Vrubel

No, I didn't. Here is a radical idea: what if stage orange people actually can have wise ideas and attitudes worth considering.

@Preety_India A forum centered around spirituality and self-actualization will naturally attract people that a green or at least higher in consciousness than most of the population. Green has it’s fair share of representation here. A conservative will whine about how conservatives are demonized here. There is nothing holy about green so people will occasionally “shit” on it. So what? Everybody has his own unique worldview, not everybody plays by your rules and some of them will trigger you. Maybe you can view this as an opportunity for self-growth. Or you can dig your heels in and double down on your worldview.

What kind of argument is that? The bulk of the world is blue so I will refuse to go beyond green. That argument is extra absurd considering that yellow is more effective in coming up with real solutions for world problems. believe me, it is much easier to save yourself than to safe the whole world. Ultimatly the two are one. Saving yourself Is saving the world. notice how attached, protective and cavalier you sound. Classic ego defense.

You just strike me as a very green person based on your talking points that are very protective of green. (There is no judgement or caricaturing here). As a debate, this topic will be very pointless indeed. And that is a legitimate point but so is mine(; It is not one or the other. My point was that being so protective of green is an indication that you have an attachment that prevents your growth up the spiral. I pointed this out but of course, you will resist and shut down the arguments that make you uncomfortable. Everybody wants to do that including me. It takes time, maturity and wisdom to grow and to let go of attachments.

You are deflecting my points because you are in denial(;

That's your confirmation bias. It's people that express orange and blue ideologies that get routinely banned here. I found that you won't get in trouble for expressing green ideologies on this forum no matter how dogmatic. Also not all criticism of green stems from demonization. Notice how protective you are of green. It's like being in green and building a wall between you and the lower stages. But of course, the key for progressing to the higher stages actually requires deep understanding and compassion for the lower stages. So tear down that wall and let your worldview be shaky and full of doubt, this is the foundation for growth. Also, a lot of stage green people see themselves as compassionate and loving angels and are royally in denial of how selfish, divisive and unloving they really are.

@commie To begin with my country is The Netherlands, so you know that's my POV. The ministers here responsible for vaccine distribution have actually admitted they blundered and that they could have been much swifter in securing the vaccins and with starting the vaccination program. We usually pride ourselves on being efficient and very competent but unfortunately not this time. The European way of organizing is in usual times quite effective but not so much in these crisis times. Mainly because we stubbornly hang on to the old ways, which make us way less flexible in crisis times when certain rules and bureaucracy need to be relaxed in order to act more effectively. In times of crises, you need assertiveness and audacity, this is sorely missing here. In the culture of my country, formal bureaucratic rules and proceeders are considered holy. This is also true for the EU, which is a highly formalized bureaucratic institution. In England, they are less formally proper in this regard. In their culture, they have this "can-do mentality" which makes them more audacious. That's why their vaccination program is having more success. I even heard that Hungary has chosen not to wait on the EU but also to order the Russian and Chinese vaccines. Whether that is wise or not, I don't know (probably not, I am afraid). But I can tell by their mentality and how they act that they are audacious and assertively proactive. This is the kind of mentality you need in a crisis. It depends on what America's approach will be, but yeah being big usually means you are more formalized and less flexible. And obviously having a large population is a huge disadvantage if you want to vaccinate your whole population. A country like Andorra can vaccinate its population in only a few days so to speak.

I was always supportive of the union but I am royally disappointed with the bureaucratic debacle in securing the vaccines. It feels to me like the EU is demonstrating that it doesn't take the survival and wellbeing of its people seriously enough. My mother has a compromised immune system so I want her vaccinated ASAP. But apparently, this won't happen before every bureaucrat in Strassbourg and Brussels gets his stack of the paperwork finished. Both of my grandparents who live in Israel already had their two injections because they live in a country that takes survival very seriously. The EU is too big and rigid to deal with such urgent survival issues effectively.

I think in my case it is a little of both, avoidance of suffering and seeking. Whenever I feel most depressed I feel most motivated to do some 5-meo. But also deep inside I always was kinda interested in existential matters. Before I knew about spirituality I extensively studied (western) philosephers thinking they had something figured out. It mostly made me cynical and nihilistic.

@Leo Gura Don't all people want to have "escapes" from their lives/hell? If they don't know about spirituality they will have something like partying, drinking, sport, gaming, or traditional religion.

@Leo Gura I think a huge part of why I got into spirituality was to escape suffering, but my life never felt like a "hell". When I was a teenager I made the commitment to myself that I will find the thing in life most worth persuing and then to pursue that thing. At the time I was very deep into being a stage orange atheist and having no clue about spirituality. So naturally, I thought that my goal in life was to get rich. But even so, I remember very vividly a moment where I intuited that there is something much better and grander than material success, something "nobody" knows about and that somehow I would get it. There was this old cliche: "I always felt that I was destined for greatness". I only didn't know what that greatness was. This intuition made me open-minded and incredibly excited when I first learned about spirituality from Actualized.org YT videos despite being deeply stage orange. I have stuck with my goals of spiritual wisdom and God-realization ever since. From the moment I learned about spirituality and that I am supposedly God, there was no way back for me. Retracting these goals simply does not compute in my brain.

Modi is definitely not a fascist.

Not extensively no, but I am somewhat familiar. He seems kinda respectable and competent especially when you compare him to those other leaders in that row.

Mine verdict is this: Trump = incompetent egomaniac Bolsonaro = incompetent egomaniac Putin = competent gangster Modi = competent conservative

@Sempiternity Leo's plugging blog is very fundamental and informative but I think the rubber band part is kinda unnecessary. From my experience, you need to put the syringe in as shallow as possible. As soon as you feel that the syringe is firmly in, you can push the plunger. Also, you can use just a few drops of vinegar and one drop of water to dissolve the 5-meo for which it isn't really necessary to be fully dissolved. And after plugging just lie down comfortably on your back and relax, I don't have problems with leakage and I don't find laying down on my stomach very comfortable. These are just my experiences if you/someone thinks otherwise I am open to that.

@Fakku Before you will go to very high dosages or other administration techniques make sure your plugging technique is correct. Hereunder is a great resource shared with me by another forum member, it helped me a lot with my technique. https://www.reddit.com/user/WeirdOneTwoThree/comments/98o55b/guide_to_per_rectal_administration_of_opiates/ Plugging is the best technique in many regards so make sure you are doing it correctly before dismissing it as ineffective.

This is a great example of how conservation and combating global warming can be highly counter-intuitive. Allan Savory is an ecologist born in Rhodesia who discovered through lots of trial and error that cattle in semi-arid regions can actually hold the key for regenerating grasslands thus allowing the land to store more carbon and serve as a rich habitat for wildlife. His method is called 'holistic planned grazing'. It's holistic because it considers and benefits all the players involved: The people, the wildlife, cattle, and the planet. Very rarely I hear of people that have such holistic solutions and a real impact on environmental change like Allan Savory has, we need more people like him. Wanna know more about his work and method, check out this video.

That's the beauty of his method, it is fully grounded in the reality on the ground. Mainly the reality of African herders who live in semi-arid regions and are mostly in the business of herding livestock. All he really does is educating these farmers with the intelligent grazing method where cattle or sheep strategically graze pieces of land ensuring grassland regeneration and combating desertification. I am not getting your point about needing more people in agriculture, this method does not require this. While it's true that holistic systems like permaculture and food forests are not scalable, Allen Savory has proved that his method works fine, even on an industrial scale (in Argentina). He already implemented his method on 15 million square hectares if I am not mistaken. First of all, you are talking here about the western world I assume, while Allan Savory is talking about places like Africa. Second, farming is not necessarily a low-status profession. Modern farming in the west has a lot of high-tech involved and usually, the profits are very decent. In Africa people farm mostly for subsistence and they care more about feeding themself than about the social status of their profession. Again his holistic method is grounded in the reality on the ground, the points here are irrelevant to what he is talking about. He already more than proved the effectivity of his concept. Of course, there are limits to his concept and it only works in specific area's given specific socio-economic factors. But then again I even heard cattle rangers in Australia embracing his method. Haha, no worries, shit all you want. Healthy discussion makes us only wiser(;

That's so true, there is this dichotomy that on the one hand America has produced or gave harbor to some of the world's most brilliant people. People who are cutting-edge artists, scientists, engineers, businessmen, or even spiritual masters. But on the other hand, the masses of people can't even point to Portugal on a map. I would like to think that it is a little better in Europe, after all, there is this image that we are sophisticated and refined. But the truth is that most people are very simple and have no interest in general knowledge.

@datamonster Thank you for taking up the tone of a decent and respectful human being. Apparently, it's a rarity these days. Never in my life did I have any problems with veganism, I also made the point that reducing meat consumption is necessary for sustainable farming. If you don't agree with me on this point and think I don't go far enough, that's fully your right and I respect that, and let's keep this discussion respectful. We will go further if we are constructive, build dialogue and appreciate that everyone comes from his own perspective. I for example have extensively studied agriculture and sustainablility, not formally but as a hobby, and I do practice in my garden on a very small scale. So mine proposed solutions partly stem from an agrarian point of view. And yes (in my original post) I do take the Brazilian farmer inconsideration. Because they are there and they are not going anywhere anytime soon. I don't like the slave-holder analogy when referring to Amazon farmers because they are not all the same. At least a part of the farmers and officials in the amazon are reasonable and receptive to more sustainable agriculture practices if given the right incentives. In my opinion is being absolutist, demonizing, and looking down on people a bad strategy for real environmental change.

Ever since I was a little child I was fascinated and cared very much for the Amazon rainforest. The Amazon is vital for world-climate, mainly because it absorbs and stores carbon thus diminishing the greenhouse effect and literally purifying the air for us to breathe. Of course, the Amazon is also the most biodiverse environment on the planet. This is priceless and precious in its self. But from a practical point of view, the many plant species in the Amazon yet unkown to us can harbor medicinal properties for curing sickness and disease. For example, the plant 'Rosy periwinkle' increased the survival rate of childhood leukemia from 10% to 90%. Deforestation is a huge problem in all the countries that contain the Amazon but in Brazil is the deforestation is extra vicious. This is because of the large scale soja and cattle meat industries and the relatively weaker social position of the Indians as opposed to Ecuador and Peru where the indigenous people have more of a voice. The deforestation of the Amazon is extra absurd when you consider that the Amazon isn't fertile at all. All of the nutrients it gets are from decomposing leaves and other organic material that the forest produces itself. So no forest means no nutrients either. Coincidently the forest produces also a good chunk of its own rain because of evaporation from the leaves. So if the deforestation continues there will eventually be a breaking point where the forest can no longer get enough rain. This is where a horror scenario can play out where the jungle will start to die back and will be replaced by a tropical savannah that holds way less biodiversity and stores way less carbon. The problem of deforestation is partly caused by the world's demand for soya and beef. So the Brazilian Amazon farmers are not solely to blame. It remains a complex issue, not the least because of the dire economic situation in Brazil. But at the same time, these large-scale farmers are not poor people so much of their expansion is from greed. I think it is necessary for western countries (and ideally all countries) to minimize their role in the economic chain that causes the deforestation. Also, they should be helping the Brazilians with new technologies that allow for a larger crop harvest on a smaller land size. There is this noticeable trend in the world of agriculture where countries that are absurdly big tend to be less creative and innovative in maximizing agriculture productivity, these are places like The US, Australia, and of course Brazil. The opposite is also true, tiny countries with a severe lack of land tend to be the most innovative and creative in maximizing productivity, these are countries like Holland and Israel. So a cross-pollination of knowledge and the development of new agriculture techniques that are more sustainable and do not require deforestation is crucial for the future of the Amazon and world climate. (Excuse my badly photoshopped map, the red shows roughly the deforestation in Brazil's southern Amazon.)

If you were honest you would have admitted to you yourself that you know nothing about me. You don't know how compassionate and wise I am. All I did was post about the Amazon deforestation and provided some down to earth solutions. I just didn't agree with your absolutist stances and now I am being demonized, projected upon and looked down upon. Very respectless. What!? romantazising the problem? You have no idea what the Amazon means to me and what I have done for it.

That's like saying never committing any crimes is a solution to get rid of prisons. True but not how reality works. You might not eat any meat but good luck convincing a critical mass of other people to do so as well. vegan missionary work is not a workable solution against the pressing issue of Amazon deforestation. The projection is strong here.

@Scholar @neutralempty I have made a post to educate, bring awareness and start a discussion about the Amazon deforestation and I didn't mention nor did I allude to veganism even once in my original post. If you want to be a vegan, fine! there are many valid reasons to be one. What seems to me to be the most absurd is that we are talking about the issue of deforestation that caused the death of billions of wild animals and plants yet all you seem to care about is aggressively defending your vegan ideology, you have literally hijacked my post to peddle your vegan ideology. Universel concern for all life..? what you are doing is the epitome of ego. It is a Don Quixote style of crusading where instead of thinking systematically about the factors currently at play in reality, you are fighting windmills. Can you imagine someone like you sitting down with a Brazilian official or farmer, feeling all superior to that disgusting meat-eater and peddling your ideology, how productive will your interaction be? Hom much impact will you have on the protection of the rainforest?

@Scholar Well, I was talking about an incentivize/Deincentivize system regarding the goal of reduced meat consumption. I don't think that eating meat is unethical or morally wrong, humanity has been eating meat for as long as they existed. There is this truth in nature that living organisms need to consume each other in order to survive. Also, I am sure that for all of your beautiful words that you have killed bugs with your car or by simply being a passenger on a train that crushes bugs as it goes along. Not to mention the plants you eat. I think it is deluded to think that fully eliminating meat consumption is some kind of a noble cause that will take humanity to the next level, it's not even achievable by any stretch of the imagination. The goal of sustainability is one that's much more practical and realistic. Of course, providing production animals with a dignified life with minimal suffering is a huge part of this goal. This is called holistic agriculture. The problem is that it is hard to implement on a large scale. In order for that to happen demand needs to be reduced. That's the thing: The is no clear established base-line nor will there ever be one. Just like animals, the plants you eat also have spirits and souls, and everything that lives wants to live, no matter the organism. Come down from your high horse of ethical superiority as a vegan.