic and racist for the millenial/zoomer crowd any more. And it can't be too pro-corporate either because millenials and zoomers are feeling to shafted by late-stage capitalism. But at the same time it can't be progressive or pro socialist either. Sagaar must walk a very tight rope. I don't envy him.

Yes, but it also matters how it is done. There are healthy and unhealthy ways to go Blue.

Yes! And THAT is a consequence of differences in perspective.

That's actually a very popular tactic of fundamentalist Christians. They specifically prey on troubled and wounded people at around stage Red because they are ripe for Christian indoctrination. The devil preys on the weak by offering them cookies. The devil never presents himself as some evil monster. He lures you in with nuggets of truth and wisdom which he then twists to twist your mind. The devil's whole MO is to make truth and falsehood so conflated as to be indistinguishable. The devil never peddles pure falsehood as that would be artless and far less effective than lacing truth with poison.

Yes, he's certainly biased and aggressive, but he also makes some sharp points. His video on systemic racism is excellent, beyond just merely trolling conservatives.

Guys, just to remind you, keep in mind that our objective here is not to get stuck in political content but to do Conscious Politics, which means going meta and observing how your own mind plays out its biases with political content and how it gets attached to its own positions and all the defense mechanisms it uses to justify them. The real game here is to not get stuck at the level of content and opinions, but to realize that it's all games your mind is playing in order to feel superior. In the big picture, it doesn't matter who kills whom. What matters is how your mind thinks about such things and how aware it is of its own biases and attachments. When you start taking sides and getting defensive, that's when you've lost the game. There's really no right or wrong in such cases, it's all a matter of difference in perspectives and being able to hold multiple perspectives at once.

@ardacigin Good stuff. We'll be talking about this stuff in a lot more depth soon.

Not that I know of, but I'm bad about checking my emails.

It can still be valuable to build a business and be successful as part of your larger life purpose. Business is a great way to escape wage slavery and help the world at the same time. You just have to go about it in a conscious way. Basically 90%+ of all ways of making a living = some kind of business. So you can't really escape business. It's more a question of what kind of business you do.

Asexual relationships??? AKA, friendship.

Lol The greatest mathematicians were mystics and religious people.

That should be Biden's only campaign ad.

Beauty is an absolute, but the ego's job is to filter Infinity down to a limited, manageable, survivable level. Ego does this through biasing reality to suit its own needs and wants. When the ego finds the master piece work of art beautiful, it is seeing through the clouds of its own selfishness to the absolute Beauty which permeates all of Creation. But the ego is so biased and limited in its vision that it falsely attributes this beauty to that one work of art. It doesn't realize that the wall on which the art hangs is just as beautiful and wondrous as the work of art itself. Ego always sees partial truths, partial beauties, partial goodnesses. So it's not that the ego is wrong, per se, it's just always limited and partial. It's like if I showed you a master piece work of art but your mind only focused on the face and missed the other 95% of the painting. You'd say, "That's a beautiful face! OMG!" Which is true. But you're still missing the other 95% of the beauty because your mind isn't open enough. In this way the ego is never technically wrong. It's just highly partial and missing a lot of stuff.

@OBEler It varies person to person. I've never had difficulty breathing on 5-MeO-DMT or any other psychedelic regardless of intensity. But you might.

@Lyubov Anecdotally, my USPS has been delivering packages speedily with no problems. Shopping with UPS doesn't really help this problem. USPS needs your biz.

Well, that's why we have a court system. That's for the court to adjudicate all those details. There seems to be plenty of video so we'll see how it all plays out in court. Both sides will get to present their evidence. Once you start shooting people, the others may feel little option but to bum-rush the shooter. Of course it is possible the mob was being aggressive. I dunno. These situations tend to be messy.

@Arcangelo When you are carrying a rifle against unarmed people, shooting in the air or ground will be more than enough to spook them off.