trenton

In this thread, I am not asking for an answer. Instead, I am asking for clarity on what exactly I am being asked to answer. next i am looking for how inquiry should even be done to approach this kind of question. The question I am exploring is "what is the nature of anything." I am genuinely stumped on how to even approach this kind of question. The question seems extremely loaded and tricky to even try to answer. The reason I was drawn to this question is because I have done a lot of intellectual work which was ultimately in service to self-love through self-knowledge and self-understanding. In my case, it was a wounded child who felt unlovable. I used various psychological frameworks to explore the inner world. This included perpetrator psychology and developing empathy for people who cause severe harm. This empathy I applied to extreme devilry ultimately applied back to myself. It became the tool for self-love that allowed me to feel again. My feelings were previously shut down completely because love was believed to be wrong or dangerous due to being associated with my parents who hurt me. However, I questioned these frameworks deeply enough, and I noticed that there are clear limits to the psychological frameworks as well as the sociological frameworks I have been heavily exploring. Yes, they are useful and highlight certain truths, but they have limits. For example, empathy is one form of love, but then in spirituality there is now claims of metaphysical love through unity of being. This is when Leo might say things like "you are ontologically identical with a sex trafficker." What throws me off is that this does not seem to logically follow empathy. Empathy is like one approach to love by understanding someone as a human being. Leo's claim is fundamentally different in that it is about the metaphysical nature of the perpetrator and the self. From the metaphysical perspective, morality becomes irrelevant because the nature of anything at a fundamental level would be such that the surface level content could literally be anything. It could be a rock, a tree, a bird, or Ted Bundy. Leo appears to claim "I am (blank)" could be filled in with literally anything and it would not make a difference. The reason I seem to hit a wall at this point is because metaphysical unity does not logically follow empathy even if they don't contradict each other. they seem to be two different flavors of love within different domains. In the case of psychology, there are various metaphysical assumptions that don't compute with Leo's claims. For example, psychology is fundamentally the study of humans. It assumes that we are separate beings with distinct minds. Given this assumption, it would never occur to someone to ask "what if I am ontologically identical to SpongeBob?" This all raises the question, what if the reason I struggle to love myself is because I fundamentally have a wrong or limited concept as to what the nature of love even is? If it is true that metaphysical love is possible, then what if this would give me a completely different approach to self-love, which is the fundamental reason why I was drawn to philosophy and intellectual work in the first place. Ultimately, me trying to understand metaphysical love is the logical trajectory of the child trying to love himself, but I also have done at least a little bit of metaphysical inquiry which has deconstructed this identity. First of all, if it is the case that the content of existence is irrelevant in terms of the nature of love, then it suggests that I can simplify the process of love. Previously, I used complex psychological frameworks in order to make empathy for serial killers possible by studying criminology and discovering counter intuitive findings. However, these frameworks are loaded with filters like self vs. other, other mind theory, morality, humanistic approaches, and so on. All of these filters can still ultimately grasp a flavor of love, but it is also possible to go straight to love without all of these filters designed to make empathy for serial killers possible. Of course, all the love I applied to these people ultimately applies to myself as well, but it still operates within materialism and dualism. When I started doing some metaphysical inquiry, I noticed how I started to trigger a sense of being threatened due to the sense of destabilization. I noticed how when I started looking through the lens of different metaphysical frameworks such as solipsism, it radically changed my relationship with reality in that I would now see other human beings as though they were me, but just another aspect of my own mind which appears to be philosophically sound. This has all kinds of implications in terms of how worldviews are organized. Of course, there are so many questions here that I am not even close to having a clear answer, but my tentative answer which I quickly came to was metaphysical relativism. The idea is that it is possible to see reality through multiple lenses of metaphysical presuppositions which in turn changes ones relationship with self and reality. From this standpoint, there is not an obviously objective one answer to which metaphysical presuppositions are correct, but at least it is a start which recognizes how reality, self, and the relationship to other is constructed at least partly by imagination. I also noticed that in doing this inquiry, my experience and my awareness were being directed based on past ideas I heard. The questions asked seem to direct how experience is felt. This is why the problem with metaphysical inquiry is that this particular domain appears to be especially susceptible to the power of suggestion and conformity. Imagine for a moment, that Leo never told you that you were God. If you are here doing serious self reflection, then do you think that your inquiry would have been directed toward something like "I am nothing" instead or maybe "I am pure consciousness." The fact that so many people here say the idea that they are God seems like it should be impossible if not for Leo suggesting such a thing in the fist place. This is why part of the problem of doing metaphysical inquiry for me is that I first have to ask "how does it even occur to someone to ask these kinds of questions?" Imagine, that you just walk through your normal life until one day a kid at school says "Hey, I was wondering if the nature of consciousness is such that it constructs all of existence through infinite imagination. Is this the fundamental nature of God and reality?" Why would anybody even ask something like this? On top of that, the inquiry itself is already biased by the idea that I could be God. Why would it occur to me to ask "what if I am not a human?" I never would have thought of this sort of thing without a random encounter with actualized.org. How do I do metaphysical inquiry if the questions themselves appear to shape experience through suggestion? I notice that my awareness is then able to see from the perspective of the multiple possible questions as though they were true in terms of the nature of my awareness. This is also consistent with my psychological studies in that it was found that suggestion and group conformity literally changes a person's perception of reality. This applies not only to moral domains such as gang dynamics leading a person to engaging in sexual harassment for the approval of his peers, but also to the perception of beauty, physicality, and literal length of line which appears longer or shorter based on suggestion. This would also be consistent with reality being a hallucination being dreamed, which is implicated in neuroscience despite the metaphysical assumptions baked into it. All of this said, in terms of the question of metaphysical love, it opens up a completely different possibility in terms of what love could even mean. It seems to correspond to my childhood assumptions about love in some ways such as love being impossible without truth because my true nature would be lost and I would therefore love an illusion. Ultimately, my entire intellectual project of worldview building is and always was me attempting to love myself through self-understanding. If there is an absolute truth in metaphysics, then that would have implications for self-love in terms of what my relationship to love would be. The difference is that Leo appears to have been operating from genuine metaphysical curiosity from the beginning. In my case, it was trauma based intellectual work attempting to understand reality in service to self-love when I felt that I was unlovable. From this standpoint, my intellectual frameworks may not be designed to even answer a question like what is the nature of anything. My prerogative is heavily biased by a wounded child trying to love himself. I have also noticed that throughout my life, part of my mind was attached to religion despite conscious disbelief. In that case, religion was representing something that my mind could not let go of in terms of goodness and love and "truth." The problem is that religion has a lot of moralistic language which targets the wounded child and then creates a difficult cognitive dissonance which took me years to resolve. Open metaphysical inquiry appears to be superior to religion because it offers the same possibility of God's love without the mythology. This is also speaking to what the child was seeking without the moralistic language that confirms that he is irredeemable. Anyway, that is some of my inquiry into the nature of reality while sober without psychedelics. Apparently, when deeply focused it is easier for autistic individuals to enter deeper states of consciousness because the neurotypical mind has many automatic social filters for navigating the world which I do not have. One of the drawbacks is that the autistic mind is also prone to sensory overload which is why consciousness work can more easily feel overwhelming. There are pros and cons to applying the autistic mind to this kind of work because deconstruction can feel even more destabilizing due to sensory overload. I have already gotten accustomed to challenging deeply held assumptions in other domains such as politics and psychology. Even so, the metaphysical challenges still appear to sting me and trigger me more. It is just really hard, but I should be able to manage hard feelings given everything I have been through in my life. What do you think about the nature of metaphysical inquiry and how it should be done or applied? I don't need a final answer about the nature of reality, but at least we can explore the nature of inquiry about metaphysics.

Uh guys. This is getting bad. My aunt is threatening to sue me and she is actively trying to criminalize me for my disclosure while insisting that remove my account. I will need to call for legal aid. I don't think my aunt loves me anymore. She used to be a nice person to me, but not anymore. She doesn't want me living here now and she is trying to intimidate me with legal threats.

Anyway, there has been further updates. The Polaris Project confirms that my account, my document, and my story stands. What I described matches child sex trafficking even though the family claims I am being disrespectful to actual victims. I really should exit sooner rather than later. Even my aunt who is normally kind to me is clearly outraged at me and she doesn't believe me even though I said nothing about her or her mother. All of this is purely their own emotional reaction to me describing my experience with my father. They actually don't have any arguments that hold against the legal description of child sex trafficking and prostitution. They refer to these arguments as me manipulating them. I am not holding out hope of them coming around to acknowledgement. Maybe they will resent me for the rest of the foreseeable future. My Aunt made it clear that her mother was defensive about my father's involvement in drug deals. Even so she maintains that Dad was a drug addict who said and did a lot of crazy shit and illegal activities. At the same time she is very defensive about her brother sexually exploiting minors such as his own child.

One of the criticisms of red pill and incel ideology is that the misogyny sometimes drives its followers to committing acts of mass violence. Sexual frustration can fuel deep resentment leading to shootings. https://cssh.northeastern.edu/the-misogyny-fueling-americas-mass-shootings/ Is this a counter example of a criticism of these ideologies that don't apply to feminism? The other examples you gave seem solid. Of course there are sexist feminists just as there sexist men who stereotype about women in harmful ways. Maybe entitlement to another person's body leading to rape would be another counter example. Currently, I haven't thought of other counter examples, but this is the first attempt that came to mind that would challenge this perspective. What do you think?

@Leo Gura regarding the distinction between reality and hallucination itself being a hallucination, I came at this from another angle. I went with the distinction between real and imaginary itself being imaginary. How exactly do get a real distinction between these without using imagination? In that sense real is imaginary. The problem is that although this makes sense it didn't break me and cause an existential crisis. it probably means I'm not conscious of it. How would I know if I'm conscious of such things?

I currently live with my grandma. I was looking into opportunities with the Polaris project. This is an anti human trafficking agency. It values survivors willing to help others in improving support systems. I reached out to this organization because of what my father and his gang did to me with their child prostitution deals. The problem is that my father is my grandma's son. I wanted to make sure that we were on the same page in terms of the job opportunity I was reaching for. I sent in a document in which I detailed what I had witnessed along with my research into organized crime. This is related to another opportunity I hesitated to tell my family about in which I would be leading a support group for male survivors of childhood sexual abuse. The problem is that my mother doesn't believe me when I say that she psychologically and sexually crippled me because of what she did to me. I can't really tell my family about that part either. My grandma said "I don't believe you." She sounded pretty pissed. She insisted that my father didn't have an extensive criminal record nor was he involved in gangs. She refuses to even admit the drug deals happened, but I documented child prostitution in a sex trafficking gang. She told me that she that I loved my father and was friends with him, but apparently not. I told her it was mixed because I was dealing with hard feelings like these for a long time. She doesn't seem to understand that it is possible for a child to love a father who did this to them. She definitely wouldn't grasp that it is possible for a father to traffic his children out of twisted sense of love. The problem is that she wants to be emotionally supportive due to my depression, but it is clearly dangerous to express the feelings I struggle with and to describe the experiences I had. I am pretty much on my own in terms of emotional support as family can't handle this information. Apparently most people can not comprehend parental sex offenders who target their own children. I can because I studied this, but others cannot. I'm not sure what better I could have done other than staying silent and suffering invisibly. There is nobody to look to who would be willing to help me with this. I probably gave more truth than she could handle, but in this case the truth is just that bad and there is no light version. I mean what else am I supposed to do? I don't mean to have suicidal depression, but the reasons for such feelings are unacceptable to others. I guess I should have kept her in the dark on this.

I think I get the message. I have been seeing a lot of pretty dumb responses on this forum. This forum is probably full of stupid people too. In that sense it is no use to ask a human forum for help on navigating stupidity because said forum will give me the responses of stupid people. I'm basically on my own for this issue.

In this case, the point behind the label stupid is that I am borrowing the framework from Leo's blog posts. I don't know if you saw those videos or not. I'm not getting anything special out of that label and there are other possible frameworks. I'm completely aware of the domain specific part. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCyd_tpumcBXyhL_8cMRYJyg

@Lila9 in terms of someone significantly more intelligent than me, the closest model I found would be the third tier of integral theory in the Religion of Tomorrow by Ken Wilber. The third tier was very difficult for me to comprehend and a lot of the mazes of words in this book blurred together into something I couldn't understand. Basically, Leo teaches spiral dynamics up to stage Turquoise. However there are four stages after this one. They describe very abstract cognitive conflicts which I struggle to comprehend the meaning of. Beyond turquoise there are stages like indigo, Violet, ultra Violet, and the white super mind. In the case of autism, it closely mirrors stage yellow cognition in that it is hyper systemetizing and involves a lot of connections that the neurotypical might miss, but it has various drawbacks such as being indifferent social games and might come off as cold. The stages beyond yellow and turquoise completely transcend systemetizing. It creates a different realm of development that is only grasped through enlightenment and non dual states of consciousness after which the developmental trajectory continues beyond turquoise. Of course, I don't see this as stupid because I don't understand it. Instead it looks like a rough of map of where I stand in terms of my development. It also reveals how little systemetizing can actually reveal about the nature of reality if there is a completely different level beyond that which I struggle to comprehend. If I apply this standard to lower levels of development with this kind of model, then the lower levels probably wouldn't grasp systemetizing as I don't grasp the stage white super mind which is apparently very god-like. Applying this pattern, then I am probably required to communicate in terms of morals, pragmatism, and empathy for most people I encounter. In my case my IQ is above average with a score of 130. Given enough time, focus, and attention there are plenty of things I might not understand now, but I can eventually figure it out. Currently, the only other thing I found that I struggle to comprehend would be quantum mechanics. The problem is that I learned a lot of logical principles which do not apply on other scales. I'm not sure what things I struggle to comprehend beyond these things. Of course it doesn't mean it's stupid.

Talking about shared interests is much easier for me. One of the problems I encounter is that most people are not interested in deeper understanding or lengthy research. It becomes a mismatch in terms of my interests and what is available to me. In the case of the stupidity framing, I was borrowing from the framing in the videos in the blog. I don't know if you watched those videos or not. There are other frames that can be used like communication styles, spiral dynamics in terms of cognitive development, or maybe something else. Autism is a relevant frame because people with autism often don't follow social cues that are intuitive to neurotypicals and are instead blunt or literal in many cases. Apparently, there has been enough research on this issue done to know that it is unreliable to try to teach people with autism to communicate like neurotypicals. Instead it is more reliable to teach neurotypicals how to communicate with people who have autism. In my case, autism support is unavailable and I must instead design my own methods of communication knowing that simply saying things as they are will be seen as a sign of bad faith. In terms of my choice to largely avoid talking to people, it was a conscious choice. Part of the problem was that I was afraid of being sexually violated again. This is why it is especially difficult to talk in dating contexts which is harder with autism but compounded by the fear of violation. The reason I want to talk to people at all is because I am alone and suffering in silence. Connection and warmth is possible, but safety is a necessary prerequisite and it is much easier to connect from within safer domains such as mutual interests. My interests have been broadened partially by necessity. The advantage is that if I have broader interests then it also gives me more methods of connection depending on which interests are being discussed. That would be the easy part. The harder part is when I start integrating multiple fields of studies to map out a complex picture that defies any simple narrative. The other hard part is communicating in terms of feelings as it makes assumptions about people with autism that don't apply even if it applies to neurotypicals. Of course I don't mean stupid in a way of meaning such people should be held with contempt. A simple counterexample might be someone who is severely disabled. In terms of their capacity for learning, it would make sense to say they are stupid, not by character fault but by circumstances beyond their control. Stupid people don't necessarily deserve contempt. This needs to be clarified in terms of the framing used.

In my case, I have done plenty of inner work. Inner work can become it's own distraction. In fact it might even be used to gaslight me by misrepresenting me in a variety of ways. All that needs to be done is to project a script onto me that doesn't apply while obscuring any relevant factors or complexity. Then it is easy to make me look unreasonable no matter what I say. In my case I am struggling with people who are close minded or who refuse to learn. Let's start with, how would you manage a Trump supporter if they had a racist rant? Surely some people are dumber than others if some are less willing to educate themselves.

I would be interested in learning this perspective. I am aware that there are different perspectives that highlight my blindspots. These perspectives might lead me to a more complete understanding of reality. Of course, I know there are assumptions baked into everything I just wrote, but I do enjoy improving my broader understanding of life. The problem is that in my case, I don't have people pointing out flaws in my perspective or my worldview at all. Instead I have people who seem to be resistant to academic perspectives or academic sounding language. They might even be anti-intellectual such that they dismiss the perspective entirely without engaging with it at all while overlooking all of its implications in terms of how it applies to the present situation. Oftentimes they show signs of preferring relational communication with an emphasis on feelings. In my case I have autism which both leads to difficulty identifying emotions and to complex mixed feelings which I believe I described perfectly, but only some managed to comprehend it. Additionally, I often deal with people who use motivated reasoning to project ill faith where there is none. This is used to misrepresent what I say, such that in some situations there is no such thing as a correct method of communication.

Leo recently posted on his blog two videos about the nature of stupidity. Most people cannot be reasoned with because it is more efficient for them to just take in information and not question it. I oftentimes have difficulty communicating with people no matter how transparent I try to be. Sometimes the truth is threatening to them, and I therefore may need to be content with giving simplified lies that are true enough to be useful. I have a few principles in mind that might be refined for such communication. I believe it starts with a combination of simplicity, confidence, humor, agreeableness, emotionality, and possibly vague appeals to morality. This kind of reminds of what I have studied in psychopaths. They often appear charming and likeable even if what they say doesn't hold under logical scrutiny. So long as you say it with confidence and charisma, that is enough for most people to believe in your character even if you are a serial killer. The psychopath thinks people deserve it for being stupid. Currently, I am thinking about things like calculated stupidity. The point is that in human affairs, people find it funny when you act as stupid as you can get away with. This sometimes rises to the level of sexual assault performed for peers. My calculated stupidity would have to account for the possibility of causing harm for the amusement of others as I would prefer to avoid unnecessary boundary crossing. Navigating stupid people might change depending on the domain. Politics is interesting because I normally look into with depth for the sake of understanding. I often learn a lot, but it depends on the situation in that many people prefer an ally. Therefore, I think the optimal public position might be to say that I am an independent and I don't get into political debates. I would have to debate whether or not to tell someone that I have done enough research to know that none of the simple narratives offered are enough to contain the full truth and in fact they often obscure it on either side especially when emotions are high. I'm not entirely sure how to handle stupid people in political debates. It often seems futile. The main goal seems to be virtue signaling and tribalism. I'm not entirely sure how to apply to my family. The way the operate depends on denial of reality. They also use coercive control through shouting and threatening. The one who performs enough outrage to provoke others to try to soothe them seems to be the strategy in that environment. I think I would rather just live on a college campus and finish my degree before going away forever. At least my brother is decent and more open minded. The last context has to do with institutions. I find that I have repeatedly ended up with friction against rigid institutions because I question authority and notice the flaws in their reasoning. Their reasoning objectively does not stand against various counter examples. However, the medical staff among other authority figures move to discredit my position as subjectivity along with insistence that they must follow through with spreading information the courts told them to spread even if that information doesn't hold under scrutiny. Institutional inertia stunts my creativity on various fronts and it makes it hard to find meaningful work. Essentially I'm supposed to not think and don't show any signs of innovation and then believe that hard work will lead to self advancement despite any evidence to the contrary. Therefore, I am trying to understand institutional survival more clearly. I'm trying to find in what ways can my creativity be channeled without threatening authority figures who depend on their lies not being questioned. It would be nice to have in depth conversations with people, but it is hard to find people interested in learning. What other suggestions might there be for navigating stupid people? Is it smart to act authentically smart in the presence of people who cannot receive or understand your perspective? Or are there other principles we might consider for this dilemma?

I visited the PIER recovery center and looked into some of the groups I was allowed to join. One of the groups was a parenting group in which I was hoping to learn something valuable. When I attended the group, I watched how it all played out and everybody seemed disengaged while a woman read off of a paper seemingly on autopilot. Along the way I started asking questions and she didn't seem to appreciate that. I started asking things like "what would it look like if those ideas were applied in practice, and can you give an example scenario in which to apply these principles?" She seemed to be covering something very broadly, but not very concretely. She didn't seem to have any confident answers for me. As I asked questions like these and gave example scenarios, I noticed that the other people in the room started lighting up and rethinking how they did parenting. They started questioning their past decisions and wondered if they could have done something better based on what I was describing. Some of the parents started saying that I should be the one teaching the class because they felt that they were learning a lot. One of the men started opening up. He told me that he beat the shit out of his son when he started talking back and cussing him out. However, he didn't do the same to his daughter and he just laughed at her. This turned into a discussion of gender bias in parenting in which it is common to make assumptions about a person's character based on their gender, leading to unfair treatment. I along with others recounted times in which they noticed gender bias which included when I sited court outcomes with men receiving longer sentences than women despite committing similar crimes. Therefore, gender bias is common even in the criminal justice system due to the stereotype of men being cold and deserving of harsher treatment which applies to parenting just as well in the cases we described. Sometimes I started asking questions like "what does it mean to be a good parent, and what kind of moral philosophy should we apply to different situations?" I noticed how little was actually being taught in these classes and how little it would be improving our actual parenting skills. The questions I raised seemed to actually get people to think about it, but for some reason the institution didn't like it. Eventually, I was forbidden from going to such meetings. Apparently, they are required to read on autopilot with no questions asked. I started questioning further about the outcomes of the program because judging from what I witnessed it didn't seem very promising for producing better parents. When I went into that class I was expecting something very different like a discussion of moral philosophy combined with specific scenarios to put principles into practice. The way the court document was written, it sounded like it incentivized coercive control such as getting your child to do what you want them to do without clear limits on what means could be used to do that. If spanking is still legal, then that raises further questions about what is legally considered a good parent given the psychological studies on such practices. I discovered that the anger management groups were also run by the courts. The instructor took the position that anger management problems cause involvement with the criminal justice system. I suggested a counter example, arguing that causation is reversed with criminal justice involvement causing anger. A simple example would be being falsely accused of crimes you didn't commit due to identity theft and being jailed anyway. Such situations would understandably cause anger and I have witnessed this happen. It is a typical pattern of "anger damns the innocent" which is well known in legal philosophy. Anger is commonly interpreted as proof of guilt rather than a reasonable reaction to a false accusation. Coerced plea deals might be another example in which a person's financial situation is weaponized against them to secure a conviction they can't overturn. Apparently, these courses were not designed for things like homicidal rage linked to sexual abuse, which would definitely cause criminal justice involvement as a result of extreme anger. An example might be if someone raped your daughter. I spoke with some of the managers and they seemed kind of nervous when I asked these questions. I used the logic of the courts against them when they insisted on evidence based treatment while their evidence was poor. From what I have witnessed, the evidence courts use is often faulty and their investigations heavily biased with an apparent agenda to prioritize procedure over outcome. These dynamics seem to extend to recovery classes that are run by the government with an apparent indifference to parental and emotional outcomes. Of course, I know there are a lot of problems with the justice system, and this just adds to the list of problems with the justice system. They probably sensed that I was distrusting of courts with the implicit frame being that I'm not supposed to present information that challenges authority. This also happened in the medical system in which I noticed similar dynamics when I presented evidence that psychiatrists were systematically involved in malpractice and largely ignorant of the epistemic limitations of the narrow studies they sited with prescribing medicine due to context stripping making antidepressants seem more effective than they actually are. The advertisements are extremely misleading and do not correspond to practical reality. In the case of the court system, I didn't even tell them that there were corrupt police officers involved in gang activities like drug and child sex trafficking while using corrupt police informants to frame their victims for crimes they didn't commit. Local law enforcement commonly is compromised in the event of widespread gang activity and trafficking cases because gangs often bribe police officers or use the local stations as cover for their crimes. The disturbing reality is that if you encounter a police officer, you have no way of knowing if this person is also a gang member. They might even use their badge to legitimize the murders they commit with limited consequences. This is well known in ICE especially as some of their members are former gang members, child predators, and murders who face little to no consequences for their actions. In any case, if I want to learn about parenting, I would be better off sticking to my own research and self-reflection. In the case of anger management, I might have to find another way to manage the desire to cause harm to others who have harmed me. It seems that the most effective approach is to meet the anger with warmth and compassion acknowledging that I was treated unfairly and I didn't deserve the attacks. My desire to harm others does not make me a bad person who should be ashamed of himself, but it is information linked to underlying unresolved wounds that seem to improve with connection to people who see this pain in a nonjudgmental manner. Sometimes there is a sense of warmth that breaks through even if it is brief and tied to a specific comment like "you were not a bad kid" or something similar. Edit: for clarification, I am not involved with courts presently. These voluntary programs are linked to the legal system. I don't know if my comments might create a paper trail that can be used against me due to my words being taken completely out of context and turned into something they are not.