Late Boomer

A man went to a monastery on a rainy night looking for shelter. They took him in, got him into some dry clothes and served him the most delicious plate of fish and chips. After he ate he wanted to say thanks. He found a man in the kitchen and asked, "Are you the fish frier?" And the man said "No, I'm the chip monk."

This one hit home...

@john1 I minored in history in college and I got a lot out of it. It was from a basic state university in the 80s and I believe the professors at least tried to be objective. I think you can find sources that get close, or try. I think that's the best you can do. I only recently came to the understanding that ALL history is biased, influenced by the culture of the historian. See Leo's video on the social matrix.

@Gesundheit2 good God that's a lot of propaganda.

It has more than one purpose. Escapism is an obvious one. Where it has value is its ability to foster empathy. If you continually read stories and novels from different points of view, it will limber your ego up and make you more tolerant. Especially if you read stories from people in different demographics and with characters who are very different from yourself. (Some of it has hidden agendas, though. Big science fiction fan and never understood how much libertarian propaganda some of my favorite writers were pushing. And of course literature comes with the prejudices of its time.)

@PurpleTree My prediction is our empire will collapse and somebody else will fill the power vacuum.

@Hello from Russia I think where chance plays in we were isolated from Europe so that most of the damage from the world wars happened there. What we essentially did was negotiate with Britain to take on their leadership role in the world since they were too war damaged to hang onto it.

The part about love from God when you don't deserve at about 3 hours in was a wow moment for me. It happened to me last mushroom trip. I wondered if I was crazy. I interpreted it as the earth talking to me - didn't feel like Yahweh, no gender or female if anything - but something talked to me and said I love you. I said I was sorry for what we were doing to the earth. I said how can you love us (humans) after the things we've done? It said I just do. And I wept.

@itachi uchiha did you watch that video from Leo? It's not as hard as you're making it out to be it's just scary, because you're making it that way. Your ego is making excuses to protect itself.

@itachi uchiha Stop chasing gurus and systems. Bottom line is you have to learn confidence and make an effort. I think that video is a pretty good start. All the things he said not to do are things I did. I can look back and see girls I could have had sex with and/or dated, but I sabotaged myself.

@itachi uchiha I don't think you're going to see a lot of positive reactions to red pill here. I was what you would have called an incel for a long time before and I know I would have been drawn to it at one time, but I consider it toxic. A lot of stereotypes about women and men I know to be untrue. If you follow that path it'll make you a bitter person and women won't like you.

Leo has a bunch of early videos on this topic. Here's one.

I think you're onto something. There's a black guy I listen to on Youtube who was talking about Bo Burnham's special and the existential crisis of white people who weren't very aware of systemic racism until the George Floyd incident. Your extreme takes may not have the same weight as the ones from people who were on the receiving end of police brutality, but having that veil torn away is painful. You realize you've been protected from all these things and it makes you feel bad. Your ego wants to make you the good guy - not that you're going to give away all your money and move to a poor neighborhood - but that's what the ego does, makes you the good guy. So there's a lot of virtue signaling to try to salve your conscience. Some of it is also signaling your progressive in-group. In the case mentioned above, I think it was on a dating app, so maybe it's a bit like when I told my now wife I was an atheist on our first date (she was too as it turned out. I'm not exactly one now...). I didn't really have a problem with religious people, I just didn't want to date a religious person as I had been in that culture for so long having to bite my tongue and I was exhausted. You don't go on dates so you can have arguments.

That's kind of in the category of "Could God make a stone so heavy he couldn't lift it?" I could understand wanting to. I still think we're stuck on the issue of how to define God though. If God has an individual personality like me, I can see how it would be torture to be eternal, but maybe that's not what God is, assuming there is one. I was raised Christian and so when I see Leo and other's talk about "realizing you are God" I have a hard time accepting it, but obviously they're calling God something different than what I was taught. Whether that's something you can do or not, I'm still skeptical because I haven't experienced it. Only a handful of mushroom trips under my belt - something told me it loved me in the last one, so there's that. But if God is something that I can't comprehend, I don't think I can comprehend God's motives.

Exactly. Do what you have to, but that's enough. There's an attitude I hear expressed a lot that punishment of a heinous crime should also be heinous: Rapists deserve to get raped in prison, torturers should be tortured, killers should be killed, etc. That I disagree with. If your society acts on that, it's not just doing what's necessary, it's justifying and getting off on cruelty to someone perceived as a non-human or a devil. That's probably exactly how that criminal saw his victim, so if we condone that we're projecting our shadow, we're endorsing the idea that some people are non-human or devils. Once you believe that it won't stay in the realm of criminal justice. You're now capable of doing heinous acts if the authorities won't do them for you. That's the principle of a lynch mob.

It's about complicity, going along. Have you seen Serpico? Based on a true story and one of Pacino's best roles. It explains what I mean. He's an honest cop in a corrupt precinct and gets targeted simply for not participating. Like honestly I've known cops who were wonderful people, but I knew they were working with cops who were corrupt. I know the good guys had to be aware, but they didn't do anything about it. Probably be their ass if they tried. It's a statement about the system. I agree it's a polarizing statement though. Same thing with Defund the Police. Probably doesn't do their cause any favors, but it's hard to fit Reallocate Funds to Social Services to Prevent Unnecessary Arrests on a picket sign.

I don't know if that's a good example. It's an argument you can make. If the good cops don't stop the bad ones are they good? I think of the movie Serpico. A good cop who tried and nearly got killed for it. Not that I think all cops THINK they're bastards or even that they try to be. It's the system, ego, self deception and survival. We all do it. I think of toxic green more as ganging up on a person who simply misspoke or trying to cancel someone who is clearly growing by digging up old tweets that they probably don't believe anymore. I feel like SJWs and redpillers are two sides of the same coin. They probably should be dating.

My guess is she had a pretty good date

Every time I had a major shift in my world view it hurt like a death in the family. And I was glad I did it afterward in time. I set out looking for truth no matter what, not really knowing what I was letting myself in for, so I took my lumps. But I don't think most people are brave enough.

Did I say that? Just saying if your culture's prison population is unusually large it might have something to do with your culture. You can't change some criminals, but you can change your culture.

Don't underestimate your culture's evil either.

I can answer that one. When you have a permanent underclass and don't want to admit it, you make sure they stay in ghettos which are high crime areas by definition. Then when they commit crimes or try to leave said ghetto, you find a way to put them in prison so the haves won't have to share with the have nots. They are considered excess people in your society, so you warehouse them, one way or another so you don't have to look at them and wonder why they exist.

What I'm saying is if you-'re a young man growing up in those lower stages where stage green is portrayed as the enemy, and you can't seem to make any progress, old ways look like the solution. I'm saying they can change to stage green and we should help them do so instead of condemning them for not being there yet. Who I am now is the very thing I demonized in the past, because I didn't know any better. If green doesn't do a better job marketing itself, stage red types like Steve Bannon and Donald Trump will. We need to give these guys a way out. Shaming them will only make it worse. That's exactly what I'm saying. You have two groups misinterpreting each other as the enemy when they're all just confused good guys/gals who don't know how to communicate.

Just saw this and it fascinated me. It almost mirrors what I felt when I met my wife. On paper, she wasn't who I would have picked, but I just knew.

@Knowledge Hoarder It's overfishing and acidification of the oceans that concern me most. If the oceans die it's game over for us. I'm pretty pessimistic about the human race's future. I think we're too selfish to do what it takes. I dealt with it it in my last mushroom trip by grieving, for us and for nature. My consolation is knowing how resilient life is. All it takes is a patch of life, maybe just a few microbes and the earth will be right as rain in a few million years. Without us, but nothing beats entropy forever. Something will dig our fossils up one day.