Scholar

I wasn't using that example as a comparison, I was using it to illustrate a underlying mechanism which you are unaware of. It is ingenius how you throw "strawman" at others while this entire thread and basically all of your objectivion have been an addressing an array of strawmans of what the position "Cultural Appropriation" is supposed to communicate. The last post I wrote was insanely valuable if you were to even attempt to get something out of it. But of course you were going to dismiss it because "I have lost all my right to judge others". I have not judged anyone, nor am I outraged. Better ignore my post though because it would reveal some uncomfortable truths about you.

There are two people, who is more "evolved"? Person A: Person A decided to stop wearing fur clothing because they saw how terrible animals are treated in the fur industry. Person A is talking about on facebook and shaming others for doing so, because of how much empathy Person A is feeling towards the animals that are abused in fur factories. Person B: Person B does not care about animals at all, yet Person B points out Person As hypocrisy. How can Person A stop wearing fur if they are the same time are eating meat? It's hypocrisy! And not wearing fur won't change anything. Perso B continues to wear fur and eat meat, and uses the hypocrisy of Person A to justify that. Notice that Person B is right that Person A is a hypocrate, yet Person A cares more about animals than Person B. Person A is in that sense a "better" person, they have taken a step towards less cruelty, even if they are currently remaining in an inconsistent position which actually doesn't change anything about the situation. Eventually Person A might stop even to eat meat, because they take one step further to reduce the impact they have on others. In the meantime, Person B has remained at their position, both wearing fur and eating animals. In a similar vein, people who are very much concerned about things like cultural appropriation and the like, even if it is neither the most effective way to reduce suffering and maybe means they become hypocrites, they are still more evolved than people who do not care about it at all, who use that hypocrisy as an excuse not to bother to think about the impact they have on others. Sure, sometimes the more evolved person might be overconcerned, but that is part of their evolution, of their increase compassion. You frame it as if these people were less evolved "hiding their white guilt", so you can comfortably remain where you are and dismiss any of these concerns as non-issues. It is fundamentally your frame of mind that is "less" evolved, even if this particular issue was a non-issue, the fact that you so easily dismiss it and show no concern and interest in it's possible validity is essentially what is "less" evolved about you. You concern is primarily individualistic, you have a priority about what you as a individual can and cannot do over what will have a better impact on others. You do not see it, but you are arguing from that desire and it determines how you speak, what arguments you provide, what things you view as non-issues and which you view as issues. It's not merely in this particular situation in which you show these individualistic, freedom, stage orange value tendencies. You have brought them up in our conversation about animal rights too. You put your individualistic needs infront of the life and suffering of others. We of course do that too, but to a lesser degree. We are concerned about these issues, we try to find validity in them, while you are biased towards rejecting them because they limit your freedom. This mechanism is what eventually leads, on a larger scale, to for example complacency towards the treatment of billions of individuals, like the animals we are putting in factories. For you that is pretty much a non-issue, as long as you don't contribute to it, you can do whatever you want in your life. However, if you truly were concerned without bias, you would see it as a problem, you would feel (!) it to be a problem. A huge problem, that does not just require an absence of action on your part, but an actual proactive approach so as to mitigate that kind of discrimination of suffering. It is not enough to simply not eat factory farmed meat, it is paramount to actually make others not eat factory farmed meat and to generally make efforts to reduce that kind of suffering. This is stage green, it is not about "live and let live", it is about "Help those who need the help most". It is a deep desire to involve yourself in the increasing of well-being of those who suffering the most. Orange is only interested in not being "hypocritical", in not being immoral, in not being "bad". See how self-centered that is? For green it is about actively identifying the issues, of actively going against discrimination, of actively participating in these movements which solve social issues. You show only very minor interest in that, which allows you to dismiss issues like cultural appropriation as non-issues. While I agree that there are far bigger problems that need to be solved, I cannot simply dismiss it like you anymore. I could have probably even a year ago, but now I feel like I need to take these issues seriously. It is an emotional transformation, which again will determine what kind of arguments you will find appealing in what you will view and dismiss as non-issues. I have noticed this shift in myself very radically the past few months. While previously I would have seen a insect and might not have bothered to help it because "I would be kind of a hypocrate if I helped this insect while eating products that kill insects", that kind of mentality just became obsolete. I helped the insect, even a tiny fruit fly, out of an innate desire to help that insect. I required no justification, there was a motivation that was just present. I did, at that moment, not care about what kind of person that action would make me, I just did what I felt was best. The carnist will focus on the hypocrisy of the vegan to justify his habits. This is hugely important. The carnist will be most concerned about "what kind of person" he will be in his own and other eyes. The vegan does not care that much, one that is truly concerned about animals. They will backwards rationalized to help the animals at any means possible. A very interesting shift, because many vegans start being vegan because of their own identity attachment, because "they dont want to be animal abuses". A more fully green person will be detached from that, they will help because of a desire to help, because of true empathy towards these beings, whether they viewed as "hypocrates" or the like is secondary and only relevant to the point it will be a detriment to the animals.

So we might say that fundamentally the ego is that kind of skepticism. The skepticism is it's own life-form and seeks to survive as long as possible. This will eventually lead to the skepticism to attempt to somehow solve the issue of mortality, so that it can be forever skeptical, or alive. So in essence the skepticisim is like a structure which seeks to uphold it's own structure. Maybe, in a metaphysical sense, that is in some shape or form what biological life-forms themselves are. There is a skepticism in the structure of the brain or mind, but the very organism itself, namely the body, the bacteria, any structure which attempts to uphold itself, is in essence skepticism. The physical form of skepticism is biological life, as it seeks to remain it's form as is, it seeks to perpetuate itself, to create more versions of itself, to basically uphold it's own structure for all of eternity. Maybe this is even what the atom is. A structure struggling to uphold a certain state, but susceptible to an eventual deconstruction or death. That would mean that the skepticism or ego in a more fundamental sense is embued in the fabric of what we call the physical universe. It would bridge the gap between "physical" and "biological" as both would fundamentally be one and the same. The complete dissolving of the universe into nothingness would then be what the dissolving of the human brain is on a smaller scale. It would explain why the physical material of the universe struggles to create ever and ever more complex structures. By that design, life is inevitable as it is even part of the very substance of the universe. The ego in the human sense would be simply a more complex structure attempting to uphold it's own structure, while atoms would be the same thing on a more fundamental scale. Thus the entire Universe is basically just Devilry. Duality attempting to remain in duality, but eventually collapsing into one. The genius of the design is that there can be something that self-perpetuates, a structure that in it's very essence structures itself. It is completely circular, it should be impossible. A structure which by the nature of it's structure creates it's own structure. Yet there is a fundamental weakness to that structure, which we can observe in the very fundamental particles of the universe and which scales up to all forms of life that exist. Imagine how smart you would have to be to create a design that works on such a small scale and yet works perfectly well on a greater scale. A design so smart it by it's very nature designs itself. It designs itself so well that it not only creates structure, geometry, consistency but also contains completely different aspects of reality, like colors, sounds and feelings, and which can create a being that by these different aspects can grasp the nature of geometry. A design so ingenius that it inevitably creates a being which can look at that design and grasp it's nature. A design in which all of these aspects are not seperate instances, but interact with each other in impossible ways. It's so funny how I thought intelligent design was an absurd argument, but at this point arguing against it seems the most absurd thing ever. This is akin to us designing an AI and then the AI forgetting that it was designed. It would look at all of the intricasies of it's own nature and explain those intricasies with the intricasies, like the physicist is explain physics with physics or the evolutionist evolution with evolution. They completely fail to see how much intelligence it took to create the physics, the evolution or the intricasies of the AI in the first place. It is so genius, so well designed, that we do not even realize it is a design. "Evolution is the way because that's just how reality is! There is no design behind it, the rules of reality create the designs." lol It's not even intelligence. This is like create a Tree by creating the rules that will eventually create a Tree. This is beyond problem solving, you create the Tree by creating the problems that will eventually lead to the creation of the Tree. Whatever that is, calling it intelligence is insulting. It is not mere intelligence, it is Intuition. It is true Creativity.

Also another objection of the skeptic might be the following: If we assume that the brain produces, or fundamentally in some shape or form is, the entirety of our subjective reality: The possibilities of what kind of subjective realities that brain can produce are virtually infinite. Any alteration of the brain and subsequently to the subjective reality, actually alters the perception and the following claims that are going to be made about that particular reality. In other words, an alteration of the subjective reality, or the brain, is due to the nature of what subjective reality is, an fully convincing experience. Because we assume, and cannot otherwise, that our subjective reality is reality, we will subsequently assume that an altered state of that subjective reality is reality as a whole. Therefore, taking something like psychedelics, or altering the brain by meditation, will actually change the reality for that brain. The skeptic might argue that the brain, once that alteration is present, cannot help but come to certain conclusions about reality, namely mystical claims about the nature of reality. He might argue that the mystical experience will be so convincing, so subjectively real, that even he will not be able to help but fall for that experience and recontextualize it as reality as a whole. Therefore he will avoid taking these substances. The problem is the skeptic will claim that even after taking the psychedelic and being convinced of whatever mystical truth he might simply have been tricked due to the limitations of his brain. He might say that once he has the mystical experience he will be utterly convinced of it, which is why he must avoid it to stay objective. It's similar to an argument of Enlightenment leading to a demon possessing your mind and body, a demon that will try to create as many demons as possible, meaning he will try to convince as many people of enlightenment as he can. If that demon did exist, nobody who would not be enlightened could know of him, and anyone who was enlightened would be controlled by the demon.

A skeptic might ask: How do we not know that all spiritual revelations are not simply the mind truly coming to terms with, or becoming conscious of, it's private nature? How do we know that it is not simply the mind truly embracing and recognizing it's isolation, it's disconnectedness from anything that was presumed to be outside of it? For example, the skeptic would state that the brain itself simply recognizes that all there is is brain. That all brain has encountered was always fundamentally the brain. That all the brain encounters is fundamentally produced or imagined by the brain. Would the skeptic not find it peculiar that the statements coming from non-dual masters very much resemble what we would predict such a brain to state if it truly were to become conscious of it's isolation, of the privacy of it's own reality? The skeptic could simply buy into naive realism. The skeptic could say that some imaginations of the brain actually correlate with what the outside of brain is, like for example the model of the brain. He might argue that the more sophisticated the understanding of that materialistic framework is the more truly it will correlate to what exists outside of brain. That way he might be able to avoid the self-referential problem and could reduce all mystical experiences merely as brain states. After all, he could object, would any experience that represented the totality of the brain actually be total, it would be Absolute. The private reality of the brain becoming conscious of itself would by definition from the perspective of that brain be Absolute, Infinite, all encompassing.

Apparently there is a new book about a meat based diet... I am not so sure anymore if Peterson is not more harmful to society than he is helpful.

We can simply alter the premise. P1. The normalization of stigmatization of a marginalized non-political group leads to an increase of violence being committed towards that group. P2. An increase of violence due to the normalization of stigmatization of a marginalized non-political group is unjustified if it does not have a sufficient social benefit. C. Therefore the normalization of stigmazitation of a marginalized, non-political group is unjustified if it does not have a sufficient social benefit. We can then construct seperate arguments for the stigmatization of non-marginalized groups and also political groups specifically. It might be the case that we acccept the normalization of the stigmatization and a potential greater violence towards a political group while still viewing the violence itself as unjustified. We might even create specific examples where violence is justified. We might for example create the group of "Terrorists" or "Serial Killers" where the stigmatization and following violence is very well justified. You lack both nuance in the Premise that "All normalization of stigmatization leads to equally proportional violence", which I reject, and both that all violence is equally unjustified. There might be a very fine line where we accept the freedom of normalization of stigmatization towards for example groups in the political context because of the social benefit that normalization of stigmatization gives us. You completely lack that nuance. For example, we might accept the stigmatization of Nazi's, accepting the violence that will ensue as a result, because of the general social benefit that stigmatization will have (in a very utilitarian sense). While at the same time we gain no social benefit from the stigmatization of certain marginalized groups, like LGBTQ members and the like. We could also inject moral weights, in terms of how much harm these specific groups do to society as a whole, which again you do not even attempt to consider. There is a difference between someone who want to take away the rights of a certain group and someone who just minds their own buisness because they are part of a specific sexual orientation. You are completely blind to that. You treat each transaction as if it was the same, as you lack any systemic approach to any of these issues. To you it's all the most basic kind of black and white calculus that will allow you to uphold your ideology of free speech. This is why we make a difference between politics and other identity groups. A very important part of politics is the mechanisms of stigmatization that take place in political rivalry. That is to a greater benefit of society as a whole, even if it does lead to violence towards certain individuals. In this case it would be more desirable to simply enforce the law in a more effective way so that the violence is reduced to a minimum. In the case of marginalized group like LGBTQ members however there is no benefit whatsoever to those particular mechanisms of stigmatization, in fact they do great harm to society as a whole. Because we cannot pick what political groups should and shouldn't be stigmatized, we just leave that area open for stigmatization, while prohibiting the stigmatization of non-political groups. To you that seems insane, because you are as orange as it gets. You feel like that is immoral, while someone at green will feel the exact opposite. Again here you fail to see that you are driven by your values and that how appealling these arguments you will find is determined by what you already value.

--- nevermind, reading error ---

Once more you have misinterpreted everything I said. I don't think you have read a single sentence I wrote with even the slightest bit of charity.

You have to explain to them why spiral dynamics is spiral dynamics. There are reasons why these dynamics work the way they work, they are very much the same as evolutionary forces. It's not arbitrary, it's not random, like evolution is not arbitrary or random. For example the limitations of stage blue inevitably lead to the new value attainment of stage orange, precisely because of the limitations of the previous stage. It's not like there is no reason why blue evolves to orange. You just have to study the model more and give them an indepth explanation of these dynamics. Treat it very similar to the theory of evolution. Why do certain animals evolve wings, why do they behave the way they do? The same can be asked for individuals and collectives in terms of spiral dynamics. Basically you can ask him whether he believes social evolution is completely random and why it would not be governed by some sort of dynamics which evolve from the mechanism that are underlying societal structures. You can basically tell him that not believing in some sort of spiral dynamics is akin to not believing in evolution, because essentially they are one and the same process. There is no "should" in evolution, nor is there in spiral dynamics. It's just how things evolve due to the nature of reality.

The problem is that the arguments we are making are going completely over your head. It's like talking to a religious fundamentalist. Imagine you were sitting here talking to one, very quickly you would find yourself at loss as to how to convince that person. Every argument you will make will be ignored, misconstrued or in some shape or form perceived as something different than it was intended by you. For us to see your value system we do not truly need to analyze your arguments, but we merely have to analyze the way you argue, the way you respond to certain arguments. It's the way you approach these problems that gives us insight into where you are at. Knowing your approach, we will immediately know that arguing with you will be most likely futile. Every attempt I did for example you missed my points by a long shot. The effort I would have to put into this to first deconstructing your own ideology and then guide you into a new one would be insane. You are unwilling to even listen to the other side, if you were you would have found the answers we are trying to communicate by yourself. Imagine you were talking to a religious fanatic, and you would pose the question "Do you have any evidence for the Christian God?" and they respond by quoting the bible and saying the bible is the best evidence, how would you continue approaching that person? The difference between blue and orange is as radical as between orange and green. For example veganism, for someone in orange you would have to somehow convince them that slaughtering animals for meat if it is unnecessary is wrong. You would have to argue what it is no necessary, then why it is wrong and still that person might just say "Ah but I guess I don't care that much, I just like my meat even if it is wrong". Green is fundamentally different in that it will not need any convincing whatsoever. As soon as it sees the exploitation, it will use rationality to justify why it is wrong to kill animals. The orange person will use rationality to justify why it is fine to kill animals. This is a shift that is outside of reason, outside of mere argumentation. It is a value shift. That value shift is going to determine what kind of arguments you find appealling and what kind of arguments you will be rejecting. You are not a rational machine, you are driven by emotions. Everything you do, every argument you make, is fundamentally a way to actualize how you feel about something. Unless there is a shift in value, there is no point in arguing. The rationalist fails to recognize this mechanic, the rationalist mistake is that he believes he is purely rational. That is why he is most susceptible to emotional bias, like you so clearly are. You mind literally refuses to accept nuance so that it can uphold it's position. You cannot see it because your perspective is fundamentally a product of what you value. If I love apples more than anything, I will structure everything in my life around apples. I will use rationality to increase appleness. Infact, I will be blind to anything that does not incease appleness. Everything that threatens appleness will be a threat to me. The apple will ground how I perceive reality, how my mind thinks, how my mind feels about all sorts of things, it is literally changing the lense through which you view and perceive reality. RIght now the values you hold limit you to a very specific lense, that lense will distort any argument we are going to make. It's obvious to us, you have no ability to grasps the meaning of our arguments. And we know so well because we have been at that place ourselves. This might seem arrogant to you the same as the atheist will seem arrogant to the religious. The religious cannot even begin to perceive what the actual argument of the rationalist is, and so the rationalist cannot perceive what the argument of the post-rationalist is.

More importantly, however, is that orange would believe itself to be yellow.

Why would I? To help you evolve as a human being? I have enough evolving to do myself. If you are interested in the other side of the argument you can find enough on the internet. I am not a day-care. I have given you enough which did not help you whatsoever.

You show no charity towards anything I wrote. What is the point of me responding to you if you are not even going to attempt to comprehend what I am writing? I think I was very clear, yet you omitted most of my points completely. I guess the orange is gonna orange. Forgo all nuance for ideology.

Libertarians are not an opressed group, and being libertarians is not as fundamentally a part of ones identity as for example your sexual orientation, migration background or skin color is. You cannot just choose to change your history or skin color. It is not the ridicule of Trump supporters which leads to the hatred of Trump supporters among Antifa and the like. It's not like Trump supportes are a neutral group of people. They have an impact on their environment and their decisions have a very real impact on other people, like for example minority groups, the environment in general and so forth. It is not fair at all to compare a political orientation with something like a sexual orientation and race. I do not think it is wrong to make fun of liberals as much as it is to make fun of Trump supporters. Politicitcal disagreement is not the same as societal discrimination. Additionally, not all violence is unjustified. For example, to have prevented the rise of the Nazi's by ridiculing them and subsequently leading to violence towards that group would have been totally fine by me if it did prevent them from getting in a position of power. Politics is not neutral. If there is a group which threatens by it's political choices the way of life of others in a very significant way, like deportation or holocaust, then stigmatization and violence is a perfectly justifiable means to counteract these movements. You do not recognize that speech leads to very real consequences that definitely end in violence and the like. Of course it is not easy to quantify, but to completely ignore it is lacking all nuance. While we should not necessarily create legal culpability for certain speech, I certainly think we can create moral culpability for speech. Another example is actively engaging in politics which leads to the deaths of thousands of people overseas. Currently the population, which continously elects people who perpetuate wars in other countries, have no responsibility whatsoever for their political choices. They can continue to elect people who support the military-industrial complex or even fund terrorists in other countries, or better yet invade entire country against their will, with no consequences whatsoever. That is completely insane. People are dying for these complacencies. Again, politics is not neutral, being gay, black or whatever else definitely is.

Do you not think there is a meaningful difference between making jokes about majority groups, that are currently in power like Trump voters, and making jokes about minorities which are actively discriminated against? Do you think the stigma around these groups effects them equally the same? What about if Piers was a Nazi and making jokes about jews. Should he be fired? Where do you draw the line? Do you think someone who is acting on national TV has a different responsibility in what they say and do than someone working at McDonalds? Piers should be fired because he is a moron, that guy is an embarrassment for the UK.

No.

Matt, at this point I think the best we can do is tell you that to us it seems very obvious that what you are representing here are orange values. We are trying to point to you why it is the case, yet you are unable to see our perspectives. This is not a personal attack, I think what you want to do is just consider the possibility that you are ignorant here or that you have a biased perspective and that you could try to step out of it to investigate if what we are saying is true. You are demanding us to expand your perspective, which we cannot do if you are not willing. Additionally, it is effortful for us to guide you through why you have a limited perspective in this case. We are talking about your development as a human being here, we are not responsible for that. If you want to dismiss us by saying we are talking down on you or that we do not provide good reasons for what we are saying, then we are only going to walk in circles. Notice how this conversation is drifting into a meta-conversation and conversations about you as individual. There is no attempt to expand your knowledge, you are turning this into a debate. I think you should have started out this topic by asking what Cultural Appropriation is and what it is about. Instead you have created your own version of it and criticized that version. The very first sentence you wrote in this thread shows to anyone who knows what Cultural Appropriation is that you have not even read a single, basic definition of it. You, from the beginning, have been very uncharitable towards the position of Cultural Appropriation. This is a problem, no matter who is right here. The fact that you could not even get the very basic and fundamental facts straight should make a warning-bell go off in you. It should not lead to further justifications of your position, but a reconsideration of your position. You cannot ask us to explain something to you that you will not even make the effort of reading a single unbiased article on.

But who are you talking about when you say "people"? I don't know a lot of people who would deny individualism. The fact is that current society is completely unaware of these group dynamics and doesn't care at all. Your average joe doesn't care about cultural appropriation at all, they don't understand it's usefulness. Sure we should not reduce everything to group dynamics, but I don't see that happening a lot outisde of the imagination of people like Jordan Peterson and other right wingers.

That's a strawman. The true problem is that you are trying to dismiss the concept of cultural appropriation without even attempting to study it at all. You have a dismissal attitude towards stage green values and tools. This will inevitably lead to an impact on society.

But notice that this was true also for the cardinals who ordered to slaughter the heretics. They were incredbily smart human beings who wanted the best for people and the world in general. Sadly they were very rigid in their ways, which prevented them from opening their minds to new possibilities.

This attitude would work if the world was absent of group dynamics and historical discrimination. The way you might want to start looking at it: In the past we have had discrimination based on skin color, which lead to the current status quo. If all group dynamics are now ignored, and discrimination of the past forgotten, we will not be able to create systemic changes so as to help the status quo to change. Rather the individualistic point of view can be used to dismiss group dynamics and uphold the status quo. For example, if we have a higher suicide rate amongst a certain population group, it would be far more effective to analyze the problems with group dynamics instead of encountering each individual as a completely new set of problems. We might put certain protections on that group so as to equalize it among all other groups. This will allow us for faster and systemic change instead of individualistic approaches which do not account for the differences in groups. For example, we might want to elevate a certain group specifically in a way that will seem disciminatory towards other, more established groups. However the elevation would only be done temporarily, until the groups are equalized. This is not done to inherently help the groups, but to help the most amount of people and create an equal society in the most effective way. Of course we have to look out for new power dynamics that would arise from the elevation of these certain groups. Power corrupts and any change of status quo can and will be attempted to be used for individualistic and collective gains. One might for example use a protective status for their own egoic needs, which is something we expect and observe. But the truth is that protective status is already present in groups that hold more power and already individuals in these groups use these special protections to actualized their egoic desires. As these special protections are pulled back from these groups and the protections of others are elevated, we are going to see what you would describe as unfair. That "unfairness" is a necessary byproduct for the overall greater good. In the end we are seeking to break down the group identities and create new identities which are free of egoic power structures. For example, women might experience a shift towards masculinity to equalize their status in society. As their status is going to be equalized, they will in the end be able to be free to follow their own energy again, namely the feminine energy. This is basically the deconstruction of societal norms and power structures by constructing new societal norms and power structures. An even simpler example to illustrate is the following: There is a limited amount of food and two people. One person is stronger and takes most of the food, as a result growing even bigger and stronger. The second person is growing weaker and smaller. Now comes along the notion of equality. It's not fair that the stronger person gets more food, instead everyone should get the same amount of food. This is better, but the problem is that the stronger person will remain stronger and bigger, because he will keep growing as much as the weaker and smaller person. It would only lead to the status remaining still. What would actually be fair, one might argue, is taking away some food from the stronger person and giving it to the weaker. While the weaker person will grow stronger, the stronger person will grow weaker and smaller. This will be obviously be seen as unfair, but do you really think it is? How is it fair for the weaker person to remain weak just because the stronger person had an unfair advantage at the beginninger? Would it not be better to give the weaker person more food and the stronger less until they were equally strong? At that point we can give everyone the same share. You are basically here arguing that we should just give everyone an equal amount and wait for everything to equalize naturally. However, this attitude will lead to a great amount of suffering, and it is inherently a limitation of stage orange values, which you are residing in.

It's so funny how his entire personality is structured after the rationalist ideal that he is clinging to. Arrogance concealed as humility, dogma played up as reason. The way he speaks, the words he chooses, even the tone of his voice are all part of the act. Even his pose during the interview. The reason itself is not actually the problem with rationalists, it is the attachment to trying to come off as reasonable at all costs, even at the cost of truth. I can't believe how cliche this guy is, it's like they got him right out of the rationalists factory. This is the kind of person who would have been preaching catholicism during the "enlightenment" revolution, scoffing at the ignorance of the anti-churchlings. Exact same tone of voice, exact same pose, just that the story is a different one.

That's not necessarily true, because the dynamic in a cult can allow for the leader to tell people to question and research on their own in a very particular way, leading to people either not researching and questioning at all (after all, the leader tells us to question everything, that means he must be honest!) or to research and question in a way which will not actually help them at all. Flat Earthers are very much into the "Look into it, just question it man. Don't just believe what science tells you!" and I personally know of people who use fake-science and teaches it to students who pay for it while the students have no capacity to actually verify it themselves, as it would require in-depth education in whatever scientific field. A cult leader might use an appearence of open-mindedness and encouragement of independence to actually gain the trust of his followers. He can abuse the fact that most people are to lazy or maybe not even able to question it themselves or to do in-depth research. Rather he can hope, and often successfully, that people will trust him even more so because he is telling them to question him. Not saying this is the case with Leo, but I have definitely personally observed this. Not in full-cults, as I have no direct experience with them, but in borderline cults/money-grabbing circles.

I am not quite sure what you mean. Perception to me is Being, I would say all Sentience is Being, but not all Being is Sentience.