Emerald

I never believed in the idea that strong men - good times - weak men - hard times cycle. That always just seemed to me that this idea comes about from a type of modern spoiledness and seeing the contemporary way of life only through a negative lens. It's clear to me that good times (where people have their emotional and physical needs met) produces less trauma. And that subsequently produces psychologically healthier people who are able to adapt better to the world, and who are less prone to self-destruction. It's evident to me that human evolution is both cyclical and progressive with a trajectory towards love, unity, and expansion... and an awakening of global consciousness. It's similar to giving birth... with its cyclical patterns of painful contraction of the pelvic muscles enabling the cervix to expand wider and wider and wider... until something brand new can come about. And I believe that we've collectively been in this process of labor and giving birth for the past 10,000 years as there have been many contractions and expansions over the course of written history compared to our nomadic past. Right now, we're about to go into a contraction for a minute. But if the pain is sharp enough and the contraction is deep enough, we will come back from that contraction more dilated and wiser and more able to step into deeper levels of consciousness and a more world-centric paradigm.

Very well said. I bolded everything that especially resonated. I see conservatism and its concerns about "degeneracy" and "sexual aberration" as operating off of the agrarian coping strategies for living in a mono-cultural village. I think this is why people in rural places tend to skew a bit more conservative as well, because it's closer to that agrarian village living lifestyle. And in an agrarian village, you need to control people's sexuality to maximize the society for growing as many children as possible to work the field and protect the village. But the issue with this, is that these are maladaptive coping strategies for living in a post-industrial society. It's like trying to stick a cassette tape in a cd player and then believing the cd player is fundamentally broken because it won't play cassettes "like it's supposed to". So, those in this conservative agrarian mindset always feel like everything is broken and working improperly because they haven't acclimated to the new societal technology. And it also leads these conservative agrarian-minded types to be very susceptible to demagogues who claim they will bring back the glory days of the past where we were just one people and one race and one religion... and people were all upstanding people who aren't sexual deviants... the man was the head of the household... and every woman was having 10 children to help the family tend the farm. But it's also difficult for someone with the paradigm of an agrarian peasant from 300+ years ago to adapt to post-industrial society. So, I have some sympathy for that feeling of disjointedness. But there's often this top-down kind of authoritarian control that they value in a leader because they want to believe that the leader will bring about an agrarian peasant paradise where women and women and men are men... and only the good race belongs... and only the good religion is practiced... and only the good kinds of sex are permitted... etc.

Thank you! I'm glad you like my channel! And yes, I totally agree.

I have done 5 out of the 7 of my Ayahuasca journeys at an Ayahuasca church. But the Ayahuasca church had facilitators that have learned from shamans, but who aren't shamans themselves.

@Joshe This strongly described me back in my teen years. I held a really strong contrarian way of being because self-differentiation had been one of my more effective strategies to (on the positive side) embrace my weirdness and cope with feelings of alienation. As a child, I really felt like an alien trying to figure out how to pass as a human... and constantly failing at it and being ridiculed for failing at it. And embracing my differences and leaning into them heavily was the only thing that ended up working. And as a teenager, I really found my place with people who appreciated my weirdness. So, I started feeling like extraordinariness and divergence was an unquestioned good. And there was a strong judgment towards those who are mainstream... because it was more comfortable to feel like I was rejecting the mainstream... instead of the mainstream rejecting me. And what arose from this was a very strong fear of being ordinary and blending in with the crowd, which manifested in increased fears of aging and becoming more average. And when I felt average, averageness didn't feel like I was enough. It reminded me of trying to conform to normalcy as a child and failing. Then, in my 20s, I really started to recognize the shadowier side of contrarian thinking especially when people were against good popular things (like the ice bucket challenge for ALS)... and I soured on empty contrarianism. Yet, I still felt this underlying sense of differentiation based off of "not being the type that falls into empty contrarianism nor the type that falls into patterns of conformity." The tendency to slice myself away from the crowd was still there, but I had just started to see empty contrarians as "a part of the crowd that doesn't even know they're part of the crowd." But in my recognition of this, there was a pride in being different and not falling into patterns that so many people fall into. So, these Shadow patterns have a way of becoming sneakier and more subtle as you grow and mature. So, I was still looking to differentiate and separate myself. I had just dropped the more overt symptom of reflexive contrarianism because I saw the "ordinary human foolishness" in it. So, I was still carving myself out from everything else and seeing myself as separate and differentiated from the world. But in one of my Ayahuasca ceremonies, it brought me back and forth between two states. One was my usual polarization into extraordinariness to the exclusion of ordinariness... and it was showing me how disconnected I was from everything. And it really emphasized how cut off it was making me. Then, it re-integrated me with ordinariness, and I felt so deeply intertwined with humanity, nature, and the universe at large because I saw the sameness in myself to all other elements of the universe. I was not distinct from anyone or anything at the core. And all this existential pressure was removed from me. And it brought me back and forth between the state of polarization into extraordinariness and the state of integration with ordinariness. And ordinariness was always a huge fear. But in this, it was everything I'd ever wanted to feel and the entire reason I was trying to differentiate myself in the first place. But of course, these coping patterns run deep. So, even in my realization of the value of ordinariness, I can use that as a means to differentiate myself because "Look how uniquely wise I am to understand this when most people don't."

From the "shucking the bearded clams" comment earlier, I'm sure your sexting game is EPIC... Like "Madam, would you like to ride the bony pony?"

He's always given me right wing vibes. But that's most men who are popular in today's independent media landscape. Yet again, it could just be a branding decision so that he can be part of the club.

I think those are all good note. I don't suppose that that will work for Democrats, as they really are just a center-right party. As long as there's no viable left-wing alternative, people will continue to move more and more towards populist Fascism. I sense that it will really have to come as a bottom-up grassroots movement.

Definitely Yes, it's just that the right wing propaganda machine is constantly churning out really memorable but false talking points. And people don't question them. And so TONS of people believe that Democrats really are for "open borders" because the right wing machine confidently lies on repeat.

She and Biden were responsible for putting out a bi-partisan border bill that would have given Republicans EVERYTHING they wanted for the border... in exchange for more aid to Ukraine. But Trump called up members of congress and asked them to vote no on the Republican wet-dream of a border bill so that he is able to run on the idea that "I'll fix the border" and that Democrats are for "open borders." And of course, that isn't true. Obama was called the "deporter in chief". And Biden deported more undocumented immigrants than Trump as a percentage and as a raw number. And Harris's campaign did a lot of appeal to moderate Republicans and ran on being tough on the border. That proved to be a losing strategy. But you can't say that the Democrats are for open borders if you look at the facts. But Republicans will always say that Democrats are for open borders... even if Democrats closed the border to anyone and everyone for the rest of time.

I see it as a bit different than the idea of a Masculine revolution, simply because revolution means embracing radical change. And this "Masculine revolution" is really about the idea of resurrecting the old order. With Feminism, it was all about breaking from long-held gender norms and embracing women's empowerment so that women can have political, economic, and personal power. With this new pattern in men, it's really about reinforcing what is and going back to what was. It's basically a counter-revolutionary reactionary movement against the revolution because many men believe that things would be better for themselves personally if we went back to a time where women were still beholden to traditional gender norms and men 'were taught to be men.' In reality, it's a coalescence of men who feel a sense of obligation to match up to impossible to reach Masculine gender norms, who feel a sense of shame around "not being good enough" or "not being Masculine enough." And in these online groups, men collectively channel the shame and rage at the illusion they hold around women's adjudicating power of how well they conform to the Masculine ideal or fail to conform to it. So, they feel women get to validate or invalidate their existence as men. Now if there really was a conferable men's lib movement, it would be around breaking the expectation of adherence to the Masculine gender norms and the ability to embrace one's authenticity and power outside of those narrow norms. But a key factor in the 'Masculinity pill movement' is the idea that one will create revolution and "escape the matrix" only by rigid conformity to Masculine gender norms. And of course, that's a catch 22 because you'd be attempting to escape the rigid expectations of society by hyper-conforming to them and policing others who don't conform to them. This is the issue when your revolution is about reinforcing and intensifying the rigidity of the status quo... and resurrecting the status quo of times past.

I don't get the sense that there's a need for a "savior" or strong figure-head that will truly move the needle. Of course, it's helpful to have good political leaders. And we want to avoid the situation we're currently in, if possible. But even the best leader will be largely feeding energy into the maintenance of the status quo... and the status quo will always lead to the destructive outcome we're in right now. So, I have the sense that having a great left-wing leader, like Bernie Sanders, will tweak things around the edges and largely preserve the status quo by making it slightly more livable. And a few years ago, I had this insight that arose that Bernie's candidacy was just a means of re-directing people's revolutionary energy back into the system that preserves the status quo. I have the sense that only communal grassroots movements will move the world in a better direction. It will never be a lefty Goliath versus righty Goliath situation... only David and Goliath.

I wanted to post this as its own thread because I see a lot of people who are operating under the misconception that Donald Trump is a dove and that his administration was more peaceful that other presidents and that his new administration will be more peaceful. Here's everything he was responsible for (that we know of)... He did 432% more drone strikes than Obama's 8 years as president in just the first 2 years of his term alone (then he slapped down the mandatory reporting requirement to hid the records of his military actions, so he very likely did even more in the latter 2 years of his term.) He kept us in Iraq and Afganistan Had a 330% increase in CIVILIAN deaths in Afghanistan under Trump's presidency He bombed Syria twice He bombed Somalia He wanted to occupy a 1/3 of Syria to "take the oil" He let Israel illegally annex the Gollon Heights He illegally assassinated the top Iranian Commander Sulemani (who was fighting against ISIS). This led to retaliatory strikes on American soldiers that led to many of them getting traumatic brain injuries. He tried to coup Venezuela He armed Saudi Arabia as they did a genocide in Yemen... and vetoed cutting off our weapons to Saudi Arabia. (Trump has business ties to Saudi) Trump has said that he wants a war with Mexico in his second term He wants to do airstrikes against drug cartels He has received millions of dollars in political donations from Miriam Adelson who he has promised to annex the entire West Bank for in exchange for that money He dropped the MOAB on Afganistan He let Neo-Cons (like John Bolton) run his foreign policy His first military raid as president killed a small American girl He signed a pro-torture executive order

Here's an interesting video that I just watched...

You may be joking, but if you worked directly with people to help them explore their unconscious, it's genuinely not that far off from how it actually is. Once I was working with a coaching client who was surprised to find herself voting for the far right party in her country. And when she told me this, I asked her questions to help her explore that deeper. And eventually she stumbled upon the realization that the leader of the party reminded her of her dad and his absolutist authoritarian personality. And consciously, she felt a lot of negative feelings towards her dad and felt rebellious towards him and his authoritarian ways since her teens. But as a child, she saw him as all knowing and had very positive feelings about him, that got repressed because of a variety of different circumstances that happened in her pre-teens and teens year. And once she realized that she was transferring her repressed positive feelings and illusion of perfection about her dad onto this leader, it broke the fever for her. And for me, when I was really involved with canvassing for Bernie Sanders during the primary that he lost against Biden, I got super involved. And on Super Tuesday, when the Democrats all got together and dropped out and endorsed Biden and screwed Bernie over, I had a lot of grief come up. And I cried on my couch. And I realized that, despite having genuinely progressive values, I had been using the idea of getting Bernie elected to avoid my own problems by getting my hopes up about more macrocosmic problems. And when I lost hope for Bernie, all the sadness that I was distracted from came up to the surface. So honestly, my estimate is that 80% of politics can be chalked up to individual and collective psychological dynamics.

Men technically didn't vote her out. Donald Trump sustained about the same numbers from 2020 (74,223,975 in 2020 vs 74,831,719 in 2024), while Kamala just failed to excite her base and under-performed Biden's 2020 numbers. That said, it was mostly left leaning suburban white men who stayed home... probably because they didn't feel like Trump was that much of a threat to them AND because Kamala is just your run of the mill establishment Democrat. Also, they might have felt more identification with Biden because he's a white guy, while Kamala is a black woman. So, they might not have been as energized to elect someone of a different race and gender to them. Plus, all across the world EVERY SINGLE incumbent party declined because of inflation. I see this as the biggest reason that depressed the Democratic vote. Also, Kamala didn't engage in identity politics at all. Hilary leaned into identity politics in 2016 without giving a strong populist message, which made her campaign particularly weak because her slogan was "I'm with her". And she didn't have much focus on bread and butter issues. And she thought it was enough to get to the White House to skate in on the idea of being the first female president. But Kamala didn't do ANY identity politics at all because she was intelligent and avoiding a Hilary situation. Whenever Trump tried to bait her into talking about race, she'd just dismiss it and say "Same old show." And she didn't talk anything about gender either. She deliberately avoided identity politics altogether. Her message was one of general unity and the idea of "not going back" while also talking about her policies for gradual improvement like a child tax credit, adding home care to medicare, $25,000 for first time home buyers, etc. But it didn't really matter. Because she's a black woman, most people just assumed she was running on identity politics because people will project what they think is there. It was really Donald Trump who was doing all the identity politics... while male identity politics. And that sustained Donald Trump's numbers from 2020. And it made him a darling of the male identity podcast circuit. But I disagree that no one has been catering to that demographic. Trump and Republicans have been leaning into white male identity politics heavily and overtly since 2016... and subtly before that. And the MOST popular podcasts and YouTube channels are all about putting the male identity up on a pedestal. It's literally everywhere to where I even get served a bunch of male identity politics stuff despite my political viewing habits being decisively on the left. And Trump's campaign was hyper-focused on race, ethnicity, gender, and calling anyone who wasn't a white male a DEI hire. So, the lesson is that identity politics IS a winner... as long as you cater your identity politics to white men. And this has, of course, always been the case. It is nothing new. White male identity politics has always been super popular. That's why most people get upset when anyone else tries to do identity politics because male identity politics is the default and everything else an aberration.

Political movements are almost always formed (at least partially) in response towards collective psychological patterns or as a means to compensate for and balance out collective psychological patterns. So, you cannot separate politics from human psychology as there is a reason why people gravitate towards the movements they gravitate towards. And with what the poster that I was responding to said, they were describing that they noticed themselves having a magnetic pull towards Fascism. And a pull towards a pattern like Fascism is usually as a result of some internal drama playing itself out externally. For example, someone might project their authoritarian parental figure onto a Fascist leader... or authoritarian leader more generally. And this can activate a child aspect of them that still sees the parent as perfect. And this gets projected onto a given politician. Or, they can play out traumas around unfairness and scarcity from childhood... and scapegoat and project that onto people of different groups who they perceive as getting unfair treatment or taking up all the resources. And these are just a couple examples that are more straight forward. Here's one that's a bit less straightforward. A person has authoritarian parents. And they come to rebel from those parents... and develop a contrarian way of thinking. And if a political figure comes on the scene that comes across as anti-establishment, the person may feel "an enemy of my enemy is my friend." And then, the contrarian can begin conforming to this anti-establishment dictator figure. And then, the contrarians repressed conformity starts to bear its head in unconscious ways.

It's good that you're aware of that tendency within yourself. The ability to recognize your Fascist Shadow can help you avoid the collective pull towards Fascism. It is those that identify with goodness that think "I could never be a Fascist" that are the most susceptible to being weaponized by a demagogue. But don't let what I just said make you complacent. Now is the time to explore and discover the vulnerabilities and patterns that that Fascist impulse arises from. Ask yourself "Where does that pull on my psyche come from?" "In what ways does the pull towards Fascism feel like it will serve or protect me? "What is it about macho stuff that feels appealing to me?" "Why does Fascism feel alluring?

Even if that is the case, my point still stands. There's plenty of evidence that Trump is just as much of a war monger as the next president... if not more of one.

We weren't even really talking about the "right way" to be Masculine in the first place. I was just saying that right wing guys don't come across as any more Masculine than the next guy. They just pedestalize Masculinity more than the next guy, and they believe that that makes them come across as more Masculine. But with regard to the dehumanization of the other, these are Shadow-Masculine qualities and are unnecessarily petty and harmful... and maladaptive given the post-industrial environment. And perhaps at war, there is a necessity to callous one's self to the other side in order to win. But the majority of wars that are happening now aren't actually benefitting anyone. It's just how governments are wielding their power to steal resources from other places. But in the 21st century first-world, where war is rarely about defense of your loved ones, these are maladaptive tendencies that come from peasant-brained willful ignorance that reflect a lack of social and emotional development. And they only divide the working class populace and make us all more susceptible to being dominated and controlled by the wealthy and powerful. It's the working class white guy who will let himself be oppressed and sell all of his power to a dictator if it means he's allowed to be on top of the hierarchy of oppressed peasants. And this guy will make himself lower just so he can bring others even lower than him. And I never met a person who was an out and out racist or xenophobe that possessed positive Masculine qualities. It was always the most ignorant people who were lacking the most with work ethic and standards of ethical values. Because of this recognition that I had as a teenager that racists are just a bit ignorant... I even had come to the conclusion of, "Who cares about racist people. I don't like it. But they're just ignorant but harmless. They might run their mouth off about this, that, or the other group, but they're not actually going to do anything." And individually, that was true. Most of the racists that I knew from my hometown were not evil... just gullible. But I made the mistake as a teenager and early-20-something of under-estimating the power of large groups of stupid people. Now, of course, many people who weren't out and out racists/xenophobes who conceptually valued tolerance and kindness still had their blind spots and unconscious biases. And many of them, I'm sure, will be weaponized if we become a truly Fascist state... mostly because they aren't consciously aware of what path they're going down. And they don't recognize their unconscious Fascist impulses. And it's easy to trick people who aren't aware of the unconscious biases. But anyone who was out-and-out bigoted was always the least developed, well adjusted, and well adapted people. So, it's important to not put Shadow-Masculine behaviors up on a pedestal and find a positive reason for it to exist. This is what happens when Masculine values go out of alignment.

People are unaware and take what he says at face value. They don't realize they're being lied to.

That's a very specific conjecture that I can't really see the logic behind. Why do you pair a guy like Leo with an aggressive curvy basketball playing woman? What is your rationale?

If being mean works on a woman to pull her closer to you, she probably has parents that treated her very mean since childhood. And so, now she has been conditioned to associate mean-ness with the drive to seek connection and love. But a healthy woman who lacks that trauma or has healed from that trauma will disappear super fast if you treat her mean. The same is true for men, of course. Everyone is subject the allure of a repeat of abusive familial patterns. It's not really a gender thing.

Fascism didn't break through in 2020... likely for a variety of different factors. But it's been very close to breaking through for nearly a decade, all over the world. But I think the issue is mostly an economic one as that is what tends to lead to Fascism.... and authoritarianism of any stripe really. But because there is no left wing options that are widely known, the authoritarianism that was chosen was a Fascist authoritarianism. And so many people associate Republicans with a better economy, even though job growth is historically significantly better under Democrats by a large margin. The issue really is that Democrats don't have effective messaging, while Republics (especially Trump) do. Democrats might have better policies that will lead to slight but genuine improvements in people finances. But they lack a compelling narrative. So, the average person is unaware of their policies despite (in recent polls) Kamala's policies being ranked as far more popular than Trump's policies by 80% of American people when people were polled but not told whose policies were whose. So, it isn't policies but the narrative. And Trump's narrative is, "Everything is economically terrible. But I'm going to fix it and Make America Great Again. It's all the leftists, immigrants, and trans people's fault because they are poisoning the blood of our nation. I'll make them pay for the problems they have caused you, and you will get your revenge. And I will get rid of them and fix it." While Kamala's narrative is, "We're not going back!" And this is a promise to protect social freedoms, which is a winning message for those who are already aware enough of history and collective human patterns to understand that Trump's narrative is Fascist and historically leads to worse conditions for 99% of people. But for the majority of Americans, they don't get that. They don't realize that they will be on the chopping block... not just the people they feel 'deserve' the crackdown. But they do understand, "You're being treated unfairly, and immigrants are getting all the benefits that you would have otherwise gotten. If I'm elected, I'll make them pay."

Sure, that's true. I've noticed that just being who we are and sharing our perspectives tends to trigger insecurities in them. And this seems to cause them to go into spiteful, petty, catty competition mode with us. And it all is very reminiscent of adolescent mean girls stuff. And perhaps other men don't get to see that side of them. That said, it's genuinely difficult to imagine that these guys come across as particularly Masculine, even in the eyes of men because they are so sensitive about basic things and have tons of petty grievances that they lack the resolve and stoicism to weather the storm of.