Scholar

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.

I am not a mind-body dualist so to me the concept of perception is delusional. There is simply a certain state of being, it is not "caused" by a brain. It seems like a certain state of being, namely sentience, is correlated to what we interpret to be a very specific form of interactions between wavefunctions. It is so particular that it can exist in the same form, namely the brain, with almost the exact same type of interaction between wave-functions, and still be present or not be present. This is the case in deep sleep, when what we call sentience is not present at all. The form of being that is present at that point is not sentience, it does not contain suffering or what our standard definition of "experience" is. Again, that state is so particular and specific that even brain-activity is not equal to it, as the brain is very active during deep sleep. The assumption is that this particular state of being, which we call sentience, is very particular to survival mechanisms, namely ones that require the complex nagivation of reality by immediate means. The organism of the human, even in the state of deep sleep, is far beyond the complexities any plant can provide. Of course plants are Being, thus they are consciousness, yet I do not think it is likely that they are what we consider to be sentience. They for example do not require ego, they do not require to suffer, they do not interact with other beings in the same way we do. They cannot run away from prey, they do not require a fear of death. All they require is deep sleep. A plant, in other words, does not require the illusion of duality, thus there is no difference between destroying a rock and destroying a plant. The intelligence contained in a rock is beyond comprehension, the difference from rock to plant is so slim it would make no difference, so is the difference between rock and human. I do not think intelligence implies sentience, rather sentience is a very particular kind of intellgence. In this way intelligence cannot be seperated from being/consciousness, but it can be seperated from sentience. Of course there is something going on in plants that the vast majority of humans are not currently aware of, but the same is true for a rock and the air your breath. Sure, plants might have a particular form of intellgence, they might resonate to different states of being, like particular aspects of human sentience. There could be plant sentience, but there could also be rock sentience, ocean sentience and so forth. I find that most people have a tendency to correlate a certain way of structured movement, which they call intelligence, to what they are in their waking state. But what about what there is in deep sleep? What would it mean to end a life that was in deep sleep for all of eternity? A life that could not remember anything, a life that was so immersed in being it simply was pure being. What would be the difference between ending that life and not ending it? I would argue in a similar way as far as AI goes, however I do not really believe that AI is possible in the way we think it is. Computers are Being no matter what, but when they become Sentience is to me a question of when there is a certain interaction of wavefunctions, a very particular kind, so particular we cannot even tell the difference between the waking state and the deep-sleep state. How I look at it: If the each neuron in the brain was a lamp, the light the lamp produces is not sentience, rather the interaction between all the light all the lamps produce is what causes sentience. A very specific kind of interaction is needed for a very specific kind of state of being. Infact, sentience is not "caused" by the interaction of the light, rather the interaction of the light is sentience. It is that particular kind of being, looked at by itself "interpreted" as one of those very interactions. You can also flip it all and say sentience causes the interactions, it doesn't really matter. Computers lack the lamps and they alsp lack the light. Computers are more like a system of strings that just pull on each other. Very rigid, no access to genuine Nothingness or Creativity. The Neurons, the Lamps and the Lights, are in a way directly linked to the "First Cause", Nothingness, Creativity. They are connected to the spark, not because of how they move or what kind of interactions they produce, but because of what they are. Basically, I think computers will only become sentient and therefore genuinely creative once we change the physical structure of the computers, maybe some sort of biological computers or quantum computers. Whatever the "brain" is "accessing" is not at all currently present in computers. This all is kind of obsolete to explain because in the end it is only an explanation in a materialistic framework. Certain kind of wave-formations (imagine perception-waves/being-waves) ARE Sentience. Neurons do not create or cause these wave-formations, rather they "tune" into them. In the end they are not truly seperate and the Neurons themselves are the waves aswell. While computers are also these waves, they do not tune into the same kind of wave-formations, much like a rock isn't. But even that explanation just misses the point, trying to explain this is like using a limited amount of rope to bind two poles together. Once you bind the rope to one pole, you cannot reach the other pole. Or, once you reach the other pole, the previous knot slips. I never said Plants aren't intellgience or not alive. I don't create dualities like life vs non-life or intelligence vs non-intelligence. A rock contains and is just as much alive and intelligent as a plant is, which is why I don't think sentience is correlated to intelligence or life. Sentience is a particular kind of being that is not present in plants, because a plant is not playing the same game we are. The plants "survival" game is so radically different, whatever state of being the plant is is foreign to our notions of suffering, ego, resistence and so forth. And also, being vegan is the best thing you can do for plants. If you say that plants are sentient, you would also have to say that each of your limbs might be sentient. Your hand grows all on it's own, in fact it will grow in all sorts of ways depending on what food you provide it and where it will find resistance. Is your hand it's own sentient being? If not, why not? Why does one body have to contain one sentience? Why do you think that different parts of your brain do not have their own sentience? How do you know each cell does not have it's own sentience?

@Anderz ???

Because plants do not need to suffer or even to be sentient. Plants can pure consciousness, as you are in deep sleep, the same as a rock is. There is no reason for a plant to create it's own world so that it can navigate reality. The plant can simply be a plant, it cannot run away from a predator, it does not run around, create complex social bonds in which it requires awareness of the potential threats that can exist within it, etc. If plants have perceptions, then calculators probably do too. So would the computer you are using right now. Aside from that, being vegan is the best thing you can do for the plants. The animals we eat have the strange tendency to eat plants themselves.

Why does this forum have no Art section? Art is such a relevant topic for consciousness work, possibly even one of the most relevant topics, yet I rarely see anyone in here discuss it. Why do we not have a section where we can share high consciousness art, artistic techniques, advice for creativity etc.? There could even be opportunities for collaborations and the like. Not just "Share your Art", but looking at the entire culture of art as it's own aspect worthy of consideration in our self-actualization process? Maybe I am biased as an artist but I do feel like Art, in some shape or form, would deserve it's own category. Right now I don't feel like there is any place in here I feel comfortable talking and sharing things about Art without it feeling rather off-topic.

Do you really think UBI could be dismantled? I feel like it would be so difficult to just take away 1000$ from all US citizen especially when they get used to it. Infact, I feel like even if it was harmful overall there might be a risk of not being able to pull it back because of how much backlash it would cause from the population. People would structure their life around the increase in income, so simply "dismantling" it would disrupt literally the life of pretty much all americans for whom it would make a signficant difference. I don't know much about US politics but I wouldn't dare to pull that away as a politician, or even dare to attempt do so, fearing the overwhelming negative response from the general population. This is in my opinion why UBI is both so promising and so dangerous, because it will be so difficult to pull it back once people have gotten their share of it.

Why wouldn't it?

Don't you think Bernie will only further the divide currently present in the US? Yang is specifically so appealing because he is so outside the box that he could actually manage to reunite the division currently taking place atleast to some extent. Just because Bernie's ideas are more progressive does not mean that the country will actually progress in case of his presidency. Infact, I would be concerned that the very radical nature of his proposals (atleast in the perspective of the US) will lead to an eventual regression due to backlash or simple failure of implementation. Also, Yang is not a single issue candidate. https://www.yang2020.com/policies/ In my view the most important policy he is proposing are the democracy dollars, it might do wonders to fight against the corruption taking place in US politics. I think the Human Centered Capitalism idea he is specifically proposing, with systemic solutions like incentive structure changes, is a much more appealling transition into eventual socialistic societies than what the current paradigm is limited to. Just ask yourself what will happen if Bernie fails his presidency, what that will mean for the progress of the US and conversely mankind.

Reality and life are not meaningless at all, in the same way reality and life is not redless or triangularless. Meaning is a very specific aspect of Isness, reality/life are full of it. No thing in reality carries another thing within. Sex for example does not contain meaning intrinsically. And obviously meaning does not contain sex. It would be absurd to say something like "Is meaning sexful?", but that is precisely what you are doing, and interestingly also what Leo is doing. He can only say "Life is meaningless", because he is trapped in that game. If he recognized meaning as itself, he would see it exists and is real and is part of Isness as anything else is. Experience is not meaningless, rather meaning is a very particular experience. This whole game you are playing, which you are not conscious of, leads you to the nihilism you are experiencing. You are not observing meaning, but rather you are observing the relationship between meaning and other aspects of experience which you have created. Now that you see that relationship is arbitrary, you might lose the experience of meaning. You can however experience meaning on it's own, as it is it's own experience, it's own dimension of Isness. You do not require anything to be meaningful for you to dwell and enjoy Meaning. Rather than looking at experiences and looking at them as if they are meaningful or meangingless, look at experiences and realize whether the experience of meaning accompanies them or not. Meaning is more like a friend that comes along with other experiences, and you have confused that friend to be part of the other experiences. It's a shock to you that Meaning is not part of the other experiences, leading you to currently reject Meaning. Poor little Meaning is utterly confused at how easily you discriminate against it, simply because you did not see how it was walking with, instead of being part of, other experiences. You should welcome Meaning back, you have to accept it on it's own. This is like your girlfriend changing her clothes and you freaking out because you thought the clothes were part of her.

lol, there is no good explanation other than magic. What Leo calls perception includes everything you consider non-perception, that is the entire point. It does not exclude anything. Perception is another word for Isness, and because most of Isness we already call Perception, the mind has chosen to simply frame it within that already present story.