Kosmos

What is hilarious about a mentally ill person's attempt to deal with their mental illness? He said: "I personally have been suffering from mental illness and poor psychology: depression, anxiety, and a body-focused repetitive behavior" Ha ha ha you a better than him? Well ok. Great, you are superior to him. He is unequal to you in many ways. Why the need to laugh though? Is that person's attempt to deal with his pain funny? Or are you triggered?

I'd thought they were your summary, I hadn't realized they were a verbatim quote from her. She makes a bunch of great points, and is clearly coming from a place of "post equality", not "pre equality".

I think there is a damaging (yet necessary) frame war constantly going on. The purpose of portraying "situation X" as having "meaning Y" isn't to literally give it meaning Y. It is because "meaning Y" fits in with a network of 10,000 other meanings and perspectives which floating around in the ether, that more or less balance in a game of Jenga to keep the whole show running and on track. All of that needs to remain hidden though, otherwise "meaning Y" falls apart, as does it's purpose. For example, I love your points here and agree that those conflations are ignorant. Yet at the same time, I suspect that kind of ignorance is also necessary and useful. It gives people a truth to cling onto that they will push for in an attempt to resolve a problem. The less awareness privilege someone has, the smaller the truth they are able to grasp onto. It's like humanity is a beautiful web made up of ignorant solutions, none of them pure, all of them perfect.

Could these instructions be more reflective of where you are personally at in your own development, and what the appropriate focus is for you personally, rather than where the "we" of humanity is at? Humanity is a chaotic dance forward into the point of all places. All sorts of "fight for X" and "fight for Y" are currently going on. In a way they are all necessary, and all necessary to reject. It all has upsides and downsides, while being eternally unchanging. "Individual progress VS Equality" is one of those polarities. They are just ways of chopping up reality into digestible pieces to munch on. So far humanity has not moved forward by having holistic communication, we move forward by increasingly abstract fights. Yet even a holistic conversation is just a "fight" between conversations that are fragmented and conversations that are whole.

In the same interview he referenced the mystical experiences the Bhgavad Gita is based on, and also him having experience with LSD, so I doubt he interpreted that experience as Jesus. He described it by calling his description a metaphor. Evangelicals don't see metaphors. He glimpsed a few hairs on the ox's tail perhaps? I wonder how deep one has to see to understand what it really is. Also, are your average videos on God shorter or longer than 20 minutes....? Does a long explanation necessarily mean lack of understanding? or can it also demonstrate complexity?

You are welcome I don't think "I" am imposing things on other people, because "I" don't really exist as a separate entity. I think (hehe, there I am!)... I think the universe is imposing things on the earth, which is imposing things on biology, which is imposing things on culture, which is imposing things on an individual's identity, which is imposing things on thought. There is constant imposition at all levels of causality. The universe is a giant impositioning, impositioninging itself. You take consciousness and matter, shake it up, throw in billions of years of love and you get actualized.org. That's billions of years of imposition, or love, or ever expanding consciousness, or God awareness trying to realize itself, or a self organizing structure to an emergent universe, or however you'd like to fragment reality into yummy little conceptualizations. When you said "Wrong", were you not trying to impose something "Right" on me? When you just said "Aren't you imposing things on others in this way?" Was that not also a subtle imposition? The attempt to influence my thought process and impose your view in service of some outcome? "Be careful about imposing on others"? Why imply that? Why is it better to be careful about imposing than to be reckless about imposing? We imposed an end to physical slavery, and financial slavery (no one starves in the West), we are working on imposing an end to emotional slavery (the whole green project), I don't see why an end to mental or conceptualization slavery wouldn't be on the cards at some point. The reason being, it is just a better and deeper and more beautiful way for existence to be and celebrate itself. Had you or I been born to a wealthy family in the Roman empire, we might have "chosen" to support slavery. What exactly is it that is underneath everything that has caused us to now "choose" not to support it? To at least attempt to relate it back to Jordan Peterson... I think his conceptualization of 'heaven and hell', is an attempt to map these things. It is clearly an attempt to influence things, but also an attempt to describe the entire process of what "influence" means, what direction it points in and why.

Firstly I love how many wrong's I got! 6 x wrong. Come on, that's awesome! I really love your enthusiasm. Honestly. I've got such hesitation in saying someone is flat out wrong, so it's really refreshing, and kinda freeing. Yeah a new baseline emerges, and I would suggest that there is a correlation between the baseline, and the chances of passing through the gateless gate. I don't have statistics on this, but I suspect the rates of realization of enlightenment are not uniform across cultures and time periods. Which would suggest these rates can be altered by things external to any individual human. If Yellowstone super volcano erupts and civilization collapses for 200 years, what happens to the rates of people realizing enlightenment? If the rates would change, then there is more going on then "choosing", or "individually being choiced", or however you frame it. Which would then mean, right now, we could affect the rates of enlightenment realization in a positive way. Right now as society, we could say "Here are 100 babies born in 2017 in Syria, lets now in 2018 decide to throw global support and $100 billion of resources towards the sole goal of getting these 100 babies enlightened." At a very minimum that would mean every single baby would have a dozen zen masters absolutely devoted to their growth and training for their entire life, from the age of 2 to 82. I bet the rates of enlightenment among those 100 babies would be higher than 100 other random babies born in Syria in 2017. But we don't do that, because collectively, we decide that it isn't worth the trade off for what that global support and $500 billion of resources could do elsewhere. So that means fewer of those 100 Syrian babies realize enlightenment in their lifetime. I think AI can change this, along with the incremental choices of billions of people and their bodyminds, along with shifts in culture, along with the sun pumping pure love into the earth in the form of photons which constantly power the whole circus parade into celebrations that are louder and louder.

I suggest reading the eBook I referenced, "Trump and a post truth world". By "horizontal polarizations" I was just playing with concepts. I meant something like "red bloods VS crips", "blue Christian vs Muslim", "orange Shell vs Exxon", "green vegan vs trans activist", "yellow meta conceptualization A vs meta conceptualization B". Maybe call them "intra level polarization". As you go up the spiral, the intra level polarization get's less harsh, but still exists, it only gets resolved when you move up a level and then the entire previous level is seen as an object. I think the intra level polarization exists most strongly when different forms of a level exist and the people at that level have not yet integrated the other form. For example, say there are two orange people, who are just starting to step into green. One becomes a vegan, the other a trans activist. At the beginning, both will be convinced they have The Answer to the Orange Problem, and that answer is either veganism, or trans activism. They might be quite militant about it, and dismiss the other cause as a competitor to their own cause. In a way it is, veganism and trans activism are conflicting for resources and change, but they are also cooperating in terms of restructuring a part of society towards compassion and love. Heck, even within feminism there is a whole polarization around trans inclusive vs trans exclusive. So I bet there are a bunch of green vegans were who initially appalled at the media attention and recent rise in consciousness about trans peoples experiences. As they became more familiar with the topic, and integrated it into their overall green identity, that horizontal intralevel polarization goes down. I think this intralevel polarization won't completely disappear until people's identities are the same trans personal identity of pure consciousness. I can't see yellow from beyond yellow, so I can't really say how intra level polarization between different forms of yellow look from a point of view where they have been transcended. But I suspect those conflicts and their illusionary nature become clear from turquoise.

"Business magnet" I laughed so much when he said that. Zero fucks given about the status of being a billionaire. Also "Love is the answer". Well said Elon.

Wise. To me, it also raises a paradox. I'd appreciate your input on it. It relates to Peterson's notion of Christ and the sacrifice of carrying a heavy burden. Does chasing teaching/changing the world lead to unhappiness? I think it depends on how do you measure happiness. There is a story about Steve Jobs, before starting Apple, he was interested in Buddhism and in search of a Guru, even going to India. He eventually found a teacher, whom he asked "Should I become a monk, or start a tech company?" His teacher suggested he use his gifts and start a tech company. Had Steve Jobs become a monk, he surely would have had deeper realizations. He surely would have escaped from the wheel of suffering and had direct realization of Experience more than he did. However, by starting and growing Apple, he "put a dent in the universe", so perhaps thousands (or millions) more people have such realizations. When you say "So, under the right circumstances and training, it's the person who does nothing in life that ends up the happiest in life.", in some situations, could it also be that such a person is also the most selfish and unethical? I think there is a balance between being and doing. I get that you are hammering on one side of that polarity and shouting WAKE UP. Yet at the same time, it is a fact that the vast majority of humans currently alive will not wake up. There are a huge number of utilitarian games going on which unevenly distribution resources and wisdom and awareness. So is personal happiness the highest value? Would you be willing to sacrifice all of your own realization if it meant 100 others could have that realization? Would that lead to more happiness? If you had such a magical button you could push, would the unhappiness of your personality's conscious selfishness force it to push the button? We personally don't have to be "successful", but until AI, someone does. I'm typing this on a laptop that was made by slave labor wages in China, using electricity which brings destruction on the planet. Someone has to keep the show running and evolving, someone has to do the teaching, and "success" is one way of loosely measuring that progress. Those Chinese workers' suffering and doing and "success", builds a foundation for my progress. Perhaps my progress will in turn build a foundation for reducing their suffering and doing. To me, that is part of a high interpretation of Peterson's message, and it's relation to meaningfulness. Something like, it feels meaningful to carry the burden of progress, so that over time, more and more individuals will have the direct realization of Experience. Be Christ carrying the cross, because it will result in more realization, maybe yours, maybe someone else's. That sacrifice too feels meaningful. I think the two of being and doing (or becoming) are very closely linked. Thoughts?

Honestly, thank you for the reply Leo, I thought about it a lot and have gotten some new insights and connections which I had never made before. Firstly, I was a bit surprised at what you replied to. I did not say “JP is yellow”, nor does that describe my position. My message had been meta, about context, about (at least mentally) taking a step back from my own yellow mental map making and saying “Oh, that’s interesting, this necessary project can’t ever succeed, the result of this necessary project (a better map / more functional human), will always only be a better map / more functional human. There are ways of being beyond creating better maps / becoming more a functional human.“ To which you responded with something like “Let me tell you about my sophisticated map and how to be a more functional human.” Well, yes Leo, your map is very sophisticated, and you seem to be a functional human with a strong identity, teaching other people how to be functional humans with strong identities. My point was deeper than that though. It is about taking my entire map and folding it into a paper plane, then throwing it off a cliff. Then celebrating in delight as I watch the spectacle of millions of paper plane maps soaring together together through the air. They all have different designs, but that’s ok because they are just experiments tailored to different niche’s. Some planes are fast and streamlined, some are slow gliders, some are fancy and complex, some simple. Some catch the thermal updrafts and soar high, some slice with ease through the wind. Some just crash and tumble to the ground, perhaps they had a serious design flaw, or perhaps their design just didn’t match a sudden change in wind at that particular time. I was wondering why you didn’t respond to the meta context at all. I was self reflecting… a soft spot for JP? what would that mean exactly? Then thought, wow, society is getting more polarized. Including myself, (in the moments where I realize my map being pushed in a polarized way, rather than the ignorant moments where I think my map is answer and deny any polarization in myself while I unconsciously put my finger on the scales in some one sided direction). You suggested I might not have enough experience with true Tier 2 Integral thinking. So perhaps an appeal to authority is in order. I presume you do believe that Ken Wilber has enough experience with true Tier 2 Integral thinking. In some ways, even Ken Wilber “views green as a mistake”, at least in terms of the current way the surface structures of green have manifested. Have you read Ken Wilber’s eBook “Trump and a post truth world”? In it, one of the things he suggests is that green has failed it’s leadership role so badly that the entire spiral has gotten jammed up behind it in a giant car crash. He suggests there are two ways forward. Either going through broken green to yellow and above, or rerouting around broken green to yellow and above. After reaching yellow, it is natural for top down healing to begin for the entire spiral. So part of the realization I had from your reply, (or more like me somewhat comprehending of Ken’s eBook), is that perhaps in the USA, there are currently multiple parallel pathways being built that lead to yellow and above, and that these pathways might look quite different and have necessary antibodies around them saying “This is The Path forward”. There is currently a strong tendency for people in the US to be polarized towards one of these two experiments that the universe is running. It isn’t only vertical polarization, it is also horizontal. Blue V blue, orange V orange, green V green, can it be yellow V yellow? How would yellow even know? It can't see itself. There are so few yellow maps in society, so there is a need for people to strongly push for some specific yellow map to exist and gain a strong foothold. Both inside themselves, and in society in general. Again, I am not saying “Jordan Peterson is yellow”. I am saying it’s possible that an additional parallel pathways to yellow/turquoise might be in the process of evolving, which looks different to the established path, making it hard to comprehend or forecast exactly what is happening. For example, Peterson describes one of the mystical (non dual?) experiences he had. When asked “Do you believe God exists?”, he spends 20 minutes giving an incredibly nuanced answer, “it depends on what you mean by God” and “I act as if I believe god exists”. What is his ACTUAL belief? What is he consciously trying to communicate? What exactly is it that he is intending to do? What needle is he trying to thread? When he says “there are infinite number of ways to interpret the world, but only a small number of functional ones”, what exactly does he mean by functional? Functional for what exactly? To achieve meaning? Meaning for what exactly? What is the ultimate meaning? Could it be realizing God? Replicating Jesus’s realization? I think there is a good argument that can be made that Jordan Peterson’s entire purpose is to guide people to a mystical path of Christianity, doing so by building a blue/orange foundation as a launch pad for continual growth and eventually replicating the mystical states of Jesus’s realization that Peterson himself had an experience of. The question is, how aware is he of that? Again, I don’t think spiral dynamics is enough to describe what is going on with him. But even the best map is just a map, it doesn’t actually describe the situation, it just maps it, it creates a nice story, and while it is necessary to be devoted to making one, it’s also kind of a distraction from the mappiness of the map, especially if it is a sophisticated and beautiful map, and especially if there is a need in society for such maps, it is so easy to believe that nothing exists outside of what your identity is able to take into account. So again, all of what I am saying is just a map, and it is curious that I have a need to build such maps. It's completely necessary, and also a complete distraction.

It sounds like you have been growing and learning new things and wanted to share it with your friend. Both of those are beautiful. Seems to me that there are a paradoxical things going on in your situation (and most situations), between accepting him as he is, and wanting to change him. Accepting his limits, and inspiring him to grow. (these exist within ourselves too, and in our actions). In a way, it is predictable that he would respond in that way. You basically said to him "Here is a new hierarchy system I found! Not only have you not mastered the orange hierarchy, there are a bunch more to go after that, you are so unevolved that you don't even realize how unevolved you are. But I know, because I am more evolved than you." Spiral dynamics is a growth hierarchy (not a dominance hierarchy or status hierarchy), but at orange he will still interpret it as a status hierarchy. He won't realize that it measures growing compassion and growth beyond the need for orange status. Your interaction opened a door for him, AND it was also super insulting. If he is ready to grow it's might be an incredible gift, if he isn't ready to grow, it might be a painful idea that he has to reject. Both of those are true at the same time. When you go to school, everyone knows "there are people above and below me in terms of education depth". As adults, we don't know this. We think everyone is equal, and in a way they are, while in a different way also not being. Perhaps in a future society, the concept of "adult education" and "continual growth" will be so widespread that it will be self evident. In that case, it wouldn't be a shock to people, because from birth they will grow up in a society where it is self evident that people can process the world in completely different ways (including greater or lesser vertical depth), and such shocking news about ones own ignorance won't have to be delivered by a friend through a podcast, to a receiver who might not be ready for it and might not have the tools to do anything productive with it. If you are growing, and you went through a major shift, perhaps you need to find new friends, new beliefs, new clothes, new hobbies, new ways of being a human. Some of your old vehicles for those things might grow with you, and some won't. You can invite them along, just don't be surprised if they are unable to follow. This might have been hard for him to deal with. You had a need (to share your new discoveries, or to interact with him more deeply, or for more authentic connection and interaction). He wasn't open to you telling him he was unevolved. Then you told him you knew in advance he was to unevolved to even realize how unevolved he is, despite you explaining it to him. You are so much more evolved than him, that you knew in advance that he would be too ignorant to understand your wisdom. In my experience, when I have said things like that to people, it has been about me and my own issues. About me wanting to create a sense of certainty in myself "They rejected the idea, but that doesn't make it invalid... right? The idea and my connection to it are still valid right? ... screw it I need to assert it out loud to make sure it's real, if I say it, and they can't rebut it, then inside my head my idea's win and I don't have to be scared that they are wrong". A lot of this is in the framing. You could also have said something like "Thankyou for listening to my ideas. They are new things I am experimenting with. I don't know if they are right, or how valid they will be. Please feel free to reject it if it doesn't make sense to you, or to point out things which you think I might be missing. I am really trying to learn and grow, and I want to share you with that. This all sounds so arrogant, but that isn't the place I'm coming from, actually as a friend and human I respect you so much that I'd like to either get your input and maybe change my own mind, or if there is value and truth in it, then to show you something beautiful I found and perhaps we can both grow from it." However, it can be very hard to speak like that with someone who doesn't self reflect enough to process it. It might sound wishy washy to them, so maybe you saying "I knew you would react like that" also has a certain wisdom to it. You tried. Good for you. I'd suggest reflecting on your motives for trying, and for interacting in the way you did, then reflect on how to better meet your needs in the future, perhaps that includes finding new friends who are on your level so you don't have to change them. That way, you can accept them the way they are.

@Serotoninluv It's curious how we want to have certainty in our interpretation of what things mean, and of how to structure our identities. I definitely feel this need. To create a coherent story and map of what exactly Jordan Peterson is and means for society and myself. It's something like, feeling as if The Answer is in more personal integration and coherence. If only I could have deeper understanding, rid myself of ignorance and create a more accurate and beautiful map... And yet, spiral dynamics is a map, a powerful meta map, but a map none the less. There are plenty of other meta maps, including much more comprehensive ones. For example Ken Wilber's AQAL meta meta map, which includes spiral dynamics as one component. So there is a (necessary?) illusion in saying "Ah ha! I know how Jordan Peterson (or any person/topic/paradigm) fits into the bigger picture. Here is my beautiful map. The coherent and non contradictory map, or at least a transitional map on the way to the eventual coherent and non contradictory map!" I don't think that coherent destination can ever be reached, eventually, at some point in people's growth, the whole project might be appropriately given up. Safe in the knowledge (new illusion?) that collectively, all our maps will balance each other out and cover the blind spots and flaws in any one individual map. It's all just an illusion, but a necessary illusion, because if we didn't have it, why would we even invest in creating detailed maps in the first place? With Jordan Peterson, if we just use spiral dynamics and attempt to conceptualize reality through that, you seem to suggest that he is blue/orange. That the green professor and host are attempting to pull him up to green, but Jordan Peterson is resisting the green professor's greater depth. That is one framing of a set of facts. (I honestly don't know to what degree that framing is accurate or useful, maybe much more than I believe, maybe much less than I believe. I do have a position on that framing, but (on a good day at least), I am learning to hold that position lightly, as a stance I'm taking, rather than be believing my stance is actually representing reality.) I'd like to offer a different framing for contrast, as an experiment to try on. The framing of Jordan Peterson being yellow, and it is the green professor that is resisting what he is saying. That Jordan's "Free speech" isn't about "individuals expressing themselves", but rather about "different paradigms interacting". In a way, yellow makes "free speech" space in ones mind for all the voices, at a depth at which green doesn't. (green makes room for the love and the compassion and kindness, but green can't yet afford to allow lower and less developed voices, the anger and greed and darkness, those are marginalized and excluded and often pushed into shadow. green has to marginalize those voices until it is strong enough to allow them to speak in a functional way). In this framing, yellow Jordan is consciously acting orange and blue, rather than him being only orange and blue. In this framing, Jordan is actually more inclusive than the green professor, because he realizes the futility in green's project of "including everyone". We have to try very hard, but no matter what, some people will be left out. Some people will suffer. Green just claims they have the compassionate high ground and says "you need to be more inclusive like us", while blaming ALL of humanity's inequality and exclusion on those selfish uncaring people and systems who don't know any better, rather than a degree of deep inequality and suffering and injustice always remaining, and rather than self reflecting that as green they are some of the most privileged people on the planet. That inequality is so deep in the structure of existence that society must eventually move on to bigger things even though inequality and including all marginalized groups is not solved, because past a certain point it is not technically solvable. That the deeper answer lays in creating a functional society whose primary purpose is to create functional pathways for growth. Which then more effectively tackle green's goals of reducing inequality and exclusion, orange's goals of reducing irrationality, blue's goals of reducing immorality, red's goals of reducing powerlessness, purple's goals of reducing lack of safety. So yellow Jordan is saying to the green professor, "You are not the 'good guy', neither am I. We are tasked with the horrible project of using our immense and unearned privilege in a way that serves the greater good of all, knowing that no matter what we do, some people will always fall through the cracks terribly, then looking those poor souls in the directly eye and saying "I'm sorry, you can't be saved, trying to save literally everyone will just result in more suffering, there is no other way, I am sorry" while tears stream down your face." While Jordan simultaneously reprimands the green professor for using his privilege to be self congratulatory about how kind and compassionate he is, and reprimands his illusion of how inequality and exclusion could be ended if only everyone enacted his great kindness and vision. So yellow Jordan isn't saying "Let's go back to blue Christianity", rather he is saying "We need to examine the entire way society is run, not just changing the paradigm, instead changing the context in which paradigms evolve. Flawed and broken Christianity is a pathway which has such a strong philosophical foundation that we can tweak and modify it for use as a conveyor belt to get people from beige at birth, all the way up to yellow as adults (and perhaps one day to realizing God), rather than the current experiments with even more flawed and broken neomarxist frameworks which seems to cause people to get stuck at green." In this framing, it is yellow Jordan who is reaching out a hand and saying "Shall we transition to a higher level of being?" while the green professor is currently unable to take it and believes the (necessary?) illusion that Jordan's views are beneath him, rather than above. Again, I'm not making the claim that this is Jordan's position/intention/effect. I'm just offering it as an alternative framing of what his position/intention/effect MIGHT be.

I understand. I kinda jumped into the middle of an ongoing discussion, so it makes sense that we would initially talk past each other a bit. You said "we fail one's self" regarding the people who die without ever realizing the paranormal reality. I think that is true, most people fail to do what is necessary to have such realizations. At the same time, I think society / external systems also fail us. At the moment humans are not given a "free ride" to enlightenment, it is "personal responsibility". But that isn't necessarily how society will be forever. In the West, virtually no one starves to death, virtually no one is illiterate. Virtually no one dies in child birth, (including mothers). 20,000 years ago those things were not provided by society, the systems, technology, culture, education system etc etc etc wasn't equipped to create widespread guarantees of those things. There was a large necessary "personal responsibility", some people succeeded, some failed. Now, a large degree of that responsibility (but not all), is being handled by systems/technology/laws/culture etc. Fast forward another 20,000 years, I think there is a good chance that "having a non dual realization" could be something that society experiments with guaranteeing as a right. Then people like Thanatos13 will be less likely to have a "failed" experience with mysticism, because humanity will have figured out more of the bugs in the system and will more successfully be able to present situations in a way in which a much higher % of people will more likely walk quite far down the path of mystics. It says "moderator" under your avatar in green...? Not sure what that means. Either way, sorry for the holy status I wrongly attributed to you!

Sure. (and nice poetic twist by the way). (and hello by the way, nice to meet you, *deep bow to the moderator(and fellow human)(and to everyone else on here, inc Leo et al)*) I was using Thanatos13's "fail" as terminology. From my perspective, mysticism uncovers the limitations of 'knowing' for some people, but does not uncover the limitations of 'knowing' for most people. From all the people in the world who have some sort of introduction to mysticism, or interaction or relationship with mysticism, I am fairly certain the vast majority won't end up experiencing the limits of knowing that it points to. Out of all the people who ever do some some type of meditation, what percentage ever realize a non dual experience? What I was trying to say, was that even if Thanatos13 thought that mysticism "failed" him, that isn't exactly surprising (in an orange statistical sense), and doesn't mean there isn't something about it which can be ... ermmm.... mystical.