Leo's Blog Discussion Mega-Thread

[Vynce]

@Leo Gura By the way, do you still have clients occasionally on personal development issues, here and there? Or did it become too much work eventually?

[Extreme Z7]

7 minutes ago, gengar said:

So you're justifying your authoritarian government? 

I think government should be allowed to enslave people like you who are serious socialists. 

There should be a "Lazy Socialist" welfare program. You can help fetch my coffee while I do my serious work.
 

Edited May 30 by Extreme Z7

[Leo Gura]

4 minutes ago, Vynce said:

@Leo Gura By the way, do you still have clients occasionally on personal development issues, here and there? Or did it become too much work eventually?

I haven't had clients for 10 years.

[Wilhelm44]

Just now, Leo Gura said:

I haven't had clients for 10 years.

Why did you stop ?

[gengar]

29 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

There are rare cases where mass mobilization grants rights. But it does not grant wealth.

Women's rights, black rights, gay rights were good movements. But we already got those rights. What next? Rights are mostly legally equal at this point.

You didn't make the point about wealth, but about social change.

"business is a much more powerful mechanism of social change than political activism."

Social rights movements aren't "rare cases" as well. women literally are half of society.

Call me a righteous leftist, but for example black people still live under a system of global oppression, are seen as the most "low" people in collective consciousness. This is obvious once you recognize it. Social action is about more than legal rights, but also about raising collective consciousness. Outsourcing all this collective human development to capitalism and building businesses is a childish, stage orange way of looking at it in my opinion.

I think this is one of the few things you are less developed in, Leo. Your individualist mindset. I know it's one of the characteristics of stage yellow but it when you're taking collective action and consciousness like this for granted it feels like you are just missing out on the insights. It's clear you don't give a fuck about much collective shit and don't like conformist movements at all. But my claim is that they are more of a feature than the bug you proclaim them to be, and a must for society to develop deeper. Annoying and surface-level as they are, collectivist movements hold a deeper esotericism than you might expect, I don't know how else to phrase it.


https://youtu.be/chNl9fzE_nc?si=xWEjuOqSlxB73Ggb

This is a video from a classic, leftsplaining socialist about black social action. Although he makes some of the classic leftist mistakes in his thought that you often mention, it doesn't take away from deep insights he has and thinking that he does here about society. For example, what's not so obvious to us whites is that most black people subconsciously feel inferior to other races simply for what they are born as. To heal this trauma, their collective ego has to go through a collective healing and raising of consciousness. Social action, collective thinking and emancipation is required for this. No business on its own will do it for them, although it can help tremendously of course. But just like no amount of money will heal your individual traumas or make you awaken, so does it go for collective groups.
 

Edited May 30 by gengar

[Leo Gura]

32 minutes ago, gengar said:

You didn't make the point about wealth, but about social change.

"business is a much more powerful mechanism of social change than political activism."

Yes. Social change requires wealth and resources.

Wealth is power. Power is the ability to effect change within society.

The reason political activism is so ineffective is that it gets counter-pushback and lack of consensus. You have to spend 50 years just to convince people to all row in the same direction. And even then you have half the country rowing against you. It's like a 50 year tug of war where neither side gets much traction, ending in a stalemate.

The beauty of business is that you can create good things without being locked in a 50 year stalemate.

You can spend the next 50 years shouting about climate change or you can build a $100 billion dollar green energy company. Which will help climate more?

Who helped the climate more? Elon Musk or 100,000 screaming college protestors?

Edited May 30 by Leo Gura

[Alexop]

56 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Yes. Social change requires wealth and resources.

Wealth is power. Power is the ability to effect change within society.

The reason political activism is so ineffective is that it gets counter-pushback and lack of consensus. You have to spend 50 years just to convince people to all row in the same direction. And even then you have half the country rowing against you. It's like a 50 year tug of war where neither side gets much traction, ending in a stalemate.

The beauty of business is that you can create good things without being locked in a 50 year stalemate.

You can spend the next 50 years shouting about climate change or you can build a $100 billion dollar green energy company. Which will help climate more?

Who helped the climate more? Elon Musk or 100,000 screaming college protestors?

Good points. But lt in Case of climate action both alternatives are needed. It is just that the climate protesters do not protest for the right things. We should protest for faster investment in green energy from both states and privates. To give incentives/tax cuts for those who do it instead of whining about how bad the fossil giants are.

Edited May 30 by Alexop

[Anton Rogachevski]

@Leo Gura

Your post about Hitler, the best one yet. Very accurate.

The question at the end is just Endgame. 

"What are the major flaws of Nazism and Communism?" Should be the first and most basic question any politician should answer to qualify. 

[Daniel Balan]

@Leo Gura this blog post is arguably the best of all time! I loved it so much! I got such a mental orgasm by reading it! Awesome interpretation of Hitler and NSDAP ideology and how much it overlaps with the ideology of today's right wingers and conservatives! The core reason I utterly abhor conservatives and the right wing is all the points you emphasised on your blog post! That is also why I am mad at you when you criticise the leftists! You can criticise the leftists because they totally deserve! But you can't criticise the leftists without criticising the conservatives and the right wingers 10 times harder! 

You made one mistake in your blog post regarding Hitler and Christianity! Hitler was on a quest to destroy Christianity and totally wipe it out from Europe! Hitler was a pagan that glorified the germanic and Norse old traditions!

[HelluvaGuy]

3 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

You can spend the next 50 years shouting about climate change or you can build a $100 billion dollar green energy company. Which will help climate more?

Who helped the climate more? Elon Musk or 100,000 screaming college protestors?

But surely you would agree that the vast majority of people simply aren't equipped to build that $100 billion dollar company, no matter how much they try. You have said it yourself that a mind like Musk's is rare. And obviously you can't have a society where everyone is a business leader. So for most folk, political activism seems like the only choice, as ineffective as it is. 

Edited May 30 by HelluvaGuy

[Vynce]

24 minutes ago, Daniel Balan said:

You made one mistake in your blog post regarding Hitler and Christianity! Hitler was on a quest to destroy Christianity and totally wipe it out from Europe! Hitler was a pagan that glorified the germanic and Norse old traditions!

That was mostly Himmlers and Heydrichs domaine. I can't remember Hitler being too occupied with christianity, since the church did mostly what he wanted. Eventually he would have had religion transformed to his will. The Nazis were in general not in any good willing tolerance to anybody. They laid out plans to even invade Japan and Italy after the US. So I'm sure not even christianity would have survived long-term. 

[aurum]

The communism litmus test needs to include to Game B.

[Leo Gura]

5 hours ago, HelluvaGuy said:

But surely you would agree that the vast majority of people simply aren't equipped to build that $100 billion dollar company, no matter how much they try. You have said it yourself that a mind like Musk's is rare.

Correct. But lefitsts don't understand that. Leftists believe all people are created equal and there is nothing special about Elon Musk other than that his daddy owned an emerald mine.

If leftists understood how rare an Elon Musk is they wouldn't be so stupid.

Also, my post was not against political activism, it was advice to capable, serious, ambitious individuals who want to change the world with their own two hands.

Edited May 30 by Leo Gura

[Leo Gura]

5 hours ago, Daniel Balan said:

You made one mistake in your blog post regarding Hitler and Christianity! Hitler was on a quest to destroy Christianity and totally wipe it out from Europe! Hitler was a pagan that glorified the germanic and Norse old traditions!

I did not make a mistake. Hitler was favorable to traditional Christian ideals vs atheism, and he did self-identify as a "German Christian", at least publicly. He tried to appeal to traditional religious masses because they were conservative like him.

Hitler's relationship to Christianity was complex and muddled. He certainly wasn't a standard Christian. His relationship to Christianity was warped by his insane political ambitions and lust for power. He had a twisted notion of Christianity since he was a twisted mind.

Edited May 30 by Leo Gura

[Keryo Koffa]

I had a conversation with GPT on 20th century Politics a while back.
Here are the bullet points from lessons learned and how to continue:

Meta-Governance & Fluid Coalitions
Post-Capitalist Economics
Cultural & Linguistic Evolution
Technological Accelerationism for Regeneration
AI & Psychedelic Renaissance
Conflict Resolution & Holarchic Globalism

Leo has been teaching this for a long time though, so it's more about self reflected embodiment.

Edited May 30 by Keryo Koffa

[Daniel Balan]

3 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

I did not make a mistake. Hitler was favorable to traditional Christian ideals vs atheism, and he did self-identify as a "German Christian", at least publicly. He tried to appeal to traditional religious masses because they were conservative like him.

Hitler's relationship to Christianity was complex and muddled. He certainly wasn't a standard Christian. His relationship to Christianity was warped by his insane political ambitions and lust for power. He had a twisted notion of Christianity since he was a twisted mind.

So Hitler used Christianity to appeal to the masses. I have a big question for you Leo since you are Russian. How came that in the most Orthodox Christian country on earth, which is Russia, an ideology like Marxism Communism, gain so much popularity and rulled the country for nearly 8 decades? To do a communist revolution like the October Revolution in the most religious country on earth, how was it possible that a godless, vehemently anti religion, Atheist ideology gain so much popularity in such an Orthodox Christian society? It makes no sense to me why Communism wasn't deeply religious and nationalistic! It should have been in order to gain the popularity it did. So how was this possible? This is so counter Intuitive for me to understand! I totally understand why all the other aspects of communism were popular, but I don't get how Atheism was popular in such a religious country like Russia! 

Edited May 30 by Daniel Balan

[Leo Gura]

15 minutes ago, Daniel Balan said:

how was it possible that a godless, vehemently anti religion, Atheist ideology gain so much popularity in such an Orthodox Christian society?

It worked because Russian peasants and workers were so fed up with being exploited serfs under the Imperial Tzarist regime that they found the promise of equal worker rights of Marxism very appealing. They were brainwashed into it by guys like Lenin.

Remember, Soviet Marxism was a vanguard movement. It was an upper class, intellectual, bourgeois movement. The actual peasants and factory workers were still very socially conservative and religious. They just followed along with Lenin's promises.

Even in the Soviet days, rural folk kept their Orthodox traditions. It was just done in the shadows. China has a similar phenomenon where the official state policy is atheism but there is an underground current of folk mystical traditions.

Religion and mysticism is too powerful to ever be suppressed. Even Stalin and Mao couldn't do it. It's like pushing water uphill.

Edited May 30 by Leo Gura

[Vynce]

1 hour ago, Leo Gura said:

It worked because Russian peasants and workers were so fed up with being exploited serfs under the Imperial Tzarist regime that they found the promise of equal worker rights of Marxism very appealing. They were brainwashed into it by guys like Lenin.

Remember, Soviet Marxism was a vanguard movement. It was an upper class, intellectual, bourgeois movement. The actual peasants and factory workers were still very socially conservative and religious. They just followed along with Lenin's promises.

Even in the Soviet days, rural folk kept their Orthodox traditions. It was just done in the shadows. China has a similar phenomenon where the official state policy is atheism but there is an underground current of folk mystical traditions.

Religion and mysticism is too powerful to ever be suppressed. Even Stalin and Mao couldn't do it. It's like pushing water uphill.

You 100% need a podcast buddy, that plays insightful ping-pong about everything discussed here. This would be a splash of clean water on the braindead podcast landscape. Only in the field of totalitarian leaders you could fill 4 episode as it seems. You know, with the intellectual level of the forum posts or blog posts - nothing too advanced. Surely there is someone to do it with.

[Daniel Balan]

@Leo Gura You know why I asked this? Because today's Europe experiences a furious backlash in regards to Religion, I give my country as an example! Here people are as fanatically Orthodox Christian as in Russia, since the fall of the Iron Courtain, religion was allowed to be practiced without one ounce of restriction from the government, yet since the covid pandemic fascism has been on the rise a lot, and these religious nutcases are vehemently anti EU like if the EU are this evil entity that wants to do away with religion! Which is totally false since EU never meddled with religion in any way sahpe or form to restrict it. The nutcases are reacting against the stage Green that is coming from the EU! Having said that, those religious nut cases are so vehemently anti EU because of some gay rights that the EU wants to grant to sexual minorities, despite the enormous sums of money that have been given to my country for development, I find it really odd that the same nutcases accepted the atheism of communist Russia, that also came with huge poverty attached, yet they don't accept few gay rights that came attached with a quantum leap in terms of infrastructure development 

Edited May 31 by Daniel Balan

[Daniel Balan]

@Leo Gura You say that leaders like Stalin or Lenin couldn't suppress religion.. but something is odd here! From my experience, people, especially fanatical religious peasants, would rather die of famine and starvation, than to support a new ideology like the one that emerged in Russia, that is totally godless, anti religious and profoundly atheistic. Even if the leader of that new ideology promises them the moon! I don't believe it! Those fanatical retarded Orthodox Christians would rather eat earth with worms than to support an atheistic movement like communism! And you can't do a revolution without the support of the masses! Masses which in Russia were and are profoundly Christian Orthodox! Look at Putin's war! This is all about! The existential fight of Orthodox Christianity against the secularism of the west!