kylan11

Among others, a fundamental moral proposition of post-Enlightenment democracy is that we can negotiate conflict with words, dialogue, debate, human conversation. The celebration I see online, and even here of all places, convinced me this is no longer as widely shared as I thought. One side is literally out there celebrating a bullet to the neck to a guy who made mouth noises you didn't like in front of his wife and orphaned children who won't even remember his voice. The other side is, as expected, engaging in the same incendiary rhetoric that has led to this hellish environment, now with a thrist for revenge. What could possibly go wrong. If we don't agree that violence outside of self-defense is a red line, ask yourself what is stopping that guy that sits on the other side of the political spectrum from shooting you in the face. He loathes you as much as you loathe Charlie Kirk. The very scaffolding of civil society is being stress tested to a degree I haven't seen since Jan 6. The least you can say about Charlie is that he believed in and partook in this recursive peaceful process of democratic debate. We can argue whether he operated in bad faith sometimes, we all fucking do. We try and preserve our destructive biases. He may have lacked empathy. If that's your excuse to see this and feel nothing, your 'spirituality' is nothing but egotistical self-serving delusion.

Evolution selects for survivability. Thus perpetuating the root cause.

Leo's recent blog post about America's decline into oligarchy & the critique of libertarianism (though it read more like a critique of Hoppe) has inspired this reflection. Years of research and inquiry into history, political science, and ethics have led me to this conclusion, which I'll be sharing in hopes of receiving meaningful pushback and maybe sparking some interesting discussion. There is simply no solution. Any utopian society your mind can imagine is fatally flawed, and there is no escaping this. If it touches reality, it will either detonate on impact or devour itself. We thought we had it with pluralistic, classical liberal post-enlightenment democracy. And, to be sure, it is the least shitty implementation so far, but I'm done pretending democracy is anything other than a temporary elaborate illusion that buys a few generations of comfort before collapsing back into oligarchy, tyranny, or chaos. Let's take liberty as our highest value. Surely that must be it, right? Except that when you're born with nothing and nobody is compelled to lend you a helping hand, your only actual freedom is to starve to death. What looks like freedom from the penthouse is just moral bankrupcy in the gutter. And NAP is not gravity. It is a suggestion (ironically enough I'm paraphrasing Elon Musk here) with no recourse. So... maybe equality? Sounds pretty reasonable. Everyone ought to have a fair shot. But equality is as far away from ground reality as it gets, meaning it requires careful engineering and enforcement. Which means massive coercion. Which means centralization. So congratz, we've built the world's biggest monopoly and gave it nukes. What could go wrong? So let's do decentralization then. Add attrition (this is democracy's shtick, in a nutshell)! Spread the power around! Cool, so we're back to gradual self-destruction by polarization, feudal warlording, and round we go. Power tends to concentrate. And the only leviathan is an even bigger power to break it up. And the latter can be corrupted, and is, just as easily. Not because it wants to do evil, it just wants to survive. Like us. Survival IS corruption. Self-preservation at all costs and to hell with everyone else if my life is on the line. This is the engine of history. Centralization -> stagnation -> collapse -> decentralization -> chaos -> re-centralization. We all ride this cycle, and no constitution or dynasty or empire or ideology has ever broken it. So if you think we're marching towards a stable equilibrium, we are: DEATH. Silence. Utopia requires permanence... in a world which runs on the illusion of duality, which runs on constant flux, definitionally, before devouring itself. It's a contradiction. That was my 2 cents. If you can go deeper, do it. I'd like to hear it.

This is meant to be a reflection about a recent experience I had on low-dose MDMA and its potential use for treatment of social anxiety, which is a problem I've personally struggled with since high school due to constant bullying. It's not supposed to be a linear trip report. See, I thought MDMA was gonna be a weird weed + alcohol-like feeling. When you drink, it's like a whole part of your brain shuts down and you become an extroverted, unencumbered version of yourself. And you know it. It feels free, fun, energizing. On MDMA? The usual thoughts are there. You retain a total lucidity that I did NOT expect, at all. Your brain keeps throwing you the usual ego-fueled, self-referential, miserable shit like "I'm being awkward", "These people think I'm weird", "What should I do now?" and a thousand catastrophic scenarios of how you're gonna ruin the whole social gathering and how everyone is looking at you etc. and how ugly and cringe you are. But here's the twist, all these usual thought patterns are entirely robbed of their emotional content. You are so hopelessly used to them immediately eliciting an emotional reaction that, when it doesn't come, you are immediately stunned. You are still at peace. That feels so distinct and baffling that it opens up the possibility of reflection: Holy shit, guess what? Whatever happens now, whatever the fuck I say or do in this social situation... the Earth will keep spinning, the Sun will rise in the morning, and nobody fucking cares. This is a thousand times more helpful than just shutting down your nervous system with alcohol. The latter will leave you with the feeling of "how nice it would be if I wasn't such an awkward piece of shit when sober". MDMA, on the other hand, teaches you that that black void of fear and anxiety can only grip you if you let yourself be captured by such useless mind-chatter, that will vaporize at first glance if you simply observe. I knew that already, conceptually, but experiencing it as a real possibility for YOU is something else. As I'm sure you know very well if you've dabbled in any kind of spiritual work. Mind you, this was a low dose experience. I don't know exactly how much I took. No boundless feeling of love or anything metaphysically significant. But it does have its place in snapping you out of things you thought were an indivisible part of you. Have you guys had any similar experience? Did the insight stick or fade away in time? I'd like to eventually try a bigger dose.

And who decides when a country has reached a certain level of consciousness? If all it takes is one psychopath for you to stumble into an Orwellian dystopia, perhaps you should think twice about the system you're trying to build.

Sure, the SEC should (again, SHOULD) investigate blatant insider trading and similar fraud... except that the whole system is rigged, there are no adults in the room. They've been kicked out one by one (you could argue there never were any, see the 2008 financial crisis or senators turbo selling stocks prior to COVID). So don't hold your breath.

Ben Shapiro (who's actually pretty pissed off about the tariffs) optimistically argues that Trump is responsive to bad press - and while that's true, he doesn't seem to realize (or refuses to say publicly) that his response has always been spinning, lying, distortion and scapegoating. Hardly helpful when you operate on the economy that tracks reality much more closely than theatrical politics. He may dig himself into a deeper hole by doubling down, or back off by getting some largely symbolic concessions in negotiations and spinning those into a huge win "for the american worker" (= best case scenario). It's a 50/50 the way I see it. EDIT: Actually, the absolute best case scenario would be an actual win: the EU getting their shit together and tearing down the innovation-crushing bureaucratic labyrinth that it is + Musk convincing Trump that an EU-US trade agreement is in the best interest of both. Now that would be one way to seriously fuck with China. Pure fantasy for sure, but you never know. Trump has been failing upwards his whole life after all.

The prophet had warned us.

100%

Hedge funds don't beat the market with an army of analysts, insider knowledge and so much computing power you could train GPT-6 on it. For all intents and purposes, everything is priced in. The thing about market doomers is that eventually they're right. Graham Stephen has made millions fearmongering for the imminent collapse, basically throwing shit on the wall until it sticks. Stocks... usually go up. Bad luck for you if you invest before a bubble explodes, but NOBODY can predict that with any accuracy in the long term, so in the meantime you're missing out on a sweet yearly return, potentially for years, losing out on significant compound interest. If you're really convinced that the crash is imminent, wait it out and buy the dip in one or two highly diversified ETFs tracking a decent index fund (arguably with some exposure to emerging markets), and monthly deposit whatever you can save consistently for 20 years. This is the only way to make money for the retail investor. In the off chance you were right, great! You managed to time the market. Never try that again unless you're so delusional you're convinced you're the next Warren Buffett.

So what you're saying is I should YOLO my life savings into 500 OTM SPY puts expiring tomorrow? Well then, that's my sign from God Wish me luck!

The best thing about a degree is that it at least gives you structure in your studies. A basic framework to explore the field, and as you progress you can deconstruct the framework also. You get exposed to the best thought humanity has to offer over thousands of years (although in a superficial way, it's up to the student to get to the substance) and then you use those tools in your personal philosophical inquiry. But so few people delve into that, it's a failure. Instead, learning online quickly gets you overwhelmed by the sheer size of the beast, leaving you a shaky knowledge base made up of little fragments gathered by insomniac 2 AM google searches.

Haha, but in my humanly egoic motivations I am not omniscient, so I don't take that privilege for myself

Resorting to intellectual sleight of hand and manipulation is and will always be inferior to actually learn how to communicate with others. People respond to genuine interest in them. They want to be heard. Only when you've given them full attention and genuine open-mindedness to consider things from their perspective will they be open to consider your concerns. Have you taken the time to do that? If not, are you instead convinced that you're correct "a priori"? Do you think you have insight on your own limits and cognitive biases? If you're unable to communicate honestly but instead implicitly try to affirm your own superiority, you are always doomed to fail. Good luck.

I've been there! Thoughts are NOT the enemy. Just another appearance in consciousness. They may feel like the enemy in the beginning (this phase can last for the longest time! don't feel hopeless, trust the process), but anytime you bring your attention back to the object of meditation you are actually improving your concentration. It's like any muscle that gets stronger over time when you exercise. This is the point, you are doing the equivalent of a push up for the mind everytime you bring it back to the present. One step at a time you are getting closer to breaking the spell. So don't get frustrated, be grateful.