Apparition of Jack

@purerogue There's no point arguing with you. You've already decided in your head that someone who killed others with no reasonable cause is only as guilty as the people he killed, who were not trying to kill him.

@Rajneeshpuram Assuming that image isn't fabricated, and knowing right-wing talking points there's a chance it might be, then it's still all completely irrelevant. You do NOT deserve to be shot for protesting or defending yourself, regardless of your background. Not to mention the shooter purposefully traveled to the protests and decided to go armed. He had no business being there yet willing put himself into a tense situation where he ended up killing two people for no reason. He's a murderer.

@Leo Gura Not consciously, no, but I feel like subconsciously there's even just a little voice saying to him "Wouldn't it be great if Trump won just to see the corporate Dems squirm?" Not enough to actually make him vote for Trump, but enough to make him consider abstaining from voting for Biden due to his inner resentment. Of course the question comes to whether he's developed enough to ignore this voice or not when the election comes. I actually think as the election draws nearer and the gravity of the situation mounts (causing a raise in consciousness) he'll be forced to evaluate and eventually come around to supporting Biden in the election. Krystal too, but it's less likely with her.

@Annoynymous @Leo Gura Here's a more cynical take - both Kyle and Krystal are upset that their candidate (Bernie) didn't get the nomination, and so in order to maintain some semblance of authority they want to "punish" corporate Dems and ensure a Trump victory. Basically, when Bernie was leading in the primaries they could "smell victory" so to speak and became convinced that Bernie was going to be the nom. However, when centrists coalesced around Biden all those hope and dreams were taken away from them, and now all they have is bitterness and resentment for the establishment, rather than taking the realistic approach and working with the establishment to get their ideas passed. I see similar things happening with some (not all) leftists on Twitter. They want to hold onto some semblance of power and so equate the Dems with the Republicans and claim that not voting is some principled ideological stance, rather than the self-biased desire for power that I think it is. This is mostly happening unconsciously too, I doubt any of these people are aware they're doing this. This is just something I've observed.

Forget climate change, covid, inequality, all that other stuff, the main driving force in this election will be how people feel about race and race issues. When it comes time to vote the vast majority of the people will vote, consciously or subconscious (usually the latter), on whether they prefer races remain apart or races cooperate with each other. I guarantee you this is especially true of the Trump camp, where most Trump voters will be animated by a desire to keep the US as white as possible (yes, this even includes black and brown Trump voters. And yes, not all Trump voters will feel this way, but most of them will.) This is why Trump is so hard to dislodge, because despite all of the shitshows he dragged the US through with the outright fraud, record-breaking government shutdown, kowtowing to dictators, destruction of climate protections, and the fatally botched Covid response, too many Americans will simply support him because he represents white interests (as opposed to collective interests.) The thought processes go along the lines of "Wow, Trump is a monster, he's put the US through so much suffering, how could I vote for him?" -> "Hey, maybe he's bad but at least he's not a Marxist/Anarchist/Chinese plant (i.e. he's not against white supremacy), I think I'll have to vote for him" as the election drawers near. I guarantee you this is how it's going to go. Most people who vote like this won't even be aware that they're doing it. Race is such an utterly pernicious and stubborn marker of identity that I didn't even fully grasp how deep the attachment goes until this election. In some sense people are more attached to their race than they are even to their gender. My proposal to all this is of course to maximise Love and make working together and promoting shared values (instead of racial purity) as sexy as possible. How do we do that? I don't know, I'm not in marketing. But we have to try. An alternative to simplistic racial divisions and white supremacy needs to be presented. Otherwise we'll get at least four more years of a climate denying, aporophobic man-child running the most powerful country on the planet.

Don't forget there's also degrees of siddhis. I imagine it would take an incredibly developed and rare soul to be able to levitate, for instance, but things like being able to feel people's emotions or having intuitions of the short-term future would be much easier to develop.

@ColeMC01 Keep in mind this is from 2015. This was before Trump, the alt-right, the rise of Neo-Nazis, etc. These sorts of ideas have gained a lot more traction since then since people have begun to see the opposite is oppression / judgement.

@Lindsay Under every single post, there's a couple of buttons that say "@ User", "Quote", and "Bookmark". The "@ User" button puts the user's name at the front of your post, like how I've put your name in this post. It notifies the person you've mentioned them. The "Quote" button puts their post in a quote box that you can reply to, like this: ^ This is me replying to your quote. And finally the "Bookmark" button lets you bookmark someone's post so that you can easily find it to read later. Hope this helps!

I consider him to be the “Shaman that failed.” I actually disagree with most of his politics, but I can “sense” he has some inner sense of shamanic insight that just never got fully developed. He clearly understands that power of myth and the subconscious to dictate human affairs, and I think it was by harnessing this energy that he managed to get so many listeners because he was appealing to something deeper inside of them. The problem was his own quest for ego go in the way, alongside his paranoid fear of the collapse western civilisation and his inability to put his insights into greater context. He assumed that just because the subconscious mind is more powerful than modern society gives it credit for, then our only hope of survival is to make up bullshit faux-Christian narratives that suppress our inner beast. This is such a novice take on shamanism that it would be funny if he didn’t unfortunately use it to mislead so many of his followers down this road. Modern western civilisation isn’t going to collapse because of a few collage students wanting to be called by their preferred pronouns, if anything it’s the stuff he defends (neoliberalism, hyper-individualism, climate denial, etc) that is going to cause our future malaise. Jordan’a biggest problem is Jordan Peterson. If he calmed the fuck down a little and got into yoga / psychedelics / meditation he could actually grow a lot as a human. The problem is he’s too full of himself to realistically do that that instead he’s just going to peddle his half-baked ideas until the day he dies.

@r0ckyreed Honest question, do you hold to these beliefs in your real life? When you're faced with an in-the-moment moral dilemma, do you mentally try and go through all these different concepts in your head to find out the correct course of action, or do you act on impulse? Because to me, and forgive me for being a bit stark here, but all this kind of sounds like elaborate mental games that don't really mean much when its comes time to act.

@Gidiot That's my issue with it too, making it compulsory so soon after its been developed with no long-term trials could potentially lead to mass health problems down the line. From what I understand a successful vaccine has never been developed for a coronavirus, so if one is developed shortly for this it'll be treading whole new ground which could have unforeseen implications down the line. I think making it mandatory after two or so years of trials that show no long-term health effects could be a good idea, but otherwise I just feel it's too risky to make everyone take it.

The ideology of these talking puppets:

More like a white-worker

@Anderz Have you checked out Leo's video on marketing? It's really good. It explains how like 90% of our "true" ideas in ANY domain are actually just the result of marketing, lol. Here's the link if you haven't seen it

@Anderz Apple has always been overpriced for the technology they provide, I honestly think 75% of Apple's "genius" is learning how to market technology as sexy and avant-garde rather than as something for nerds and bureaucrats, and hence being able to charge premium prices for their products. I don't want to diminish the real technological achievements made under them though, they clearly have technological innovation, but most of their success comes from marketing IMO.

@diamondpenguin Because mentally he is 13

"Progressives may benefit more from a Hitler victory. Here's why"

@LfcCharlie4 Be careful of self-fulfilling prophecies tbh. Saying "yeah Trump will win even though I don't like it" means you'll be less likely to put in the effort to actually change this. A Trump victory isn't a certainty at this point, nor is a Biden victory. Every moment the future is in motion. 76 days is an eternity in the current state of politics.

This is why a second Trump term is so dangerous. It's not only another years of incompetent, racist, climate-denying neoliberalism, but it also fundamentally shifts the conception of American politics from being based on reason and consensus towards being based on ego, manipulation and falsehood. A second Trump term change's Trump's presidency from "temporary reactionary embarrassment" to "future of American politics from here on out." We cannot normalise fascism and incompetence in the White House.

I've since learnt that at this point in history American politics is simply way too chaotic to make any sort of meaningful prediction until the actual event happens. As it stands now, the chances of Trump winning through fraud, Trump winning legitimately, or the Dems winning legitimately all seem equally possible to me. My approach to the situation is to not think too much about the potentials of it and instead just work tirelessly to ensure a Dem victory in November, come hell or high water.

These things aren't mutually exclusive though, it's often through a desire to manifest ideals into the world that people are motivated to survive / struggle / work hard enough to get through the hardships of devilry, social ills, corruption, etc. If all you give people is cold, logical ways to maximise individual survival at the expense of some higher truth to strive towards, people will abandon you when hardships inevitably arise. This is a huge part of why technocratic neoliberalism is proving so ineffectual at staving off fascism / radical communism etc. This worldview has no ideals beyond "let's use technology to make as much money as possible." And to be fair, technology has progressed rapidly over the last 30 years or so, so credit due where credit is due, but eventually people will get sick of just being marketed new ways to solve problematic minutia without being given any sense of higher truths to strive towards, both collectively and individually. Giving people an optimistic glimpse of what could be possible, whether that's through art, discussion, prefigurative politics, debate, etc. grants people a sense of "grounding" and provides them with hope that a civilisational downswing is only temporary and that brighter days will still lay ahead. Otherwise people will turn to corruption and devilry when they feel their world closing in too much and start lashing out, which obviously negatively affects everyone's survival.

"Those who want to live, let them fight, and those who do not want to fight in this world of eternal struggle do not deserve to live." - Adolf Hitler, a man who committed suicide after failing to win a war and plunging the world into an era of darkness

https://reddit.com/r/MensLib/ Despite the redpill-sounding name, this subreddit is the exact opposite and instead focuses on building up a healthy attitudes towards masculinity, self-esteem, being inclusive of women, minorities, LGBTQ+ people, etc. There's some truly fantastic discussions there and if you're a guy (or not, hehe) struggling with feelings of insecurity, dating, emotional issues, a role in life etc. then there's a lot of great stuff to be discovered there. Highly recommended.

Just get a phone case and a screen protector and it'll survive 99% of all drops. As far the products themselves go, I don't like how restrictive they are customisation-wise and honestly don't see how they're any more "intuitive" than Microsoft of Android products. In fact I often find them less intuitive. With that being said, the privacy concerns are a real issue for me and I basically see Microsoft and Google as being an open-door to whatever security agency wants to snoop around my personal info, so I use an iPhone for that reason alone since Apple seems to take privacy a little more seriously (I doubt they're that much better honestly.)

As with all sentiments, there's some truth to these feelings. In a sense we have gone too far away from nature and too many people do feel alienated as a result. The problem is going overboard with it and then claiming everything would be perfect if we just gave up cars and electricity and the internet and just lived off the land like our ancient ancestors did. I think the right solution would be to take that nugget of wisdom and then integrate it into the understanding that technology is here to stay. One of my favourite current literally / aesthetic genres is Solarpunk. The idea is a future envisioned where an understanding of ecology and the natural processes of earth are integrated with and moderates our use of technology and urban planning, which to me is the sort of future we should be aspiring towards.