sholomar

The vast majority of the improvements in my life come from working on my psychology and purging past trauma from my subconscious mind and finding my peace of mind. Diet and exercise are a relatively small contributor but still important. I've exercised and eaten clean and still had major problems with autoimmune issues that solved themselves when I worked on my psychology. If you go according to polyvagal Theory you need to work on cultivating your ventral vagal nervous system which is basically the playful social side for optimal health. Unfortunately introverts will always be at a disadvantage because it's harder to stimulate that part of your nervous system when you're not socially engaged. It's doable with mindfulness practice and the whole process of personal development however. There are a number of people on this forum who are stuck in dorsal vagal mode which is the depressed and defeated state which is the worst state for the body to be in. In that state you will be subject to a number of Health problems just as you would be if you were stuck in sympathetic dominant mode. I can speak 100% from experience for me this isn't just Theory. https://themovementparadigm.com/how-to-map-your-own-nervous-sytem-the-polyvagal-theory/

I'll admit I like to come here to question leftists because I genuinely believe their philosophy is flawed and would never work applied on a mass scale due to human nature and the nature of this reality in which we incarnate into and natural law. I'm integrating acceptance of what is into my programming and achieving higher levels of peace of mind as a result. Still, that's not what I REALLY come here for. I like to debate deep, philosophical issues, something the general public really doesn't do much. It keeps my screen addiction going too. Unproductive time that could be better utilized at this point than on any forum, but whatever. I'll change when I'm ready.

Censorship of speech always ends up being a slippery slope because eventually the one that is censored is you. Just because of human nature I lean towards never supporting it. The crowd in charge wants everyone to assimilate into their cult, regardless of where they reside on the political spectrum. We are a herd species and capable of great deception and the best way to eliminate your opposition is to make sure they don't have a voice. The line between alternative viewpoints that the establishment doesn't want pushed and outright falsehoods is a thin one though. Bottom line, there are no easy answers to the human nature problem. We evolved as a species over a million years and have programmed genetic traits embedded into our DNA computer software that drive us towards certain traits. Anyone can take any philosophy and push it as though they have all the answers. Nobody has all the answers. It's better to take that attitude and let people find their own truths, not have the truth spoon fed to them.

I take the following: Multivitamin (cheap costco brand) Magnesium (citrate, glycinate, or bicarbonate) Vitamin D (winter months) Creatine Glycine Taurine Father got me into creatine. Taurine and Glycine are for anti-aging. Sometimes I'll buy Aldi Pork Rinds (spicy version) for the collagen. Great with smoked oysters or dipped in cottage cheese. Diet is antioxidant rich, focused on whole foods and reduced refined carbohydrates. I also use Tretinoin on my face and sun block in the summer. Sunlight ages the skin and makes white people in particular look terrible as they age.

They shouldn't even be running Biden again, nor Kamala. Kamala is unelectable and Biden is senile. Surely they are intelligent enough to see this. Personally I'm fine with that, because unlike most here I believe the leftists are the big threat in the 21st century, at least the faction of them that is in charge right now pushing unchecked immigration, unlimited money printing, not wanting to punish anyone for non violent crimes, along with pushing "equity" in the schools systems and society at large, giving unqualified individuals passing grades and jobs they shouldn't be doing. Natural law dictates these policies are going to cause societal decay. Still, advice to democrats... don't run Biden or Kamala if you want to win. Bottom line, society's problems are a human nature problem. No easy fix outside genetic engineering.

Pretty good documentary on Xi... he is a victim of his childhood and upbringing. It made him who he is. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DKIQpu4hhQ (Age Restricted for some reason) Otherwise I tend to watch these two... https://www.youtube.com/@ChinaFactChasers I don't believe in authoritarian rule so naturally I don't support the Chinese Communist Party. It's a 1984 dystopian society.

I like to "dabble" and one of the things I got into was studying musical theory, the clefs, and it's made me appreciate classical music that much more. Western musical notation is really quite amazing in it's own right, the way the notes are designed around sound frequencies and that when you go up an octave you are basically just doubling the frequency, so that say middle C is 261.6 hz, an octave higher is 523 hz... they understood this before they even knew what frequencies in hertz even were... that when you double a frequency it has a similar sound. There's a lot I don't really even understand yet, like paying music in particular keys, the makeup of chords, the circle of fifths, etc. I did understand briefly but if you don't use something constantly you'll tend to lose the information over time. This is a really good musical theory course free if anyone here is interested...

Good insights. I agree. Sometimes it seems like the cravings and impulses will last forever, LOL. Then they come back in waves. It's difficult work, for sure, but it's what makes a man out of a person. All strong men have mastered their emotions and impulses to some degree or another, in my opinion. This gives them a level of inherit wisdom from having suffered through the experience that makes them better leaders that people look up too, something relatively rare in modern society today that pushes heavy hedonism on us where addictions are ever present elements that permeate our culture and seek to make us mediocre consumers of content instead of producers.

How do you release it? By engaging in it? The problem with engaging in addictions is that it reinforces the synaptic connections in the brain that give the activity pleasure. The more you do something pleasurable, the more you are going to want to do it. "Just one more cigarette" ... I logically know that one cigarette is going to make me want to crave another, and another, so I'm not going to even have the one. I think most of us give up bad habits, emotions, or addictions because at some point they bring us more pain than they do pleasure, and it's at that point people finally decide to change, like when a woman leaves an abusive man that she loves because he's dominant but at some point he just brings more pain to her life than pleasure and at that point she finally leaves. That or the guy who gives up his pot and video games... he does it not because he doesn't enjoy pot and video games, but because he knows he's creating an opportunity cost in himself to greater levels of pleasure and satisfaction. Would he rather chase his short term pleasure and emotional state or build towards long term goals and accomplishments? It's the hedonistic vs eudomonic argument made in Leo's "happiness spectrum" video. Really emotions and impulses are the same thing... they are both a drive to "act" in a certain way created by our brain chemistry and evolutionary makeup. The trick would seem to be to allow the emotion or impulse but without engaging in the associated activity that brought on the emotion, to allow it to "burn out" over time.

Pop culture wants you to treat your emotions like gospel and that you should "do what you feel like" and that "your feelings are always right" which is a huge mistake and trap. Feelings are the domain of many animal species and most mammals have basic emotions that drive them to act in the absence of self awareness and rational thought. Feelings can be a double edged sword. They can sabotage and betray you, get you chasing the wrong things in life. It's why most spiritual teachers like Eckhart Tolle emphasize being "the observer" ... being able to observe the rising waves of emotion (and cravings, impulses) without identifying with them and allowing them to totally take over one's reactions. I really like his book "A New Earth" in this regard. Talks all about it. It's far superior to "The Power of Now." Then again so do many self help authors like David Hawkins who also took their work from past sources like The Master Key System. Being able to sit with any impulse mindfully and let it's energy burn out... Leo's videos on addiction, subtle addiction, the happiness spectrum, his principles for living the good life, burning through karma, and related videos... they all bark up the same tree of finding a level of emotional/impulse mastery and developing more productive habits, but without the use of emotional suppression. The book "Atomic Habits" is also important for any person who wants to grow in life because a good life requires good habits. You want your most important personal development goals on autopilot, so they are done on a schedule without thinking and more importantly, done while powering through the emotional resistance to do them.

Probably simple genetics. Our species is wired toward a proclivity towards certain behaviors and men dominating the world around them is wired into dominant or "alpha" males, the type women do tend to submit too when for example their tribe gets invaded and all their men got slaughtered. It's also why women tend to be hypergamous and trade up when something better comes along. The loyal women who stood by their man or tribe would get killed off over the course of tens of thousands of years of evolution, leaving the surviving women the ones willing to manipulate men and remain loyal to the men who had the most power... the "sexually submitting to the invader" narrative. Most human behavior can be explain by past evolutionary conditions. We are bundles of computer software (DNA being the computer code), living in a sophisticated hardware simulation (with all it's various laws that make matter work perfectly to create life), created by an intelligence as of yet unimaginable to most. The facial expression in your profile picture really says it all. I see dominant evolutionary traits written all over it. A sort of cocky dominance. It's kind of a "Bonnie and Clyde" "partner in crime" sort of relationship you desire. You want to dominate her (or him, whatever way you float) but want her/him to be strong enough to be an equal. Many humans do want this. It's exciting and barks right up our evolutionary ladder.

The one thing I've learned is my assumptions and things I assumed to be true about "world events" sometimes end up being totally false, and that my own assumptions and interpretations are subjective. I think I know a lot about things but really don't. I just enjoy philosophy as an interest, along with geopolitics, science, and economics. However, it should not be used to strengthen the "pain body" within or to create a big spiritual ego that thinks it's better than everyone else. What an illusion and trap that would be. I'm into deep, esoteric material because the normal conversation by normal people... sitting around a table telling stories and gossiping about those in their social circle, holds little to no interest for me, even though I know it would be good for me in moderation. I don't see spiritual seekers or conspiracy theorists as "more awakened" than the "sheep" anymore however. It's just different people with different perspectives. We all share the same common trait of having to incarnate into what in my opinion is a difficult species going through growing pains at the moment, our genetic makeup not having caught up with our technology and cultural advancement. Someone said Leo's video content is better than these forum posts. I definitely agree with that. A lot of neurotic, depressed people from both ends of the political spectrum tend to gather here and do a lot of "blaming" of external circumstances for their lack of peace of mind, whether it's left wingers or right wingers or whatever narrative they decide to believe or whatever group they decide to blame when the real problem is a human nature problem, that's if you decide there even is a "problem." I'm working on this one myself. It's a problem of garbage inputs leading to garbage outputs.

I'll be honest....leftists seem incapable of recognizing that the decay of the west is maybe 75% being caused by their policies post covid. Pushing equity in schools with pressure to give passing grades to underachieving students is one small piece of the overall problem. Leftists are certainly not immune to neurotic, emotionally driven behavior, echo chamber thinking and herd behavior, and policies that are in my opinion almost certainly going to fail. Our genetics aren't optimally equipped to handle 21st century life. That will take genetic engineering or a few thousand years of evolution yet along with the evolution of nations/cultures low on the spiral dynamics scale...many who's immigrants are flooding the west with open arms right now unable to speak the native language with nowhere to put them. In any case, my personal development goals include accepting it all, accepting human nature, accepting all cultures go through cycles of rise and decline. Human nature is what it is. Genetic software operating within sophisticated hardware developed by an unimaginable intelligence.

A lot of it is actually from an overstimulated nervous system. Too much screen time stimulates the sympathetic nervous system. People never allow themselves a chance to slow down and this often causes things such as what I had which was LPR or silent reflux. Any sort of prolonged sustained stress or anxiety can cause any number of autoimmune problems in the body. A lot of people generate this state mentally through many of the same processes were here trying to stop in our personal development journey. Silent reflex causes stomach acid to regurgitate up into the throat and the body responds by producing mucus which coats your tongue. The anaerobic bacteria start the colonize that and produce an unpleasant odor. A lot of people who think they have allergies actually have lpr. It goes along with having a white coated tongue and bad breath. A lot of people with LPR also have gastroparesis or delayed stomach emptying. This goes along with having poor vagus nerve function which is a side effect of having an overstimulated sympathetic dominant nervous system. https://www.holistichelp.net/blog/autonomic-nervous-system-dysfunction/

It's very easy to eat 2500 calories in 24 hours. I constantly have to watch my calories because if I didn't I would overeat and would gain a lot of weight. There's a subreddit called volume eating that you should look up if you want to try to maximize the amount of food you eat while minimizing calories. All animal species evolved in an environment of scarcity so here we are living in an environment of abundance and our genetic makeup still believes we're in the Stone Age and are going to starve so we have these biological cravings that can be very hard to resist. I don't blame or judge people for being overweight to be honest. There's a lot of neurotic dna-driven aspects to our species that need a few thousand more years of evolution or some genetic engineering to fully sort out.

Quantitative easing is where the government suppresses interest rates by purchasing government bonds the free market can't absorb and hold on to them. It's a form of debt monetization. Here's the website that shows how much quantitative easing the Federal Reserve has done at any given time. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WALCL There are some who believe this debt is not a problem. Debt is money and money is debt so all debt is basically just created money. All debt is technically already monetized since it exists as money in the system. The real problem comes with the interest money because the interest money doesn't exist and contributes to deflationary pressure. Raise interest rates to suck up extra money from the system over time to manage inflation. However because this interest money was never actually created the debt can only ever keep going up. You basically need to create new debt to replace the money lost from circulation from paying these interest payments. The end result of the overprinting they did during covid is simply more inflation as more dollars Chase fewer goods. This is a totally separate issue where they mismanaged fiscal policy there for a year or two. When you print money and hand it out without a corresponding increase in economic output you're going to get inflation. There's no way around it. The disruptions to the supply chain caused by the pandemic policies added to this effect and exaggerated it. The best way to maintain yourself in a system like this is to stay invested in assets. Don't hold cash. Quit jobs that don't offer a wage that keeps up with the cost of rental increases or whatever other living costs you have. Inflation is sort of a necessary evil when you have an aging populace and all these entitlement programs with decreasing birth rates. It devalues the burden of past government spending though it does put pressure on the working class. Maybe we shouldn't have a currency based on debt and compound interest at all. Maybe the government should simply print all the interest free money it needs directly from the treasury and bypass the central bank. Quantitative easing is a hack to get around the interest problem anyways. Regardless, there is no paying off the debt. It will never get paid off only monetized due to the interest money not existing problem I discussed earlier.

It's easy to take isolated events and extrapolate them out to make it seem like there's this huge problem going on. Most police don't behave in that manner obviously but the ones that do obviously end up getting a lot of social media exposure these days. Here's an educational video for people so they know how to behave during a police encounter. If you do what they say and act civilized you generally won't have any problems. Most of the people who end up in these videos resist arrest or act like asses.

I try to tell people it's a human nature problem. It's not fair to scream "jews" to the 85% of jews that aren't in the power structure. Any ethnicity of people you get or any large enough "herd" of people or any one person that accumulates enough wealth and power will tend to act and lead in the same way depending on whether they are a psychopath or not. It does no good to target an entire ethnic group. I tell people to watch for specific individuals who support authoritarian or autocratic rule and make sure they don't get power. If they do, take them out. No need to involve innocent collateral damage. The main threat to the species are authoritarians. Left authoritarians. Right authoritarians. Doesn't matter. Autocracy doesn't work. The Chinese Communist Party under Xi would be a classic example of what we want to avoid when we are talking about global leadership. I don't care how good your intentions, checks and balances are the best way to keep human nature at bay. I find most leadership to be incompetent, but again that's just human nature. Our species needs some genetic engineering... see my post here: All the more reason to practice radical acceptance!

I can't find any competent leadership I want to fall behind in either party. The problem is they all push "narraitives" these days which creates polarization, echo chambers, etc. It's a human nature thing though. I recognize these are growing pains of the species, so I try to be sympathetic. In the end civilizations rise, and they fall. It is what it is. My ego still loves the "dirty laundry" ... it's something I'm still working on. Feed that "pain body" as Eckhart Tolle would call it. There's nothing I can do about the geopolitical policies I think are going to decay nations, but I still like to talk about them.

There's this rumor that goes on around conspiracy forums that when you go to donate your organs they don't give you anesthesia only sedate you and that there have been instances of the human body responding in ways that suggest that the person is actually conscious when their organs are being harvested which is why this big anti organ donation movement popped up online. There's also the conspiracy theory about organ donating being this big industry which engages in scrupulous practices especially in some Asian countries. I'm sure there's some truth to either of these or not.

Just finished this batch of decaf beans roasted on an inexpensive chinese made roaster. Decaf of course, because roasting of caffeinated beans involves chaf production, which is lacking in decaf beans. Most store bought decaf is repulsive, and most people in my opinion drink coffee wrong, using preground beans often with flavorings to mask the fact they are drinking old, stale coffee. Enjoy the taste and the antioxidant benefits and the fact it's a low calorie drink. Brew using a V60 with a Gooseneck kettle to heat the water so I can fine tune the temperature and get it hot enough for light and medium roasts, which most drip coffee makers do not do. My cheap roaster can't get all the beans perfectly even, but this would be classified as a light roast, which is what I generally prefer for the bright flavor and origin characteristics. If some beans make it to medium or city roast, that's fine. Tastes great. Buy the beans super cheap on ebay... $6/lb

I use an electric toothbrush with bluetooth connectivity that idiot proofs the whole process. It beeps every 30 seconds, beeps when the 2 minutes is done. I use "Plackers twin line" floss. Then I visit the dentist every 6 months and they say I have great gums and teeth for my age I'd rather not have receding gums and have to use dentures when I get older. You do you, bro. If I eat meat, it will get in between my teeth and start to smell like rotting meat after a day or three. I certainly wouldn't not brush personally just because I was zero carb.

I could use my father as an example. He's 66 years old and ripped for his age. He still goes to the gym and does squats, bikes 35 mile rides on his road bike (we did one together when I visited last week). For him it all comes down to habits, habits habits. Healthy habits, and sticking to them even if he doesn't "feel like" doing them. If you don't develop a plan, and stick to it like clockwork, you may as well not even start. You'll be like those people who join the gym for their New Year's resolution and are gone by February. I am still working on achieving his level of self discipline. He eats a plant based diet based on the book "How Not to Die" and his main meat source is grass fed, grass finished beef. He consumes an antioxidant rich diet, including coffee in the mornings, whole grains, steel cut oats, various kinds of nuts, spices, fruits, vegetables, with light alcohol consumption in the form of craft beers, usually on the darker side. That's not to say you have to be into fitness to be happy, or even that you have to live to an old age, but I won't get into that here. It comes down to being able to sit there and mindfully observe cravings to do something, and then do the activity that you have planned and want to make into a habit. Leo's video on addictions and "subtle addictions" are handy for this. It's not bleeping easy if you are not used to it. It's torture, like quitting a drug.

Finally someone else saying it. There should be a global ban on real estate investment and speculation... you can own a certain number of single family residential homes, none of them used for rentals or AirBNBs if they are inside city limits. You can fix them up and sell them, or owner occupy them. That's the way it should be. The problem is a lot of wealth has been created and concentrated by central bank magic fairy dust (quantitative easing) so the top 5% are flush with cash, so seeing inflation they spend that cash on assets, pricing the lower and middle class out of asset ownership. People should not own 25 houses. Corporate entities should not own 300 houses.

Personally I think parents should choose with vouchers that let them pick whatever public and private school they want is best. Let the schools compete with each other and let students go to the ones where they can excel the most academically. I don't believe in telling parents their kids must go to a public school. If they want to home school them, the kid will probably turn out better than a sizable percentage of public schools in the United States. We are depressed and anxious because our DNA isn't adapted to modern life in this planet yet. I still love this series of posts I found: It only worsens as you coddle people, give them safe spaces, and try to shelter them from everything. Emotional resilience requires discomfort, facing fears, and the like. Even then, our DNA wires us with high levels of neuroticism, and most people feel comfortable around strong leadership that is competent and ethical, something greatly lacking in society today. Then again, if you look back at history with an unbiased lens, you'll see it's almost always lacking. The nature of being an animal, and evolution itself. DNA cares about propagation. Everything else is fluff. The world has always "been a hell" or "been perfect" it really depends on context and perspective.