Apparition of Jack

A lot more goes into running an effective charity than just handing out cash to victims. You need logistics, you need to make sure the money is being spent on the right things, you need to make sure you’re paying for long-term problems not just short-term problems and so on. This recent attack on the charities smells like nothing more than a way to deflect blame for inaction on the bushfire crisis to charities that really shouldn’t be the ones to be doing the government’s job in the first place. Also Sky News is trash. It’s the Fox News of Australia.

@Bno Let me ask you something Bno... what evidence would convince you that there was Russian interference in the 2016 election and that there was collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia? What does this evidence look like to you?

It sounds like your question is whether you should get the loan or not - everything else you've figured out (direction in life, career choice, place you want to move, etc.), and now it's just a matter of actually manifesting them in the real world. I'm no expert at all on personal finances or loans or anything like that, so don't take this as professional advice, but it sounds like your intuition is right and trying to stay where you are and slowly etch out enough cash to move will only hold you back in the long term, compared to if you took the loan and dived right in. Yes, repayments are a bitch, and I understand the desire to not be shackled with debt, but at this point either option is going to involve some degree of suffering (monotony of staying where you are and putting your life on hold vs. moving to a new city but having to pay back a loan.) The only question is which suffering will you prefer? And to me it sounds like the repayments will be the lesser burden to suffer, because even though you'll have to make sure you pay them back every month for a couple of years, the psychological rejuvenation of being in a new place, meeting new people, seeing new sites will be the motivation you need to stick with it and put up with the repayments. Besides, it'll help you get your degree quicker, which'll ultimately improve your money prospects down the line. The alternative is to stay where you are and save up enough cash to get there yourself, but this has its own set of risks as you might be made redundant, you might get stuck in a rut as you say, and so on. Leo talks about following your intuition when trying to create your life purpose, and this may be one of those times you have to listen to it. This is just my two cents anyway. I'd like to see others' replies because I don't really have much experience with these things and maybe some others have.

@Bno I don't know what to say dude. Your concerns have like 30% truth to them but then 70% hair splitting. Yes, it might make sense for progressive voices not to go after Tulsi Gabbard too hard if they want her supporters to vote for Bernie, but she is such an obscure and unknown figure in the first place that making sure her supporters are on board with Bernie is like a British war cabinet minister worrying about if British communists were on board in the fight against the Hitler when he invaded Poland in 1939. It's just so low on the list of things that could be worried about at such a time when so many other resources are at their disposal. If you're a devoted Tulsi supporter, so be it, but just from my perspective to yours, she's really not that big of a deal, and Green progressive causes could be much better served by focusing on spreading information about Bernie's policies, making sure reactionaries and corporate centirsts don't control the conversation, and so on. I am trying to be respectful here, I still agree with like 90% of what you say, I just wish you could see things from a bigger perspective.

Most education systems around the world are basically the complete opposite of what they should be in terms of creating healthy, conscious people. I would say that easily 90-95% of what you learn in school is lost effort, and in fact can set yourself up for failure in the future as you try to adjust your school conditioning with realities that don’t match them. If education was optimal, it would include things like being taught yoga/meditation, proper nutrition, how to set up a business, critical thinking, self-actualisation, how to channel your creativity, and so on. Most of the stuff we learn about maths, history, etc is mostly pointless save for the few students who end up going to specialise in these subjects, and even then these topics are straightforward enough that if you’re serious about learning them then a healthy young adult can pick them up quickly at higher education. Like, who here can say that they have genuinely retained and benefited from the majority of what they learnt at school? Sure basic writing and math skills (like grammar and multiplication) are important, but you’ve basically mastered these by the time you’re a teenager anyway. I’d say the most benefit that people derive from the current education system is simply how to socialise and get along with other people, but that would happen anyway if you put a bunch of kids together no matter what the content they’re learning is. Also the way in which most topics of taught is complete nonsense either - rote learning from books basically causes you to forget all information. (Seriously, I learnt more French in just a few months of private study than I did in 10 years of French lessons at school because the process was actually engaging and hands-on, and wasn’t just repeating phrases from a book.) Kids have to be engaged and encouraged to learn in their own ways, not assessed by arbitrary tests that teach you very little other than how to play the game of making limited facts sound good to the correct people.) In a hundred years time we’re going to look back at the way we teach kids today the same way we currently look back on how medieval people practiced medicine.

@Bno Dude, EVERYONE is a hypocrite. EVERYONE. Even Bernie Sanders is a hypocrite. The point is not to demand ideological purity. The point is to demand the best possible outcome with the tools we have to us. If you demanded that everyone you ally with never do anything underhanded or hypocritical in their lifetime, you'd be left with exactly 0 allies.

@tenta This man is such a grifter

When even a stage Orange MSNBC pundit is saying Bernie will likely be the one to win in Iowa, you know the direction the winds are blowing. The biggest threat to his nomination is the Biden voters who like Bernie's ideas but still think he's "too unelectable" because of a misplaced fear of the socialist label, since there’s a lot of them and they’d need convincing if Bernie is to have a shot at the nom. But it can be done. At this stage Warren isn't a player IMO. As people interested in consciousness and collective awakening, I think it's important that we support Bernie Sanders and do everything we can (within reason) to help seize this opportunity and move America up towards Green.

Spirituality and mental health can be co-opted by capitalist forces to avoid tackling the underlying issues that are causing social malaise, yes. I see it fairly often with certain New Age people, who use New Age teachings - as cool as they are - as more or less a simple crutch to help them deal with financial / health / family etc. stress, rather than to truly self-actualise and reach the highest states of consciousness. This is why I think it's important to have a focus on "public works" and being engaged with the world even while you're self-actualising. The conditions you live in affect just how high you - and those around you - are able to go, so it's silly to think that by just getting the right yoga technique down or sorting through your own trauma can you resolve the collective issues that are preventing you from manifesting a truly glorious life.

@Buba You can be attracted to both men and women. It's not like there's a rule that says you have to pick one or the other, lol. You might prefer the softness of a woman one day and the masculine energy of a man the next day.

@Leo Gura For what it's worth, learning about the double-slit experiment in year 11 physics is the first time I truly had my mind blown and started to question the nature of reality, so there's that

@purerogue My apologies, I didn’t read correctly. My point still stands though, acknowledging the suffering that is unique to minorities doesn’t somehow discredit the suffering of white people.No one in their right mind would say that your friends stories are unimportant just because minorities suffer in a different way. Put it this way - you might have a friend who becomes paralysed and has to live in a wheelchair for the rest of his life, but then have another friend who has to live in a wheelchair and is diagnosed with cancer. Would you then say your first friend’s suffering is unimportant? Would you stop caring about that friend? Of course not. You would still care deeply about them and do whatever you could for them. They are still in a terrible situation relative to most healthy people, and will have a lot of trials as a result. But you would also acknowledge the suffering of your second friend, including the suffering unique to him. Your ability to care about different people isn’t limited to “how bad” they have it - compassion is also an unlimited resource.

@purerogue If you’ve had so much suffering put upon due to circumstances outside of your control (and I truly feel for you, what you’ve been through sounds awful), why would you dismiss the suffering of others put upon them by circumstances outside of their control? As someone from a fairly well off background, I can’t personally understand what it’s like to come from such a place of poverty, so when you speak of your experiences dealing with it I will naturally listen to what you have to say so that I can understand better. So when someone from a black or other POC background tells you their experiences and how it’s caused them suffering, wouldn’t it only make sense to listen to what they have to say, since you have no personal experience of it? Listening is an infinite resource, and it’s one of the most powerful tools we have for self-development.

@Yog This sounds like a case of content vs structure. While it’s true that the structure of unhealthy left-wing ideologies can resemble unhealthy right-wing ideologies (collectivism, dogmatism, etc), the content sets them apart. Whereas a left wing ideology might scapegoat “the rich” or “the billionaires”, a right wing ideology will scapegoat minorities and other vulnerable groups. This obviously leads to much more dangerous and unhealthy outcomes than misplaced anger against all rich people (although I’m not defending such a position either, just that it’s less insidious.) Also, while left wing ideologies might take their opposition to certain groups too far, this opposition is built on a deeper and more nuanced understanding ou the world than right wing’s opposition to minorities. Because let’s be honest, late-stage capitalism IS a shitshow and it’s socialistic policies and thinking- though probably not outright socialist governments - that are what’s going to be needed to solve the 21st century’s problems, not reactionary fearmongering that causes more problems than it solves.

Not to mention it just reeks of projection IMO

Beautiful

@Hatfort If you're truly that worried about getting Trump out of office (which is completely understandable), then even then Bernie is still the best candidate. I agree that Trump is going to have an uphill battle no matter who is the nominee, but if it's Bernie then he's all but guaranteed the lose. Bernie's populist policies and rock-solid record make him without a doubt the Trump's toughest opponent to beat, and Trump knows this. Like, it would be very possible that a Bernie victory over trump would be 55%-45%, a total wiping of the floor, compared to a much tighter race between Trump and Biden or Trump and Warren. Bernie is extremely popular. He's a good orator who's ideas are intuitive and appeal to the majority of Americans. He's personable and has a genuine sense of integrity that every can respect, and it shows. He really is the best man for the job, and the best man to remove Trump from the White House, bar none.

If white progressives are being dismissive or patronising of the opinions of minorities, then odds are they're not fully Green and still have a Blue/Orange shadow. A lot of white progressives, especially if they come from well-to-do backgrounds, simply don't have the same lived in experience of oppression and discrimination that minority progressives do, and hence aren't as strongly committed to fighting injustice due to a lack of survival need to do so. Also, since they are from well-to-do white backgrounds, then they personally benefit from an unjust Orange/Blue system that affords them special privileges, even if they're aware that they benefit from this or not. They might be on board with redressing a lot of social ills, but not if it comes at the cost of their personal privileged position, which they might reflexively defend when they feel it being threatened. Think about the blind guy from Get Out if you've seen that movie. This isn't to excuse their behaviour though, just to point out there's a cause for this attitude, which can be addressed if they're made aware of their own shadow and shown how they would benefit from taking a more holistic approach to social justice.

@Revolutionary Think Yang is cool but his vision isn't as holistic as Bernie's IMO. His UBI is very popular, but it by itself doesn't do enough to redress wealth inequality, and it comes at the cost of existing welfare benefits, which is a bad idea. Also he seems a little to attached to the idea that it's automation that is the main source of America's ills, and while this has some truth to it there are structural issues that go much deeper than just job automation causing these problems. Bernie's vision - a mass movement of working-class Americans getting energised and involved in fighting for their rights to make America a more equitable, sustainable, enjoyable place to live - has more long-term staying power in terms of actually transforming America than Yang's UBI IMO. Plus Bernie has the experience and record of pushing great policy, whereas Yang - as successful as he is - is still a political newcomer who would very likely be stonewalled by Congress.

I've decided to delete this post. I am unconfident that the information I put fourth was helpful.

@Leo Gura Do you fear death? I remember in one of your "live awakening" videos you said you don't care if you live or die, but for some reason I am compelled to ask anyway.

A fantastic example of two people elaborating on the Green mindset vs the Orange mindset, especially towards the end of the video.

I like Rare Earth, he has good insights, but I’ve noticed he’s stuck in the secular-rationalist-materialist paradigm as far as explaining religion and mysticism goes. Still, he makes interesting videos.

What an absurd thread.

@Hypnofrik So long as science clings to the materialist paradigm, true AI will never be possible.