Emerald

Thank you.

Not only do I believe this, I think it's quite obvious if you listen to his work. He is very anti-progress, and seems to credit the social progress of women over the course of the past several decades for the social decay he perceives. So, if you listen to his work, it's really clear that he wants to bring up a lot of the social mores of yesteryear... especially relative to women's place in the world.

I think I can give some insight into this. When, I was 20, I was a street musician that would play my guitar (mostly at night) for people who were leaving the bars and clubs in the pedestrian area of my town. During that time, I got a lot more harassment from men than I would normally get, because they probably assumed I was homeless... as most of the street musicians were. And when certain men think you're in a position of powerlessness relative to them, they will try to exploit that weakness. So, during that time, I had tons of guys come up and make sexual comments to me. One man bent down and kissed my legs as I was playing the guitar. I was propositioned quite often by the Ward Cleaver types of the world. I had one guy beg me to kiss him. I had one guy say that "I better get used to running from (him)." I had men follow me home. I had men try to invite me to come and live with them (with the promise of chicken and rice). One guy, who was walking with his girlfriend (who was mortified), kept repeating "I wonder what she would do for a twenty!" after his girlfriend tipped me a couple bucks. I had one group of guys (that I later suspected that they were sex traffickers) invite me to come to Amsterdam with them. And this is just the stuff that I can remember of the top of my head. Sexual harassment was just a constant occurrence during that time, when before it was just every now and then. I never went a single night of playing without receiving unwanted sexual attention. And as I got more and more used to this kind of attention from men, my disgust and fear would bleed into my daily life. I just had an auto-projection onto all men that they were going to harass me as a defense mechanism. So, I would avert my eyes whenever I would cross paths with a man on the street. I just got so used to intrusive levels of male attention, that I would go into defense mode whenever I was around a man. And it was a nightmare because it made me feel like secretly all men were perverts that seek to exploit women whenever they perceive a weakness. Even though I knew this was probably not the case, the fear was still there because it was the main way I experienced men during that time. So, I became deeply misandristic and fearful of men as a projection because I was always bracing myself for the fallout. It took me quite a few months to get over that projection. So, basically, my thought is that it's probably a projection based on past experiences with other men. I say this because I experienced an intensified version of the harassment that I would normally receive, and it resulted in an intensified version of the projection. So, perhaps you've experienced a milder amount of harassment that translated into a milder projection that just sometimes crops up.

I mentioned this to you before about Jordan Peterson. He brings up a regressive point of view like he's simply musing about it, as an open-minded intellectual playing devil's advocate. But he's already knows how his audience will receive those "musings". He knows that his audience will make the connections he wants them to... which is that women are to blame for harassment in the workplace because they wear make-up and are asking for it. That's his whole game. He never commits to any of those viewpoints. But he turns his followers on to them, so they can do whatever they want to do with them... which JP knows exactly what that is. This is the lion's share of his manipulation game.

Thank you!

I don't know where I'd peg myself on Spiral Dynamics. But I find that I'm actually better able to relate to people now, than I was a few years ago. But I also have many outlets where I can talk to others who have similar interests and paradigms. So, I don't starve for that type of interaction, and I don't ever try to get that type of interaction from random people in my life anymore. That was always a disaster to try. So, I basically just had to keep myself to myself for many years. But now, I can just have conversations about anything that that person is interested in, and I'm not starved for outlets so I'm content being with that person without needing to try to bring them into stage yellow and turquoise topics. I'm content to talk totally mundane things that are just normal. So, I think finding an outlet and people who share your interests is key for functioning normally around others and not trying to force others into the higher paradigms that they may have no interest in or resonation with.

I call Jordan Peterson the Trojan Horse of human regression. His desire is to go back to some golden age... that he would probably hate if it was actually achieved (to be honest). So, he give 95% good advice for living and laces it with 5% regressive ideologies that demonize progress and seek to bring the state of society backward. One such way, is by painting a much smaller box for everyone (especially women and anyone who doesn't conform to gender) to live within. He thinks there is something special and natural about the gender roles of the past. So, he thinks everyone would be happier living within those confines. Everything about his perspective holds up Blue as the end all be all of healthy and natural human social structures. And he wants us all to go back to that. That's why I call him the Trojan Horse of human regression. It's the pill inside the peanut butter that he feeds all of his fans. And they eat it up like it's the best thing on the planet, as it gives them the illusion of expansion while they're contracting into a less expansive perspective. Kind of like running on an conveyor belt that's even more quickly bringing you backward.

Perception and rationality are two different faculties of the human lens. But if we are unconscious, we come to mix them up. When I was 15 and learning how to draw and paint, in high school art class, I learned that perception and my mind's ideas about what I was seeing were two different things. Before that, I had never seen the world in my entire life. All I ever saw were my ideas and labels of things. Tables were just tables. Chairs were just chairs. Things were essentially as I thought they were, and not as they actually were. I lived my life through a projection of a very subtle framework that I had woven throughout my life. But when I really started to perceive accurately, I realized that there were no separate objects at all. It was just one huge two dimensional plane of shapes imbued with colors. And that plane changed completely if I moved even one inch, or the lighting changed slightly. My mind had no useful information to tell me about the world in front of me as far as accurate perception goes. In fact, the mind could only distract and delude me away from accurate perception. So, at that point, all I needed to do was to trust that my perception was accurate and to let go of the need to cleave to my mind's notions of the world, and that was 95% of the battle of learning to paint and draw. And I learned it all in a one-second long insight into the nature of reality and perception. And I had a feeling like the implications of that insight spanned into the other senses as well. Though, I didn't figure that out until much later. So, rationality and intellect will always try to strong-arm their way into the mix and distort accurate perception. The trick is to learn how to disengage from the rational/intellectual strivings and simply perceive. Meditation can help you learn to detach from intrusive thought processes like that. You just have to recognize when they're trying to sneak in.

I don't know. To me, all this leading/following focus feels like putting an idea over top of a relationship and the masculine/feminine dynamic that doesn't really need to be there. And as a woman, it's tiring far more than it will ever be titillating to engage with men who are enamored by that idea. It feels like these types of men like to masturbate to the fact that they're men, in some kind of weird auto-androphillia, and it just doesn't do anything for me. And I'm pretty sure that's the way most women think about it, as there's no shortage of men who are trying to cram themselves into the alpha mold. It's very dime a dozen with those types. Plus, it's a lot less ego-friendly to be type-cast as the follower in that narrow caricature of a relationship dynamic than as the leader. It squelches the natural flow of libidinal energy because the story tells you to make yourself smaller. And there's nothing less sexy than a man who's hung up on being the dominant one. It ironically feels very immature and try-hard... which are the very opposite of the natural Yang energy. I remember the first time I'd heard of the dominance submission dynamic in a relationship, I was 19 and my friend Andrew's sister had married this guy Brian. And they were pretty religious. And they had vowed that she would be submissive to him and that he would be dominant and make all the decisions in order to live by God's word. And we had to laugh because their personalities didn't resemble that dynamic in any way. So, they just started acting weird trying to cram themselves into those ideas. So, ultimately, people have their natural set-points, and when people are authentic there may be one partner that's more of a leader than the other. But creating rules around who leads (man or woman) just feels like a bunch of kids trying to be adults and fetishizing the mundane lives of men and women amd cleaving to those roles in an attempt to live out a fetish. The way I see it, is that people will naturally lead where they have an aptitude and follow when the other partner is the more skilled of the two. And there will also usually be a bedroom dynamic that each person enjoys, as well. So, I just feel like all the fixation on leading and following muddies up our relationship to our natural Yin/Yang energetic signature which best ebbs and flows from situation to situation. The dominance/submission stories are old and tired. Any story is just a story. And stories write over the truth. Just do what feels right without engaging those stories, and life will be a lot more expansive and pleasurable. So, female-led and male-led relationships are okay... as long as it happens organically and no one's trying to cling to ideas.

I just began life-coaching, but I do technically have a successful career (in the business sense) in it because I can now quit my job. I haven't gotten certified yet, and I've only been doing it for two months though. I have also been able to help my clients in real substantial ways despite the fact that I'm very new to it. I'm surprised at how much I have actually been able to help and how many breakthroughs that I've witnessed in just two months of sessions. But people are mostly interested in my services because they subscribe to my YouTube channel and are interested in my perspective and having me guide them through their issues. So, the main value that I provide is not in that I have an amazing life with all the money, success, etc. And then saying, "Look. You can have this too." My life is very modest, which I'm very candid about if the topic comes up. So, the thing that really sets me aside is the amount of inner work I've done. So, I know the terrain of the human psyche pretty well because I've personally fallen down a lot of rabbit holes and have had to find ways to climb back out again. And I can guide people into whatever is blocking their goals in ways they may not have considered. I'm also very receptive, non-judgmental, curious, and personable in my approach. And most people come to me for a sense of direction and clarity. So, I am a novice coach. But the thing that sets me aside from even seasoned coaches is my ability to facilitate paradigm-hopping in my clients to give them new perspectives to consider their issues from.

Why are you asking? Are you just going thinking into the future like, "What if I got into a relationship and broke up. Then, if that's the case, should I stay in or go out?" and getting stressed about these far-off possibilities. And is it you trying to talk yourself out of giving relationships a try? I'm going out on a limb here, of course, but it feels like a really strange question to ask for someone who is single.

@Charlotte I was looking around for the sources that I found before, but I couldn't find them. But this one had a lot of good information, even though it's written blog-style... https://www.precisionnutrition.com/intermittent-fasting-women

I don't mean that you're starving yourself. I'm sure that you're eating a normal amount. What I mean is that the body registers the intermittent fasting as a sign of potential starvation. Women's bodies are especially sensitive to it and produce more of a compound (called Ghrellin... if memory serves), because we have to maintain an eco-system that a baby can grow in. So, the body goes into protection mode and makes it to where you can't get pregnant, so that you can monopolize on the food you eat without having to provide food to a child growing inside of you. So, it's your body's way of protecting you (and your potential fetus) from starving. And it gives you extra ability to be able to go get food on your own through increased testosterone production. So, it may not come off as more aggression, especially if you haven't experienced complete cessation of the menstrual cycle yet. But it's basically, your body gearing up for the pre-historic male role of hunting by giving you the potential for extra aggression that the testosterone supplies. But I don't know to what extent this has been studied and proven. I know that there's a ton of information on the internet about intermittent fasting and women though, and it all says the same thing. I was interested in intermittent fasting a year or so ago, and I looked up information about it. And I found a source that was talking about the dangers of intermittent fasting for women. And I was like, "GoshDangIt!" And I found a lot of different sources that echoed the same information.

They say that intermittent fasting isn't good for women, because it throws off our reproductive cycle. Because growing a child is a huge tax on nutrient stores, intermittent fasting give the body the message that food is frequently scarce in your life. The body doesn't know that you're doing it on purpose in a very controlled way. So, it can put a damper in your libido and even stop menstruation, because your body is telling you that it's unsafe for a child to grow there. Also, it will stimulate more testosterone production to give you the extra aggression to find your own food in the wild if you were in pre-historic times. Studies have shown that across the board intermittent fasting is good for men on many different levels. But it's not recommended for women because of how much it messes with hormones and the reproductive cycle. If you do, as a woman, want to do intermittent fasting, it is recommended that you skip a day or two between each intermittent fasting day. That way, your body doesn't register a pattern of prolonged starvation as it would with everyday intermittent fasting.

If you don't mind my asking, in which way do you experience inequality? For me, it mostly comes through the lens of being a woman. And then just looking on the internet and seeing all the misogyny that I didn't know existed prior to the days of the internet... and how it interacts with so many of the insights I had into my own repressed femininity and self-hatred the years prior. And that salting wounds that are so deep that they are on both the personal and the ancestral level. It's like seeing a really ugly part of humanity's shadow, and how it crosses over so many psychological, social, biological, and sexual human threads. It's this really complex ancient dark curse of a thing, that's both a riveting and terrifying monster to hunt. And I'm obsessed with it like a hunter who wants its head hanging on my wall, and a mad scientist that wants to know all its machinations. But the social boundaries are really stifling. People who are of any class that's considered default are very sensitive about anything related to their class being brought up. They're not used to dealing with situations in relation to that class. So, they get uncomfortable easily, like someone entering into a cold pool. But people of classes not considered default are already in the cold pool, so we're both used to it but the discomfort is constant despite its manageability. So, it's difficult to make a person from the default class listen and understand without having a negative emotional reaction or so many ego defenses thrown up. The water is too cold for them, and many freak out even though it's just a temporary discomfort. My solution (that doesn't fully solve the whole problem of Course) is to try to understand the system that's creating those inequalities as deeply as possible. This helps me get more perspective on how and why those patterns have come about, and also the solution for core problems. Plus, it gives me a sense of detachment to view the issues from a less personal perspective as well. It helps me avoid victim's mentality.

It's important to understand the inequality comes as a result of systems. And those parts of systems that create inequalities also squelch consciousness and integration on the macro level. So, if your goal is to have a more conscious society/world that's better to live in, your own inequalities give you the perfect door for exploration of these systems. If you are in a non-privileged position for power, you are in a privileged position for wisdom and insight about the whole system. So, it's just a matter of being able to see what you perceive as purely negative from a different (and better) angle. It may be less comfortable to live with inequality... but it will also make you aware of certain shadows within humanity in ways that people who have more privileges may never have. Through this you can make yourself more resilient, stronger, more aware, and more wise. It will also help you learn how to dismantle these systems so that others in the future don't have to experience the same. Some people crumble under this weight. So, it's important to dismantle them for the sake of avoiding that and expanding society's consciousness in general by removing its bindings. So, even thought the inequalities are difficult to deal with, there is a way to do the alchemy of soul with them, where you turn water into wine and exalt yourself to your highest. Understand that hardship can go two ways. It can help build you up if you're resilient. It can break you down if you're not.

For this, I think it's important to reconcile the inherent perfection of the absolute along with the inherent imperfection of the relative as an extension of the perfect absolute. So ground yourself in the absolute as this is Truth, and the awareness that no matter what happens it's all 100% perfect. But do not forget about the relative or waive it off as unimportant. The relative is also an extension of the absolute, and it's important to live an embodied life if you're going to get the most out of living the human experience. So, understand that everything is ultimately already perfect, but also recognize that so much could be improved relatively. And if it calls to you, seek to understand the systems that produce the inequalities that you perceive. Then, you'll know how these problems can be addressed, and be able to do so. Also, find your motivations. Why do these inequalities bother you so much? Is it a genuine problem that has negative effects on many people? Or is it just the principle of the thing?

It's difficult, that's for sure. But there are people out there. And what I found is that having similar interests is only one piece of the puzzle. There are about ten other compatibility factors that precede that one in importance. So, you don't have to find someone who's perfectly into the same things as you. And even if you did, you may have no chemistry whatsoever. You just have to find someone who shares some of your interests who enjoys out of the box thinking and has their own passions as well. They're out there and by the plenty. But they're also more rare than they are common. So, I totally understand the difficulty. But you can look for some tell-tale signs of a relatively "woken up" eighteen year old girl. She may be a bit iconoclastic, have a major in art, philosophy, or the humanities in general. She might dress unusually, be a loner, and/or hang out with a nerdy/off-beat crowd. She will probably have a very particular taste in music and art. And she will have a clear sense of self and direction. And she'll be chilled out and open-minded. Now, none of these are guarantees of being compatible or that a particular girl is actually more awake. These are outward traits, after all. But this is always the type of girl that I would hang out with back then. And they were always similar in their way of thinking to me, even if they didn't share my exact interests in this that and the other thing. But we always got eachother, and could have deep conversations on a lot of different topics, and there was a clear sense of intimacy between friends because we were cut from the same cloth. I'm still friends with most of them now. This is the type of person that someone with these types of interests and personality-leanings really needs in their life, whether as a friend or as a partner. At my current age, I have come to notice the vibe that I get from someone when we're cut from the same cloth. And it's something that I notice nearly right away. So, my recommendation is to continue socializing and get really good at finding who's cut from the same cloth as you, friendship-wise and relationship-wise. It will make socialization and building relationships quite a bit easier. But my tell-tale signs should help in a pinch... But again, that's no guarantee. Just know, that those kind of girls are uncommon but not THAT uncommon. They're definitely around, especially on college campuses.

I understand. But hear me out, I have a friend who ironically just struck up a conversation with me on FB a moment ago after having not talked in a very long time. Not necessary info, but very ironic because I had him in mind when I gave you this warning. So, very synchronistic. My friend (who I didn't know at the time) transferred to my college when I was in my junior year. He was a few years older than me at the time but he had just started college because he spent a few years in the military. My first impression of him was really negative because I just met him and he asked me out like two minutes later. Then, through word of mouth I heard from like 10 other girls that he had done the same to them. So, my opinion of him was low, at first. But about a week later, I was walking at night from the gas station down the street from my college back to my dorm room, and I ran into him and he was really genuinely upset. He told me that he had just found out that a lot of people disliked him because he asked out so many girls. He was genuinely very surprised by this, and didn't see anything strange in his actions. He's always had difficulty picking up on social cues. But he continued to have problems because of the bad first impression he had given. Most people didn't (and still don't) understand that he meant no harm in his actions and that he can't help his social unawareness. So, I didn't want to risk putting you in that kind of situation by not adding that caveat to my advice. Now, you can still approach girls on campus, but not 20 per day for sure. That you'd probably save for a club. But maybe approach a few per week... but make sure that they don't know eachother very well. If you try to ask out a bunch of women in the same social group, it will likely turn out badly.

You're welcome. Did you read the edit that I made the response. I thought of it about ten minutes after I'd written it originally. But it's really important to keep that advice in mind.

Easy now, kiddo. I'm an old married lady with children. Haha! But yes, the idea is that if you're persistent and cast the net wide, you'll find someone if fairly short order. Also, you have a great advantage of being a freshman in college. So, a lot of freshmen girls are looking for boyfriends. Note: I forgot to mention this but it's important. If you do cold approach, try to do most of it off-campus like at clubs/bars/etc. It should be a place where it's expected. Otherwise, you'll get a reputation as the guy who asks everyone out. And that will kill a lot of opportunities.

It's harder if you're asking out girls you just met as girls get a lot of inquiries, and it takes a while for an genuine attraction to blossom for a woman. So, I'd say the generally the odds are probably 1 in 200, if you've only talked to her once. This might be slightly better since you go to the same college though. So, maybe 1 in 150 for co-eds. And this is true even if you were a male model or something. For most women, if you're too available too soon, she'll be uninterested. But if it's a girl that you know and you've been building rapport with her for a couple days/weeks or so, your odds will probably go up to about 1/10 or so. So, you can either go the easier route of approaching and approaching and approaching girls until you hit one that's un-selective enough to give a stranger a chance. You'll get quicker success this way, because if you approach every girl you meet, you'll eventually get someone to say yes. But if you're trying to build rapport and increase your odds by quite a bit, it's important that you see the girl frequently in a normal platonic social situation throughout the week (i.e. have a class together, work at the same place, hang out with the same people, go to the same parties, etc.) That way, you can build platonic rapport with her for a week or so before you ask her out someplace. There is no guarantee here, of course. And the time investment is a lot steeper (days and weeks vs. seconds). But your odds will go up significantly for that particular girl. And the girl will probably be a bit more selective in general which is good for a long-term partner as it may indicate that they have better boundaries and better self-esteem. So, you just have to know what you want. If you just want to hook up, then approaching as many women as possible is probably your best bet. If you approach 20 women per day, it'll probably take you a week and a half max to get a yes. But if you want to find someone who is compatible with you for a long term relationship, then I highly recommend building platonic rapport with the women that you see on a frequent basis before asking them out. Women prefer this method too. That's why the odds are so much higher. The drawback here is that the time investment is high, there are still no guarantees, and there's a limit to the amount of women that you know. This is why all the PUAs don't recommend this method. You can run through all your possibilities and still get a no after having invested months on handful of women. But this is the method that women prefer. And if you're looking for a long-term partner who is also looking for something steady, you'll generally find a better quality partner with more in common with you, if you use this method.

If memory serves, I'm a 9.

Do the contemplations regardless.

Contemplate on these things... What is America actually? And what is a country in general? What does moral superiority entail? Who gets to decide? How do you know that America is a morally superior country to the other countries? What is the objective of war? How is the winner of a war determined? Who determines who wins the war? What is the relationship between death and winning a war? Is a war a competition? If so, how can we tell who loses and wins? If no, how can we tell who loses and wins? What are enemies? What makes them the bad guys? How do you think the enemy lives their daily life? How do you think they experience being a soldier? What does a countries border consist of? Who decides?