SOUL

I even think the people of this forum should be freed from the religious loonyism on this forum. Sure, it's a mental captivity and I doubt the solipsistic cabal would turn to actual physical oppression because they would only be oppressing themselves in their mind.

I think all people across the world should be freed from the religious loonies.

You are leaving out an important piece, that Shah was an oppressive and abusive dictator. The religious extremists said they would 'liberate them' from the oppressive government, which they wanted. Except they turned around to oppress them in another way, the religious extremist version of it. They may have been culturally Islamic but that doesn't mean they wanted the extremist version of it. They didn't choose the religious extremism, they wanted the freedom from oppression, they just didn't get it from the zealots, either If the west hadn't meddled in the first place, the country still might be democratic today. Except for greed and callousness to the people far away, they didn't have to see, the west didn't care as long as they got what they wanted. It's just the extension of the colonialist mindset that seems to permeate the west.

It wasn't just the 'rich and upper class' but the amount of religious extremism or the more culturally restrictive version of it wasn't as influential as it came to be. In fact, in many instances the US and western countries backed, armed and empowered the religious extremists because those groups promise to let the western corporations get the oil and getting a cut themselves in exchange for backing them. As soon as they didn't do everything the west wanted them to they all of a sudden became 'extremist' and 'terrorist' states. As an example, Saddam Hussein was a western puppet dictator they let gas his own people because he let them do what they want. Some friction occurred, he decides to sell his oil in euros which plummets the US dollar value and poof, 6 months later there's gulf war and he's in a spidy hole. If a country lets western corporations make most of the money off the oil then they get to do whatever they want. If not then here comes the meddling, coups, destabilization, sanctions and war mongering. They will let Saudi Arabia be as cruel and religious extremist as they want because they play ball with western corporations, if not like Iran, then they are the baddies...truth is, both are pretty bad.

If you see pictures of the middle east in the 40s, 50s and 60s it shows a western styled modern(for the times) culture. Yet, after decades of meddling and warmongering by the west, mostly the US, it's been thrown into continual destabilization and degrading of the quality of life for everyone there. Well, except for the few that allow themselves to be vassals for western corporate interests, then they are allowed to improve their quality of life and build a society free from constant war. They even get to be permitted into the circle of warmongering states themselves, like Saudi Arabia and Isreal are.

The rightoid brainworms are realer.

Fixed it for you. Fixed it for you.

I read it and the basis of their research seems pretty flawed. I don't want to go into a full explanation of what I find flawed but how they came to their conclusions is derived from a misinterpretation of distorted results from a flawed survey practice. I will point to one aspect that seems fundamentally flawed, though. This was a survey of Europeans who self identify with American political parties. Americans don't even really understand what the political parties represent, let alone Europeans, who only hear through social media or mass media. If they didn't add that aspect and just centered it around the 'attitudes' towards the topics and the networks connecting them without trying to 'identify' them with political parties, they might have been able to draw a more clear conclusion about diversity of thought. The truth is 'liberalism' encompasses much of the political spectrum in the west but what people call conservative and liberal is a shallow bastardization of the meaning of the words which in practice is more based on social, cultural and geographical differences. To be fair, though, many are moving towards a more traditionally conservative view point. They endorse more authoritarian control from an elite class with less freedom of expression from a set ideology. Although, they differ on who should control and what is that ideology, but it still is moving that way. Most seem to think their ideology should be the one for everyone and the people on 'their team' should control. The people who don't think this are a minority that are trapped in a partisan fight. They may 'identify' with one or another but are forced to accept things they don't agree with in the process. In conclusion....not a conclusive research study, they did a poor job of it in my opinion. Oh...and there is no actual 'left' party in America...both parties are 'right' and what they call 'left' in the US are hardly leftists. They really don't exist, they are the smallest percentage of people.

Anyone who argues in favor of solipsism doesn't get the joke, those that don't mention it at all are in on the joke.

So mad and triggered...haha

Genesis 1:27 "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them". So according to the bible God is both sexes, one might even read that as transgender or hermaphroditic. Also, using quite a few pronouns there, don't let it trigger you.

Once I realized I am the idiot it could not ruin my life anymore

Yea, this can be a powerful insight. @MutedMiles If I may add some context to this. To have an 'opinion' it implies a certain amount of judgment of something, usually in the sense of morality, a binary of right or wrong, good or bad. Just observing and allowing something to be what it is without us trying to categorize it frees up the consciousness from being trapped in dualism. The next piece is nuanced and I hope you don't hear it is criticism because it isn't, I just want to illuminate something else I see in your words. It is with not just the word but the dynamic of 'ignore' because ignoring still is attracting and attaching some of one's attention. To ignore implies turning away from or resisting something which can drain us of the precious presence of being. As I mentioned in the first bit we can just observe without trying to conceptualize what is, just let what it is to be what it is. It is what it is regardless of what we think it is. It's virtually impossible to be completely ignorant to our surroundings and the stimuli that comes from our environment but to mitigate the attachment to it's conditioning and programming is crucial. It will allow for a transcendence of the conditional mind to an unconditional state of consciousness. Yet you have already become aware of the hardest part so you are well on your way to a lasting state of well being.

The right is a cult and one of it's many symptoms is woke derangement syndrome but no matter how much faith one has will it bring 'back' a past idealized society that never existed to begin with. Free people have issue with the religious trying to impose their beliefs and 'traditions' onto others, not the presence of faith in one's life but the broke mindset might not quite understand this. Oh and I go wherever I want with muddy shoes up on your couch living rent free in your head whispering from the depths of your subconscious mind that your imagined utopian dream is an illusion.

Are people really still arguing about this here? Wait...let me translate this into solipspeak... Is the appearance of others within the appearance of time still appearing to argue about the appearance of this dispute with the appearance of others in the appearance of this space?