BlueOak

Yes. Most people stay roughly in their original income bracket. People will be triggered to tell me about the exceptions. But the above sentence will still be true for a whole host of reasons: Education, starting capital or financial support, patterns, behaviors, success/losses, social peer group, expectations, general mindset, environment, how conscious someone is in regards to things like health or work ethic, etc. If you've pushed up a bit you've done well financially for all those reasons. The trouble is, you'll see the 0.000001% on social media or TV and think damn I'm not doing as well as them, and not realise everything you've gone through. This is the long way of saying you're doing well, keep at it.

Life's a balance of emotions and logic. You have your emotional fears, but you also have your emotional ties too to consider. Logically, you must ask yourself: do my life's plans work better in America or another country? Have you visited these countries? If not, that's a good first step: spend time away from tourists and get to know the locals. Every country has its pros and cons, research them, ask about them, etc. America is full of drama on its media to the point its comical if you step back from it. So definitely having some time away from the TV or screen would be a good idea before you make a major decision. Don't forget these emotions or bury them but at the same time put them in the context of your life.

Biden has lost this significantly at this point. If anything, you'll see the establishment, as in those in power, trying to even things out a bit so it isn't a complete landslide for Republicans. They need to do this for your dual party system to function which they maintain at all costs. Biden should have gone years ago. Every time I post the following elsewhere: Boomers don't like giving up control. The post gets deleted. It's true, its a generational thing I've been dealing with all my life. Its not true of everyone, but each generation has common characteristics across it, and one of the boomers' worst ones is not training leaders and successors. The healthy dynamic should have been for Biden to pass the torch but to remain the mentor. That would be a sensible, natural evolution. We have a generation that cannot do that en masse. So Gen X gave up trying in many areas, not all areas or all people obviously, they are quiet workhorses, but Gen X dealt with this stubbornness all their lives. Now people blame Gen X for giving up on certain areas. When hardly anything they did made a dent on this stubbornness. Nobody can tell me that running an 80-year-old man in one of the most difficult jobs on the planet is a sensible idea. It's ridiculous. What happened to looking after the generation after you, mentoring, being a protector, and a guide? It's just that boomers have lost the ability to mentor the subsequent generations, and thus can't accept getting old. This mentorship is how you accept the natural progression of things while remaining part of it. Father to Son. Mother to daughter in the family, and then a relatable mentorship in life generally. I've seen it across my entire family, politics, business, everything. It's sad, and what's worse is they'll just blame the shooting, they won't even get to learn the lesson at the 11th hour either now. In the wider population, people cannot accept getting old, they resist it, and that resistance plays out in different ways, such as bizarre cosmetics, geriatric pregnancies, putting off life too long (not living in the moment), and not training leaders to replace us. Some of it also comes with the disconnect in families, with people working too many hours and thus not developing the aspect of themselves that would do this naturally, plus staying in the provider roles unnaturally without passing the torch for far too long, but hey corporations and 60 hour work weeks 'yay'. *Worse not having any connection with children at all, like me, and thus never developing the aspect of myself that would seek to teach a younger generation how to be a leader, provider, and self-sufficient man. It's all related. **I also realize with the age gap increasing, trying to address this is like moving an even bigger bolder, as there are more old people stuck in the same patterns, and also more older people that need representation they can relate to, usually from other old people.

@integral For what it's worth, I am sorry you've had difficult and painful experiences in the past related to the topic. By talking about them, you can educate and help others find balance. I hope your sister is healed and well.

Maybe its my flaw that I don't accept that at face value, and that I want to integrate or understand all perspectives, it's something to consider.

Well, let's break it down. You don't want an evidence-based conversation. You don't want a non-evidence experiential conversation. (if it doesn't align with you) You want to just make your point and have people agree with you when they don't. How can I address the point when the two methods of doing so you don't want to see? I know I am being hard on you and a part of me feels sorry about it, but if someone doesn't bluntly say this to you, you'll never see it.

My way of making sense of the world is to take the information I've been given and then fact-check it. If it holds up, I reconsider my position. I look for the best I can find and then cross reference. Then I try to bring in as many factors as possible to form a well rounded conclusion. I do use personal experiential experience as well but only as a starting point to learn more. If you are unwilling to indulge that or our ways of dealing with information are incompatible I understand.

Really blunt and narrow then: Thread about the identity of vegans -> Don't want to talk about veganism. Result: ?????? More broadly; You don't want to talk about X, Y related to it, just the definition you've given, in the way you've made it. Result: Life never works that way. *BTW you already have leveled up as you called it, you don't want to talk about identity anymore, because arguing identity is like kicking yourself over and over in the shins. It's painful, you don't get very far and you often fall over. Trying to lighten the mood, you can always call me out on my need/love to debate :D.

Come on this has to show you that you have an issue to work on internally? How do I reply: No you? Anyway, it's been a pleasure going back and forth, take care of yourself, and don't take identity too seriously or how it's structured, it'll be easier in life.

Everything I just typed came from working with nutritionists, therapists, and other professionals for 10 years, and then living as a vegan for 13. In that time, I was required to learn a certain amount of information I passed on to patients, both to recommend products and to give suggestions to put them in contact with the correct specialist for them. You'll get more from nutritionists, professionals, or therapists in these fields who taught me, and less from a member of the public. The information I gave is systemic to the body and its behaviors and has holistic qualities in an attempt to align them. It certainly has an emotional and behavioral component (green), but I've touched on the psychological, the biological, and the collective interpretations, we brought the bible and dictionary in for example. I've drawn associations between these things heavily linking identity and diet. I hinted at cultural, social, and financial components. I haven't explored every aspect in depth, 1) because your responses are quite short, and 2) because the thrust of your thread was directed at identity. If you want a better thread, take your own advice and bring more than a surface-level analysis yourself in your responses. Put the time in and give me more to work with, it's not a one-sided thing. I generally reflect who I am speaking to because those are the parts of me that are engaged. Let's say for arguments sake I was completely orange in my approach, or blue. If you cannot talk to these aspects of yourself, that's a failing inside you. Do you understand that? For example in your analysis, the poster who brought up the bible, someone could kneejerk and say that is a blue response, but you can take the bible all the way to turquoise if that part of you is developed enough. What you are saying is: I see something I consider green in myself and I cannot talk to, elevate it or I reject it. This aspect of me is something I am resistant to. If you were truly more conscious than this aspect I am showing you (whatever that means to your valueset), you would be able to not only be able to contain the reply I am giving you but elevate it. It would not provoke any negativity in you because you'd realise you were creating resistance to something.

I've been a vegan for 13 years now. Yes when you stop eating something, there is a detox period. If you see people go vegan or vegetarian, it's quite common. For many reasons: You have cravings, and you can develop physical symptoms associated with them, but usually, they are mental in nature. When we eat anything, we change our body chemistry and our mood. This applies to any food, and you have a lack of body awareness if you are unable to experience this. I'll give you an easy one coffee. Too easy, okay, some middle ground, sugar. Maybe too obvious still, bread. Bread is very filling and often used as a quick snack or comfort food, removing it from your diet is often noticeable both in how you have to approach meals (more time) and also in the comfortable feeling of being full which people use to mask emotions, without the bread they have to experience the emotion. When you remove anything from your diet there is also a distinctly physical component. Detoxes can happen when you drop any major food group and certainly heavy foods from your diet. In the bread example, you may notice your tongue is less white, and you may notice how your throat feels (also that suddenly you are losing weight!). Meat is an extremely heavy and dense food, going without it for a time allows your organs to cleanse and recover. A complete week-long detox every six months from all food is a good idea, and if you are not doing it (which from your words I can assume) you are not allowing your body to recuperate and are always in a state of digestion or actively using the organs in your body, which builds up toxins and things you need to eliminate over time. It also tires them out. This is why fasting, even historically, was so helpful, but it was less needed in times gone by because people didn't have all their trash in their food, and they didn't have as much food to process either. Being hungry and going without something was a more normal state of affairs. These days, people are overfed, their organs are in use when they should be resting, eating late at night, eating poorly, and never having a break. I'm going to reflect your judgment equally and say you know so little about this topic that advising people on it is a very bad idea. *If anyone follows the week detox advice every six months, do something that feels reasonable. if it's a vegetable detox, a salad maybe, water, or just a few days even that is beneficial, slow, and steady. This is one very direct way to experience physical, mental, and sometimes social, financial, or cultural associations and reactions to food.

Nowhere in that post you quoted will you find I said anyone, let alone all people, should go vegan. You invented that as a projection of your general anti-veganism bias. People are incapable of having a vegan diet on mass, they don't take care of themselves enough. If you surmised me telling people what to eat from other posts I've made here, they were done directly to show you how telling people what diet to have or what identity to have generates resistance, and not to be surprised when you see it. Talking generally here, not about veganism: Changing your diet is not dangerous; people do it all the time. Putting fear into people for trying to make healthy choices is unwarranted. Healthy choices require you to pay attention to your body and focus on it, if you are not doing that they are not healthy choices. Then you talk about veganism being unhealthy again. It's vitamins, minerals, and proteins. If you are getting them you are getting them, if you are not you are not. It's honestly not rocket science. *I'll add personally I had a detox period coming off of meat also, and have heard its not uncommon. I was a heavy steak eater, and I enjoyed a lot of meat, but I got through it and my stomach adjusted over time; just as I did picking new foods that I appreciated, I dropped soya very quickly as an example, and consider that junk food. I've had similar detoxs in the past by doing cleanses; it wasn't much different.

Most people don't have the ability to cook or buy a varied diet because they live off junk food or trash, and then end up 60 years old with Musculoskeletal pains or diseases they wouldn't have otherwise had. This is in part because they have to work 60 hours a week to spoon-feed millionaires their lifestyles, and so snack on trash; also these days because of being broke, and more difficulty sourcing food globally due to in supply chains problems from the global tensions, and scarcity from global warming. This is a very common outcome: people are getting less healthy not more, and the percentage of people who are vegan in the population is very low. I would like to see your data that shows vegans vs the general population in terms of health issues, that would be interesting. Because 1) it won't exist. 2) The problems with diet are down to junk food speed eating and a detachment to food, exemplified by factory farming; which alongside demonstrating people's disconnect with the most important part of their physical existence, also creates meat of an inferior quality. I know there are always people who need certain things and certain diets, but nutrients are found in vegetables and fruit in plentiful quantities. Specifically minerals/protein and vitamins respectively.

Let's start with the dictionary on identity, which is a collective structure: The condition of being a certain person or thing. The set of characteristics by which a person or thing is definitively recognizable or known. The awareness that an individual or group has of being a distinct, persisting entity If I were to expand this with my former understanding, it would be: What I consider as part of myself. For me these days: It's a convenience in a void; that tends to be how I view identity, people use it so they can function day to day with a reference point. For example, if I were to try to push in that direction again of becoming everything, or egoless, I would answer: Yes a human can be everything talked about in this thread. It would be simple and true. In your analogy here, you'd have to accept veganism, carnivores, fruitarians, people who don't eat, regular diets, vegetarians, and pescatarians. Or killers and non-killers as equally part of existence and life.

@integral Reality is entirely defined and responded to in your head. If I say yes what does it matter? If I say no what does it matter? We can find common ground and do, but that has to account for this fundamental truth: You live in a different reality to me and everyone else here. In your own mind. Everything you’ve told me, down to the language itself is going to hold different nuanced meanings, connections, importance, experiences etc between each of us. *I’ll have a watch of the video later thank you, I am going to a hospital visit soon. Reality is incorporated into each of us. The entire reality is in our heads. There is no more or less reality. You might mean something like collective approval or recognition for the identity, this is where you confusing the two.

I am giving you an alternative way to describe the same topic and using it to justify another identity, so I can show you how futile or non-universal it is. We not only define identity differently, we define everything according to our environment, belief set, experiences, peer group, patterns, emotional processes, hopes, aspirations, etc etc etc. This is the point. How can I read something and not process it the same way as you? Because identity is a perspective of infinity or god. This is the point! We are pieces of god having a conversation with ourselves from entirely different perspectives and identities. This is why, as people have tried in various ways to tell you the futility of trying to argue about identity as universal, or that others should accept your definitions as absolute. Not only do people define subjects differently, but all the associations, the meanings, the use of it, the importance of it. If you continue down this path you will keep unraveling your association with your identity (a point in/of/for infinity), and eventually, the hope is to realize what you are. I don't want to bias that in any way, sometimes it's quick, sometimes it's slow, sometimes it's big, sometimes it's small, pieces, hints, direct realizations, sometimes weird, sometimes emotional you get the idea. Its infinity. You are looking at a small piece of it and saying that's what life is, because you are creating the definition and reacting to yourself.

One thing that splinters reality is trying to make our beliefs, virtues, morals, patterns, and impulses universal. Whatever aspect of us driving that need unconsciously is often something to spend some time with to heal, often a painful memory, trapped emotion, reactive part of ourselves, cyclic pattern, or pressure we still have in our lives.

You are still using your identity as a template for everyone else's and then justifying it. There is no need when it comes to diet. If it's not about diet, stop making it about diet lol. Can you not see you are arguing against yourself? Anyway. I can do the exact opposite argument. I could mirror this almost exactly word for word but let's try to expand it instead, I am sorry meat eaters but to meet like with like, I'll need to do a partial ego hit. It isn't personal, it's to show the futility of this line of self-justification masked as a universal norm, it's just as bad when vegans do it to you (as I am sure many are fed up with already) watch: Protecting things is part of you, protecting this planet, the creatures in it. Everything has a spiritual component, destruction, and death do as well, it sounds like you've detached yourself from it. You will want to kill less when an animal is no longer food. Psychologically, you will consider these creatures differently, and biologically, this will be reinforced in your own body as of the many unconscious impulses you have. Killing on mass, like you do every day you put a piece of meat in your mouth, isn't required to survive. It's a merry-go-round of slaughter that has led us to the horrors of factory farming, which is condensed killing and suffering in a small space to feed an ever-growing population. You do it and support it because you choose to and it tastes good. You, like everyone else reading this (and me) are at the mercy of our cravings when we indulge them. We are not in the 1500's. I could justify a heck of a lot from the 1500's like chopping people's hands off for theft, or killing someone with a sword because he said the wrong words to me. People lived on almost nothing, for almost nothing, life was both simple and, during that particular time period much akin to slavery to landowners. As to food, if you were a peasant off the farm in the city your diet was often trash, on the farm, it was quite good relatively, it's a bad example you've picked there. However, you can't cherry-pick parts of an era and say that fits my worldview, and then ignore the entire collective circumstance that formed or supported a belief system. This is not the 1500's. Back to hitting the ego in reflection, as you are doing: Don't align yourself with being a meat eater, it's backward, justified from a piece of the worldview in the 1500's? You are at the mercy of your cravings for your decisions, destroying the planet by warming it up, raising fuel and property prices to support your dietary choices, and so collectively making all our lives worse. Also, add the other things I don't like that don't fit my identity or my need to tell you how to live or define reality. - Can you see how this is futile? You, I or anyone else can't remake the world in your own image, when you try you are in for a lot of disappointment, most of all from trying to define virtues and morals. If I was seriously saying this I would expect an egoic backlash. (It'll probably trigger one anyway). You are not above that because you consider yourself more conscious in certain areas of life, in this one, you are almost unconscious of your own meta pattern here. You are saying this is a set of beliefs to live by, it's my set so I'll justify it by behaviors that I find appropriate, and try to make it universal. We are all doing this, but your line of reason focuses entirely on impulses you wished people embodied more often. Of all of them, the killer is not one we need to encourage! This next bit isn't required; it's just an expanded way to view all this: These animals are pieces of yourself on a deeper level, and the experience is all that exists in each moment, so you are killing yourself each time you have a meal, causing suffering on levels you don't even comprehend. The entirety of the farming industry, like all of life, evolves by what we want, do, and our cravings or impulses. That means these parts of you are evolving to be subservient to bacteria in your gut, your internal flora and fauna, and your mental associations wanting the taste of meat. I don't want to keep insulting meat eaters here because honestly, until someone comes at my ego I live and let live, but this entire line of reasoning is subservient to bacterium and cravings justifying itself. Which we all do to an extent, but when it prompts people to tell others how to live you can see how it ends up.

Its a tricky one if we take the definition of objective: 1) Existing independent of or external to the mind; actual or real. "objective reality." 2) Based on observable phenomena; empirical. "objective facts." 3) Uninfluenced by emotions or personal prejudices: synonym: fair. "an objective critic." 1) Cannot exist unless we expand the subject. 2) Does exist. 3) Can exist in part. If you believe there is no objective morality among people, then anything can be justified. However, objective morality does exist collectively, reflected in what society generally accepts and what laws, institutions, and social contracts are built upon. This collective morality is shaped by various templates, such as the Bible, family beliefs, laws, or communal social norms. It forms part of the 'collective mind' or 'collective consciousness' and often revolves around harm or loss that can be demonstrated toward another party, protected by the same laws, institutions, or social norms. This explains why so many people try to reshape society according to their own belief systems, seeking protection and validation for their identities. They often target entities outside the same protection, viewing them as influenceable or easy marks. This reactive mindset can diminish as individuals feel less threatened by differing beliefs, although it can still surface even in well-intentioned people, especially when they feel a core part of their existence is under threat: Exampled by the debates in this thread. I can only tell you what happens here in this case: When you stop considering something food, your relationship with it changes significantly, as you can probably imagine mentally, but it also happens physically and in your unconscious impulses or cravings. If enough people held this belief, animals would receive significantly more protection by those same collective constructs I've spoken about, which are formed from the thoughts, mind, impulses and cravings of the population.

I would have probably skipped my above post had I read this first, so apologies there, because you are in extreme resistance to resistance. I see it all the time in spiritual communities. The fact something is uncomfortable, hard, or even hated, doesn't mean it's universally incorrect, or a net negative for the world. Doing what everyone else does because its easier and accepted can be aruged to be lazy and selfish as well. If you are going to generalize you are going to get generalized replies. Hiding behind: You are just low consciousness, it's not going to work here. You are reacting to yourself, sit back and ask yourself in contemplation why you've just generated 50 replies you hate. I do and sometimes I even learn from it, usually after hitting my head against a wall three times. I could argue very seriously that burning up the planet for a steak is in conflict with existence as well, (for me it's ludicrous) and I do quite often but nobody listens, and I try not to take it personally. I don't think you are more or less selfish than I am because of your dietary habits, you just have different values, different understandings about reality, and an obviously different relationship with animals.

A human is a farmer, a producer. This is the fundamental nature of humans that non-farmers and consumers cannot come to terms with. A non-farmer or consumer rejects what they are. They reject what they were born to do. They reject the biology they were born with. Non-Farmers are an identity crisis in disguise. Let me make a case for my own identity because I feel it challenged in some way, so I can make myself feel better because I am reflecting on an uncomfortable fact of my own life, but conversely I will resist realizing that because it is easier to demonize the other and rationalize they are incorrect because they have a different belief system. (Everyone does this don't feel bad). I'll do it again: Traditionalism A human is born to socially adapt. That is the fundamental nature of the species that traditionalists cannot come to terms with. Traditionalism is an identity crisis in disguise. Again? A human is born to build structures and order. That is the fundamental nature of the species that progressives cannot come to terms with. Progressivism is an identity crisis in disguise. Another? A human has a deeply spiritual connection. That is the fundamental nature of existence that atheists cannot come to terms with. Aethism is an identity crisis in disguise. And to finish. A human is a physical creation. That is the fundamental nature of existence that spiritual people cannot come to terms with. Spiritual people are an identity crisis in disguise. I could expand these into several lines, paragraphs, or an entire thesis on identities, so don't bother picking them apart too much, it won't go anywhere. Existence is fluid. Its whatever you make it.

Are you arguing these colonizers didn't hate the other? Or that sometimes fighting/hating/fracturing is understandable? It's always understandable, I can look at anyone's point of view with enough time and understand it. You can only kill someone and be okay with that if you hate them or are detached enough from them to do so. The people in power hating the other is the point of the thread (although it can work both ways), in the analogy of a tribe in the Amazon vs an industrialized nation, that power would very much be with the industrialized people. Fighting has its place, I am stubborn myself and grew up fighting to survive, but I understand the limits of that and also understand things don't function that way, they only break. If the break is temporary, it can lead to a better outcome, if the break is permanent or long-term, it only leads to suffering.

Part of Stage Green you would benefit from integrating is: Inconveniencing people is a requirement for change. Moreover, the green part of me would say that sometimes you have to break things to set them correctly, which will inconvenience people. Sorry to be direct with an ego shot. I could talk around the subject, but it's easier this way. Yes, just breaking things or causing a scene with no plan is simple and dumb, but it's a requirement of the process, and to remind people or focus them. Obviously, these people have no plan past that, and we can all highlight the flaw in that thinking. Nothing ever shifts much without some inconvenience, and we can be strategic and pick and choose. Also, you'll notice if people don't see something demonstrable then they don't remember it happened. People can, for example, bring what Trump or Biden did in a list all they like, but others won't remember a list, they'll remember a gesture.

You can score points socially, politically, financially, etc by identifying an enemy that doesn't vote or has no power and saying they are the bad guys. In a right-wing world, this is just low-hanging fruit. Almost every political party is a right-wing party now, before anyone rushes to defend their favorites. Let's all hate the 'other' is the motto, and fracture ourselves as much as possible. That's always ended well.

This argument is flawed but also pushes people into yellow thinking so it is necessary. People live in an imperfect world. It is a fantasy to think they can operate otherwise for them and for you. This gradually means people try to operate within the world rather than outside of it, but they will still be flying the 747's, and most people will understandably still lack the conviction to completely bypass Amazon for example. However it will increase their effectiveness when they work within the world rather than outside of it.