Depending on where we look, the universe is expanding at different rates. Now, scientists using the James Webb and Hubble space telescopes have confirmed that the observation is not down to a measurement error.
If you are interested, there is a book by the philosopher Daniel Dennett - who is a halfway decent author, e.g. of Darwin’s Dangerous Idea
That does sound right up my alley I’ll write it down. However my reading ability lately is not great. If I read 2 books in a year, that was a good year hahah. I already have a pile of books on my desk that has been there for about a year now and once in a while a book gets added on top but none get removed from the bottom 😭
Ngl, but the Catholic Church does do some good stuff
Absolutely! Not only the Catholic Church, many religions do a ton of good stuff. It’s sad that these days it is difficult to see that part of it. I have family members who would not be where they are today if it wasn’t for Religion. I don’t even know what their religion is called but it’s not one of the main ones around here. It’s a very small church. They’ve never talked about it, they’ve never tried to get anyone else in the family involved and I respect that so much. All it did for them is put them on a much better path than the one they were on. They went from violent alcoholics to basically loving saints and there is nothing fake or forced about it, if you know what I mean. I still feel
I used to be very angry at the Catholic Church for a long time myself, though fortunately I healed
I can relate to that a lot. I still feel guilty about how I used to be around religion. Particularly with my mom. She used to believe and for some reason I couldn’t accept that. I would often talk shit about religion and her beliefs, try to convince her it was all just bullshit. Now I just ask myself why the fuck would I want to take that away from someone? Especially someone like my mom who basically just used religion as a way to calm her mind about the afterlife. Worst part, the most painful part, is that one of the reasons she probably believed so strongly was because it was a way for her to believe that she might be able to see my brother who died before I was born.
I also quit something - a teaching position
Ouch… I’m really sorry you’ve had to leave a teaching position. That is a tragedy, but don’t bother second guessing your decision. Whatever you did was the right thing to do. You can still teach even though you aren’t in a teaching position and I have a feeling you weren’t in it for the fame and the fortune that comes with the official title of “Teacher”.
And yeah, maybe your town will die off then. Perhaps even… I doubt you will take this the wrong way so I will go ahead and say it: perhaps it should?
Bahah none taken at all. It would be pretty hypocritical of me to take offense when I basically said the same thing about your country! It just is what it is sometimes. Maybe if we all understood that, we would take better care of what we have but no. Too many people take what we have for granted.
Try to have empathy for Trump …
Agreed. There are no monkeys named Trump on my back at this point. In a way I don’t really “care” anymore. I’d rather concentrate on the things that are happening rather than the people who we view as the cause of those things because it’s never really just one person. Trump wouldn’t have been able to do much if there wasn’t a growing mass of people who somehow connected to the things he was saying. To put the blame on one person would be ignoring the true root of the issues. Do I believe he deserve every punishment he gets? Yes, 100%. What he does not deserve is my time and energy. I’d rather spend it on people who might end up voting for someone like him.
…from the GREATEST PERSON ALIVE ON THE PLANET EARTH RIGHT NOW, Jon Stewart…
Hahah! Yaaaass! I wanted to watch the whole thing raw before I watched Jon Stewart on it though but I will probably end up just watching that instead.
Determinism: I also believe that. I cannot prove it though, so I don’t hold to it too hard.
Ahhhh yes. This is the part that really sent my brain into a death spiral 😂 It still does. It is just such a “fun” thing to think about. There is so much to think about when you know nothing. I see it as any other kind of belief. Since you can’t prove it, it should only enter the equation when nothing else can help you make a decision. When there is no right or wrong, or all options are appear to be either right or wrong, to me that is when beliefs are useful. Then again, that is kind of why we’re at this point in time right now. Ironic. Some beliefs are just more dangerous than others I guess, or maybe it’s just the incompatibility between certain beliefs that is dangerous.
And yes, since we can’t know whether we have free-will or not, we must treat it as if we did because our brain tells us we do but we still need to remember that our brain lies all the time. Well, maybe not as much lie as it omits a lot of information.
he meant it, he set things in motion to make it happen, nobody bothered to try to fight back, and, here we are)
I like that thought. Inertia isn’t only applicable to the physical world.
I have to apologize, I am having a hard time grasping your thoughts on space and time. If you want you can try to re-word that for me as I wouldn’t mind having a clearer picture and toying with your ideas a bit.
Yes, we may be pawns on a chessboard, but who is to say that WE are not ALSO the players!? If life is a video game, WE could be the characters, but “WE” could ALSO be coming down into our avatars from above.
Oh god yeah. That is something that I have thought about a lot. I also like the idea that we are all just one consciousness experiencing itself from within, or just a bunch of thoughts trying to sort themselves out in some sort of giant cosmic brain. I dunno hahah, these ideas can go pretty far and get pretty crazy. It’s just so much fun to think about. I miss Timothy Leary, Terence McKenna and their crazy psychedelic-fueled ideas.
----PART 2----
And moreover, who cares?
Exactly.
That said, I halfway agree in that I think people carry around so many strange things, that when you talk with someone you are only partway talking to them, and partway talking to all the stuff that they bring with them.
Oh it is very rare that you will get to truly talk to someone. I think you’re always interacting with a translation layer that sits between an interface and the actual mind.
I do believe there is a higher mind and that we all have it but that it can be buried and suffocated. It’s very difficult to stay open-minded these days as we are constantly bombarded with crap coming from all directions. I can’t blame anyone for closing that door after a while. I also think that you should never really be interacting with the same person twice. Healthy people grow and change constantly.
I have thought that before, but can never seem to hold onto it
I know exactly what you mean. It is extremely difficult to hold on to. It takes a conscious effort to do so but it is absolutely worthwhile. To me it offloads a ton of weight from my shoulders.
This is part 1, then space-time wonkiness in part 2:-).
Sheee’s bAAAAaaaaack 😱
She is absolutely the BEst biTCH!:-) (I really hope you take that as I meant it, in that I mean that you are awesome:-P)
Ngl, I think Darwin’s Dangerous Idea took me a year to read through. Except that’s got to be a lie - it surely took more:-P. And I never did finish the other one… - nor iirc did the person who unloaded gave it to me:-( Anyway I am glad that I read the former one at least, and have at least heard about the latter, b/c when I was young I was taught “young earth creationism” (as pretty much everyone in America is, despite how most people outside of the USA iirc pretty much never are), and that (first one) was perhaps the chief resource that helped me logic+reason my way out of that - not alone, but it helped. So it had personal significance to me to be worth that investment of time. I don’t know if either of those books would have that kind of punch in your case, but I did want to share so that you could make that determination on your own, knowing that they exist:-).
Your example of Religion is perfect: real or not, it has enormous benefits, as too does the placebo effect. Jesus Himself used it, even as He commanded to redirect it - e.g. towards taking care of widows and orphans, which implies everything up to and short of that as well, e.g. paying workers their wages. That said, it can also become horribly corrupt, as can anything that People touch - e.g. Science+Technology can lead to nuclear war, genocidal tools, even experimentation upon being beings; Education can be twisted to become “re-education” in a totalitarian regime (see e.g. Uighurs); Math can… well I am sure it can somehow be used poorly as well, maybe by making numbers go brrr i.e. chasing after “efficiency” i.e. profits at the expense of the human beings involved:-(.
But if it can be used poorly, then surely it could be used well too, like you mentioned, to turn someone’s life around by offering them a REASON to exist. We all need that. Fome some, atheism or agnosticism is enough, but not everyone - e.g. not me personally. That said, it can also be super great to break away from a poorly-used, poorly-run one, like an overbearing one that actively hurts people. Especially here - but really almost anywhere except the hardest of the hard sciences, like it happens in politics - there is a huge gulf between things like the real, actual, full Truth (which for religion nobody knows - e.g. the Christian Bible even explicitly says that it is impossible to know, like “now we see dimly, in part, as if a reflection from a dirty mirror…”), and then what we think is true, and then also distinct from both of those how people chasing after power use as their method to control others. e.g. when I am at my job, it is not Religion that is used to control me - all mention of personal beliefs is highly taboo - so there it is rather Authoritarianism that accomplishes that purpose for them. Relion is one tool of control over the masses, but it is not the only one, and it is not inherently either good or evil. (Arguably it is good when it says to e.g. “hold fast to what is true”, but that can be bad when what it thought to be true is incorrect, and the people are willing to e.g. behead someone over a disagreement)
Moreover, even full “Logic”, in the hands of a child - i.e. virtually everyone, especially those among us that choose to act that way, as in child-ish behaviors observed in adults - becomes mere “justification”, to serve their ends, rather than being an end unto itself. This is why I place a lot of value on “stories” to help us see that - Isaac Asimov, Pinocchio, Star Trek TOS’s Spock’s emotional quest to gain parental & societal validation through (ironically) expunging his emotions by achieving Kolinahr (his motivations for that are explained much deeper in the book than the movie), and the converse of that in TNG Data’s perfectly-logical quest to become more “human” by discarding logic when appropriate, e.g. to appreciate and be able to tell a joke.:-D So… even logic itself, becomes a mere tool to be used for some aim, in the hands of our monkey selves. Whether it “should” be this way or not is irrelevant, as it simply is.
So anyway, philosophy is so extremely central to these foundational aspects of our lives, and many can find their meaning in Religion, and in Logic, and I like that:-). It deepens us, which is good, but if used improperly, then just like a surgeon’s scalpal or again like any tool at all, it can harm us just as if not all the more readily, by virtue of touching our lives in such a vulnerable spot.
Speaking of, if I can make a suggestion: PLEASE only think about these matters if and when they are fun for you. I want to enjoy your company, not add to your burdens:-), like if any of this would stress you out.:-D
And further along those lines, I hope that you take heart in that all of our relationships with our mothers are this way, it seems to me. From when you were the tiniest little baby all the way forward until now - e.g. you would kick and scream and spit up onto her, not even b/c it was “her”, but then later especially, yeah, b/c it was specifically her. I am no child psychologist, but that is the “normal” state of affairs it seems. For all monkeys even. At the same time, I am glad that you grew out of it. Also fwiw, that seems unlikely to be the sole reason that anyone would “believe” something - surely it must have been a big one, but also if she grew up in it that would be another point towards it, the “sunk cost fallacy” you know, and so on. But everyone is different - e.g. for me I don’t even necessarily “want” to believe (or if I do then I am deceiving myself - which is also a distinct possibility!), but I have to chase down wherever my investigations lead me, and if that causes me to ditch it one day then I will. On the other hand, the latter viewpoint of life is rather unusual, so I cannot project that onto everyone, and yeah maybe she actually was holding onto that thought for her own sake, plus whatever other background reasons, in which case I am glad that she had it - false or no. We do need our security blankets - I used to think the more solid they are the better, but the more I see how society is crumbling around us (and the corresponding suicide rates), the more I question my belief in that. To be clear, I still believe that for ME, and I would hope that others would STRIVE for the same, but I must accept that the vast majority of people will not do so.
I am not really a “teacher” at all I think - it was kind of a career path that people just “expect” for others to follow, but my problem is that I only care about helping people who WANT to be helped, so I think I am more of a “helper” at heart. So now I am a software engineer where I get to do that. I have lost some autonomy, but that could be good as well. I never had any ability to truly help people who REFUSE to be helped, and it would have killed me to keep trying and fail. In that sense, NOBODY who has that kind of “teacher” mindset should have a job where they have to actually TEACH in today’s current capitalist societal framework. It self-selects otherwise.
What he [Trump] does not deserve is my time and energy.
YAAAASSSS QUEEN! Except… hrm, it will keep coming up, every few years and also rearing its ugly head. It is something that we cannot ignore, except for the sake of our mental health, we have to, even though we couldn’t if we tried. Doesn’t that just about sum it up!?!?
I also “feel like” I know what you mean there about predestination or whatever we are calling it - “fate”. It is one of the most dangerous mindsets b/c it robs people of their agency - but we really do seem to also have that!?!? (Maybe?) So it’s like there’s a Truth there somewhere, but darned if I know what it is, and whether True or not, how does it even help me either way? This is why I like CS Lewis: he also talked like that, having lived it first. Like, if we had not believed that first, and then late in life learned it, that might have been more helpful for us. Instead, we (all three of us) stumbled upon it earlier, and now do not know how it fits in with the rest of the framework. I liken it to a mage/sorcerer type who learned some kind of arcane branch of magic, so while their buddies are going around doing all the cool, useful stuff like fireball, we basically got nothing to show for it, except that we happen to know (what might be, MAYBE) a deeper Truth. It could end up being the most powerful magic of all, but what good does that do for us, practically speaking, on a daily basis?!
If you were asking more about the Russia connection, Fox News is what has damaged America, and Russia funded/started Fox News. There is a documentary about it on Netflix, which I haven’t watched, just piecing that together from other sources. But I am guessing that you rather meant the other thing:-).
But I will have to put the time/space thing in a separate part again due to space limitations.:-D
She is absolutely the BEst biTCH!:-) (I really hope you take that as I meant it, in that I mean that you are awesome:-P)
Bahah no worries, literally everybody calls me that. Ok I lied, my parents don’t, but everybody else does!
And further along those lines, I hope that you take heart in that all of our relationships with our mothers are this way, it seems to me.
Yeah you may be right about that. These days however I am working towards being friends with my mother instead of just being her child and that has been kind of a healing experience.
She really hasn’t grown up in a religious family but still, everybody else around was. People were living and breathing in religion. My grandfather hated organized religion though. He stopped going to church very early in his life and never made his children attend which is kind of crazy for someone who grew up in the early 1900s. He saw religious people as sinners looking to be forgiven on Sunday just to start a whole new week of sinning. Dude was an absolute bad ass but he suffered from chronic depression his whole life. I really wish I had the chance to discuss with him more.
I am not really a “teacher” at all I think
Aw, yeah, I understand what you mean. Jobs tend to suck the life and soul out of everything though. You can still be a teacher and not be in the teaching profession but the helper label still has a nice ring to it! I feel the same way though. I have a hard time throwing my energy at someone who can’t be bothered to bounce that energy back at me. It is so exhausting.
YAAAASSSS QUEEN! Except… hrm, it will keep coming up, every few years and also rearing its ugly head.
Oh I know, but there is a point of diminishing return for time and energy spent on things like that and it comes on real quick. Just gotta realize when that happens and stop.
It is one of the most dangerous mindsets b/c it robs people of their agency
Well, the way I see it, even if everything was predetermined, I still make all my decisions as if I do have agency because my brain is convinced that I do. The difference is that in the back of my head I’m not sure I really did have a choice so it’s not worth agonizing over too much. What is done is done. Regrets just serve to influence future decisions.
liken it to a mage/sorcerer type who learned some kind of arcane branch of magic, so while their buddies are going around doing all the cool, useful stuff like fireball, we basically got nothing to show for it, except that we happen to know (what might be, MAYBE) a deeper Truth.
Hahah I like that comparison. We will probably never know in our lifetimes either, and that’s ok. I have nothing impressive like fireballs to show but I know that people see something in me that I can’t put my finger on. It’s gonna sound like a weird brag but people fucking love me and I’ve never been able to figure out why. All my life I’ve never been able to go to any kind of gathering without having people just flock around me. I’ve always just kinda wanted to be left alone so at gatherings I would try to find a nice quiet corner and have maybe a couple close friends with me, but I would always end up being swarmed and overwhelmed. Maybe that’s my power, people magnet. I have no clue how I would use such a power but I feel I’m getting closer to figuring it out.
EDIT: I will be back for part two at a later time! I’m currently in the process of buying a house and becoming something that I hate, a landlady 🤢. I’m currently having a wild internal battle about this but no matter which way I look at it, I have to do it. Gonna get back to that for a bit but I will be back.
We all have our traumas. For instance my grandfather had a similar story - he would not entertain the notion of us having any relion besides Catholicism, though he himself had not attended church in decades. He saw too much how the sausage was made, and could not stomache it, though he still believed, ostensibly, except he did not, but again would not allow us to go our own way without comment. I realize that came from his pain, though have too much of my own to really be able to fully set foot into his shoes there. I realized from all that - and later from reading the irl backstory of CS Lewis, who walked away from his puritanical upbringing to become atheist - that a lot of people have a made-up “god”, and that quite frankly Jesus Himself not only “would be” but WAS fucking PISSED at that aspect of life. We all should be more atheistic - yes, this from the very words of Christ Himself!!! (hehe, my rather… “liberal” interpretation of them anyway:-P, e.g. “be ye either hot or cold, not just making up whatever the fuck you want and call it a day”)
I feel like there is a Truth to the universe - this is what makes e.g. planes fly in (or in Boeing’s case fall out of) the sky - and while we do not have to choose to live in Reality, preferring our fantasy dreamland adventures, it really is (probably) better to do so. So the real question is whether God exists or not, not whether we want him to. Ofc that proves a bit hard to answer, or to prove even if someone knew for certain. Like in The Matrix movie, if Neo himself introduced himself to you and you saw him fly, but did not record it on camera (or even if you did), how could you convey that? Similarly, how can smart people convey the complexities of mathematics, of physics, of philosophy, to people who literally cannot - as in do not have the capacity to uptake - understand even a fraction of wha t you speak of? How can people who KNOW convey that both the Left and the Right side of politics are both WRONG, having been bought out by corporate special interests (but that even so, one side is most definitely even more so in that regard lately…)? Ofc we cannot, and really, except the “hard sciences” one, how can we even be fully sure of what we DO happen to know? (and even there, physics is constantly over-turning old ideas - like the latest thought that there is no need for all that “dark matter” that the media has been throwing about for decades now, just poof, it’s all gone now!? ofc most things are merely supplanted by a higher-resolution version, like Newtonian is not gone just relegated to a subset of Einsteinian mathematical formulations of our understanding of the universe)
Another thing I use the Bible for btw is as a repository of the “wisdom of the ages”, as in even though I believe in a God, putting that aside and conjecturing at worst as if that were a false statement even, there is still some merit in its depictions of things. And I definitely looked through its verses regarding teaching… which convey that you just CAN’T force knowledge onto people, not b/c of stupidity but rather b/c of obstinancy. “You can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make it drink.” I still would have offered them the benefits of my knowledge & experience regardless, except it was heartbroken to think that they were being saddled with generational levels of debt, for a degree that they probably would not even use, b/c they lacked the emotional maturity level to handle life beyond the (post-No Child Left Behind era) high school level.
Regrets: I actually have very few of those in my life, b/c I realize that the past me did not know what the current me does, so how could I have done any differently, and furthermore why bother thinking along the lines as if I somehow could? That said, like CS Lewis (this being the main reason why I like him, b/c I so very much “get” his struggles), I often arrive at the correct conclusion from the most bass-ackwards route, which highly ironically may thereby end up making it potentially the wrong thing, for me in my circumstances. So am I “ahead”, or am I “behind”? Yes! I have a feeling that you, having experienced more than one major “transition” in your own life, may understand exactly what I mean there!:-P (others may be born there already, while you had to struggle to get there, and vice versa) But no matter how painful, those struggles are also what define us and give us character so… tbh I probably would have skipped them, but I am also grateful, in a tiny way, that I am who I am now, and can appreciate so much that I otherwise would not have been able to - if that makes any sense whatsoever?
I would guess that people love you b/c you seem to have genuine empathy + depth both. That seems… rare these days. It should NOT be, and you would not think it, but given how often people take advantage, it does seem to be like a beautiful flower that gets mowed over quickly as if it were some weed that people feel the need to stamp out quickly:-(. Especially on the interwebz. If you want, you can use that power to make people feel better - as you already do, but I mean consciously! - but ofc I hope you also hold it in check, so that you manage to meet your own needs as well (which are ofc interconnected to helping others, so it truly is a balance there, not just all one or all the other way). I feel like it is good to be Masters of ourselves rather than the other way around. Which ironically… I accomplish by giving in to my desires? But like, making sure that I acknowledge ALL of those, not hyper-fixate on just one at any given moment.
Bring on the part 2 then! When you are ready. I know what you mean about ownership - I have nothing now but one day if I ever could, the thought of needing to do that worries me. As it probably should:-). 💫
Similarly, how can smart people convey the complexities of mathematics, of physics, of philosophy, to people who literally cannot - as in do not have the capacity to uptake - understand even a fraction of what you speak of?
Funny, I was thinking about something similar last night. I’m not a very mathematically inclined person but for some reason last night I was thinking about it and how people who are “mathematically inclined” must see the world in a completely different way than I do. Kind of like how your average gamer and a game programmer might see a video game world differently. You can try to explain to the gamer who knows nothing of the complexities behind game programming and how it is really just all numbers, but they might not be able to see the numbers that make up that beautiful world you’re playing in. This line of thinking can be applied to so many things. I sometimes feel like we may all be on the same planet but we all live in a completely different world.
Another thing I use the Bible for btw is as a repository of the “wisdom of the ages”
Yes, that is how I see it too. I don’t know if I had mentioned it in one of my previous replies, since I don’t even remember when that was, but I actually found my grandmothers old bible a couple days ago and decided to start reading it. I read the Satanic bible so I figured I might as well give God’s book a chance! I think it can definitely be a useful tool in that regard because things really haven’t changed all that much. Humans are still the same.
Regrets
I see it the same way you do. Were it possible, I might go back in time and tell my younger self to do some things differently, but I would effectively be killing my current self and I love this bitch. It wasn’t always the case but now I think I’m actually kinda cool, I can see value in myself and I wouldn’t want to be someone else. All roads lead to home, some are just longer than others but in the grand scheme of things I don’t believe there is such a thing as wasted time.
but given how often people take advantage
Yeah, that is one thing that had made me grow a bit cold in the past, as a coping mechanism. Fortunately over the years I have learned to deal with these things a lot better. I can’t avoid abusers but I can recognize them and limit their impact on me. When I say abusers I don’t necessarily mean bad people either, although there have been some. Some people just don’t realize just how much of their pain I soak up when they dump their trauma on me and some would basically only use me for that but I let it happen. I think it is just as much my fault as it is theirs, I simply overestimated what I could handle. I might’ve also been able to handle much more when I was younger but then as I grew older that shit started weighing really heavily on me.
I hope you also hold it in check, so that you manage to meet your own needs as well
That is something I have only recently realized I had to do, for the sake of all my loved ones I need to prioritize myself.
You may not be a fan of Kendrick Lamar but his song “Mirror” off his latest album (Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers) resonated with me SO strongly. I get the most intense “frissons” whenever I listen to it. The entire album is an absolute masterpiece, as is everything he does in my opinion. It all builds up to “Mirror”, it might not be as impactful if you haven’t listened to the whole album but it still is.
I accomplish by giving in to my desires?
Absolutely, you need to do what you need to do to build a strong foundation for yourself. Only when you have that can you support others.
Some people can think in 7 dimensions at once, or so they say. For those of us who struggle to even contemplate a hypercube, we may not even begin to realize how impressive that must be. Then again, that is only one form of IQ, and EQ is still entirely separate. Still, how could an eagle even begin to describe to a turtle what life is like? Not that an eagle is “better” and a turtle “worse”, but despite coinhabiting the same “world” as in physical space, they do experience that world according to SUCH different criteria that they essentially live in separate realities, like different dimensions of that “world”.
As you said. Similarly in the USA, a white person can call out to a police officer and have some expectation of receiving immediate help, whereas a black person might get the literal opposite of help if they tried the same action. Rich or beautiful people likewise receive differential treatment - the same location, the same experiences, but received against a backdrop of a different lifestyle. Getting fired, or divorced, may just be laughed off by those who would be “set free” by such, vs. someone for whom that is their last thread. It is “the same”… yet so very, Very, VERY different! The tortise and the eagle, or the hare.
The irony there is that mathematics is pretty much the one universal constant. English, or French, or other languages may vary in their interpretation, and even Logic itself becomes subsumed by mere Justification in human hands. Even programming languages differ - identical syntax may be interpreted differently by C, C++, Java, etc. - though it does come fairly close when you specify all of the code, the language, and the receiving device, which together deterministically implements the mathematical instructions via the flow of electrons in the physical world. Math made real - pattern becomes substance (or something else even cooler-sounding, I dunno:-P).
Speaking of I have not read a Satanic one - surely there must be more than one type? - but I would give it a chance if I ever came across it. There’s a lot to like there. Also a lot I do not like, but that is the same with literally everything. Not quite the same thing, but on a related note: most pagan religions “lost” the war against Christianity, which I feel like gives the latter some credence. Although… ofc it is not that Christianity “won”, so much as that they “lost” - a HUGE distinction. Perhaps Christianity will lose someday as well… or maybe Jesus is a space/reality alien and when the energy beings come to enslave the human race, those of us who follow it will have been more properly prepared to serve the new overlords? (after all, if Might makes Right, especially for a being - like the owner of The Matrix - who literally can MAKE a Universe, then they do get to call the shots, whether we like it or not) Yeah, that’s pretty out there, so I will bring us back to: who knows, really? Nobody, at least not perfectly, though we try to do the best we can, as far as we know at the time.
I do not believe in wasted time either… although just try telling that to a boss! Those with more authoritarian mindsets are not capable of accepting this aspect of the Universe, and I concede too that there must be a Balance. So wtf does that even mean - that it both is a waste of time, yet that waste was itself not a waste!? Yes. You get me. It is a contradiction, and within that paradox lies such beauty as to take our breaths away. Yin and Yang - not one or the other, but fucking both, always and never not that.
You also have a beautiful perspective on abusers: sometimes they do not mean it, sometimes they do but are not “evil”, sometimes they are but… so what? We still gotta roll how we want to, not just always react to however others want, or even not want, us to. We chase after our goals, and they do whatever little thing they want, and we need not even break our stride as we press onwards. This point was REALLY driven home for me HARD when Trump won the 2016 election. Conservatives just did not give two fucks about “him”, but they liked what he could do for them… it was quite strategic. Raw. Naked. Bleeding. Evil incarnate… and therefore beautiful for all of that? Like that movie Haunting of Hill House: a darkness that shines as bright as the stars themselves - and all the more deadly as a result of that. Jon Stewart tried to warn us, he foresaw that and said how “liberal media aims to be correct, but conservative media aims to be effective”. This is why I have lost faith in democracy: it depends on presuppositions, specifically that the voting citizenry are aiming to vote correctly, and that errors are distributed randomly; however it is vulnerable to an outside attack that cause all the errors to bend in a single direction: towards the will of the evil ones (whoever they may be - Putin, Bezos, Musk, and others who prefer to hide deeper in the shadows). Oh well. Like everything else: I will enjoy it while I can.
But anyway, you were speaking of smaller-scale abuses, like a turtle crying over something to another turtle, never realizing that e.g. taking a long time to speak could be agonizing to an eagle (or the analogy works far better in reverse:-D). Many people do not realize it. Many others do realize it but do not care:-(. Some even realize it, care, and enjoy it:-|!? But if you get overwhelmed, you cannot help anyone else, least of all yourself, so yeah, guard your heart, most definitely. Literall nobody else can do it for you (well, they can help though:-).
I want to share with you a phrase that I have always hated: “If you see yourself in others, whom can you harm?” Whoever invented that must have had two loving parents, and can just fuck right off as far as I am concerned for rubbing that in the faces of those of us who did not. Setting that aside, part-way, even if you gave zero thought to your own welfare and cared exclusively for others, you STILL need to take care of yourself, or you will not be able to do that! (for very long) YOU ARE A PEOPLE TOO!!! I really like how the Bible portrays that: “the measuring procedure that you use to levy judgement upon others is the identical process by which you will use to judge yourself”. People either suck, in which case you do, or they are worthwhile, in which case… say it with me… you are worthwhile too:-P. I have fought against this every hour of every day of my entire life, but it is True nonetheless. I HATE that thought… but I can’t fight physics, or in this case the more relevant part is that it is just how human psychology works. I do not know much, but this is one that I do feel certain about, and I hope sharing these thoughts help you too (and by extension, perhaps me as well?:-P).
I am glad that you are going through such a time of change, to be able to get frissons!:-) I have been closing off so much lately that it will take some time to open up again:-(. But that too… is not a waste of time (except it is, but even so - it is what must be:-). I almost wonder why he says “I’m sorry”, b/c it is the Right thing to do, though I get that he does feel guilt for it too, but still there is that nagging thought: is that a slight admission of doubt, that he is not entirely certain that it is the correct path? And like, he could have said “I need to choose Me”, but instead he chose the other wording… so I wonder, what does that mean? I am probably over-thinking it, and quite frankly the intricacies hardly matter, b/c the main thing is what it means to you. I am SOOO glad that it gives you peace - b/c yes gurl you NEED to get that!:-)
About me saying that I accomplish Mastery of my Mind, I wanted to be sure that I conveyed that I feel like I cannot win when it becomes a “struggle” - even at best if one side or the other were to totally conquer the opponent, then I overall would lose. So by “giving in to my desires”, I mean not fighting it, nor letting it win either, but striving to achieve that Yin/Yang balance of winning when and where most needs to happen at each given moment, the trick being to find what that is. Some things I have practiced enough to have a really good idea of precisely where that line is, while other things I severely struggle on a daily basis to even identify the factors involved. As I suspect we all do, at least those of us who allow ourselves to remain open to adventure rather than falling prey to stagnation.
Hehe, this music is good for other reasons too:-D.
Omg I have a couple minutes of free time today! I don’t remember where I was at before life came at me 😅
Speaking of I have not read a Satanic one - surely there must be more than one type?
I read the one by Anton LaVey, it was kinda basic and very short but I still really enjoyed it. I’ve heard it described as “baby’s first Nietzche” and I guess that’d be a pretty apt comparison.
Perhaps Christianity will lose someday as well… or maybe Jesus is a space/reality alien and when the energy beings come to enslave the human race, those of us who follow it will have been more properly prepared to serve the new overlords?
Bahah I have definitely thought about that as well. Life is so crazy, I wouldn’t even be that surprised if that was the actual truth. It’s not as “out there” to me because I’m also out there but yes, it is out there. We do not know, we are not ready to know, we may not even want to know. All that I know is that the questions are wonderful and it’s the only thing in life that never gets boring.
It is a contradiction, and within that paradox lies such beauty as to take our breaths away. Yin and Yang - not one or the other, but fucking both, always and never not that
Amen! It’s sometimes hard to deal with this reality but that’s just how it has to be.
Conservatives just did not give two fucks about “him”, but they liked what he could do for them… it was quite strategic. Raw. Naked. Bleeding. Evil incarnate…
Yup. To be completely honest, I hate to say it but I was kind of one of those people in 2015. I was not a conservative, I’ve never been a conservative but I was miserable at the time, which I feel is his core demographic. Obviously I’m not even American so I couldn’t and wouldn’t have ended up voting for him but there was a time at the beginning where I participated in the Pro-Trump meme culture. I told myself, and I’m really sorry about that (oof I have a hard time typing it out because it’s so fucking stupid and shameful.), I told myself that Trump could be a “good candidate” because he was so bad he could bring down the “American empire” and then maybe “things could change”. Not thinking about what could end up replacing it, not even taking into consideration all the lives that could be affected or even ruined. I wasn’t evil but I was lost. I feel actual guilt about the way things turned out, like I actually had a part in it and my beliefs tell me that I did. Now I am very careful what I wish for.
This is why I have lost faith in democracy: it depends on presuppositions, specifically that the voting citizenry are aiming to vote correctly
I feel that. It is vulnerable from outside attacks, and also from the inside. I don’t know of a system that has no vulnerabilities though. As long as there are people involved, there are going to be vulnerabilities.
Oh well. Like everything else: I will enjoy it while I can.
Yup! Life is much better with that mentality. It’s cliché but it didn’t get to become cliché for no reason. Enjoy things as they are and embrace the changes when they inevitably come. I’m not saying we should just accept everything that happens but we need to find enthusiasm and a “raison d’être” in the new paths we are thrown into.
I want to share with you a phrase that I have always hated: “If you see yourself in others, whom can you harm?” Whoever invented that must have had two loving parents, and can just fuck right off as far as I am concerned for rubbing that in the faces of those of us who did not.
Aw, I’ve never heard that phrase before. I can see the spirit in which it is intended but I can also see your point. It must be terrible to have less than great parents. Fortunately (and also unfortunately), I have been very lucky in that department so I can’t even begin to truly understand how that must’ve been and I have tried.
It reminds me of something a friend told me a bit over 10 years ago that never left me. He basically said that whenever you dislike a person for the way they are, you’re probably seeing reflections of yourself that you try to hide. I felt it was true then and the older I get the more I find it to be true. I’ve also noticed that a lot of the people that I’ve become very close friends with have been people I kinda disliked on first impressions. I think that said a lot about myself as well.
I have been closing off so much lately that it will take some time to open up again:-(
Yeah I know how that feels. It’ll get better though and it is definitely not a waste of time.
The way I interpret it is just that he feels sorry for letting people down and not living up the the expectations people had of him, sorry for not actually being a saviour, even though he never said he was and it was something that was just dumped on him.
About me saying that I accomplish Mastery of my Mind …
I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around that paragraph. What is it that you mean by a struggle in this context?
All that I know is that the questions are wonderful and it’s the only thing in life that never gets boring.
YES - THIS IS IT!!! Like, whether we have free will or not, I do not know,(but as we mentioned, it doesn’t even matter b/c either way we need to act as if we do) but whether we SHOULD have free will is something that we could answer… if we knew for certain that there was an external entity. Star Trek is famous for exploring this. Like even if the actual Zeus did exist (they never met him iirc but Kirk did run into Apollo/Mercury at some point…), what “claim” would he have over humanity? Same with Arthur C. Clarke’s (2001 A Space Odyssey) saga: just b/c they gave us our start (into sentience, or even seeding DNA & thus life itself?) doesn’t necessarily mean that they should have agency over us…
Whereas on the other hand, whatever OS I am running on my computer (Mac OSX for me, though I hear that some people on Lemmy prefer Arch btw:-D) very much should obey my commands. e.g. when I tell it to reboot or to shut down a misbehaving program, I want it to do it NOW (or at least… soon, even if it needs a few moments to wrap things up, that’s arguably far better b/c then it can do so safely). That, to me, seems to go beyond “might makes right”, b/c we literally put in love, care, attention, and design into making that OS. The gulf b/t human sentience vs. like a worm or even a bacteria is far lesser than the gulf b/t us vs. the programs that we write, in terms of autonomy. We own it b/c we MADE it. (I am ignoring future AIs where we set up the system but then it kinda makes itself - a fascinating thought that very likely could qualify for an exemption, so here I am just bypassing that line of thinking entirely)
Anyway, I love thinking such thoughts:-D. I have no idea if doing so offers practical benefits (I kinda do not care!:-P), but it very well might. e.g. just how much agency / oversight did Elon Musk offer to building his Tesla cars? With all the crashes & potentially actually fatal consequences, it seems that even he did not put in the effort to truly know what those cars are all about. Thus if some hacker were to do so, would they “take ownership”, and be able to bypass certain features & controls, in a manner that even Musk himself (& most of his engineers) has no idea exists - and in so doing, would they have that “right”, or is that just another example of “might makes right”, where they can & therefore they do? (which is a power that they could wield for good - e.g. go ahead and pay the subscription service, in order to help keep the company afloat, and yet still patch security vulnerabilities that the company itself never bothers to implement - so such a thought would not have to be solely due to piracy & stealing considerations)
According to such thinking then, if the Illuminati control the world, then can Anonymous help fix it, like Robin Hood? Except that Power Corrupts, and Absolutely Power… well the latter actually often turns around and converts to good, given enough time passing and the proclivities of the person, but even 99.99% Power corrupts nearly Absolutely, so it might end up being the other way around - perhaps they will merely join or subvert the Illuminati, or even become co-opted by them unknowingly? Trump presented himself as a style of “Robin Hood”-esque “savior” type, saying how he was going to “drain the swamp” and fix all the problems, but he did not work out so well. And while that attempt was blatantly obvious to anyone who has eyes, who is to say that the next attempt will be so readily detectable?
You do not need to apologize: Trump had a lot of us fooled, and I don’t think your underlying idea - motivated by compassion - is wrong at all. I happened to not be fooled, at least in that same sense, but only b/c of my background having been similarly fooled by earlier events (so without those, I easily could have been), and even now I agree that he did a lot of good: by exposing the vulnerabilities inherent in our system, he may have done a lot better than Hilary Clinton would have to cause them to be fixed? She would have papered over the whole situation - her whole message was just “the status quo is absolutely fine” - but it is FUCKING NOT FINE!!!?!!! So I understand why people voted against her, even if that meant voting for him. Even now, I think her particular brand of insensitivity to people’s needs is far more toxic & deadly than whatever Trump may have wrought for us - even if that leads to the death of America, it seems preferable to me to at least be honest about that death, rather than to keep claiming the “this is fine” meme (as in, “THIS IS FINE - OR ELSE!! Do not say that you are not fine, or you will be imprisoned!”). Unfortunately, Democrats seemed to have learned very little from the whole thing.:-(
Part of what I mean in that I am losing hope for democracy, is that I am wondering if I should be gaining hope in whatever may replace it? If this truly is a non-viable solution to begin with, then whatever we end up with later could potentially be better? Like, instead of a nation full of suicidal people who cannot afford housing and hate their jobs, what if we accepted that we are mere peasants and at least came to peaceful coexistence with that thought? I dunno, maybe I sound like a subversive there, but it is a thought that I cannot shake from my head. Is being a slave more “honest” than being a “free” employee, who nonetheless depends on their job for food/housing/medical care/existence? I guess you could say that I am questioning EVERYTHING - even just what our “freedom” may offer us? Unlike the earlier discussion points we mentioned, I despite these thoughts… but if they are coming at us regardless… then I at least want to struggle to open my eyes, regardless of whatever I might see:-(. In so doing, I am prepared to leave my religion, or double down harder on it, or shift it over to something else, or wherever the facts (as best as I can see them anyway) may take me. And that’s good imho - I feel proud about that aspect of myself:-).
If you see yourself in others, whom can you harm?
It is a common bumper sticker on vehicles that I saw a few years back, often alongside the words “Coexist”. The latter phrase is fantastic, but the phrase I mentioned really rubs me the wrong way. I believe it is Buddhist? Anyway, as you picked up on, my reaction was not how it was meant to be interpreted:-D - and I get that, and don’t even hold it against the statement itself, except… I still have my preferences about the whole affair, and I happen to hate it:-P, and I am okay with having that emotion about it. Life is a journey, not a destination, and all that.
I wanted to be sure that I conveyed that I feel like I cannot win when it becomes a “struggle” - even at best if one side or the other were to totally conquer the opponent, then I overall would lose.
Speaking of life being a journey, it seems to me that it was not meant for us to be comfortable 100% of the time, nor perhaps safe either. If we were hyper-diligent and did everything correctly, every time, would that be “good” - is that then our “goal”? Certainly the opposite cannot be true, b/c then we’d be dead, but is the goal then the opposite, or is that a fallacy of False Dilemma? Moreover, is there just one path through life, that a “perfect” person would have taken, let’s say if they were in my situation, or are there many ways, and our flaws are what make us beautiful, in part? This is one area where religion has helped inform my thinking: the word “perfection” should (perhaps) rather not mean “lacking any flaw” so much as “being complete, lacking nothing (major)”. Therefore I do not strive to eliminate my flaws as if this is some kind of war and my goal is to murderize my opponent, but rather I accept them, embrace them even, and thereby find my peace. And then I get up off my butt and do something about them, one at a time, and it never sticks, but still I keep moving forward - and you know what? That is enough for me. Perhaps Nirvana, for us, is not absence of pain - or in other words, even if it was, we are human beings and not meant to exist in such a state? Thus, I do not want Discipline to always win, nor Comfort to always win, but rather both, each as seems best in the current moment. Maybe that’s stupid of me, but it’s a thought.
Anyway, the context was that people love you, b/c you show care & attention to them - but I hope you also fail to do that sometimes as well too, so that you can take care of yourself as well? Yes, you read that correctly: I wish failure upon you (“muwha-ha, a pox upon thee!!”, ahem no wait, not like that!:-P), when/where/as appropriate, if that helps you to ultimately succeed. e.g. if you have a job interview the next morning, and you are fairly nervous about it, and then someone calls you at 2am needing something - perhaps they got drunk and wanted a ride home from 2 towns over or something - maybe don’t answer? Hopefully they’ll be fine, but you also need to be fine as well? The “right” thing to do in that moment may not always be to continue to give of yourself selflessly, if doing so would cost you a big job (which perhaps the drunk friend may not have even remembered, b/c of their drunkeness, but when sober they may have even agreed with the decision?). Anyway, you (Kendrick Lamar) already said it: “I choose me, I’m sorry” (hopefully not always as in “solely”, but at least sometimes it does need to be done!?).
Btw, good luck with your whole house situation - I am certain that cannot be trivially easy to handle:-).
(Mac OSX for me, though I hear that some people on Lemmy prefer Arch btw:-D)
Are you trying to tell me there are Linux users on Lemmy???
Anyway, I love thinking such thoughts:-D. I have no idea if doing so offers practical benefits
Well, they may and they may not! It all depends on if you sometimes share these thoughts or not. The time you spend thinking and the things you think about definitely has an impact on your future interactions. It does not if you never actually do anything with those thoughts. A person who spends all their time thinking has nothing but thoughts.
It’s funny, recently I was thinking about electric car jailbreaking. It’s something that I find very interesting as electric cars these days kinda remind me of the early iPhone days. There are definitely people working on such things as we speak which can be a scary thought as this could be used for evil as easily as it could be used for good.
According to such thinking then, if the Illuminati control the world, then can Anonymous help fix it, like Robin Hood?
Well, good and evil are human creations. Like we’ve talked about in our previous comments, one can not exist without the other. If there is an “illuminati” there is going to, at least eventually, be an equal opposing force. They will eventually mutually destroy each other, giving way to a new good and evil of our own creation. It is a never ending cycle. At least that is how I see it.
He (Trump) may have done a lot better than Hilary Clinton would have to cause them to be fixed? She would have papered over the whole situation - her whole message was just “the status quo is absolutely fine” - but it is FUCKING NOT FINE!!!?!!!
Agreed. There is always good to be found in any situation if you know where to look. We sometimes focus way too much on the bad things themselves to realize that they actually have a role to play in fostering good. Of course nobody wants to be stuck in a system where they’re unhappy but if we’re “happy” all the time we grow complacent. Sometimes we need a good slap in the face to wake up.
If this truly is a non-viable solution to begin with, then whatever we end up with later could potentially be better?
Absolutely. I don’t think that means we should be pushing for the death of democracy, but if that’s how you feel then by all means, do it. Your thoughts and feelings about the situation are valid, as are everybody elses. It just remains to see if there are enough people who feel the same way for them to have enough mass to actually move things. Whatever happens happens.
I still have my preferences about the whole affair (If you see yourself in others, whom can you harm?), and I happen to hate it:-P, and I am okay with having that emotion about it.
Bahah, absolutely valid. You’ve had experiences that have shaped the way you view things and you are not wrong to have those thoughts.
Perfection
Ahhhh perfection lol. That is a fun concept. We have a broken definition of perfection because we do not understand that there is nothing that is “without flaw”. “Flaws” are part of a perfect design. I consider myself a perfectionist which is why I never get anything done. How perfect is that? I find it laughable when people praise God, saying he makes no mistakes, but then go on and talk about things being abominations in the eyes of God. Like who the fuck do you think you are to say things like that? Again I’m not much of a “religion” person, but the older I get, the more I realize that life IS actually perfect and if there is actually a God it indeed makes no mistakes. It is mind-blowing to me the system of checks and balances that are built into life itself. Every error eventually corrects itself, which can spell catastrophe for us as a species but in the grand scheme of things it is absolutely beautiful.
Yes, you read that correctly: I wish failure upon you
Thank you, that is the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me 😭!!
For real though, I am choosing myself now. More than I ever have and it has had a positive impact on everyone around me so far. I’m still available to everyone when they really need me but I’m not scared to say no when it’s not that important and I need to do my own things. If there are still abusers in my midst they will soon make themselves visible but so far so good.
Btw, good luck with your whole house situation - I am certain that cannot be trivially easy to handle:-).
Thank you, it has been absolute hell so far but I have some really good friends helping me with the things I’m not so good at and things are moving. I already have people lined up to rent the upstairs and I’m able to rent to them cheaper than all the other places they had looked at so I’m really happy about that. They seem like really good people too so I’m excited to have them as neighbors.
It is fundamentally difficult to grasp, yeah. CS Lewis has an illustration that I will borrow blatantly steal outright: imagine an outside entity who “sees” the entire trajectory of your life as a line, with all its twists and curves, and then, perhaps on a whim or to make it more beautiful art, decides to “outline” it, like maybe a highlighter or let us rather say one line “above”/to the left and another line “below”/to the right of it. From your perspective, your life appears “hemmed in”, outlined, bordered by those two lines - as if you had no choices in the matter? Yet, that outside agent was the one who drew the lines, but following YOUR choices! That at least is the simplistic version, but it gets even weirder if, while the outside agent is drawing those outlining lines, your own lifeline changes in response. So if the agent starts drawing from the beginning of your life to the end, the final trajectory could change - according to YOUR choices, but in response to THEIR choices, which were themselves based on YOUR choices to begin with. Notice the caveat inherent in that: the “you” may change, from an alternate-reality you without interference from that outside agent, to now the “you” that has done so.
Even weirder, what if that “outside agent”, who I mentioned earlier plays you like a chess piece pawn, isn’t “God” or whatever, but YOU! In that case, “you” are the video game or storybook or whatever character, but in this formulation, the external agent is also YOU - moreover it would be the REAL you, whereas the one inside this reality is the lesser version. Ofc, here you must somehow have “forgotten” your true, higher self. And as you brought up, there may not be a 1:1 correlation between each of us down here vs. ourselves up there - all humans could come from just 1 or a few up there, or whatever. Anything is possible there, and we are only limited by our imaginations here. What we know for certain here is that what Religion tells us in this regard is fundamentally flawed and wrong - b/c it is inconsistent e.g. even the people saying so do not practice what they preach - but we do not necessarily know what the True reality is. Now we see only in part. I still like thinking along those lines b/c there are multiple ways to be wrong, and thereby thinking along several different lines could help lead us to Truth - e.g. we might not be “actually” one being (I sincerely doubt it, I see no evidence of it at least), but is there any doubt that we are all “connected” nonetheless?
you should never really be interacting with the same person twice.
This one hits me hard - my (autism-spectrumed?) brain constantly forgets this and wants to pick up right where it left off - more a reflection of my own reduced capacity to handle things than anything to do with reality. Speaking of, I had already forgotten that beautiful perspective that you had shared with me about nations changing. Stuff at my job, weird weather, for a few days my exercise schedule has been interrupted and I am just “off”, and just like that it had already slipped through my fingers, again. Maybe, or at least I mean it did at the conscious level. That said, I tend not to try to hold onto anything too strongly, trusting that if it is good that it will find its way back to me in time. That… is nowhere close to true though:-(, and yet I know that I CANNOT hold onto things no matter how I try, so it is demotivating to even try.
And I think there is an evolutionary reason for this: community. No one person - a sage on a mountaintop lets say - can or even should really try to have it all, all the knowledge, all the wisdom, all the perfection. Rather, if we choose to surround ourselves with those who are worthwhile, and distance ourselves from idiots (it seems sad but what else can you do but that? they are hell-bent on their own destruction, and they will absolutely take you down with them!), then we can keep reminding ourselves of these beautiful Truths.
Or, so I say anyway, but then I don’t actually DO it - oopsie, I guess I too am one of those who says one thing yet does the polar opposite, an “idiot” even. As too are we all, but one difference, not sure I can take “credit” for any of it but just saying it as a fact (or so it seems to me): some of us, for whatever reason, desire to know the Truth, and Reason, and Mind, while some of us, again for whatever reason, do not. THAT makes all the difference in the world, b/c I will eventually find what I seek, with effort + time, while they literally never will (and even if they stumbled upon it, they would set it back down again without realizing its significance). So I am grateful that I care, and therefore… almost grateful for the pain that I lived through that made me care. Most people would have no idea whatsoever what that means, but I don’t even need to explain it further than that, b/c you already do.
I hope these thoughts are at least halfway entertaining:-D.
Space timey wimy goodness
It is indeed difficult to grasp hahah! I don’t think I’m able to see the exact picture you’ve written down. Kinda difficult with these things because they are so open to interperetation. The way I’m interpreting it right now is like whatever restrictions we feel we’re surrounded by simply act kind of like horse blinders? There are so many possibilities when we know nothing!
but is there any doubt that we are all “connected” nonetheless?
Well, not in my mind. We can’t really do anything without affecting the rest of the world. Everything we do has an impact, no matter how insignificant it may seem, even something as trivial as a fart. The energy, the words, actions and possibly even thoughts that we put out in the world, none of it is lost. I feel like that is a power that most of us ignore these days. We are to focused on the “now” and the things we can physically see and touch.
Speaking of, I had already forgotten that beautiful perspective that you had shared with me about nations changing. Stuff at my job, weird weather, for a few days my exercise schedule has been interrupted and I am just “off”, and just like that it had already slipped through my fingers, again.
That is so relatable hahah. I think it’s normal and that we all have those moments but I also do not know what normal is. I think that’s where meditation and mindfulness can be really helpful. You sometimes must make a conscious effort to remind yourself of these things because the world we’ve built is just so overwhelming at times, it’s easy to get caught up in it and forget. It’s kind of like weightlifting for the mind/soul hahah. If you stop training you’re gonna lose all them gainz!
I guess I too am one of those who says one thing yet does the polar opposite, an “idiot” even.
I like to think that these “idiots” don’t ever have these thoughts but what do I know, I may very well be an idiot myself. We probably all desire to know the truth but none of us seem to see the same thing, life is different for everyone. We are not given the same knowledge, everybody has a different piece of the truth (or truth™) that they build around.
So I am grateful that I care, and therefore… almost grateful for the pain that I lived through that made me care.
Well of course. You are the sum of your experiences and if you are at a point where you are happy with who you are, then you must appreciate the pain you’ve had to endure to get there.
I hope these thoughts are at least halfway entertaining:-D.
Absolutely! They have managed to take up an hour of what seemed to be the start of a pretty boring day.
Hehe, isn’t it fun that we know nothing? Well, whether it is or not, that’s just the way it is, so we adapt - it’s what we are good at, and all that could ever possibly be done regardless:-P.
People that think (& act) as if their actions do not affect others do so as a result of that CHOICE to act exactly that way - just as those of us who do the opposite do as well. Facts may have little to nothing to do with that choice, except for some very few of us.
As you said also about the choice to be mindful - which is a separate aspect of the choice but that too is also a (meta-?) choice! I feel like I know, somewhat, how to excercise, but I really have no clue how people maintain their mental health. All the more so when it goes beyond “maintenance mode” into actively trying to heal from past wounds. Nor would I trust any resource that said that it knew, unfortunately. e.g., churches say that they know… and who knows, maybe they do? Like people, it would vary according to the individual one.
I do not know if I would say that I am “happy” with myself, but on the other hand I look at others who experience their own pains that are caused from the fruits of their own labors and… yeah, I see that. I often do not want to see that, but I do. I definitely see too much, yet also too little at the same time? As do we all.
Well, I am glad that my problems are amusing to you then - sheesh! (/s, I know you know but to be abundantly clear!:-P)
Sheee’s bAAAAaaaaack 😱
That does sound right up my alley I’ll write it down. However my reading ability lately is not great. If I read 2 books in a year, that was a good year hahah. I already have a pile of books on my desk that has been there for about a year now and once in a while a book gets added on top but none get removed from the bottom 😭
I can relate to that a lot. I still feel guilty about how I used to be around religion. Particularly with my mom. She used to believe and for some reason I couldn’t accept that. I would often talk shit about religion and her beliefs, try to convince her it was all just bullshit. Now I just ask myself why the fuck would I want to take that away from someone? Especially someone like my mom who basically just used religion as a way to calm her mind about the afterlife. Worst part, the most painful part, is that one of the reasons she probably believed so strongly was because it was a way for her to believe that she might be able to see my brother who died before I was born.
Ouch… I’m really sorry you’ve had to leave a teaching position. That is a tragedy, but don’t bother second guessing your decision. Whatever you did was the right thing to do. You can still teach even though you aren’t in a teaching position and I have a feeling you weren’t in it for the fame and the fortune that comes with the official title of “Teacher”.
Bahah none taken at all. It would be pretty hypocritical of me to take offense when I basically said the same thing about your country! It just is what it is sometimes. Maybe if we all understood that, we would take better care of what we have but no. Too many people take what we have for granted.
Agreed. There are no monkeys named Trump on my back at this point. In a way I don’t really “care” anymore. I’d rather concentrate on the things that are happening rather than the people who we view as the cause of those things because it’s never really just one person. Trump wouldn’t have been able to do much if there wasn’t a growing mass of people who somehow connected to the things he was saying. To put the blame on one person would be ignoring the true root of the issues. Do I believe he deserve every punishment he gets? Yes, 100%. What he does not deserve is my time and energy. I’d rather spend it on people who might end up voting for someone like him.
Hahah! Yaaaass! I wanted to watch the whole thing raw before I watched Jon Stewart on it though but I will probably end up just watching that instead.
Ahhhh yes. This is the part that really sent my brain into a death spiral 😂 It still does. It is just such a “fun” thing to think about. There is so much to think about when you know nothing. I see it as any other kind of belief. Since you can’t prove it, it should only enter the equation when nothing else can help you make a decision. When there is no right or wrong, or all options are appear to be either right or wrong, to me that is when beliefs are useful. Then again, that is kind of why we’re at this point in time right now. Ironic. Some beliefs are just more dangerous than others I guess, or maybe it’s just the incompatibility between certain beliefs that is dangerous.
And yes, since we can’t know whether we have free-will or not, we must treat it as if we did because our brain tells us we do but we still need to remember that our brain lies all the time. Well, maybe not as much lie as it omits a lot of information.
I like that thought. Inertia isn’t only applicable to the physical world.
I have to apologize, I am having a hard time grasping your thoughts on space and time. If you want you can try to re-word that for me as I wouldn’t mind having a clearer picture and toying with your ideas a bit.
Oh god yeah. That is something that I have thought about a lot. I also like the idea that we are all just one consciousness experiencing itself from within, or just a bunch of thoughts trying to sort themselves out in some sort of giant cosmic brain. I dunno hahah, these ideas can go pretty far and get pretty crazy. It’s just so much fun to think about. I miss Timothy Leary, Terence McKenna and their crazy psychedelic-fueled ideas.
----PART 2----
Exactly.
Oh it is very rare that you will get to truly talk to someone. I think you’re always interacting with a translation layer that sits between an interface and the actual mind.
I do believe there is a higher mind and that we all have it but that it can be buried and suffocated. It’s very difficult to stay open-minded these days as we are constantly bombarded with crap coming from all directions. I can’t blame anyone for closing that door after a while. I also think that you should never really be interacting with the same person twice. Healthy people grow and change constantly.
I know exactly what you mean. It is extremely difficult to hold on to. It takes a conscious effort to do so but it is absolutely worthwhile. To me it offloads a ton of weight from my shoulders.
This is part 1, then space-time wonkiness in part 2:-).
She is absolutely the BEst biTCH!:-) (I really hope you take that as I meant it, in that I mean that you are awesome:-P)
Ngl, I think Darwin’s Dangerous Idea took me a year to read through. Except that’s got to be a lie - it surely took more:-P. And I never did finish the other one… - nor iirc did the person who
unloadedgave it to me:-( Anyway I am glad that I read the former one at least, and have at least heard about the latter, b/c when I was young I was taught “young earth creationism” (as pretty much everyone in America is, despite how most people outside of the USA iirc pretty much never are), and that (first one) was perhaps the chief resource that helped me logic+reason my way out of that - not alone, but it helped. So it had personal significance to me to be worth that investment of time. I don’t know if either of those books would have that kind of punch in your case, but I did want to share so that you could make that determination on your own, knowing that they exist:-).Your example of Religion is perfect: real or not, it has enormous benefits, as too does the placebo effect. Jesus Himself used it, even as He commanded to redirect it - e.g. towards taking care of widows and orphans, which implies everything up to and short of that as well, e.g. paying workers their wages. That said, it can also become horribly corrupt, as can anything that People touch - e.g. Science+Technology can lead to nuclear war, genocidal tools, even experimentation upon being beings; Education can be twisted to become “re-education” in a totalitarian regime (see e.g. Uighurs); Math can… well I am sure it can somehow be used poorly as well, maybe by making numbers go brrr i.e. chasing after “efficiency” i.e. profits at the expense of the human beings involved:-(.
But if it can be used poorly, then surely it could be used well too, like you mentioned, to turn someone’s life around by offering them a REASON to exist. We all need that. Fome some, atheism or agnosticism is enough, but not everyone - e.g. not me personally. That said, it can also be super great to break away from a poorly-used, poorly-run one, like an overbearing one that actively hurts people. Especially here - but really almost anywhere except the hardest of the hard sciences, like it happens in politics - there is a huge gulf between things like the real, actual, full Truth (which for religion nobody knows - e.g. the Christian Bible even explicitly says that it is impossible to know, like “now we see dimly, in part, as if a reflection from a dirty mirror…”), and then what we think is true, and then also distinct from both of those how people chasing after power use as their method to control others. e.g. when I am at my job, it is not Religion that is used to control me - all mention of personal beliefs is highly taboo - so there it is rather Authoritarianism that accomplishes that purpose for them. Relion is one tool of control over the masses, but it is not the only one, and it is not inherently either good or evil. (Arguably it is good when it says to e.g. “hold fast to what is true”, but that can be bad when what it thought to be true is incorrect, and the people are willing to e.g. behead someone over a disagreement)
Moreover, even full “Logic”, in the hands of a child - i.e. virtually everyone, especially those among us that choose to act that way, as in child-ish behaviors observed in adults - becomes mere “justification”, to serve their ends, rather than being an end unto itself. This is why I place a lot of value on “stories” to help us see that - Isaac Asimov, Pinocchio, Star Trek TOS’s Spock’s emotional quest to gain parental & societal validation through (ironically) expunging his emotions by achieving Kolinahr (his motivations for that are explained much deeper in the book than the movie), and the converse of that in TNG Data’s perfectly-logical quest to become more “human” by discarding logic when appropriate, e.g. to appreciate and be able to tell a joke.:-D So… even logic itself, becomes a mere tool to be used for some aim, in the hands of our monkey selves. Whether it “should” be this way or not is irrelevant, as it simply is.
So anyway, philosophy is so extremely central to these foundational aspects of our lives, and many can find their meaning in Religion, and in Logic, and I like that:-). It deepens us, which is good, but if used improperly, then just like a surgeon’s scalpal or again like any tool at all, it can harm us just as if not all the more readily, by virtue of touching our lives in such a vulnerable spot.
Speaking of, if I can make a suggestion: PLEASE only think about these matters if and when they are fun for you. I want to enjoy your company, not add to your burdens:-), like if any of this would stress you out.:-D
And further along those lines, I hope that you take heart in that all of our relationships with our mothers are this way, it seems to me. From when you were the tiniest little baby all the way forward until now - e.g. you would kick and scream and spit up onto her, not even b/c it was “her”, but then later especially, yeah, b/c it was specifically her. I am no child psychologist, but that is the “normal” state of affairs it seems. For all monkeys even. At the same time, I am glad that you grew out of it. Also fwiw, that seems unlikely to be the sole reason that anyone would “believe” something - surely it must have been a big one, but also if she grew up in it that would be another point towards it, the “sunk cost fallacy” you know, and so on. But everyone is different - e.g. for me I don’t even necessarily “want” to believe (or if I do then I am deceiving myself - which is also a distinct possibility!), but I have to chase down wherever my investigations lead me, and if that causes me to ditch it one day then I will. On the other hand, the latter viewpoint of life is rather unusual, so I cannot project that onto everyone, and yeah maybe she actually was holding onto that thought for her own sake, plus whatever other background reasons, in which case I am glad that she had it - false or no. We do need our security blankets - I used to think the more solid they are the better, but the more I see how society is crumbling around us (and the corresponding suicide rates), the more I question my belief in that. To be clear, I still believe that for ME, and I would hope that others would STRIVE for the same, but I must accept that the vast majority of people will not do so.
I am not really a “teacher” at all I think - it was kind of a career path that people just “expect” for others to follow, but my problem is that I only care about helping people who WANT to be helped, so I think I am more of a “helper” at heart. So now I am a software engineer where I get to do that. I have lost some autonomy, but that could be good as well. I never had any ability to truly help people who REFUSE to be helped, and it would have killed me to keep trying and fail. In that sense, NOBODY who has that kind of “teacher” mindset should have a job where they have to actually TEACH in today’s current capitalist societal framework. It self-selects otherwise.
YAAAASSSS QUEEN! Except… hrm, it will keep coming up, every few years and also rearing its ugly head. It is something that we cannot ignore, except for the sake of our mental health, we have to, even though we couldn’t if we tried. Doesn’t that just about sum it up!?!?
I also “feel like” I know what you mean there about predestination or whatever we are calling it - “fate”. It is one of the most dangerous mindsets b/c it robs people of their agency - but we really do seem to also have that!?!? (Maybe?) So it’s like there’s a Truth there somewhere, but darned if I know what it is, and whether True or not, how does it even help me either way? This is why I like CS Lewis: he also talked like that, having lived it first. Like, if we had not believed that first, and then late in life learned it, that might have been more helpful for us. Instead, we (all three of us) stumbled upon it earlier, and now do not know how it fits in with the rest of the framework. I liken it to a mage/sorcerer type who learned some kind of arcane branch of magic, so while their buddies are going around doing all the cool, useful stuff like fireball, we basically got nothing to show for it, except that we happen to know (what might be, MAYBE) a deeper Truth. It could end up being the most powerful magic of all, but what good does that do for us, practically speaking, on a daily basis?!
If you were asking more about the Russia connection, Fox News is what has damaged America, and Russia funded/started Fox News. There is a documentary about it on Netflix, which I haven’t watched, just piecing that together from other sources. But I am guessing that you rather meant the other thing:-).
But I will have to put the time/space thing in a separate part again due to space limitations.:-D
Bahah no worries, literally everybody calls me that. Ok I lied, my parents don’t, but everybody else does!
Yeah you may be right about that. These days however I am working towards being friends with my mother instead of just being her child and that has been kind of a healing experience.
She really hasn’t grown up in a religious family but still, everybody else around was. People were living and breathing in religion. My grandfather hated organized religion though. He stopped going to church very early in his life and never made his children attend which is kind of crazy for someone who grew up in the early 1900s. He saw religious people as sinners looking to be forgiven on Sunday just to start a whole new week of sinning. Dude was an absolute bad ass but he suffered from chronic depression his whole life. I really wish I had the chance to discuss with him more.
Aw, yeah, I understand what you mean. Jobs tend to suck the life and soul out of everything though. You can still be a teacher and not be in the teaching profession but the helper label still has a nice ring to it! I feel the same way though. I have a hard time throwing my energy at someone who can’t be bothered to bounce that energy back at me. It is so exhausting.
Oh I know, but there is a point of diminishing return for time and energy spent on things like that and it comes on real quick. Just gotta realize when that happens and stop.
Hahah I like that comparison. We will probably never know in our lifetimes either, and that’s ok. I have nothing impressive like fireballs to show but I know that people see something in me that I can’t put my finger on. It’s gonna sound like a weird brag but people fucking love me and I’ve never been able to figure out why. All my life I’ve never been able to go to any kind of gathering without having people just flock around me. I’ve always just kinda wanted to be left alone so at gatherings I would try to find a nice quiet corner and have maybe a couple close friends with me, but I would always end up being swarmed and overwhelmed. Maybe that’s my power, people magnet. I have no clue how I would use such a power but I feel I’m getting closer to figuring it out.
EDIT: I will be back for part two at a later time! I’m currently in the process of buying a house and becoming something that I hate, a landlady 🤢. I’m currently having a wild internal battle about this but no matter which way I look at it, I have to do it. Gonna get back to that for a bit but I will be back.
We all have our traumas. For instance my grandfather had a similar story - he would not entertain the notion of us having any relion besides Catholicism, though he himself had not attended church in decades. He saw too much how the sausage was made, and could not stomache it, though he still believed, ostensibly, except he did not, but again would not allow us to go our own way without comment. I realize that came from his pain, though have too much of my own to really be able to fully set foot into his shoes there. I realized from all that - and later from reading the irl backstory of CS Lewis, who walked away from his puritanical upbringing to become atheist - that a lot of people have a made-up “god”, and that quite frankly Jesus Himself not only “would be” but WAS fucking PISSED at that aspect of life. We all should be more atheistic - yes, this from the very words of Christ Himself!!! (hehe, my rather… “liberal” interpretation of them anyway:-P, e.g. “be ye either hot or cold, not just making up whatever the fuck you want and call it a day”)
I feel like there is a Truth to the universe - this is what makes e.g. planes fly in (or in Boeing’s case fall out of) the sky - and while we do not have to choose to live in Reality, preferring our fantasy dreamland adventures, it really is (probably) better to do so. So the real question is whether God exists or not, not whether we want him to. Ofc that proves a bit hard to answer, or to prove even if someone knew for certain. Like in The Matrix movie, if Neo himself introduced himself to you and you saw him fly, but did not record it on camera (or even if you did), how could you convey that? Similarly, how can smart people convey the complexities of mathematics, of physics, of philosophy, to people who literally cannot - as in do not have the capacity to uptake - understand even a fraction of wha t you speak of? How can people who KNOW convey that both the Left and the Right side of politics are both WRONG, having been bought out by corporate special interests (but that even so, one side is most definitely even more so in that regard lately…)? Ofc we cannot, and really, except the “hard sciences” one, how can we even be fully sure of what we DO happen to know? (and even there, physics is constantly over-turning old ideas - like the latest thought that there is no need for all that “dark matter” that the media has been throwing about for decades now, just poof, it’s all gone now!? ofc most things are merely supplanted by a higher-resolution version, like Newtonian is not gone just relegated to a subset of Einsteinian mathematical formulations of our understanding of the universe)
Another thing I use the Bible for btw is as a repository of the “wisdom of the ages”, as in even though I believe in a God, putting that aside and conjecturing at worst as if that were a false statement even, there is still some merit in its depictions of things. And I definitely looked through its verses regarding teaching… which convey that you just CAN’T force knowledge onto people, not b/c of stupidity but rather b/c of obstinancy. “You can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make it drink.” I still would have offered them the benefits of my knowledge & experience regardless, except it was heartbroken to think that they were being saddled with generational levels of debt, for a degree that they probably would not even use, b/c they lacked the emotional maturity level to handle life beyond the (post-No Child Left Behind era) high school level.
Regrets: I actually have very few of those in my life, b/c I realize that the past me did not know what the current me does, so how could I have done any differently, and furthermore why bother thinking along the lines as if I somehow could? That said, like CS Lewis (this being the main reason why I like him, b/c I so very much “get” his struggles), I often arrive at the correct conclusion from the most bass-ackwards route, which highly ironically may thereby end up making it potentially the wrong thing, for me in my circumstances. So am I “ahead”, or am I “behind”? Yes! I have a feeling that you, having experienced more than one major “transition” in your own life, may understand exactly what I mean there!:-P (others may be born there already, while you had to struggle to get there, and vice versa) But no matter how painful, those struggles are also what define us and give us character so… tbh I probably would have skipped them, but I am also grateful, in a tiny way, that I am who I am now, and can appreciate so much that I otherwise would not have been able to - if that makes any sense whatsoever?
I would guess that people love you b/c you seem to have genuine empathy + depth both. That seems… rare these days. It should NOT be, and you would not think it, but given how often people take advantage, it does seem to be like a beautiful flower that gets mowed over quickly as if it were some weed that people feel the need to stamp out quickly:-(. Especially on the interwebz. If you want, you can use that power to make people feel better - as you already do, but I mean consciously! - but ofc I hope you also hold it in check, so that you manage to meet your own needs as well (which are ofc interconnected to helping others, so it truly is a balance there, not just all one or all the other way). I feel like it is good to be Masters of ourselves rather than the other way around. Which ironically… I accomplish by giving in to my desires? But like, making sure that I acknowledge ALL of those, not hyper-fixate on just one at any given moment.
Bring on the part 2 then! When you are ready. I know what you mean about ownership - I have nothing now but one day if I ever could, the thought of needing to do that worries me. As it probably should:-). 💫
Funny, I was thinking about something similar last night. I’m not a very mathematically inclined person but for some reason last night I was thinking about it and how people who are “mathematically inclined” must see the world in a completely different way than I do. Kind of like how your average gamer and a game programmer might see a video game world differently. You can try to explain to the gamer who knows nothing of the complexities behind game programming and how it is really just all numbers, but they might not be able to see the numbers that make up that beautiful world you’re playing in. This line of thinking can be applied to so many things. I sometimes feel like we may all be on the same planet but we all live in a completely different world.
Yes, that is how I see it too. I don’t know if I had mentioned it in one of my previous replies, since I don’t even remember when that was, but I actually found my grandmothers old bible a couple days ago and decided to start reading it. I read the Satanic bible so I figured I might as well give God’s book a chance! I think it can definitely be a useful tool in that regard because things really haven’t changed all that much. Humans are still the same.
I see it the same way you do. Were it possible, I might go back in time and tell my younger self to do some things differently, but I would effectively be killing my current self and I love this bitch. It wasn’t always the case but now I think I’m actually kinda cool, I can see value in myself and I wouldn’t want to be someone else. All roads lead to home, some are just longer than others but in the grand scheme of things I don’t believe there is such a thing as wasted time.
Yeah, that is one thing that had made me grow a bit cold in the past, as a coping mechanism. Fortunately over the years I have learned to deal with these things a lot better. I can’t avoid abusers but I can recognize them and limit their impact on me. When I say abusers I don’t necessarily mean bad people either, although there have been some. Some people just don’t realize just how much of their pain I soak up when they dump their trauma on me and some would basically only use me for that but I let it happen. I think it is just as much my fault as it is theirs, I simply overestimated what I could handle. I might’ve also been able to handle much more when I was younger but then as I grew older that shit started weighing really heavily on me.
That is something I have only recently realized I had to do, for the sake of all my loved ones I need to prioritize myself.
You may not be a fan of Kendrick Lamar but his song “Mirror” off his latest album (Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers) resonated with me SO strongly. I get the most intense “frissons” whenever I listen to it. The entire album is an absolute masterpiece, as is everything he does in my opinion. It all builds up to “Mirror”, it might not be as impactful if you haven’t listened to the whole album but it still is.
Absolutely, you need to do what you need to do to build a strong foundation for yourself. Only when you have that can you support others.
Some people can think in 7 dimensions at once, or so they say. For those of us who struggle to even contemplate a hypercube, we may not even begin to realize how impressive that must be. Then again, that is only one form of IQ, and EQ is still entirely separate. Still, how could an eagle even begin to describe to a turtle what life is like? Not that an eagle is “better” and a turtle “worse”, but despite coinhabiting the same “world” as in physical space, they do experience that world according to SUCH different criteria that they essentially live in separate realities, like different dimensions of that “world”.
As you said. Similarly in the USA, a white person can call out to a police officer and have some expectation of receiving immediate help, whereas a black person might get the literal opposite of help if they tried the same action. Rich or beautiful people likewise receive differential treatment - the same location, the same experiences, but received against a backdrop of a different lifestyle. Getting fired, or divorced, may just be laughed off by those who would be “set free” by such, vs. someone for whom that is their last thread. It is “the same”… yet so very, Very, VERY different! The tortise and the eagle, or the hare.
The irony there is that mathematics is pretty much the one universal constant. English, or French, or other languages may vary in their interpretation, and even Logic itself becomes subsumed by mere Justification in human hands. Even programming languages differ - identical syntax may be interpreted differently by C, C++, Java, etc. - though it does come fairly close when you specify all of the code, the language, and the receiving device, which together deterministically implements the mathematical instructions via the flow of electrons in the physical world. Math made real - pattern becomes substance (or something else even cooler-sounding, I dunno:-P).
Speaking of I have not read a Satanic one - surely there must be more than one type? - but I would give it a chance if I ever came across it. There’s a lot to like there. Also a lot I do not like, but that is the same with literally everything. Not quite the same thing, but on a related note: most pagan religions “lost” the war against Christianity, which I feel like gives the latter some credence. Although… ofc it is not that Christianity “won”, so much as that they “lost” - a HUGE distinction. Perhaps Christianity will lose someday as well… or maybe Jesus is a space/reality alien and when the energy beings come to enslave the human race, those of us who follow it will have been more properly prepared to serve the new overlords? (after all, if Might makes Right, especially for a being - like the owner of The Matrix - who literally can MAKE a Universe, then they do get to call the shots, whether we like it or not) Yeah, that’s pretty out there, so I will bring us back to: who knows, really? Nobody, at least not perfectly, though we try to do the best we can, as far as we know at the time.
I do not believe in wasted time either… although just try telling that to a boss! Those with more authoritarian mindsets are not capable of accepting this aspect of the Universe, and I concede too that there must be a Balance. So wtf does that even mean - that it both is a waste of time, yet that waste was itself not a waste!? Yes. You get me. It is a contradiction, and within that paradox lies such beauty as to take our breaths away. Yin and Yang - not one or the other, but fucking both, always and never not that.
You also have a beautiful perspective on abusers: sometimes they do not mean it, sometimes they do but are not “evil”, sometimes they are but… so what? We still gotta roll how we want to, not just always react to however others want, or even not want, us to. We chase after our goals, and they do whatever little thing they want, and we need not even break our stride as we press onwards. This point was REALLY driven home for me HARD when Trump won the 2016 election. Conservatives just did not give two fucks about “him”, but they liked what he could do for them… it was quite strategic. Raw. Naked. Bleeding. Evil incarnate… and therefore beautiful for all of that? Like that movie Haunting of Hill House: a darkness that shines as bright as the stars themselves - and all the more deadly as a result of that. Jon Stewart tried to warn us, he foresaw that and said how “liberal media aims to be correct, but conservative media aims to be effective”. This is why I have lost faith in democracy: it depends on presuppositions, specifically that the voting citizenry are aiming to vote correctly, and that errors are distributed randomly; however it is vulnerable to an outside attack that cause all the errors to bend in a single direction: towards the will of the evil ones (whoever they may be - Putin, Bezos, Musk, and others who prefer to hide deeper in the shadows). Oh well. Like everything else: I will enjoy it while I can.
But anyway, you were speaking of smaller-scale abuses, like a turtle crying over something to another turtle, never realizing that e.g. taking a long time to speak could be agonizing to an eagle (or the analogy works far better in reverse:-D). Many people do not realize it. Many others do realize it but do not care:-(. Some even realize it, care, and enjoy it:-|!? But if you get overwhelmed, you cannot help anyone else, least of all yourself, so yeah, guard your heart, most definitely. Literall nobody else can do it for you (well, they can help though:-).
I want to share with you a phrase that I have always hated: “If you see yourself in others, whom can you harm?” Whoever invented that must have had two loving parents, and can just fuck right off as far as I am concerned for rubbing that in the faces of those of us who did not. Setting that aside, part-way, even if you gave zero thought to your own welfare and cared exclusively for others, you STILL need to take care of yourself, or you will not be able to do that! (for very long) YOU ARE A PEOPLE TOO!!! I really like how the Bible portrays that: “the measuring procedure that you use to levy judgement upon others is the identical process by which you will use to judge yourself”. People either suck, in which case you do, or they are worthwhile, in which case… say it with me… you are worthwhile too:-P. I have fought against this every hour of every day of my entire life, but it is True nonetheless. I HATE that thought… but I can’t fight physics, or in this case the more relevant part is that it is just how human psychology works. I do not know much, but this is one that I do feel certain about, and I hope sharing these thoughts help you too (and by extension, perhaps me as well?:-P).
I am glad that you are going through such a time of change, to be able to get frissons!:-) I have been closing off so much lately that it will take some time to open up again:-(. But that too… is not a waste of time (except it is, but even so - it is what must be:-). I almost wonder why he says “I’m sorry”, b/c it is the Right thing to do, though I get that he does feel guilt for it too, but still there is that nagging thought: is that a slight admission of doubt, that he is not entirely certain that it is the correct path? And like, he could have said “I need to choose Me”, but instead he chose the other wording… so I wonder, what does that mean? I am probably over-thinking it, and quite frankly the intricacies hardly matter, b/c the main thing is what it means to you. I am SOOO glad that it gives you peace - b/c yes gurl you NEED to get that!:-)
About me saying that I accomplish Mastery of my Mind, I wanted to be sure that I conveyed that I feel like I cannot win when it becomes a “struggle” - even at best if one side or the other were to totally conquer the opponent, then I overall would lose. So by “giving in to my desires”, I mean not fighting it, nor letting it win either, but striving to achieve that Yin/Yang balance of winning when and where most needs to happen at each given moment, the trick being to find what that is. Some things I have practiced enough to have a really good idea of precisely where that line is, while other things I severely struggle on a daily basis to even identify the factors involved. As I suspect we all do, at least those of us who allow ourselves to remain open to adventure rather than falling prey to stagnation.
Hehe, this music is good for other reasons too:-D.
Omg I have a couple minutes of free time today! I don’t remember where I was at before life came at me 😅
Bahah I have definitely thought about that as well. Life is so crazy, I wouldn’t even be that surprised if that was the actual truth. It’s not as “out there” to me because I’m also out there but yes, it is out there. We do not know, we are not ready to know, we may not even want to know. All that I know is that the questions are wonderful and it’s the only thing in life that never gets boring.
Amen! It’s sometimes hard to deal with this reality but that’s just how it has to be.
Yup. To be completely honest, I hate to say it but I was kind of one of those people in 2015. I was not a conservative, I’ve never been a conservative but I was miserable at the time, which I feel is his core demographic. Obviously I’m not even American so I couldn’t and wouldn’t have ended up voting for him but there was a time at the beginning where I participated in the Pro-Trump meme culture. I told myself, and I’m really sorry about that (oof I have a hard time typing it out because it’s so fucking stupid and shameful.), I told myself that Trump could be a “good candidate” because he was so bad he could bring down the “American empire” and then maybe “things could change”. Not thinking about what could end up replacing it, not even taking into consideration all the lives that could be affected or even ruined. I wasn’t evil but I was lost. I feel actual guilt about the way things turned out, like I actually had a part in it and my beliefs tell me that I did. Now I am very careful what I wish for.
I feel that. It is vulnerable from outside attacks, and also from the inside. I don’t know of a system that has no vulnerabilities though. As long as there are people involved, there are going to be vulnerabilities.
Yup! Life is much better with that mentality. It’s cliché but it didn’t get to become cliché for no reason. Enjoy things as they are and embrace the changes when they inevitably come. I’m not saying we should just accept everything that happens but we need to find enthusiasm and a “raison d’être” in the new paths we are thrown into.
Aw, I’ve never heard that phrase before. I can see the spirit in which it is intended but I can also see your point. It must be terrible to have less than great parents. Fortunately (and also unfortunately), I have been very lucky in that department so I can’t even begin to truly understand how that must’ve been and I have tried.
It reminds me of something a friend told me a bit over 10 years ago that never left me. He basically said that whenever you dislike a person for the way they are, you’re probably seeing reflections of yourself that you try to hide. I felt it was true then and the older I get the more I find it to be true. I’ve also noticed that a lot of the people that I’ve become very close friends with have been people I kinda disliked on first impressions. I think that said a lot about myself as well.
Yeah I know how that feels. It’ll get better though and it is definitely not a waste of time.
The way I interpret it is just that he feels sorry for letting people down and not living up the the expectations people had of him, sorry for not actually being a saviour, even though he never said he was and it was something that was just dumped on him.
I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around that paragraph. What is it that you mean by a struggle in this context?
YES - THIS IS IT!!! Like, whether we have free will or not, I do not know,(but as we mentioned, it doesn’t even matter b/c either way we need to act as if we do) but whether we SHOULD have free will is something that we could answer… if we knew for certain that there was an external entity. Star Trek is famous for exploring this. Like even if the actual Zeus did exist (they never met him iirc but Kirk did run into Apollo/Mercury at some point…), what “claim” would he have over humanity? Same with Arthur C. Clarke’s (2001 A Space Odyssey) saga: just b/c they gave us our start (into sentience, or even seeding DNA & thus life itself?) doesn’t necessarily mean that they should have agency over us…
Whereas on the other hand, whatever OS I am running on my computer (Mac OSX for me, though I hear that some people on Lemmy prefer Arch btw:-D) very much should obey my commands. e.g. when I tell it to reboot or to shut down a misbehaving program, I want it to do it NOW (or at least… soon, even if it needs a few moments to wrap things up, that’s arguably far better b/c then it can do so safely). That, to me, seems to go beyond “might makes right”, b/c we literally put in love, care, attention, and design into making that OS. The gulf b/t human sentience vs. like a worm or even a bacteria is far lesser than the gulf b/t us vs. the programs that we write, in terms of autonomy. We own it b/c we MADE it. (I am ignoring future AIs where we set up the system but then it kinda makes itself - a fascinating thought that very likely could qualify for an exemption, so here I am just bypassing that line of thinking entirely)
Anyway, I love thinking such thoughts:-D. I have no idea if doing so offers practical benefits (I kinda do not care!:-P), but it very well might. e.g. just how much agency / oversight did Elon Musk offer to building his Tesla cars? With all the crashes & potentially actually fatal consequences, it seems that even he did not put in the effort to truly know what those cars are all about. Thus if some hacker were to do so, would they “take ownership”, and be able to bypass certain features & controls, in a manner that even Musk himself (& most of his engineers) has no idea exists - and in so doing, would they have that “right”, or is that just another example of “might makes right”, where they can & therefore they do? (which is a power that they could wield for good - e.g. go ahead and pay the subscription service, in order to help keep the company afloat, and yet still patch security vulnerabilities that the company itself never bothers to implement - so such a thought would not have to be solely due to piracy & stealing considerations)
According to such thinking then, if the Illuminati control the world, then can Anonymous help fix it, like Robin Hood? Except that Power Corrupts, and Absolutely Power… well the latter actually often turns around and converts to good, given enough time passing and the proclivities of the person, but even 99.99% Power corrupts nearly Absolutely, so it might end up being the other way around - perhaps they will merely join or subvert the Illuminati, or even become co-opted by them unknowingly? Trump presented himself as a style of “Robin Hood”-esque “savior” type, saying how he was going to “drain the swamp” and fix all the problems, but he did not work out so well. And while that attempt was blatantly obvious to anyone who has eyes, who is to say that the next attempt will be so readily detectable?
You do not need to apologize: Trump had a lot of us fooled, and I don’t think your underlying idea - motivated by compassion - is wrong at all. I happened to not be fooled, at least in that same sense, but only b/c of my background having been similarly fooled by earlier events (so without those, I easily could have been), and even now I agree that he did a lot of good: by exposing the vulnerabilities inherent in our system, he may have done a lot better than Hilary Clinton would have to cause them to be fixed? She would have papered over the whole situation - her whole message was just “the status quo is absolutely fine” - but it is FUCKING NOT FINE!!!?!!! So I understand why people voted against her, even if that meant voting for him. Even now, I think her particular brand of insensitivity to people’s needs is far more toxic & deadly than whatever Trump may have wrought for us - even if that leads to the death of America, it seems preferable to me to at least be honest about that death, rather than to keep claiming the “this is fine” meme (as in, “THIS IS FINE - OR ELSE!! Do not say that you are not fine, or you will be imprisoned!”). Unfortunately, Democrats seemed to have learned very little from the whole thing.:-(
Part of what I mean in that I am losing hope for democracy, is that I am wondering if I should be gaining hope in whatever may replace it? If this truly is a non-viable solution to begin with, then whatever we end up with later could potentially be better? Like, instead of a nation full of suicidal people who cannot afford housing and hate their jobs, what if we accepted that we are mere peasants and at least came to peaceful coexistence with that thought? I dunno, maybe I sound like a subversive there, but it is a thought that I cannot shake from my head. Is being a slave more “honest” than being a “free” employee, who nonetheless depends on their job for food/housing/medical care/existence? I guess you could say that I am questioning EVERYTHING - even just what our “freedom” may offer us? Unlike the earlier discussion points we mentioned, I despite these thoughts… but if they are coming at us regardless… then I at least want to struggle to open my eyes, regardless of whatever I might see:-(. In so doing, I am prepared to leave my religion, or double down harder on it, or shift it over to something else, or wherever the facts (as best as I can see them anyway) may take me. And that’s good imho - I feel proud about that aspect of myself:-).
It is a common bumper sticker on vehicles that I saw a few years back, often alongside the words “Coexist”. The latter phrase is fantastic, but the phrase I mentioned really rubs me the wrong way. I believe it is Buddhist? Anyway, as you picked up on, my reaction was not how it was meant to be interpreted:-D - and I get that, and don’t even hold it against the statement itself, except… I still have my preferences about the whole affair, and I happen to hate it:-P, and I am okay with having that emotion about it. Life is a journey, not a destination, and all that.
Speaking of life being a journey, it seems to me that it was not meant for us to be comfortable 100% of the time, nor perhaps safe either. If we were hyper-diligent and did everything correctly, every time, would that be “good” - is that then our “goal”? Certainly the opposite cannot be true, b/c then we’d be dead, but is the goal then the opposite, or is that a fallacy of False Dilemma? Moreover, is there just one path through life, that a “perfect” person would have taken, let’s say if they were in my situation, or are there many ways, and our flaws are what make us beautiful, in part? This is one area where religion has helped inform my thinking: the word “perfection” should (perhaps) rather not mean “lacking any flaw” so much as “being complete, lacking nothing (major)”. Therefore I do not strive to eliminate my flaws as if this is some kind of war and my goal is to murderize my opponent, but rather I accept them, embrace them even, and thereby find my peace. And then I get up off my butt and do something about them, one at a time, and it never sticks, but still I keep moving forward - and you know what? That is enough for me. Perhaps Nirvana, for us, is not absence of pain - or in other words, even if it was, we are human beings and not meant to exist in such a state? Thus, I do not want Discipline to always win, nor Comfort to always win, but rather both, each as seems best in the current moment. Maybe that’s stupid of me, but it’s a thought.
Anyway, the context was that people love you, b/c you show care & attention to them - but I hope you also fail to do that sometimes as well too, so that you can take care of yourself as well? Yes, you read that correctly: I wish failure upon you (“muwha-ha, a pox upon thee!!”, ahem no wait, not like that!:-P), when/where/as appropriate, if that helps you to ultimately succeed. e.g. if you have a job interview the next morning, and you are fairly nervous about it, and then someone calls you at 2am needing something - perhaps they got drunk and wanted a ride home from 2 towns over or something - maybe don’t answer? Hopefully they’ll be fine, but you also need to be fine as well? The “right” thing to do in that moment may not always be to continue to give of yourself selflessly, if doing so would cost you a big job (which perhaps the drunk friend may not have even remembered, b/c of their drunkeness, but when sober they may have even agreed with the decision?). Anyway, you (Kendrick Lamar) already said it: “I choose me, I’m sorry” (hopefully not always as in “solely”, but at least sometimes it does need to be done!?).
Btw, good luck with your whole house situation - I am certain that cannot be trivially easy to handle:-).
Are you trying to tell me there are Linux users on Lemmy???
It’s funny, recently I was thinking about electric car jailbreaking. It’s something that I find very interesting as electric cars these days kinda remind me of the early iPhone days. There are definitely people working on such things as we speak which can be a scary thought as this could be used for evil as easily as it could be used for good.
Well, good and evil are human creations. Like we’ve talked about in our previous comments, one can not exist without the other. If there is an “illuminati” there is going to, at least eventually, be an equal opposing force. They will eventually mutually destroy each other, giving way to a new good and evil of our own creation. It is a never ending cycle. At least that is how I see it.
Agreed. There is always good to be found in any situation if you know where to look. We sometimes focus way too much on the bad things themselves to realize that they actually have a role to play in fostering good. Of course nobody wants to be stuck in a system where they’re unhappy but if we’re “happy” all the time we grow complacent. Sometimes we need a good slap in the face to wake up.
Absolutely. I don’t think that means we should be pushing for the death of democracy, but if that’s how you feel then by all means, do it. Your thoughts and feelings about the situation are valid, as are everybody elses. It just remains to see if there are enough people who feel the same way for them to have enough mass to actually move things. Whatever happens happens.
Bahah, absolutely valid. You’ve had experiences that have shaped the way you view things and you are not wrong to have those thoughts.
Ahhhh perfection lol. That is a fun concept. We have a broken definition of perfection because we do not understand that there is nothing that is “without flaw”. “Flaws” are part of a perfect design. I consider myself a perfectionist which is why I never get anything done. How perfect is that? I find it laughable when people praise God, saying he makes no mistakes, but then go on and talk about things being abominations in the eyes of God. Like who the fuck do you think you are to say things like that? Again I’m not much of a “religion” person, but the older I get, the more I realize that life IS actually perfect and if there is actually a God it indeed makes no mistakes. It is mind-blowing to me the system of checks and balances that are built into life itself. Every error eventually corrects itself, which can spell catastrophe for us as a species but in the grand scheme of things it is absolutely beautiful.
Thank you, that is the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me 😭!!
For real though, I am choosing myself now. More than I ever have and it has had a positive impact on everyone around me so far. I’m still available to everyone when they really need me but I’m not scared to say no when it’s not that important and I need to do my own things. If there are still abusers in my midst they will soon make themselves visible but so far so good.
Thank you, it has been absolute hell so far but I have some really good friends helping me with the things I’m not so good at and things are moving. I already have people lined up to rent the upstairs and I’m able to rent to them cheaper than all the other places they had looked at so I’m really happy about that. They seem like really good people too so I’m excited to have them as neighbors.
This is part 2, space timey wimy goodness:
It is fundamentally difficult to grasp, yeah. CS Lewis has an illustration that I will
borrowblatantly steal outright: imagine an outside entity who “sees” the entire trajectory of your life as a line, with all its twists and curves, and then, perhaps on a whim or to make it more beautiful art, decides to “outline” it, like maybe a highlighter or let us rather say one line “above”/to the left and another line “below”/to the right of it. From your perspective, your life appears “hemmed in”, outlined, bordered by those two lines - as if you had no choices in the matter? Yet, that outside agent was the one who drew the lines, but following YOUR choices! That at least is the simplistic version, but it gets even weirder if, while the outside agent is drawing those outlining lines, your own lifeline changes in response. So if the agent starts drawing from the beginning of your life to the end, the final trajectory could change - according to YOUR choices, but in response to THEIR choices, which were themselves based on YOUR choices to begin with. Notice the caveat inherent in that: the “you” may change, from an alternate-reality you without interference from that outside agent, to now the “you” that has done so.Even weirder, what if that “outside agent”, who I mentioned earlier plays you like a chess piece pawn, isn’t “God” or whatever, but YOU! In that case, “you” are the video game or storybook or whatever character, but in this formulation, the external agent is also YOU - moreover it would be the REAL you, whereas the one inside this reality is the lesser version. Ofc, here you must somehow have “forgotten” your true, higher self. And as you brought up, there may not be a 1:1 correlation between each of us down here vs. ourselves up there - all humans could come from just 1 or a few up there, or whatever. Anything is possible there, and we are only limited by our imaginations here. What we know for certain here is that what Religion tells us in this regard is fundamentally flawed and wrong - b/c it is inconsistent e.g. even the people saying so do not practice what they preach - but we do not necessarily know what the True reality is. Now we see only in part. I still like thinking along those lines b/c there are multiple ways to be wrong, and thereby thinking along several different lines could help lead us to Truth - e.g. we might not be “actually” one being (I sincerely doubt it, I see no evidence of it at least), but is there any doubt that we are all “connected” nonetheless?
This one hits me hard - my (autism-spectrumed?) brain constantly forgets this and wants to pick up right where it left off - more a reflection of my own reduced capacity to handle things than anything to do with reality. Speaking of, I had already forgotten that beautiful perspective that you had shared with me about nations changing. Stuff at my job, weird weather, for a few days my exercise schedule has been interrupted and I am just “off”, and just like that it had already slipped through my fingers, again. Maybe, or at least I mean it did at the conscious level. That said, I tend not to try to hold onto anything too strongly, trusting that if it is good that it will find its way back to me in time. That… is nowhere close to true though:-(, and yet I know that I CANNOT hold onto things no matter how I try, so it is demotivating to even try.
And I think there is an evolutionary reason for this: community. No one person - a sage on a mountaintop lets say - can or even should really try to have it all, all the knowledge, all the wisdom, all the perfection. Rather, if we choose to surround ourselves with those who are worthwhile, and distance ourselves from idiots (it seems sad but what else can you do but that? they are hell-bent on their own destruction, and they will absolutely take you down with them!), then we can keep reminding ourselves of these beautiful Truths.
Or, so I say anyway, but then I don’t actually DO it - oopsie, I guess I too am one of those who says one thing yet does the polar opposite, an “idiot” even. As too are we all, but one difference, not sure I can take “credit” for any of it but just saying it as a fact (or so it seems to me): some of us, for whatever reason, desire to know the Truth, and Reason, and Mind, while some of us, again for whatever reason, do not. THAT makes all the difference in the world, b/c I will eventually find what I seek, with effort + time, while they literally never will (and even if they stumbled upon it, they would set it back down again without realizing its significance). So I am grateful that I care, and therefore… almost grateful for the pain that I lived through that made me care. Most people would have no idea whatsoever what that means, but I don’t even need to explain it further than that, b/c you already do.
I hope these thoughts are at least halfway entertaining:-D.
That is so relatable hahah. I think it’s normal and that we all have those moments but I also do not know what normal is. I think that’s where meditation and mindfulness can be really helpful. You sometimes must make a conscious effort to remind yourself of these things because the world we’ve built is just so overwhelming at times, it’s easy to get caught up in it and forget. It’s kind of like weightlifting for the mind/soul hahah. If you stop training you’re gonna lose all them gainz!
Well of course. You are the sum of your experiences and if you are at a point where you are happy with who you are, then you must appreciate the pain you’ve had to endure to get there.
Absolutely! They have managed to take up an hour of what seemed to be the start of a pretty boring day.
Hehe, isn’t it fun that we know nothing? Well, whether it is or not, that’s just the way it is, so we adapt - it’s what we are good at, and all that could ever possibly be done regardless:-P.
People that think (& act) as if their actions do not affect others do so as a result of that CHOICE to act exactly that way - just as those of us who do the opposite do as well. Facts may have little to nothing to do with that choice, except for some very few of us.
As you said also about the choice to be mindful - which is a separate aspect of the choice but that too is also a (meta-?) choice! I feel like I know, somewhat, how to excercise, but I really have no clue how people maintain their mental health. All the more so when it goes beyond “maintenance mode” into actively trying to heal from past wounds. Nor would I trust any resource that said that it knew, unfortunately. e.g., churches say that they know… and who knows, maybe they do? Like people, it would vary according to the individual one.
I do not know if I would say that I am “happy” with myself, but on the other hand I look at others who experience their own pains that are caused from the fruits of their own labors and… yeah, I see that. I often do not want to see that, but I do. I definitely see too much, yet also too little at the same time? As do we all.
Well, I am glad that my problems are amusing to you then - sheesh! (/s, I know you know but to be abundantly clear!:-P)