LastThursday

@Leo Nordin you're going have to be more specific with your requests.

We all are all born by the magic of the universe. But we are reproduced nonetheless. Our bodies are a mix of our parents' bodies. Jesus was in the shape of a man. Moses in the form of a baby.

Materially: reproduction. Spiritually: uncovering the absolute nature of reality. As to why? None of us would be here without reproduction. And without the absolute, there isn't a reason for our existence.

What's the best strategy to win a game? Depends on the game right? What happens when the game is real life? Take sex, attraction and finding a mate or even plain just finding a friend. Is there a best strategy? The answer appears to be no. For every good logical strategy there's an alternative non-intuitive strategy. I use the word strategy because I'm talking about games. Let's talk about chess for example. What are the basic intuitive strategies in chess? Well the most obvious one is to take your opponent's piece if possible. Of course you have to maneouvre yourself so that you can actually take a piece. The second is blocking, where you intentionally block your opponent from being able to maneouvre into position. These two basic strategies can then be piled up on to each other by both sides. A pawn can be pinned where there are a series of threats and blocks leading to a position were either side finds it hard to act. Are there any unintuitive strategies in chess? A slightly less so one, is pawn promotion, where you doggedly push the pawn forward until it hits the last rank and turns into a powerful queen. Another is to reduce your chances of blocking yourself by sacrificing pieces. Maybe another is to play quickly or slowly to confound your opponent's pace. The non-intuitive strategies are endless. And so it is in real life. In reality the number of options available are large in any one moment. To employ a one size fits all strategy is both unimaginative and can be innefective or at least less efficacious. Real life requires imagination, improvisation, lateral thinking and risk taking in addition to convention or tried and tested methods. But just as playing chess is an endless process of mastery, so is finding your next girlfriend or life partner.

@Preety_India you're so sweet, you make this old Brit's heart feel younger. @Leo Nordin I ask myself that question every day and get a different answer each time.

I'm on a roll... A Love Letter To Nobody I can't stop thinking about you. That first time you were an apparition of beauty and sensuality. I was transfixed, but then immediately I blushed at my uncontrolled emotion. I thought I had temporarily gone insane. You saw me as translucently as glass smeared with my embarrassment and childlike fascination. I knew that you knew, it was unbearable, I was blissful and euphoric. When you decided to bring your cherry red lips close and whisper those words I shall never forget, my love for you blossomed and has been unshaken ever since. I do believe I have become lost to you and unable to return or even remember that insignificant former incarnation. When did we become one? That first day we awoke together exposed and at each other's mercy? That second day your laughter took hold of my soul? I don't know. I don't want to know. This love is not something to unknot with fleeting thoughts. I love you.

Is it possible to name God? Surely, that's what I've just done? Slapping a label on something doesn't exactly tell you what that something is. The other problem is that the label must be attached to something that is definable. Here's where we come unstuck. To name God we must define God otherwise we're just playing word games and getting nowhere. What I mean by this is that we can band around "God" as if we knew what is being talked about; but in actuality not having defined what God is, we don't actually know what we're talking about - this is a problem. Ok, let God be defined as everything. Very good, nice and simple and we can state that whatever we choose to focus on, that is God. So then there's the small problem of parts or whole. If God is everything and we concentrate on a small part of that everything, say an apple, is that apple God or not? If not, then if we take two apples, is that God? If we go on taking larger and larger numbers of fruit and throw in cows and sheep and people and and and... is that God? Clearly there's something fishy going on. Ok, let's change our minds, let's say an apple is a part of God. Is that God? No. God is everything (that's the definition), an apple is an apple. Ok let's shift our definition. Let God be composed of parts that when taken altogether go to make up God. Good. God is the set of all parts taken together. So is God one thing or many things? What else is like God? Hmm. How about consciousness? Yet another label, yet another definition. So substitute "consciousness" for "God" in the above and rinse and repeat. Where does this get us? Well if God is everything and consciousness is everything, then surely they must be identical? They are two labels pointing to the same definition. Notice that the problem here is not the labels, but the definition. Everything means everything without exclusion: objects, thoughts, memories, smells and so on. Included in that definition however, is the concept of everything itself (now we're on really shaky ground), this is because all concepts are included in everything. We can indeed have a definition that includes itself (for example a fractal). But it's not at all clear that our direct experience of consciousness includes itself (you know what I'm talking about eh, or do you?). This is were the map is not good enough to describe the territory. The concept of everything is simply not up to the task of describing our supposedly concious experience. Consciousness cannot describe consciousness (!). It is possible to name God. But what we think the word refers to is only a map to an indescribable territory. Words are not powerful enough.

No. It's the nature of reality. Stuff happens when it happens, not before, not after, there is no free will, there is no need to try and control or manipulate anything. As the folks say here often everything is perfect. It's the nature of self-help that you can't know something before you know it, and you can't be aware of what you're not aware of - that's what makes it so difficult and hard to get traction. We are ignorant of the depth of our ignorance, but it's only with hindsight we realise how much we didn't understand. There's only three ways to gain knowledge and self understanding: Someone tells you. You discover it (by accident). You uncover it (by deduction). The last one is weird but think of it like this: what's the area of a triangle with sides 3, 4, 5? It's obvious the triangle has a definite area, but it requires some sort of deduction or method or drug or whatever to realise the answer which is in plain sight.

Self awareness. Which can only be gained by a lot introspection and meditation:

I often think about age, it's said that it's just a number. The problem I have with age is one of emdodiment. I feel like there's kind of double standard that goes on whereby other people are "old", but you yourself feel "young". It's a peculiar effect, because you look in the mirror and lo and behold there is an old(er) guy looking back at you. Don't get me wrong I know that I look young for my age, one of my exes told me as much - she thought I was ten years younger, it's not self bias honestly! But I can't deny my history, that alone tips the scales. I can say, that for myself my mindset is really stuck in the 1980's. It's not that I'm old fashioned per se, I'm very up with how the world functions right now and very much part of it; however, the 80's were my formative years, the years where I became me and when my essential nature took hold. It's like the core part of my operating system was etched into me then. For example most of the music on my iPod is from the 80's, despite having a wide range in musical tastes. I know nearly nothing of the popular music of the last twenty years, it just doesn't gel with me in any way, although one or two songs stand out. Or, if I watch old TV shows from the 80's it feels totally natural, the fashion of the time doesn't seem odd to me. It nearly feels like I went to sleep on 31st December 1989 and just woke up on 7th March 2021. It's not quite that jarring, but you get the picture. So despite living and breathing in 2021, I feel like a time tourist who ended up in a foreign place. I suppose I should be thankful I wasn't born in 1923, the difference between then and 1972 would have been enormous, I wonder how my grandmother felt? I was born in 1972 and she would have been my age then. I'm certainly very different to the teenager I was in the 80's in a lot of ways though. But those differences are mostly natural progression rather than the result of doing solid work. For example, most of my confidence is just the result of having had lots of experience in dealing with people and situations. And, I'm a lot more emotionally stable than I was back then, but that's largely due to circumstances then and having a stable life right now. The largest difference is really one of understanding the world in all it's different aspects and that naturally changes your approach to it. Other differences from teenagehood are that I'm a lot less anxious and a lot less emotionally needy. But I also feel as though I lost some of that spark and energy I used to have, and that high optimism that all my troubles were just temporary and there were golden days ahead. That spark and energy is something I would dearly love to embody again, but work life and social life just simply don't allow me to express that any more, I'm expected to behave like "my age", I've had my time. So is there a better way to compare ages and get a feel for how us older people understand time? Yes, and that is to use a logarithmic measure of age (my nerdiness was born in the 80's). The formula I'll use is 50 x log(age), which really captures how you should think of ages and how to really compare them: Age 5: 35 Age 10: 50 Age 15: 59 Age 20: 65 Age 30: 74 Age 40: 80 Age 50: 85 Age 60: 89 Age 70: 92 Age 80: 95 Age 90: 98 Age 100: 100

Insist on a video call for interviews. Trust me some employers will see this as initiative. If they won't bite, then feed back to them and suggest that they're losing potential candidates by not providing video interviews. Job done. Take back control.

There's only one way to cure it. Work in a call centre. Joking aside, I hate talking on the phone too. In fact I prefer any other type of communication to it. I give talking on the phone a 1 out of 10. Getting philosophical about it, I think I hate it because there are no cues to let you know how to guide the conversation, and how to end it. Also it's very immediate and there's no thinking time. Also the kind of the people that like using phones are talkers (auditorily lead, in NLP speak), and I'm not really a talker, I'm a thinker and more visually lead. Also on a phone call there is generally no record of it, so people make stuff up about what happened on a phone call. Phones: just say no. Just to actually answer the question: there are a ton of other options available nowadays, just avoid calling on the phone - suggest Zoom, email, etc.

True that!

Anger or more specifically agression would be biological and related to testosterone levels - but has been culturally appropriated.

@Haumea2018 I get your point, personally I don't have an opinion on the hypochrisy one way or the other. Other people here might. But I think the stigma arises because there is an expectation, and probably high chance, that a man in his thirties and older is already married. So the thinking goes that he's mostly likely only having an affair with someone so young; because what has she got to offer the man other than her youthful looks and body? I also think the stigma is almost always against the older man and not the younger woman, for the reason I've just given. He's trespassing on the sanctity of marriage. The younger woman is being exploited by the older man, not vice versa. You can argue about single older men, but they're few and far between. Amongst my many friends in their 40s and 50s, there are only two of us single blokes. Even for a single older man, the assumption is still that they're married and just looking for an illicit affair with a 19 year old.

And the other dirty secret is of course, those MUCH older men enjoy the attention. But, being a much older man you would wisely consider your options (and probably your wife and children) before engaging.

@roopepa a lot of us get backed into a corner by our circumstances and society, and we don't feel like we can express our true nature. You already know what your true nature is: You just need to step out of your own way.

Being social is necessary. Social media is not. Email only took hold with the internet around 1994. Myspace and Facebook in the 2000s. Before that the only social media was writing a letter to your overseas pen pal or writing a letter to a TV show or gossiping on the telephone. Yes, there were bulletin boards and email way back in the 1980s, but they were for rich tech nerds - you needed an acoustic coupler, a computer (a novelty) and deep pockets for the phone bill. Saying that, like all other technology once it's mainstream society can't function without it. Try doing anything without cars or email. So social media will be around for a while, but Facebook and the like will be taken over by others in time. The serious problem with Facebook (and others) is that they are advertising agencies in all but name. They're not interested in the people they serve, other than to simply squeeze money out of them by tracking their every transaction and targeting them or selling their data. They're metaphorically selling you crack to get you addicted to their services. That addiction can be a problem for society: for example just look at the ferocious bullying that happens in schools though social media. So there is definitely room for a more imaginative and higher conscious social media platform - one that doesn't hoodwink its clients - one that protects younger users. That's not to say they shouldn't make money, but they should do so transparently.

A lot of the differences are not actually biological or innate, but cultural. Men and women attach themselves to different sub-cultures. One of the main differences being appearance: long hair versus short, makeup versus no makeup, tight clothing versus loose clothing and so on. Some of the gender sub-culture may be influenced by sex characteristics, such as body shape and clothing, or facial hair, but it's less than you think.

The only healthy substitute is a real person (although mileage may vary). I realise the pandemic makes this harder though. But perhaps just plain old masturbation and your imagination is good enough? Maybe if you have fetishes you should improve on those some more? Obviously, only as long as the fetish isn't just watching porn all day.

Weird, but perhaps natural. We don't have control over most of the things we find attractive. We can only control what we do about it.

@Preety_India indeed at 17 she may not be an adult or able to have sexual relations in some countries. Personally, that's a no from me. If they guy had been 19 or 20 himself, then so be it. And here's me thinking I was open minded! I only mention biology because it comes into the equation, it can't be ignored. On the whole younger women are more attractive and fertile and fit, and men instinctively know this, they don't need to be taught it. Conversely, older men are more confident, have higher status, and are more stable, and women instinctively know this too. Age is definitely correlated to fertility in both sexes, and so is attractiveness, that's why wrinkles and grey hair are generally a put off - and also why there's a stigma against large age differences. Also, I guess every potential relationship is different. It sounds like in this case the guy has questionable motivations, maybe he wants power, or at least lacks the maturity to go with older women.

In my opinion there's two opposing views of the situation: a. If they are both consenting adults (in that country) then what right do we have to stop them or judge them? b. If you were 36 and already had a 19 year old daughter, would you really want to date a 19 year old? There's also the systems view of it and biology. There's the idea of peak attractiveness, fertility and fitness - where fitness pertains to fitness to bear and bring up children. It's probably different ages for men and women. My guess for women is that it's likely to be in the twenties and for men possibly in the thirties. Even a man's fertility will drop in his forties, with lower quality sperm producing more birth defects, similarly for women where the chances of miscarriage and complications increase with age.

I'll jump in with the obligatory video offerings:

You're only ever aware of the present moment. Everything else is imagination in the present moment. How many present moments are there?