sholomar

How clean is everything? How is the crime? Despite not having as much freedom I get the sense that autocratic nations at least enforce laws better and people behave themselves because they know there are consequences for their actions. What is the cost of living for actual chinese people, not western influencers earning US dollars and spending them in China.... are we making any progress at average middle class people able to get ahead on this planet or is it more of the same, where the top 10% can buy up everything using the central bank money printing, cantillon effect, and existing wealth to leverage, while the wages of the working class don't keep up with the rate of inflation? Do they have to work 60-80 hours a week just to be able to support themselves? What is the worst thing about living there you've noticed so far if you did live there and were a born citizen? I watch "Because I'm Lizzy" youtube videos and they tend to just show the positives whereas SerpentZA & Laowhy86 seem to peddle bullshit but in a negative light.

Quite true. Even knowing this information about "radical acceptance" it's hard to internalize it. Most people don't stand a chance here. Get born in North Korea and try to preach about radical acceptance of leaders who are hypocrites and live lavish lives totally at contrast to the way they treat their citizens.

There's literally an infinite number of choices of everything these days for egos to "define their individuality" and "be themselves" whether it's cars, vacation destinations, sports teams, video games, or religions. Makes me chuckle. Find your inner peace. How you get there doesn't necessarily matter as much. It's neurochemical reactions in the brain combined with external stimuli generating a result determined by genetics and environment. I've found 15 mg/day Lexapro to really help me achieve peace of mind, working on my thoughts and mindfullness without that reactive emotional animal brain always getting in the way with it's irrational evolutionary demands.

Pushing one's limit is a young man's game. Past 35 it should be more about common sense exercise to maintain the body without destroying joints and tendons. Exercise itself is somewhat overrated and just another "belief system" that people decide to participate in. In fact past a certain point, the more you use your body the faster it falls apart, just like any other item.

I mean, higher spiral dynamics stages are more evolved than lower ones. Today's modern left is less dangerous because they are more evolved. Conservative parties tend to be lower on the scale and more apt to resort to violence and autocratic ways of leading, but that's not to say that greens can't be violent because we have clear numerous examples of them being violent, mostly fueled by the leftist propaganda they get when going to colleges, which pushes them to "hate the haters" in a very polarizing and unhealthy manner. Most conservatives are not nearly as fascist as the media and colleges paint them out to be, and this caricature of the right leads to increasing polarization. Most non political people have more common sense than most people into any sort of strict "movement" who want to try to assimilate followers whether it's religious or political or whatever. Most of them are nutty to one degree or another. I look at the movement following Charlie with the same healthy skepticism as the one telling me I must embrace 85 genders or else. A stage yellow is not going to be a strict leftist supporting these social utopian forms of government that go against the basic laws of nature if they see these systems aren't going to work, as an example. Just my opinion. It's about getting past emotional bias and understanding human nature, as best one can do. Most centrists are probably not more "evolved" but some are. They are mostly less dangerous, as long as they aren't centrists that are easily manipulated into causes or conspiracy theories.

The problem isn't "right wing" as much as it is any large group that brainwashes people with dogma. The shooter here went into college and got all that "right wingers are fascist" dogma thrown at him by the professors and got radicalized. After watching the wife speak however I got the sense she was cult indoctrinated herself and the last thing we need is some right wing religious cult getting significant power. If you want to unite people, you can't keep attacking them and portraying them as fascists and preaching about democracy while at the same time claiming the other side is dangerous and shouldn't have a voice. Most normal people aren't into "movements" and are good people by nature (as good as they can be given our genetic makeup.) It tends to be activists who are varying degrees of mentally damaged, which is contrary to what they'd like you to think when they talk about the "sheep" not knowing the "so called" truth about whatever so called truth this "truth seeker" thinks they know. Best thing the average person can do is live by example, live a good life, and avoid social media, politics, and various "movements" and "causes" designed to impose morality on people's behavior, whether it's loony left or loony right.

Porn is no more or less a problem than drug culture or excessive use of screens. It's all just dopamine hits giving short term pleasure. As for climate change, until the people who talk about it actually reduce carbon emissions themselves, not much will improve. You see a lot of people on the left who fly all over the world and have large carbon footprints themselves. It's one thing to talk about carbon emissions, it's another thing to reduce them oneself, and most people don't want to give up their enjoyment of life and experiencing everything to live on principle, and the banking systems which rely on consumption and perpetual growth to fund unfunded liabilities, don't want people to stop consuming. As to the solution to all these problems, if you want to give people freedom you have to accept they aren't all going to make the "right" choice... which means you're supporting forcing people to live a certain way. The mistake the left makes is thinking people will simply make the right choice, when given unlimited freedom, and then there's the matter of what choices are considered "right" which is in the eyes of the beholder ... in any case it takes pavlonian conditioning and enforcement of laws to force people to behave in the way those in charge would want them to behave.

It's because the left started caring more about 5% issues like genders than worrying about things regular people care about like the economy. The major issue however is the left's seemingly unchecked immigration they allow, going so far as to fly in migrants and pay for their housing. That's the main issue that turned people off from them. The fact you think everyone in the right are fascists shows you are brainwashed by your leftist propaganda just like any other large group of people.

He thinks identity politics was thrown into the democratic party to distract people from the economic issues. When blackstone owns a million houses, but the media is talking about genders, people won't focus on the economic issues that are actually important to people. The left went away from trying to help the middle class to focusing on these 5% issues like transgenders. Democrat party is much more in bed with corporations than in the past. For me it's about the unchecked migrants... the left seems obsessed with just letting in anyone and everyone unvetted. Again though, the real reason those at the very top want the migrants is not out of compassion, it's for the cheap labor. More sign a lot of leftists are being fooled into being compassionate for corporate interests.

Trump, despite the good things he has done, is still a spiral dynamics stage blue/orange. It's impossible for him to act outside his stage so the argument is moot. He definitely has a big ego, and he's not going to release the Epstein files because literally every powerful person on both the left and right is on it, in every country. The dirty little secret of human nature is old men are attracted to teenage girls, and old powerful men with money will do anything to get access. They don't teach this stuff on TV, it's one of those things some of us just understand, and others are naive too. Everyone has varying degrees of private lives they hide from others to avoid judgment and the consequences of going outside the polished cultural mores pushed by society at large. Plenty of people cheat on their spouses and go against their supposed values in the heat of the moment, because those animal impulses are powerful and feel really good. This is why the left not going tough on crime doesn't work, because carrot and stick conditioning is required to modify behavior.. if you teach people they can get away with bad behavior, they will keep doing it. In any case, the things mentioned in the first few posts here would go way above Trump's head. Asking a blue/orange to understand green/yellow is like trying to understand a foreign language. Nice post Emerald by the way. Amazing thought and time went into that.

It's hard to make turns onto major arteries when all cars are evenly spaced apart. Bottom line, you're not going to change human nature anyways. As long as people have conscious control of their vehicles, trying to moral shame them with should statements will have no effect. Their genetic drives will take over their driving behavior. Plus traffic is way too congested in many areas to expect perfectly spaced driving. Best to practice radical acceptance on this matter.

I just prefer to take the side of the underdog because understanding human nature, when a group becomes too large or has too much power for it's own good, it starts to become oppressive, and that's the modern left. People tired of their censorship, the unchecked migration, the inability of them to want to fight any crime, and they think they can rehabilitate spiral dynamics red and blue people. Not to say the right can't be oppressive, but they are not the ones in control of the institutions implementing their psyops among the public right now, it's largely the left. Many of their ideas just go totally counter to the laws of nature, natural selection, evolution. I get they are compassionate and think they have the moral high ground, but there's a balance between trying to "save everyone" or have some socialist utopia that would never work, and having a society that can actually prosper, which will largely be capitalistic in nature, despite the flaws in capitalism. Leftist logic... we need to "protect democracy" so we need to ban this "far right" political party ... that's what I call cognitive dissonance. Make no mistake, the "right" would attempt the same thing if they had majority power. It's just human nature. https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/06/europe/germany-afd-ban-politics-analysis-intl Take the whole Texas gerrymandering thing also... democrats are masters at gerrymandering. I say it's about time the republicans use the same tactics the democrats have been using for years. You have to play to win... this "getting along" stuff is something people like to tell the other side to get them to capitulate and hope that it works.

The economy has suffered from something called financialization, a term I learned by asking Gemini and Chat GPT about the decreasing purchasing power of the middle class. It has to do with quantitative easing, too big to fail, and wanting to bail everyone out rather than allowing a normal, healthy liquidation cycle in the economy. This wealth tends not to trickle down as much as it's used by the the top 10%, who own more than 90% of the combined stock market wealth, to buy more assets and drive asset bubbles (home price to income ratios rising globally as an example, from wealthy investors buying homes and real estate whether in their own country or others) "Financialization is the increasing influence of financial markets, motives, institutions, and actors on a country's economy. It represents a shift in how wealth is created, moving away from an emphasis on producing goods and services and toward generating profits through financial activities. This process has led to a growing share of the economy being dedicated to the financial sector, and it affects everything from corporate decision-making to the daily lives of individuals. Key Aspects and Causes Financialization isn't a single event but a complex process that began to accelerate in the latter part of the 20th century. Key factors that have contributed to it include: Deregulation: The loosening of regulations on the financial industry, which allowed for the creation of new, complex financial instruments and increased cross-border capital flows. Shareholder Primacy: A shift in corporate governance where the primary goal of a company's management became maximizing shareholder value. This often means prioritizing short-term profits and stock prices over long-term investment, employee wages, or product innovation. Effects of Financialization The rise of financialization has had significant impacts on the economy and society. Corporate Behavior: Companies may focus more on financial engineering, such as stock buybacks and mergers and acquisitions, rather than reinvesting profits in research and development or new equipment. This can lead to less innovation and long-term growth. To better understand this phenomenon, imagine a manufacturing company that, instead of building a new factory, uses its profits to buy back its own shares to increase their value. Income Inequality: Financialization is often linked to a widening gap between the rich and the poor. Those at the top of the income scale, who typically hold a large portion of financial assets like stocks and bonds, benefit most from rising asset prices. Meanwhile, the wages of many workers have stagnated as companies prioritize capital over labor. Increased Instability: The expanded role of credit, derivatives, and other complex financial products can create greater systemic risk. The 2008 global financial crisis is a prime example of how an over-financialized economy can become fragile and prone to collapse. The link between QE and financialization lies in how and where the new money enters the economy. The money created through QE is injected directly into the financial system, primarily through the purchase of financial assets. While the intention is for banks to lend this money to businesses and households to spur economic activity, this isn't always what happens. Here's how QE can contribute to financialization: Asset Price Inflation: By creating a massive new buyer (the central bank) for assets like government bonds and mortgage-backed securities, QE drives up their prices. This can create a "wealth effect" where those who own these assets feel wealthier and spend more. However, the biggest beneficiaries of rising asset prices are often the wealthiest individuals and corporations, which can increase income and wealth inequality. Portfolio Rebalancing: When central banks buy bonds, investors who sold them have a surplus of cash. They often reinvest this cash into other financial assets, such as stocks and corporate bonds, to seek higher returns. This increased demand can push up the prices of those assets as well. This process can lead to asset bubbles and a greater focus on financial speculation over productive investment in the "real economy." Corporate Behavior: Low borrowing costs make it cheap for companies to take on debt, but instead of using this capital for new factories or research and development, some companies use it for financial activities like stock buybacks and mergers and acquisitions. These actions can artificially inflate stock prices and benefit shareholders, which aligns with the principle of shareholder primacy at the core of financialization. In short, while central banks use QE with the goal of stimulating the broader economy, the mechanism by which it operates—by channeling liquidity through financial markets—can disproportionately benefit the financial sector and asset owners, thus intensifying the trends of financialization."

A good diet contributes, especially getting enough choline and Vitamin B12, both found in egg yolks in much larger amounts than anywhere else in the diet. Several studies have linked low choline intake to dementia also. Dr Gregers scare mongering about choline causing TMAO increase from gut bacteria and recommending a low choline diet is/was really bad advice. Adding eggs to a vegan diet makes a vegan diet totally viable, say 2-4 per day. https://www.eatingwell.com/choline-dementia-study-8779484

Could be your microbiome got messed up from the antibiotics. People with excessive anxiety and stress tend to have delayed stomach emptying as well (idiopathic gastroparesis) and this can manifest mostly as acid reflux or LPR. Your body might just not be used to the stressors and is overstimulated. This was me, until very recently, when the fruits of practicing radical acceptance have increased my peace of mind to a greater point than any in my life thus far. My addiction to screens is still my achille's heel. In any case, most chronic health problems people have are actually stress related, and when they can reduce the stress the problems disappear. https://www.holistichelp.net/dysautonomia-autonomic-nervous-system-dysfunction.html

An unfortunate aspect of our evolutionary makeup is that the body likes routine, and a set carcadian rhythm really is better in the long run for you, unless you can get to the point where you can practical radical acceptance over not sleeping. The older you get the harder it can be to sleep, so it might be best to go with it, and stick to a set sleep time. I realize when young people want "fun" and "nightlife" and such but these bad habits can potentially cause issues as one ages. Don't want to tell you to not have fun though. Especially if you wake up to an alarm clock, it's uncanny how the body will wake up just a few minutes before it's set to go off, because the body sees the alarm clock as a negative stimulus. Maybe don't wake up to alarm clocks? My real advice: radical acceptance... accept if you are groggy and destroyed... if you resist it, or have a negative emotional reaction to it, you compound the issue. Relax into it and accept it's part of our specie's biological wiring.

Nothing wrong with price decreases. Don't fall for the Keynesian psyop. Maintaining housing bubbles doesn't help new money and people starting out get into the market. How would someone with nothing be able to buy property much less rent in a nation like Canada that purposely props up their property bubbles? Home price to income ratios globally are getting worse for the working class, and it seems like the only way to make any decent money is to inherit money or have enough to invest, because central bank policies act to inflate asset prices without the corresponding increase in wages. Doing nothing to prevent investors from gobbling up these assets doesn't help. Wealth on this planet is becoming more and more concentrated, which is almost a natural result of an unchecked system, but will have a bust at some point, if not managed better, the bust will be greater.

They're not devils, they are naive combined with idealistic. They act on their emotional ideals of what they "think" an idealized society would be and yet the policies don't work partly for the reasons you mentioned. A system can only support so many parasites before it collapses. Right now it's the top and bottom that are the biggest parasites on the system, thanks to quantitative easing, too big to fail, bailouts, and money printing to pay for unfunded liabilities. They think you can afford to just pay people to get free everything, and then wonder why there are supply shortages, or a 3 year wait for a surgery... but it's not the top 10% who have a problem affording these things... they got their overinflated stonks and multiple investment properties. The left has no real solution to the problems of wealth concentration that would actually work, they just think they do. Their solution of printing more money and handing it out doesn't work. We need to bleed the liquidity away from the investor class, with high top end taxes on investments and net worth, and reform the concept of a corporation at it's core, but neither side will do this. Wait you're saying I as a "centrist" support taxing the rich? Well the fact is the rich have gotten a lot of central bank welfare post 2008 and especially post 2020. Wealth is concentrating while middle class affordability is decreasing. Using the money to invest in new housing and businesses is one thing, using the money to gobble up real estate and existing housing and pump up the stock market is another. This is what "private equity" is now doing, with central bank blessing.

Mark Belling would call it "rationalization" (what leo called self deception) which he called "the second strongest human drive" ... he was a conservative talk show host out of milwaukee, now semi retired. That said I'm hesitant to use youtube videos with clickbaity looking screencaps as evidence for any viewpoint these days. Everything panders to the algorithm. (Mel Robbins video above a good example... that screenshot would instantly have me not wanting to watch it) ... content peddlers calling out other content peddlers... needless drama.

Same here. My nervous system is already overstimulated so it doesn't need more stimulants.

Eat the cheat meal on the day you lift, so the calories can go towards hypertrophy. That said, splurge days don't actually work to reduce cravings, in fact any dopamine hit will result in craving more next time, so if you are using splurges as a way to try to increase discipline, that will not work.... just like having "one more cigarette" won't help you quit, only increase the craving for another one in the future. There's nothing inherently "bad" about "junk food" if you have normal blood glucose and can see your abs when looking in the mirror. The bad part is it's addicting and calorie dense. The dopamine hit from food is enhanced when you mix fats and carbs together. Eventually you will stop craving junk food after a long enough period of time. My weak spot being a cheapskate is when junk food is provided for "free" which it can be at work. I will usually partake during those times. Otherwise I have healthier substitutes for my cravings, like my keto french toast I make. TLDR: If you hit a point where you never eat junk food, it will be easier to maintain that if you don't partake, because any dopamine hit from a rich food will increase the urge for more of that food in the future.

Dead hangs or inversion tables are relaxing ... for people with sciatica, dead hangs are a life saver. Our bodies have not evolved that much beyond apes to where they are perfect, and the weak spot is the lower back, as we used to not really walk like we do now, but more like a monkey.. even millions of years later our lower backs haven't totally adapted to this, and the discs tend to bulge and press on the nerves as we age. This was mitigated during our evolution by humans still climbing and hanging from things, which decompressed the spine... so find a bar and hang from it. Don't overdo it, or you can then get golfer's elbow as a result. Ask me how I know. Weak bodies. Have to work all the muscles fairly evenly because any weak points will then result in chronic issues. Oh one more idea... you can try pouring 3% hydrogen peroxide (brown bottles) in your ears. I find that relaxing.

Good on you, man. Eggs are full of choline which has many positive effects on the body (ignore the nonsense about TMAO formation from gut bacteria) including being a methyl donor and removing fat from the liver. Vegans could simply introduce eggs into their diet and make a vegan diet totally viable. Make these huge garden salads with sam's club spring mix and tomatoes, hard boiled eggs, nuts, bacon bits, dressing, Parmesan cheese. Good stuff. Junk food is like cigarettes, a quick dopamine hit but you feel it later, especially the stuff they serve at blue collar establishments... ice cream bars, soda, cookies, etc. That said recently I've really found that believing all these "stories" that I'm told about what I should and shouldn't do, eat, and whatnot, is also a form of chain binding me down... david hawkins is right when he says you can actively cancel belief systems to increase peace of mind, and then enjoy that junk food in moderation without having a negative emotional response to consuming it. I just wanna be able to see my fucking abs, and be active into an old age. Life is short and I'm not going to age out of it by 50-55 though inactivity and not being able to see my penis because I'm a fat slob. The rules of this engineered reality we incarnate into dictate you "use it or lose it." Just because you can cancel belief systems, doesn't mean you should drink gasoline (or live totally off sugar and fructose) though. This engineered reality is still governed by the base software and hardware programming of the behavior of atoms, DNA, etc... all the positive thinking and radical acceptance in the world won't make your physical body survive acts which violate the rules of this reality. Since nothing in this simulation or reality or whatever you want to call it actually matters, as it's just a video game for the soul, no biggie though... you'll just incarnate back again shortly, hopefully not in North Korea.

If democrats simply had some, ANY vetting on who comes into the country, and bothered to try enforcing laws and punishing criminals in big cities just a little, they'd probably still be in power. These soros funded prosecutors that catch felons in possession of firearms, major car thefts and robberies, running from the police and causing accidents, and then never punish them, they end back out on the streets, this is what is unpopular. It's rewarding bad behavior. Democrats reward bad behavior. A society should reward responsible behavior. Republicans try to do this, despite their corrupt nature. Personal and individual responsability and accountability should be a thing, calling it "community" responsibility is a copout to justify an ideology (spiral dynamics stage green) that doesn't work. You can't shower a stage blue/red with green values and expect them to behave themselves. For that matter, you can't expect a person to simply do the right thing, all the time. Our genetic makeup is too primitive for that, without further genetic engineering. The socialist utopian state where you can pay everyone to do nothing won't work until we can replace all human labor with machines, and get our primitive genetic makeup up to modern standards with engineering. I'm rooting for you though.... nobody would love to escape corporate wage slavery as much as I would.... but in nature, species have to work hard to survive and reproduce... they don't get to sit around and have their hands held and get coddled, unfortunately. Murder as the way to be able to pass on one's seed is the norm, not the exception. Plus, democrats got overconfident... why the fuck did they pick Tim Walz as VP? What were they thinking? They thought they could win no matter who they ran. They would have won had they ran ANYONE else. That was on them. Now today's youth are rebelling against "wokeness" which I find amusing and refreshing. It was becoming a bit stale and suffocating, like a religious person peddling their wares on the masses. In any case it's all a distraction... this political infighting is not what enlightenment is about, it's about radical acceptance of what is. Let the sheep fight over this video game for the soul, and make it all real to themselves, getting caught up in the drama as their genes would have them do. Let your large "spiritual egos" as David Hawkins would call them, shine forth. Be the spiritual warrior he warned everyone about.