zazen

Very impressed by this guy Evan’s geopolitical analysis. He’s been correct on quite a few things. See the above post I shared a month ago and consider what’s occurring now with Trump / Bibi’s supposed divorce. The world order has undeniably shifted. Connected to this indirectly is the Pakistan-Chinese jets downing India’s French Rafael. Global military circles are shocked and studying this development that’s shaken assumed Western dominance in the Military industrial complex - https://www.reuters.com/world/india/global-militaries-study-india-pakistan-fighter-jet-battle-2025-05-08/ This was Chinas DeepSeek moment in the Military domain. With Pakistan and Turkey both flanking the Middle East and with asymmetric advantages (drones, missiles, electronic warfare, air superiority) over a legacy built conventional Western military - the Middle East is coming under the Asian orbit of asymmetrically stronger regional players. Hence Trump disengaging with the Houthis also. A multi million dollar cruise missile can sink a multi billion dollar naval asset like a carrier - that’s asymmetry and why $$ spent no longer means eclipsing adversaries on the battle field. We are in a new world. Asias on the rise with Middle East stabilising and hopefully on the come up also. The Wests imperialistic teeth are being extracted in the global south - by the global south. Even in Africa with Burkin Fasos Ibrahim Traore leading the charge. The last holdout is India which may be swayed to be used as a bulwark to bog down and contain China via Pakistan (current flare up). The US will opportunistically use this to overextend China so they have a chance at attempting something around Taiwan. That will also fail - I don’t think the US will even attempt it as reality seems to have slapped them across the face.

@kbone it’s a beautiful region. India is forcing Pakistans hand to now retaliate. Let’s see what happens - maybe tonight.

@Raze True, dams will take time and Pakistan has said they will strike them as it puts the entire country at existential risk. Aggressively symbolic and high risk to even entertain it. There’s usually an escalation ladder that is climbed over time but India’s obliterating it and going for the jugular it seems. @BlueOak Turbulent times indeed. Thing is, Pakistan has been both an enabler and a victim of terrorism. Its past haunts it from the days the US turned it into a jihadist bulwark against USSR. I read somewhere: Pakistan is the condom the US used to enter Afghanistan lol These groups don’t just disappear once the parties over they’ve served their purpose, they splinter. Terrorisms such a loaded term to label a country or people also. A lot of complexity involved - Pakistan has been tarnished for decades by it and misunderstood.

What’s gotten into India - they’re escalating big time as if it’s Israel striking Gaza and not a neighbouring country they have nuclear parity with. Bonkers. Suspending the Indus Water Treaty, denying neutral investigation, 9 strikes not only in the disputed territory of Kashmir but Pakistan proper - breaching their sovereignty, yesterday Israeli drones across the country, and now this. Strikes at the military HQ near the capital.

@kbone @Nivsch Psychology is downstream from biology, and both exist within the ocean of spirit or consciousness. Biology survives, only a psychology can thrive for more. Biology operates through differentiation, hierarchy, specialization. It’s not concerned with fairness, only with efficient function that ensures its survival. Psychology is where the capacity for equality emerges. Because only the mind can reflect, empathize, and develop the conscience required to aspire toward fairness. Our psychology nurtures biology to transcend its raw mechanics of survival. So equality is not a biological principle - its a psychological and spiritual one. It doesn’t grow against nature but from nature, through the flowering of consciousness. If we Just look at ours hand - our fingers are un-equal. Thats nature and biology. But with a conscience and a brain, those hands engineer equality. Your psychology nurtures biology and nature to bring about equality. Nature gives us the tools. Consciousness gives us the vision. Psychology is the bridge between the two.

@Emerald @Leo Gura You guys are talking past each other and getting tangled on the tension between freedom and equality. Leo is right that equality constrains certain freedoms. Emerald is right that those constraints are what make meaningful freedoms possible for everyone else. The libertarian maximalist position is more pro-a certain kind of freedom: which is freedom from law, rather than being free under and within law. In nature there is no equality - dignity, fairness or rights. Equality is engineered by constraining the freedoms of the jungle where might makes right. It is nurturing nature. Where there is no equality, there is only power. And often, that power is un-principled. With an engineered legal structure of government, power is somewhat centralised - hopefully with principles that render it just. That structure then checks the decentralised power of individuals who lack any principles, and would otherwise abuse that power in the wild if no laws were to exist. That is where you have a constraint of freedom in order for equality to exist, which straightens out your guys “debate”.

You lack nuance and discernment. See my comment above that adds those elements to your and Leo’s discussion of “freedom”.

@Emerald On the point of freedom, perhaps we need distinctions to clarify that not all freedoms are equal - freedoms exist in relation to one another and some require constraint, in order for more essential and fundamental freedoms to exists. What good are human rights, if a human can’t exist to enjoy them? Because we didn’t care enough about stability (safe streets) or national security (borders) ie survival. The essential human right / freedom, is to exist in the first place to experience further rights / freedoms. - Existential freedoms = essential (ones required for survival, stability, security) - Fundamental freedoms = fairness (for a just society with equality in front of the law) - Important freedoms = valuable but secondary (enhances life but isn’t crucial, like consumer choices or sub cultural / artful expression ) Existential freedoms are for life itself, fundamental freedoms are for a dignified life, important freedoms are for a lifestyle. Existential freedom enables life to exist, fundamental freedoms creates fairness in life, important freedoms enhance life. Enabling life to exist, is the pre-condition to having other freedoms that enhance the conditions of life. The problem with leftists is that they mistake important freedoms for existential ones. Which is why when the right talks about safety and security they seem more in tune with reality - even if they layer on their flawed goofiness.

Sane people are for equality but with quality control. You can’t have Drag queens in kids classrooms rooms - might as well roll in stripper pole to teach kids about self expression. Drag isn’t an identity but a performance with sexualized elements. That’s the issue in America - everything has to be a spectacle and become idealogical. Veganism, lgbtq etc etc. They can’t just be allowed to exist organically, it must be imposed, elevated and pledged allegiance to. You can have diversity whilst having discernment. With no discernment leftists are just detached from reality.

@Emerald @Leo Gura Leo is correct that it is goofy shit. Just like the right wing has goofy shit. What strengthens a movement more: clinging to ideological purity and alienating the majority, or correcting your own side’s blind spots so it actually resonates with more people? To be honest, both parties alienate a sizable and sensible portion of the population - its just that people only get two choices and so have to pick which bag of goofy they're willing to give oxygen to for the next 4 years. The lefts framework treats every boundary or constraint on freedom as oppression. It’s allergic to tradeoffs - allergic to the idea that some freedoms must be constrained in order to protect larger freedoms - not as tyranny but as stewardship. This is why China wins bigly - because they aren't tripping over themselves playing a tango of ideology like in the West. If they even have one its just whateverworksim lol. The left demands fairer outcomes like healthcare, housing, economic justice and security - but can’t reconcile that structural authority is required to implement them. They dislike China not necessarily because of its values, which in some ways align with their policy goals - but because of its structure. They see authority and conflate it with tyranny. The lefts contradiction: they want more fairer socialist outcomes (greater freedoms), but can’t accept the systems or actions (constraints on freedom) that make those outcomes possible. Civilization doesn’t run on anarchy (total freedom) but on order (constrained freedom) which is the middle way towards the other extreme of tyranny (total constraint). That requires leadership, which requires a position of authority to steward that ship, which has hierarchy baked in as a feature and not a bug. Obviously this feature becomes a bug when those within the hierarchy dominate and crush those lower within it like bugs. Systems and hierarchies are more so neutral, except the actors within them. Those actors actions are downstream from a cultural and civilisational DNA. For example, in China, leadership isn’t seen as a mere position of power but carries the weight of the “Mandate of Heaven” a Confucian concept that frames authority as sacred stewardship rather than rulership over the people. Contrast this to the West which has a history and cultural memory of centralized power lending itself to tyranny - hence a suspicion of authority itself. Never mind the philosophic-cultural foundation of elevating individual liberty over collective harmony. English liberalism rejected the divine right of kings, the French Revolution decapitated kings, and the American Revolution rebelled against a British monarchy made up of kings and queens. The West fears authority because it remembers tyranny. The East respects authority because it remembers stewardship. Every functional system - families, corporations, governments - need authorship and stewardship. The question isn’t whether authority exists, but what kind of authority and who wields it. Conflating all authority with oppressive tyranny is the lefts blind spot - abusing authority is the rights. The macro civilisational blind spot and predicament of the West: the scale, complexity, and fragility of modern civilization require high-trust systems, capable stewardship-authority, and collective discipline. But its cultural DNA rooted in a distrust of authority, individual primacy, and perpetual critique, has no spiritual or philosophical infrastructure to support the kind of leadership its system now demands. A X thread that prompted these thoughts for me:

- Like Israel, both occupy disputed territories for over 70 years, denying people within those territories self-determination, both majority Muslim. Both refuse to honor UN resolutions (solutions). A plebiscite in Kashmir's case, an end to occupation in Israel's. - Like Israel, both engage in cross-border violence. India assassinating a Sikh activist in Canada and attempting to assassinate another in the USA, which the US foiled during Biden's term. - Like Israel, both are led by ethno-nationalist supremacist ideologies (Hindutva and Zionism) with visions of a greater pre-Islamic era of 'Akhand Bharat' and 'Ezret Israel'. Both view indigenous Muslims living there for centuries as foreign invaders with no right to be there. - Like Israel, both justify collective punishment and block neutral investigations into attacks - weaponizing guilt by association as a tool of domination and a form of domestic political currency to appease their voter base frothing at the mouth. - Like Israel, both have elevated extremists into positions of state power - not despite their extremism, but because of it. Ben Gvir was a designated terrorist. Modi was nicknamed the “Butcher of Gujarat” who presided over a pogrom killing thousands of Muslims and was barred from the US and UK for over a decade before he became politically prominent in the world's largest democracy. - Lastly, on that note, just like Israel, both love to flaunt that they are ''Democracies'' - as if your political system says anything about the elevation and evolution of your people. As if the way a nation organizes its power says anything about the way people are treated under and beyond it. Check out Sadhguru getting political in support of this “defensive” action - aligning with the Hindutva state narrative. It’s equivalent to a peace loving Eckhart Tolle cheering on a US airstrike on a Mexican cartel on Mexican soil.

What's missing in the discourse is that ''India's pressure to respond'' is valid - but it responding to Pakistan by loose association to the Pahalgam massacre is invalid. This is simply misdirected vengeance and collective punishment - similar to Israel (many parallels between the two). India is automatically attributing and projecting the massacre onto Pakistan without proof, and denying any neutral investigation into it which Pakistan has called for (similar to Israel again). This is why even the US and international community have denied blaming Pakistan and not bought the Indian narrative. India ''retaliating'' by weaponizing water flowing to Pakistan is an act of collective punishment *cough Israel* on 250 million people - that just makes it look foolish and bloodthirsty. And then attacking not only the disputed territory of Kashmir but Pakistan itself, breaching their sovereignty - is massively escalatory. Vaush said it right - if Mexican cartels launched a deadly attack in America, would Washington bomb Mexico City? Would it dam the Rio Grande and starve Mexicans of water? No. Because that would be an act of war, not justice. Another parallel is Egypt, Gaza and Israel. If Egypt may have sympathizers or smugglers aiding groups like Hamas - should Israel attack Egypt and collectively punish over a 100 million Egyptians by blocking the Nile river? Corruption, negligence, or complicity by some officials doesn’t make the entire state guilty. There’s a difference between a country harboring extremist elements - often non-state actors operating in the shadows - and a state itself conducting military aggression or terrorism across borders. Pakistan has been dealing with the run-off of the US backed Mujahideen war machine against the Soviets, fueled by Saudi Wahhabi ideology. It has no incentive for instability - to let these elements proliferate, let alone work with them to gain what? India on the other hand, along with the US, have every incentive in destabilizing Pakistan's growth and China's BRI project in Pakistan. That falls under US's larger strategy of containing China. When Chinese nationals working on BRI projects in Pakistan are killed by Balochi separatists - does China attack or starve Pakistan? When the Balochistan Liberation Army (separatists) hijacked Jaffar Express holding over 300 people hostage just over a month ago - does Pakistan attack India for loose association with that group? When a government launches military strikes or cuts off vital water supplies, that’s not a non-state actor but state policy ie an act of war. Blurring the line between shadowy actors and sovereign governments is a dangerous game. If that standard is applied universally, every country on Earth becomes a valid target.

Heating up tonight.

3 good shorts

https://x.com/whitehouse/status/1918502592335724809?s=46&t=DuLUbFRQFGpB8oo7PwRglQ How is this real..pinch me I think MAGA or Trumpism is going to discredit itself. Even an ally like Japan coming out with such a statement is significant. https://www.reuters.com/markets/asia/japans-us-treasury-holdings-among-tools-trade-talks-finance-minister-kato-says-2025-05-01/

I think a state can operate and orient at a different level (''stage'') than it's society. Especially if the political structure is designed to vet and bring the best of society to those positions of leadership and governance. That doesn’t mean the society lacks those values altogether - they simply don't dominate peoples day to day lives and are peripheral rather than central. A society recovering from poverty and a ''century of humiliation'' are naturally inclined to prioritize stability (blue) and economic opportunity (orange). Just because something isn't prioritized doesn’t mean it isn’t valued. The way Wilber speaks of the values of green is as if other societies are alien to these values. These values only ''came online'' lol. As an example, when I was visiting a friend in Vietnam and went hiking - local Vietnamese very much cared about ecology and the community affects of the Mekong River being dried up due to China using those resources. Obviously they will care more for where their next meal is coming from due to that being a more immediate demand. Green values have universal appeal because these are human values, and we are more similar than different. They just manifest differently and to a different extent in each society depending on material conditions, geography, cultural and moral foundations. Perhaps the flaw in Spiral Dynamic interpretations is in assuming Green must look a certain way - based on Western aesthetics and concerns - but every society has different histories, peculiarities and concerns. Which is why I wrote they can represent and even achieve green values (ecological/social harmony, human well being) , just not ''liberal - Western'' green values (radical relativism, identity politics, de-construction). Liberal green gets conflated with universal green. And societies lacking any liberal manifestations of green are dismissed as lacking development. A lot of Green seems to be treating the excesses of the previous value sets in the other stages. But the issue is that the green prescription the West is undergoing, uses that prescription as THE definition for green itself, and for others as well. It takes its particular green prescription for a universal green definition. The West came off the back off colonialism, racial stratification and hyper individualism from the Enlightenment. Green values manifest as identity politics, radical relativism and a polarized pluralism - a civilizational therapy session to heal those past wounds. Other countries have different wounds so will have a different therapy. How Green manifests across the world generally tracks the historic divide between the colonialists and the colonized. A lot of these countries are lumped into the term ''Global South'' and in most of these countries colonialism was suffered, not imposed, and the individual wasn't elevated to god-hood status through Enlightenment philosophy. Their healing is less about recovering from self-created internal chaos and more about restoring continuity (before being interrupted by outside forces). They want sovereignty (BRICS and de-dollarization) dignity (not to be bullied by the West), and internal coherence (which is why they don't get hard ons for Democracy). Green will show up as collective restoration, not self-fragmentation through de-constructionism. The Western manifestation of Green is largely about breaking down the systems that broke others - and that broke themselves in the process due to its excesses. The imperial core was hollowed (culturally, spiritually, economically) just as much as the imperial periphery (other nations) were destroyed and disrupted of their own trajectory. Civilizations grow forward according to the shape of their roots. Not every tree grows the same way, even under the same sun. China doesn't require identity politics when its people largely share one deep rooted identity (Han). They also don't require excessive fragmented pluralism and challenges to hierarchy and authority when they are largely cohesive and have been for 5'000 years - with much of Confucian influence making up their civilizational DNA. The West are taking the green prescription for their particular society, as THE universal definition of green, that other societies should aspire to. When those countries fail to look identical, which is highly improbable, they are thought to be behind or incapable. But if (maybe when) China surpasses the West in poverty elimination, ecological balance, technological innovation, social stability, and global influence - and does so without liberal identity politics, relativism, or the constant need to deconstruct itself - will we still say it's not “Green” or “developed”? If so, then that reveals more about our ideological biases than about China’s development. I don't think one green is better than another, they just evolve differently from different soils. Perhaps the best grass is Green on both sides - it just grows in different gardens.

@NewKidOnTheBlock True, had me thinking I’m wiser than all of ya’ll on this forum including Leo’s alien consciousness. Jokes aside, it can be dangerous if it gets certain people thinking they’re “right”. It’s like being a celebrity with yes men who solidify your delusions.

New BBC documentary from Louis Theroux . For those outside of the UK: If it disappears Hassans got it covered:

Who knows these days..

I think Spiral Dynamics can start to choke on its own framework when used too rigidly. The map is not the territory - and that territory we call life is highly complex and layered. Doesn’t Wilber present the values of each stage as if they’re locked in some historical sequence? Like we’re on a civilisational staircase. Perhaps it’s directionally correct that there are dominant paradigms (stages) but that doesn't mean exclusive access to values within those paradigms, and exclusively at certain time periods in history. For example, thinking that green values like compassion and equality didn't exist before the 1960's, or that rationality and inquiry didn't come ''online'' (as Wilber says it) till the enlightenment era. This is very western centric framing and historically myopic to non-Western civilisations that did exhibit such values before. Wilber frames these developments as “beginnings” that suddenly come online, as if they were entirely absent before certain points in time. That framing makes it seem as though development flows outwards from Europe - as if the world evolves according to the West’s timeline, with the West naturally leading the way. It presents Spiral Dynamics as if it spirals around a distinctly Western arc of history. Development seems to be more contextual and fractal, rather than universal and linear. In reality, it doesn’t seem to unfold like a baton passed down a historical relay race. Can’t it emerge in parallel pockets across different times and places? After all, it is spiral, not ladder dynamics - which means values can and do exist simultaneously, not sequentially in linear progression. This also means we don’t have to identify with any one “stage”. For example, thinking we have to hustle first in our orange phase before we care about the environment by choosing a EV over a diesel. Or thinking we can’t tap into red rage when being burgled because we fear flirting with warrior energy is toxic masculinity and will ruin that mornings turquoise meditation session. Life isn't like picking a Power Ranger colour to operate as. The problem with Spiral Dynamics trying to map entire political systems to one color - is that its treating structure as proof of consciousness level. For example, Western democracies are assumed to be Green or Yellow because they’re pluralistic, but often function in service of elite Orange capitalists. Conversely, China is dismissed as “Blue” because it has a one-party system, despite the fact that it produces outcomes aligned with Green (social up-liftment, green investment) and Yellow (systems thinking, long-term planning). Defining China’s governmental centre of gravity as blue because its centralized oversimplifies it. It can be argued that’s it’s more like a Yellow-led integration of Blue governance, done with Orange execution, to produce Green outcomes. - Confucianism provides the ethical spine (BLUE): order, hierarchy, duty, social responsibility. - Capitalism with Chinese characteristics unleashes achievement, productivity, and scientific innovation (ORANGE). - Collective well being, harmony, poverty elimination, ecological restoration and sustainable energy are clearly (GREEN) values, just not liberal Green values. Western goggled Spiral Dynamics often mistakes stylistic differences for the absence of values. Just because China doesn’t wear Green on its sleeve or wave the pride flag, doesn’t mean it’s not practicing Green. It’s largely achieving Green results despite the virtue signalling of Green rhetoric common in the West. This framing confuses progress with packaging, and mistakes Western aesthetics for higher development. If we’ve been steeped in liberal gravy like a dunkin donut our whole life, it’s natural to misread China’s use of Blue tactics as proof of a Blue ethos. But what looks like Blue isn’t always Blue in spirit - it can be Yellow in function, using Blue strategically to hold a complex system together that governs over a billion people. What looks regressive from one lens may be deeply adaptive from another. The problem is, it doesn’t look like Yellow in Western terms - it violates the Green moral aesthetic of expressive freedom and pluralism, even while achieving Green level goals like ecological balance and collective welfare.

Did Democracy ever begin the way we think and define it? Also brilliant:

Israel and the US are themselves rogue states. Which nation on earth has dropped not one but two atomic bombs on an already defeated people, and has continued to be at war around the world every day of its existence? One of these nations still exists as settler colonial apartheid state ethnically cleansing the people it occupies today. These are psychotic nations that shouldn’t have the power they do, due to the abuse of it.