Apparition of Jack

"Those who want to live, let them fight, and those who do not want to fight in this world of eternal struggle do not deserve to live." - Adolf Hitler, a man who committed suicide after failing to win a war and plunging the world into an era of darkness

https://reddit.com/r/MensLib/ Despite the redpill-sounding name, this subreddit is the exact opposite and instead focuses on building up a healthy attitudes towards masculinity, self-esteem, being inclusive of women, minorities, LGBTQ+ people, etc. There's some truly fantastic discussions there and if you're a guy (or not, hehe) struggling with feelings of insecurity, dating, emotional issues, a role in life etc. then there's a lot of great stuff to be discovered there. Highly recommended.

Just get a phone case and a screen protector and it'll survive 99% of all drops. As far the products themselves go, I don't like how restrictive they are customisation-wise and honestly don't see how they're any more "intuitive" than Microsoft of Android products. In fact I often find them less intuitive. With that being said, the privacy concerns are a real issue for me and I basically see Microsoft and Google as being an open-door to whatever security agency wants to snoop around my personal info, so I use an iPhone for that reason alone since Apple seems to take privacy a little more seriously (I doubt they're that much better honestly.)

As with all sentiments, there's some truth to these feelings. In a sense we have gone too far away from nature and too many people do feel alienated as a result. The problem is going overboard with it and then claiming everything would be perfect if we just gave up cars and electricity and the internet and just lived off the land like our ancient ancestors did. I think the right solution would be to take that nugget of wisdom and then integrate it into the understanding that technology is here to stay. One of my favourite current literally / aesthetic genres is Solarpunk. The idea is a future envisioned where an understanding of ecology and the natural processes of earth are integrated with and moderates our use of technology and urban planning, which to me is the sort of future we should be aspiring towards.

White man are magicians all on their own - they can make a poor country's mineral wealth disappear!

Much easier to accept the world is constantly staked against you so you can just jerk off and get angry on twitter all day than to accept you are able to influence politics and make your policy positions a reality with hard work and compromise

Foreign funding can happen for a number of reasons. One can be to invest in the security of a country where the donor country has regional interests. I don’t know much about Jordan but I know it’s generally friendly to the West and downplays extremism, so the EU is probably happy to support it so that it has a friendly nation in the region. Another is to shore up diplomatic support. Unlike what many isolationists, autarkists and militarists think, it’s important to maintain healthy global relations and displays of good-faith like this can improve a nation’s or an alliances’ international standing. Say the EU wants a resolution passed at the UN, this donation might mean your country is now more likely to support the EU in that resolution. And another reasons which shouldn’t be understated is there might just be genuine goodwill from the EU to help out a county in need. Despite how easy it is to be cynical these days, a lot of political efforts are still motivated by values and ideals. I imagine there’s enough people in the EU bureaucracy who genuinely believe in international solidarity enough that something like this is seen as a beneficial course of action.

ATLA is a fantastic example of effective worldbuilding and storytelling and will honestly remain popular for decades to come. It's legitimately one of the most impressive pieces of media I've ever seen, yes it might be targeted at kids but the creators were truly channeling some higher truths when they created it. Mike and Bryan were truly living out their Life Purpose when they got to work on it IMO.

I have mixed feelings about this. On one hand, she’s like the only non-geriatric person in a position to be President within the next four years (who isn’t also an evangelical wingnut like Pence is.) Plus, she has that generic “Yass Queen” energy that appeals to many undecided normies who might like the fact that she’s an outspoken woman. On the other hand, I get a really bad vibe from her when I listen to her speak and I 100% believe she’s going to be as stubbornly status quo as possible, a few minor platitudes aside. Even Biden seems to be more genuinely progressive than she does these days. Plus, unlike dementia-patient Biden she has the mental fortitude to put up resistance to progressive policies. I’m still hoping Biden wins, but it means that when she inevitably takes over from him when he gets too old, it’ll mean progressives really have to hold her feet to the fire and push her to be as radical on climate change, lobbying reform, healthcare etc as possible. We can’t let her be Hillary Clinton 2.0 just because she happened to be in the right place at the right time.

“Stock prices have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau. I do not feel there will be soon if ever a 50 or 60 point break from present levels, such as they have predicted. I expect to see the stock market a good deal higher within a few months." - Dr. Irving Fisher, Professor of Economics at Yale University, October 17, 1929

Stage Purple comes across stage Orange industrial technology:

You have a house, but there’s 10 homeless people in our town with nowhere to stay. I decided to kick you out of your house and put the homeless people there instead. I’ve just helped out the maximum number of people with the resources we have. Do I get my good boy utilitarian points now?

A little bit of column A, a little bit of column B IMO. Humanity is always progressing towards greater consciousness, freedom and Love, but at the same time our lower human impulses (ego, greed, violence) are a fact of life and can't ever truly be eradicated no matter how developed we become. It's a paradox, but that's how you know it's true, lol.

So you mean he's going to get outsmarted by a couple of teenage girls?

@Roy what would be wrong with that?

@Roy Hard to do personal development when you’re in jail for dissent or are stuck in cyclical poverty because crucial social services are unfunded.

@Dragon Liege I don’t know if you can map anti-mask sentiment onto spiral dynamics, but whatever the case it’s an absurd belief to have. My respect for Ralph Smart at this point is basically 0 so it doesn’t surprise me he’s pushing this sort of nonsense.

It might sound all nice and fluffy, but if they avoid talking about tax reform then that’s all it ever be.

@Leilani Please for the love of your daughter just have fun with her! Death may be Absolute Infinity but sometimes you just gotta enjoy the simple things in life!

@Don Wei This article might interest you, it touched upon some of the things you were concerned about

@Parththakkar12 His VP will take over, which is why his pick for VP is such a big issue this election. There's a very good chance they'll effectively be running the country in a year or so after he wins anyway.

Trump's persona appeals so deeply to a few key identity pin points of the American psyche that there's a large portion of the US population that would sooner die than admit Trump was wrong. Some things like: He's white (very important one) He's a man He's "macho" / "masculine" / a "winner" (at least, he portrays himself as such) He's unbonded to "political correctness" (meaning he's free to say whatever racist and sexist nonsense that comes to his head) He's from the corporate world (a lot of Americans see themselves as "temporarily embarrassed millionaires" who are just a year's work away from the big bucks) He talks up nationalist rhetoric and downplays "playing nice" with the "globalist elites" (it doesn't matter that he's part of the global establishment himself and has undermined his country countless different times, Stage Blue just needs the aesthetics of nationalism to be on board with a demagogue) All make him out to be the archetypal "winning American" in many voter's minds. It's what many Americans see themselves as, whether or not they actually live up to that reality. He's like a manifestation of the unhealthy shadow of the American collective conscious, but the utter disaster his presidency has been means that that consciousness is rapidly changing.

If people are peddling conspiracy stuff then they're probably not as developed as you would assume. It can be an easy mistake to make since a lot of the sorts of people you're talking about use language like "Consciousness", "Healing", "Awakening" etc. so they can sound very awake, but they're still stuck deeply in Tier 1 and probably have a lot of stage Blue/Orange shadows they haven't worked through. New Agey circles can be magnets for all sorts of whackos, unfortunately. As for what "the elites" are up to, it's most likely possible that there's some sort of secret discussions at Bilderberg meetings and such, but these are probably just boring talks about further trade deregulations or government support of large corporations and stuff like that. Not exactly healthy Tier 2 politics, but not exactly "sucking the blood out of babies" either. Don't forget that even the rich and powerful are unconscious themselves, and aren't always aware of the damage they do to society, so it's usually best not to attribute harmful behaviours by those on top to malice when it can be better attributed to ignornace. And of course, the answer as to what to do about all this is to continue to develop yourself and raise your own consciousness, as you will be naturally more able to see beyond the unconscious forces that cloud the mind and see the world in a more clear light. Spiral Dynamics, self-actualisation etc. are all great tools are making sense of the world.

@Leo Gura Yeah, I regretted putting that in there, I'll delete it now. I suppose what I meant to say in more simple terms is that the progressive ego is simply under too much pressure right now and turning towards unhealthy behaviour as a way of coping. Progressive causes have been hamstrung for too long that those who believe in them are getting desperate. This isn't to denigrate progressive causes at all though, ending racism, tackling neoliberalism insanity, tackling climate change, etc. are all absolutely necessary to creating a conscious, sane world.