trenton

I forgot to mention something else. Usually, we are told that poverty causes crime by making people desperate. In cases like these the opposite is true. Crime causes poverty because the gangs are so powerful that they destabilize the entire economy. It is impossible to run a business if you are constantly held at gun point and robbed with no hope of justice. Criminal justice is what makes business possible. In some countries that successfully fight the gangs there is an amazing economic recovery as the country becomes stable enough to have businesses flourish.

I have been considering a different route for my life purpose. Currently, I am working with a chess in schools program. However, I could do more good for the students if emotional mastery were taught in schools instead of chess. The closest thing to this goal I found is isha inner engineering by Sadhguru. I have considered this route before. I was stumped because I don't know how to change the educational system. If I went to college I think my major would be politics with minors in philosophy and psychology. The problem is, I don't know what to do next. How do I go about changing something like this? I happen to be passionate about this issue because I know that I found something that could prevent suicide. It is a combination of spirituality, psychology, philosophy, and other fields. It may include cognitive behavioral therapy, which has good empirical evidence for reducing self harm. A lot of this came up while I was in the hospital due to withdrawal symptoms from anti depressants. I was able to apply what I learned from this site in a way that made group therapy more effective. This includes a bible study in which I helped a woman who lost both her children recently. I clearly have the potential to go far in this direction, but I don't know how. Should I go to college? Should I join a movement? Should I join isha engineering? Should I do more inner work on myself to be better qualified to teach it? Should I write a book? Should I restructure the educational system? Where do I go with this life purpose?

I did make my own video on emotional mastery. I could make more videos like these.

@flowboy I considered starting my own schools before. That would be closer to the scale I'm aiming for. I'm not as interested in becoming a therapist and working with people one at a time. If emotional mastery were taught in schools it would be a more efficient way of reaching large numbers of people. Learning how to start my own schools would be one way to tie everything together.

@SaWaSaurus I often struggled to bring spirituality and chess together. Part of the problem is that chess gives too much credit to thinking and not enough credit to attention. If you pay really close attention during a chess game you will start to find moves you don't normally consider. As Einstein said, we live in a society that values the servant and forgets the gift. The gift is intuition and the servant is rational thought. Finding a bridge between board games and a higher life calling would be ideal so I don't have to give up anything in the process.

I have been taking medication at night that induces drowsiness. The medication has inevitably become less effective requiring a higher dose. I recently started eating salad with tuna, sweet potatoes, and avocados. The result is that I have been drowsy after lunch and I fell asleep easily. I switched to salad because one of the side effects of the medication is weight gain. This finally pushed me to clean up my diet. At first I started feeling bloated. The bloating has stopped now. If I eat salad at night, then that eliminates one of the problems I have been struggling with for a long time. I can tell there is a lot of room for variety in case I get bored. I felt it would be tragic if the food that is healthy was actually the food I liked, but I was too addicted to junk food to try it. I have been slowly improving my diet for some time. This is my biggest leap yet and it seems to be doing work already.

I have a story to share. When I was in the hospital, there was bible study group. It was there to help people suffering through a crisis and having a mental breakdown. One of the patients was a woman who recently lost her son and daughter. I participated in the bible study. It was easy for me to apply what I learned from other spiritual books and actualized.org to the study. This woman was grateful to have met someone like me. I don't believe in any formal religion, but I recognize that religion can be used to save lives because of the psychological benefits when combined with a good intellectual understanding of spirituality. A drawback is that if a person gets locked into an ideology it can prevent them from holding God as an experience. This has various consequences like religious zealotry. A commonly sited negative of religion is that it motivates wars and genocides. Although there were some religious wars, there were not as many as you think. The true motive for most wars were economic, territorial, and geopolitical. In many cases religion is used as propaganda like in the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It makes it seem like there are more religious wars than there really are because of the war time propaganda. One of the causes of the collapse of religion is the sex scandals. Treating lust as an objective sin backfires horribly. In fact some people become mass shooters because they wanted to kill the women who tempted them. At the moment religion is far from destigmatizing sex. It is starting to happen by allowing priests to marry. This is a start of healthy sex being allowed. In the future I expect religion to evolve so that most of these backfiring mechanisms are resolved. Religious extremism partially motivated the attempted coup on January sixth. Presently Christianity is locked at a low level of development. It leads to literal interpretations of the bible being fused with racist and nationalist ideologies. The prophesies of Donald Trump getting reinstated rallied extremists to attack the capital. Considering the dangers of religious extremism, I think at the moment religion does more bad than good. However, I expect that religion will continue to evolve until most of the problems are ironed out. Maybe in the future religion will do more good than bad. What do you think?

@meta_male I know my sisters are trying to guilt trip me and I don't feel bad about myself.. my goal is not to subscribe to the rules, but rather to know what they are. This can help me to anticipate other people's behavior, allowing me to more effectively navigate social situations. Autism is a factor for me because many of these social games make absolutely no sense to me. There is way too much bullshit, including my sisters trying to guilt trip me while denying their vengeful motives. By the way, they now refuse to discuss my cousin while I'm around. My rule has been made.

I recently made the mistake of violating women's unspoken 'keep this between us' rule. This led to a lot of drama which I naively believed could be resolved. It didn't work. Now my cousin and sisters hate each other even more. Here is the thread for context. This issue got me thinking about what other unspoken rules there might be. Maybe there are other people on this forum who made a serious mistake and learned from it. This should be a more efficient way of understanding relationships so we don't have to repeat each other's mistakes.

I can live without porn. I've seen enough of it to know what it's about. At my current rate I look at porn about once every three weeks. It speaks negatively of my character to admit that I looked at porn, knowing there was corruption like this. I know it is slightly painful for me to quit, but I think it is better for me to grow up than to hurt others by remaining immature. There are a lot of people who feel the need to make excuses for looking at porn despite this knowledge. I don't make excuses. I admit that I looked at porn and did not care about the sex trafficking. Whatever arguments and stories you have, drop them. Just admit you look at porn and you don't care about the ethical issues.

The anti depressants are lexapro. The anti psychotic is zyprexa. Zyprexa is designed to stop the ruminations. I used to be taking Prozac, but that ended in a catastrophe.

I'm confused about the following situation. My sisters were talking behind my cousin's back. I told my cousin about it because I felt he deserved to know. My cousin is grateful I told him, but my sister lashed out at me. She felt that I was going out my way just to hurt her. She was vengeful because she thinks I told the truth just to hurt her, therefore she told me how loving and caring dad was for people other than me. My cousin is now pissed at my sisters and refuses to talk to them. My sisters and grandma think I need to apologize, but I don't know for what. Is this not minding my own business or is it okay to tell your friend that someone is talking behind his back? I told my sister I think this is moral relativism, but she interpreted as I think my point of view is just the truth and she is wrong. I don't think my family will understand my point of view, hence the emotional support feels hollow. so far my older sister is mad at me for not being sorry. My younger sister thinks I'm a liar because of my confused apology. My grandma thinks that this isn't about truth, it's about doing the right thing which is to stay silent if saying something makes it worse. My point of view is that we are all full shit, but pointing this out tears our illusions apart. in my case I'm biased against illusions which I see a lot of. I am now tempted to become quieter and say even less. This would be shameful if I was just starting to open up only to realize that my point of view doesn't matter because it won't be understood. Should I be sorry? If so, what for?

I'm working on all of this. I have a psychologist I see every couple of weeks. I am taking medication. I have a group called mindfully to get cbt therapy for ptsd. I feel like I'm growing even though it is unpleasant. I am facing some developmental drama by opening up with my family.

I came home early to check in with my older sister. I wasn't going to ruminate all day again. Maybe she would lash out at me, maybe she calmed down. She seems to have calmed down. I won't bring up issue. I won't tell her that I helped my cousin pass the math exam. I will let her find out for herself. The situation remains unamendable. It will only start a fight if I talk about my cousin.

@TheCloud I have been in the process of understanding my internal situation my entire life. I am never ignoring the internal world and I am constantly learning about it. I have learned a lot from this situation and I am oscillating between calm and frustrated. I don't know how to approach my sister's frustration. If anybody has a suggestion, how in theory should I respond to my sister? The reason I'm stumped is because I have constantly been trying to find a way to make my sister's anger better, but I constantly fail. I must understand that being calm may never be enough to solve her internal state which in turn becomes my problem. I don't take it personally when she gets angry. I shouldn't expect my good faith efforts to be met with good faith efforts.

@Schizophonia part if the problem is that I lack social experience. This is partially due to autism, isolation, bullying, and my family. My family tells me to socialize more, but my sister is presently the reason I isolate myself. It used to be because of my step father. Before that it was because of my mother lashing out at me for misbehaving. Hyper vigilance keeps me up at night.

@Schizophonia I don't intend to hide the source of any conflict. The problem is that two conflicts now overlap. First of all, I opened a conflict falsely believing that everybody wanted amends. I have come to the realization that not everybody wants amends. This is why it was a mistake to open the conflict. I was naive and I have learned a lot. My older sister thinks that I did it because I am actively trying to hurt her, therefore she is vengeful. She denies this. Secondly, my relationship with my older sister is a mess. She wants to have a relationship with me, but I isolate myself from her. I don't want to spend time with her because of her anger issues and how she lashes out at me. She admitted to this issue after lashing out at me over the laundry. She refuses to get help for this. I hold this against her every time she lashes out at me. It is hard to communicate with her because she takes everything the wrong way and does not allow for the possibility that I am acting with good intentions. I end up walking on eggshells and it is frustrating. I can't get through to her because she has a torrent of projections that she accuses me of. I feel like I no longer care what she thinks of me because she lives in a completely different reality. She is unable to understand my point of view and acts like I am the one who only cares about his own point of view. This is another projection. Part of the problem with my sister is that we lack common interests. It could be the divide created by philosophy and spirituality. It has made it impossible for her to understand my point of view so it seems malicious. It becomes frustrating to try to explain myself. She tells me I think too deeply about everything.

@TheCloud I admit that "they have no interest in peace" is taking it too far. I am still frustrated because I am dealing with bad faith and vengeful motives as they try to guilt trip me. I don't know how to approach my sisters when I go back home.

@TheCloud I did not think it would be easy to change people's minds. I know the kind of person I am dealing with when it comes to my older sister. I texted my younger sister first. I might be able to get through to her. I am not holding out hope that my older sister will want to understand me. Currently, I can think of no better message than to leave me alone or to fuck off next time she starts harassing me and verbally abusing me over this situation. She fails to win my sympathy or make me feel sorry. I guess if I want to put it nicely I will tell my older sister that I have no hope of communicating hurt and anger because that is how she wants me to feel anyway. Once again she is harassing me for amends she doesn't want. Sorry if I sound kind of mean. I know being mean won't help either. I'm just at a loss for communicating with my older sister as I typically am. She refuses to get help for her anger management issues because she thinks therapy is useless and takes it out on me. She has a victim complex and constantly frames me as the abuser. Many if the things i say will be taken in bad faith, twisted, and misinterpreted. She only wants me to bend over backwards for her while claiming to want a trusting relationship. She destroyed my trust a long time ago. My relationship with my older sister is a separate issue, but it is overlapping with this issue.

@Schizophonia I didn't actually tell my cousin that much. I said that my sisters were upset with his behavior at the festival. I included that they felt he was not doing his school work fast enough. That's all I told my cousin. That is what spawned this entire mess when my sisters found out what I said. My sisters actually said way more about my cousin. They assumed that I told my cousin everything. They assumed that I twisted their words. They are being complete bitches. They want to pin everything on me. My cousin is mad at my sisters because of how cruel they are being to me.

The lesson for me at the moment is that not everybody wants amends. This is why I am naive. I was altruistic and trying to do the right thing. It seems so natural to me that it is hard to fathom that people would act like this. My sister has no interest in improving the situation. She asks for amends she doesn't want because she wants me to feel bad. I am typing a paper to share with my mother. Wish me luck. I am dealing with people who have no interest in peace and getting along.

Good news My cousin passed his test with flying colors thanks to my help. I studied with him and gave a motivational speech. My sisters are trying to guilt trip me and make me feel like shit. It is not working. I don't feel guilty. I don't feel sorry. I am doing everything in my power to be good and they tried to sabotage me. And they fucking failed. They can fuck off if they want me to rebuild trust.

Bad news I did everything in my power to do the right thing. My sisters are actively sabotaging my efforts to make amends. Fundamentally, they do not want amends. They want to guilt trip me and me feel like shit. They don't care about making the situation better. 1. My sisters say I need to take responsibility. 2. My sisters say there is nothing I can do. 3. My sisters ask me to apologize. 4. My sisters say apologizing isn't good enough. 5. My sisters want me to rebuild trust with them even though they broke my trust a long time ago. 6. My sisters are calling me the hypocrite and assuming I am acting in bad faith or trying by to hurt them. 7. My sisters are vengeful and they are saying harmful lies to me about my father and cousin. 8. My sisters are trying to guilt trip me and blame the entire situation on me. 9. My sisters acuse me of being against women saying harmful truths while they are lying. 10. They are twisting my motives at every turn. I know my sisters want nothing more than to guilt trip me and to make me feel like shit. Unfortunately for them, it isn't working. I have nothing to be ashamed of. I did everything I could to help and they are sabotaging me. I don't feel bad. I don't feel sorry. They can fuck off. How should I deal with this sabotage?

@TheCloud I'm sorry. I tried to be the bigger person and do the right thing but it did not work.

@TheCloud thank you very much for this input. I will test what you told me and inform you of the results. I didn't consider talking to my sisters first. My instincts do mess with my evaluation for the worse. A similar thing happened when I didn't tell my mother about my father's crimes. I have been struggling against my instincts my entire life. This is partially due to autism. People think I'm acting with ill intent, but really I lack social experience. I am learning a lot from this situation.