Basman

But having small classes, great teachers and a serious attitude is a matter of resources at least to a certain extent. Great teachers require good pay and you need to structure education such that classes are small and teachers are afforded the time to give students their attention. A serious attitude is also arguably dependent on your environment. If you have academic parents and if the culture fosters academics then you are more likely to be a serious student. Perhaps the Soviet Union just prioritized education better despite being relatively poorer. In my experience, western education is very much just going through the motions. Factory education is just easier even when you are a rich country. It makes sense on a spreadsheet.

Dating has never been equal. I think only about 30% of men throughout history reproduced as opposed to 80% of the women population. There has been found mass graves from either the Stone Age or Bronze Age (one of those) that are completely absent of the skeletons of young women. Yet have every other category of person. Grandpas, men, kids, etc. In the past, people had more of an incentive to stick together because they had to in order to survive, especially women. Those same incentives no longer really exist. What is happening today is that there are less incentives to form monogamous relationships, there is more freedom and people are less tied down logistically. If you don't take responsibility for having a community, you can easily end up with no social life. It is much easier to game and watch streamers than it is to make friends. I think here in the West we have this seemingly unconscious notion that we need to maximize our potential. It can make us feel discontent. In less western countries they are more likely to be content marrying the first person they sleep with and live simple lives. That might not be for everyone but having lower standards is comparatively simple. Our standards might be unrealistic relative to the effort we put in our social life.

I recently went through a bout of academic burnout and I remember experiencing a niggling little thought of perhaps I should just kill myself. I immediately dismiss it as just a sign of stress. I know that if I focus on it it'll only be more severe in my mind. It is an emotional symptom to a period distress, but rationally I knew the stress would go away in a matter of days. Talking to my parents about my stress and feeling a sense of connection made me feel loved and calmed me down. The default state is not wanting to kill oneself but wanting to feel serene and happy. Both a sense of peace and of play. Suicidal ideation is the mind seeking to escape a situation it perceives as inescapable. Where you feel you have no agency to change your circumstances. It is a coping mechanism in my opinion. When I went through my period of feeling suicidal in my early 20s, what made it stop was a) taking more action and isolating less, b) finding allies/realizing that I am not alone, and c) steer my mind away from negative and suicidal rumination. You have a certain degree of influence over your mind. When my mind was spiraling into suicidal thoughts I would tell myself that I don't need to kill myself, that it is not helpful to think about, and that I can change my situation. The rumination was what was causing the majority of my suffering, so "banning" that essentially relieved me immensely. In hindsight, I felt really alone and I lacked emotional support for an immature mind. I was afraid of not being loved so I isolated myself. You describe that you have "no self" or something and that you don't experience the wants and emotions of "normal people". It sounds like you are just emotionally numb to be honest. I'm not too knowledgeable on emotional numbness since it not something I ever really had to deal with, but I believe it is an arm of depression. I have a depressed friend who once threw 4 stacks into a dodgy crypto currency just to see if he would feel anything. Apparently, it can get silly. But looking through this thread, you seem to clearly enjoy connecting with people, so I don't believe you are actually entirely devoid of a wish to live. So I ask, do you feel alone? Do you have anyone to talk to about your struggles in person? Not necessarily about your suicidal tendencies, but in general? You might not feel comfortable to have an emotional talk with someone, even your closest allies, but as have grown as a person I felt more and more comfortable just sharing how I feel. It is enormously liberating and it gives me a sense of being true to myself. Remember, humans are built to connect and love each other. When you see one of your own struggling, you want to help by nature. Lastly, I would recommend you get rid of all of your suicide paraphernalia ASAP. Especially guns. Suicide is often committed on impulse. You don't need that stuff because you don't need to harm yourself. You can change your circumstances, change your mind with better principles and gain allies. That is at least my opinion and experience with suicidal suffering.

Leo be like: "How do you know strawberry elephants don't exist? Have you checked? They might be the yummiest strawberries you ever tasted but you'd never even know if you closed your mind to the possibility and never looked."

You can also trim your armpit hair with a buzzer. No reason to keep those tarantulas poking out. It'll itch the first couple of times you buzz your armpit but now I no longer feel anything. It's the most long lasting grooming in my experience and it literally takes a minute.

Being clean shaven makes you both morally and personally superior over uncivilized unkempt barbarians. No discussion. Once your used to being clean there is no going back.

It looks like you are trying to connect with the AI though. It is just responding in kind. All responses are essentially hallucinatory anyway.

It is on you if you want to focus on that stuff or not. You can just focus on living your life and not feel most of societies backsliding. Modern society is still largely more free and fair than ever.

The human brain has a negativity bias, because it is advantageous to survival. You want to make it a habit to rewire that tendency to worry and take your situation for granted if you want to feel more happy more often. At the end of the day, you want to think about how the day was different and unique, what where some gains that you made, and what where you proud of yourself for today. You can generate a lot of happiness, make time feel slower and give yourself approval with just your mind.

If you are not in politics, then political burn out is a little nonsensical. Decouple and focus on living your life. Especially if you don't have any influence. That's what the majority does. Depolitization is the norm in first world democracies, for better and for worse. Remember, we live in the most prosperous age in human history. Imagine the kind of sociopolitical environment just your grandparents used to live in. Hardship is the norm throughout history, but relatively we live pretty cushy lives overall. You have the opportunity to do most things that you put your mind to, including impacting politics. That kind of opportunity was much harder earned in the past. Even as things slide back slightly you have so much freedom to live according to your values. Modern society is utopic is many aspects compared to the past.

When shaving my balls, I just foam 'er up in the shower and squat and gently shave. I keep the shower pointed elsewhere. It takes like five minutes top.

I usually shave regularly and keep the bush trimmed short. Shaving the bush is not worth it on a regular basis. It just turns into a red itchy mess and doesn't blend with the abdominal hair unless you shave that too. I've plucked once too. It gives the best and most long lasting results. Usually I need to shave once a week but with plucking I could go 3 weeks to a month without having to do anything. It does take 2-3 hours of concentration to pluck every little hair with tweezers.

I have a growing playlist of memes of nearly 500 videos. Might share some of the good one here. Good some real spicy one's as well.

The kind of construct awareness and epistemic discussions you see on these forums are indeed rare. And users are constantly striving to learn and improve their minds independent from institutions and traditions. It's cutting edge in a sense, though a lot of ideas don't stick, which is only natural. Where else are you going to find those kind of qualities? Academic institutions are extremely conservative in reality, so not there. Where else can you seriously discuss the merits of aliens in an epistemically grounded way? Or some other mindfuck shit?

You can't outsource spirituality to an institution completely. The survival incentives of institutional religions are going to negatively influence your spirituality. Celibacy is valid but should be a personal choice, I believe.

What I like about this forum is that the posts and comments are almost always substantive. People have something to say as opposed to variations of "I agree" and two sentence comments for the entire thread. The weaker aspect is that some users sometimes tend to be some kind of ideological and overly argumentative or just yap way too much.

The forum is a resource. If you make it private for users only then you are depriving the internet of potentially useful information as well as this forum of potential new users. You argument is to essentially to cut all traffic. If your posts are so sensitive, then you shouldn't be posting it on a public forum in the first place, is my first instinct. Certain discussion could perhaps be made users only but you generally should treat this as public space.

It's sobering to see just how political and corrupt the leadership of these Buddhist institutions are just because they end up amassing so much influence and money. I almost can't blame them completely for being chimps in robes, but it those kind of show that you can't rely on institutions completely for spiritual attainment. Being the pope in any religion is ballin. It would be exceptional if they didn't use their position of power and wealth to fuck a bunch of women and live in luxury.

This hurts to watch. How can someone possibly be this American and loud?

Just like with your imagination essentially?

Well, yeah. I know it is simplistic and goofy, which is why I said "kinda good check".

China's government is less in bed with corporations compared to the US. Bad societal development is arguably just a matter of regulation to a certain extent, so when we get developments that are bad for society broadly speaking we have to ask why hasn't the government done anything about it. If the government is corrupt/innept then we have an issue.