trenton

I'm back from the tournament. I lost two and won three. The last win was against an opponent rated 200 points higher than me. I didn't win any money, but I had useful experience and it shows my capabilities. During the games I often felt like I had scatter brains. It could be some kind of OCD and autism symptom. It often makes me hesitate to move while being unclear about a final evaluation. This more than likely affects my ability to think about my life purpose as well. One limit of actualized is that it assumes a normal psychology, and I may need to find something more suited for me. I had been thinking about a lot during the tournament. It didn't distract me from the actual games, but I was paying closer attention to how my mind behaves and reacts. When there are real stakes it is easier for me let go of strong emotions than normal and with more practice I will be doing better. What I love most about these tournaments is not the money, friends, and awesome games. Those are all nice, but I love having my mind focused on the task at hand in front of me. I become paradoxically peaceful yet alert, determined yet detached, and in a state of flow. One of the things I thought about was how much of my life I'm wasting doing things I don't enjoy. I wondered if my purpose in life boils down to being a mediocre chess player who bags groceries. If I can't come up with a great business idea, get away from my family, or actually play in tournaments as much as I want to, then this could seriously be the case. This is probably why a bunch of players stagnate. I feel trapped, angry, saddened, and disgusted. If I can't do what I want with my life, then what the hell am I doing? There are not many opportunities to work with Chess and make money. I'm usually the quiet guy who is mysteriously good at chess. I am off work Monday. I will need to get a doctor's appointment, hire a grandmaster to ask his advice, prepare to move to Kentucky for a month, and as always keep practicing. I struggle to find motivation to keep playing when I am stuck away from what I enjoy doing. I swear on my life that I will find a way out of this slow and painful death. I become very pessimistic about life when I am stuck doing things I don't want to do while the other players get ahead of me. It makes me feel like I'm wasting my time and there is nothing I can do about. Maybe there is something I can do though. If I have to do something drastic like moving to Europe, then fine. I will not tolerate living in this depressing hell hole as I watch my body slowly deteriorate over the next 40 years. Many of my co workers feel this way, but they don't want to talk about it. Unfortunately, I struggle to make a clear sense of direction. Maybe I was meant to become a cynical average worker who gradually becomes angrier because of my failures to live an enjoyable life just like the rest of them.

@at_anchor I have been considering the same thing myself. I don't want to walk around with a SD blue shadow by judging things rather than understanding them. I end up lost in a relativistic nihilism in which I have no sense of purpose at all. It is important to address this sort of hang up somehow. One of my greatest fears is the loss of individuality through a false sense of purpose and conformity. This worsens my social skills and sense of belonging. Currently, I don't feel like I belong anywhere and this doesn't help me find a life purpose. One possibility to keep in mind is that going to church can trigger an epiphany. It could be taken such that you reinforce to the surrounding paradigm. If you take what is said with a grain of salt and focus on consciousness as they attempt to point to it in this environment, it might work. That sounds awesome, but they would probably throw you out. The visions of angels sounds off the hook. We may have to work with what we've got and not use psychedelics. From this point of view we can't blame people for being selfish, unconscious, and fearful if they don't have the tools to raise their consciousness.

My chess tournament starts tomorrow. I know my openings pretty well and have no especially bad weakness. I am excited for the near future and I would like to remember what it is like to be in a place that makes me happy. I like to be in the zone to the point that nothing else in the universe bothers me and I have complete peace of mind. After this tournament I would like to test out a new style. It is playing more positionally rather than simplifying chess to just attacking. My calculations are often over simplified through this bias. The reason grandmasters tell people to adopt this style is because it works and it is an easy way to boost your rating by 1000 points. Many players end up hitting a limit at 1800 though, and I would like to expand my knowledge and go above this. I also notice that my games become increasingly beautiful as I improve so that is interesting.

I recently stumbled upon a scene depicting Jesus Christ as a social justice warrior. I am wondering when to behave like this. My mind plays devil's advocate and says I would probably be wrong and look horrible. I think Jesus would react like this toward corporate lobbyists who turn the capital into a market place while oppressing humanity through legalized bribery. How do we balance a low tolerance for devilry with moral relativism? When should righteous anger be used and how should it be done? How should we respond to someone else's righteous anger when they are wrong? How can righteous anger be used without making people radical and violent? When does being nice make us a doormat for evil?

@gettoefl This is an interesting paradox I would like to discuss. How do we pick our battles? Some people may be unwilling to change and you will only make an enemy out of them. In this way your righteous anger will backfire and lead to further transgressions. One example is if you make it obvious that you are offended, but the abuser recognizes this and takes joy in violating this boundary. This can become harassment and it will enrage you further. I see this in transgenderism which is a common battle being fought nowadays. I think if you want to peacefully enforce a boundary, then the one who violates our boundaries must himself be conscious enough to admit his wrong doing and be willing to change and be your friend. If he does not want to be your friend, then he will actively seek disapproval out of the addicting pleasure of getting on someone's bad side. This is how adults bully each other as they take joy in this sense of power and control. It is like I'm a monkey stuck in a cage and a sadistic bastard is jabbing me with a stick while laughing. If somebody is like this, then the response could be saying "fuck off" and cut them off from you. If you can't get this person out of your life so easily like a family member, then you can get stuck and feel like a victim. I felt This way when my mom had an abusive boyfriend who broke the dishes, stole my money, and beat her. Mom would not listen to reason and she told me to mind my own business. I chose this battle because I was concerned about the safety of the family. On the inside it felt hollow to me because I was only acting based on the belief that a family should love each other. In fact, I didn't really feel love from my family because we were full of lying, stealing, manipulating, criminals. Dad fled the state to avoid paying child support and it all felt like a lie to me when I tried to stop the drug addiction and domestic violence in the name of family love.

My answer is I don't know. For all I know Jesus is a poetic character that never existed like Adam, eve, Noah, and so forth. I would never know for sure what Jesus was like unless I met him in the flesh. As for using righteous anger, I think it is necessary to know your boundaries and make them explicit and specific. Then enforce those boundaries. An example would be if my grandma says she does not care if a n-word crook can't breath. In that case doing the right thing or enforcing a boundary could be telling her "stop being a racist b-word." The function of not being nice is to get the point across and make it obvious that change is necessary.

If I want to find my life purpose, then I will need to find a way to show or tell the world who I am in my own unique way. This may change in different moments, but I am more willing to confront dark truths than most of my co-workers. This can be included in my life purpose. I noticed that when I focus on a physical sensation, then my mind becomes quieter and I sleep more easily. If I want to find my life purpose, then I need to find some way to quiet my mind by focusing on something to touch. It is not something I find by jumping to different pages on the internet. If My focus deteriorates then it explains why I feel so confused. Perhaps I could use a rubber band for when my thoughts start racing.

@Consept I kind of agree with where your coming from. Although the issue can seem heated for the parties involved, this really is a small issue compared to all of the other things going on. Society will need to test its policies on this issue over time. You may miss a few details on smaller issues like these, but you seem to be keeping the big picture in mind.

I see what you mean. I'm trying to find some way to balance what these parties want, and I don't see how else to do this. There are still scientists debating this matter.

Suppose we add another category exclusively for trans athletes. This would avoid controversy with trans people getting an unfair advantage in One way or another. It would also allow trans folk to keep pursuing their passions. The drawback is that they will still be alienated from the rest of society as a cost for fair sports.

I haven't been updating much because it often takes away from anything else I'm doing. I will occasionally add. I find that I am interested in learning about politics still and I have found implications in the imbalance of sex. There are many applications, but one of them is that feminist movements tend to be more successful when the majority of a population is female. This can happen following a major war. I also found new angles for looking at border security and I enjoy learning about new perspectives. I found that changing the drug policy throughout history has been more effective at stopping drug trafficking over our borders than directly securing them. This has been unsuccessful since prohibition, and the smuggling of bootleg alcohol stopped after prohibition ended. The same logic can be applied to marijuana with proven success. I like finding how different issues are interconnected. As for chess I beat my nemesis. He is rated over 2400 and he beat me 12 times. https://lichess.org/oxK0ogcK/black#0 I plan to tell my sister about why I resent her with a complete list. This is one of the exercises in a book I'm reading. She will likely interrupt, argue, deflect, and get sidetracked. I doubt that she will want to apply many of the things I plan to tell her. I will still test the exercise to know from experience.

@PepperBlossoms Leo mentioned that in how to escape wage slavery. If you don't understand how the economy and business works and how to become a massive value provider, then you're fucked. You will probably be a wage slave until you die no matter what dead end job you switch to. His recommendation is to start a business. It is harder to do with COVID, but I still looked into building my own chess club. so far nothing became of it because I was using an employment service for people with autism and I can't find the diagnosis. I could use any regular service then if that works better. Meanwhile, a dark reality about how these complicated things work is that most of the money in the world is made through exploitation, slave labor, disaster capitalism, fighting over oil and so on. This doesn't have to be a limiting belief because it is possible to make millions without slavery. You just won't become a billionaire with way more money than you need anyway. Becoming a millionaire is still within reason. If your concerned about slavery, then the global supply chain is deeply corrupt and the U.S. alone imports hundreds of billions of dollars worth of slave products every year. This requires going into politics to change. Sometimes I think if machines did these jobs, then we would not have as many human sweat shops. Some of Leo's books on politics can get depressing.

@PepperBlossoms very good ideas thank you. This right here is what paralyzed me in college because I became unable to pick a major. At first I wanted to be a chess grandmaster, but my family wanted me to go to college. There were no chess majors, so I tried to pick something that eventually makes me better at chess. Maybe psychology would make me better, but I didn't like the career prospects. As I shifted my focus toward career prospects, I considered politics, but switched because of fear of failure. I also wasn't mature enough to do such a thing. I ended up narrowing my decision to computers or business because the career prospects are the most lucrative that way. Maybe financial independence could help me become a grandmaster. By this point I felt torn in many different directions. Every major is because I want something unrelated or the one that I am somewhat passionate about seems difficult to achieve just like transforming our overly secularized society such that we better appreciate the importance of emotional mastery and the spiritual wisdom that backs it up. That is a very useful observation. My negative thoughts identify problems such as my relationship with my sister, my job at Kroger and how it lacks creative labor, my confusion regarding my life purpose, the challenges COVID has created for me, my sense of being stuck in chess improvement, and my fear of failure in politics. Thoughts like these could be used for hopelessness and depression, but the alternative seems more promising. Thanks for pointing that out. In terms of potential, I could be doing a lot more than bagging groceries and wiping poop and blood off the toilets and bathroom walls which is my least favorite part of the job. Any other job I take would only be if it makes it easier to become a grandmaster or if I can do something that is significant enough for my existence to be felt. This would be something like Decriminalizing psychedelics, which if there were a job for that then that would be an awesome job. I could try contacting some holistic medicine sites to learn more about this. If there were a job in which creative labor had a substantial impact on mankind that paid enough for me to move out, then that would solve a lot of problems. It sounds idealistic, but it is worth a shot. As for chess, my current job makes me feel exhausted to the point that I want to eat ice cream and lay down in bed. My brain feels dead at the end of the day so I can't think clearly. Maybe replacing ice cream with fruit smoothies would help. Otherwise, I may continue to feel stuck when this is combined with working at a grocery store with varying schedule. The more time off I have, the happier I am. I mentioned this to the management just as I described the fact that this job lacks creative labor. They said they have nothing there and I should get a different job. Most of my negative thoughts revolve around all of this potential and all of the things I could doing with my life. My co-workers are unwilling to even talk about how they feel stuck in life as well. I could say that this is my main advantage over most employees who have already given up on any higher ideals. "Living up to my potential" becomes a common theme which leads to sleeping problems and suicidal thoughts as it starts to seem like my life is not worth living if I'm stuck forever. I would rather try the other method of using negative thinking for something purposeful. Thanks very much for the observation.

In a sense the hypocrisy of the West is not much worse than other countries. A lot of it boils down to geopolitics by defending or ignoring the war crimes we commit while condemning those of our enemies. China has a similar hypocrisy with saying the United States started COVID and spreading all kinds of lies and propaganda. It looks like any country spreading propaganda about the enemy is usually a hypocrite. those in power are usually hypocrites in many different nations. In the U.S.for example, the laws often don't apply to the rich and powerful. This is probably true everywhere, but when the 18th amendment was passed to ban alcohol the only place it was legal was in the capital building. My history teacher was confused as to why we would ban alcohol, so I told him that our representatives had too much to drink. Another recent example is the stock market in which you are not allowed to trade stocks with insider information without disclosing the trades. The law is not enforced at all for those in power, so they enrich themselves and cling to power to maintain all the money. On reason this happens is because it takes a lot more work to convict someone in power. This happens with your boss when he sexually harasses you, billionaires when they illegally evade taxes, or the president when the party in power refuses to impeach him. They will only impeach the other party's president. Another major point of hypocrisy would be that we pretend to be more advanced than we really are. This can include leaving people with the impression that we are above racism thanks to MLK, but in fact there are over 600 white supremacist groups including the American freedom party. A common quote by conservatives is "I have a dream that one day my four little children will be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.". These are the same people who deny systemic racism while benefiting from it, scapegoat illegal immigrants for the failure of bad policy, move polling stations away from black communities, call COVID the kung-flu, dog whistle to white supremacists and the alt right including neo Nazis, and defend explicit racism in restaurants in spite of the civil rights act which forbids it. Our country still denies civil rights to transgender people. I could go on all day.

I don't know why, but my brain does not seem to be clicking and I am screwing up badly in chess. Maybe this happens after I'm off of work. I can't focus as much anymore and I get annoyed. I feel myself shifting toward a negative mood again which previously lead to suicidal thoughts. I start to feel trapped when my brain does not work right anymore and I get stuck. I need to do something about this pattern right here. I end up just messing around on YouTube and walking around or eating ice cream after I get off work. If I make a fruit smoothie instead of ice cream or might make a positive difference. I get a sweet tooth after work, so this is the key. As for some good news, I wrote a letter to a neighbor about how their dog jumped the fence. I hope they read it and see that their dog ran up and down the side wall in the middle of the night.

@PepperBlossoms Thank you for asking. I will explain the best I can. What I enjoy the most about chess is the spirit of the player. By putting myself in a state of flow, nothing in the universe bothers me any more, only the task at hand. This becomes peaceful, yet tense. Energetic, yet relaxed and focused. And with a determination that can be seen in my eyes. What I love about chess is the sense that I can get rid of a lot of internal chatter and conflict in which I tear myself down with my victim mindset. I make myself feel hopeless and fight myself constantly. When I get all of that to stop, it helps avoid deeply depressing attitudes while allowing my strengths to shine brighter than I thought possible. The titles themselves are meaningless. I want to do something fun that makes money for one thing. I also want a job that requires me to grow and change.

Of course when I'm in the thick of it, I would either isolate myself to avoid getting hurt or kill myself to escape life. This is my typical strategy for dealing with conflict. Otherwise, I might make it worse by talking to people who may as well be speaking Chinese. Each of my words will have a different meaning attached to them for every person, so instead I don't talk as my words will be taken as I don't mean them. Maybe a more accurate way to put is "I hope you had a good laugh at the idea that conflict is wrong.". What the post really argues is that conflict is inevitable, not that conflict itself is absurd. Maybe this is a sign of the problem I'm describing. I would rather say nothing than say something I don't mean or that someone will interpret in a worse way.

I watched Leo's video on conflict and I would like to add my own insights that I find hilarious and I hope it makes you laugh. After finishing the video I sat down and went back to practicing chess. As I was playing I started thinking "why is there so much conflict and war in a chess game?". I then started laughing because the point of the game is literally that pieces are at war and they want to checkmate the other king. In order for there to be no conflict in chess, chess would have to die. It would be absurd to sit here and moralize about how cruel it is that the pieces are attacking each other and oppressing the other side. a similar example is in Pokemon the first movie. A lot of Pokemon fans make fun of the message that fighting is wrong. Literally the point of Pokemon is that you catch Pokemon and train them to battle each other. If you want conflict in Pokemon to stop, then Pokemon needs to die. Playing this kind of music in the background of a chess game would be ridiculous. The nature of the game is conflict. That is the point, and if you want no more conflict, then you can't play. That creates another conflict. Now let's get a little more real. Say a wolf and a rabbit. It would be silly to moralize to a wolf about why eating a rabbit is wrong. The point of being a wolf is that you are a predator and your nature is such that you must eat a rabbit. Capitalism is another good example. The idea is that many different companies compete for customers by producing goods and services. Naturally, this leads to conflict and other companies will want to destroy each other. this also creates income and wealth inequality which causes is to think that corporations are evil. This is not a bug of capitalism, it is a feature. Just like In chess, Pokemon, and in the animal kingdom. Capitalism must divide the rich and the poor simply by the nature of the economic philosophy. Interestingly, communism tries to unite the rich and poor, but in an unsustainable way. How would we unite the rich and poor? Would it be like Martin Luther king trying to unite the slave and his master in his "I have a dream speech?" One more example is in war. Sometimes my sister argues that men caused all the wars throughout history. My mom and I dispute this point. My mom looks at examples of violent women who wanted genocides against the pegans in Europe. Meanwhile, I argue that in order for a country to survive, it must compete with other nations for land and resources. This will inevitably lead to war regardless of who is power. We could say that the nature of a country is that of a super organism that must oppress other super organisms in order to feed itself. I would argue things like "do you really think the illegal drone strikes and bombings in the middle East would stop killing civilians if Hillary Clinton were in office?". Of course this argument is another form of conflict over my sister's feminist ideology. Her boyfriend cheated on her and she had a lot of bad experiences with men because of my dad's sexist favoritism toward me. I would argue that racism works the same way, but my sister pulls up videos of other like minded feminists who defend their generalizations about men. We could say that men and women are stake holders in the war of the sexes. So of course the division of man and woman will lead to conflict if they are not unified in a sustainable way. One way I try to resolve these types of ideological and political conflicts is by finding common ground. This tends to be more effective than arguing that one ideology is the one true one, which is the biggest absurdity in history. For example, I agree with my sister on some actions that could be taken to stop income inequality and human trafficking. She respects me for my research into slavery because most men don't know what women go through because of the prevalence of forced prostitution in the black market. You could say that I am trying to look at multiple points of view and unify them, thus stopping polarization. This method for resolving conflict is limited when my grandma insists that Trump won the election and the democrats cheated. I can't challenge this close minded argument because she rejects any and all evidence I show her while defending any all actions of Trump. I wrote a message to her explaining how transgenderism works, and I don't know her reaction yet. It is like a marry couple that will argue and hate each other until death do they part. Fundamentally, the point of survival is that you are in conflict with death. If you are alive, then you are not dead. From this point of view, there will inevitably be conflict and it is absurd to look at conflict like it is wrong. Conflict is the nature of reality. I hope you get a good laugh at the absurdity of conflict.

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?