trenton

I spent a lot of time recently focusing on improving chess and reading books from Leo's book list. It is helping me to sort through a lot of the lies I lived such as trying to be smart and intellectual. This becomes a false pretense which tells me that I value spirituality more than I really do. This then leads to a cognitive dissonance in terms of what I should be pursuing in life. I do appreciate the clarity and peace of mind it gives me when I do this though. I talked with my brother about what he wants to do with his life. Sometimes he has self esteem issues and a lot of it has to do with fighting with my sister. She interprets so many things as an attack when really we don't mean any harm. This leads to her picking fights and arguments while denying any validity in the things her family has to say. We try our best to get along with her, but it fails in so many ways that there is no room for error whatsoever. I just don't know what to do, so I isolate myself from my sister just as my brother does. My sister interprets this as an attack as well, so I'm damned if I do and damned if I don't. As far as my chess studies go, I made a lot of progress. I didn't study endgame theory this time, but I viewed positions relevant to my recent tournament games. This includes queen's gambit declined and Sicilian defense. I then shared my studies with my brother and played a game against a stronger opponent for him. I was rated about 100 points lower. I narrated my thinking process to my brother and played a rare, but okay move. I provoked many weaknesses in my opponent's camp and used them to attack his king. I had an advantage through the whole game, and ultimately won the endgame with extra material and a final tactic to win the rook, causing white to resign. My brother often gets bored and has nothing to do, but he enjoys learning history and playing chess with me. He gets bored sometimes, but it isn't boring when he is playing it. It told him that becoming a professional takes a lot of boring work. I have a 500 paged encyclopedia just on endgame theory and 5 other books to go through yet. As Kasparov said "hard work is talent." As for some bad news, I lost my life purpose course. It was probably because I logged into my laptop, my tablet, my grandma's laptop, my grandma's tablet, and a desktop. It makes it look like multiple people logged in because my grandma lives out of state. It was actually me in all cases. I'm not too bummed out about this because I finished the course anyway, so I'm fine. My honest opinion of the life purpose course is that it was mediocre. Yes I'm grateful that I discovered many things about myself, but I was being held back by many other issues which the life purpose course could not address. Because of this I believe that the book list is more effective at transforming my life. The wisdom packed in these books help me to undo many of the false pretenses I put on, but which make their way into the life purpose course. This hindered my results because I was stuck in a cognitive dissonance that never went away with just the course. I was pointed in a general direction which was nice, but if you really want results then you should combine it with the book list. Your emotional problems will taint the results you get from the course if you feel unloved, have low self esteem, feel depressed, or anything else of that nature. I hope you enjoy the update. Good luck to you all.

I hit a couple of dead ends for the moment. It looks like everyone is doing the best they can, but I can't get anywhere unless I drive myself to tournaments. I considered moving to Kentucky, but that does not look realistic any time soon. I spent some time over there studying chess games and endgame theory. I started a study called grow through experience. I think the Best way for me to learn is by playing games and studying them. My next best way is by books and courses. I have been having a lot of suicidal thoughts lately. I know it started by saying this was a mid life crisis and I began pushing to solve it somehow. I could call it a threshold guardian. This would be a more positive framing in that it is not like I am reading myself apart. I wish I could retitle this thread and call defeating the threshold guardian. One thing that inspires me is the fact that everyone is doing the best they can, but it is not enough. It means there must be something more I can do like driving even though I am afraid. I am prepared to go to Vegas in a few months. I hope I'm ready for the chess tournament then. I am love

@zurew I find it interesting how pursuing this efficiency was necessary for humanity survive diseases and to grow our population. It just doesn't account for our entire relationship with the earth when we were pursuing survival in this regard. We forgot about a more all encompassing survival because we valued our lives as humans the most. Also fascinating is the bias you are pointing out with factory farming. Nowadays we take for granted that animals are just stupid and can be used as food. It is like a psychopath who thinks stupid people deserve to be exploited. I like how different religions place a higher value on animals even though it now feels natural and obvious to us that animals are inferior. It feels like reality, but really it is no truer than paganism. Our biases can be hard to see from within a single culture. These biases can change quickly if our survival demands if. A similar example is how we treat our resources now versus how we will treat them in the future. I imagine that punishments for wasting water in 20 years will be much worse than they are now in places like California. This is how survival shapes morality and animals are just another example. I didn't normally account for all of these geopolitics when I though of these issues before, so it is good that I am seeing a bigger picture now. Our survival demands that we compete with other nations for oil, hence there is so much controversy about the private military contractors for oil companies in the middle east. In a sense they must be there. The issue feels very different when there is no clear bad guy. As for the chevron scandals, I think addressing something like this is our best bet. Companies will continue to exploit cheap labor and resources so long as they are able. Our consumerist culture will worsen the issue until the prices are raised by making the true cost of efficiency paid for. Basically, chevron owes over 50 billion dollars in lawsuits in 31 different countries. Of the 70 lawsuits they owe, one particularly bad one is in Ecuador. A prosecutor named Steven Donziger won a 16 billion dollar lawsuit against them for the environmental damages. If companies had to pay for this, then put consumerist culture would slow down because of the increased prices. Chevron had this man arrested through an unfair trial and still didn't pay the lawsuits. Congress woman Rashida Tlaib of the 13th district of Michigan confronted the CEO who pretended the lawsuits didn't exist. There were some petitions to free Donziger, but there would need to be more action to hold the company accountable. Like Tlaib said, this is not about demonizing big companies, it is about accountability and paying the true cost of our livelihood. I'm sure you know about the Apple sweatshops and factory riots. When workers are not paid a minimum wage of helps Apple sell the cell phones at a cheaper price. If they paid the real price for labor by enforcing business transparency throughout the global supply chain, then this would grind our consumerist culture to a halt when the goods are much more expensive. People have to think "do I really need the cool new cell phone?". You can learn more from the global slavery index. There are about 91 billion dollars worth of electronic products at risk of slave labor being imported into the U.S.every year. Clothing, fish, and other products are also included. There are still cotton picking slaves in Uzbekistan according to anti slavery international. This feeds our consumerist culture by keeping the price of clothes low. One important detail about slavery is that although we can force of stop temporarily, it will come back so long as global poverty and overpopulation leaves people susceptible to this exploitation as the abusers try to survive through crime and corruption. The goal is to frame environmental protection as a human rights issue because the injustice invokes a strong negative reaction in those who learn about them. The argument is "Although slavery has a lot of good economic benefits, we should still abolish it because the cry for freedom cannot be suppressed forever. Our way of life is unsustainable so long as we must exploit this cheap labor while failing to pay the true cost for our consumerist culture." Imagine a Republican making this argument today like they would have before the 13th amendment. It looks like the world needs more human rights activists, social justice warriors, and environmentalists. Just be warned that these companies will imprison you on the grounds of false defamation lawsuits and the legal system will likely not listen to you. They will use their advantage in money to drown you in impossible debt should you try to challenge them legally. There must be large scale movements to confront these companies so they can't arrest us all, just like MLK. This approach makes me more optimistic.

@zurew That was a deep and complicated discussion. that is a lot to take in. I didn't know about the Jevons paradox because that is commonly overlooked. It seems plausible on the surface that it reduces energy consumption, but in reality the increased efficiency results in an increase of demand for what it produces. If this leads to using the resource faster, than the energy consumption could get worse. Aside from a few other minor points like renewables and externalizing the problem of cheap labor, I find the idea of a post growth economic system interesting. As a super organism we are growing out of control and collectively we are in a deep denial that growth does not solve all of our problems. We wish being more efficient would help, but this isn't enough. This pursuit of growth comes especially when competing with other nations and it leads to something like game theory in which everybody has to cooperate or we're screwed. If one group exploits this, then we will be under their foot. It looks like this race to the bottom can't be stopped. I can't say that I see our society getting the prices right until the resources are scarce. My conclusion would be that we need more environmental activism to ensure that the cost of collateral damage is better respected. Only if there is more collective action like this, can we begin to get the prices right and more toward a more sustainable living. This seems to be the most promising way to approach this especially since it is easily framed as a human right's issue. Do you know about the scandals with Chevron? Do you have any other ideas for moving away from consumer culture, Or is this too much to ask of our growth oriented society? I want to be careful not to say "we are all doomed so fuck it." There seems to be a real possibility that we could destroy ourselves from this. I know that humans have been saying that for hundreds of years, but the research seems to suggest it. To be honest, a lot of the video seemed very complicated and went over my head. I should probably listen to more stuff like this over liberal podcasts which serve more so as entertainment than real education. The ocean cleaning technology you sent me seems cool. I remember one of them from Team Seas. Where do we put all the trash after we get it out of the ocean?

@zurew I feel a bit like a doomer too, but I think we have a chance if different people contribute in any way that matters to them. Animal rights would be one to stop pollution, water waste, cruelty, and health issues. I can see how all these systems affect each other. I am glad you told me about the oil crisis. I didn't know that we were running out soon. If companies are forced to conserve oil in order to survive, then like the fisheries the companies will die if they don't become sustainable. I don't know if oil companies know about this future crisis. If they conserve oil and therefore use less, then this will buy us a lot more time for clean energy. This seems more realistic than buying all the oil for ourselves, granted the idea is a creative way to force conservation. There needs to be a much more vocal message about the world's oil crisis. If we are running out, then this forces the companies to act or die. The conflict of interest comes from short term vs long term profits. I believe there is an alternative to uranium that causes less nuclear waste and reduces CO2 emissions. The reason we haven't used it is because uranium is more destructive and more research was done on that to help win WW2. Uranium is doing its job very well by destroying the environment. According to this site it is called thorium. https://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0411/4-clean-energy-alternatives-to-uranium.aspx#:~:text= 4 Clean Energy Alternatives to Uranium ,many better alternatives for nuclear power. More There are some scientists advocating for this alternative energy source because it is not only more abundant, but also more environmentally friendly when it comes to nuclear energy. This would buy us some time. As for cleaning water, I'm not sure. There is team seas and they used some kind of trash collector in rivers. It worked well, but it is expensive. The problem with this well meaning movement is that it doesn't come close to getting all the trash out of the sea and it gives volunteers a false sense of security. This could ultimately make the issue worse. I think we need to put more money toward developing machines that can clean water more efficiently. I don't know what kind of technology is being developed aside from trash collectors in rivers. Furthermore, a problem with cleaning ocean water is that it causes a lot of emissions. I don't know how to eliminate this problem. If we could, then we would be home free on the water crisis. This is complicated by all the plastic in the ocean though. If we want to educate people on these things, then we need to know what information to send where. I would think to make sure oil companies know about the energy crisis. Do you know the best way to spread the information for each of the issues we discussed? Public forums may be limited to groups with one particular bias. If we use the information which hits each of these biases, then it could encourage more activity. I don't want to be labeled a spammer though. There is always Facebook and Twitter or something. Is there something else that I am missing when it comes to better educating people? Do we need to speak publicly?

I want to focus on what I can do. First I can write out my results from the life purpose course. I am not posting content or methods from the course, only results. I know my values are creativity, significance, truth, honesty, originality, self knowledge, optimism, personal development, learning and education, independence. a core value is self awareness. This supplements all of my other values. My strengths are creativity, open mindedness, genuineness, wisdom, and judgement. I want to use my original thinking to inspire others rather than working a dead end job with no value for creativity. One method could be to pursue chess mastery. This conflicts with my work schedule and my family doesn't want me to play chess all day to prepare for tournaments. Secondly, I can clarify what I want. I am currently getting into more chess tournaments so it seems that this should be My field of focus. I still feel torn between that, politics, and spirituality. Going based on my values, I want to pursue spirituality, but I don't know how to do this. I know I could be successful in chess given enough effort. The three things that divide me are survival and separation from my family, living a significant and meaningful life in which my existence can be felt, and pursuing the truth while using my creative capacities to their fullest. My first task is to use my creativity to align my life with my values. I am pursuing truth ultimately, not chess. This is a stepping stone I am trying to use to build the life I want. I have a tournament coming up in April. I know there are volunteer opportunities for isha. These are not sustainable for making a living though. Spirituality and truth seem to be the least practical in terms of survival. The best I can work with is reading and educating myself to apply anything I learn to personal development to my life. That is the best I can do on the front of spirituality given my current position. It is still significant in reforming how I think. I feel like I'm setting a negative time and like I'm a victim in a cage. I am having thoughts like I should kill myself, but I know I don't act on those. The goal of writing here everyday is to remind myself of what I want. This keeps me grounded, determined, and focused. Good luck. I know you can do it.

The philosophy I am attempting to approach this with is the idea that everything is connected. I try to find connections where most people can't see them. Look at the issues that concern people in various places today and try to find any indirect connection to environmental problems. If there is any way to make any progress on any front, then all of it is positive. It can happen with psychedelics and alternative medicine to make people more compassionate, but what else could there be? There could be affordable healthcare and access to pharmaceuticals. If depression is getting worse and more people become inactive. The FDA has approved of lsd for medical treatment and it is an effective anti depressant. If people could afford this kind of healthcare, then they would be less concerned with their own immediate survival. Gun control could be indirectly related to climate change in that the media spends more time on school shootings than wild fires and droughts. If there were even less crime then there already is, then maybe the media would cover other issues more. If one government seems to stubborn, then we could look at other governments around the world and maybe they are more open to climate change action because different cities, states, and nations are affected to different degrees by climate change. For example, California is more willing to take action because they are not by wild fires. If you find something caused by climate change in your area, then maybe it could spark action. A pro abortion argument is sometimes related to over population and crowded orphanages. This becomes a polarizing issue and neither side is willing to listen to the other. If there were free contraceptives to reduce the quantity of abortions, then both sides could be satisfied. Currently, anti abortion is often too dogmatic for this solution. Slavery is also enabled by overpopulation because it becomes cheaper, thus there is more human trafficking and organ harvesting. I'm not saying the pro abortion is good, but it is common. Given proper distribution of wealth and resources, we could house a lot more people than we currently are. This would involve raising the minimum wage for example. This might not happen until wealth inequality becomes so bad that more movements like occupy wall street come about. Progress anywhere is progress. Can you find any indirect connection to environmental issues?

@zurew https://bearfoottheory.com/top-environmental-groups-you-should-know/ This site brings you to many environmental groups. They have petitions we can sign and letters to send to law makers. I have tried signing some petitions before, but I doubt its effectiveness. If we try sending it to sites where a lot of people can see it, then it may be labeled spam. I also remember that there is wolf pac. Leo talked about this in conscious politics. Government corruption is the root of this problem. Not only does lobbying and the filibuster kill any meaningful legislation, but the government misrepresents what the majority of the United States wants. On various issues we lean more to the left collectively than the government is willing to admit. If voting rights were protected, then this would help liberal politicians get elected. It would also make it harder for republicans to win because they consistently lose the popular vote without gerrymandering, moving polling stations, and cheating more than the democrats do. Remember, the Republican party is distracting from meaningful progress with their lies, conspiracies, and misguided culture wars and fake moral panics. They stand for nothing but obstruction of progress. Wolf pac is currently focusing on an amendment to ensure free and fair elections. This is because the supreme court is killing their attempts to get money out of politics. I am aware of revolutionary optimism because too many people are becoming doomers. Even the college teachers told me and the class that it's over. To be honest I still feel pessimistic, but I continue to look for whatever hope there may be.

@zurew I get what your saying about the economic incentives. If stage orange companies make way too much money this way, then they will lobby against so many necessary bills. What these companies overlook is that they are concerned with short term profits. One example is raising the minimum wage. Although companies lost money up front, the workers started spending more money because they had more money. This ultimately made these companies more money in the long run. These are the tactics we need for convincing these kinds of companies. For example, plastic is filling the ocean, killing the fish. This combined with overfishing will lead to the inevitable collapse of economies which depend on seafood like Japan especially. This is worsened by oil spills. Companies which depend on sea life may be more willing to lobby in favor of environmental conservation. Otherwise their company will die and go bankrupt. Overfishing is profitable now, but not for long. Can you come up with more strategies like these?

@zurew I think this post is excellent. It clearly demonstrates how unsustainable out way of life is. I share some of your pessimism in that societies often ignore serious issues until it's too late. It makes me think that sometimes humanity has to hit rock bottom before it cares. Even so, I think there is value in teaching people about this. I think the water wars are the greatest threat to humanity and can be caused by climate change induced droughts. One good health move you can make is to kick soft drinks and alcohol in favor of water. The problem is that stating this is not enough. I almost never drink soft drinks and rarely drink alcohol. My individual efforts are not enough just like with boycotting the meat industry because of water use and factory farming. A collective effort could be to combine the fights from various issues. One, slavery and cheap labor are often used in producing agriculture. For example, chocolate companies use unpaid child labor in their production. If they can't use this, then they can't sell as much, therefore they use less water because of human rights violations. Two, uses a lot of water, is unsustainable and ruins farmers lives. People need to appreciate that water is becoming more scarce. Three, oil and gas companies cause a lot of water pollution all over. They need to be held accountable and regulated strictly. Four, factory farming is cruel and causes people health problems. Five, fixing the leaky pipes and replacing lead pipes will draw people's attention to water issues. Six, The epa and fda guidelines for clean bottled water are poorly enforced. Stricter standards are needed for pfas, mercury, arsenic, and more on the food and water. Seven, we need to break up corporate monopolies on water, gas, electric, ect. Eight, we need to fight poverty and ensure everybody has access to basic necessities like food, water, and shelter. Perhaps parts of Africa can form a union of nations to better use their resources and fight poverty. Don't forget about homeless Americans. Nine, we need to fight the wild fires that are being worsened by droughts and climate change. Ten, we need to educate many different people on many different issues. Different issues make people click because we have different values. Perhaps you could try advertising based on which of these issues concern people most given a local area. I'm thinking of a billboard that says "scarcer than you think" with water running from a tap. I don't mean to scare them, but it would put this issue on their radar. A seemingly unrelated one would be to decriminalize psychedelics. If this happened, then people could become more compassionate and therefore more interested in helping mankind rather than not caring. A start can be marijuana which most states have decriminalized. If enough States jump on board, then sooner or later the federal government will have to budge. Basically, we need to love each other or we are going to kill each other over water.

In the past this idea of compassion kept coming up on this forum. I couldn't tell why people were saying it and it seemed moralizing. My compassion was often limited to logically understanding that someone was hurt, but this is very limited. A common pattern across all kinds of political issues that people laugh at the suffering of others when they don't understand what this person is going through. This includes rape, sexual assault, drug addiction, child support, psychedelics, rising rates of virginity in men, and much more. I our low consciousness we take joy in the situation when others talk about it. I will give a few examples. When asked why I lost my cell phone, I told answered that it was because I left it in my dad's car before he drove off because mom threatened to call the cops. They not only fought over the fact that dad fled the state to avoid paying child support, but they both also had drug addictions and stole my money to avoid losing the house. Apparently this was funny because my mom worked for the irs and should be able to afford all the drugs. I understand that teaching kids about drug addiction will often fail if they lack true understanding and compassion for drug addicts rather than laughing at them or demonizing them. I told my brother and cousin that Nazis used to throw babies into A pit of fire upon arriving to A death camp. This was in response to my cousin saying that the Russian soldiers were just following orders and I told him that this was the same defense used for Nazi death camps. They both started laughing and talking about the assembly line to pass the babies to the pit of fire. My brother asked "why are we laughing?". I told him it is because the horror I am describing is so far outside your paradigm and comprehension that it seems insane, ridiculous, cartoonishly evil, and impossible. My brother agreed that it is insane. A woman was sexually assaulted by a man who took off the condom during sex. She didn't say anything out of the fear that he would hurt her more because he is clearly willing to break boundaries. She was also a rape victim and telling the attacker to stop made it worse. The community laughed at her and came up with reasons why the victim was a fool while shifting the blame away from the criminal. A similar thing happens in scams. People laugh at you for being stupid and gullible. I had a close call with a fake job interview. After the incident I told my friend at chess club and he never heard about fake job interviews either. I told him about the red flags to look out for that he didn't know about. People conflate stupidity with ignorance. Ignorance can be corrected through education, but stupidity cannot be reasoned with. Even so a lack of compassion for stupidity can be problematic as well. I realized ego is going to be like this on every issue all the way until the end. This creates the struggle between higher and lower consciousness, not left against right. Even now I lack compassion for all kinds of people I don't understand. I have to force myself not laugh as I logically understand that the situation is bad and the person needs help. I then choose to operate off of logic instead. This is still a limited form of compassion and it creates inner conflict. Only when something happens to me do I now have compassion for other victims. How would your compassion for the homeless change of you had to live with no money or house for one month? What if you had to go to prison for one month? A big one Is psychedelics when people say "oh no your doing drugs" while laughing and refusing to look at the research. Is there a way to improve compassion without subjecting ourselves to these things? An interesting connection is that when enough people are hurt by something, the collective ego now cares enough to change. Otherwise, they will be laughed at for being lazy criminals if they are homeless. Most importantly, how should we approach the ignorant superiority complex in ourselves and others? Ourselves is the easiest if we can write about it and self reflect even if we don't have access to psychedelics. From here we can lead by example, and this seems like the best way. Other egos may be too close minded to reason with. In my experience arguing can just cause people to dig themselves in even deeper by doubling down on their behavior to spite you.

@Igor I'm curious. Other countries often think of Americans as self absorbed to the point that we don't even know the prime minister of Canada. Do you think that Americans are too self absorbed? If so, how does this cripple our understanding of the world and what are we overlooking? Are we insensitive or close minded to other cultures? How might our behaviors change if we were more aware of the differences in how other cultures think? If Americans are more self absorbed than the average citizen in other nations, then it could add to the never ending story of me, making enlightenment more difficult. A second example could include the occupation of the middle East without recognizing that these countries need to evolve on their own to naturally topple the dictators. The United States worsened it by failing to appreciate the collective consciousness in the regions we occupied.

@Someone here I can give a reason for being defensive toward all kinds of religions. I see the double standard you are trying to point out in that the many failures of Islam is ignored. The approach I would take is to emphasize the similarities between all religions. This way I do not have to defend one and attack another. The ideas in Islam I would point to is the greater vs lesser jihad, forgetfulness, no images as in other religions and so on. If you can point to similarities in other religions, then this is a key to stopping persecution and hatred toward other religions. One of the reasons the left may be critical of Christians is If Christians view Muslims as objectively evil and therefore reject any validity. this would be a criticism from below. This is the same underlying problem that lead to persecution on all sides throughout history. The left is afraid that the evils of Islam can be used to justify more evils against them. The cycle of hatred continues and the left wants to stop it rather than block refugees based on the fact that they are Muslims or start religious profiling of suspected terrorists. I don't mean to make excuses for the corruption of all religions. They still need to grow out of these old ways of thinking eventually because the anti-secularism cannot be sustained without further persecution.

There's a lot of people who get stuck in abusive relationships. This includes my parents. Maybe a separate video could be about "how to confront devilry.". I think he mentioned these things in a few other videos. This video would help me to appreciate the necessity of stage blue. The value they place on law and order while fighting criminals ultimately helps us to develop ourselves further. I think this video could really be a ramp for anybody into personal development even if they are not very spiritual.

I would like to see a video about navigating trickery. This is critical for personal development because if you are not careful and well informed, then you could have your entire bank account wiped or your credit card stolen. This would be a very practical episode even for our friends who don't care about spirituality and personal development. I recently fell for a scam. It was a fake interview for a job I never applied for In which they stole my debit card number. they were offering six figure salaries, required me to pay for a course to get a license, and they called from many different numbers. Luckily, I cancelled my card before they got any of my money. My journey into personal development could have ended today. There are more of these online scams because of COVID. The thumbnail could be little red riding hood walking through the forest, blissfully unaware of the wolf lurking right around the corner. This symbolizes our hero's journey in personal development and the unseen dangers which make us afraid to enter the woods in the first place. The title could be things like "Navigating Trickery" or "How to Avoid Scams."

I also have a friend who was a victim of predatory loaning when she went to college. She was unable to pay back the loan and was going to have 80,000 dollars on her head the rest of her life. When I learned about this I shared my political research and told her about how Joe Biden was making a move to forgive student debt from fraudulent colleges. She perked up and said she was going to check the Biden administration's program. She had been fighting to get a lawsuit for 5 years but nobody would listen to her. Finally, as of two weeks ago all of her debt was forgiven. She started crying tears of joy as she told me about this. She said that I have no idea how much I had just helped her. If you are well informed on politics maybe one day you will make your friends cry tears of joy.

@happyhappy a better outlet is anything private, but not excessive or in a way that causes physical harm. A similar example is with sex. so long as it is at the house rather then in a public bathroom which some people end up doing. There is no problem so long as my brother avoids any negative social consequences and punishments.

I live in a small house with my sister, brother, and grandma. I have a room, my sister has room, but my brother sleeps in the living room with my grandma. My grandma and sister are pointing out that my brother is touching himself inappropriately. He makes up excuses like "I have money in my pocket" or "I need to go to the bathroom." I can see straight through this. In some cases this becomes a serious issue. In high school there were kids who touched themselves during class under the desk or had sex in the bathroom. it can be accompanied by sexual harassment or inappropriate comments that get you in trouble. this could lead to teenage pregnancy or expulsion. Other people look at this person like they are stupid, but in fact this is a worse way of sexuality coming out given a poor enough environment. For the first time I have empathy for these people and I have an easy time not judging them. How should I help my brother? I need to make sure he does not get punished or hurt himself. I think I should point out to him that basement bathroom has a lock. I would remind him of the consequences of touching himself while others are present not because of is evil, but because it is not in his favor. We would then discuss the proper balance to strike so that this does not happen multiple times a day or goes beyond the basement bathroom.

@happyhappy he is 13. I understand fully well that touching oneself is not an issue. I am more concerned about his lack of a better outlet. I intend to point out the consequences by explaining how guilt backfires on these types of issues. I could make a dozen examples of more easily. I don't want my brother to feel ashamed of himself and get in trouble somehow. That is what I am trying to avoid and I have no intention of building him.

@Windappreciator he does not have a room.

@Kamo I watched the video on grasping the nature of thought. It seems very helpful and I will be practicing that. I came up with a couple of thoughts to flatten immediately. This can help me sleep.

The thoughts I have commonly focus on religion and they have since I was a child. At the time of was because I was trying to figure out which religion is the right one. my childhood vows was, If I could ever figure out which religion was the right one, then I would convert to that one. This time it is because every religion also claims to be the most persecuted and I have deconstructed this debate. Here is a story. I had a casual conversation with a Christian one day and he mentioned that Christianity is the most persecuted religion as of it were a fact. I was sceptical and asked for his reasoning. He said it was because of the church burnings in Africa. I then told this to another woman in a casual conversation. She asked for my reasoning before asking for my religious affiliation. I told her that I have no religious affiliation, and then she bought the idea Christianity is the most persecuted religion. She then told her friends who were even more sceptical. They asked for her reasoning, her affiliation, and who she heard this from. She told her friends that she heard it from someone with no religious affiliation. This made it seem believable enough for them to buy it. The Christian quickly left. His plan was a success and now everybody else would promote his religion for him. Christians will focus on the church burnings, Muslims will focus on islamophobia and persecution at the hands of other Muslims, Jews will bring up the 1940's and so forth. This happens because they frame life as an epic battle between good and evil. So how do I determine which religion is objectively the most persecuted? There are a ton of problems with the above question. First of all, which years should be counted? Should this be since 2000, 1900, 1000, or since ever? Secondly, which types of persecution should be measured? Should murder, rape, slavery, torture, and others all be measured separately? Should turning away refugees over islamophobia count as persecution and to what degree? Which religions should be counted on such a study? Should Sunni and Shiite Muslims be measured separately or does Muslim on Muslim persecution count? If measuring murders, then should it be done by quantity or by percentage? For example, if Christianity is a more popular religion than Judaism, then logically more Christians should be murdered more, but the likelihood of being murdered if you are Jew should be higher. Furthermore, if I am counting pegan tribes, African tribes, and native American tribes then the likelihood of being murdered is very high. This is because some of these tribes are now dead religions because they were victims of a successful genocide. In that case of you were part of a particular pegan tribe, then there is 100% chance that you will be murdered during the genocide. Percentage wise, that makes pegans the most persecuted if they are being counted. Christians, Jews and others would argue that pegans should not be counted as real religions. A final problem I will mention here is the age of every religion. If Hinduism is the oldest living religion, then logically it had the most opportunities to be persecuted. So if the parameters start the 15th century BCE, then hindus should the most persecuted. Conclusions: There is not a way to determine things like "most" or "least" objectively. Such a study can only conclude most or least given a certain set of parameters. Given A I conclude X, given B I conclude Y, and given C I conclude Z. All of these are presented like they are facts, but in fact they are self constructed. This puts me in a wierd position. I feel like I don't know, yet I know that everything is relative. If I say "everything is relative" then it is presented like a fact, but if there is no real truth to these "facts," then it is as if I don't know anything. What if there is no truth to discussing whether or not there is truth to things as it appears either way from either angle? If measured by the past decade, then apparently it is Christians according to a quick Google search. This fear of white genocide in Africa is likely driving some people to become white Christian nationalists. It seems hard to compare and quantify, so how can we be sure that these studies are right?

To help my mind to mature more, there are a few things I need to figure out. How do I stop getting upset with myself for thinking of scenarios in which I hurt others and therefore repeat to myself that I should shut up and not tell anyone? This is a psychological pattern in which I compensate for not getting my hopes up through catastrophizing. Bad scenarios occur to me regularly. Maybe I should surrender to the possibility of me being selfish and hurting people? Of course I don't mean to use that as an excuse. It could actually be the case that my level of consciousness is such that I would do that and I am attempting to avoid it. This psychological pattern reminds me of how I was worried about making girls uncomfortable on a date when In fact I am too shy and meek. If I figure this out, then I can stop being a victim of myself by judging myself harshly. I think doing this keeps me out of trouble by not allowing these possibilities to surface.

I recently watched Leo's video about heavy metals. I am attempting to change my habit of drinking tap water because I no longer trust it. I started taking action by comparing the concentration of heavy metals by water bottle brand. I asked the store management about it and my boss seemed uncomfortable when I asked about the cancer causing materials in our products. Ultimately, I was under the impression that Core is one of the better brands in that it has the fewest heavy metals and pfas possible. I bought 5 of the single bottles because the 24 packs are terrible for you. I continued researching the issue and discovered that bottled water is still contaminated with micro plastics. Furthermore, it would be very inconvenient to keep picking up single use water bottles every day. I would like some clarity on what exactly the ideal filter should do. Apparently, it costs about 600 dollars to replace every two years, so clean water seems very expensive. What are the materials that need to be removed through the filter? Which minerals should be added to the water after the filtration? When should the filter be replaced? If somebody could describe in theory what this filter should look like, then that would be great. I don't want to waste my money on an expensive, but useless filter.

The first is a close up. The second shows the score sheets. I have a laptop I work on in front of this vision board on top of the books shelf.