BlueOak

@Princess Arabia All of what you said, the answer is yes. It's one and two. It's an illusion and real. It's self and a reflection. You are both, and everything else you can label or conceive in your mind. To keep that single thing in mind, you need to keep generating it. You've probably experienced this when you needed to take a refresher course, workout to stay in shape, or realize you'd forgotten something you used to know. Bricks crumble, people age, beliefs decay, interests change, people lose skills or memories, fashions go, relationships end, etc. The contradiction is where the fun happens for many of us and we sit there because it's entertaining. I think what Razard says is true from my experience, but he's hitting his ego a bit hard. It's a survival mechanism, and when we feel a threat to our identity or some part of reality we protect, then the ego is there. Spiritual egos are quite common when a belief system is formed and challenged. Sitting in the ego can become an addiction, at least in me, where I go fully into the ego for long periods when I don't have to be. I like establishing the 'best' set of beliefs I can and then arguing them. When you see me or anyone else doing this beyond the initial communication or perhaps an explanation of a point, people should just smile and shrug unless they also like the game. It's not always unhealthy, if it's positive (and by that, I mean giving you energy) then it's part of the unique makeup of that person. If it's negative, by that I mean draining energy, it's not what a person is, and they are having to use up energy to maintain it. If you find something that's giving you energy to do, then it's you beyond the ego, beyond all the crap we put in the way. Many of us in this particular forum know arguing perspective is a game God is playing with god. Neither perspective can be better than the other in absolute terms, because who am I to tell you (God) what to believe?

For material needs, yes. For everything else, we still need each other. That's the gaping void in so many lives covered up by addictions, medications, suicides, and ill conceived individualist solutions to communal problems.

Everything in this reality meets challenge. There is nothing anyone has ever done or will do that will not have an opposite polarity challenging it. - This is one absolute i've always seen in reality. Unless you enjoy being challenged, you will always be facing discontent and unhappiness. So cultivating an enjoyment of being challenged, is the only method of doing anything while remaining in a positive state.

Here are 7 problems and 7 solutions. 1) Be this 10%. We'll highlight this 10% and promote it at the top of searches. Are you the 90%? Sorry, my searches are for these attributes and qualities. Current failed solution: Change the 10% to another 10% and the problems persists. Solution: Focus on average people. What the average relationship brings into people's lives. Redesign the internet to promote average people, not exceptional people. Remove narcissism from the design of the internet. 2) Financial hardship, affording the cost of running a house and family. The money to do is in the hands of fewer people. Current Failed Solution: Pretend it is not the case or can't be fixed. Solution: Acknowledge it is a serious problem, redistribute wealth, and pay decent wages to people. 3) Fearful populations have fewer children Current Failed Solution: Inject as much fear into the population as possible to sell media and maintain political control. Solution: Stop. Double Tap: Stop burning up the planet, eliminate the warmongers from power, and get into sustainable energy solutions. 4) Reduce agricultural land use, and build more houses to make them cheaper. Current solution: Vertical farming. Better Solution: Get rid of Cows and Sheep from the food supply. The worst offenders in terms of land use. Double Tap: Inject the cultural idea of large family apartments. 5) Promote people, and families. Not things, and the worship of money. Current Solution: Religions and politicians tell you to breed, and peer pressure. Society tells you to buy, or worker harder. Better Solution: Design society around families, not breeding to fill jobs, or social pressure to do so. 6) Cultural stagnation. Current Failed Solution: Pretend to not understand how this effects society. Better Solution: Invest in culture, get it vibrant, alive, and attractive. Growth, new concepts, and fertility need to be in all elements of society. If a society stagnates, people pull back, they conserve what they had, and things grind to a halt. People in that mentality are not looking to take on new responsibilities or commitments. 7) Finally accept the left half of yourself, 95% of people I talk to no longer do. That half is the one that will care for a family, nurture it, be sympathetic to its needs, listen to it and care for the baby. Without it, nobody wants that in their life in the first place, only out of obligation or peer pressure. For fun - 8) Your hail Mary solution is colonizing infinity in space, where everything we experience here now becomes infinitely large, including population, and the cost of things changes radically. Water/Air/Time etc become priceless (they already are), and metal things become cheap.

@Razard86 Reality tries to maintain itself. So whatever you have as your reality, the world (you) is trying to maintain aspects of it for you, at the same time as it is decaying or breaking apart. The funny thing is that my statement will also have the same thing happen to it over time.

Its about not suffering and enjoying the challenge. There is no way out of challenges, no strategy, no method, because that's how reality works. I might as well be trying to get out of breathing. Nothing you've ever done in life, including this reply, didn't meet the opposite polarity eventually. That's what happens in duality. I appreciate you demonstrating it to me one more time in the reply :D. You move left you get pushed at right. You build something, and something appears to test the building. I give an absolute view, someone gives me a relative view. I try to build a business, I hit hurdles. I try to run, the exercise will test me. I try to relax, I'll have to get rid of distractions. I try to help someone, I'll hit their biases. I try to diet, I'll fight hunger or cravings. I try to learn a skill, I'll fail a hundred times. Nothing we try to do isn't met with some form of challenge. I know what your telling me. This body is a concept in my own mind. The challenge is a concept. Duality is a concept. Now is all that exists (but now is also a concept). That doesn't change anything about what I said. You tell me something you did that didn't eventually hit a challenge. Even meditation will hit challenges, sitting there in a quiet room, there'll be things that challenge it. Its just how this reality works. As a side note, the future as you describe doesn't exist, no, but all things are being created now before you see them, we see them after they happen. You get spiritual messages of what's coming, intuition, then dreams, and then you hit the physical manifestation of it, because its an ongoing pattern created in each moment.

From my own experience of some of these, this was excellently articulated. Paired with:

Decriminalizing drugs is the only sensible way to either remove drugs from your country, or regulate their usage. It brings everything into the open, to either remove the people actually responsible for bringing them in, or regulate their usage and offer treatment or help at the very sites where people are using them. Making drugs illegal to use is moronic: It forces everything underground and makes it harder to track Creates kingpins and an underground authority in the gap where the government should be. Fuels the resulting organized crime, and institutionalizes users. Creates criminals out of users who hate the police Stops people from seeking out support or offering up information. Pushes a further social stigma on damaged people Removes drugged up informants who could tell you everything you ever wanted to know. Removes any chance of tax income. Its what humans always do, chop off part of themselves from the whole, and then wonder why they are unbalanced, and eternally fighting themselves, all very dumb. I actually think that keeping drugs illegal is such a bad a strategy, organized crime are partly responsible in some countries for them NOT being decriminalized. By all means string the Opiate dealers up by their necks, but you might as well not further ruin lives to do so, just bring the people in, say give us your dealers, and you walk, no record at all - that's the bare minimum a society can sensibly do. No jailtime, no record, they walk, and then you can go back to them 50 times for information, because opiate junkies rarely change.

Hamas is a gang, it is a collection of children and teenagers led by older members who have survived. Set in a region that experiences great hardship and a constant level of violence. It rules through violence and legitimizes itself by constantly having the enemy of Israel fight. Authorities over stable regions rule by law, force is often a necessity when the laws are not followed. In this forum, for example, the moderators are the authority, their force would be to ban, close threads, or take other such actions when the rules or etiquette are not followed. This sort of example extends to any authority, and healthy ones don't require an enemy to function. Violence only happens when the process I just described breaks down and people are willing to commit violence. Let's say against a police officer, or against a landlord etc. In gangs, violence is the primary method of control, it is often the rule rather than the exception. Every day where I live people commit infractions against the law and no violence happens at all, its all handled bureaucratically. That's what needs to be established in Palestine, healthy civil institutions, and a legitimate functioning bureaucracy, so its no longer under gang or violent rule, if you prefer that term.

@royce You might not like the fact, but it's a fact that most people did not elect Hamas, because most people are teenagers, and the election was 20 years ago. Apparently,14-year-olds make up 40% of the population in Gaza, and half are actually under 18 now as of 2020. We are talking about children and teenagers led by a few people who live long enough to perpetuate it. If we were capable of understanding that, we'd be able to actually address the situation appropriately. Every authority is maintained by force of some kind, but they don't all have the same systems, regulations and oversight, nor levels of violence, repression, and social breakdown. If you are comparing my peaceful village here to a country in anarchy ruled by a gang, for example, I don't know where to start with that disparity. No, a police force and a gang are not the same thing. Whatever you believe about who initiated the instigating act. The Hamas leadership is in Qatar or Iran depending on your point of view. This means Israel can bomb the people in Gaza for the next hundred years and it's not going to stop Hamas from reappearing, even if they just change the name. There needs to be a better alternative to replace what Israel is trying to remove, else it's pointless. There will always be an authority in place of some kind. We can roll the dice and hope for the best again, or actually make one. Israel is not addressing anything, they are not changing anything, they are just killing people. They have no plan and no clue. That becomes more obvious the more people I speak to about this. *Added this link to the top post as the one I used is behind a paywall after enough visits. https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2023-11-14/population-religion-and-poverty-the-demographics-of-israel-and-gaza#:~:text=About 40% of Gaza's population,from the CIA's World Factbook.

Reality check. - The average age of people in Palestine was 19.6 years old. Less for males (and probably less overall now). None of them elected Hamas. Hamas's leadership is in Qatar, or Iran depending on your point of view, unaffected by events there. The election itself was only 50/50 even 20 years ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Palestinian_legislative_election https://www.statista.com/statistics/1423040/gaza-age-structure-of-population/ *added link as the one above has gone behind a paywall https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2023-11-14/population-religion-and-poverty-the-demographics-of-israel-and-gaza#:~:text=About 40% of Gaza's population,from the CIA's World Factbook. In a refugee camp, the guys with the guns holding the food make the rules. You and I wouldn't be resisting them, we'd be shot, so we'd keep our mouths shut like they do. These are young, impressionable teenagers in a region that would either be in anarchy or ruled by a gun. It's the same as any gang, and should be treated as a gang, not a government. At most, you can argue it's a proxy Iranian force. Palestine needs legitimate, functioning civil authorities supported by its neighbors, including Israel for their own security. It can be demilitarized too, but it needs a police force, emergency services, schools, and an export so it can trade for what it lacks. Rather than bombing it to nothing, it needs to be built up. I am in favor of a three-state solution, with each region treated as a manageable, independent nation. No more endless weapons being thrown at the problem, that includes stopping them from going into Gaza, and supporting a police force long term to keep order in the region.

1, What plans are in place to replace Hamas with a better central governing authority that will bring some stability and legitimacy to the region? Israel equates Hamas with the Palestinians, so how can the Palestinians themselves disappear? It's completely backward logic and a flawed approach, they should have been doing the exact opposite, and trying to separate Hamas from the people, then replaced the authority with a better one. Instead every action the IDF has taken has strengthened Hamas and Iran in the long term. There will be an authority that rules over a region, and unless a better one is put in place, it'll be another one that is actively hostile to Israel. So what are you asking, that they rename that authority as something else, the IDF go home to celebrate, and the cycle starts back up? 2, The 2,000-pound bombs on buildings make releasing hostages impossible. They are no longer alive, like most of the northern area. 3, The leadership of every major country involved requires war to sustain itself with hatred of others (or just an enemy). America - Iran - Israel - Hamas 4, Everyone combined has generated enough hate for another 50 years of violence.

I see a lot of talk about borders all the time. Humans create their migrations by things like wealth disparity, environmental damage, hunger, the narcissism of their cultural superiority through their media, water shortages, cheap labor requirements by paying the actual workers peanuts, and war. They create their problems with drugs by criminalizing all of them, creating an additional problem they then need to solve. Ban the immigrant workers + We need to manufacture things again! + But we don't have enough young people! + Breed more! + But it costs too much to raise a family and buy a house! = Temporary Work Visas, and/or high-speed rail connections, housing on the border they can travel from. *Unless the person is racist, which many people who speak along these lines are, in which case there is no hope of reaching a common ground on this issue with them. Any refugees of all kinds should be given ten years to establish themselves. If they are earning a wage, speak the language, and have integrated, then it's done. If they are in a gang, committing crimes, or still on benefits, then they have to go. Family or not. That's a good chunk of time to get yourself into a stable place, and yes, the last nine years need to be taken into account for last-minute changes. It's also a good chunk of time to arrange another place to go to if your country is unstable.

***If extreme libertarians had their way. The left can be just as strict with the border as the right. @Leo Gura

True, but I wouldn't equate structured and disciplined armed forces with a gang. This is the entire problem and why the situation came about. @Leo Gura Gangs tend to come about where there is chaos, a lack, or a power vacuum to be filled, and they're the only authority in it. In many countries, this is because the government or country doesn't control drugs, smuggling, prostitution, or lack control over an area. While people are still buying these things or living in a region, a gang forms as the authority controlling it. In more war-torn regions, the gang forms because there is no authority at all, that's Hamas. The biggest problem is that civil authorities were not properly installed and supported in Palestine, as they'd be responsible for everything occurring in the territories, not some nebulous association with all Palestinians, because Israel then focuses on all Palestinians rather than a responsible civil authority or government. When the armed forces lack discipline and restraint, yes, it can devolve into a gang mentality. The IDF has shown a lot during this conflict that it lacks these. In the armed forces, it's a struggle between people's worst instincts and restraint or training, which officers are trained to keep in check.

@royce Thanks for sharing your view. I agree Russia, Iran, and the Syrian government won in Syria for the most part, though the devastation was horrific. I'll agree that these countries with valuable exports and a lot of money exert pressure on bigger countries, but the reason people don't understand how they can move a huge country like America to do what they want, is that America wants to do this as well. If they didn't want to help or keep Iran pinned and their hands out of their fuel suppliers, Israel and Saudi Arabia wouldn't be able to budge America to do anything, the size difference and geographic distance would make it impossible.

In England we have tended toward socialism in hard times. We've been conservative for 14 years, so its possible. However, for me personally, its been nearly twenty years of recession already, since 2008 and the bank crash at the very least, we also had covid and Brexit, but there were a few years before that as well leading to the banking crash. Where we are at now is past conservatism and closer to fascism, the reform party is trying to supplant the conservatives here with a further right government as an example. Apologies I should checkout people's profiles more, I think it was your name that threw me off and the choice of avatar.

You're not expanding, why you disagree? Israel and Saudi Arabia are both allies of the west, though Saudi Arabia has wavered in recent years because they didn't get unrestricted weapon shipments to keep bombing Yemen into nothing (that and Russian OPEC pressure). Both don't like Iran very much, and both get weapons from the west. This is no accident. Iran tries to exert influence over countries like Yemen through religion, cultural influence, proxy forces, and weapons. America tries to exert influence through money, military bases, and weapons. It should be no surprise why this is the case:

Islam is a religion Hamas is a gang of young men raised in violence, given a gun and told to shoot people.

Why is this not accurate, its an obvious strategic pattern repeated three times. What is your counter argument? Are you arguing that countries don't constantly try to push their influence outward, and other countries don't constantly push back? Or are you saying NATO isn't holding Russia in Ukraine, China in Taiwan and Iran in Israel? If China takes Taiwan, they own trillions of dollars of global trade routes through those waters, that's going to increase the price of everything you own from insurance costs, if you can get things like semi conductors for any technology at all through instability and/or tolls. They would have launching paths to the disputed Japanese Senkaku islands, and the many other countries disputed islands to their south east they are already trying to take over. It fuels their expansionist policies generally; if needed, I can retrace these expansions for you and the regions China have invaded. Taiwan gives them clear access to numerous Southeast Asian countries waters, which they've decided to try to steal. America would have to arm 15 countries to maintain their presence and allies there, rather than one, Taiwan. If I need to run a history recap of why America won't allow another huge naval buildup in eastern Asia by a hostile power to threaten global trade and its western influence, then I can. Just read the history of WW2 or the lead up to it, then add in a globalized world. We've already discussed Israel's military presence, how America maintains a balance on Iran and its many proxies above, and also touched on Russia slightly. If Russia needs further highlighting, talking about the black sea expansion Russia was trying, the 8 attacks on former USSR countries, or the takeover of its gas connections, I can certain retread old ground on these things and others.

Your and my entire country got us into this, mine is currently conservative. These parties are two sides of the same coin, one governmental whole. You can't break that apart and achieve any effective change to the whole by not owning all of it as you say. The problem is structural, and its in people, the people themselves. https://www.politicalcompass.org/uselection2020 Both your parties were rightwing in 2020, I can only imagine what they will all look like after this is calculated in this year, mine won't be much better with our so called 'left' under starmer. There is not a practical leftwing in America bar a few voices, and barely any in England . You can, as demonstrated by all this, be liberal and right-wing. The liberals biggest fault is that its all about how things look, or sound. Which is useful for keeping people from fighting each other, or disruptions from occurring, but as you can see when they are so far right, they are the ones fueling the wars, the ideology becomes horrific in its suppression of criticism (calls for peace), and shows another aspect of liberalism's dark side. And by the way if you didn't see everyone in America, average joe people included, ravenous to supply Israel with mountains of weapons, I can certainly pull hundreds of videos for you.

The level of equipment being sent is in preparation for a regional war. Not guaranteed but i'd be happily astounded if that wasn't the case now.

For sending unlimited weapons and not caring how they are used. For shielding Israel from the results of their actions. Both done with almost no political opposition to speak of, because there is no political opposition to rightwing actions. The options are: weapons, or more weapons, and do you need our troops? Good thing everyone 'owned the libs', demonized socialists, and mocked every libertarian idea . When a politician actually spoke up, Ilhan Omar, what did America do to her, kicked her off the foreign affairs committee. That's why. We create our own futures. The Hamas gang helped create theirs, and we, Israel, the USA and the UK have chosen to create ours however that comes at us. Yes. The level of how much America jumps when Israel says so surprised even me. Britain approved airstrikes on Yemen without even consulting parliament; they told them after the fact. That's collectively, Trump, my leaders, your leaders, every politician with any clout. Then there is Biden who is a Zionist, so he's not exactly held captive, he's doing what he believes in. While everyone else does what they think will earn them money, and keep them in power or get them elected.

I can't even get people onto the political compass as a way of reasoning, getting them out of a simple right/left dynamic is all but impossible. I've come to realise the duality is too well represented by it, until recent times where the left dropped off completely, the system on a meta level is still maintained even without half or more of it functioning within the system, which should demonstrate its durability. The momentum is also useful for governance, and while individuals are still more important than groups, a single individual, personality, and face is enough for people. This fits the dual system very well: Good and bad, right and wrong etc The way our minds work, an individual in mind is easier to remember and relate to than a group, or even symbol. That's the crux. How do you get people to relate to a group or (many groups/people at once) more than they do a single individual? *How do you get people to see everything as a functioning whole, not a separated right left dynamic?

This is exaggerated, but this its what's happening in Europe with the global isolationist me me me trend. Ditto Britain and the world, i'm not pointing the finger at America, the whole world is almost in the same trend. Belarus has said similar things repeatedly so its not even a western or eastern thing.