Apparition of Jack

Hi all, hope all are staying safe and well in these confusing times. Time for another thread. In my last thread I talked about how the effects of this virus will represent a shift away from left-brain masculine dominant being towards more right-brain feminine dominant being [or rather a synthesis of the two.] In this thread I'd like to talk about how this virus will break down a lot of our anthropocentric assumptions about the nature of the world and society. In short, anthropocentrism is the ideological assumption that humanity is fundamentally the most important thing about nature, and/or that we are essentially in total control of the world around us, using our minds and our technology. This ideology gained the most traction during the industrial revolution, when it seemed like there was no limit to the amount of control over the natural world we could achieve, compared to earlier eras when we were seemingly more at the mercy of nature. Since that time, this assumption has only gotten stronger and stronger, so much so that it's now seen as basically an undeniable fact of life for most people on earth, and especially most people in modern urbanised countries. While we have obviously had to deal with periods of drought, extreme weather, and so on in this time period, it always seemed like we had enough money and the right tools to fix these problems without major social and economic upheavals. Even the modern Green [in environmentalist terms not SD terms] parties, as beautiful and progressive as they are, still err on the side of talking about protecting nature for the sake of humanity's ability to live in it, rather than protecting nature for it's own sake. Perhaps the greatest encapsulation of this sort thinking is the 1930s Diego Rivera mural ''Man, Controller of the Universe'', which I'll post at the bottom of this thread. The problem with this assumption, of course, is that it ignores just how dependent on nature we actually are for everything [I mean, your bones and organs are just rearranged plant and animal life essentially] which causes all sorts of mass illusions about politics, society, etc. In its most egregious forms, it can be stuff like driving a big, toxic truck that shoots black smoke into the air with a bumper stick that says ''Get Lost Hippies!", or digging mines for fossil fuels that will contribute greenhouse gas emissions knowingly, and so on. In it's more subtle versions, it can simply be an alienation from the natural processes of life, instead assuming that whatever ecological problems we have can just be fixed with ''enough technology'' or ''enough funding'', rather than a restructuring of the basic ways we operate in and view the planet. So what we are seeing today, then, is an end to this very simple yet very widespread and frankly very ignorant assumption about humanity and its place in the world. For humanity to really make sense of this pandemic and to move forward in rebuilding when its done, we are going to have to wake up to the fact that we are not, in fact, ''controllers of the universe'', but instead are just one aspect of it; are part of a greater, inter-connected whole that has to always be taken into consideration when planning our politics, economics, societies, even our music, movies, and so on. And just because I don't like to leave people without anything practical, here's a basic tool you can use in order to navigate these trying times. If you find yourself freaking out, if you find yourself feeling trapped or catastrophising or anything like that, no matter where you are, simply do this - close your eyes and breathe in, being consciously aware that what you are breathing is Nature, and not, in fact, anything man-made. Visualise strongly somewhere in nature you've been. Visualise the sights, sounds, smells, animals, plants, atmosphere, and just sit there in this pleasant environement. You might do this for 30 seconds or 30 minutes, for however long it takes. Notice how despite having no government, no president, no corporations or ideology or economic system, it is in complete, loving balance. Notice that you feel calm and loved in it, despite it not granting you legal rights, or air conditioning, or delivery pizza, or anything else we take for granted for comfort. Notice that this calmness and love is a fundamental aspect of reality which can never leave you. Do this for as long as it takes to let the negative emotions ailing you wash over you, and awake with clearer eyes. You'll have calmed down and recentered yourself. Anyway that's all from me today. I think I might make these threads a regular thing, if people want me to keep posting them. They help me make sense of this situation and I hope that others can take something from them too. This is a time we all have to reach out to one another in order to pull us through it. Here's the mural BTW, don't be like these guys:

Such devilry!! Your ego can't handle being told to go against it's conditioning, so you lash out like a cornered rat and do utterly stupid things like this. The solution - go against your conditioning anyway. Accept that lockdown is what you have to do right now. Will it be frustrating? Will it be boring? Will you feel like a cuck, a loser, a nerd, a simp, for being told what to do for the good of the collective? YES! But that's precisely the point. That's Self-Actualization in a nutshell. It was always meant to be difficult, because that's where all the growth comes from. See this time as a source of growth. In fact, right now is like a fucking goldmine in opportunities to increase awareness, development, Love, etc. You'd be a fool to miss out on it

I feel this is going to be bigger than both of them.

First, I hope everyone is staying healthy and keeping themselves occupied, especially as countries move towards lockdown. This will be an interesting experience for all of us to say the least. If there was ever a chance to meditate, do art, self-actualise, start a blog, catch up on movies, now is the time. Anyway, moving onto my main point. One way to look at this situation is essentially the global shift from left-brain, Masculine-dominant consciousness towards a more right-brain, Feminine dominant consciousness. We in the modern world - and especially in the modern West - are very masculine-dominant in our outlook and activities. We value control, progress, delineation, movement, industrialism, individualism - all very masculine-heavy aspects. However, what this Covid virus will expose to us is the aspect of reality that is instead about being receptive/dependent (instead of in control), cycles of time, connection, stillness, environmentalism, collectivism - things we have either suppressed or ignored for a long time now and is now being made clear to us. Because this is the basic truth - as much as one can stock up on food, take supplements, follow the news, practice social distancing, and so on (and I highly encourage everyone to do all these things, except maybe the news part too much), there's still only so much you can do, and odds are you, or someone close to you, will end up catching the virus anyway. This is nothing to say of the collective consequences of this - despite our best efforts, we will have a recession, politics will be shaken up, old ways of thinking will die, public institutions will fail to meet the demands, you catch my drift. I'm not saying this to make you afraid or angry, quite the opposite actually. I'm saying this because the way to be able to navigate and come out of these collective processes we will go through is to get acquainted with the Feminine. Instead of compulsively reaching for the news app every time you feel a negative emotion about the virus, invoke the Feminine and do a piece of art on how you're feeling instead (bored, nervous, sad, doesn't matter). Instead of getting neurotic about every little thing you eat, invoke the Feminine and trust that so long as you are healthy and have been taking dietary precautions, your body will do the rest of the work. Instead of catastrophising about the end of days, about people fighting over scraps and nations falling into anarchy, invoke the Feminine, let yourself experience these emotions, and trust that the world is more secure than that and the way forward for humanity will be shown, so long as you let the Feminine help you let go of your obsession for control. Also, I say this a lot in my posts, but cultivating Love and reaching out to others is always a valuable and uplifting thing to do, since it binds your being to another and helps take you out of whatever internal distress you were feeling. The Feminine thrives in these connections. How you imagine the Feminine doesn't really matter IMO. I visualise her as Sophia, the Goddess/Spirit of Wisdom that the ancient philosophers, gnostics and Christians have devoted themselves to for millennia. For you it might be another Goddess, maybe St. Mary, or Gaia, or Shakti, or Tara. It might just be "the Feminine" aspect of God/Truth/Reality without having to put too much labels on it. Maybe it could be your Anima, if you're a guy and are into Jungian psychology. Be creative, whatever one appeals to you the most - however you conceive of the Feminine aspect of your True Self/God/the Universe is 100% fine if it works for you. Also, how you interact with her is up to you to. I know Leo doesn't speak too highly of bhakti but if you're so aesthetically-inclined, a shrine to the Feminine might help keep your mind grounded during uncertain times, so long as you don't start mistaking it as something "outside of" yourself (she is just You, after all. Just a part of You that you might not be familiar with). I know I have a little shrine to her in my room. Or, you might just "feel" her when you need guidance/support/wisdom and leave it at that. Maybe you could watch YouTube videos by wise women who speak with a very truthful and reassuring energy. Again, whatever works for you is good. If you do all this and let the process unfold, many wonderful things could happen. I wish to reiterate that I'm not saying any of this is a replacement to doing the nitty-gritty Masculine work that needs done, nor is it a solution to whatever problems arise, just that it is the emotional, psychological and spiritual framework we will increasingly have to get used to in order to give us the individual and collective space and security we need to deal with this thing. The Feminine is the aspect of Reality that loves, accepts and connects unconditionally, no matter what is going on on the surface. She will be here throughout this thing entirely.

Listen man, it's good that you don't need external circumstances to get you to self-actualise, but you're still very much dependent on those external circumstances regardless. You say something like WW3 might bring beneficial change in the long run, which is a possibility, but in the short-run it would involve a lot of chaos and suffering, even for yourself. You might tell yourself "I'm in a safe area, I won't be affected" or "I'm self-actualising, I don't want to get involved", but things like wars and diseases are bigger than any one single man or woman. Odds are way more likely that you will be affected, and affected for the much worse. This is what I'm saying - are you prepared to suffer through the hardships that the things will bring to the earth? Because the things you're talking about will force you to suffer those hardships.

This is Stage Orange in a nutshell IMO, everything from the desire to make a lot of money, to playing devil’s advocate and making fun of traditions, and indulging in materialistic hedonism:

@jimwell Are you prepared to die for society to evolve? Because that’s what you’re asking of other people.

@YoungSingh I have it on good authority that the virus will last 400 billion years, will mutate to turn every victim's skin into a shade of neon green, and is actually a cosmic joke sent by Loki the norse trickster god to get us all to buy overwhelming amounts of toilet paper

This has me wondering if this is the sort of language he should've used from the very start. I understand that his rhetoric of political revolution appealed to many disenfranchised people, myself included, and you can't say it hasn't given him a lot of clout, but it seems to be hitting a solid wall in how far it would take him. Perhaps if he had used the language of moderation and sensibility from the start to promote his social policies he could've picked up more of the vote. But then, at the same time, if he HAD used more moderate language, would he have built up the base that he did? Would he have managed to shift the conversation so much? Would the journalists and media even listened to him if he hadn't been so standoffish and instead tried to present himself as just like every other politician? He may have been easier to ignore. Maybe voters would've liked his ideas but not enough people would've heard of him. It's hard to say. The primaries are still ongoing so we'll see if he can get the nom.

@Roy Uruguay seems to be an oasis of humanistic ideas in a sea of a lot of dehumanising corruption. I remember one of their presidents refused to drive a fancy car and took on a very cheap salary because his loyalty was to the people, not money. I could be wrong but the things I've heard from that country tend to be positive.

@Hansu The purpose of this is symbolic, not pragmatic. Clearly no one believes that a single politician cutting their salary is going to make any significant contributions to the state budget, not even her. The point is to make people aware that politicans are paid so much in the first place, especially when compared to the people they're supposedly trying to represent. And it's working - the very fact that we're having a discussions about this is proof that awareness around politicians salaries is being generated, and the hypocrisy of earning too much while trying to serve the people is being highlighted. It alone won't do everything, but it's an important step in building the energy needed to get rid of corrupt money interests in politics and making the political process more human and holistic for everyone.

If I had to posit a guess, it would be because cubism, expressionism etc. was a reaction of the stuffy formalism of the stage Blue society it came form, and was used to express things like individualism, self-identity, one's own passion, the absurdity of excessive formalism such that was found in classical art, and so on. It's not really Green because it's not expressing feelings of love, humanity, ecology, etc and its not Turquoise because it wasn't really about mystical insights and oneness, although it may have had some Green elements to it.

To me "The Invention of Lying" is a perfect encapsulation of stage Orange attitudes religion/spirituality. In the movie Ricky Gervais' character is the first human in history to be able to lie, and so he uses this ability to "make up" stories of God, the afterlife and so on.

It exists, but I personally feel one of the problems with it is simply a matter of language - saying that White Privilege exists is accurate, but a lot of people will respond negatively to the phrase, because they don't understand what it actually means and they have will become defensive claiming that they don't experience privilege in much of their own lives, which would be accurate for a lot of them (for instance, being poor.) I prefer the term "privilege of Whiteness", since rather than saying some immutable thing about you (being white) is privileged, rather one of the factors that you possess (having whiteness) is privileged, which is a much less controversial thing to accept. White Privilege - or Privilege of Whiteness - is the phenomenon that when stripped of all other elements (class, health, etc.), someone with whiteness will be unfairly advantaged over someone with blackness, or someone of colour, and so on. Yes, a poor, working class white person might not feel privileged in their day-to-day life of poverty and financial stress, but that white person is far less likely to have a negative interaction with a police offer than the exact same person if instead they were black, for instance. Of course, many white people aren't aware of this, and due to self-bias assume that their cordial interactions with police officers are the "norm" for everybody else, so they will not accept that they get treated better than others based on one aspect of their being. Of course, the problem with getting too caught up in white privilege dynamics is that, if not met with Yellow-level integral thinking, it can become an ideology unto itself, and people can build up whole worldviews around taking down white privilege and seeing every interaction through that specific lens (when another lens may be more useful), and can create an "us vs. them" mentality. For instance, it's true that Bill Gates benefited from white privilege in his quest to become super wealthy and develop a revolutionary technology company - (would Microsoft have taken off if it was headed by a couple of black or Latino college students instead? Perhaps not, and even less likely so during the early days of the 80s and 90s when it was being founded) - but does that mean that every bit of hard work and personal insight that Bill Gates used in order to manifest Microsoft is now discredited because he had this one particular area of unfair advantage? I would say no. Bill Gates is still a visionary in his own right, ignoring the race he was born into. Honestly it's a complex subject, and I don't want to dismiss the very real concerns that non-white people have with it. It's still a very real phenomena and it does create a lot of social injustice that doesn't otherwise have to exist. Being aware that exists and and taking conscious steps to counter-act it is very beneficial, but it doesn't have to become an all-encompassing worldview too. There are greater dynamics in society, politics, economics, etc. than just whiteness vs. non-whiteness, but it is still an important one that has to be considered. EDIT: Just to clarify, the solution to solving it is, as with most other things in life, increasing consciousness and cultivating Love / Truth / Awareness and so on. As you grow and develop in consciousness, you will begin to identify with more and more of the world, and you will begin to recognise that any benefits or injustices other people experience due to their race are intimately tied with your own well-being. From that period onwards, the dynamics of privilege will become increasingly untenable to you and you will want to do whatever you can to help elevate society beyond them.

You know, I just had a thought as to might be healthy Red. A self-disciplined bouncer or bodyguard might make a good example of Red. Someone who doesn't necessarily have qualms overstepping boundaries in order to achieve their goal but isn't necessarily vindictive or vicious about. They will be restrained and respectful and will resort to violence only as a last resort, but when they do there's no hesitation is seeing the fight to its completion.

I've thought about this, and to me an example of healthy stage Red might be something like a journalist breaking the law in order to get a scoop that exposes widespread corruption. The journalist themself might be at Green, but that desire to expose the truth no matter the legal consequences to me would be them utilising a healthy Red aspect. I'm not sure what a healthy example of someone centered at Red would look like though. From the POV of our modern societies that moved up to Orange and even Green Red can seem violent and backwards, but I'm sure there are examples of it being healthy and useful. Maybe a tribal leader in India who has seen their tribe succumb to poverty and in-fighting due to exploitation / discrimination uses their wits and cunning to bring the disparate parts of the tribe together and push for their rights on the legal stage might be an example of healthy Red. I don't know.

Was the Black Death also an effort to move the world towards a cashless society?

I just watched the video to see what all the fuss is about. I really don't see the issue. From what I can tell it's poking fun at the structural prejudice against women in the high-flying world of achievers and doers, which absolutely exists. If you want to rise up in the corporate world, or become a famous director, or become a producer, or anything else like that, then being a woman is a hindrance to you. In this regard I think the message makes a fair point, since it is frustrating for the countless hard-working women out there who find their dreams harder to manifest due to structural sexism. If there's one thing you could criticise this song for it would be that it promotes code-Orange success/status/wealth as something desirable to achieve, but considering this is the pop music industry we're talking about then this is par for the course. It's really here nor there with regards to the controversy.

@Leo Gura My bad You've got me hooked on him!

Anand is at it again! He spells out in very clear terms what the 2020 election means and why billionaires don't grasp what's happening on the ground, as well as the necessity for a hybrid of both capitalism and socialism.

@LfcCharlie4 If Bernie wins the presidency, then the answer will be yes, we are ready. There’s never a perfect time for social progress to happen, there’s never a moment when all the naysayers can come to the table and say “ok, we’ve heard you, at first we didn’t agree but you’ve convinced us so now we’re on board.” There are people who are so stubborn that they will go ahead and reject Medicare for All up until the day they die. But they are an extreme minority, and most people - even many people who initially opposed these ideas - will get on board once the ego backlash has come and gone and society has integrated this new, more holistic way of being. In 10 to 20 years from now, even Republicans will accept the need for universal healthcare, cheap education, and so on. That’s the whole point of evolution. It’s always happening, even if there are hurdles along the way.

I like to look at it from Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. It just makes sense that any collective effort - in this case government - should aim to meet everyone's most basic needs first (food, water, shelter, health) so they can function and grow as much as possible, and making healthcare a legal right is a powerful tool to achieve that.

Yeah, I'd like this too. Christianity still stirs under the surface of most western countries (even if we like to pretend we've moved beyond it) so I think a Christian non-dual video would catch a lot of eyeballs.

This man should be given a Darwin Award

@Johnny5 Who says it didn't? Maybe we'd all still be cavemen beating each other with clubs without the help of psychedelics