trenton

That is a good observation. If I am having a lot of fights with my family or I am struggling to find a better career, then the frustrations could easily be displaced. For example, it is hard to stay objective and recognize that everybody is good in the middle of a heated argument in which you are a stake holder. If this feeds into your general disposition or mood, then you are likely to focus on the most frustrating aspects of existential questions as well. The ability to recognize this disposition could help you to more quickly recognize displacements and I can try that too. This could also be related to people with anger issues treating other people poorly not because those people are bad, but because of the general disposition. Maybe it applies to depression as well if you develop a victim mentality in your worldview as a consequence of poor psychology in other aspects of your life. This can lead to blaming, scapegoating, and a sense of powerlessness.

I have watched many actualized videos including the life purpose course and there are some exercises I intend to review after this message. On many occasions Leo and other people on this forum can mention that meaning is imaginary. There is nothing wrong with the teaching itself and it seems logically straight forward. However, a common source of self deception I am familiar with is to pretend that I am hyper logical rather than emotional, which is itself a fear based reaction encouraging a lack of emotional awareness. I have even watched the video on coping with nihilism, but it still did not get through to me even though it logically makes sense. There are various consequences of my incomplete integration of the truths in nihilism. One includes my need to be obsessed, laser focused, on a mission, seeking goals, ect. There is nothing wrong with the passion that I find in things like chess, but deep in my psyche there is a subtle weight that eats away at my joy as I push myself more and more. In a since I am not wrong if such a focus is necessary to become a professional, but I could enjoy the work even more if I were to properly cope with meaninglessness even though hearing the positive framing didn't quite do it for me. A second consequence can be the fact that I was drawn to politics so much. Again I am seeking a way to live my life a way that is significant and matters even though action on the issues feels hollow to me. Perhaps it is a reminder of the deeper issue that if my struggle with meaninglessness is not fully resolved, then I will be seeking meaning where it is not. In this case meaning comes from me imagining that the needs of mankind take priority over my own happiness. This becomes a self sacrifice for society. The fundamental fear at play is that I am seeking survival. Survival requires me to have some kind of values to pursue or else I would just do nothing. I also am operating under the assumption that not thinking some pursuit is meaningful would make me feel less passionate about doing it. At the same time I am starting to see it in a more empowering way of I think of it like "I am the source of meaning.". The underlined sentence seems to be resonating with me. Similarly with chess mastery I could say that I am making the pursuit meaningful. Perhaps the positive framing is starting to get through to me if I don't feel less passionate as a result of this. I will give this a try. If anybody had similar struggles with meaninglessness, I hope this helps if you can relate. I think this is a root cause of various episodes in which I feel deeply upset without a clear reason why. It can be frustrating if this goes on for years. If you have ways that helped the truth to penetrate your psyche and transform you in many parts of your life, then you could discuss them here.

@eTorro sounds like solid advice. Thank you. I found an audio book from Eckhart Tolle called the power of now. I was meditating pretty much all day and it triggered a sense of merging with all of existence through transcending time. It is a powerful book of you haven't checked it out already. He has a couple of other books I did not check out though. When I manage to meditate early in the morning, I feel much better throughout my entire day as it leads to emotional stability. I tested this before and I know the result. Currently I am swept up in many other things like working full time in thanksgiving, looking for new career paths, reading a lot of books, and many other things. If I could squeeze in just 30 minutes then even that could help out a lot.

Recently, I received 5 chess books. My behavior changed significantly after receiving these books because I am more interested in studying these books than watching YouTube entertainment. These books have been extremely effective in breaking my bad habits, and I have been learning a lot of new strategies and techniques. I have been reviewing certain sections to make sure I retain the information as not to rush the learning process. The books are very dense and complicated, so it will take a while to get through these books in a way that maximizes learning. The thing is that my head feels numb after practicing against the computer 95 times in the past week before I could Finally get everything right and understand why it is right. I need to know the most effective ways to take breaks, and when I should return to reading the books. Other factors include when and what to eat to improve my ability to study. I remember when I went to a tournament and forgot to eat dinner because I was so focused on the tournament that I could not tell I was hungry. This would explain why I start getting worse. Should I set a one hour timer for study?

@Preety_India interesting thought. I seem to be swinging the pendulum from eating a lot of sweets because I'm not doing anything. Sometimes I gave myself hiccups from over eating or drinking. I think there is a balance between these two and it should make me more effective at studying. If I am exploring my need to constantly be studying these chess books, then it is tied to becoming a professional player. This will open up new opportunities aside from working at the grocery store. It would also bring in extra money from chess coaching, directing tournaments, and playing tournaments. Currently I don't make enough money to live on my own just with kroger. In this way chess is my key set myself up for the life I want, living alone so I can put even more time into doing things I love more. Ultimately I want a better way of making money. Ideally I would be traveling around the world for both chess tournaments and spiritual retreats. Currently it is extremely difficult for me to set up 30 day retreats because kroger only allows 2 weeks vacation a year. If I want to do something like that, then I need to replace kroger somehow while creating new avenues for financial independence. Chess is one method that I love more than my current job. Thanks for the thought

@Illusory Self if you find a positive habit to replace your negative habit of works very well. I used to procrastinate all the time with YouTube videos and I was unable to break the habit until I received 5 chess books. This helps me in my vision to become a professional player, and I enjoy this more than watching YouTube. Like Flowboy said "vision comes first.". It is hard to motivate yourself to do something If you don't have a vision for what it could bring you. By the way, the life purpose course was pretty good and it is a valuable investment. Good choice. Just remember how powerful your life will be when you clarify your vision. The other method you can try is studying emotional mastery. It reaches you how to respond when you feel stuck, frustrated, and unable to motivate yourself. There are some books on Leo's book list on these topics which I found useful. If you like Leo's content, you can try replacing your cell phone habits with books you enjoy the most and supplement the vision you create in your life purpose course.

@Preety_India I didn't research the refugee crisis caused by civilians fleeing the war zones and I will have to think about that point.

Modern warfare can be an extremely difficult issue to research. There is often a lot of one sided propaganda that it makes it difficult to find accurate information. Furthermore, wars are hectic and it forces people to act from incomplete information. Nevertheless, I have identified some factors which cause wars, which wars are necessary, and which can be prevented. In the modern world, some of the causes of war include the fear of nuclear weapons, energy crises caused by disputes over oil, climate change induced droughts, and ISIS insurgencies. Most of these factors are preventable, but when factions like ISIS occupy large amounts of territories and destabilize regions like Syria, Iraq, Libya, and Somalia foreign intervention is often forced. The first strategy for preventing wars is for the United nations to agree to a universal ban on nuclear weapons. The United States made a serious mistake when the invasion of Iraq began because of the fear of weapons of mass destruction. The weapons did not exist, but Colin Powell was still effective in manufacturing consent for the invasion. In order to prevent mistakes like these from happening again, a universal ban on nuclear weapons could alleviate international tensions. This would also prevent events like the red scare, which could be caused by very powerful nations competing to control land and resources. The second strategy for preventing war is to switch to renewable energy. Since the 1970's some countries in the middle East like Saudi Arabia set up oil boycotts against the United States. These oil shocks caused energy crises which lead to skyrocketing gas and oil prices. This lead to countries from around the world competing for access to oil in the middle East. The clearest example of an international intervention caused by oil disputes was the gulf war. The gulf war took place in the early 1990's because of Iraq's attempt to control oil pricing through an invasion of Kuwait. If more countries switched to renewable energy, it is possible to decrease dependency on fossil fuels which caused these disputes. This is an extremely important step that will also help mankind to avoid water wars. Droughts are a significant factor in placing intense economic pressures on countries. For example, one of the contributing factors to the Syrian civil war was the worst drought in the history of Syria. In the future it is expected that water will play a bigger role in inciting international conflict. These droughts are linked to climate change which can be minimized through renewable energy. This can be accomplished through projects like building solar panels on the Sahara, providing energy for many different countries. This would make it possible to avoid economic recessions caused by energy crises, avoiding most wars in the process. The remaining wars which are hard to prevent are those caused by ISIS insurgencies. Currently, there is a U.S. Led coalition to defeat the insurgents in many different countries. A premature withdrawal of U.S. Troops could leave areas like Somalia and Syria vulnerable to future attacks at the hands of ISIS and other dangerous factions. One of the reasons these factions exist is because people like Osama bin Laden wanted revenge against the United States for all the war crimes the nation caused throughout the cold war. Osama bin Laden argued that the United States caused many events like 9/11 and he was justified in getting his revenge through these attacks. If the United States did not commit as many war crimes, maybe it would prevent people like Osama bin Laden from being radicalized to the point of threatening revenge through suicide attacks against the United States. One of the causes of American war crimes is the use of private military contractors in war zones. PMCs are not held to the same degree of accountability as U.S. Troops, but the incentive for using them is that they are cheaper and require less training. This enabled the torture of Iraqi civilians at the hands of PMCs as the U.S.dependency on PMCs expanded. The United States often used more PMCs than troops, like in Afghanistan by 2007. These trends have continued into 2019, and so long as PMCs are not held accountable, more people might seek revenge against the United for the war crimes committed. From what I have gathered it appears that many wars are preventable unless an intervention is called for to stop factions like ISIS from gaining territory. There are strategies for defeating ISIS, and based on the maps of their territory, ISIS has been in decline over the past decade. It seems that interventions against the groups are often successful and necessary to stabilize different regions. Although humanity may not be able to prevent all wars, it is certainly possible to prevent some of them through a ban on nuclear weapons and a transition to renewable energy while improving the accountability of PMCs to reduce war crimes and civilian casualties. By taking these steps humanity can make the world a safer place by preventing water wars and nuclear stand offs.

@Knowledge Hoarder you have raised a solid point that is worth discussing. I will try to make a steel man for keeping nuclear weapons. The primary function of nuclear weapons is to serve as a shield from invasion. Other countries will not want to go to war with countries with nuclear capabilities as they will be facing the threat of being wiped off the face of the earth. As a result weapons of mass destruction counter intuitively prevent more deaths than they cause by strongly discouraging war due to the threat of mutual destruction, killing billions. my initial research argued that nuclear weapons caused several crises including the red scare, the Cuban missile crisis, and the invasion of Iraq. If these crises are not enough to outweigh all of the wars prevented by the threat of mutual destruction, then humanity should keep nuclear weapons. With this steel man in mind, I will now add one more argument. Other countries using nuclear weapons against us is not the only threat. There is also the possibility of accidents caused by a miscarriage of our own nuclear weapons. A few examples of nuclear accidents include the 1997 radiation poisoning in Georgia, an explosion in Y-12 security center in 2003, and a failed nuclear test by Russians in 2019 which caused a missile to land in the sea when it didn't function properly. These nuclear accidents are more likely to kill people than an actual nuclear war ensuring mutual destruction. These accidents are not as bad as the ones that happened 50 years ago. "on Jan. 21, 1968, ... an American B-52G Stratofortress bomber, carrying four nuclear bombs, crashed onto the sea ice of Wolstenholme Fjord in the northwest corner of Greenland.". This is not the only time a military jet carrying nuclear weapons crashed. If the weapons detonated on any of these occasions, it would have been a catastrophe. https://theconversation.com/50-years-ago-a-us-military-jet-crashed-in-greenland-with-4-nuclear-bombs-on-board-87155

@Windappreciator chevron is attempting to avoid accountability for massive multi billion dollar lawsuits in 31 different countries. The charges total around 50 billion dollars and the CEO is pretending it isn't real. This is leading to the judicial harassment of those attempting to stop the environmental destruction. A common tactic corporations use is to file false claims of defamation even if the charges accusations are true and already on the courts. In this particular case, Steven Donziger won an 18 billion dollar lawsuit against Chevron which they have not paid. Chevron is using strategic lawsuits to stop this man while using corrupt court cases to skew the judgement on their favor. Big money does not stop at politicians, it effects the entire judicial system in the United States with over a thousand judges failing to recuse themselves when they have ties to the stocks of companies involved in lawsuits. Chevron took over this entire legal judgement and process. It has been 30 days since this unfair judgment was handed down and three days since Donziger was moved to prison with a maximum sentence of six months. After 42 days it becomes impossible to file a judicial ethics complaint about the judge involved in this case. Donziger still is not being allowed a retrial. A quote from Wikipedia "Human rights campaigners called Chevron's actions as an example of a strategic lawsuit against public participation (SLAPP).[3] In April 2021, six members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus demanded that the Department of Justice review Donziger's case.[4] In September 2021, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights ruled that the pre-trial detention imposed on Donziger was illegal and called for his release.[5]" If Donziger were allowed to hold big corporations accountable for environmental destruction, this would be a major victory for everybody across the world victimized by pollution and corporate greed.

https://sign.moveon.org/petitions/free-steven-donziger This is a case of clear injustice. This man is trying to protect thousands of people from environmental destruction and human rights violations. Chevron did not allow him a fair trial in response to being held accountable for all the people killed for billions in profits.

I think when it comes to rapists only the most extreme cases should get the death penalty. I know a story about a man who kidnapped three young girls when they were in grade school and repeatedly raped them for decades. one day they managed to escape when a man heard them screaming and he broke down the door. The girls had been so broken that they eventually stopped caring that were routinely being raped. A similar thing happens to people who are torture for extended periods. If a person does something like this, then they are probably beyond salvation and should be put to death. No amount of punishment could make up for something like this. The only problem with this argument is that some people become school shooters because of brain damage and they lose the desire to kill dozens of children when the brain damage is corrected. This kind of insanity defense could be used for somebody who repeatedly raped someone for decades. How are we supposed to account for insanity in these cases?

I have been thinking about my hobby a lot and how I could turn it into a career. It is difficult to make it as a chess player, but I am looking at many different ways I could make money off of something I want to do. First, there could be a professional chess player who travels around the world to many tournaments, playing in as many as one a week. Currently this is not feasible because I work at Kroger and have limited time off. Plus I currently don't make enough money to live alone without getting a raise to about 15.50 per hour. It would be hard to balance a job with demanding hours with many tournaments, while still having enough money to live on my own. I would have to eat into my savings for paying bills and tournaments, over the course of two years before they finally pay me 15.50. Second, there are various jobs I researched in order to transition to something closer to my passion. I am currently a chess coach for 15 dollars per session, but I only have one student and she is recovering from surgery. I would have to find more people by becoming an online coach. If I taught 6 people per week, it would bring me to 90 dollars on that front. If I get better, I could charge more. Grandmasters charge about 50 dollars per session. Another way I could make a similar job is with an organization like chess in schools. Unfortunately, the opportunity I found was in New York, and COVID makes it even harder. Third, I asked about becoming a tournament director. I don't know what the salary is yet, but I have some emails explaining how to become one. If I get experience on this front, then I could work with the Ohio scholastic chess series on one Saturday in each month. Fourth, I could become a proofreader or chess commentator for online sites like Chessable and play Magnus. I once was a voluntary beta tester who found typos in a course and analyzed various positions with a computer to find instructive variations. I took four years of Spanish back in high school and if I review that, I could qualify for jobs like these. One of the courses was an AP course. Apparently it has a very nice salary, but I don't know how much exactly. Fifth, many of the jobs in this field require some knowledge of computer science. I went to college and got an associate degree in computer sciences, and if I went back to make that a bachelor's degree, then I would have enough knowledge to qualify for many more jobs in this field. Sixth, I could try making chess courses, but the market is already saturated with many chess courses made by grandmasters. I would have to work for one of these grandmasters in making courses, and it is probably something related to computer sciences. I could consider checking other board games to see how many of them have courses and in what languages. If I can't make chess courses, then I may need to make and translate different courses from other games. Finally, I have a few ambitious ideas. I could bring in a little more money by building my own club, charging membership, and holding tournaments. if I were to do something special, I could make a special school for many board games, I would set myself up to break some records. I would teach each board game throughout one week. After studying many different board games, I could play a simul. It would be like how chess grandmasters play 20-50 chess games at once, only this time I would be playing a different game on every board. One would be chess, another shogi, another Chinese chess, another checkers, and so on and so forth. I could really make it crazy by adding things like duel monsters and Pokemon trading cards. I currently don't know if any simuls featuring 20-50 different board games. A similar idea would be to play a simul with all 960 unique Fischer random postions. Currently, the world record for the largest simul is 604 chess games, taking 25 hours to complete. If I were to make this simul doable, it would have to be online rather than walking around a large area. The current world record holder walked 34 miles during his simul. If online simuls count, then this record could be broken in under a day and half of constant play. Of course I would need to get better at Fischer random. Maybe through a combination of all of these things, it would be possible to make it as a chess player and potentially put me in a position to more easily become a grandmaster. If I find jobs which encourage constantly learning and self improvement, then that would combine money with my goals. One day I hope to bring month long spiritual retreats into this equation plus testing psychedelics to recontextualize my entire life, but that is a story for another day.

@unborn_chicken You probably feel This way because there is not a lot of optimism and hope in the future of mankind. You mentioned that technology is improving and that's a start. We can also say that societies are degrading as a necessary part of our evolution to realize the current limitations of our way of being. We may witness our societies fall apart, but this is necessary in order give us a vision of something that could possibly be better. What changes would you like to see in the world and what would it take to realize this vision? If the world is not acceptable now, let it inspire you by teaching you that life is not as good as it could be and you can use the suffering of mankind to give you ideas for change.

I left a comment on his most recent video telling him not to get himself killed for the sake of YouTube views. He probably won't stop, but it's worth a shot.

It took me a lot of practice to get from 1700 blitz to 2000. I know a young prodigy at chess club who has an online blitz and bullet rating of 2500. When it comes to longer time controls I have a small edge and I play a little bit better until my time gets low. I lost pretty badly in the tie breakers though. If I study him I might figure something out for blitz. We have some pretty close and tense games otherwise. One bit of hope for me in blitz was a bughouse tournament I played in and won. My time control was excellent despite having only five minutes for the whole game and I was stalling for my team mate. We ended up thing for first, but I proved that I can excellent time control even though I often end up "living off of the increment" in 3+2 games for blitz. I started on lichess back around 2017 at 1700 in classical and rapid. I have been practicing constantly and have been on this kind of slope of gradual improvement overtime. I have some bumps and peaks, but overall I have been getting better all along.

@cookiemonster I normally don't play on chess.com so my rating there is low. I typically play on lichess.org with my rapid and classical being around 2200. My blitz is around 2000. I tried to break 2100 in blitz, but the closest I got was 2080. My peak rating on longer games was around 2270.

I have the right stuff to make it happen. Other players recognize my talents and agree that I am under rated. I played black in this game against an International Master and won. https://lichess.org/guK01WfB Am I willing to make my entire life chess? No, and there are world champions like Kasparov and Carlsen who also play sports and are politically active. Some grandmasters are also psychologists or engineers. If I were to do something aside from chess it would be restructuring our society such that we appreciate the significance of emotional mastery which is completely overlooked in education. This vision I have resonates with me most emotionally because all my life I struggled with self manipulation in which I tried to push away my most authentic emotions to convince myself I was someone else. If there are other people who struggled in this way, then I could make my life about teaching society the limitations of education and how to overcome them. One of the consequences would be to prevent suicide, but there would be a much broader impact beyond that. This leaves me with a big decision because these two directions for my life are good, but the second resonates with me most emotionally. I don't yet know how to actualize the second and I still don't make enough to get away from family. This leaves me with some uncertainty and feeling split as to where I should go. I will keep researching other methods for actualizing the second vision.

@Ineedanswers I want to live my life without self manipulation. Self manipulation can take on many different forms. I can manipulate myself into being self sacrificing, greedy, spiritual, caring for mankind, and more. It becomes a great source of suffering when I convince myself to be a different way. This self manipulation can be hyper rational as a means of rejecting my emotions and gut intuitions. If I could effortlessly live my life without self manipulation such that I live in a flow state allowing life to happen to me naturally, then I would be so happy that it makes me cry. The only thing to do after that is to help others stop self manipulation so they can happily be themselves.

@Kross I felt like that a lot through years of my life. I would criticize myself for enjoying my suffering as if I should not enjoy it, creating more suffering in the process. First of all, you need to check if you take pride in painful memories of the fact that you suffer in a unique way. This is the subtle joy you get when you replay painful memories repeatedly. So far I tried telling a psychologist about this kind of self manipulation, but they seemed stumped, I find Leo's book list on emotional mastery more helpful. My psychologist guessed that it could be low self esteem and that if I somehow feel unworthy, then it could cause us to feel that we deserve to suffer or be punished. It sounds like a good guess that could apply to some people. I was actually working on this aspect of my life earlier today. I found that my most limiting beliefs are my meta beliefs. This includes beliefs like "my beliefs should be true" "I should not be self deceived for the sake of emotional comfort" and "I am in control". These are well intended, but these beliefs can create these emotional problems if not examined carefully. There is a snuck premise in these beliefs which is that I need a world view to tell me what reality is. This comforts me by keeping me grounded in my sense of reality, but really this comes from the fear of reality collapsing as I question the very experience I'm having. As for control, our self judgement can be used to imply that we are the cause of things happening whether they are good or bad. If the idea of not being in control scares you, then this could be a source of self judgement and emotional turmoil that makes you feel even less in control. Meditating on these desires and observing them can be a good start. This can then be turned into some kind of spiritual masochism in which we tear our worldviews apart. This can lead to a form of suffering mixed with pride, and if you let go of the pride, you let go of the suffering. If you have a habit of doing this, then part of your mind will not want to change even if you are suffering. You could then try letting go of your meta beliefs just as an exercise to see how it makes you feel, and then it gives you a window to change this habit. For me my suffering was mostly internal and consisted of self judgement rather than thinking of problems in the world of with others. I don't know what your specific beliefs may be, but I hope this gives you a start. If nothing else, you can try recognizing that you do love suffering, and in this sense you never really suffered which gives you a window into spiritual healing. Maybe this does not make sense to you, but at least recognize that to reject the fact that enjoy suffering creates falsehood and it results in a spiral of emotional instability. If you start from self honesty, then you are on the right track.

There were a lot of pick pockets when I went to England, France, and Germany with my sister and my high school. While I was watching the street performers in London, it was night and they were spinning on their heads and singing songs. A suspicious couple walked up behind me and tried to pick pocket me just as the music was getting loud. I was suspicious, so I was listening to the movement behind me carefully. They quickly unzipped my back pack to try to reach two fingers in and grab something, but I felt the vibrations and took off my back pack, turning around to confront them. They walked away, but they didn't get anything. There's a lot of pick pockets in these areas that target American tourists. There were also bullies in school who messed with my back pack and tried to steal my things because they were jealous of my good grades. Maybe this made me more sensitive to pick pockets.

I have an honest perspective on family, crime, sexuality, and personal responsibility. I lived out this perspective when I was a child. Blue reacting to red: I come from a family of criminals who were constantly abusing drugs and stealing money. I needed to take personal responsibility for this and recognize that my family is a terrible example for me. My father told me that I could be the one to break the chain of crime in the family after he was routinely stuck in it. I understand that people are more likely to become criminals of they drop out of school like my father. Unlike him, I will be a sharp, disciplined student with straight A's. (Which I did actually.). My school was also a bad example for me. I only had one detention in my life which was when the teacher was bullying me believe it or not. Aside from the teachers blaming children for the problems in the world, sexual impropriety was common. There were grade school children flirting with girls, humping them, twerking, and all sorts of inappropriate things. This all continued into high school, in fact 6/7 girls are expected to experience sexual harassment by the time they graduate. I chose not to participate in the actions of other children, so I stayed to myself, away from them. I don't want to get myself in trouble. I was bullied by multiple students who were jealous of my grades and stole my homework. I was one of those students at one point. I stopped caring about doing my homework and nearly failed. When I realized my selfishness could have hurt me by getting me held back, I snapped and became a straight A student. During this time I also copied some of the inappropriate behaviors of other students so they would think I'm funny and be my friends. I never really felt comfortable with the sexual topics every student talked about, and I struggle to find how people are supposed to handle these topics. In fact I started laughing at kids for being gay even though I had gay thoughts and I was afraid of looking girly by admitting I like Justin Bieber. It is unacceptable that sexual harassment is so commonplace, but it is unhealthy to isolate myself from other people when bad behavior is this common. I did it to my family as well. This makes me feel lost and confused as I try to figure complicated situations myself. This lead to hyper rationalizing in response to emotions I did not like or understand how to handle. This is an interesting example of stage blue mixed with resistance to mainstream culture or my environment. Normally I would be a conformist at this stage, but instead I became an individual who questioned society and loved my own uniqueness. There are definitely qualities of multiple stages if I take into account my reaction to religion when I was young. I first wanted to know by which standards should I evaluate which religion was correct. It still rubbed me the wrong way even though my family was Catholic. I felt that I would lock myself into a narrow perspective which I would spend my life defending with wallpaper over my doubts all the way to my death bed. I still felt that religion was somehow partially right, but that converting to any religion would be limiting and problematic. There are definitely qualities of stage blue in this post, but I have a negative view of conformity because of how personal responsibility contrasted with my environment. Perhaps there are qualities of yellow like being a lone wolf and being open minded. I did a lot of self reflection while I was away from everyone else.

@Knowledge Hoarder I think if we were preparing for the worst case scenario, humanity should be taking steps to mitigate the damages of water wars. Since there were nuclear stand offs in the past it makes sense to ban nuclear weapons, taking them out of the equation when it comes to water wars. World superpowers don't want to do that though. Secondly, there is the mass extinction of sea life. If some economies like Japan depend on sea life, then they need to switch their dependency to other food sources like vegetation. The point is that vegetables take the least amount of energy to make, especially when comparing it to raising cattle. That would take a lot more resources. Maybe other nations should rely more on vegetation. I don't know what to do about the rising sea levels displacing millions of people and destroying farm lands. A bunch of them will probably die if other nations are not willing to take all the refugees. This will also lead to the migration of mosquitos, which is why the U.S.military thinks climate change is a national security threat. I guess we need more pills For preventing malaria. It is the impoverished and undeveloped countries that will be hurt most of all even though they are the least responsible. It will likely lead to various genocides because of water conflicts caused by droughts. I would imagine that helping underdeveloped countries finish developing while eliminating poverty would help them to more effectively respond to The climate disaster. If corporations were taxed more, maybe it would help finish the development of Africa. The earth is expected to heat by 3.5 degrees at the rate we are going even though we are technically in an ice age. For some reason Leo does not seem very concerned about climate change. He says things like "a couple of degrees won't kill you.". I would like to know what he sees that we don't . Maybe he thinks the fear mongering and political biases are making climate change seem worse than it actually is. I would love to know what science there is to back that up.

That makes a lot sense. Why should we assume that one education is the best for everybody? The world needs engineers so our philosophers have air conditioning and proper plumbing. Normally students are not given freedom to choose their education until college because most of the courses I took in high school were required. I still think math, english, history, and health should be required. It is the advanced courses like calculus that make no sense to require just like studying Shakespeare's plays. Some of the required courses are superfluous and not everybody needs to take them. Maybe required math should stop around algebra and geometry. How much freedom do you think students should have in high school? How far should required courses go on various subjects?

A common complaint about how philosophy is taught is that people are not taught how to think. The main goal of teaching philosophy should be to help people use their minds as effectively as possible. Instead of this, philosophy becomes studying the history of delusional men. Studying mankind's mistakes can be useful if you learn from them and grow as a result. This does not help as much if students merely debate what a text from centuries ago meant. students can't really know for sure unless they ask the old men. In compulsory philosophy courses students should contemplate questions like "what is the mind and how should it be used.". These individual answers can then be improved upon through teaching logical fallacies that philosophers made in the past. Rather than giving students a philosophy on how to behave, it would be more interesting to let students be their own philosophers and then use history to supplement and improve their thinking.