trenton

@Sincerity I'm not angry with my father. I'm angry with myself. I hate my similarities. It is my own selfishness that I am afraid of. @Schizophonia I have a few similar tendencies like going for walks and how our brains work. I just don't trust myself sometimes. A lot of it is because of how I behaved as a child. If I don't hold myself back, I am afraid I will act like that child. It makes me hate myself.

Quick update. Something good just happened. My sister got locked out of her car. I was interrupted because I was the only one who could help her. Mom wasn't answering the phone and she had the spare key in her house. I was afraid of driving, so grandma asked me to run to mom's house and get the spare key. Instead I drove. I then got mom up so she can get the spare key. Mom said I could ride as with her as she drove out to get my sister. Instead I drove again! Unfortunately, I almost hit a car and that's why I'm scared of backing out especially. Ultimately, the mission was successful though. Mom offered to drive me home, but I just drove myself again! My sister was concerned that I didn't know the way back. I went on so many walks that I know a million ways back. so mission accomplished. Onto my next task of getting a better paying job that allows me to be unavailable on weekends. @NoSelfSelf thanks for the advice.

@NoSelfSelf good point. Thank you.

@NoSelfSelf thank you. I realize that. I am just dealing with a lot of intense anger at the moment. It is leading to painful headaches and seems counterproductive. I was going to try going for a walk or meditating for a bit. I'll see how I feel then.

I have been trying to build a life purpose from scratch, but I can't do it. The life purpose course didn't help as much as I hoped it would. At least one of my highest values in life is peace of mind. I have been struggling for peace of mind through self education and emotional mastery techniques, but it was never enough.

I really struggle with making a meaningful impact. I don't see how I'm supposed to go about doing any major life purpose. I may be tearing myself apart by placing high standards on myself to be a majorly successful person who changes the world. I don't know what else a meaningful impact would entail. It makes me feel very confused about myself, my life, and my purpose. I don't know what to do with myself. I don't know how to change. I considered moving out, but there are a lot of problems with that. First of all, dad is dead and he was a horrible drug dealer who fled the state to avoid paying child support anyway. Unfortunately, I never had a good role model in my life and I felt forced to figure everything out about life myself. I still feel like I hate myself. I truly doubt the rest of my family would help me pay rent because my grandma is already charging me 500$ a month. My mom can't help with rent because she not only blew through all the inheritance from grandpa, but even was desperate enough to take money from my bank account. She managed to put all the money back after my abusive step father was evicted. It looks like mom has changed. I don't want to ask her to help me pay rent though because it feels preposterous to me. I still feel like I want to kill myself sometimes, so I tried therapy. Its a long story, but I don't act on those thoughts. In any case, I always felt that I was on my own. My relationships feel hollow because I never believed my parents to be good role models. I don't see good role models anywhere. This made me resistant to socializing with other kids at school, especially seeing how horrible they were as they bullied me, believing me to be a fa*****. I wanted to move out, but it feels very hard to do. I still work at a dead end job that pays dirt and I have no passion for it whatsoever. The closest thing to a passionate life I ever felt was playing in chess tournaments. The only way for chess to be economically viable is to become a professional player. I wanted to do this, but now I'm not sure because I feel even more confused about life. How am I doing anything significant? What am I supposed to get out of continuing college? If there were a major about becoming a professional chess player, then I would have taken it in a heartbeat, but now I don't know. I stopped at an associate degree for lack of a vision. I still feel like I hate myself. I'm having doubts about whether I want to become a professional chess player or not now. I don't know. I'm confused. I don't know what to do with my life. I always wanted to do my best to be a good person, but I have nothing to live for. That's why I try to find a higher purpose, but I never found one. I'm sorry if I make my situation sound dire or if I sound like a bit of victim. I feel like I hate my life because my intrinsic desires seem to be what causes me so many problems. There is no life worth living of your intrinsic desires make your life terrible because by default you will be a slave to extrinsic desires. Autism may also be a factor in my intrinsic desires being a problem to most people. I want to be in control of my life, but I don't know what to do. I feel lost. Sorry for being the way I am. I want to change but I keep failing.

I'm 24.

This isn't hard. You could say "teaching kids about LGBTQ." The way it is phrased falsely implies grooming.

@StarStruck dude, when you use the phrase "going after kids" you are doing the same thing as Christians and Muslims who scapegoat LGBTQ as pedophiles and groomers. It is completely wrong and is very low conscious behavior. Christians and Muslims are going after kids all the time because they want to indoctrinate them too. Some of them actually are pedophiles if you look at the sex scandals that happen in religious institutions. Do you see how stupid it is to scapegoat people as pedophiles? It could easily be done for Christians and Muslims as well. Scapegoating LGBTQ as groomers as you are currently doing is completely asinine. You clearly have no interest in being impartial on issues of grooming, pedophilia, or indoctrination.

The war in Ukraine has had many developments in the past few weeks. Ukraine has liberated 6000 square kilometers in the north eastern region, pushing the Russian soldiers back as the defensive lines collapsed. This lead to low morale as soldiers lost faith in their commanders. Many Russian soldiers are attempting to desert the military because they don't want to be there. There are many signs that the Russian military operations are failing, but nobody wants to deliver the bad news. The propaganda pretends that all of it is according to plan as the Russian military lost hundreds of vehicles. It is better to admit a mistake than try to justify it. Some civilians are rebelling against the occupying forces even though Russian soldiers were told they would be welcomed as heroes. As the lies of propaganda are unraveled, militaries begin to collapse. Of course the war is not over yet and Ukraine has lost a greater proportion of its forces than the Russian military. It is interesting to see how lies are meant to serve the survival of national pride, yet clinging to these lies only accelerates its collapse. This happened with America in Afghanistan as well because the leadership did not want to admit that it was a useless 20 year war. People who tell the truth in war are commonly punished for spreading "misinformation" especially in Russia right now. Even so it still can be seen when the media in America gives you a biased picture of America's war crimes while ignoring the war crimes of our allies. This is part of the reason why many other countries hate us and it can be a factor in America's decline as a world power.

@Razard86 when you make the lesser of two evils argument, you appear to feel that both sides are a net negative on society. If I recall correctly, Leo in his conscious politics series mentioned that Democrat and Republican is a false choice. Both are wrong for their own unique reasons with the Republican party being more corrupt.

I have come to the realization that there is no reason for love other than for love's sake. If there is a reason for love, then it is conditional. For example, if you love to reduce suffering, then you may not love suffering, and you thus suffer more. I have been trying some exercises in loving the unlovable. I felt intense feelings of distraught as well as intense feelings of hatred throughout the process. Hatred was physically painful and my heart beat started to scare me. It looks like love gives us life and hatred gives us death. Even in the face of pure brutality and the destruction of everything you hold dear, love gives us life force. It may not heal you completely if the brutality was that bad, but unconditional love seems to cut your losses. Still this is a pragmatic perspective on love to look at it in terms of what it does for you. Perhaps the wisdom of love is that it makes us more open to reality as it is. If hatred is the refusal to accept a certain reality then love should align us with truth. I am skeptical of tying love to truth because of how often it is stated in the forum. I want to make sure that this is not some form of social conditioning. At the same time reality looks beautiful to me. I noticed that my mind making explanations for things is not the work and is a form of distraction. I did this at school and work a lot to relieve boredom by making time tick by faster. It becomes maladaptive daydreaming. I have been noticing the beauty of the things around me more as my mind quiets down. I give credit to the anti depressants that treat OCD and as a side affect ruin my appetite. I feel happy and peaceful though. What happens if I love unconditionally?

@Razard86 I have to disagree with you quite a bit. The difference between the Democratic party and the Republican party is an attempted insurrection on the basis of lies. Conservative media outlets scrambled for a false equivalence at every turn. The Republican party is much more corrupt and they stand to gain from the false equivalence between left and right. Looking at politics and calling it the blame game assumes equal responsibility just by looking at the surface.

This is a good point. I felt that something still wasn't quite right. Love for love's sake is still a reason. If love just is then that makes it easier. I felt some resistance trying to love for love's sake. This is still relative love and it is easy to get lost in it. Thank you.

The death penalty is a good example. It is easy to be against the death penalty if you had an easy life. If you watched as your children were sadistically burned alive it would be hard for you to let go of your resentment. In the case of the death penalty an isolated incident could easily be the cause of a broad enough outrage to keep the death penalty. In fact I would be hated for diminishing the suffering someone felt from this intense trauma. It ruins your life to have a loved one brutally murdered. It makes sense that this would strongly distort your entire worldview. People want to have their perspective validated. This makes it very easy to take a single event that happened to you and then use it to reject other world views completely. Rape can be a similarly brutal example. Take for example a child who was sexually abused by a religious authority figure. There are several ways people could interpret the event, shaping their entire worldview. 1. The child could develop a tough kid attitude and become a life long criminal. 2. The child may reject Jesus and become a Satanist in defiance to the church. 3. People may be morally outraged and divorce themselves from religion entirely. 4. People may argue that the corruption of the church and the truth of the bible are separate issues. Therefore, church corruption does not invalidate the bible. Someone whose child was raped probably wouldn't like this argument. 5. The child might have an existential crisis and commit suicide. In any case, it is easy for someone not personally affected to look at multiple perspectives. Trauma is what makes people close minded after they take their first interpretation of an event. This first interpretation shapes their worldview and it is hard to question it for them. Tragically, questioning these interpretations may be a key to healing trauma. Trauma is a strong source of childhood vows that become the basis of your worldview.

I am noticing a pattern in my past trauma. Traumatic family situations and events commonly lead to misguided moral and political beliefs on the basis of limited experience. When trauma plays a role in our beliefs about society, it tragically serves to worsen our collective suffering due to the skewed, but emotionally charged perspectives we take. This can happen in any political issue, but especially terrorism considering how skewed of a perspective someone might have as a consequence of losing a loved one to 9/11. Our emotional pain creates a very stubborn bias and makes us close-minded. This is problematic because it not only perpetuates our own suffering as we cling to emotionally charged beliefs, but it often leads to well-meaning people misguiding others. Tragically, the most misguided beliefs tend to be the most emotionally charged, making them difficult to change. I will give examples from myself. I have had a lot of misguided beliefs and attitudes about sex, drugs, and domestic violence. I grew up in a very dysfunctional family and was led to adopt many dysfunctional beliefs as a consequence. If the pattern continues, then I likely have many misguided beliefs about child support, the failure to pay child support, gang activity, misattributed paternity (which my father falsely claimed for one of my half brothers), women, men, adultery, how families with multiple male and female sex partners operate, the psychological effects said families have on children, many other issues involving dysfunctional families and how it causes children to hate themselves for issues they have no control over, and somewhat ironically autism. Other people often blamed me for my weird behavior which they continue to do and I morally blamed myself as a consequence. One example is my initial close-mindedness to psychedelics. I was afraid of this subject because of what people like my mom and dad did with drugs. My fear of drugs was reinforced by society spreading the well meaning, but misguided black and white advice of "just say no." This attitude led me to believe that psychedelics were just as bad as opioids. In fact the government still treats them like a schedule 1 substance, making them as bad as heroin. When I eventually watched Leo's videos on the stigma of psychedelics, it helped me to heal some of my trauma. I had adopted a lot of dysfunctional beliefs about drugs because of what happened with my parents, but I am now able to look at the situation from a broader perspective. Looking at my trauma from this broader perspective helps to heal the pain. With this meta frame in mind for all of my beliefs, I would like to discuss some of the beliefs I have picked up about society as a consequence of my upbringing. A common pattern is that I assume certain things to be more common than they actually are in an effort to trivialize my trauma. The reality is that even if a thing is common, it does not make the hurt feelings go away. A well meaning person might tell you "others have it worse than you," but this does not help and it makes me feel neglected. 1. Beliefs about Child Support One belief I have about child support is that a common tactic for avoiding paying child support is to switch your job in order to avoid getting taxed directly out of your paycheck. When my dad went to court, the judge was angry that he did not have a consistent paycheck. One of the loopholes or means of exploiting our current system is to switch jobs constantly. Our current court system is very poor at detecting and punishing this kind of behavior and getting the payment needed. Is the U.S. court system better at detecting this behavior than I currently believe? I am unable to find statistics on how many fathers flee the state to avoid paying child support. My gut tells me that it is common, but thinking about this logically it probably isn't common. Here are some of the statistics I did find about child support. https://www.verywellfamily.com/us-child-support-statistics-2997994 According to this site, only about 60% of child support is paid. This partially confirms my reality that dad fell behind on child support a lot. However, the reality of my case is that dad owed hundreds of thousands on child support. He paid far far less than 60% of what was owed. It seems that I was an exceptionally rare case of a really really bad father. I used to feel guilty for loving him and having a few happy memories with him, especially since he neglected my sisters and showed favoritism toward me. Apparently, there are around 13.6 million single custodial parents in the U.S. I am unable to find how many people live with a mother and father. My gut tells me not that many, but logically I think otherwise. It is amazing how much trauma skews your view of reality. I used to beat myself up for believing that somehow mom and dad would get back together and we would be happy. The heartbreak and betrayal makes me cold and less willing to love myself and others. This is mostly due to the fear of being emotionally wounded as a consequence of loving others. I therefore lied to myself by saying "I don't care," as if I do not love them anyway, but feel hurt. It appears that my true nature is always love, but my ego wants to reject this even though it is blatantly obvious. Most of my suffering comes from denying that my true nature is nothing but pure love. Part of the problem with child support laws and the problem with our laws in general is that they have fixed fines. Fixed fines are problematic if they do not account for inflation or if they hurt some families more than others for the same crimes. This allows the wealthy to become less fearful of breaking the law due to the consequences not being sufficiently felt. https://www.justice.gov/criminal-ceos/citizens-guide-us-federal-law-child-support-enforcement The required payment for child support isn’t that much. It is only about 500 dollars a month. I pay that in rent for living with my grandma. Failing to pay child support also results in penalties that don’t make a lot of sense to me. First of all, how does putting someone in prison for failing to pay child support solve anything? How are the fines going to help if they can’t pay enough as is? I don’t understand how any of this in the legal system is helpful, but I’m not sure how the situation ought to be handled either. The children are just screwed in this situation and there is nothing they can do about it. Deep down I felt that my father should have gone to prison for the rest of his life. I didn’t call the police on him for his drug dealings because one I loved him, and two I believed that putting him prison forever would only serve to hurt my family more. I believed that he was paying more for child support than he actually was because he and his mom told me that my mom was greedy and trying to exploit him for money. This is a common lie about child support. My mom was struggling for money and started pawning electronics to pay the bills. I thought that she would struggle even more if he were in prison. Maybe this was selfish of me because I was not thinking about all the other families he was hurting with his gang. After he died it occurred to me to tell the police what I knew about the gang, but my grandma was unwilling to cooperate by giving the name of the man we saw with dad. I never understood what putting dad in prison would accomplish. Would the consequences have been better for my family if I reported all his behavior to my mother or to the police? Can somebody help me understand? I felt that I was forced into secrecy because my parents wanted to use me as a legal pawn against each other. I was therefore unable to discuss this with anybody and I was alone in trying to determine what was best for the family. I was closed, quiet, and not very sociable because the information I gave about either side was critical for determining the fate of the family. I wanted to talk to someone but couldn’t. The reason I sided with dad was because mom refused to listen to me when my siblings and I begged her to evict our abusive stepfather for our safety. The information I gave my dad had tangible legal consequences for my mother. I told dad that mom was a drug user. Dad complained about this in court to get out of paying child support even though he was a dealer. I will add my beliefs about domestic violence later. There is one possibility that troubles me. It is possible that my dad was maliciously manipulating me to get a legal hand over mom. He preached the bible to me and told me the bond between father and son was sacred. He threatened to disown me if I told mom where he worked. He insisted that if anything bothered me about mom and stepdad, that he would be available for me. The reason I think he was trying to be good was because of what happened with my stepfather. We cried as I told him that I had thoughts of murdering my stepfather. He wanted to get me out of the situation and tried to drive away with me, taking me away from mom. Apparently, this was an attempted kidnapping. I felt that my father loved me, and I loved him despite the emotional manipulation with which he used me as a legal pawn against mom. Otherwise, a lot of our relationship felt hollow and fake to me. “Father” felt like a term used to socially condition love. I therefore questioned my love for my family, wondering how much was genuine and how much was social conditioning. I also had a lot of suicidal thoughts and believed that I was a terrible person despite doing everything in my power to be good. Feel free to add your own findings on child support. I hope to add more trauma related beliefs later. I think this topic is critical for understanding people who seem close-minded and cold from a less judgmental perspective. Heartbreaking stories have a pretty big impact on how we think about the world. Try to find the issues which personally impact you the most, and pay attention to how emotional, ideological, and close minded you get. I want to confront these emotions that sit at the core of our identity. Some of it might boil down to childhood trauma like how you were raised. My goal in learning about politics is to be the best person I can be and to think as objectively and as unbiased as possible. When discussing issues that go to the core of my ego, I notice that my mind does not want to accept beliefs which make me angry because of the injustice that I personally faced. This issue seems to be critical for mastering the mind and our emotions as we learn to be as open minded as possible even when it is emotionally taxing.

I take it you mean that honesty is about showing or living by your true character then?

@Danioover9000 I noticed this as well. I am asking two questions at once. One, what would a highly developed person do? The answer seems obvious at first. The second question is much harder. Would you actually do it? This is when I really put myself in the Nazi's shoes and think about it. I probably wouldn't. These are two very different questions. Knowing the answers is not the sign of a highly developed person. You would have to actually follow through rather than making it sound easy through an inspirational philosophy.

I thought about it a little more. I am going to guess your answer. You should go against the Nazis even if it means risking everything. This is high integrity and idiot compassion would be to sympathize with the Nazis. It is better to die in a meaningless revolution than it is to support the evils caused by hitler. A highly developed would therefore be dishonest to people like Nazis.

@Leo Gura I'm curious about this scenario. Suppose a highly developed person is in a situation like the following. There is a knock at the door. You answer the door and find Nazis standing outside. They ask if you have seen any Jews or if there are any Jews hiding in your house. In this scenario there is a Jew hiding in your basement. Would a highly developed person tell the truth in this situation? follow up: Would a highly developed person let a Jew hide in their house in the first place in this kind of society? If I lived in that kind of society, I would be afraid to let a Jew hide in my house if it could get me killed. Realistically, my behavior would therefore support the Nazis. This sounds like a person who is not very developed. I don't mean to be personal, this is just survival. If something goes wrong, I could get us both killed. Is helping the Jew a form of idiot compassion in this situation? Would a highly developed person let go of their survival in this situation to help the Jew? What if you are also risking your family by helping the Jew? Should you help the Jew or just let him die? These scenarios are way more difficult when you take into account uncertainty in my opinion. Most scenarios are framed with obvious and fixed outcomes. It makes it easy for me to say that I would lie to the Nazis in that situation. Reality isn't that easy.

The evidence that the liberal mind is wiser seems overwhelming if you look just at America. Liberals are better educated and more open minded. Conservatives denied the existence of climate change for decades because their worldview is too narrow, myopic, or corrupt due to lobbying. Is the liberal mind always wiser? Maybe not in a harsher environment. If survival is tough, then the conservative mind sees the danger of compassion. provided an environment in which you can afford to be open minded and explore new ideas, the liberal mind suddenly seems much wiser.

It has been a while since I gave the update. The battle of bahkmut has been going on for months. It looks like Russia has finally managed to capture the city. At the same time their flanks are collapsing on the outskirts of the city. It seems that Ukraine was planning a counter offensive in the south, but this information was leaked by a Russian spy. The counter offensive has now been delayed as Ukraine looks for somewhere else to start a counter attack. It looks like the Biden administration is finally going to approve of sending f-16 fighters to Ukraine and the European nations will likely follow suit. The war has been costly for both sides with Russia apparently reaching over 200,000 casualties and with Ukraine suffering somewhat fewer but still devastating losses.

@Consept you are pointing out the core hypocrisy of people like Ben Shapiro. The point of saying "facts don't care about your feelings" is to make yourself appear rational and intelligent. As Ben Shapiro ends his debates like this, he is covering the fact that he is constantly using dishonest debate tactics such as gish galloping and cherry picking while fear mongering about the left. His bad faith argument commonly boils down to "you're with the left" as a means of discrediting your position without taking it seriously. None of these behaviors are rooted in facts but rather feelings. People become emotionally attached to the appearance of seeming rational or intelligent. This can be used to cover up their own insecurities about there emotions and how deeply it influences their worldview. It is like a rationalist who gets defensive and ideological about rationalism, but in doing so he becomes a hard headed false skeptic who thinks he's fighting for the truth, but really he is just entrenching himself in his misguided notions of truth seeking. He is locked in thinking, but discredits feelings as a valid means of truth seeking. Remember, it is impossible for the human brain to think without emotions. Understanding this does not make you a baby or a snowflake. it actually makes you more rational by recognizing the limitations of human thought. So long as people like Ben Shapiro deny the extent to which their emotions are shaping his worldview, the more they will be locked into pseudo rationalism as they constantly struggle to make themselves appear intelligent while relying on dishonest debate tactics, allowing falsehood to win.

@RebornConsciousness I would like to tell you, but I think I'm technically not supposed to.

I recently took some cannabis based edibles and I found them life transforming. I was blaming myself for my emotional issued for my entire life, but this is a game changer. My relationship with consciousness has changed because of this and I want to know about your struggles through this poll.