PepperBlossoms

The jehovah's witness groups don't want their members talking to non-members because those non-members could try to get them to reconsider their beliefs.

Another thing she said is that you are okay at "death" as long as you believe what Jehovah wants you to believe and I asked if she knew what all that was that she was "supposed" to believe and she said she didn't know everything and I told her that she better figure it out. It is interesting to question people on their religion to see where the assumptions and reasonings are. It is up to each person to believe in what they want or to change their mind as I have learned questioning doesn't necessarily do anything and may make them feel even more religious than before.

Another thing that I questioned my friend was why the heaven had to be on Earth and if there were heavens on all the other planets and galaxies too? Why the bias for Earth? And where the line was drawn between Earth and outer space.

Well said. I should have said that! haha.

One of my bff's is part of the Jehovah group. She says that when Jehovah is ready, there will be Heaven on Earth and everything will be perfect and we won't have to worry. I asked if pets will get to go and she didn't know. I asked why there is a preference for humans over other animals and she didn't know. I asked if we die on Mars, how will we get back to Earth or if we are on a spaceship or in some other galaxy, will we be instantly transported back to Earth and she didn't know. I asked how we would recognize others and what would they look like when we are on the Heaven and she didn't know. She said that there is an apocalypse coming and that the bible predicted it such as storms, poverty, etc. and I said that that stuff has always been like that and she didn't have anything to say. I asked how she could trust the bible when none of the stuff could be proven and she just said that you just have to have faith and that she had faith and all this great stuff happened to her and via the experience she has had, she believes. She said I was asking great questions and she didn't have the answer to any of them. I have another friend who is a Christian and I brought up how we can't prove anything that the bible says and she says that she too has faith and that from her experience she thinks God is real. She did bring up that God was telling her to think poorly of people who do not believe in God. I brought up concerns about all the hate/discrimination/violence/threats in the bible to my mom who is a Christian and she never budges although she has decided to quit going to the Catholic church because of the priests raping/molesting kids. It is okay for them to think this stuff when it doesn't hurt anyone but when it does hurt people, that is where the line is drawn. To be friends, you kinda have to keep the topic away from religion but it can make it awkward and feel like you aren't on the same page. I feel like if we bring up religion, I end up trying to question their argument/justification for believing in the religion and that feels like awkward tension and I just end up leaving their house at that point. I guess it takes more practice and you have to be very careful with your conversation so to keep it amicable.

Remove notions of left, right, and research and consider this - We seek to validate what we think we know while also looking and stumbling upon more information and explore that. It would be nice to listen to all opinions neutrally but we only have so much time and money and so we pick and chose. There is research in all different types of areas as well as all different types of things constitute research. People using this website could consider it for research. Some research will be in favor of validating "right" views and some will be in favor of validating "left" views. It will also depend on who is funding the research, what their current viewpoint is, and what results they are trying to get. It could be that people who tend to go into research careers are already biased towards the left. When I think of left and right, I tend to associate right with wanting to keep info the same and left of wanting to explore new ideas and hence it would make sense that research would dominate in the left field as right would not be seeking anything new. We create the rules based on what we think will work and what we think is important. However, we can get blinded by "how things are typically done" and "existing structures" that it takes away from the whole purpose of the thing and can make us want to throw away the structure or significantly change it because it is not performing for how it was intended. I am not fully aware of German politics but just as a guess - It could be that the deemed bad political decisions are seen as bad in terms of finances but good in terms of the environment and social factors and the legislature values the environment and social factors more so than finances. However, I can see that no concern for finances could be threatening to the entire system and it needs to be considered as well. One would want to consider all 3 of those things (and a bunch of other things). Holistic systems thinking is key. If one has no care for the environment and social factors, the place may have more crime, more poverty, may not be as nice aesthetically and health wise, etc. I thought that Germany had quite a bit of political parties. That can be a problem if speech is being silenced. Is the speech that is being silenced done so because it is inciting violence/hate?

Vegan with a daily B-12 and iron vitamin and occasional protein powder Feels good in terms of not eating animals

You are not alone. So many people's parents are like this. You just have to notice it and not get upset about it and just not rely on parents for stuff like that as they tend to not be interested in changing or listening especially when they are old fashioned which means "wanting to stay the same" and not consider anything they haven't already considered.

Noticing detail and nuance allows for deviation from structure and norm. The social game and putting on a façade of being super sweet is ironic in that one can look like a ### when they are not responding appropriately to the situation. People who play the "everything is happy" social game don't see everything or don't show that they see anything other than happy stuff. They care so much about how much they meet the social game's norms and that they look good that they aren't caring about how they are making others feel or looking to see if they need to act or respond differently because of the situation.

Some women fear toxic masculinity. Some are annoyed by it. Some are attracted to it. Some don't even recognize it. Some think it is normal, some don't. And others will have other opinions that are something else. All women do not think the same. Also, as people develop/experience new things, they tend to change opinions of things. People will also have different definitions for what is considered toxic masculinity. It will also vary from situation to situation as how someone reacts. Someone may fear person A's toxic masculinity and may be annoyed by person B's toxic masculinity.

Older English writing can be overly wordy and sometimes hard to interpret what the writer had meant (but yes today's writing can be the same). I am wondering if the ego, in wanting to show off how many dictionary words it knew and images it could create, drove this type of speech. It was an art yes, but also a way to show off what it could do with language. Like, hey look at me, look at how amazing I am at this wordy language. However, we grew out of that as it was inaccessible for understanding and being on the same page and took a long time to read and grasp. I guess also what we deem beautiful, desirable, and practical has changed over time as has other things. It was trying to push the envelope and explore various speech methods like how painters, musicians, philosophers, etc. do as well. (Yes I am finding that my ego is operating similarly - hey look at me, look at all these ideas I am coming up with.) How the ego wants to show off transforms over time.

When you apply oneness to your relationship and realize as you are kissing that you are kissing yourself, how did you react to that? We are talking to ourselves, getting angry at ourselves, falling in love with ourselves, attracted to ourselves, scared of ourselves, etc. It is interesting how we can't read each other's mind or feel each other's feelings other than by having to imagine what it must be like. BUT at the same time, can we even read our own mind? The thoughts, images, and feelings seem instantaneous and then pass by and evolve. "To read a mind" may be assuming something is static like a book with text. We just experience what we do. I guess to read the mind assumes we are separate from the mind instead of us as the mind. We read ourselves like how we kiss ourselves.

When we are having a psychedelic experience, the context, thoughts, and images during the trip can seem like a different place/event and it is not till we come out of the trip or look around some more and then see that everything was "in our head" and it goes back to how it was before the trip. The same goes with being in a dream when asleep. Do you think that reality is already like this? That what we experience now could be like the psychedelic trip and we will come out in some other context? But yet there may possibly be no "right baseline context" and stuff could keep on warping to new contexts with no way to tell which one is the right one - other than it sure feels like the one I have experienced the most (and right now) is the "right" one but just because something appears to happen frequently doesn't necessarily mean "correct." It is interesting how we can be feeling a certain way about a situation and then we may get some new information and then think we were deluded and see it totally different. What we see now tends to feel right, especially when we are calm. I can see that emotions in a psychedelic trip may possibly be telling us that what we see is not right?? But also may not mean that at all. Do you think every moment is delusion? The movie 1408 did a pretty good job related to this concept. It kinda reminds me of twisted shapes with inside and outside part of the same plane.

There's no contact either because that implies that there was a separation.

Wow. Y'all are good. haha good one. "What" is a statement. What is a statement? A question is what we say it is. It may mean that we are seeking for information but yet what is information? If there is none then why are we seeking? Who is seeking? What is seeking? Who is we? What is who? Nice one that really sums up the whole funniness of chasing knowledge or chasing anything. But yet we can also chase nothing and it is still chasing. It may mean that me the dolphin may get treated better by me the human. Haha unicorns. To visualize where the visualizations go and then see that itself is a visualization. To visualize one level and to visualize levels within levels. To visualize visualization visualizing visualization.

To do nothing is a reaction as is doing something. What is reaction?

It may not feel so great to fuck society up.

Ask him to explain why it is a bad idea to buy healthy groceries.

Yeah I guess no one can really answer that. ha. I feel like we still come up with justifications for stuff to not be real. Like - oh I thought that 25+25 = 40 and that was real to me but then I did it again and then I thought that 25+25 = 50 and that the 40 answer was false, or not real, or mistaken, or lazy math ha. Like the notion of imagination/fake/delusion exists in the same way that the notion of real/accurate/true exists. It is like black and white where real and imagined define each other and can't exist without each other. Imagination seems to be a paradox. Imagination is the notion that it is imaginary and separate from reality but yet the imagination itself is part of reality otherwise it wouldn't be happening. Imagination is true and real in that it happens even though the judgement/label applied to it meant that it did not (or not in the way we thought) - maybe we say it is imagination, when we mean the context was different from what we were thinking it was. We say something is imaginary when it doesn't fit the context/story of whatever we are experiencing now. Everything is always judged/experienced from the perspective of the now and the now tends to be considered real. We are seeing whatever we are seeing and what we see is real but what we see changes/evolves and when there is contradiction from one sight to another sight, we explain that contradiction by saying it was imaginary but I guess we could also say it was real but it changed/morphed from then to now. One could be on team imaginary and say everything is imaginary, delusion, and can't be known and likewise one could be on team real and say that everything thought/experienced/being is real. Even if everything exists on the same level, in the same oneness, we are still making up distinctions and creating our own hierarchies, stories, perspectives, judgements, comparisons. It can be real for something to not be real and it can be not real for there to be any real.

Another weird one is the "edge of infinity". Is there no edge or form? Infinity is infinity - it can go on forever. In that sense, there is no outer wall keeping stuff in or keeping stuff out. But if we look at "solids" which there seems to be a boundary between the "solid" and the "gas" even though the boundary itself is not solid and has space from particle to particle and the particles themselves have space among the particles that make them up and so on and so on.... Hence "gravity" and "forces" creating the arrangements that then create forms/structures.

@Nahm Hahaha. But when I am at the north pole and an apple is dropped in Asia, the apple goes sideways! Nice points on imaginary or coming up nopes and yeps to try to get some sort of fit together understanding. I can see that okay, stuff has to have conditions that allow for it to happen for it to happen. @diamondpenguin You get divorced or work it out. hehe @Fearless_Bum Like me haha. It is weird how we can see stuff and then what we see is what we take as understanding like immediately. It is like, why am I accepting this? But also, how do I not accept it when it? @mememe Interesting questions - I wanted to attempt them hehe. (may not be the best/right response but it's an attempt) Why is order contained in chaos? Chaos and order define each other. Chaos is a type/degree of order and vice versa. Chaos and order are opposites/part of a spectrum. We could have orderly pieces in a chaotic arrangement as well as chaotic pieces in an orderly arrangement. How can structure exist without matter? Matter put together creates structure. Matter is made up of structure which is made of matter made of structure. If there was no matter, there would be no structure. Matter will always have some sort of structure that it is arranged as otherwise there'd be no notion of any existence of matter. How can stuff like life exist if matter is inherently lifeless? Stuff is both lifeless and full of life at the same time. Stuff has different capacities for what it can do. When you have certain things that are put together in certain ways, it allows for things that otherwise it wouldn't have/do. We may not really dead or alive (labels) but rather just is. Stuff just changes from one form to another. Why does space as an aggregate not connect to matter as aggregates? Matter has voids and is full of voids and voids define matter. (Like how colors next to each other together define each other's shape) Why does it seem like zero and one not basically both one? Zero means none and one means something. None can mean something as none is a concept and concepts are something. None can also be considered not the same as something. Why can't one exist without zero? Something and nothing define each other and are part of the same spectrum as opposites. What the heck are all the other numbers standing for? Numbers stand for whatever we choose to have the number stand for.

I think I finally see Leo's perspective of the delusion of science. Science makes so many claims of knowing and describing things - "the history and science of xyz" but yet we can't ever fully know anything so it is chasing something and presenting something and getting us to think we know or are closer to knowing - - You tell someone that and then they say with the rebuttal: "Oh but this person has worked in the university or has researched in the field for 30 years or has written 10 books or whatever." They are then missing the point that it doesn't matter what the so called credentials are. We won't ever know anything other than that we won't ever know anything so credentials then don't mean anything other than what we imagine them to mean. But sure it can be fun to see what ideas people have come up with and sure I can presume that one who has studied more in an area may have more things to say about it than one who has not. It will just be basically a faith/religion that they are spouting. BUT then the hypocrisy/paradox of me writing this POST is that I am then deluded in saying ANYTHING as my opinion is basically the same as a scientist saying what their opinion is. So the mirror goes right back at me/you. (But I may have more awareness of the delusion than the scientist...)

@Leo GuraThe infinity answer seems nice. It is thinking more maximally than how I was thinking. @diamondpenguin The process of death may feel pretty painful for one. @LastThursday I've created a theory like that too - A long object could collapse inward to be more spherical because of the asymmetry that the long object creates. @Ineedanswers The worlds we imagine may exist even if it is just in your mind and my mind.. Is all of this in our mind anyway.. The division between the mind and the outer mind but is it all one mind and what about inside the head and outside the head but yet is stuff processed in the head or is the mind without limits and the processing is the entire thing itself.. or if it is one mind but I am imagining some other place, but that is part of this reality too.. so weird. Adding more based on Leo's response - Everything is allowed. The universe doesn't say no or reject anything. Yeah gravity could disappear and may not be how it is now forever. The universe is okay with gravity and also okay if there is no gravity. The universe doesn't judge. But yet we are the universe and we judge stuff so that one is tricky... We say stuff isn't allowed... so huh.. So in a way us judging stuff - could be like the universe judging via gravity going towards what it "approves" and going away from what it rejects. But yet as stuff changes/evolves, how it judges changes... there is seemingly the flexibility for anything... We can read minds - - if we develop the technology ha. We can fly... with an airplane. We can go back in time.. via watching old footage. We can live more close to forever.. if we develop robotic hearts, liver, lungs, etc.

I am noticing an apparent theme here. We may observe things that don't add up and become angry and fill with distrust. We may start to distrust everything. Distrust appears to linger regarding the vaccine, the police, the military, the government, agencies, schools, our partner, our food, history, science, religion, atheism, spirituality, the law, our parents, our friends, our mind, our stocks, our bank, our money system, our body, the news, our imagination, our books, etc. We may rebel against it, not wanting to accept it, wanting to question it, wanting to change it. Burn it down, burn down the knowledge you have as you may not be able to trust it, it may not be able to know the truth. Burn down the churches they may be ridiculous and may preach stuff that hurts others who appear to disagree. Burn down the enemy before they may burn us down. Burn down the military as they appear to bomb others. Burn down the police they appear to be killing people. Burn down the vaccine as you can't trust it. You appear to be wrong, I appear to be right. Don't tell your friends as they could tell on you. But then we may see that when we burn it down, it may be gone. We may be alone. We may have nothing there supporting us. We may have to fight alone. We may have to build up everything on our own. But wait, those theories appear to have developed cars and medicine. But wait, those morals appear to have prevented killing. But wait, those police appear to have prevented theft. But wait, those books appear to have provided funny stories and ideas. But wait, those languages appear to have aided in communication. But wait, those rules appear to have aided in structural reliability, ethics concerns, equality, harmony, etc. We may then see that we want the stuff that we wanted to burn. We may like the imagined safety, the security, the notions of understanding, the notions of reliability, the funniness, the sadness, the boldness. We may see that we don't want it but yet, yes we may want it. We may see that we are scared to burn everything down completely - scared of destruction of what appears to be here now and what that may lead to or look like. We may appreciate what appears to be here now and may feel conflicted with futility, confusion. We may move from tearing down everything to picking and choosing based on utility, perspective, gain, etc.