Leo Gura

The rich & powerful rig the game to make it easier for them to acquire more wealth & power. This has been the case since the dawn of mankind. This is just ego 101. Providing genuine value is important if you want to create self-made wealth. But since this is challenging and slow, many wealthy & powerful people instead just rig the game and exploit the system. This allows for accumulation of vast amounts of wealth without providing much value. If the system was designed better, many such loopholes would be closed. If you want a more balanced system then you want a more socialistic, a more directly democratic form of government.

All of this is relative and contingent. That's YOUR point of view. Don't expect others to agree with that, and don't expect that to be some eternal, objective truth. Right and wrong are constructs of your ego-mind. If you stop thinking a thing is wrong, it will stop being wrong. People will use force regardless of what you believe is right or wrong. People do whatever they want, period. That is always the case. You are free to do whatever you are physically capable of doing. All shoulds are delusion. There are no shoulds in the universe. Whatever is the case, is what is. The ultimate goal for most people is not happiness but survival. Which is why most people are not happy. Your beliefs are mostly dualistic. The opposite of nonduality. It would be wise to question and deconstruct them.

Consciousness is like an infinite field. Within this infinite field various forms arise. The brain is one of those forms. The forms arise and pass away but the field is never created or destroyed. Think of a video game. The player character's brain does not create the video game simulation. It is part of the simulation.

@Mafortu It's important to learn how to stop your mind and break trains of thought if you're gonna be tripping because sooner or later a negative one will come. Practice letting go, body relaxation, mind relaxation, and silencing the mind. That will come in handy.

No, the problem is they oversimplify spirituality and try to teach it to people who clearly aren't qualified. Their teachings lack depth and breadth.

@wingsofwax You are more than ready. Your mind will be blown.

That is precisely what I am suggesting you do. My words are merely describing what you will find there.

More accessible but far inferior.

In the best case, like Sam Harris or JP.

@VioletFlame I am no expert on Stockholm Syndrome.

No, sorry, drug sourcing not allowed.

@EternalForest Stockholm syndrome

@Aimblack That wouldn't be enough for most people. Plenty of Orange people read GEB and stay Orange.

@GabeN You'll know it when it happens. Upgrade from snorting to plugging. It will be way better. And you will have many breakthroughs.

5-MeO comes pretty darn close

Anger is definitely something your mind is actively doing. And you can learn to become conscious enough that it stops happening. Anger is a self-manipulation. It's a survival mechanism of the ego. Ego uses anger to get its needs met. But there are much healthier, more conscious ways to meet those same needs. In the same way that as an adult you don't need to yell and scream to get your food needs met -- the way you did as a child.

@Dan Arnautu That's where many of you are. It's a decent place to be.

@Sahil Pandit That's interesting but I'm not sure if it qualifies as recontextualization for me.

@Aimblack Precisely because you have to be at vision-logic to appreciate vision-logic. And he's kinda nerdy and not very practical as far as self-help goes. As great as GEB is, it will not actually develop you. It's mostly just food for thought. Like mind-porn.

@billiesimon Well, you gotta keep in mind that those writers & poets were like the top 0.001% of the society. And they idealized the shit out of their culture. They of course were probably at Blue and above. But they were the high elites. The average folks were far less conscious and the culture of the elites is not the same as mainstream vulgar culture. While Virgil was writing his poetry thousands of illiterate Roman peasants were rioting in the streets for bread and sacrificing goats & chickens to minor religious deities (stage Purple). And bloodthirsty mafia-style gangs controlled the various sections of the city. Clan and family warfare was common. Conventional European history does a poor job of teaching the everyday realities of life in ancient Rome. It's highly idealized and sanitized. Also because it's much harder to find historic evidence of vulgar life. The art that survives is high art of the elites. Poems are not written about bread riots, plague, illiteracy, slavery, gang rape, genocide, torture, and cults.

It depends, some of them are Blue. Many of them are a mix of Red/Blue. Hitler was the epitome of ethnocentrism: my race, my people, my civilization is superior to all others. Hitler also had Red aspects because he had a lust for absolute personal power. Religion is almost always a part of one's ethnicity. Religion does not exist in a vacuum. If you are religious, your religion was indoctrinated into you as part of your culture and geographic location. If not for that, you would not be religious. You might be spiritual, but not religious. Religion is culture. And their own culture is what ethnocentrists strive to defend. Jews are a great example of how ethnicity and religion go hand in hand. Not a genius, but integral and multi-perspectival and well-read/educated. It does not have to be formal education, but you must read books. That chart is not comprehensive. There are many examples which were not shown due to space restrictions. Hippies need a more cerebral integral approach. More book smarts. Learning systems thinking would help them. And studying Spiral Dynamics would help them a lot. Also, laying off the weed might help them A nonlinear, hyper-intuitive sort of rationality which is more right-brain dominant vs left-brain dominant, and which focuses on holistic big picture thinking rather than technical analysis or linear logical proofs. Vision-logic fuses rationality with intuition, consciousness, and high emotional intelligence. Albert Einstein is a great example of vision-logic. He was not the typical cold-hearted, paint-by-numbers academic. Also, Richard Feynman is a good example. Vision-logic is more playful, whimsical, creative, than traditional logic and very importantly it can handle paradox, which traditional logic cannot. Douglas Hofstadter is a good example of vision-logic.

@billiesimon Maybe. On the other hand a lot of Roman art was a glorification of Red military conquest, power, and domination. Is the Colosseum Red or Blue? Is Trajan's Column Red or Blue?

It takes a lot of research to understand the details of how each of those lines evolves. Some of the lines are not very well documented. Although the Metaphysical/Spiritual line is very well documented and I've basically addressed it in my Spiral Dynamics mini-series whenever I talked about religion, spirituality, or mysticism. Stage Blue is dogmatically religious Stage Orange turns materialistic science & rationality into a religion Stage Green is "spiritual but not religious" -- hippie spirituality Stage Yellow is open to mystical ideas but doesn't have direct mystical insight yet. Sort of a conceptual spirituality. Stage Turquoise is having lots of mystical experiences and very aware of the oneness of everything

You realize that 40% of Romans were slaves? And that Rome was run by bloodthirsty Emperors many of whom back-stabbed each other? Ancient Athenes was pretty advanced but it disintegrated rather quickly amidst all of the low consciousness carnage in the area. The tallest blade of grass gets cut the soonest. The HBO series Rome is a good depiction of life in stage Red. It's actually very similar to the politics of Game Of Thrones. Everyone is scheming to undo everyone else. Of course Rome did have some stage Blue aspects to it. Marcus Aurelius was a fine example of a Blue emperor. Like I said about center of gravity, to say that Rome was Red is to say that 50% of it was Red, 25% Purple, 25% Blue. You see roughly that mix in the HBO Rome show.

@Nahm Time for you to schedule that acid trip, buddy