sholomar

Good insights. I agree. Sometimes it seems like the cravings and impulses will last forever, LOL. Then they come back in waves. It's difficult work, for sure, but it's what makes a man out of a person. All strong men have mastered their emotions and impulses to some degree or another, in my opinion. This gives them a level of inherit wisdom from having suffered through the experience that makes them better leaders that people look up too, something relatively rare in modern society today that pushes heavy hedonism on us where addictions are ever present elements that permeate our culture and seek to make us mediocre consumers of content instead of producers.

How do you release it? By engaging in it? The problem with engaging in addictions is that it reinforces the synaptic connections in the brain that give the activity pleasure. The more you do something pleasurable, the more you are going to want to do it. "Just one more cigarette" ... I logically know that one cigarette is going to make me want to crave another, and another, so I'm not going to even have the one. I think most of us give up bad habits, emotions, or addictions because at some point they bring us more pain than they do pleasure, and it's at that point people finally decide to change, like when a woman leaves an abusive man that she loves because he's dominant but at some point he just brings more pain to her life than pleasure and at that point she finally leaves. That or the guy who gives up his pot and video games... he does it not because he doesn't enjoy pot and video games, but because he knows he's creating an opportunity cost in himself to greater levels of pleasure and satisfaction. Would he rather chase his short term pleasure and emotional state or build towards long term goals and accomplishments? It's the hedonistic vs eudomonic argument made in Leo's "happiness spectrum" video. Really emotions and impulses are the same thing... they are both a drive to "act" in a certain way created by our brain chemistry and evolutionary makeup. The trick would seem to be to allow the emotion or impulse but without engaging in the associated activity that brought on the emotion, to allow it to "burn out" over time.

Pop culture wants you to treat your emotions like gospel and that you should "do what you feel like" and that "your feelings are always right" which is a huge mistake and trap. Feelings are the domain of many animal species and most mammals have basic emotions that drive them to act in the absence of self awareness and rational thought. Feelings can be a double edged sword. They can sabotage and betray you, get you chasing the wrong things in life. It's why most spiritual teachers like Eckhart Tolle emphasize being "the observer" ... being able to observe the rising waves of emotion (and cravings, impulses) without identifying with them and allowing them to totally take over one's reactions. I really like his book "A New Earth" in this regard. Talks all about it. It's far superior to "The Power of Now." Then again so do many self help authors like David Hawkins who also took their work from past sources like The Master Key System. Being able to sit with any impulse mindfully and let it's energy burn out... Leo's videos on addiction, subtle addiction, the happiness spectrum, his principles for living the good life, burning through karma, and related videos... they all bark up the same tree of finding a level of emotional/impulse mastery and developing more productive habits, but without the use of emotional suppression. The book "Atomic Habits" is also important for any person who wants to grow in life because a good life requires good habits. You want your most important personal development goals on autopilot, so they are done on a schedule without thinking and more importantly, done while powering through the emotional resistance to do them.

Probably simple genetics. Our species is wired toward a proclivity towards certain behaviors and men dominating the world around them is wired into dominant or "alpha" males, the type women do tend to submit too when for example their tribe gets invaded and all their men got slaughtered. It's also why women tend to be hypergamous and trade up when something better comes along. The loyal women who stood by their man or tribe would get killed off over the course of tens of thousands of years of evolution, leaving the surviving women the ones willing to manipulate men and remain loyal to the men who had the most power... the "sexually submitting to the invader" narrative. Most human behavior can be explain by past evolutionary conditions. We are bundles of computer software (DNA being the computer code), living in a sophisticated hardware simulation (with all it's various laws that make matter work perfectly to create life), created by an intelligence as of yet unimaginable to most. The facial expression in your profile picture really says it all. I see dominant evolutionary traits written all over it. A sort of cocky dominance. It's kind of a "Bonnie and Clyde" "partner in crime" sort of relationship you desire. You want to dominate her (or him, whatever way you float) but want her/him to be strong enough to be an equal. Many humans do want this. It's exciting and barks right up our evolutionary ladder.

The one thing I've learned is my assumptions and things I assumed to be true about "world events" sometimes end up being totally false, and that my own assumptions and interpretations are subjective. I think I know a lot about things but really don't. I just enjoy philosophy as an interest, along with geopolitics, science, and economics. However, it should not be used to strengthen the "pain body" within or to create a big spiritual ego that thinks it's better than everyone else. What an illusion and trap that would be. I'm into deep, esoteric material because the normal conversation by normal people... sitting around a table telling stories and gossiping about those in their social circle, holds little to no interest for me, even though I know it would be good for me in moderation. I don't see spiritual seekers or conspiracy theorists as "more awakened" than the "sheep" anymore however. It's just different people with different perspectives. We all share the same common trait of having to incarnate into what in my opinion is a difficult species going through growing pains at the moment, our genetic makeup not having caught up with our technology and cultural advancement. Someone said Leo's video content is better than these forum posts. I definitely agree with that. A lot of neurotic, depressed people from both ends of the political spectrum tend to gather here and do a lot of "blaming" of external circumstances for their lack of peace of mind, whether it's left wingers or right wingers or whatever narrative they decide to believe or whatever group they decide to blame when the real problem is a human nature problem, that's if you decide there even is a "problem." I'm working on this one myself. It's a problem of garbage inputs leading to garbage outputs.

I'll be honest....leftists seem incapable of recognizing that the decay of the west is maybe 75% being caused by their policies post covid. Pushing equity in schools with pressure to give passing grades to underachieving students is one small piece of the overall problem. Leftists are certainly not immune to neurotic, emotionally driven behavior, echo chamber thinking and herd behavior, and policies that are in my opinion almost certainly going to fail. Our genetics aren't optimally equipped to handle 21st century life. That will take genetic engineering or a few thousand years of evolution yet along with the evolution of nations/cultures low on the spiral dynamics scale...many who's immigrants are flooding the west with open arms right now unable to speak the native language with nowhere to put them. In any case, my personal development goals include accepting it all, accepting human nature, accepting all cultures go through cycles of rise and decline. Human nature is what it is. Genetic software operating within sophisticated hardware developed by an unimaginable intelligence.

A lot of it is actually from an overstimulated nervous system. Too much screen time stimulates the sympathetic nervous system. People never allow themselves a chance to slow down and this often causes things such as what I had which was LPR or silent reflux. Any sort of prolonged sustained stress or anxiety can cause any number of autoimmune problems in the body. A lot of people generate this state mentally through many of the same processes were here trying to stop in our personal development journey. Silent reflex causes stomach acid to regurgitate up into the throat and the body responds by producing mucus which coats your tongue. The anaerobic bacteria start the colonize that and produce an unpleasant odor. A lot of people who think they have allergies actually have lpr. It goes along with having a white coated tongue and bad breath. A lot of people with LPR also have gastroparesis or delayed stomach emptying. This goes along with having poor vagus nerve function which is a side effect of having an overstimulated sympathetic dominant nervous system. https://www.holistichelp.net/blog/autonomic-nervous-system-dysfunction/

It's very easy to eat 2500 calories in 24 hours. I constantly have to watch my calories because if I didn't I would overeat and would gain a lot of weight. There's a subreddit called volume eating that you should look up if you want to try to maximize the amount of food you eat while minimizing calories. All animal species evolved in an environment of scarcity so here we are living in an environment of abundance and our genetic makeup still believes we're in the Stone Age and are going to starve so we have these biological cravings that can be very hard to resist. I don't blame or judge people for being overweight to be honest. There's a lot of neurotic dna-driven aspects to our species that need a few thousand more years of evolution or some genetic engineering to fully sort out.

Quantitative easing is where the government suppresses interest rates by purchasing government bonds the free market can't absorb and hold on to them. It's a form of debt monetization. Here's the website that shows how much quantitative easing the Federal Reserve has done at any given time. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WALCL There are some who believe this debt is not a problem. Debt is money and money is debt so all debt is basically just created money. All debt is technically already monetized since it exists as money in the system. The real problem comes with the interest money because the interest money doesn't exist and contributes to deflationary pressure. Raise interest rates to suck up extra money from the system over time to manage inflation. However because this interest money was never actually created the debt can only ever keep going up. You basically need to create new debt to replace the money lost from circulation from paying these interest payments. The end result of the overprinting they did during covid is simply more inflation as more dollars Chase fewer goods. This is a totally separate issue where they mismanaged fiscal policy there for a year or two. When you print money and hand it out without a corresponding increase in economic output you're going to get inflation. There's no way around it. The disruptions to the supply chain caused by the pandemic policies added to this effect and exaggerated it. The best way to maintain yourself in a system like this is to stay invested in assets. Don't hold cash. Quit jobs that don't offer a wage that keeps up with the cost of rental increases or whatever other living costs you have. Inflation is sort of a necessary evil when you have an aging populace and all these entitlement programs with decreasing birth rates. It devalues the burden of past government spending though it does put pressure on the working class. Maybe we shouldn't have a currency based on debt and compound interest at all. Maybe the government should simply print all the interest free money it needs directly from the treasury and bypass the central bank. Quantitative easing is a hack to get around the interest problem anyways. Regardless, there is no paying off the debt. It will never get paid off only monetized due to the interest money not existing problem I discussed earlier.

It's easy to take isolated events and extrapolate them out to make it seem like there's this huge problem going on. Most police don't behave in that manner obviously but the ones that do obviously end up getting a lot of social media exposure these days. Here's an educational video for people so they know how to behave during a police encounter. If you do what they say and act civilized you generally won't have any problems. Most of the people who end up in these videos resist arrest or act like asses.

I try to tell people it's a human nature problem. It's not fair to scream "jews" to the 85% of jews that aren't in the power structure. Any ethnicity of people you get or any large enough "herd" of people or any one person that accumulates enough wealth and power will tend to act and lead in the same way depending on whether they are a psychopath or not. It does no good to target an entire ethnic group. I tell people to watch for specific individuals who support authoritarian or autocratic rule and make sure they don't get power. If they do, take them out. No need to involve innocent collateral damage. The main threat to the species are authoritarians. Left authoritarians. Right authoritarians. Doesn't matter. Autocracy doesn't work. The Chinese Communist Party under Xi would be a classic example of what we want to avoid when we are talking about global leadership. I don't care how good your intentions, checks and balances are the best way to keep human nature at bay. I find most leadership to be incompetent, but again that's just human nature. Our species needs some genetic engineering... see my post here: All the more reason to practice radical acceptance!

I can't find any competent leadership I want to fall behind in either party. The problem is they all push "narraitives" these days which creates polarization, echo chambers, etc. It's a human nature thing though. I recognize these are growing pains of the species, so I try to be sympathetic. In the end civilizations rise, and they fall. It is what it is. My ego still loves the "dirty laundry" ... it's something I'm still working on. Feed that "pain body" as Eckhart Tolle would call it. There's nothing I can do about the geopolitical policies I think are going to decay nations, but I still like to talk about them.

There's this rumor that goes on around conspiracy forums that when you go to donate your organs they don't give you anesthesia only sedate you and that there have been instances of the human body responding in ways that suggest that the person is actually conscious when their organs are being harvested which is why this big anti organ donation movement popped up online. There's also the conspiracy theory about organ donating being this big industry which engages in scrupulous practices especially in some Asian countries. I'm sure there's some truth to either of these or not.

Just finished this batch of decaf beans roasted on an inexpensive chinese made roaster. Decaf of course, because roasting of caffeinated beans involves chaf production, which is lacking in decaf beans. Most store bought decaf is repulsive, and most people in my opinion drink coffee wrong, using preground beans often with flavorings to mask the fact they are drinking old, stale coffee. Enjoy the taste and the antioxidant benefits and the fact it's a low calorie drink. Brew using a V60 with a Gooseneck kettle to heat the water so I can fine tune the temperature and get it hot enough for light and medium roasts, which most drip coffee makers do not do. My cheap roaster can't get all the beans perfectly even, but this would be classified as a light roast, which is what I generally prefer for the bright flavor and origin characteristics. If some beans make it to medium or city roast, that's fine. Tastes great. Buy the beans super cheap on ebay... $6/lb

I use an electric toothbrush with bluetooth connectivity that idiot proofs the whole process. It beeps every 30 seconds, beeps when the 2 minutes is done. I use "Plackers twin line" floss. Then I visit the dentist every 6 months and they say I have great gums and teeth for my age I'd rather not have receding gums and have to use dentures when I get older. You do you, bro. If I eat meat, it will get in between my teeth and start to smell like rotting meat after a day or three. I certainly wouldn't not brush personally just because I was zero carb.

I could use my father as an example. He's 66 years old and ripped for his age. He still goes to the gym and does squats, bikes 35 mile rides on his road bike (we did one together when I visited last week). For him it all comes down to habits, habits habits. Healthy habits, and sticking to them even if he doesn't "feel like" doing them. If you don't develop a plan, and stick to it like clockwork, you may as well not even start. You'll be like those people who join the gym for their New Year's resolution and are gone by February. I am still working on achieving his level of self discipline. He eats a plant based diet based on the book "How Not to Die" and his main meat source is grass fed, grass finished beef. He consumes an antioxidant rich diet, including coffee in the mornings, whole grains, steel cut oats, various kinds of nuts, spices, fruits, vegetables, with light alcohol consumption in the form of craft beers, usually on the darker side. That's not to say you have to be into fitness to be happy, or even that you have to live to an old age, but I won't get into that here. It comes down to being able to sit there and mindfully observe cravings to do something, and then do the activity that you have planned and want to make into a habit. Leo's video on addictions and "subtle addictions" are handy for this. It's not bleeping easy if you are not used to it. It's torture, like quitting a drug.

Finally someone else saying it. There should be a global ban on real estate investment and speculation... you can own a certain number of single family residential homes, none of them used for rentals or AirBNBs if they are inside city limits. You can fix them up and sell them, or owner occupy them. That's the way it should be. The problem is a lot of wealth has been created and concentrated by central bank magic fairy dust (quantitative easing) so the top 5% are flush with cash, so seeing inflation they spend that cash on assets, pricing the lower and middle class out of asset ownership. People should not own 25 houses. Corporate entities should not own 300 houses.

I stumbled upon an informative website in my psychological and evolutionary research that may provide insight. Here's the article in particular that I would agree with from an evolutionary perspective: https://www.museumofplay.org/app/uploads/2022/01/3-4-article-gray-decline-of-play.pdf The website is the "American Journal of Play" "Over the past half century, in the United States and other developed nations, children’s free play with other children has declined sharply. Over the same period, anxiety, depression, suicide, feelings of helplessness, and narcissism have increased sharply in children, adolescents, and young adults. This article documents these historical changes and contends that the decline in play has contributed to the rise in the psychopathology of young people. Play functions as the major means by which children (1) develop intrinsic interests and competencies; (2) learn how to make decisions, solve problems, exert self-control, and follow rules; (3) learn to regulate their emotions; (4) make friends and learn to get along with others as equals; and (5) experience joy. Through all of these effects, play promotes mental health."

Personally I think parents should choose with vouchers that let them pick whatever public and private school they want is best. Let the schools compete with each other and let students go to the ones where they can excel the most academically. I don't believe in telling parents their kids must go to a public school. If they want to home school them, the kid will probably turn out better than a sizable percentage of public schools in the United States. We are depressed and anxious because our DNA isn't adapted to modern life in this planet yet. I still love this series of posts I found: It only worsens as you coddle people, give them safe spaces, and try to shelter them from everything. Emotional resilience requires discomfort, facing fears, and the like. Even then, our DNA wires us with high levels of neuroticism, and most people feel comfortable around strong leadership that is competent and ethical, something greatly lacking in society today. Then again, if you look back at history with an unbiased lens, you'll see it's almost always lacking. The nature of being an animal, and evolution itself. DNA cares about propagation. Everything else is fluff. The world has always "been a hell" or "been perfect" it really depends on context and perspective.

Like Leo said in his video on gaslighting, it's up to you to find your own truth and let other people find theirs, and stop relying on other people, belief systems, gurus, or whatever as an authoritarian source of information on anything. There is no perfect diet for everyone, no optimal eating frequency that lets you be closer to God. God doesn't care if you eat an animal... study natural selection. Evolution is cruel. I see animals killing other animals ALL THE TIME and homo sapiens are another species of animal. I believe within the next 20 years we are going to see certain animal species like Geese start to attack us because we are giving up our spot as apex predators by not harming animals. I've seen more aggressive action by birds, Geese, and deer this year than ever before. Geese along the bike trail are increasingly ignoring my presence, not moving out of the way, making aggressive moves. If you don't go and strike one and kill it when it doesn't move out of the way, their DNA won't learn to fear humans. That's how nature works. I see this planet and universe more as a matrix with built in rules, laws, and DNA as the computer code. There is no "right or wrong" to it, just interactions between mathematical variables and computer code that make up the simulation. As the DNA of these animals realizes humans are not a threat, they are going to act more bold and/or aggressive towards us in future generations of offspring. It will happen. It will fly in the face of people who think nature is pure, innocent, and that all species can live together in harmony. That's not how this planet and universe work. We "should do this" and "should do that" ... more should statements. There are no concrete rules for incarnating on this planet. Good post though! I appreciate hearing your perspective... all perspectives. There's a lot to "agree with" in your post for those who choose to integrate some of it into their belief system.

I voted no because my nervous system was sympathetic dominant from a young age due to overall lack of friends and being bullied. This caused gastroparesis which caused LPR which caused post-nasal drip which caused a coating on my tongue that gives me bad breath that's still persist to this day. The breath can cause a small room to have a musty smell after a period of hours. I continue to work on cultivating a stronger parasympathetic nervous system through healthy habits but given how long I've been wired to be in this emotional state it's a slow and gradual process. It remains to be seen if my body can reach a state where it's totally healthy I believe it will happen within the next 12 months. It's just a matter of implementing everything I've intellectually absorbed and turning it into into subconscious programming at this point. Having a healthy parasympathetic system is necessary to keep the stomach emptying quickly which is necessary to keep food from pressing up against the lower esophageal sphincter which then causes LPR or silent reflux. When you go through a deep trauma your stomach tends to shut down and if it becomes chronic then it will cause these sorts of symptoms. Most people who have idiopathic gastroparesis suffered some sort of trauma or are in a heightened sympathetic dominant state. It's another one of those stress-induced illnesses. Psychological state is more important than one's diet in the overall grand scheme of body health. Unhealthy psychology and Trauma tend to cause the very autoimmune problems that people blame on diet or environment or pesticides or whatever.

That's really cool. I avoid pizza because of the vast amount of simple carbohydrates in its crust for the most part. I'll have to give this a try.

I get the vaccines because I believe in vaccines as a person of science and plan to get another updated booster in October with my flu shot but I will not be forced to put on a mask or lock down again. I'm not one to believe in conspiracies but I do understand human nature and a sizable percentage of the population would be fine with authoritarianism if it was for something they supported. To me that is unacceptable. There's also a sizable percentage who supported the lockdown simply so they could get paid for months to sit around and do nothing which is also unacceptable. The long-term consequences of these policies due to supply chain shortages and inflationary pressures harm the entire global population more significantly than the virus would have. We don't want to be doing this nonsense again. The vaccines are around so what would be the point in doing this? I have a number of family members who are anti-vaccine conspiracy theorists and I just let them believe what they want to believe. I get why the right believes this stuff because the left were turning into authoritarians there for a while. It's a reactionary response of being mandated to do something and our species DNA doesn't like to be forced to do things. They let themselves be run by their fear. When Homo sapiens sympathetic nervous systems are activated and their fight or flight response is triggered they will often justify all sorts of activity they wouldn't otherwise justify. This goes for both sides the left and the right when they start flinging feces at each other or groups of people who try to get people to do things "for their own good" ... the road to hell is paved with good intentions. If conservatives die in higher numbers because they don't get the vaccine then what is the left worried about? It's less competition for them. Human beings just like to try to control each other. Being a control freak to a degree is wired into human DNA. People tend to think others are stupid for not doing things the way they do them. Try not to take anybody's actions personally because it's just programmed DNA firmware doing what it's genetically obligated to do through a million years of evolution. It doesn't matter which political side you are on. We're all subject to the same genetic firmware and it's not optimized for dealing with life in the 21st century. As far as Sean Penn goes Wake Me Up When the ruling class stop using their private jets. When they start following the rules they try to impose on the rest of us maybe I'll take them seriously. ( They won't. People in charge Never follow their own rules. Genetics. Rules for thee, not for me.)

No. This is the republican party playing politics. They support it because it annoys the other side and people in politics tend to lean towards being psychopaths, sociopaths, narcissists, and Machiavellian. For them its a chess game and every move is calculated. Most people find this obnoxious and just want to be left alone so they are not into politics, but they should be if they want to see the change they desire. Politics is a horseshoe. The extreme left and right have more in common than anyone in the middle. Without lifetime term limits and campaign finance laws it's also an opportunistically driven venture where certain power driven people are disproportionately represented which is unfortunate. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_theory

The family and the institution of marriage were formulated because they are instruments of social control. A person who is on their own has nothing to lose; they have no family that can be threatened by an enemy (the government); a person with a family will always be an inert soul who supports the evil "system". The state loves the married person; a married person is 100 times more likely to be an obedient serf & subject. He or she doesn't have the time to ponder the shit show going on all around him; he has a family to support! There are probably not even five great philosophers who were not bachelors. This is why a bachelor is Never elected. That said a Puritan style system with the nuclear family probably works better than any type of system we've had to date. The alternative is anarchy which is an inferior choice or collectivist authoritarian systems which don't work either so mixed capitalist systems with Democratic elections it's the best we have right now until we can alter our genome through genetic engineering.