No Self

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Everything posted by No Self

  1. Maybe things have changed since I used to watch some of his videos, but I found there to be some excellent educational content and insights into psychology. But he seemed to become quite arrogant and instead of sharing a perspective on his area of specialty, started pushing a whole philosophy rooted in fundamentalist Christianity. It's necessary to be conscious not to turn him into a cult of personality. On another topic, leftists arguing in favour of censoring all opinions except their own (while nonetheless stupidly making a lot of noise promoting their opponents via the Streisand effect) are a disgrace to politics. It would be so easy for the majority of society to get behind sensible progressive politics if it weren't for this insanity.
  2. Hitler himself had an extremely brutal step-father who beat him pretty much no matter what he did. He also experienced trauma during WWI and further pain when his artwork was rejected. He retained his vegetarianism and a highly evolved concern for animal welfare. However, the message is that sensitive people, when pushed too far by the world's insanity, can become monsters themselves. After all, the Holocaust was essentially an inhumane slaughterhouse for humans. Hitler did the right thing in restoring Germany from its state of ruin, but did not do the right thing in resorting to expansionist, vengeful policies that caused mass casualties globally. And the Holocaust, while ultimately a 'mistake', remains a low point in human history that should never be explained away. Compared to his Soviet counterpart, Hitler's genuine passion for his country and authentic belief in conspiracy theories against the Jewish population at least show he had some personal integrity. Stalin, meanwhile, enjoyed torturing and murdering his own most loyal comrades just to maintain a culture of chaotic paranoia. He left his own son to die in a concentration camp. Who could imagine a worse person? All of us benefit from the technology that Hitler pushed so heavily. You can thank him for rockets that make your satellite services work, jet-powered airplanes and more. And the aftermath of Hitler's death made Germany one of the few decently 'sane' large nations on Earth. All in all, WWI and WWII were a devastating experience for humanity and a huge number of primitive individuals, institutions and systems all played a role. Oversimplifying with scapegoating one man is not helpful. Hitler had been regarded as a clown until economic ruin hit Germany, then he became viewed as a saviour. The Western world's grievances today are pitiful by comparison, mostly to do with people's feelings being hurt by others on the internet having incompatible viewpoints. And yet, the machines of social media working to radicalise the population mean we risk seeing a resurgence of this type of non-reality-based politics led by charismatic clowns. If you have used Facebook, you will realise that there are literally millions of 'Hitlers' on the internet. The only difference is that we have not been putting them in positions of power, though we are starting to get dangerously close at times.
  3. Good: * Exposing legitimate grievance with police accountability and institutional racism Bad: everything else. * It's OK for thugs to loot * People of colour are entitled to commit violent crime and then claim victimhood * It's better to attack, rather than repair, law enforcement * Let's defund the police and let violent gangs run riot * Where's the protests when police officers are killed by criminals? * All of the above loss of commonsense causes reasonable, decent white folks to support the batshit crazy GOP out of fear of violent, leftist insanity
  4. Yes, all egos are a little bit narcissistic. Fully-fledged NPD is taken to the extreme and includes people like Jim Jones. Conflating the psychiatric condition with everyday people risks normalising/minimising deadly behaviour. And yet, failing to acknowledge this level of 'evil' as partly existing in all of us would ironically be quite narcissistic.
  5. A world of highly evolved beings - Jesuses, Ramanas, etc. - would be a world with either zero violence, or practically none.
  6. The problem would be solved via evolving humanity spiritually, away from the primal, and certainly not censorship.
  7. I have the same problem. I must have started listening to Mooji about 11 years ago. One of the best for getting to the point and avoiding irrelevant nonsense.
  8. If everything is good, the word good has no meaning whatsoever.
  9. The biggest world war since WWII was the Second Congo War (1998-2003). It was also very bad. Ultimately, nine African countries and around twenty-five armed groups became involved in the war.[8] By 2008, the war and its aftermath had caused 5.4 million deaths, principally through disease and starvation,[9] making the Second Congo War the deadliest conflict worldwide since World War II.[10] Another 2 million were displaced from their homes or sought asylum in neighboring countries.[7][11]
  10. Yes for sure. The sooner one gives up on making progress the better. One of the implications of learned helplessness theory is that you will eventually have to un-learn some of the behaviours that helped you to survive this situation, to avoid passively permitting yourself to be bullied in workplaces and so on.
  11. It seems to be a matter of integration. Some people develop immaculate 'masks' that they present to the world, while leaving the underlying self to go to the dogs. Any sort of close relationship will expose the truth at some stage. If not at the stage of discarding the mask AND the underlying self, there needs to at least be a bridge between the two.
  12. That's a good one. Similar to the familiar analogy of being in the audience.
  13. I think he meant that children reach a stage of accepting any insane bullshit that is normalised in the culture of the parents. They stop fighting back.
  14. WWII was a direct consequence of WWI, and over the longer term people will probably regard it as one continuous conflict. If the Cold War had gotten out of hand, that would have been yet another continuation so perhaps WWIII would have been appropriate. As for Trump, we have seen a certain amount of violence on the streets between the fine people on both sides. It may escalate slightly beyond that for a time, but beyond that we are going to have to get used to living our lives without constantly referencing this primitive little man.
  15. This is true. Different experiences display in front of the unchanging one.
  16. I have faced a similar predicament. Chasing financial independence means living through a period of heavy enslavement. Generally, nothing can be done about it in a practical sense. But as far as attitude goes, plenty can be changed. It has been said, "You don't see things as they are, you see things as you are." Also, life is Now. Being in a position of needing to work endlessly can be an opportunity to drop the ego. The practice involves giving regardless of receiving, and being completely surrendered and accepting in the face of the unfairness of the world in a harsh existence. And non-judgmental. Your quote above has truth to it, for example as evidenced by human treatment of the ecosystem, but ironically contains within it the ingredients for being one of those self-righteous humans yourself. Perhaps life gives us these challenges to stimulate ego dissolution.
  17. A keyword not mentioned yet is empathy. Particularly in a Western context, empathy is a counterbalancing force that enables someone to imagine another's suffering and restrain their selfish behaviour on that basis. (A spiritual master sees others as themselves, which makes for much higher levels of compassion again.) The absence of empathy can be conditioned ("Let's never think about animals in the slaughterhouse") or it can result from a genetic defect from birth. A distressed child in survival mode can also permanently lose the ability to empathise because the brain develops in a malformed way. The classic conduct disorder/antisocial personality disorder/narcissistic personality disorder scenario is a result of a regular person functioning with all empathetic faculties of the brain switched off. If such a person craves a feeling of dominance, why not just torture or kill someone? Or if they want sex, why not rape someone? The only real counterargument is fear of authorities. It opens the door to the darkest recesses of the human mind, normally hidden behind taboo, and this also explains people's morbid fascination with the phenomena.
  18. Do you still believe in yourself being the non-believer? If you wish to pull the weed out by the roots, start there.
  19. Blame games are a staple of dysfunctional politics, but there are respectable politicians around. Germany is known for its civility. It will still boil down to having a finite amount of resources and having to debate what should be prioritised.
  20. Narcissism is a strong word, and one that an actual narcissist would never use on themselves. I have experienced a similar situation. Some people will say you have to be gentle on yourself, love yourself, etc., which may or may not work. But there is another way. Hardcore spirituality is not about positive thinking or achieving normal relationships. It is about discarding all that is not true - the entire structure of the ego - to find the inner peace that you already are.
  21. There's nothing wrong with what you say, it just might not work for everyone.
  22. A Bible prophet said the same thing, albeit with slightly different phrasing. I have seen all the things that are done under the sun, and have found them all to be futile, a pursuit of the wind.15What is crooked cannot be straightened, and what is lacking cannot be counted Ecclesiastes 1:14