trenton

I would like to discuss my least favorite thing about the criminal justice system. It seems ludicrously unfair. It has to do with labels like 'felon' or 'sex offender.' When a person is found guilty of a crime they might have these labels put on them. Sometimes a person is later found innocent and their criminal record may be expunged. However, the label cannot be removed causing innocent people to live the rest of their lives labeled a felon or a sex offender. Being registered like this makes it hard to get a job because although you are innocent the label will always implicate you. To me it seems like a reason to commit suicide if I have to live the rest of my life as if I am a felon or a sex offender and people will constantly treat me harshly throughout the rest of my life for something I never did. I bring this up because my friend is a registered sex offender. He claims it was a case of mistaken identity, but he had to go to jail anyway. I find it unfair that a person has to carry the label 'sex offender' forever even in cases of mistaken identity because you look similar to someone who did commit the crime. Furthermore, anger damns the innocent. Although the natural reaction to a false rape accusation might be to get angry and defensive, the appearance of being belligerent will make people think you are guilty anyway. Being calm is seen as a sign of innocence even though the opposite is often true. Even professionals mix this up. The solution seems obvious to me. Innocent people who have their records expunged should also have the label expunged. Why is this simple fix so difficult? What am I missing? Is there something I don't understand? This just seems completely stupid that our society treats innocent people like trash and not giving them a chance to defend themselves. Even if someone was guilty in the past, maybe they could change through rehabilitation. If someone carries a label like that forever, then that could easily serve to mess them up even more leading to recitivism. I profoundly disagree with this permanent punishment. Jail or prison is one thing, but to live the rest of your life like this is asinine. I would rather die than carry a label like these for the rest of my life.

@supremeyingyang the reason Christianity like many religions struggle to reform is because they conflate belief and truth. Questioning these beliefs and threatening the survival of the church is commonly lumped together with killing God. In fact people have been killed over questioning religion and to this day atheism is punishable by death in the middle East. Religion is deeply problematic in that it is a paradigm lock that keeps people from seeing the world from many perspectives. This leads to many misconceptions about other religions which in turn leads to persecution due to Christians learning about Islam from a biased source like their church. If people were taught the philosophy of other religions, not to subscribe to them but just to understand them, then this would be the key to preventing persecution through clearing up our misconceptions. So long as the many religions are at stakes with each other by placing the survival of an ideology over truth they will never reach God. A start would be to recognize validity in other religions to see the deep similarities they share. If Christianity for example is close minded to other religions because they are taught that those ideologies are evil, then they will never explore Satanism. Most Christians assume that Satanists are literal devil worshippers. In fact most Satanists are atheists and they use Satan as a symbol of man as an animal. Satanic cults are far from representative of this worldview. Childhood imprinting and indoctrination can hold people back for their entire lives when they are taught an absolutistic morality that demonizes other world views. Religions certainly do change, but it is a long, slow, and brutal process that takes hundreds of years. Nevertheless some progress is being made. Here are two examples. 1. More divisions of Christianity are embracing same sex marriage. Although most Christians are against homosexuality, some churches integrate scientific knowledge. This includes prenatal hormones which are linked to sexual orientation. Homosexuality can't be a sin if this is how people are born. Furthermore, when the bible says "sodomites" it is not condemning homosexuals, but rather false priests Who are sell outs to other Gods. This is a common misconception that is unfair to gay people because the KJV and NKJV use a misleading term for false priest. 2. More divisions of Christianity are allowing priests to marry. In light of the sex scandals, some Christians are trying to replace unhealthy expressions of sexuality with something healthy, for example sex in marriage rather than shrine prostitution. Some Christians are becoming more open to sexuality because treating it like a sin in practice backfires in many ways. Sometimes it even leads mass shooters to killing a dozen women because they were tempted to have sex with them. Purity culture is deeply problematic because you can't repress sex forever. Your body could not exist if not for sex. Maybe there are others, but I don't remember off the top of my head.

I learned about this from TLDR news. They cover several countries and major global events. First of all, I think BREXIT is a disaster and it seems most people are starting to realize the economic flaws. This is made worse by political corruption among the conservative party. The people of the UK are not electing new leaders because the corrupt leaders are being replaced by other corrupt leaders with winning the vote. Secondly, I would be very annoyed by the broad and encompassing laws that are commonly passed. Not only is there legal uncertainty due to the repealing of many EU laws, but there are also annoying restrictions on freedom of speech. For example, people get thrown in jail because they held up a sign which was "likely to cause distress." It does not even have to cause distress. Some of the laws are kind of annoying because they are way too broad. On the other hand, here in America freedom of speech, the press, religion, and the right to bear arms are all common bad faith smokescreens used to pander to uneducated voters while distracting from the corruption of our conservative party. Consider the right to bear arms. We deal with a lot of gun violence here, and when people from the UK start challenging us on our obviously stupid laws that endanger people it makes us look like fools. Politicians are more concerned about things like hunting for fun while schools are the grounds of mass killings. A common argument is that there are a bunch of knives in London. I am not convinced by this argument because If you have a gun, then you kill people faster without needing to get close. I would rather be in Vegas with a man holding a knife than with a man with an assault rifle killing 50 people in a matter of minutes. If spiral dynamics were applied to the political climate in the US, then I would see the drama of moving from stage orange and blue to green. It could be the case that the UK is going through something similar to the US. For example, there are some who want to abolish the monarchy. These values come into conflict with traditional values even if some members of the monarchy are racist. Maybe the UK is also a conflict between blue, orange, and green.

@Raze this is a good post that I can relate to. As a teen, I was diagnosed with depression. It is very rare to grow up with a functional family. Fatherlessness is Very high, and it leads to all kinds of psychological illnesses. Men are commonly pushed aside unfairly during child custody fights because of the assumption that women are better parents due to men being more likely to be criminals. In my case, my father really was a horrible person. He was a drug dealer who fled the state to avoid paying child support. Even so, a good father and a functioning family is necessary to avoid all kinds of mental illness, yet 1 in 4 Americans grow up without a father. I would imagine that for orphans this is even worse. Oftentimes women are not ready to have a child. This can certainly lead to dysfunctional families. For example, a woman could be a single mother due to unfortunate circumstances, yet she is not allowed to have an abortion. Sometimes this leads a child to constant hunger and the threat of homelessness. I would imagine that this child would have many psychological issues. The opioid crisis is another huge factor. Not only was my dad a drug dealer, but my mom was a drug addict as well. Sometimes mom would start falling asleep while standing up and picking at her skin. Very often she would get into fights with my step father causing destruction throughout the house. A rise in opioid addiction would certainly cause children a wide range of mental health issues. Alcoholism is certainly another factor. My depression started when I was very young and I was unhappy with life in general. I often wondered how it was that I existed at all. I didn't believe in religion because it was too constraining and holds people back from viewing life from many different perspectives. These underlying existential issues lead to a sense of meaninglessness and often suicidal thoughts. This is a big factor in widespread mental illness. It coincides with the decline of religion due to things like the sex scandals. As more and more people become divorced from religion, they may lose various psychological benefits which were provided through religion. If the psychological benefits of religion are good enough to prevent some people from committing suicide (which it is), then it makes sense that suicide rates would rising. As someone with autism, I felt like a social outcast when I failed to act the way everyone wanted me too. I felt like it was my fault for following my natural impulses that make me happy. This reinforced that belief that I do not deserve to be happy. People with autism have very high suicide rates, and the same is true for other neuro divergents like maybe schizophrenia or transgender people. Persecution against the mentally ill existed in all human civilizations since the dawn of time and it leads to things like insane asylums. Don't forget about heavy metals, pfas, and micro plastics. Our food and water is polluted and it is causing people brain damage. Sometimes people start wanting to shoot up a school, but when the brain damage is corrected, they lose this desire. Heavy metals are poorly understood, the epa and fda guidelines are severely outdated and there are carcinogens in our food, and the American standard diet is horrible anyway. This causes all kinds of mental and physical illnesses. As others mention, social media is certainly a huge factor. It messes with our brain chemistry and is addicting like crack. There have been studies done on things like porn addiction as well. It coincides with a sense of meaninglessness. America is a mentally ill nation. Just one of the things I mentioned above is enough to cause people depression, yet many of these are wrapped up into one for nearly everybody. Do not be surprised when so many people are committing suicide and we constantly feel socially isolated. It is no wonder that America is in the current state that it is. Maybe if you are referring to social media. This idea does not account for opioid addiction and fatherlessness.

I am curious about this topic. When we learn history, we learn about successful movements and humanity's greatest achievements. I doubt that this paints the true picture of history. The full story can only be told through the long list of well meaning individuals and groups who failed when they were the lone voice of reason. If you look at history more completely, you realize that being a hero often boils down to dumb luck. 1. Claudette Colvin This woman is not very well known. She is Rosa Parks before Rosa Parks. She refused to give up her seat to a white man, but was labeled a trouble maker and didn't accomplish anything with this stand against racial discrimination. This has implications for police brutality. George Floyd was the example that got attention. There were many more forgotten victims of police brutality, but it is not until an injustice receives a lot of attention that it begins to be corrected. There are likely many forgotten victims who suffered a similar fate. 2. Jan Hus This is the Martin Luther before Martin Luther. I am referring to the protestant reformation in response to church corruption concerning indulgences. Basically, you give the pope money to be forgiven for your sins. Jan Hus and many others stood against this corrupt practice for over 100 years. This man and others like him were executed for the attempted reformation. It was not until Martin Luther wrote 95 theses and it actually worked. There were 100 years worth of failure before that. 3. The Maji Maji rebellion This was a rebellion triggered by German colonialism in Africa. Ngwale was the leader of the rebellion and he gave his followers magic water, hoping it would protect them from bullets. The limits of magical thinking were demonstrated brutally through several massacres. The failed rebellion against slavery ended in widespread famine. In fact there were two similar rebellions prior to this that I didn't know about. The Abushiri revolt of 1888–1889 and the Wahehe Rebellion of 1891–1898 ended in a similar catastrophe. 4. History written by the losers Any victory in history is simultaneously a defeat. Any war won is also a war lost. Any movement that succeeds does so often because it triumphed over its opposition. Life is a zero sum game. 5. Environmental concerns In many cases environmental movements fail brutally. There are examples with oil companies taking over governments in Africa and South America through lobbying and then suppressing environmental movements even more effectively then they do in America. Many countries have horrible birth defects and widespread illness due to pollution caused by these companies. For example, Chevron owes about 50 billion dollars but refuses to pay. I wouldn't say that this movement failed yet, but there are failed heroes in jail on false charges when they confront the corruption of oil companies across the globe. Other issues like ocean pollution and climate change may realistically end up in examples of failed movements. Water wars are already happening due to climate change induced droughts and it is only going to get worse. I think humanity will survive, but the global population is projected to decline. Water wars will be the biggest tragedy of the 21st century and potentially the greatest catastrophe in human history and they seem inevitable. In my opinion this is the greatest threat to humanity and we need better management of global resources to ensure that as few countries collapse as possible. More issues like the drought of the Colorado river will only become more common. Will someone attempt to ease my fears concerning water wars, or is my assessment correct? If you can tell me about other failed heroes and movements, then that would be great. This is interesting to learn about. Thank you.

@Someone here good questions. There are a lot of factors that contribute to this. First of all, the global population is much higher and we are using our resources faster. Secondly, as societies evolved we became more dependent on various energy sources. Thirdly, climate change induced droughts are causing wars and there are likely to be many more of these water wars in the future. Humans used to rely on wood for energy much more often. It wasn't until much later that we started using oil. As technology evolved so too did the resources we were using. This opened more doors and allowed us to burn through more resources for more time. We are now predicted to run out of oil in about 40 years, maybe sooner. Jevons paradox played a role in the increased consumption of oil. Check it out. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox

I have a story to share. I am taking pills for racing thoughts before I go to bed. The pills are designed for schizophrenia. The reason for the prescription is that they slow down my racing thoughts while helping me sleep. I have slowly been having a more difficult time sleeping at night and it gradually built up through my life. So when I first ran out of pills, I started having a hard time sleeping. I lied awake for over an hour with intense suicidal thoughts. I felt very heated on the inside and wanted to kill myself over various imaginary scenarios in which I made minor mistakes which built up into bigger mistakes. My attitude was along the lines of "I don't fucking care, I want to die." One of the aspects of this was the fact that I put my private parts in my sister's face when I was around seven or eight and mom was not happy about it. Logic such as I don't deserve to face the continuous harsh judgement does not make the attitude to away. I have been analyzing myself for a long time attempting to get to the psychological root of this whole thing. I spoke with a psychologist and didn't feel that it helped much. I have been allowing all kinds of memories to resurface as I realized the trauma that each of the memories held. They influenced my emotional system in many different ways, including the way in which I withhold happiness and excitement for fear of placing th expectations too high. I didn't want to let myself be happy for various reasons. I haven't yet considered the possibility that it is because I think I don't deserve to be happy. After sleeping for two to three hours, I woke up again with many intense feelings. After rolling around trying to sleep to no avail, I suddenly had some insights. These insights lead to a sense of inner peace, joy, and happiness. First of all, just because something didn't work doesn't mean we shouldn't do it. There are plenty of reasons why something may not work. It could be the context in which any thought of action occurred or it could be the execution of an attempted action. These childhood vows have some overlap with how I play chess. When I played a strategy that backfired it is often the case that the strategy is good, but not the best for a certain situation due to concrete reasons. It is easy for me to accept mistakes in a chess game, but it is hard to accept real mistakes because the consequences are much more substantial. If only I could change my attitude toward making mistakes. In fact the failure to admit our mistakes could have an even bigger impact as well. for instance, in a chess game it is better to admit a mistake than to justify it. Imagine I joined a cult and refused to admit it for my entire life. This denial is much more damaging than in a chess game as well. Very often we take a narrow lesson away from childhood trauma but these lessons Are often limited or wrong. This changes my relationship with many beliefs because there are many possible different lessons which could be taken away from one thing. This opens a lot of doors and helps to heal through open mindedness. I made sure to take a minute to write about gratitude for the peace and joy I felt. For the rest of the day I was very happy, energetic, and peaceful. Now that I am writing about this I am starting to feel anxious and heated again. I often have temporary insights with Grant me inner peace, but the temporary rise in conscious often fluctuates. I am paying attention to how my previous conclusions may lead to an upper limit problem in which I assume my downfall is soon to come due to things going too well. I hope you got something out of this and can give some nice input. I am grateful for this forum and this particular section. It has helped me with a lot of over the years. The core issue is what I have described just now. There are many tangents that help a little in healing, but it would be nice to some how heal what ever THIS is. I am not sure of a better way to refer to this situation other than THIS.

@John Paul I did a bit of digging. Apparently, attendance is linked to school funding. ADA funding exists in Texas and seven other States. https://www.mytexaspublicschool.org/the-school-system/funding.aspx#:~:text=ADA is a key number in a formula,funding a student with perfect attendance would generate. This site has a few videos you might want to look at. https://www.publicschoolreview.com/blog/an-overview-of-the-funding-of-public-schools#:~:text=According to Education Week%2C public school funding comes,the property taxes of homeowners in the area.

I have been playing a different board game. Apparently chess has more possibilities than there are atoms in the universe. Meanwhile, go has more possibilities than there are atoms raised to the power of the number of atoms. Go is much more mentally challenging and it isn't even close when compared to chess. So far I am doing my best to make sense of why stones are placed the way they are. It usually involves deep calculations of moves that I don't know to consider. In my practice games the computer indicates that I am 100% lost within 7-10 moves and I am unable to see why I am lost until 70-80 moves later at which point I finally resign. I will continue trying to understand this game. It pushes me to high levels of concentration as I make several bad moves anyway. I played one round with my sister, but she was too lazy to read the rule book. This alone demonstrates that the game is more challenging and complicated than chess. Now chess feels easy in the sense that I do not concentrate to the same degree yet I am in the top 1% of players on lichess.org. I wonder how good at chess I would be if I concentrated as much as I do While playing go. Apparently there are players trying to unify chess and go by bringing them both to certain clubs. The games teach very different ways of thinking and helps to expand our minds as much as possible. Right now I am working with a chess in school program, but if it somehow integrated other board games, then it would stretch our minds as much as possible. My mind is pretty worn out. At least this will help me appreciate how none of the strategies I use in chess are obvious at all. I see beginners making early flank expansions and rook moves all the time. I remember how differently I used to play chess. I used to move my rooks like that and it worked against my opponents. I was deeply concentrated yet making bad moves, but now I concentrate much less and make the "obvious" moves to win easily. It starts getting harder to push myself once I reach such a state of mind. My brain is doing the minimum effort and winning anyway. This is a sign of limited growth when I could be growing much more. I wonder if there is some way to integrate chess and go. What would it take to make me concentrate that much in chess? I notice that sometimes I find interesting moves that are not objectively best. Once I play into such lines, I go into the unknown. Usually it is dangerous and I might lose. Then again, it is my highest capacity for growth should I play in such a style. It is usually an interesting middle game decision that is playable but unusual. I will look into this in chess as well.

@John Paul I don't know about all of the laws of how schools are funded. But I do know that school funding is part of systemic racism. Teachers in private schools which were never forced to desegregate are given pensions. This puts teachers in public schools at a greater disadvantage and they often don't have all of the supplies they need. Public schools tend to have even more black children, and it sets them up to perpetuate economic inequality. All of this is reinforced by white flight and voluntary segregation in the suburbs following the civil rights era. This is part of what continues to perpetuate the imbalance in school funding.

In my opinion most of the propaganda comes from the history classroom. This is universal across all countries. The American narrative concerning slavery is wrong in many ways because it attempts to downplay the cruelty of slavery as well as the long term consequences of slowly fazing out slavery. It is presented as if the 13th amendment banned slavery immediately, but there are all kinds of problems with this narrative. Industrial violence is completely white washed. It would decimate the capitalist narrative if history text books included how many people were killed just so we could have a 40 hour work week. people were essentially trapped in indentured servitude, forcing them to live in massive construction sites forever with no economic mobility. People were shot for protesting, and this is an understatement. Democrats and republicans have a huge conflict of interest when controlling the American history narrative. This is an immediate red flag that we are not being told the truth. Slavery is still being white washed, especially by republicans who claim to love American history and want to present just the facts, but they are presenting just the lies. CIA scandals are never mentioned because this undermines the social matrix. In the 1970's America was the kind of place in which black people were given syphilis and denied the cure when it was available. This destroys the narrative they feed us in school. In fact many schools skip over the civil rights era entirely. Look up the Tuskegee experiments by the CIA. I could go on and on. North Korea is the exception. In North Korea all classes are propaganda, even the math textbooks. They have math problems like "853 American bastards attacked the lands of the great leader. The great leader killed 726 of the American bastards, but some were lucky and got away. How many American bastards are left over?"

@Majed Ulax makes a solid point. Many of your paradigms serve the survival of a self image. For example, if you condemn, demonize, or scapegoat other groups, then it is a sign that you are telling yourself "I am not like them" which therefore creates a shadow. Veganism is likely tied to a sense of morality if you are attached to it. You are telling yourself that you are a good person. The same can be done with actualization in that it boils down to being the best human being you can be. This is trying to be good in another regard. Sometimes people go about self actualization in a neurotic way such as "living up to my potential." This belief actually was linked to me losing sleep at night. I'm just now noticing you mentioned pick up. Of course that serves your survival.

@DocWatts that is some very solid advice. It is a meta paradigm about paradigms that ensures that you don't get locked in one. "Situationally appropriate" is the key to ensure that one paradigm is not the best absolutely. This is critical for avoiding the act of looking down on others for their worldview while championing our ideology as if it makes us superior. Tribalism is a common nightmare created through paradigm lock because of the failure to distinguish identity and belief.

@Majed Leo mentions reading about other spiritual teachers to learn multiple perspectives. This can include checking out the book list for starters if you haven't already. There are also other solid book lists aside from the one on this site. There are also many other online courses on a broad range of subjects. I have been wondering about alternatives to spiral dynamics. There is ego development theory, but I wonder if there are other solid models which strongly differ from the models Leo provides. I don't know about a third or fourth alternative, but I am open to that possibility. As for veganism, it is fine for you to eat like that, just don't get stuck on the idea that everybody should do it for moral reasons. One blind spot in this kind of stance is that veganism is not the healthiest for everybody. Some people are better off eating more meat because they need extra calories or have a strange disease that makes their gut react violently to vegetables. I understand that factory farming is brutal and there are a lot of health concerns that emerge from it, but understand that such an ideology is only a partial solution and it is idealistic to assume that it will be more than a partial solution. I'm not sure what to do about the self actualization paradigm. I still am addressing a deeper unhappiness in a my psyche. I have always been mildly depressed since I was child in that my relationship with my family constantly felt hollow and dysfunctional. A common theme is that in some form or another I am not good enough. Furthermore, life is overwhelming and I often attempt to simplify it by finding something in good at and focusing on endless analysis. A higher life calling would be something like integrating emotional mastery into public schools, but I don't know how to do it and I myself have deeper issues. I just don't want other children to suffer in the same way I did by constantly struggling with suicidal thoughts while hopelessly begging their drug addicted mothers to evict abusive boyfriends. I know a lot of powerful teachings, but it still isn't quite enough. I am still struggling with this deep sense of unhappiness. However, I have discovered that this is a broader social issue to the point that commercials are now actively making fun of depressed people because of how normal it is to be deeply unhappy with our meaningless existence. Here is one of many examples. I mean the second one, but I posted a weird link for the first one and can't take it down.