Apparition of Jack

Pope Francis is Blue and Green

Sure. One good example is wealth / income inequality. It has been getting worse and worse every year since the 70s. This might not sound like a huge problem, but economic inequality results in very negative real-world consequences. One of the major ones is that wealth divisions become entrenched, making the rich richer and everyone else poorer. If you're born poor in a highly unequal economy, there's a 99% chance you'll die poor. Here's an article with a few other problems too. So far, the Republican response to this has been to ignore the problem. If you point out how the situation is getting worse, you are attacked for being a "socialist" who wants to "take everyone's money." This prevents the issue being solved, which entrenches poverty. If Bernie gets into the White House, he'll make this a key issue and start the process of undoing the damage it has done. Thousands of people died in the fight to end slavery long before the Civil War ever broke out. Then once it finally did, hundreds of thousands more died. All because greedy slave-owners didn't want to give up owning other people. If anything, we should be grateful that we live in a time where radical action means non-violent protests in front of corporate headquarters, and not mass bloodshed on battlefields across a nation.

Radicalism was needed to abolish slavery. Ending slavery didn't destroy the US, it saved it from internal rebellion and stagnation. The US would be 50 years behind where it is today if the Civil War had never been fought.

Honestly? IMO, it's Bernie and his movement. Remember, harnessing the spiritual aspect of life doesn't mean you come across as charismatic or likeabe (it can mean that, but you have to be careful you're not being deceived by ego too.) It means you're in touch with what's really going on around you, you're able to see greater trends, and not only that, but you're able to harness them, regardless of what the world around you is saying. The current problems in the US are complex and many-layered, and it takes guts to peer at them head-on and be prepared to make the changes needed to face them. Trump and the GOP aren't willing to do either - in fact they're more or less digging their heads in the sands and deny they even exist. Bernie and his progressive movement are the opposite however - they see the structural problems and they are willing to take them on. No one is saying it will be easy, but then nothing in life that's worth doing ever is. If you're worried about traditional values being upended, then you really shouldn't be - communities retain tighter bonds and have more cohesive support networks when their material needs are met, which is something that Bernie is willing to do (unlike the Republicans, who aren't meeting America's needs at all.) Also keep in mind that harnessing truth and wisdom will always be met with backlashes, especially when the powers of society gain their authority by denying these very things. Bernie might appear "too controversial", "too aggressive", and so on, but this is only because there are too many powerful people who rely on lies and deceit who are threatened by his swinging of the truth-sword.

Here's one of Orwell's essays I read in high school, and I think it ties in well with what Leo had to say about ideological thinking. http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/nationalism/english/e_nat Here's an excerpt: "By ‘nationalism’ I mean first of all the habit of assuming that human beings can be classified like insects and that whole blocks of millions or tens of millions of people can be confidently labelled ‘good’ or ‘bad’(1). But secondly — and this is much more important — I mean the habit of identifying oneself with a single nation or other unit, placing it beyond good and evil and recognising no other duty than that of advancing its interests. Nationalism is not to be confused with patriotism. Both words are normally used in so vague a way that any definition is liable to be challenged, but one must draw a distinction between them, since two different and even opposing ideas are involved. By ‘patriotism’ I mean devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best in the world but has no wish to force on other people. Patriotism is of its nature defensive, both militarily and culturally. Nationalism, on the other hand, is inseparable from the desire for power. The abiding purpose of every nationalist is to secure more power and more prestige, not for himself but for the nation or other unit in which he has chosen to sink his own individuality. So long as it is applied merely to the more notorious and identifiable nationalist movements in Germany, Japan, and other countries, all this is obvious enough. Confronted with a phenomenon like Nazism, which we can observe from the outside, nearly all of us would say much the same things about it. But here I must repeat what I said above, that I am only using the word ‘nationalism’ for lack of a better. Nationalism, in the extended sense in which I am using the word, includes such movements and tendencies as Communism, political Catholicism, Zionism, Antisemitism, Trotskyism and Pacifism. It does not necessarily mean loyalty to a government or a country, still less to one's own country, and it is not even strictly necessary that the units in which it deals should actually exist. To name a few obvious examples, Jewry, Islam, Christendom, the Proletariat and the White Race are all of them objects of passionate nationalistic feeling: but their existence can be seriously questioned, and there is no definition of any one of them that would be universally accepted."

@Serotoninluv This is only applicable if you're watching Trump's spectacle from the comfort of wealth and privilege though. If Trump's rhetoric has forced you to work 60 hours a week to survive or causes a gunmam to go and kill your brother and 20 other people in a mass shooting, then you're really not going to care about his entertainment value.

It's a 4chan creepypasta project for people who like coming up with that stuff to contribute to. The cryptic and official-sounding language is all part of the schtick. It's not real, however.

Yes, it will. I don't necessarily think it will end though. In fact, most people will survive, albeit with different material conditions to what we have now. Global warming will represent an unprecedented challenge to us. We've truly faced nothing like this before. But we will face it, and we will adapt to it, even if there's much uncertainty during the process. And remember, YOU imagined global warming up! Everything that is happening is just you, as Infinite Imagination, imagining things infinitely! The answer on how to solve these problems is the same answer to everything else - CONSCIOUSNESS!

@CreamCat Right. But that's just from your limited ego's POV. From an absolute POV, all of these things are relative. From an absolute POV, a sick, decaying, disgusting body is every bit as perfect and complete as the most handsome and chisled Mr Olympia's body.

@CreamCat Under what rubric is an amateur body builder's body "better" than a hikikomori's? "Better" at attracting women? "Better" at being strong? What if your goal was to land the part of a hikikomori in a movie, would it be "better" to have a body building body then?

@CreamCat Define "better shape"

@Leo Gura (apologies for getting partisan to any non-Bernie supporters reading this) How do you think Bernie could get the Democratic nomination? Right now it seems like the MSM is coalescing around Warren and she's picking up a lot of the failed centrist candidate's voters too, while Bernie is being deliberately ignored. I saw a while ago you betting someone that Bernie would win the election, and I feel silly for saying this but this is what I've been basing the last few months of my political analysis around. Now, I'm not so sure. What do you make the situation?

If you don't see the urgency at which we need to act to solve the climate crisis, that's a problem with you, not her. She may be a little bit too pessimistic, but this is a criticism from above, not below. To all the stage blue and orange politicians she's been addressing, she is way more on board with reality than they are. This isn't meant to be a criticism of you either, I'd genuinely like for you to raise your consciousness enough where you start to take it more seriously.

My biggest issue with nuclear energy is essentially that it's unnecessary. The biggest argument in favour of it is that it's CO2 free whilst also being able to meet the same demands as coal / gas etc. But you know what else is CO2 free and can meet the same demands as coal and gas? Wind, solar, water, geothermal! It's essentially a symptom of not enough consciousness when it comes to thinking how we can tackle the carbon problem. The answer is there. We all know what it is. But due to manufactured concerns about "wind and solar not being ready yet" (they are), nuclear seems like a respectable "middle ground" between fossil fuels and renewables. And don't get me wrong, this is coming from someone who used to be on board with nuclear energy when I was younger. I used to think it ridiculous that environmentalists didn't consider it!! and all that. But as I've grown in consciousness and awareness of the energy grid, it just seems silly to me that we'd spend billions of dollars on technology that still has its own drawbacks despite being CO2 neutral instead of spending on billions of dollars on technology with no drawbacks.

@Bas Thanks for this! @Bodigger Even if you say this in jest, it's funnily enough the exact reason we need him right now

The mainstream media is pushing the narrative that Warren is the candidate America needs and downplaying Bernie and his accomplishments. To everyone reading this thread, don't buy into the lie that Bernie is hopeless. He has what it takes and truly stands for the working class. Warren is OK but ultimately will buckle to the neoliberal establishment. Fight for Bernie. Get a stage Green candidate into the White House to berate the Stage Blue and Orange kleptocrats with their hypocrisy. Drag America up the Spiral. This is how we fix society.

Mushishi is a great little anime with a very meditative atmosphere that has a lot of subtle wisdom in it

@Hansu I just wanna say you're doing a great job at growing politically and your willingness to do self-reflection is very admirable! Keep at it man!

@Leo Gura This might be somewhat of a tangential question, but do you have any friends, so to speak? People you hang out with, are close to, support, get advice from, etc. and who aren't just a part of Actualized.org?

Jordan Peterson is a good clinical psychologist, and his content on purely that can be insightful. The problem is for some reason he's decided this qualifies him to be an authority on politics and sociology, when he really has no true understanding of how these things operate. Also, because he's been hanging around a bunch of shady actors (and is likely in the pocket of some of them), he's come to severely downplay the severity of certain socio-political issues affecting the world today. For instance, his stance on climate change is defeatist and borderline denialist, which is absurd coming from someone who's supposedly worried about the conditions that lead to totalitarian governments (famine and climate collapse are great motivators for dictators to get into power.) What his psychology and mythology stuff if you like, but in terms of self-actualisation, everything else of his will hold you back.

Good luck to you and the citizens of Israel tomorrow Nivsch!

@Scholar He's a dishonest person who likes YouTube money too much. I wouldn't waste my time worrying about him to be honest.

@Scholar Tim pool is a conservative in denial

@Leo Gura Did you mean to say you don't think Trump has any chance at re-election?

Yes, I think you're at a Green-Yellow level of development. The trick for you now is to integrate Orange, Blue, Red and below so that you can move beyond Green and get really into the juicy Tier 2 stuff. Don't approach this undertaking lightly though, you'll have to be very open-minded and willing to have your ideas challenged if you really want to integrate the lower stages.