SwiftQuill

@NewKidOnTheBlock I do agree like 5% of what the wokie said, that sometimes it's mental gymnastics to justify experiencing pleasure and still hold the goodie goodie persona. Personally, I've dropped the "I'm such a good person" identify delusion so I don't care about it too much. @Kid A I invite you meeting a lot of vegans and see how most of them behave. I'm sure you'll enjoy being called a "r4pe promoter" and "animal torturer" and "serial murderer" and "animal h0locaust promoter" just because you dare to have ever eaten meat or drunk milk in the past. I call out self righteousness and virtue signaling when I see it. And my morals are nuanced, not black and white. Keep up with the moralizing. It's working out great. Extremely effective strategy.

I went vegetarian for 9 months. I intended on becoming a vegan. But I developed health issues because of the change in my diet. Don't let vegans gaslight you into thinking becoming a vegan is easy and if you aren't one it's because you are evil and selfish. If you plan on becoming a vegan, I recommend looking for help from a nutritionist. Making a big shift in your diet can be difficult for many people. It can force you to keep track of the amount of nutrients you're ingesting. And if you don't care about becoming a vegan, don't. Don't become one just because you "identify as a good person" or whatever virtue signaling it is. For 90% of the population, who work long hours, are stressed about paying the bills, stressed because of college, those who lack free time and energy, the mere thought of becoming a vegan is a privilege. A privilege. That being said, I do feel bad about animal suffering. And I do intend on becoming vegetarian again, but I will seek help from a nutritionist first.

They deserve the hate. They are stupid, self righteous and obnoxious.

When I was a teen I got super into reading and writing creepypastas (horror stories). It was an obsession. I wrote a few creepypastas, and they were cringeworthy af lol. Even back then I knew they were bad. But I believe that was the beginning of something interesting. Years later, I discovered my Life Purpose. My purpose is to be a fiction author. Writing fiction brings me such a deep satisfaction, it has unlocked something special in my life. I gain such a strong sense of purpose, like I'm working for Art, for the sake of Art. Even if it doesn't bring me any practical benefits yet. It's so fulfilling. I've written and (self) published 3 novels (a drama, a horror, and a crime thriller). I'm working on the 4th at the moment (dark fantasy).

This entry is going to be strange, but I suspect Matpat (The Game Theorists) is stage Yellow. It's hard to find a video which demonstrates this. Most of his videos are long and focus a lot on videogames, so it's hard to find one where he's talking and you can see his Yellow. Here's why I believe he is Yellow: He has clearly mastered stage Orange: He worked very hard building a successful career on Youtube over many years, gained a lot of popularity, has demonstrated he has a strong work ethic (working many hours a week, putting out content like crazy, managing a business with many projects and selling all sorts of products). He also takes good care of his looks and is in shape. Materially (looks + wife + business) he reached a lot of success. He is a healthy progressive: Over the years he has subtly showed he supports progressive and liberal ideas (support for LGBTQ, women's rights, the environment). Yet, I've never considered him woke. Not once have I heard of him calling someone else racist or attacking some other content creator, or even speaking about politics in a self righteous way as Destiny The Cuck does. Matpat supports ethnic and LGBTQ representation in videogames and shows and all of that stuff, but in a good, non preachy, non super aggressive way. He has also supported many charities like the Wish foundation, and from the way he conducted his business, it seemed to me like an almost stage Green way (not outrageously greedy, more focused on creating a strong gaming community and less on profiting super hard). He is multiperspectival: Matpat is an extremely intelligent man. He studied Theater Arts, but when went on to start a youtube channel that analyses videogames using History, Maths, Science, even other topics like Sociology at times, many of his videos contain a variety of topics. And it's not that he performs these analises from one perspective alone. The way he created his game theories adopted multiple perspectives at once. But really, the best way to notice this side of him is through the livestreams. In many livestreams where he played videogames, he would commentate on the game from various points of view. The artistic side of the game (the graphics), the meaning, the philosophy, even mentioning obscure theories and terms that many people don't know. One game he mentions the philosophy of nihilism and existentialism. In another game he starts talking about psychology and the concept of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. Matpat is an incredibly smart, and wise guy. I've been impressed many times not only from how many interesting facts he knows from different fields, but also from how he mixes them together while talking about a videogame. Edit: His wife Stephanie is also super smart. Also stage Yellow, for the exact same reasons. I might actually bother to edit a compilation of this stage Yellow side in Matpat and Stephanie. It's going to take a long ass time though because it's a lot of content to rewatch and piece together.

Philosophy is bullshit. The bald man is bullshit. Spirituality is bullshit. Nonduality is bullshit. This forum is bullshit. Textbooks are bullshit. If you want to know something, you must find out for yourself. Of course, if it's something practical, technical, factual, you can (and should) seek external sources. But if it's something profound, you must look inward. How does society work? How does it really work? Why do humans behave the way they do? Why is life structured like this? Why are we even alive? What's the purpose? No bullshit. No spiral dynamics bullshit. No actualized.org mental masturbating. It's possible to answer these types of questions. You must become mad. Paranoid. Ill. You must become obsessed, for a long period of time. And only look inward. See what is the logical pattern in these questions, and in your lived experiences. When you discover the truth, you also feel it. Once you discover it, it's no longer an opinion. No longer open for debate or discussion or gaslighting. Truth is true. Truth contains all other smaller, fragmented truths. You then can detect an incomplete truth. The Truth doesn't deny it, it simply contains more than the incomplete truth. And if they keep trying to sell you the incomplete truth as the Truth, well, they aren't wrong in a sense. But it's incomplete. I recommend writing down your findings. It is possible to have a strong epiphany about something and then forget it. Some things are too abstract to be applicable to day to day life. But it's also possible to not answer your question. If you aren't obsessed enough, or if you don't feel it, or if you haven't had sufficient, diverse life experiences, these truths may not be accessible. I've suffered greatly. But at least now things make perfect sense. Certain truths are nasty. Still worth chasing though. Edit: I'm using truth, insight, epiphany, interchangeably here. Edit 2: Engaging with your Life Purpose also helps experiencing insights.

Mastery by Robert Greene

In late stage feminism and late stage hypergamy I wouldn't pick this as a life purpose. That's like planting flowers in the middle of the Sahara and hoping to become a florist. Not gonna happen. Especially now that people are backlashing against Andrew Tate and "toxic masculinity" and all that shit. Literally just pick any other life purpose.

@LastThursday the thing is the IT market here in Portugal has become really competitive so I always feel pressured just to keep up. And yes they may not require every single line, but even just withing the backend development world there's a huge list of things to master (architecture, unit testing, docker, etc). I find it very stressful.

I'm new to this world but I plan on starting a side hustle in a couple of months. As for marketing, I've used LinkedIns marketing tools once and I found them very confusing. As for courses, I'm thinking of creating high quality courses on some programming languages, and other IT skills I possess. But I have to say I'm concerned. Nowadays the online course market is hyper saturated. There already is a shit ton of courses available for any topic. I do worry if I spend a lot of time making a high quality course, only to end up in the 10th+ page on Udemy (no one is going to find that shit). I'm very interested in researching this topic further though so feel free to ping me or something if you make any progress in this thread.

@Yimpa I have a giraffe as my pfp here, and on discord, and as my phone's wallpaper, and as my blog's background, and I've written a novel titled "Invisible Giraffe". Also on the topic of this forum, my next major life goal (after I complete my Master's) is to bootstrap a small business to assist in CV editing services and mock interviews and career planning. I've been doing a lot of research on the topic. Which is why this thread interested me. And your pfp is cute as well.

I'm a software engineer with 4 years of experience and I've had about a hundred interviews. The topic of job interview skills specifically in the tech industry is very very wide. You need to do a lot of research on many topics. Here is a short list of important points you should consider: How to stand out: I've figured the best way to stand out is to communicate why you want to work for that company in specific. Let me give you an example: "I am very interested in this company because it's one of the largest and most famous IT consultant companies in (your country). I've done some digging and I learned the company offers high value courses to its employees because it has a partnership with Microsoft, which is something I value a lot. I've not see many companies with a Microsoft partnership so this alone got me interested." Ideally, you would specify that you love the niche within that tech industry (tech for Finance, or tech for Healthcare, or whichever it is the business). One other method I use is compliment the project. For instance, if they ask me at the end of the interview, after presenting me the company and the potential project I'll be working for, I'll say something like "I'm very interested in this project. I've never worked on a project that involves such a variety of tech tools before. This alone I believe would be a great learning opportunity for me, to be exposed to a new software architecture and different technologies. On the topic of tech questions: This is by far the most obnoxious and hardest part in tech interviews. Bullshit IT questions - often times they will ask you questions regarding your field. In my case, it's .net Core. So the interviewer asks me about .net core libraries I've used, .net core architectures, the programming patterns, SOLID. I am a good programmer but I'm really bad at explaining concepts verbally, without even looking at code. So I suggest you look up "Programming language X interview questions" and see which are most common. Bullshit algorithm question - not super often, but once in a while they ask you an arbitrary question to test your logical reasoning skills. A question might be "How many light bulbs are there in your entire neighborhood?". There's no right or wrong, they ask you just to see if you can form a step by step method to calculate the value. Bullshit coding test - I hate this the most. Often times they will make you do a coding exercise in the worst IDE imaginable like leetcode and expect you to perform as well as if you were coding normally. For this, I recommend trying a sample set of exercises and mastering them (binary trees, reversing characters in a text, converting json to text, etc). As for O(n) complexity, to solve those, try to use dictionaries when possible. On the topic of overall interview questions: Bullshit personality questions (your biggest flaws, your biggest strengths) "Tell us about a time you screwed up in your past project and how you learned from it" (I hate this one a lot) Sallary and negotiations: So you want to study the market beforehand. See other job ads from your area, for the same role. Try to get an average value. Maybe if you can't find job ads with the sallary, look up a study - there are plenty of studies on IT roles and sallaries per location. If this is your first time in the tech field, be humble. Don't go for a high sallary yet. If you've been in the tech field for a while then THE OPPOSITE. DON'T LOWBALL YOURSELF.

I don't usually preach people on what they should or shouldn't do with their lives but I strongly advise against gambling.

@Carl-Richard I guess we just agree to disagree. I trust my own assessment of SD. You don't. I don't think it's naive at all to use models this way. It's a rough indicator of where you are.

Or, hear me out, you just read the model and ask yourself how many traits you possess from each stage. And how many values you embody from each stage. And you assess yourself according to what makes the most sense. One more thing you can do is NOT impose your assessment on someone else, like Leo does all the time here. Maybe give people the autonomy to self-assess without derailing discussions all the time by saying someone is stuck in stage orange or stage green or whatever.

@Carl-Richard I understand you insist that I've "likely" mimicked green or yellow after being exposed to the SD model I get it. That it's a concern you have about people who learn about the model. That said, I don’t feel it applies to me in this case. I’m not claiming any stage to boost my ego or self-image. I genuinely don’t care about appearing ‘Yellow’ or ‘advanced.’ I’ve simply gone through a number of internal and external transformations over the past five years that make Orange a very poor fit for where I currently am. At the same time, I’ve seen enough of Green to recognize its limitations, and I’ve moved beyond it for the most part. Not just in theory, but through lived experience. Also, I’m 27 now. The years between 20 and 30 are often some of the most foundational in a person’s life. First serious job, living independently, taking on real responsibilities, maturing emotionally, forming (and ending) relationships, rethinking values, etc. That’s been very much the case for me. So yes, I’ve changed. Not because I read SD and want to brag about being yellow. But because I’ve lived. The model just helped me make sense of that process. If knowing Spiral Dynamics makes all self-reflection invalid, then the entire model becomes useless. Just intellectual gatekeeping dressed up as theory. No one passes your purity test. I’m not here to play mental gymnastics. SD is a tool for insight, not a cult filter to discredit lived experience.

It's not about being attractive or not. It's about being accurate to the person I am today. I'm not going to pull up a maths test I did in highschool and use it as point of reference to see if I'm good at maths. Not if I took maths in college a year ago. I get you want to dismiss everything past the point of knowing the SD model. I get it. And I simply disagree that using the period from before knowing it as a good point of reference. I personally have evolved a lot in the past 5 years. As for the SD personality test bullshit: - "Are you a pluralistic thinker?" There is no such SD quiz. There are some quizzes but they're not too good in my opinion. My opinion is you just read the model, or watch Leo's videos, and see what resonates to you most. And if you insist on using the past as a point of reference, I can clearly distinguish a long period when I fit the stage orange, and a long period when I fit stage orange. And unlike Leo insists - no, I have not regressed from green to orange. The fact I've learned more things, suffered more, and introspected more, doesn't mean I've regressed. I can write a whole book on why stage orange is problematic. Not just out of theory, but out of lived experiences. Same with stage green. So in my case in particular, since I 100% don't fit into orange (way past it) and I've also exhausted green (perhaps not 100% but most of it) I would feel comfortable saying I'm yellow. By the way I don't care about competition. This attitude of "I'm going to bullshit myself into believing I'm yellow because my ego likes it" no I honestly couldn't care less. I rather be a healthy, functional, successful stage Blue, than a toxic, ideological, self righteous stage green (or above).

Coding (it has increased my productivity like you would imagine) Planning and editing my master's thesis Editing my novels Editing my blog posts Therapy/venting Analysing career goals (how the job market will be in the future) Researching small business ideas (niche, cost of investment, ability to delegate, products/services) Assessing text bias (e.g. copy pasting content from CNN or Wikipedia to see how legit vs how woke it is) Summarizing books and movies Straight up testing chatgpt's ability Comparing different ais (copilot vs woke gemini vs chatgpt)

@Carl-Richard i just beg to differ. I think if you have a decent level of self awareness you can look at the model and assess yourself relatively accurately. This is like a personality quiz. I won't pick "highly agree" on the question "I clean my room frequently". As for the suggestion of assessing yourself from before you learned of the model, I don't think that works with people like me who have learned about it years ago and in the meantime gone through transformations. My biggest criticism on this model really is people overuse it in this forum. Not everything should be analysed should this lens. Not all individuals, events, actions, groups of people should be analysed through this. It's still just a limited model.

Woke Hollywood

According to you, anyone who studies psychology loses the ability to self reflect. Because their knowledge of psychology clouds and distorts their self perception. It's an extremely reductive conclusion to arrive at. [Insert here more references to the bald man's videos as evidence to my bad conclusion]

@Lyubov you make a great point summarizing the sample of this community. But the way I see it, you don't have to be fully financially successful to be outside orange. I think it's mostly mindset. I can look back at a few years in the past (ages 18-22) when I feel I fit the definition of stage green perfectly. In fact, when I first watched Leo's video on stage green, I cried. I teared up during the part of the video where he lists the stage green values. But the past 5 years I went through a lot. I became somewhat financially successful. I also found my life purpose. I gained a lot, and I also suffered more than most people my age. I also became a lot more open minded. I used to demonize centrists and right wingers but now I can steel man them. And I discovered a serious, really dangerous side in various stage green perspectives. Stage green has a self righteousness problem. And it lacks open mindedness. I would not say I embody yellow 100%. Perhaps I'm 50/50 green/yellow. The biggest reason I consider myself yellow now is not because I've acquired more beliefs. It's because I've explored green a lot and dropped many of its lenses. The spiral dynamics model is fantastic. But I worry people misuse it a lot in this forum. Especially Leo. The act of calling any criticism directed at stage green and refer to it as "stage orange" misrepresents spiral dynamics.

I'm willing to grant actualized.org viewers are likely higher on the SD scale than average. That being said, I'd say 95% of people here are stage green. I have zero issue considering myself stage yellow, regardless of the bald man having called me stage orange multiple times. "Stage orange" is this forum's favorite enemy, equivalent to how feminists call men "misogynists" or how right wingers call others "communists". It has become a thought terminating cliché.

Like this entire forum.

Humans are garbage. Learn not to give a fuck so much. Learn to be happy on your own and not care so much about all this bullshit.