Leo Gura

I would reframe the way you look at social evolution and development such that you see EVERY event as progression. Even the bad regressive-looking stuff is still just a part of the overarching evolution. Society evolves by going 2 steps forward, 1 step back. The mistake many progressives make is that they foolishly want progress to always just be 5 steps forward. But a homeostatic system just cannot work that way. If you are foolishly expecting 5 steps forward every election cycle, you're setting yourself up for a lifetime of disappointment and frustration. You need the patience of a saint when it comes to people evolving.

Russia and China got a lot more Red & Blue. And also, remember, there is much development room within each stage. For example, it might take 50-100 years for development to go from early Blue to late Blue, or to just enter Orange vs mature Orange. There is also a difference between a country's cutting edge vs it's center of gravity vs it's tail. The cutting edge of Russia or China might be high Orange, but that's still a tiny portion of the overall population. It will need another 50-100 years to trickle down to the masses and solidify within all the social systems. These notions are highly relative. You're the one defining "1st world country" and "democracy". It means whatever you want it to mean in your mind.

"Most men lead lives of quiet desperation." The suffering and misery is there, but it's masked over with addictions, distractions, and rationalizations.

But this is a circular definition which begs the question, since you are defining democracy by using the US as the touchstone, thus taking the touchstone for granted as a stable given.

That's the function of all conflict, not just war. There's not much difference between war vs a fight with your parents vs snow buckling into an avalanche. It's a dissipation of pent up unstable energy. The energy is released to reach a new equilibrium point.

Like wrestling an alligator.

Yes, because their worldview is too closedminded to seriously consider that gender categories are relative constructions of the mind and culture. Admitting that degree of mental construction is very threatening. What next? Science is a construction? Atoms are a construction? God is a construction? Race is a construction? My country is a construction? My history is a construction? My self is a construction?

Arguments have been made that America was not really a democracy until the Civil Rights movement. But "democracy" is a relative notion with many degrees to it. It's not a simple binary. Democracy has many degrees of quality -- which is what matters. The notion of "a true 1st world democracy" is highly relative and constructed. What does that even mean? People will have all sorts of subjective ideas about that question.

Individualism has turned into a mind virus that's swept across America. People have lost touch with the fact that living in a society comes with pretty serious collective responsibilities. Otherwise society disintegrates (as we have been seeing). Every-man-for-himself is not a society. Nobody really wants to live in that kind of world because it's too brutal.

A lot of Western Buddhism is so watered down that it's compatible with scientific materialism and doesn't do any serious deconstruction of that paradigm. That is precisely why it's so popular in the West. It allows the ego-mind to maintain its fundamental grip on reality while cosplaying as a spiritual or woke person. But the truth is you ain't woke unless you realize all of reality is just your dream -- especially stuff like science and even Buddhism. All of Buddhism is your dream. This is the thing Sam Harris fundamentally doesn't get. Mediation and no-self isn't God-realization.

Actually, we've made enormous progress since the 1970s. You just have to see the bigger picture and realize that progress cannot happen at the rate you expect. Changing society is like steering a giant oil tanker. It doesn't turn on a dime. Of course you can. Don't sell yourself short. Your business does not have to be anything as big as Elon Musk's. You can help evolve society in small ways. Actualized.org is a tiny, tiny business by any measure. My work is like pissing in the ocean. Yet here I am doing my work. The reason I am satisfied with it is because I am not at all attached to having society evolve at any particular rate. I don't really care what rate it evolves at. It will evolve at whatever rate it can handle. I am not trying to impose my rate on it. I just enjoy doing my work.

You could make that case. Although I think a lot of the acceptance of LGBTQ today is thanks to Green memes infecting our culture. America was pretty Orange 30 years ago when LGBTQ folks were regularly demonized. "LGBTQ" is a Green meme. I would say that gay rights and gay marriage is a Green achievement. And even most conservatives have conceded on this issue by now, unless they are fundamentalist Blue. Many conservatives in America are okay now with treating gays as normal people. It just looks bad to hate on gays now. It makes you look like a social retard and conservatives like to be conformist.

On the whole I would say they are definitely a bit more consistent. But the human mind is run on self-bias and hypocrisy, so you should still expect plenty of hypocrisy from libs and even progressives. Out-growing hypocrisy is an extremely advanced stage of development which 99% of humans will never reach.

Ego-mind is like a shark, if it stops moving it dies.

I have a video called How To Study. But getting straight As is the wrong objective. Your objective should be to deeply learn and master life. Grades are dumb. No one will give you a grade for mastering life.

They don't know they're oppressed or they don't fixate on it. They just embrace the challenges. This SJW stuff actually makes you ungrateful and constantly annoyed with society. Society is never good enough for an SJW. There's always some injustice to wage war on. If you wanna be happy at some point you just gotta accept the social system for what it is. It's foolish to wish to live in the future. Just accept that you were born in the dark ages of mankind. Cause both are full of bullshit.

It's your job to create it.

Some bullshit humans made up to make themselves feel bad.

What's funny is that many normies can be pretty happy with life. If your ambitions are low it's not hard to be happy. Get a stable job, go to church, have some kids, watch Netflix, play video games, eat junk food, drink beer, watch porn, go to football games, hang out with your dumb likeminded friends, hate-watch your opposing political party. Live unconsciously. Life is pretty good. Ironically, strong religion and strong family are some of the best predictors of happiness.

That's what jerking off is for.

It will probably decline towards the end of our lifetime. So get used to living with this shit.

Blue is about defending dogma. Part of American dogma is capitalism, individualism, libertarianism. Plus, most Americans are not solid Blue, they are more like 50% Blue 50% Orange. People are not consistent. They will compartmentalize and criticize capitalism in bits when it personally serves them to do so. Tucker Carlson does this all the time. He will bash big corporations as part of his "I'm just fighting for the common man" shtick. When in fact his whole career hinges of gross corporate exploits of rubes.

It will decline eventually as it bears hollow fruit. But probably not for at least several decades. We'd have to evolve out of Orange for that to pass.

It's hilarous to me that people whine about Covid restrictions and inconveniences when our grandparents had to put their entires lives on hold to go fight Nazis. Americans have become spoiled children. "Oh no! I have to wear a mask on an airplane. It's just like 1984." Lol Our grandparents would look at all this anti-covid whining as the pathetic yelping of spoiled brats. You can't go to your fave restuarant while people are dying from an unknow virus? OMG, what an outrage, what authoritarianism!

Blue loves to moralize. Blue will even moralize to capitalism at times (where it doesn t personally affect his profits) if it bolsters his moral righteousness and owns some libs. And of course even Ben will have some bits of Green. For example, he will consider gays human beings. Whereas solid Blue in the Middle East would treats gays closer to nonhumans. Green values have so soaked through Western culture that anyone living in the West will have some bits of Green memes infecting their mind.