Late Boomer

My user name says it all. I was born in '65, the last year for Baby Boomers. And I'm late to the party as usual. I've heard Leo say understanding a lot of these concepts could take years or decades, but I don't think I have decades. I’m 56 with health problems. I have changed a lot over the years, so maybe it counts. Had a major life change (quit a good state job due to fallout from Jan. 6. Escaped with conscience intact, but now what? Still unemployed in a pandemic and recession. Luckily my wife is holding us down, but I need a purpose or at least a job. Took mushrooms to help with depression. They helped and even spurred a lot of creativity. I was starting a blog and a YouTube channel. But I was on the wrong track with both. The last trip blew me out of the water. It was stronger than the others and really beautiful. But now I'm kind of adrift. It actually left me LESS motivated than the previous ones. I thought, I really don't know anything after all, do I? I have to take some things seriously that I used to scoff at. I was an atheist who used to be a Baptist. I thought I had that one nailed down, but now I'm not sure. Maybe it was all in my head, but I could swear I communicated with something that loved me. If it was God it wasn’t Yahweh, but it didn’t feel like I was talking to myself. I interpreted it as the earth. But I'm not sure. One thing I am sure of now is that the ego is not me. I was able to let it sleep and give in and it was a blessing. I had a lot of insights. A lot of it was about processing grief. For myself -- not afraid of death now -- for mankind and for nature. I decided I need to know more about what is true. I figured a path would turn up, but so far it hasn't. I've talked to some psychonauts and new agers. Not sure how much to accept. Some of their claims are hard to swallow. I'm willing to entertain a lot of new ideas, but I have to keep some skepticism. I don't trust people that easily any more - least of all me. Discovered Leo's videos at just the right moment. The one about how reality is a mass hallucination hooked me. I'm also fascinated by spiral dynamics. I've watched quite a bit of his content and a lot of it has been eye opening. There was a time when I would have dismissed it out of hand. There are some concepts, like absolute truth, being God, nonduality, etc., that I don't know if I can buy, but maybe I just don't get it. Benefit of the doubt. I'm a creative person, but I never really found my niche - or rather I thought I did, but it's now all but extinct. I was a reporter and editor for small town newspapers for 20 years. I thought it was my purpose in life. I loved it until I didn't. I was lucky to escape without becoming homeless. Did I waste my life or is there something I’m still supposed to do that only I can do? I want to move forward and find some kind of outlet, but I feel stuck. I was inspired after the big shroom trip. We were in that little window before Delta showed up. I did a few meetups, tried to make some friends, get a circle going, but it kind of fizzled and now here I am again, stuck inside and dealing with health issues. Sciatica and high blood pressure being the main ones. I'd love to trip again and see if I can get some guidance that way, but till I get the BP under control that's out. Not sure where I’m going with this, just figured this is a group of people I can talk to about things everyone else thinks are crazy. Maybe y'all can help me figure myself out.

@Arcangelo Thanks. Still not sure about all of Leo's content, but some of it made so much sense and is so little discussed, I can't dismiss any of it out of hand. Impressed by most of the discussions I've seen so far as well.

They're in pain. I would expect to find them in a place like this. At least on some level they want to be healed. Much better here than a place that will help them reinforce their insecurities and projection.

My father was one, possibly even stage Yellow - even though he was a Baptist deacon believe it or not. He was in the national guard band and was extremely physically fit. Was a dead shot with a rifle although he didn't hunt and never shot anyone. He was an intellectual who read constantly and who listened to and performed music all the time. He loved nature and was an organic gardener. He placed a high value on tolerance and was kind to people others rejected - poor people, alcoholics etc. He was an anti-racist. Whether he would fit into your definition or not, he was ahead of his time. I was lucky to have him, especially here in the conservative South.

The bastards that destroy our lives Are sometimes just ourselves But mostly they're invisible I hope they fry in hell - Robyn Hitchcock

Bingo.

@roopepa It looks like Texas. Main impact on me was having to leave a job for reasons of conscience. In addition I'm almost completely alienated from most of my aunts, uncles and cousins who still live in the country. I still love them, but I can't talk to them. They were good people once. Mom and Dad are gone. Glad they didn't live to see this. My wife and I are lucky enough to live in a somewhat progressive city, but it has a different problem - gentrification by people who call themselves liberals, but who have no social conscience. Homelessness is exploding and people have no empathy. The culture and music I came here for has mostly been priced out of the city, which is starting to have more of an LA vibe. Not so progressive any more. The vibe from state government is getting pretty ominous as you probably know from the news. When you drive through the countryside, you see a lot of Gadsen flags and Trump 2024 flags. People don't wear masks or get vaccinated in the country. When I go there I can feel the tension. Although when I think about it, most of the right wing aggression doesn't really come from the country, it comes from the more affluent conservative suburbs. Country folks are being played and will end up being scapegoated as they always have been.

@Heinrich Faust Ah, Sweden. Love you Scandinavians. Best friend is Norwegian. It's tough being a fish out of water. I have a lot of empathy for red pillers even though they're tough to reach. If I'd been born in another era I would be one, probably an alt-righter as well. I think stage green types contribute to the problem unknowingly and could do more to help. I shouldn't be such a team sport. Something that gets lost on both liberals and conservatives is the concept of a good man. I've known good men. I never wanted to be anything else. My dad was a good man. A Baptist deacon, but I swear he was stage yellow. Correcting society's unfair position toward women and LGBT people was and is necessary. But what about boys who know they're straight and want to be men? If role models in the media tell us what makes a man is violence and domination and if progressives also define men that way... Well that boy still wants to be a man. What else does he have to aim for except violence and domination? And if you start out on that road and you decide to grow, but you see people like yourself being shut down for past views, how are we going to get anywhere as a society? I'm pretty fortunate that most of my right wing BS existed way back before the Internet, but I'm old. We could all stand to be more charitable with one another.

Already shared this in another sub-forum where this was a topic starter. Might be helpful to somebody... It might be helpful to elaborate on my perspective. Correct me if I get my spiral dynamics confused, but I think I have the gist.... I only just discovered Carl Jung and how the ego mind is separate from the rest of the mind. I only just discovered what the shadow is, how it affects your life and what you can do about it. If I had discovered Jung in my 20s or 30s it would have changed everything, but I have no complaints. I think my path made me into who I was supposed to be at this moment. I was an incel before the term was coined. I literally never got laid till I was 47. I'm 56 now. I grew up in a very stage blue environment. Small towns in the rural South. Fundamentalist Christian. My parents were very much in love and did it the traditional way. Very good parents, but they couldn't control for all events. I experienced some sexual trauma when I was a young child and I was bullied in junior high, including by girls I was attracted to. I was also arty and bookish in a very anti-intellectual community. I became very introverted and built up a pretty strong shell. (On the upside, I learned not to care if anyone liked me or not, which has served me well.) It didn't occur to me to blame women or society, because red pill dogma didn't exist yet, but I was lonely. I wanted sex, no idea how to get it. I understand now that events from my youth were embedded deep within my psyche and were unconsciously controlling my behavior and demeanor. AKA, my shadow. As a result I had no game. I could talk to a girl about books or school or religion or what have you, but I was terrified to get personal, even if I really wanted to. Looking back, I can think of several I could have dated if I'd had guts enough to try, but I always found excuses why they weren't "the one." Instead, I had crushes I never acted on and used porn. And went on with my life. I was lucky enough to find a career that let me use my brains, which is hard to come by in small townsville - newspaper journalism. It forced me to learn to talk to all kinds of people, learn to take criticism and develop skills and confidence. I evolved from stage blue Republican to stage orange libertarian Republican, but for dating I still had stage blue attitudes - monogamy, preferably the girl would be a virgin (so I wouldn't be judged if I couldn't perform), double standard for myself if I happened to get laid by some miracle. Again, I can think of plenty of missed opportunities. Any excuse not to try. I wanted what Mom and Dad had. As a result, any time I went on a date, I put pressure on myself - "this has to be the one" - which made for awkward dates, which I lied to myself about. It didn't get better until I finally reached the point of now or never. And became disillusioned with the right wing and evolved into stage green, which is more compatible with the type of woman I wanted - a smart woman with culture, who I could talk to and who would understand. And wound up in the orbit of a city full of women with those values. I went on enough dates until one of them clicked, and we're now married. And I guess I'm still somewhat stage blue about that because I have no desire to be with anyone else, nor does she. We're in this to the end. Again, no regrets. If I had settled down with someone earlier, I might have become stuck in a small town in a conservative culture with a hyper religious partner. When I inevitably became an atheist and progressive and whatever kind of spiritual but not religious creature I am today, I would have gotten a divorce, lost custody of any children, had an ex and in-laws that hated me. Or would have to suffer in silence and live a lie. It took me decades to get where I am now. Stage green heading into stage yellow and hopefully beyond, more in touch with my feelings and more confident for it. If you want to get there faster than I did, do the work. Study your shadow and find out what's holding you back. Have the courage to admit when you're wrong, face the things you're ashamed and afraid of in yourself. Be skeptical about your skepticism. Maybe get therapy. Read some Jung. Listen to some thinkers like Eckhart Tolle and Alan Watts. I would say try mushrooms like I did, but if you're not ready you could have a rough time of it. You have to be willing to lower your defenses. That you're here is a good sign. I haven't solved all my problems. I'm currently an old progressive without a job in a radicalizing Southern state. I have to figure out where I'm going next. I still have things in my shadow that are holding me back. That's why I'm here.

Metal was kind of my starting point. Or rather what you would now call Dad Rock - AC/DC, Judas Priest, etc. What took me to the next level was goth and postpunk. Also helped integrate those dark feelings in myself, but... there was something strange about it that made me readjust my brain. I think being expansive with your music tastes can help you grow in a lot of ways. I'm into so many genres nowadays.

@Mihael Keehl I think if you find one who's into Jung it'll be the same difference.

@zazen @Heinrich Faust It might be helpful to elaborate on my perspective. Correct me if I get my spiral dynamics confused, but I think I have the gist.... I only just discovered Carl Jung and how the ego mind is separate from the rest of the mind. I only just discovered what the shadow is, how it affects your life and what you can do about it. If I had discovered Jung in my 20s or 30s it would have changed everything, but I have no complaints. I think my path made me into who I was supposed to be at this moment. I was an incel before the term was coined. I literally never got laid till I was 47. I'm 56 now. I grew up in a very stage blue environment. Small towns in the rural South. Fundamentalist Christian. My parents were very much in love and did it the traditional way. Very good parents, but they couldn't control for all events. I experienced some sexual trauma when I was a young child and I was bullied in junior high, including by girls I was attracted to. I was also arty and bookish in a very anti-intellectual community. I became very introverted and built up a pretty strong shell. (On the upside, I learned not to care if anyone liked me or not, which has served me well.) It didn't occur to me to blame women or society, because red pill dogma didn't exist yet, but I was lonely. I wanted sex, no idea how to get it. I understand now that events from my youth were embedded deep within my psyche and were unconsciously controlling my behavior and demeanor. AKA, my shadow. As a result I had no game. I could talk to a girl about books or school or religion or what have you, but I was terrified to get personal, even if I really wanted to. Looking back, I can think of several I could have dated if I'd had guts enough to try, but I always found excuses why they weren't "the one." Instead, I had crushes I never acted on and used porn. And went on with my life. I was lucky enough to find a career that let me use my brains, which is hard to come by in small townsville - newspaper journalism. It forced me to learn to talk to all kinds of people, learn to take criticism and develop skills and confidence. I evolved from stage blue Republican to stage orange libertarian Republican, but for dating I still had stage blue attitudes - monogamy, preferably the girl would be a virgin (so I wouldn't be judged if I couldn't perform), double standard for myself if I happened to get laid by some miracle. Again, I can think of plenty of missed opportunities. Any excuse not to try. I wanted what Mom and Dad had. As a result, any time I went on a date, I put pressure on myself - "this has to be the one" - which made for awkward dates, which I lied to myself about. It didn't get better until I finally reached the point of now or never. And became disillusioned with the right wing and evolved into stage green, which is more compatible with the type of woman I wanted - a smart woman with culture, who I could talk to and who would understand. And wound up in the orbit of a city full of women with those values. I went on enough dates until one of them clicked, and we're now married. And I guess I'm still somewhat stage blue about that because I have no desire to be with anyone else, nor does she. We're in this to the end. Again, no regrets. If I had settled down with someone earlier, I might have become stuck in a small town in a conservative culture with a hyper religious partner. When I inevitably became an atheist and progressive and whatever kind of spiritual but not religious creature I am today, I would have gotten a divorce, lost custody of any children, had an ex and in-laws that hated me. Or would have to suffer in silence and live a lie. It took me decades to get where I am now. Stage green heading into stage yellow and hopefully beyond, more in touch with my feelings and more confident for it. If you want to get there faster than I did, do the work. Study your shadow and find out what's holding you back. Have the courage to admit when you're wrong, face the things you're ashamed and afraid of in yourself. Be skeptical about your skepticism. Maybe get therapy. Read some Jung. Listen to some thinkers like Eckhart Tolle and Alan Watts. I would say try mushrooms like I did, but if you're not ready you could have a rough time of it. You have to be willing to lower your defenses. That you're here is a good sign. I haven't solved all my problems. I'm currently an old progressive without a job in a radicalizing Southern state. I have to figure out where I'm going next. I still have things in my shadow that are holding me back. That's why I'm here.

Those are all impressive-sounding theories, but they're still just red pill propaganda. Something to make you feel victimized when you're really just afraid to try. Red pill talk keeps you from confronting your shadow. When you don't address your shadow, you will project it on others and that will make you unattractive to women, no matter how you look physically or how much money you have. It's toxic and it'll make you toxic. If you don't deal with your insecurities you will project them on others and your personality will turn women off. This may not be describing you, but if red pill propaganda is resonating with you that's a danger sign. If you stay with it you're going to end up lonely and bitter. Coming to this forum for self-improvement and spirituality is a much healthier direction.

That's still red pill thinking. Watch where you're getting your rhetoric. Biology isn't as simple as that. Chemistry is unpredictable. The main thing is keep dating and your confidence builds naturally. You may also be surprised at who you find attractive and vice versa. I went out with 90+% matches from OK Cupid who turned me off or who were not into me. I ended up meeting my now wife from a Craigslist ad, both of us on paper were not matches physically or personality-wise, but we've been inseparable for nearly 10 years at this point. The spirit plays a role. You have to give it room to maneuver.

Lock them up as needed, but make sure your punishment doesn't make your society as evil as the criminals you're trying to punish. There are degrees of crime and levels of criminality. You don't treat a petty thief like a murderer. There are also people who get caught up in violent situations for survival reasons. Note that a lot of the gansta rappers of the '90s quit their behavior once they no longer needed to engage in it. But even supposing you have a real animal on your hands, a Ted Bundy, for example, your punishment should still be humane. If you torture them the way they did their victims, they're not going to learn anything. You're just doing it because you get off on it, the same way they did. Because the system is punishing them and you feel they deserve it, you feel justified, but that's not an excuse. There is a music video by Coil for the song Cold Cell that makes you think about the morality of inhumane punishment even for the undeniably guilty. The persona giving the convict's prayer doesn't deny guilt at all, he's totally guilty, but he's still a human. The video contains footage from a Russian youth prison. It's really sad.

My take as a sort of stage green sort of maybe yellowish trajectory: His aim seems to be to deradicalize alt-right gamers who are currently orange-regressing to red. He has their same edgy aesthetic, which is probably the only way to appeal to them. I'm not a gamer, but I know talking smack is something they respect. I at least use Reddit... I doubt he will turn many of them to stage green progressives, but if he can just hold them at orange and drag them out of their fascist trajectory. Stage green that talks like stage green can't even talk to them. I may have my spiral dynamics mixed up, but I have seen examples of people he talked out of harmful positions. Hunter Avellone for one.

We're all brutal. We are just separated from the brutality so we don't see it. Your plastic-wrapped lunch meat used to be alive. It happens where we can't see it. That farm animals are considered OK to eat, whereas animals like whales, dolphins, cats and dogs are not, is arbitrary. All humans in a civilization are guilty. Some of our shame is revealed, most of it we hide.

Can you clarify? Not sure if I agree. Are you talking about the concept of guilt based on what's against the law or if you got caught? Isn't shame the idea of being perceived as less-than based on violating social norms? Or the feeling you get if you think of or get exposed over the ugly thing you're keeping secret? I would argue that we do operate based on shame. A big part of the right wing reaction to Civil Rights activism and BLM involve repressed shame. There is also the idea of being "canceled" for violating certain norms. That's public shaming. In the South we have a sort of face culture. If you call us trash or tell someone their mother is a whore you're going to get a fight over honor. The Lost Cause myth is a reaction to shame.

I've been studying Jung lately and contemplating the concepts shadow and projection, especially when it comes to collective shadow and projection. I wonder in what ways we make easier to self-deceive and participate in terrible acts without feeling guilt. One is obviously mob mentality and diffusion of responsibility. If you feel anonymous, you're more likely to go along with violent acts, especially if the group is projecting its shadow and you're convinced the victim or victims deserve what they're getting. Lynch mobs and vigilantes will commit atrocious acts and feel justified. It seems like the only way to make someone feel bad about those acts afterward is to convince them "they got the wrong guy," which is difficult to do in any case. I'm also wondering what role technology plays. If you see it happen on a screen violence isn't as real to you as it would be if you saw it in person. Does psychology have a name for the phenomenon where you get into dangerous situations while trying to take a photo because it feels like you're a distant observer? I experienced that when I was a newspaper reporter. I sometimes got way too close trying to take pics. Although there was also the element of risk-taking for a purpose - I felt it was worth it at the time. Still sometimes I would think whoa, I shouldn't have been standing there. I'm a fan of Black Mirror, although I kinda quit watching when society got bad enough. I always get in arguments with people on the Black Mirror subreddit over the episodes involving vigilantism - especially White Bear and Shut Up and Dance. It's like a Rorschach test. Some people see the anti-vigilantism message I thought was obvious. The rest view the episodes like, "I felt bad at first, but whew. What a relief the person was guilty and got what they deserved." They think those were happy episodes where justice was served. To me it seems obvious the story is telling us, the anonymous vigilantes in Shut Up and Dance and the tourists and operators of White Bear Park are guilty in a way that mirrors what the subject of the torture did. I think the internet and social media at large are doing that to all of us. The more layers of distance they can put between you and whatever foul thing is being done, the less likely you're going to feel bad about it. If you're willing to extrapolate far enough, a dollar bill in your hand is a little piece of murder. But there are a lot of layers between you and whatever gave value to that dollar.

What does mean mean? I am journaling to contemplate different subjects as suggested by Leo's video "How to contemplate using a journal" I decided to contemplate on the word "mean" (as in what does x mean?). What does mean mean? Meaning and truth appear to be related, but not the same. Mean is a symbol that means "accurately represent a concept or an object." Can any symbol be accurate or true? Arguably no. A symbol is by definition not the thing it symbolizes. "The map is not the territory." Meaning = definition. To define something, you explain what that that something represents. Because a word is a symbol, the only definition you can get is another symbol or set of symbols. "What is the meaning of life?" is like asking "What is the meaning of 'life'?" Life is a symbol for something you know because you experience it, but you can't really say what it is. If you try to say, you have to use symbols, which are not the thing itself. Because language is dualistic and reality is non-dualistic (conditionally for me - still trying to grasp this), "what does x mean?" is a question that can't be answered with words. "Hola" is a Spanish word that means "hello" in English but what does that word mean? A greeting. But what does a greeting mean? All you can do is produce more synonyms or symbols. What about "aloha"? that means both hello and goodbye in Hawaiian. Does a wave or a nod answer the question? What if other cultures use different gestures? What if your culture uses a gesture that means "fuck you" in your culture? You have to somehow know their intention, which is internal. So meaning is a meaningless oxymoron isn't it? You can't convey truth or reality with words, you can only symbolize it. Interestingly, I decided to begin reading [[Tao Te Ching]] today and the first words were "The Tao that can be told is not the true Tao." This is my train of thought. Am I on the right track? Can we take it further?

@ZzzleepingBear Thanks for the sign post.

Can you elaborate on this a bit more? My signpost analogy works like this. It doesn't give you the meaning, it points to the meaning. If you ask someone "what does x mean?" you're going to get a synonym, a combination of other words or a word in another language. If you get several of those or exactly the right one and you understand it, you get very close. But you still have to experience it to really find out what x "means." For example, a Norwegian friend told me they have a word hygge, that doesn't have an English equivalent. It means "a mood of coziness and comfortable conviviality with feelings of wellness and contentment." They have a similar word, "kos" that means "something quiet and good going on between a select group of people." He said the English word cozy isn't the same. It gets close, but not quite. I suspect you have to be Norwegian or Scandinavian and experience the feeling to really know what it means. Germans have a word, "weltzshmertz" that means something like "world pain." Pathos is close, but not quite it. What do you mean about pointing back at a sign post? "As directly as you can" is what I was getting at. It can't actually BE the thing. It helps you figure out how to experience or really understand the thing. I'm being meta in other words. BTW, for most of my life I've had a vague feeling about what I thought of as sign posts: when events happen that tell me the path is changing and I am supposed to take another fork. I always kind of wrote it off as superstition, but it feels real. When certain key people quit a job I've held for a long time, for example. Or a traumatic event happens - like recently having to quit what I thought was a safe job due to extremist politics. Or I discover something that impacts me very strongly - like the several mushroom trips I had and some of the teachers and philosophers that resonated with me afterward, Leo and Alan Watts for example. Could mean and meaning be related to the concept of Tao?

This is good stuff. At first I was like, eh, doesn't get it. Then I realized, you DO get it. Which is kind of helping me get it. Here's my latest thinking: Mean doesn't mean anything, but mean IS something. It's a signpost pointing to something that does mean something. It could be a mile ahead or 100 miles ahead, but whatever it is, the signpost helps you get there. Mean is a metaphor. All words are metaphors. The more meta you get, the closer to the truth you get. Mean is a really powerful metaphor.

Interesting. So you think it's not there, but it's our projection? What about this idea? I think we have a feeling when we name things that we never get it exactly right. You can never describe something completely because you're using words. Meaning is that thing that feels missing from the words. Like the words don't quite cover it. What is it that the words are failing to capture? Whatever it is, that's meaning.

Good points. But I think things we're not aware of can have meaning. I think it demonstrates the limitations of language. We mistake words for what they symbolize. I think mean shows the limitations of language the way x/0 shows the limitations of math (I'm on shaky ground here. I don't know shit about math). But it brings up another angle. Do numbers "mean" things? Are they symbols for things only or do they exist independently? Like why are there "objects" like the Mandelbrot and Julia sets and why do they make these beautiful shapes that can only be discovered through lots of number crunching? Are they real? Do they mean anything?