Will Trump be re-elected?

[Epikur]

20 minutes ago, Serotoninluv said:

@Dutch guy You’ve mentioned white guilt several times and I think this is an important point. I’d like to share a personal experience regarding guilt.

When I was learning Spanish in Central America I was at a beginner level. I felt awkward trying to speak Spanish with locals. I wasn’t good at it and I felt embarrassed and that they probably think I’m stupid. I was very intent on speaking Spanish properly, especially with pronunciation. I practiced pronunciation over and over. My teachers often told me my pronunciation was actually quite good for my level and assured me that people wouldn’t judge me. Yet that wasn’t good enough. I spent countless hours practicing how to roll RRs and thrill Rs. 

When I returned to the U.S., I realized that I had been subconsciously judging how others speak and this is the reason I was so insecure about people judging my poor Spanish. . . When I was a kid, my parents would mock the speaking pattern of inner-city black people. It was a manner of speaking that was not proper English and there was a different tone an cadence. People around me would call it “Jive” and mock it. I knew from a very early age that this was a stupid form of speaking. As well, my parents were very strict about my speaking. If I used incorrect grammar, they would firmly correct me. I knew I didn’t want to sound like “them”. I went on into academia and it became important for me to speak very precisely and articulately. . . And for decades of my life I was judging others based on their speaking style. Judging them on how educated, intelligent, status, worthiness etc. I wasn’t intentionally doing this. It was subconscious. Even after I realized this, I couldn’t make it stop. It was conditioned into me and it would automatically appear. Here is the part with guilt: When it would appear, I felt bad about it. I didn’t want to judge people like this. I wanted to be able to connect with lots of different people. I also remembered how I would often correct people when they didn’t speak English properly. I would do this in public spaces, even my classrooms. I did it in a manner that was very insensitive and a bit derogatory. I felt guilty about it, yet I didn’t do it on purpose. It was subconsciously conditioned into me. Yet now that I knew, I could do something about it. . . 

I was very ashamed to talk to anyone about this. Especially a black person. I was afraid they would judge me and call me racist. I didn’t want to feel guilty. Yet that’s not what it’s about. I started dating a black woman and told her. I really liked her and didn’t want her impression of me to change, yet I also wanted to grow closer to her. To my surprise, she wasn’t surprised at all. She actually appreciated my vulnerability and willingness to look at myself and grow. This gave me the confidence to share with my colleagues of color at my University. Again, I was nervous that they would judge me and call me a bad professor. I didn’t want to feel guilty. Yet that’s not what they did. Like my gf, they allowed safe space. They could see that I genuinely wanted to learn and grow. I learned a lot about implicit biases and started teaching about it in my courses. 

This process removed this filter that was conditioned into me. And I can say I appreciate life much better. I much better at connecting with a wider variety of people. For example, I spent a month living with locals in Belize. The community I lived with spoke a broken form of kriol English and had a very difficult time speaking proper English. Yet rather than judging them and trying to teach them how to speak English ”properly”, I had a deep appreciation for their kriol. There manner of speaking was sooo wonderful. It was spontaneous and flowed beautifully. I was with a group one time and asked them to help me speak kriol like them. Yet I couldn’t do it. Just like they couldn’t speak “proper” English like me. Yet now there was no “proper”. There was no “right” way to speak English. There was no “better” culture of English. . . We had so much fun, even though I sucked at it. There were times in which they would laugh hysterically at my poor kriol speaking. Yet I was no longer insecure about this. I laughed with them it was part of the fun. One time I playfully said “Oh yea? You think my kriol is bad. How about you say Hippopotamus?” They stumbled around trying and we all laughed together. 

In going through this process, the “me or them” dissolved. I was no longer an outsider looking in. I was no longer judging them as being inferior based on their “improper”. Rather, I was engaging with them. There was love amongst each other. 

To me, it seems like you are missing out on something very special and I hope you get to explore that one day. It’s not an intellectual thing, it is a heart thing. 

It was the opposite for me. I was raised in a low education islamic migrant culture. Their culture mostly was based on lies. The german culture helped to figure that out. The migrant culture had it's advantages like you said it was more fun, warm, easy going in general.  

I thought I don't want to base my life on lies that is why I left that culture. One problem was I think that I got the patterns of the culture subconsciously ingrained. That I think is one of the reasons I could not generate the intellectual patterns to be more efficient in thinking. I tried quite hard to overcome it with selfimprovement. Still it was not easy. 

My point is that some cultures hold people like me back. Also they base their lifes on lies. They should have the right to do it but it's clear that there will be friction between people like me and them. I tried hard to get my life together. It was really hard. Some cultures have given up but blame others. 

So my natural default is easy going but then I start to make stupid mistakes and my life becomes more difficult. That is why people like me have to fight to get motivation and have problems with people who complain and blame others all the time and behave dysfuncional at the same time.



 

[Epikur]

49 minutes ago, Consept said:

 

I will say we seem to have come further in terms of a fair society than most other large scale civilisations in history, which we are even aware of how unfair it is. These battles are really the last efforts of a dying system and we're getting to a stage where if you dont evolve you will get left behind 

I am not so shure about it. Look at for example Brasil. There are many failed states who get taken over by fascism. We are making ganes in some fields and degenerate in others it seems. 

Most of the development comes basically from prosperity due to scientific progress. The base from it is hard work. I believe like Henry, the father of socialism that our default is being lazy. Degeneration is the default. People take progress for granted. 

For example the Aborigines lived for 40k years the way they did till the europeans arrived. Not much would have changed otherwise. 

Destruction is so much easier then building. False optimism can bring desaster. If you don't gratify the high achievers they will stop putting in the effort. Things will slow down, hunger and starvation can follow.

Not every culture wants to be like Japan or Germany. Let them be work maniacs. It can be beneficial war everybody. They produce technology and others produce some form of happy cultures ideally. Then German and Japanes can take a break and enjoy other cultures. 

The easy going cultures on the other hand can profit from the technology of the others. That is the ideal scenario. If we can't handle that, things will be very problematic. 








 

Edited June 9, 2020 by Epikur

[Forestluv]

@Epikur I can relate. I also grew up in a fundamental religious environment. 

The deconditioning process has been ongoing. There are so many layers to it. 

[Danioover9000]

1 hour ago, Serotoninluv said:

Observe how the mind negotiates as it tries to hold onto the ideas it is identified and attached to. That is a transitional stage of development.

   I'm reminded of a story I listened to when I was attending a local retreat with an occultic Gura. He was slowly pacing back and forth on the pearl-white, wide stage he's on. I was at the front row, and he gazes at the back row. " a long time ago, my teacher once told me a long-bearded old man, trudged up a hill with his cane, smiling, taking in nature before him, and came across an oranged cloaked man sitting on a stony patch, with beads all over his head.". 

   He eyes each attendee at the back, landing at each guest, "The happy old man resigns to sit across the oranged-cloaked man, onto the soft green grass. Their eyes met and the old man could tell this man's devoid eyes have seen another part of nature. Before greeting each other, a long-haired, flute-playing man strides along the graveled, muddied path with lengthy strides. Strangely, like the orange-cloaked, beads-headed man, he instead has a spiky flower that sits slanting away from his head, which contrasts the bluish soft powdered skin of his face. And for that matter, his entire bluish body. Like the old man, he flows into sitting on the wet, graveled path he walks, and with vibrant eyes, greets the old man eyes and the orange-cloaked man's eyes-".

   He then starts eyeing up the middle row. "They introduced themselves, the old man's name is Lao-Tsu, the oranged-haired man, Buddha, and the flute-playing man, Shiva. They then commenced their discussion about nature itself. However, each knowing the difficulty of talking about the true nature of nature, begin by first declaring an attribute to it. Buddha first declares nature is bitter, Shiva declares nature instead is sour, and Lao-Tsu finally declares nature is sweet.-".

   After spending some time here on this thread, and seeing how users interact with each other on the issues of race discrimination, inequality, and left vs. right politics, I can't help but detect how each mind of the users are battling each over, framing and re-framing each other's pieces of information, inaccurately interpreting each other, trying to control the bigger, mainframe of this thread: Will Trump be re-elected?

   This is the mainframe: 'Will' sets this context as a future possibility, which is comparable to an imaginary scenario, of which little can be argued for in terms of objectivity. 'Trump' is already a loaded word, that has a variety of associations in minds today, starting from the right, as a successful businessman ready to 'make America great again', and show 'those sleazy politicians that leached us some real change!' that'll finally 'stop undocumented immigrants coming in!' Or a man that'll finally make my business profit some more, and him being a business person himself, he'll finally bring America's economy to greater levels than China! Or To others from the left, an idiot that'll run this great country to the ground, who's merely an idiotic racist that doesn't know what he's talking about' and so on depending on your position and life experiences. 'Be re-elected' is a nasty part of this mainframe. Why? First, it re-inforces the future, into a more specific direction: will history repeat itself? Depending on who you are, this can bring out, once again, feelings of fear and defeat (if you're leftist), or feelings of hope and confidence (if you're rightist), from the possibility of re-living Trump's victory again, and keeps this mainframe as a specific frame within the general projected future frame.

   Predictably, different users here bring up issues about race discrimination, inequality, and policing, issues that stem from a different situation/context: George Floyd's case and #blacklivesmatter protests, and some come from lived experiences. 

   I remember the first time I saw a black man, and his name is Michael Jordan, who was playing as one of the characters that, at the time, I thought discovered how to travel to the cartoon world and got to hang out with Bugs Bunny and the other cartoon characters I liked. That left an impression on me. Shortly after, I was into music, when I first heard Michael Jackson's songs he was a favorite of mine. When I learned about his backstory briefly, that shocked me and left my young mind confused then (I was around 7 years old) and I couldn't figure out why he went from black-skinned to white-skinned. That left an impression on me. Years later, during my adolescent years, I got to stay in the Seattle area and continued my entire middle schooling. Not only did the racial diversity of students shocked me a little bit, but my experiences with the Afro-American part of the schooling, positives, and negatives, really re-contextualized how I saw that part of the human species, was different from the Michael Jordan/Jackson modal (without the blue school uniforms, and some common practices and procedures from teachers and the environment I learned from my UK primary-elementary schooling, I would confidently be lost and confused as to which class and which peers to hang out with). Come to think of it, a lot happened so quickly that at the time I couldn't recognize a pattern forming, Years later, during my high school years, I was in North Canada, Quebec, at yet again I met some very different people with different cultural backgrounds, with an added challenge: the French-English language, bilingual culture, and of course another country with different cultural importances like, in Quebec, they loved their poutines (fries with gravey and cheese), were more liberal with regards to clothing, and loved hockey. However, the American culture didn't have this particular fetish for poutines or liberal clothing (maybe, I was told off for some of my fashion sense), and they loved Rugby more than hockey or soccer.

   Speaking about my childhood, I remembered the first chess game I had with my Dad. At first, it felt hard, trying to associate meanings onto each chess piece, how each piece moved to each part of the chessboard, learning all the chess rules and techniques, and piece values. I didn't continue playing the game, until many years later, when I was able to watch a recorded match on youtube between Gary Kasparov, the world champion at the time, versus deep blue, the latest chess A.I developed by IGN at the time, and that entire match was for some reason exciting enough that I picked up chess as a hobby. I remembered very well a hard chess game I had with an A.I program on my phone, that I lost plenty to. Each move I made I was calculating each variation of moves to make, evaluating each sequence and whenever I knew a sequence is bad I would discard it out of my mind, to keep continuing searching for better moves. During the match, I found the greatest sequence that limited the A.I"s influence of the board while maximizing my ability to attack its king.

   There was a user here that I was communicating to that brought up many different points, really keeping in line with the mainframe of this thread, without diverting and going deeply into too much on race discrimination and somewhat more on policing and adds in the spiritual/paranormal topic like entity manipulation, which was to me at the time so left field, but had some interesting interconnections to the actual mainframe I established and we had an interesting back and forth, and most of the time I was trying to get the user to pause for a bit a look at the assumptions being made here, on the user's pet theory, or you could say conspiracy theory, that the user draws between spirits and elections. I can't quote or bring the user's name here, for some reason they're all gone, but he was rather confused and from his writing seemed triggered when I was 'conflating' A holy man with spiritual powers, stating to the majority of immigrants that 'Europe belongs to Europeans' and my way of telling it was too conformist and inaccurate. He insists that instead, it was part of a spell to lull people into conformity and moral obligation, that demons were at work, trying to feed off of the emotional turmoil of every election. Again, I tried to help him re-frame his side of the story, but he just up and went 'poof'', and now I'm starting the forget how interesting our back and forth was, let alone the point of our interaction at all.

   Which reminds me of that chess game. I finally defeated the A.I. program, and I felt very happy. Later on the day, though, I realized I didn't save our match, and I felt so annoyed and felt like what was the point of having such a victory when I lost the data that I could learn from. I even was trying to remember each move of the game, a caught myself here, and there misremember or misplacing pieces that it was frustrating. This brought up a memory of the aftermath of Gary Kasparov versus. Deep blue. Despite Deep Blue winning, controversially, it was taken apart and discarded.

   Near the end of my high school year, I remember not liking too much hip hop, but I remember one song in particular called 'Rap God' and I was liking the song. If I'm not mistaken, it was playing on the radio, or I was listening on an online website. When I got around to seeing the official video, I was surprised, that a white man was rapping, and rapping really well! Briefly learning about his background, at that point I felt that despite the differences, from racial to cultural, that actually there can be similarities, despite emotional frictions and differences that we can somehow co-exist.

   When the Gura's gaze lands at the front row I'm in, he exclaims "Unfortunately, my teacher said that Buddha, Shiva, and Lao Tsu couldn't quite resolve their discussion of nature, and so, they conclude themselves and part ways. However, the Buddha's understanding of a bitter nature now has some elements of sweet and sour; Shiva's conception of a sour nature is mixed with bitter and sweet, and Lao Tsu's understanding includes not just sweet, but bitter and sour natures as well." You know, it was one of those moments back in life where you would, like, be giddy and rush towards the roller coaster, to really get at the action, until later on at the top of that peak you go 'Why the hell am I doing?'. Well, I raised my arm and asked the Gura "So, were the teachers able to understand the natures in the end?". He shrugs, saying " My teacher did say they have, by a miracle, managed to communicate the impossible, to their peoples at the time. But, people's heads are like lakes, and when they come together, their minds are like the seven seas and their minds, then, create torrents of muke and storms to cloud a single drop of truth. In a bizarre way, humanity is itself an achievement of lies, a really vast collection of siddhis onto itself. Probably why other masters warn of seeking out paranormal powers: you have already been enmeshed in powers around you. It was my speculation, back then, that this was why spiritual rites and magical abilities were guarded. Now, because of the mind's nature, there's no need, it's already warped with magical lies."

    

   

        

 

   

[Epikur]

7 minutes ago, Serotoninluv said:

@Epikur I can relate. I also grew up in a fundamental religious environment. 

The deconditioning process has been ongoing. There are so many layers to it. 

That is why my working concept is self improvement. I repeat myself here. That is why I look down on people and myself when doing chronic complaining and blaming others. That takes away from my concentration from doing productive things. 

I think first comes work then fun. Otherwise things get out of control very fast. Ones the lizard, monkey brain takes over it's game over. 

Of course the religion has it's place. It's actually there to calm the lizard brain. We know they are lies and we have to make the next step if we don't want to risk degeneration through building a system on lies.





 

[Forestluv]

23 minutes ago, Epikur said:

That is why my working concept is self improvement. I repeat myself here. That is why I look down on people and myself when doing chronic complaining and blaming others. 

That’s great you are working on self improvement. I hope you find the forum.

I agree with you that taking personal responsibility is a good trait for personal development. I also understand why people complain and blame others. I spent several years blaming my upbringing and father for my difficulties before I was ready to forgive, let it go and move on. Also, someone that has been abused has been negatively impacted and it can be difficult to work through. 

[Extreme Z7]

2 hours ago, Dutch guy said:

@Serotoninluv  yes all cultures are beautifull. In saodi arabia we have the authentic chopping of heads for gays. In China we have the authentic cultural practice which is called disappearing when having the wrong opinion. In Italy we have the italian sport called paying no taxes. In the middleeast we have the o so beautiful religious wars. In south afrika we have the white farmers killings. Then we have the different shit hole countries. etc etc etc. All cultures are the same. All those things whites have accomplished are of no worth, lets just make the world one country. I guess since china is to become the most powerfull we will live in communism. Horray!!

Speaking as a fan of so called leftist "Breadtube", you could say I'm a bit more edgy with my leftist rhetoric.

So I have no problem reading that and just outright labeling you a racist and a white supremacist.

I know this forum encourages more productive, deep, and detailed discussion but HEY. . . . ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ sometimes you just gotta say what you want in the most direct fashion. No beating around the bush. No pretense of trying to have a civil discussion. Kinda like how your favorite Trumpy boy acts, wouldn't you agree?

[Forestluv]

This thread has run its course.