tsuki

I used to do this, it worked amazing when I wrote the child responses with my non-dominant (left) hand.

Bought myself a new mouse and keyboard. Super excited for them so I decided to write a post, share some of what is going on with me recently . My inner development concerns trauma recently, how it affects my current understanding of the world, how it came about and how to respond to it when I'm triggered. I've been triggered a lot recently, because of my current work situation and how self-reliant I force myself to be, and how many things I see to be out of my control. I am not a native English speaker, and it is customary in my native language to call 'trauma' by its English name in psychological literature. I've been using this word for a long time now, but only recently I understood viscerally that it literally means a wound, damage, which is uraz in Polish. This is a good way of thinking about it. When my arm is broken, I cannot use it, it has to be in a certain position, or else it will hurt. This is very similar to how psychological trauma works, there is a oftentimes repeated event in one's life that is painful, and when something similar happens, a lot of psychological pain comes up, and it is not at all clear that this pain comes from a wound, rather than from the situation at hand. The difference from a regular wound though is how it affects the rational mind, and the whole emotional system. When a traumatizing event has occurred multiple times in the past, the body learns to reflexively recognize similarities to past events, and sometimes enters what I call survival override, even though the situation at hand is not exactly what happened in the past. Survival override is about fixing the situation ASAP, with no consideration for long term effects on one's health, finances, or relationships. Unfortunately, because not all of my intelligence is engaged in fixing the issue, the solutions are superficial at best. It's mostly about not seeing the problem, about covering it up with a blanket and pretending that it doesn't exist. God forbids anyone stands in the way of covering the problem up, though, because then - the steamroll mode is entered with zero consideration for other people's feelings. From the first person POV, the traumatic response shuts off all rational thinking, and emotional consideration, with deep conviction that I am right and this is what I should do. I can often see myself thinking that I should not behave this way and that I am making the situation worse, and yet - I keep behaving the way I do. Only in retrospect, it is clear that I was in a traumatic response and at that point I usually feel ashamed, humiliated and betrayed by my own body. It is difficult to bring this topic up with people that I've hurt and say constructive things because they are usually preoccupied with their own pain that I caused to actually listen to what I feel. What's unhelpful is that I also feel hurt by them, even though I was reacting to my past. So, just like a broken arm that has to be held in a certain position to avoid pain, trauma is about controlling one's environment so that it does not resemble painful memories. Mine regard being emotionally abandoned and being loved in exchange for performance. I've been pushed beyond my comfort by my demanding parents with very little support, and a threat of withholding love when I fail. This threat was implicit in that my parents were only ever enthusiastic about me when I surprised them with my talents, or accomplishments. Other than that, I was mostly treated as an obstacle to peace, like they didn't really want me around. I was supposed to cause no drama, keep my emotions to myself, pretend that I don't want anything and be obedient with respect to the path my parents chose for me. Thankfully, I had my internet corner, where I could be anybody I wanted, as long as it was not taken away from me for "misbehavior". When I look back, this makes me so goddamn angry. They were punishing me by taking away my only escape from them. How insanely insensitive is this? If I ever wanted to devise a cruel way to torment my child, I would have never come up with shit as twisted as this. Emotional abuse is so difficult to spot when you grow up shaped by it. In the past I would try to focus on the fact that they were reacting from their trauma, but frankly, I don't give a shit right now. I was goddamn entitled to their love when I was a child and they failed me miserably. Where does that leave me right now? I don't feel like I belong here, that I am loved for who I am and that the world actually cares for what I want. I feel like I am an obstacle to other people's happiness and that I should not cause trouble with my bullshit. I feel like I will be thrown away like a piece of garbage when I am not useful, and that people will bully me if I don't obey them. So I perform goddamn technological miracles to impress people, I am smart and I'm a wonder-fucking-machine. And it gives me no pleasure because deep down, it is still laced with fucking fear, that if I fail, it's over. I hate it. I just want to have fun in life, I want to explore and learn and play, and do all the amazing stuff that I want to do. I want to build amazing programs, I want to understand what lies at the bottom of things. I don't want to be scared. Please body, just let go. You are amazing, why do you keep clinging to these things that happened so long ago? Nobody is going to throw you away! You can make mistakes and not know things. It's okay to feel lost sometimes. It's okay to feel overwhelmed. It's okay to feel tired and rest, and to say no to things that are just too much. Anyways, trauma is created by repeated exposure to events that teach you, practically, that you cannot stand by your side, that you are not fully human, that your emotions are invalid, and that you have no right to be yourself. They leave you with a underlying sense of threat and anxiety on the level of the nervous system, and your body is constantly on lookout to mobilize. A good example of a traumatizing situation is bullying. Someone punishes with violence for who you are, and uses your will to defend against this punishment, to keep punishing you. This teaches you that you have no right to be yourself, and that any attempt to defend will only make it worse. Or, if you are successful in defending yourself, it teaches you aggression, that you should be hyper-aggressive to deter all threats. What is important is that when you notice someone "weak" (like you were), you are triggered and you have to bully them, because you've internalized that "weakness" is a good excuse to be violent. This turned darker and longer than I expected, but I guess that I wanted to say this. <~ here's an apology for sharing my feelings. Sigh...

I'd say that beliefs are a class of thoughts that are taken to be true, without consideration, and acted upon with conviction. When inspected, it usually turns out that you don't really know something, but you act as if you do. Some beliefs are surface-level, like when you go to the other room for the glasses you left on a table (but you don't really know where you left them). They can also be very deep, about existence itself, where you don't even have the right vocabulary to ask the question about them, and can't even imagine how the world would look like if you didn't assume them. If you directly want to experience a belief, take any intellectual incongruity or conflict within your experience, and start asking questions from your direct experience. For example, we usually think that there are things that we do see, and that there are things we don't see. When I believed this, I used to imagine that my field of view ends with blackness similar to the one I experience when I close my eyes. Now go ahead and see whether your field of view has any end, using your peripheral vision. Is there a line dividing what you see, and what you don't see? Are there really, in your direct experience, things you don't see? You can obviously "move your head", and "notice" the things that are there, but this is not what I am asking. Do this, ponder whether things that are not experienced exist, until you have a clear answer. Until you have no doubts about it and see how your experience changes. This is how you know that you gave up on a belief. Some beliefs turn out to be true, in the sense that you can agree with what you were thinking, but your thinking about the subject is now much more nuanced and deeper. A relationship now exists. It's like when we learn math in grade school. There are kids that learn how to solve specific exercises, and there are kids that actually "get it". They exhibit a kind of creativity and flexibility that other kids don't.

I think that this happens because spirituality is such a high horse to ride, and once people realize some stuff, they just can't stop thinking how special they are. The truth is that if we ever wanted to have an "embodiment" sub-forum, we would basically have to stoop down to other categories and talk about spirituality in relationships, or food, and who wants that? It's much more convenient to keep sitting here, on mount awesome. I can see some people I respect open up and venture off to other places, but it's still too few of them. I always love seeing some neo-advaitan give advice on how to approach a relationship problem. A quickest way to see how much they really know.

The green, relativistic mindset understands that all things, including science are constructs. The problem is when green goes too far in this thinking and puts science on the same level with, let's say, opinions about choice of clothing, or taste in the opposite sex, or even food. Yes, we invented science to serve social needs, and it does precisely that. Serve social needs, by normalizing the way in which we approach problems. Not all approaches to problems are created equal because some of them are effective, and some of them aren't. It's cute to argue that within the scientific paradigm of effectiveness, science is the most effective tool, as long as we don't have hundreds of thousands people killed. This argument is useful if you actually apply it to yourself, not when you point fingers at people (the green game par excellance). The other problem with forums like this is the delusion that we are actually solving anything by discussing it here. Our consensus here has literally ZERO impact. It would be much more productive for everyone to inspect their own life and arrange it according to one's understanding of the world. People would benefit much more if you actually wore a mask next time you went to buy groceries than convince some infidel that your POV is the correct one. It is not possible to convince someone to go up a stage. All growth is directed from within, when a person feels stuck and honestly inspects one's life. If you ever wanted to communicate with someone that is stuck on a lower stage, this is never done by demonizing them. Especially Green should be aware of this, as they have gone through a lot of stages and have the experience of being blue. If you want to be effective in communication across stages, you have to first accept them within yourself, so that you can speak from that stage that you were embodying at some point. Green does not understand this because it does not actually embody its relativistic understanding. It sees that societies are made of groups of influence, and does not see this within themselves, how they are fragmented internally, on the level of the psyche. And finally, to re-iterate, not stating one's views is not the way of tier two. This is some centrist green agenda that tries to avoid hurting people's feelings in the name of some abstract virtue masquerading as equality. People are equal in the face of rules that govern this world, like they die to COVID regardless of their political views, or fall prey to shadow when they repress themselves in the name of cultural values. People suffer equally and their will to live and flourish is equal, regardless of where they come from and should be treated with respect. Equality is not about being right regardless of what one is saying. Everyone has the right to have their own opinions and arrange their inner world to their liking, as long as this does not endanger the people, or the environment around them. Hell, they are even allowed to arrange their interior in a way that makes THEM SUFFER. This is still okay, albeit difficult to witness in people we love. But not all perspectives are created equal and should not be treated as such.

To be more direct, my point is that to study evil, you need to do it through experience, not by watching inmates like monkeys in a zoo. Don't misread it, don't go around killing people. You've done enough already for a lifetime of learning.

You are talking of evil in terms of proverbs and morality, which tells me that you haven't explored this facet of yourself to a great degree.

@jimwell I wonder how well you understand the evil you did yourself and how you view you choice on that matter.

@jimwell And what is it that you think motivates them? I assure you that you are mistaken.

@StarStruck Sorry to hear that. Maybe she isn't right for you if you can't communicate well enough.

@StarStruck Mmaybe she isn't aware of your intellectualization? Have you tried talking with her about it?

What you are saying is basically that she should sleeze her way past your defence mechanisms, against your will? This is not how progress is made in therapy. How can you build trust with someone that is scared? By forcing him open? "Getting past his defence mechanisms"? Nothing in therapy will happen against your will.

@StarStruck What is the significance of this statement? Did it 'solve' your problems with 'social quirks like codependency', 'productivity', and 'self-confidence'?

@StarStruck The premise of therapy is that you are discovering yourself, and the role of the therapist is to facilitate this discovery. A therapist is not supposed to tell you what to do, or give you insight into the mechanics of psychology. She is supposed to facilitate your self-discovery by being open, receptive and supportive. It is a person that is well-versed in her own self-discovery and is willing to sit by while you do this yourself, and learn alongside you. The benefit comes from the difference in experience. Good psychotherapist can interpret your whole-body reactions while you share yourself, and spot lies, inconsistencies, wounds, and other things that are not apparent to you. Some of them are hidden from you because you are conditioned to avoid them, or because you don't have the language to name them, or awareness to notice them. She does this to listening to her own feelings in reaction to what you are saying. Psychotherapist is not supposed to talk about psychoanalytical knowledge with you, discuss Freud, Jung, or philosophy. This is a distraction and a defense mechanism. If this is what you are doing in therapy, then you are avoiding doing the real work.

I know, right? Mathematics and physics are amazing. You would not believe the things that are possible to calculate and use to increase your effectiveness. Crazy stuff. I like to think that mathematics are a very flexible language that has inference rules that give you conclusions based on premises. I have no idea why it is so damn effective though. It always fascinated me. It's like the most stripped down, abstract way of viewing the world, to the point where you can apply it almost anywhere.

Context of existence is non-existence. But non-existence does not exist.

In my opinion, as it currently stands, cryptocurrencies will not replace fiat money. This is because of how they are designed. Imagine if the Internet was such that in order to view actualized.org, you would have to download the whole internet and store it locally on your hdd. This is what cryptocurrencies are currently like. This is clearly unsustainable. What has to happen is we either have to have an unprecedented advance in communications and storage technology, or someone has to come up with a clever way to verify whether blockchain is secure without having the whole copy of it. What I think will happen in the future is that we will, at some point, stop caring about the global blockchain security, and start treating it more locally. We will start to watch people we transact with and verify them, instead of verifying everything that is stored on blockchain. There will probably also exist another breed of blockchain service animals alongside miners/verifiers, which will deal with blockchain security specifically. They will be an analog of blockchain police that will track frauds by downloading larger and larger portions of data. They will be awarded based on their findings. Another thing that will probably change is that most already establish cryptos will transition to proof of stake and this protocol will allow stakeholders to vote on the coin supply algorithm parameters. This is how blockchains will scale their coin supply based on market demand. This is crucial if they were to replace fiat money. Without it, they will only ever be held.

Oooh, Thank you! I really appreciate it! Marry Christmas too! @Preety_India

The pyramid scheme occurs when new participants pay dividends to people who joined earlier, at their own expense. How is it true for Bitcoin? The net worth of the currency increases, which is beneficial to every participant. The relative loss late adopters experience does not benefit the earlier ones. I think it would be beneficial to this conversation if you defined what is speculation in the domain of currency. I don't think that the price of Bitcoin is volatile because people cannot reliably predict its "intrinsic value" because there is no such thing. The BTC price is volatile compared to standard currencies, which are deliberately stabilized by centralized authorities to serve social needs. Bitcoin has no such constraints because it does answer to political institutions. It's like saying that newspapers are better than websites because they the internet has no editors. These are two completely different domains. Apples and oranges. Also, please note that when you say that a currency is worth something, this worth is always expressed in another currency. This does not mean that one currency is better than another currency. It simply means that more people want to own it relative to its supply. Also, when viewing financial systems via the lens of reputation, the reputation concerns the system that provides the money. It's government, or technology, not USD or Bitcoin. To predict the price of USD, you have to understand American politics, not the printing press. When you want to predict Bitcoin price, you have to understand the problems it solves relative to other cryptocurrencies, or how it advances decentralization of finance. And this may tie back to my question about your definition of speculation. At best, speculation is simply using unreliable sources of information, with no understanding of underlying principles. It's making decisions based on hearsay. No system can prevent it because every person should have the opportunity to learn from their own mistakes.

Bitcoin cannot be thought of in similar terms as regular money. That is because its supply cannot be scaled to match the growth of the economy that uses it. There is no incentive to spend it, because there is a limited amount of it, and its value will only grow in the long term. This why most users buy it to hold it, because there is no other incentive. Even if there was incentive to spend, then there is still a massive issue of integration between blockchain and regular money. Bitcoin fees are astronomically high, so it only makes sense to spend a lot of it in a single transaction. If Bitcoin was designed to replace fiat money, it was designed incorrectly. It is, at best, the first approximation of what digital currency should look like. Its killer feature - decentralization is exactly what makes its price unpredictable, and it supply uncontrollable. This is a speculation. What you call "intrinsic value" is identical to "reputation". There is no objective, intrinsic, reason why gold is more valuable than dog shit. The only difference is that we deem it more valuable, we want it. Gold is not even used all that much in industry, compared to, let's say - steel. Even if you compare usefulness of resources, it is extremely sketchy to compare actual resources that are used in production to abstractions of value, such as money. The"intrinsic value" of money is the ability to spend it, to exchange it for other goods. That, in turn, is dependent upon your trust in institutions that back it up. If European Union was in distress, Euro would be worthless - which is, again, why "intrinsic value" is "reputation". When you compare the trustworthiness of cryptocurrencies vs trustworthiness of fiat money, the former is backed up by political institutions, and the latter is backed up by technology. This is a matter of personal preference, but I strongly believe that cryptocurrencies in general will do to finance, what the Internet did to information.

The "start" part is tricky. It is usually easier to tell when you are knee deep into the relationship phase. The signs of a relationship are that you are coordinating your everyday life together and that you depend on each other to work as a single unit, a team. There may be some tension arising between individual freedom and needs, and what you should be doing so that he ship is sailing smoothly. Also, you may start to feel that there are things that you are giving up so that you can be with your partner. You may start to see that a lot of things about her were pure fantasy on your part and that she is a real human being with faults. A comprehensive answer to this question is worthy of a book, if anybody cared to read it. In short, know yourself, know where you come from, how you have been hurt and what triggers you. Know what you want and don't try to act as if you don't want anything at all (repression). Communicate what you want with full understanding that what you want is your own idiosyncrasy and it's up to her to give it, or not. Trust that she wants to give it to you. Listen to what she wants and don't chalk it up as nonsense simply because you don't feel this way. And most of all, remember that the single most destructive force within relationships is control. When you lose the trust that your partner wants to satisfy your needs and try to control her, it's a road downhill that leads to forms of violence. Most violence is covert, rather than overt (i.e. emotional, financial, withholding sex/bartering, etc). It's very difficult to rebuild when it gets there, but it is possible.

As someone who went through 6 years of psychodynamic psychotherapy, I can say that it was invaluable and that I highly recommend it.

So, I will be working at the new place starting from 3.1.2022. A lot of things on my plate recently, a lot of fear has been coming up. When I'm stressed, I tend to be extremely self-critical and perfectionist. I want everything to be exactly right, with no seams between systems. It's been driving me nuts because there's a lot of things I have to get in order before I will start working. I had to start a company, I had to organize my living space to work from home, I had to buy a new computer and configure it properly. None of it seems to turn out exactly how I want and I really, really want it my way. The computer I bought does not mesh with linux too great and everyone in that company works either on Ubuntu, or Debian. I spent the last week configuring windows WSL and getting it to work, and it seems like it works fine, but I'm very uneasy. This puts me in the spotlight when something won't work properly and I really want this transition to go smoothly. I really like how this laptop looks and feels and I decided to stick with it. I could have returned it, but I decided to trust my gut. It feels right for me. I will be working from home, which I never did before. I don't know whether or not my internet connection is up for the task and I hope that it will turn out for the best. There were problems in the past, but I hope that I managed to solve them. Another thing is that my wife counts on my income to start her own business. She has rented a place and will be moving out soon, so that I can have a room for myself. I will now be paid by an hour and my income will double compared to my previous job. I hope that everything will work out just fine. I'm depending on a lot of things to work...

Something isn't nothing. Nothing is not. Nothing isn't. Something is, nothing isn't, it is not. That is why it is called nothing. No-thing, not-a-thing. Things exist, no-things don't. You have a concept of nothing, a word that does not point to anything in actuality. This is diametrically different from something. There isn't anything that is more distant from something than nothing. And yet, try to grasp what it means for something to exist. Take any ordinary object and see how it comes to pass that this thing exists. It exists because it is different from other things. Now inspect what is difference. Does difference exist? Difference is not something, like an object, it is nothing, and yet-everything exists because of it. Something and nothing are unified via difference. This is completely paradoxical, I can't explain it in any conventional way. When I speak of it, it seems like I'm violating every way in which language is supposed to work. Sorry if it seems like rambling.

@Bruins8000 I dare you to find one single thing that starts and ends without changing form and turning into something else.