Nilsi

Aurelius' Meditations is all the Stoicism you could ever need - he and Epictetus were the only real Stoics that ever existed (maybe throw Schmachtenberger in there, if you want - but he's much more than a Stoic and barely mentions that aspect). Don't listen to some spineless modernist nerds talk about the philosophy - what could they possibly know about being a Stoic? -- it's an insult really.

Jordan Peterson should have already proven you otherwise years ago.

Those are just fantasies. The coin hasn't dropped yet, but I don't blame you - took me quite some time to start fathoming how twisted moral conventions really are; a rather uncanny Realisation, I can tell you.

Exactly! so what makes you so sure then, that what they are saying is valid, given that there is no rational argument for it whatsoever? Now we're back to religion and appeals to some supposed transcendent values...

You don't even have the balls to go out there and really put your hypothesis to test - you're just repeating some nonsense that society has indoctrinated you with.

Leo is the only spiritual "teacher" I'm aware of that has some serious brains, is open-minded and is willing to question his conclusions relentlessly. That's why he has such a holistic and deep understanding of reality, whereas people like Frank Yang are like the college professor types that spend all their careers investigating one petty corner of reality that they end up knowing extremely well - while completely missing the forest for the trees. If you investigate that same corner of reality, of course your experience will match his. Stop embarassing yourself.

Not congruent with my experience. It's as easy to justify my self-interest as noble and good, as it is to justify subordinating my interest to some collective ideal. And life gets way better the more you can just look the other way when you externalize harm. Never did I ever feel my connection to reality and my awareness of myself suffer from doing something society calls "immoral." How's that for a red pill?

Did you even listen to the damn talk? I've actually studied Krishnamurti quite extensively - I even had a picture of him on my wall at one point-, but that's hardly a viable philosophy to build your life on. If I have an overabundance of anything, it certainly is consciousness and connectedness to reality, so I'm good on that front.

That's fair and I'll take it, but I'm absolutely serious here. I'm not trying to silence him or anything - quite the contrary: I would be super interested to hear him talk about what's going on in India, but I don't care for his analysis of Western society at all. If I saw an ISTP suffering away in a library, I'd tell him that it's ok to suck at reading, instead of asking him to join my book club.

I'm not desputing that. One more reason to encourage diverse perspectives and not have this become some homogenous soup.

I'm far more interested in having him study his own tradition and culture and tell us about it, instead of trying to be something he will never be - a Westerner.

Don't be so difficult. If I'm a psychologist and exclusively concern myself with physics, because my roommates are physicists, I'm clearly lost and need someone to point me to what's actually relevant. That's like the old story of the fox trying to be like the lion.

You're a westerner talking about western society. It would be inappropriate for us to discuss Indian or Chinese or Russian politics, given the stark cultural differences and our lack of historic context and lived experience - don't you think?

As far as age goes: obviously if you want something long-term, you will have to accept the fact that she's getting older lol. As far as domination goes: you're just strawmanning me at this point - you can be generally dominant and assertive without being some oppressive chauvinist pig.

I can live with the idea that it's preference, but 18-20 is how I like mine and that's perfectly legal, so deal with it. I don't want her to be experienced and I don't need her to make sex more fun - I'd rather have a sweet youthful girl that looks up to me and is still genuinely excited and curious about dating and sex.

It is a primal urge for the male to be dominant and for the female to be submissive - unless both your hormones are seriously screwed up (which wouldn't be surprising these days) that's the most healthy and natural arrangement. When you get a child or grow older your biochemistry will regulate itself and become more androgynous, so don't worry about it.

Let's be real here: there is no good reason to date a woman over 20. After that she's already carrying unnecessary cultural baggage and is past her prime physically - so unless she's super interesting or developed, there is really no point. Obviously not a scalable worldview, but oh well.

What about the rest of this post was "insensitive?" This was an important point: take care of your own shit before you criticize and gossip about a society you know nothing about and have no stakes in. This is like a blind man talking about color.

As long as there is becoming, there is karma (which refers to the movement of becoming that is already given/determined) - if you abolish becoming in your metaphysics, you also abolish any notions of karma.

Same here in Germany. Die Linke ("leftist party") has always been against NATO. Those are quite old-school and populist politics though and very disconnected from any political realities. To me this is already far left politics and it shows in their vote count (usually <5% - so rather fringe). When I talk about "the left," I basically mean the status quo in Europe (which is overwhelmingly progressive-rationalist).

It's the perfect union of European high culture and nature/eco-awareness.- doesn't get much better than this.

Do it! More pressure and more responsibility most importantly means more growth. Since you're just an employee, you don't have to bend over backwards and worry about this shit in your free time - so just do the work, learn your lessons and take the money.

What are you talking about? We condemn sexual assault way more than we used to and it's way more acceptable to talk about these things in public than it used to.

Same ideology - probably just the difference between introverts and extroverts. Those people hold virtually 0 political power. This is all about power.

What? The "extreme" left are a bunch of sweaty androgynous teenagers that hang out on Twitter all day - hardly the kind of demographic starting wars. It's precisely the "moderate" left that has the power to control the narrative and go on political crusades.