Scholar

What you are talking about requires levels of consciousness that I don't think are accessible to the person we are talking about, talking about it will only lead to ideology. I think it is much more useful to point to more obvious and immediate questions, like inspecting these aspects of consciousness and being directly aware of them. Imagination is equivalent to reality, it's just another word for it. Don't conflate your understanding of imagination with that of someone who uses it as a metaphor for the deepest understanding of manifestation. You would teach an infant to walk first before you would teach them how to play soccer.

Yeah, I guess we could say Trump is not a classical populist, but he uses a similar psychology. He basically convinced the people that he will replace the corrupt elite, the "establishment", with a better elite. This is probably part of his great success, and of course the tribalization is part of that. Trump kind of used every trick he found to get elected. But still, he is definitely about distrusting the government and the classical media, making people paranoid and lose faith in the institutions which keep the fabric of society together. Which I think is one of the most dangerous aspects of all of this. Once people lose faith in the institutions, they will be free to be exploited by anyone.

Yes, but you said it yourself, Bernie is green and Trump is blue/orange. The similarity is the optics, not the internal motivation. They both use populism in their rhethoric. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Populism No one here is saying that Bernie is as selfish as Trump, it is argued that they use similar strategies in their ways of convincing people. It's not even a critique of Bernie, it's a compliment as it shows that he has an understanding of politics that many lefties lack. I don't see how Trump is not a populist, populism just means that there is a narrative of the people vs the elite. Both of them use this narrative in their own way. Trump uses this rhethoric for his own gains, while Bernie most likely wants to to make positive changes.

This topic is connected to Spiral Dynamics and Self-bias. I feel like in this community we need to have a much greater awareness of Post Hoc rationalisation in general because it is so prevalent everywhere, even in this forum. I catch myself doing it all the time so I am not special in the regard that I don't do it. But the awareness of it alone I think can keep a lot of us from falling into traps. Post hoc rationalisaion is basically creating arguments from a conclusion or feelings that you already have. An easy example of doing this is by asking "Is rape a good thing?" Now, pretty much all of us will have already concluded that rape is wrong, we will not even start to entertain the question. Our minds will feel that it is wrong, we will intuit it, and from there our minds will try to come up with good reasons for why it is wrong. Notice yourself doing that. You will be doing this even if you are a moral nihilist. A moral nihilist will already have concluded that nothing is wrong and his mind will immediately shuffle around to find the justifications for his position. The tricky thing is that post hoc rationalisation does not mean you are automatically wrong, infact often if gets us results that are farely accurate. But doing it unconsciously allows for the devilry to take place, it allows for self-deception, for self-bias. In the cases in which it does, we will keep arguing a position even when we have not yet found any rational reason to justify it. It's like when you ask a normal person if they think eating meat is moral, they will in most cases immediately tell you reasons for why they indeed do think it is moral. When you then inspect the reasons, you will notice that they are all shallow and completely absurd, yet the person who stated them did not notice it, even if they would notice it if we would change the context. This is a really good example of post hoc rationalisation, because it demonstrates that we reason from our emotions, from our conclusions, rather than objectively inspecting the question to find an answer. With our knowledge of Spiral Dynamics we know that the way we value things is determined by what needs have been fulfilled or not fulfilled in our lifes. For example, a person cannot transition into orange before they have not fulfilled their individualistic needs. What we value is basically a tool of survival, it allows us to focus on what is important and leave out that which is not. For someone who is individualistic, animal rights are secondary because they are still worried about actualizing their own individuality. Once that individuality is actualized, one might move onto valuing say community or the like, which then becomes the primary object of perception. It means that what we perceive to be lacking in our lifes will be what we will value, and therefore our perceptions will focus on finding information that will fulfill and actualize that value. This is where post hoc rationalisation comes in. When we ask someone why they value what they value, they will come up with reasons, but the reasons they give are never truly the reasons for why they value it, rather the reasons are a result of what they already value. They create the arguments from the way they perceive and from what they value in the world. This determines everything. This determines our metaphysics, it determines how we speak, it determines what we like to consume. Literally everything. And our intellectual positions are part of that. We will find certain world views and ideologies more compelling than others based on what we value, and we will do anything to justify these world views. This is why we cannot convince a religious person, with arguments, that their religion is wrong. The arguments don't really matter, what matters is what they value. They will come up with any reason, no matter how absurd, to justify their beliefs. And this is happening everywhere. We are all doing it, and we need to be aware of it. Some good questions to keep and mind and ask yourself on a regular basis are: "Why do I find this argument compelling?" "Am I attached to this position?" "Would I really want to be convinced of the opposite of what I believe?" "How would it make me feel if I was wrong about this?" "Am I more certain about this than I should be?" Basically we need to observe the process of rationalisation. Where are my thoughts coming from, why are they the way they are? There must be a reason and it will be found if we look for it. I see a lot of people for example delegitimizing the model of Spiral Dynamics, despite them not really understanding it at all. How is that possible, how can a rational agent not understand something and yet disagree with it? Well, because they do not care for the truth, they care about how this piece of information will be useful to actualize whatever they value. If a piece of information goes contrary to what they value, infact even if they just hint thaat it might they will immediately proceed to rationlize why that piece of information is false. Their minds will seek reasons from a conclusion instead of inspecting it honestly. We need to train ourselves to catch this process, because whether our arguments are valid or not, this process allows for the devil to sneak in. Infact, the devil will use the instances where this process worked to justify all of it's lies.

The soviet union was a very specific system, it was communism. You can't brush all of socialism, which has obviously evolved over the years, to be the same as communism. There are hundreds of different socialist theories and systems that are being proposed. Nowadays socialism is basically everything that is considered to be a restributive solution to captitalism. But again, read some books on the matter. I am not interested in arguing.

I think you are right in a sense with describing him as a green version of trump. Bernie uses very similar optics, or rhethoric tactics as Trump, because it works. Populism just works in our time, tell them "You can't trust the corrupt government, you have to trust me!" is basically all that people want to hear. And it's somewhat of a valid desire in our times. I don't think Bernie would be popular without these rhethorical tricks, and he knows that. People work on emotions.

First, what do you mean by socialism? Have you read any contemporary socialist theories? And by what metric are they doing a worse job? How many books have you read on socialism, or on the critique of capitalism? You will only gain a more deeper understanding if you do read some. You don't have to answer, just question it. And notice how it makes you feel.

Yeah this is why it's harder to determine ones stage than it used to be. People have a far easier time nowadays to find memes of higher stages and kind of incorporate them into their own ideological system. Especially stage orange people can find a lot of value in stage yellow because stage yellow is very solution based oriented in general, and also to an extend individualistic. A stage orange person might not value systemic thinking in an of it self, it might not value authenticity itself, it might however value the results it will get from these higher stage tools.

But how do we make people aware of this? I watched the self-deception series but I didn't have this post hoc rationalization realization until now for some reason. Is it possible to make someone aware of it by trying to explain it to them or does it take time for it to actualize into an actual awareness of what is going on? So many of us here are doing it and I feel like it's such an obvious thing that somehow we should be able to avoid, right? But how?

No I will not, there is no point in arguing it. I gave you some critique of your system in the first post, you can ponder whether that is valid or not. If you want to know about the limitations of libertarianism you can read some books on it, or maybe someone else will explain. I don't have the time, we would argue for days.

Christ living now would be a vegan hippie who would mobilize entire societies to act against capitalism and greed, in the ideal scenario.

I think Leo would say that Bernie's criticism would contribute to raising the level of consciousness of people in the US and thus increase future likelihood of implementing these ideas. Whereas other leaders might not raise people's consciousness as much, and in the case of Trump might even lower it. The priority however is to raise consciousness in general, as that is what will lead to more stable progress. Bernie like Trump is very much a populist, just that his is pulling us towards green while Trump is pulling us towards blue and orange.

I think there is, what else would be the point of discussing Napoleon but raising people's consciousness? Look, I am not saying you are a lesser being because you don't value Christ more than Napoleon. I am just telling you that one day, following this path, you will actually change your values and be valuing someone like Christ the most. There is a reason for why you value Napoleon more so than Christ. And again, that reason is determined by your level of consciousness. Don't forget that your idenity if closely connected to your consciousness and how you perceive the world. This means that because you admire and maybe even idolize Napoleon so much, it might actually have an influence on your consciousness (it certainly has). Once you will let go of that, you can still look at Napoleon and see the good things he did, but you will see his low level of consciousness, you will see his egoism, and it will quite unattractive to you. That's just how it goes.

I know that is your understanding of compassion, but that is a very Stage Orange way of looking at compassion. You will only be compassionate as long as it does not restrict your individualistic needs. Once you have enough of these individualstic aspects you might one day start to think it isn't as important after all, and that maybe compassion is more important than freedom. I never told you what I value. I am explaining to you the difference between Stage Orange and Stage Green. All of your justifications are established post-hoc. It means that the arguments you are giving me are not actually what inform what you value, but what you value informs which arguments you will use to justify what you value. It would be senseless to discuss the arguments because you will not be compelled as long as your values do not change. I could give you reasons for why for example it will not end in disaster, or why your arguments are strawmanns and don't really reflect any position. But that would be useless, because you would just come with another argument to support your values and debunk mine. All I can do is make you question why you value freedom, and have you consider that any rational reason you will give is actually a result of that value rather than a true reason for why you value freedom. You entire consciousness is structured to perceive the world through an individualstic lense, there is no argument in the world that can change that. Which is fine, maybe you need to fullfill your current needs because you lack something in your life. But remember, once you fullfill that need for freedom, you will move onto other things. And that is good, that is how values evolve.

But that is not an unbiased description of what Hitler did. First, what are evil reasons? Hitler, and actually the germans in general, thought it was a very justifiable reason. They thought the Jews were a threat to the world and the wanted to get rid of them. You call them innocent, but to Hitler they were all a threat, they were like an infestation to him. Hitler genuinely thought he did the best for Germany and even mankind. Sure his beliefs were misguided, and surely we all disagree with his solutions. But to just say he was pure evil I don't think is a very accurate analysis. I am not judging you. You said Napoleon is one of your top 5 human beings ever. Clearly you value something in Napoleon, and clearly there is a reason for it. And the reason for it must be your level of consciousness, as it determines what you value and how you perceive the world. And because he is in your top 5 it does not really allow a lot of room for people who I think someone would value if they had a higher consciousness. One day you might find yourself to start disliking Napoleon, when your perspective evolves and you find new things that you admire. Always be open to that. You have no true control over what you value and who you admire. Question why you admire Napoleon in particular. And then question why you value these particularities. If your values stay rigid, you will not evolve your consciousness.

Maybe you don't think it is accurate because you still view the world through a very individualistic lense? Be open-minded that there is a reason for why you value what you value, for why you find certain argument compelling and others not, for why you agree with John Glubb instead of someone like Ken Wilber. What you value will determine how you will perceive the world. And how you perceive the world will determine what you will think to be true and false.

I have stopped to admire people for their grand achievements, I don't see anything special in Napoleon other than unfortunate genetics that allowed him to accomplish his egotistical needs. Someone who has the capacity to spare a creature like a spider despite fearing it to me is more admirable than Napoleon could have ever been, even if he conquered the entire world. I wonder how you would have talked about Hilter if he did succeed in creating the Third Reich. What if the world indeed would be better off without the jews? Would you then be sitting here and arguing for why Hilter had admiring qualities despite his relative cruelness? I could list a hundred people who I find far more extraoridnary than Napoleon. What you value, what you find extraoridnary and admirable, depends on your level of consciousness. Do you think Jesus would have listed Napoleon in his top 5 human beings ever? To me it seems like you are very biased towards Napoleon because you are attached to him. Especially because you have been reading about him from such a young age, it is likely that you have attached your identity to him.

Yes but then would you not agree that Napoleon was exceptionally ruthless and egotistical?

Yes but I don't think we also should just relativize everything to a point where everyone is basically just a person with some flaws. I would state that Napoleon and people like him were exceptionally egotistical and ruthless, otherwise they could have not assumed the positions of power they did. If I for example would compare Napoleon to Marcus Aurelius, I would say Marcus was definitely less egoic than him. But even he was embedded in a culture of imperialism. When you ask the people who had to live with the consequences of what Napoleon did and what Hitler did, you will probably get very similar responses. This is even true in contemporary contexts, where the imperialism of the US in the middle east is viewed as pure evil by those who are effected by it. Sure Hilter was more ruthless, but he also existed in a different historical context. We have to recognize that both of them were basically pure evil in the eyes of those who suffered greatly as a result of their conduct. Would you ever argue that a person who rapes children but also runs a non-profit charity that cures cancer is a person with some flaws?

Alright, I have not done too much research into it so you could be right. I think the entire point Leo was making was that this attitude of war and exploitation is so normalized that we don't even look at it like it was particulary egotistical. "Oh Napoleon just fought for france, he was just good at his job! And besides he did so many good things for france!" This entire attitude is a result of completely blatant self-bias. How could Napoleon have done what he did if he had not been ruthless? It's not like Napoleon stayed in france and defended it from foreign invasions. He was the conqueror. To be imperialistic you have to be egotistical.

So what did he say in the video that was unfactual?

Watch the video I posted above, about Napoleon's greatest foe. You can then research the names of the villages he mentions to verify it for yourself.

Napoleon destroyed entire villiages of innocent people who had nothing to do with the war, who were completely neutral, and from whoms destruction he gained no strategic advantage at all. He killed thousands of people because he felt like it. I think you really need to read up on Napoleon, the guy was a narssicistic maniac. Sure, he was also a strategic genius and fought for france, but in what world is that a justification for murdering innocent people, conquering and invading countries etc.? Napoleon is highly romanticized. Noone here is using barbaric as a description of Goths. I think you know what we mean when we say barbaric here.

I think any historian would call Agustus Caesar barbaric, in the common sense of the word. By the way you are arguing, you could say Hitler just did what was best for Germany. The only difference would be that Hitler failed while Napoleon had some temporary success.

@Nemo28 Essentially the answer is "Because Nemo28ness is not Dogness". It's like asking "How can there be individual atoms when the universe is one unified field or wave-function?". It's like asking "How can there be green while there is red?" By framing it this way you are already begging the question. You already assume that there is such a thing as possession, or some sort of metaphysical idenity. This right here is like a grain of sand. Look at how many grains of sand there are. Each grain of sand is it's own grain of sand, how is that even possible? Instead of buying into your thoughts of seperation, question them, look at them. What is "two thing"-ness? What is the substance of "two-thing"-ness? What is the substance of "me-vs-the-dog"-ness?