No Self

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Posts posted by No Self

  1. Posted

    4 hours ago, MrBON said:

    @No Self (forcing kids to play with dolls in kinder garden for example).

    Many good and mature responses in this thread.

    I want to respond to the above titbit because I was a professional early childhood educator. We do not push any agenda regarding gender. When there are toys to play with or costumes to wear, we allow any child to play with any toy or wear any clothes with no judgement. Sometimes boys wear dresses or whatever and we see it for what it is: nothing.

    If there is an agenda, it is to remove the idea that 'boys do this and girls do that'. Let people be themselves and the world will be a substantially less fucked up place. It is true, however, that the majority of educators are female (97% in my country) and some of them would at least subtly attempt to push a weird leftist agenda. But this is not a reflection on the industry itself.

    More importantly, the feminism you speak of is some of the worst possible poison that you could consume. Some of them have experienced severe sexual abuse and have turned to activism rather than therapy in an attempt at healing. Others were merely raised in a culture of SJW entitlement and victimhood. As Leo has pointed out, this is not a reflection of the biological process behind attraction.

    I once knew a guy who was quite short, but he had the personality of a honey badger. He once saw a girl he was attracted to in a fast food restaurant, and her basically went up and asked her out, not even caring that she was with her female friends and said she already had a boyfriend. Last I heard, the now married couple had had their 3rd child I think, and he'd done well in his career, too. 

    The point is that regardless of what bullshit discussions are on the internet, nothing is more important than having the right attitude.

  2. Posted

    4 hours ago, Talinn said:

    Believe it or not, there's people out there that are legitimately concerned about where they can go to the bathroom. 

    I believe it. Sky-high suicide rates for trans people is a statistic that speaks for itself. This is not the argument, it is the insanity of prioritising the 1% over the 99% then expecting to win elections (yes, the right does this to, but they at least pretend that their economic theories will benefit the whole).

    Issues like fair living wages, opposing corrupt lobbyist groups, safe working conditions, sustainable population growth (including immigration) and clean air affect the vast majority. A proper left-wing culture would place issues like these first.

    2 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

    They both have it, but the right-wing is 10x to 50x worse.

    Yes, the far-right is uniquely militant. No effort is made to act in good faith, as the name of the game is winning at any cost. This is partly necessary as they do represent a minority who must compensate for their numbers with sheer aggression.

    2 hours ago, Nyseto said:

    One thing that strikes me is that the left has nearly all the minority groups going for them.

    They do, but in the process they form a very divided culture. For example, the feminist groups would want a woman as president regardless of policies on the myriad of complex issues. (All things being equal, I'd support this, but it does defy commonsense in practice.) Such voters would not want to support any male candidate. Again, we have a situation where the left has divorced itself from being sensible and reasonable, being too at war with itself to be compelling to an average person.

    Those who voted for Trump in the hope of bitch-slapping the left into being sane again have a valid grievance that sadly has still not been properly recognised by the mainstream.

     

  3. Posted

    Keep in mind that the world is changing. I am noticing new meat-substitute products on the market all the time which has added heaps more variety to my diet, and future technologies like lab-grown meat is also on the way. The issues of animal cruelty and bovine methane emissions will mercifully be a thing of the past one day, but the next few decades will be a time of transition.

    Anyone who even engages with this issue on any level has my respect. Be true to yourself.

  4. Posted

    13 minutes ago, Nyseto said:

    It's like spirituality has a negative stigma because of the left.

    You're probably in a good place if right-wing conformists accuse you of being leftist and left-wing conformists accuse you of being rightist. Hopefully more individuals will awaken out of the respective mobs in the coming years so energy can go towards making a sane world, rather than attacking our own neighbours.

    Regarding your other question, the likes of Eckhart and Rupert have to my knowledge never identified as leftist. However, Eckhart has frequently dismissed society as a product of the madness of the ego, citing examples such as genocide, environmental destruction, nuclear proliferation and so on. No doubt from this perspective, much of today's politics can be dismissed as noisy mobs of unconscious people functioning in ape mode. He once quoted Shakespeare, "It is a tale. Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,. Signifying nothing."

    And my favourite political commentator is actually Bill Maher, despite (or because of) his background as an atheist. He strives to improve both sides by pointing out their respective insanity.

  5. Posted

    1 hour ago, Nyseto said:

    I'm trying to see if anyone can acknowledge right wing views as being as equally substantial as left wing views.

    I can't do that, but I can put my hand up for acknowledging right wing views as being equally as bullshit as left wing views.

    Right wing: fundamentalist Christian cultism, pseudo-economic claims about tax cuts for the rich benefitting the poor, opposing abortion and then leaving the resulting children to rot due to lack of welfare, increasing reliance on conspiracy theories to defame opponents rather than offering comprehensible policies...

    Left wing: divisive identity politics, more interested in 'transgender bathroom rights' than genuine issues affecting average people, opposition to law enforcement, looting, cancel culture, intolerance for alternative viewpoints, entitlement to unlimited handouts without a source of funding...

    If people were able to control their emotions, genuinely want positive outcomes for all, function independently to the angry/stupid mobs on both sides and engage in nuanced thinking, the result would be something workable. That would be what I would call 'high consciousness' politics.

  7. Posted

    The problem is the tendency to judge parts of ourselves as negative, then attempt to suppress them.

    Michael Stevens has pointed out that the English language has more negative words and a richer vocabulary for describing negative experiences.

    There is probably no movie on the planet which does not contain scenes of something undesirable happening.

    The majority of musical genres expresses negative emotions (blues, rap, heavy metal, some pop, etc.)

    A.E. Fischer's studies into puppies showed that the strongest bonds with trainers formed following a random mix of negative and positive interactions.

    Jordan Peterson has cited studies showing that relationships are doomed to fail if they have too many negative interactions (1 in 5 or more from memory), but also doomed to fail if it does not have enough negative interactions (1 in 12 or less from memory).

    As for women not being attracted to men who are too agreeable... you know that one already.

    It has been said: if you cannot see God in the profane and the profound, you are missing half the picture. It's OK to grab a wine.

  9. Posted

    7 hours ago, SamC said:

    There is super strong evidence actually. people who score higher on concientsciens and lower on openes are more likely to be conservative.

    For sure; indeed, it would be crazy to disagree on this point as these traits are what actually define the movement. In the case of the more hardline right-wing communities, additional traits like authoritarianism and 'social dominance orientation' are substantial.

    However, what is less clear to me is what the genetic differences are between, say, stereotypical Californian leftist or an equivalent rural conservative from South Carolina. Keep in mind that 50% of a human's DNA is the same as a banana, well over 93-98% is the same as a chimpanzee, and ethnic differences between humans are negligible; in this case there are not even any ethnic differences at all. There are enormous differences in education, exposure to diversity, cultural identity and so on. But I would argue that biology has almost nothing to do with it.

    Anecdotally, I have known many young people from right-wing societies who go through a rebellious phase of caring about the environment, expressing concern for animal rights and so on, but eventually they fall into line and wind up succumbing to their childhood conditioning. (Even the Hippie movement of the '60s is a wide-spread example of this, considering where the Boomers ended up in later decades.)

    Another factor is epigenetics. My knowledge is extremely limited, but it does seem that the experiences of the parents has an effect on genes, even if the parent never met the child. My father had a traumatic childhood and ended up with narcissistic personality disorder, and then his eldest daughter also had NPD even though she experienced no such trauma. I speculate that this is an epigenetic consequence rather than a result of early childhood socialisation.

    I also have an uncle who I didn't see for many years. When we did reunite, it turned out that we had a crazy number of common traits, developed completely independently: vegetarianism, environmentalism, love of birds, etc. In addition to obviously having similar genes, we both were shaped by trauma; the Vietnam war in his case, and an ultra-dysfunctional immediate family in mine. Perhaps genes affects how we interpret experiences.

    In conclusion, many people are indeed psychologically doomed to remain closed-off to change. At the risk of being offensive, I'd say we have to wait for more Baby Boomers to pass away before we can get serious about caring for the environment in our politics. But this is almost entirely about child-raising, culture, peer pressure and other mental shenanigans. Genetically, we are all remarkably similar.

  11. Posted

    14 hours ago, SamC said:

    If this is the case this should inform us that some people are not born to be spiral dynamics stage yellow -  for they can't be open minded enough due to their lack of openes to experience.

    Closed-mindedness is definitionally a trait of conservatism - and appropriately so. But is there any evidence that people's biology determines their political views?

    I'd start with the nature vs. nurture debate before going any further.

  12. Posted · Edited by No Self

    No news is good news. :)

    I sometimes check up on the failing New York Times as there's some quality journalism there, though be wary of the identity politics bias. You may have a local/community news source also. In my home state, The Age is sort of equivalent to NY Times. BBC can be good for international news. On YouTube, DW (German state media) is great, and do excellent documentaries also. Then there are specialist sources for topics that (IMO) should be much higher priority on mainstream news sources, ie the environment and renewable energy. 

  16. Posted

    Atheists don't necessarily claim that everything is an accident. Many make no claims of holding supreme knowledge, but merely stand in opposition to the harm and violence caused by the fairy tales of fundamentalist Abrahamic religions.

    Agnostics are being honest because truth is not knowable by the human mind.

    Discard the threats of afterlife punishment of the Abrahamic religions, as this is obviously appealing to primal fear rather than profound truth. There is still wisdom to be cherry-picked in the scriptures of these traditions.

    Leo's statement is true so long as it is interpreted correctly. When an ego thinks it is God, all hell breaks loose. When the Self is realised, eternal peace is your birthright. Be warned.

  17. Posted

    Donald Trump's remarkably successful 2016 campaign emphasised anger and negativity; the very phrase MAGA implies that America is not great - surely an outrageous statement by a leader. The fact that he won is partly a reflection on his large-scale psychological manipulation (including unmoderated misinformation campaigns on social media), partly a reflection on systemic corruption like gerrymandering, but also suggests that he was more clued-in to how 'real' people outside of Obama's forced-optimism culture were feeling. In the latter respect, yes, the campaigning was better.

  18. Posted

    Here's a thought.

    The same way that Mesopotamian has often argued that Iraq is an artificial state, perhaps the same is true of the United States to a lesser degree.

    Throughout its history, it has needed a common enemy to unite its people. In early times it was the British, (not to mention the conquered native peoples and Mexicans), then in the 20th century there was Japan/Nazi Germany, then the Soviet Union, while the 21st century seems to be pivoting away from select Muslim nations towards China.

    The implication is that without a common enemy, there could be no healthy collective ego. And the Trump era, as with the American Civil War, showed how readily the country will divide and war with itself.

    Rather than buying into the schoolyard antics of primitive geopolitics, perhaps we should unite in opposition to all human rights abuses, everywhere. The even more serious issue facing us in coming centuries is the environment, and the very notion of competing nation-states (which is obviously a man-made concept) is going to be irrelevant if we are to survive.

  19. Posted · Edited by No Self

    11 hours ago, PlasmicProjection said:

    Any questions?

    Greetings!

    I've studied NDEs for many years and Howard Storm's testimony is a famous one.

    First rule of thumb, near-death studies should not focus excessively on any single report, as there are literally thousands available and it is important to watch for common themes such as life review, the great light, ancestor/angel communications, etc.

    NDEs containing hellacious references are pretty rare, but do happen. There was a new one just recently. Researcher Kevin Williams has gone into much detail referring to an assortment of experiences, including that of Howard Storm.

    Neale Donald Walsch, in his book Home With God, has explained hell in the afterlife as a creation of the mind that is too immature to realise that it is actually manifesting its own reality. The true Self is watching the drama from a detached place.

    I don't have much to say to all the sceptics here. As @Michal__ pointed out, experiences have been verified on numerous occasions, including overhearing conversations in other rooms while 'dead', visiting other locations and more. The research fits profoundly with high-level spiritual teachings. And trying to dismiss NDEs to fit it into a 'consciousness is all there is, therefore there's no experience after death' or whatever is just nonsense. Do research.

    In a very practical sense, there are numerous reports that a 'deceased' individual (obviously no one actually dies, only the body) in a distressing situation usually receives help if calling out to Jesus or God. It's happened many times. But be warned, this point is often used by fundamentalist Christian propaganda to prove that they have the one true religion, which is yet more bullshit to be wary of.

    Also in a practical sense, it is advisable to treat others as you would want to be treated. What we do to others, we do to ourselves, and ultimately experience from their point of view. But I'm going to leave it there before this turns into a mammoth post. 

  21. Posted

    Neale Donald Walsch once critiqued the word 'love', pointing out that we might say we 'love' banana splits, or might 'love' the people closest to us, even though there is an enormous qualitative difference between the two.

    Perhaps the word consciousness carries a similar flaw. From the perspective of Ramana, the is only one consciousness and all the rest involves people taking the unreal to be real. And yet the points made by others here are true from within the relative perspective also.

  24. Posted

    13 hours ago, RoerAmit said:

    Yes, I do read these books, I am struggling the most with this inner feeling of being not ok and unloved. How do I change it? what am I lacking?  

    The mind is a snake oil salesman. It starts with the not-OK feeling and then tries to sell you all sorts of false stories about yourself. Ultimately it is an energetic entity trying to grow.

    Without the identification with the mind, you will not be buying into it so much. You take all practical action that you need to with your life, but are detached from the mind's drama. Eckhart Tolle's work covers this topic in much more detail. Hope this helps.