trenton

I call it rapid fire cherry picking. One criticism is that if you were to debate Shapiro, you could lose because he puts out so much falsehood in a short time span that you can't keep up. You need to make many pauses and challenge him point by point. One problem with persuasion is that it has nothing to do with truth. The more truthful side could lose a debate to somebody who is good at tricking people. Shapiro is a very skilled debater and he won many times, but he is not a good source of you are concerned with the truth.

@Hardkill I will tell you about my experience from when I used to follow this guy. At first he seems witty and addicting, but you are greatly underestimating his biases. This was what led me to seeking out better media sources than the daily wire. First of all, he constantly demonizes the left. His biases become obvious when he uses the term "leftist" attempting to make people look bad without understanding them. Shapiro is very poor on issues such as science vs. Religion. Sam Harris is considered more evolved and it is clear when these two are against each other that Shapiro is out classed. Shapiro constantly cherry picks and misinterpreted information about systemic racism. There are several videos criticizing Shapiro in depth. You can see that he sights many sources, but misrepresents them constantly. His bias is very obvious here. Among many other things, his moral absolutism makes him inflexible and incapable of looking at an issue from other perspectives. This can lead to naive libertarian arguments like pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, underestimating the terrible conditions people could have. In fact he sited Martin Luther king to argue the opposite of what he would say. I could go on for a long time so I will just add one more. "Facts don't care about your feelings" is a problematic way to view the world. It does not help you to master your emotions, rather you unconsciously act out emotional biases while pretending to be hyper rational. Ideas like these could hinder your ability to live a happy and fulfilling life. I was hurt by operating under similar ideas before by failing to recognize that hyper rationalism is a consequence of a completely emotional bias. Shapiro is a poor teacher of self love. I ultimately stopped watching Shapiro in favor of this website because it is more worthwhile to listen to. Leo posted a list of better conservatives somewhere in the first half of the mega thread about trump supporters storming the capitol.

I am concerned about the future prospects of this country. It looks like the national deficit is always a background issue waiting with serious consequences. It has worsened substantially since COVID-19. Given how this issue is not being effectively tackled, it looks like the only alternative is to know what is coming if the United States continues to overspend. Is there a realistic way to balance the budget? If not, what are the consequences of ignoring this issue? Are the consequences bad enough to justify moving to another country and converting to a different currency? Interesting fact: the U.S. Was once free of debt thanks to Alexander Hamilton raising taxes, curtailing government spending, and selling federal land. The deficit started up again with the civil war and became more severe with the great depression and world wars. These events were the start of overspending.

A couple years ago I used to follow the conservative media. One day I had the sudden idea that I should cross reference it with other news sources. I was concerned about media bias and thought that I was being misled. After comparing different sources, I found drastic contradictions. I watched the conservative media laugh and make fun of the left for being insane babies. I remember the idea "facts don't care about feelings.". the worst idea was "make them cry again." I can never take these ideas seriously. These mobs are worse than the mobs they condemned before. I started buying into this media when I thought they were smart. Sometimes I think I am stupid because of ever thinking they were smart. This was when I only saw what they wanted me to see. I am worried about what other people would think if they realized that at some point I followed this media. I judge myself because I think others would judge me. I also don't express my thoughts very often because I am worried that my thoughts would hurt people. As a result I was usually silent with my thoughts. For some reason I don't want to forgive myself. I will keep working on this because it doesn't make sense to not forgive my ignorance and it is counter productive to not love myself. At least I am ready to be grateful that my intuition stopped from going any further down that rabbit hole I found in 2017. I felt that there was more value in studying spirituality than in consuming the conservative media.

I would like to know how call it when one side is clearly better. If I say Trump is clearly far worse than Biden, I will sound biased in this judgement. People will tell you that you are the biased one. Is it possible to not sound biased in these conclusions in spite of all of the false equivalences being drawn?

@Nyseto I think you make an interesting point. Spiral dynamics can be turned into a ideology. This is problematic if the limitations are not fully acknowledged. Maybe if Leo has an episode detailing the limits of the model, it will change how these discussions take place. Another interesting idea is that a military soldier might be considered stage blue, but he can be very developed and disciplined. The soldier can be compared to an ordinary citizen who could be considered orange, green, or even yellow. If you start questioning what should people be developing toward, then in a way stage blue can be considered more developed than stage yellow for a given purpose. It therefore does not make sense to say I am better than stage blue because I am stage yellow. Most developmental models assume that people evolve toward higher wisdom. Given a different purpose, the assumption is limited. I think it is important to understand the limitations of the models we use when participating in politics.

One last note. I heard that monopoly is good at teaching businessmen how to make money. I never heard of the strategy games you mentioned, but I like strategy games like chess. These games look like they might be fun, but I never heard of using them to teach politics.

I do have some aspirations to act politically, but I ran into some problems. I am from the United States, so it is difficult for me to say what you should do in Germany or Bulgaria because the college systems in those countries might be different. There were several reasons why I was interested in politics. The first was the principle of the greatest good for the greatest number. I felt that in order to detect the greatest good for the greatest number, I would have to observe my own corruption constantly. This would help to build me into the best person I could be, making me more effective at finding the best course of action for a country. The second reason is because I think the truth reduces suffering. If I become a corrupt politician, I could mislead many people and contribute to the confusion of mankind. One thing I observed about myself is that I am never actually happy when I am being ideological about anything. There could be some truth to what I am saying, but I could hurt myself and others if I turn an educational perspective into a universal prescription. Some people will react badly. One reason I become dishonest is because I don't know how else to represent myself in a comprehensible way. The first problem I ran into was how to become a politician. Nearly 40% of Americans are unsure about the value of their college degree. Some of them don't even use the degree and work in customer service anyway. Jobs in politics can be very competitive, and require a lot of education. I was worried that I might fail and was discouraged from pursuing this education further because it is a gamble that I will get a job in this field. College can also be very expensive and take a lot of time for a master's degree. If I failed, I would be worse off than when I started working at Kroger anyway. The consequences of being discouraged from politics are noticeable. In order to be any good at politics, I need a lot of education, but it is a gamble that my education would be worth it. I thus see less value in learning about politics even though I find it interesting to learn about what major decisions were made and how to predict the consequences. The reasons I had for pursuing politics are no longer being appreciated as deeply as they could be, and I could become part of the problem if I don't know what kind of changes need to be made to our government. Being an under educated voter in the United States is part of the problem. I am a little more educated than some Americans, but it is not enough. The specific type of politics I would be interested in would be the field that best reflects the greatest good for the greatest number. I was discouraged from studying war because diplomacy failed to dissuade Kim Jong Un from building nuclear weapons. This make me doubt how effective I would be at stopping wars. The field I am most interested in is public policy because it is where I can focus on making the lives of many people as easy as possible. I want to detect the consequences of different policies and select the best one. This work would be meaningful to me. To answer some of your questions, it may be necessary to start in local politics to gain experience. I would reason that you should do this in Bulgaria because working in Germany places a limit on you that you can otherwise avoid. I assume that you have purchased the book list from this website already. I found some useful books on it that I read. Part of it relates to politics, but it is not the entire list. The rest of your questions I am not as confident in my answers. One question I have is what is college like in Germany and Bulgaria? If these colleges are different from the United States, it could be less expensive to become a politician. This could work on your favor. The jobs will probably be competitive still, so it might not eliminate the gamble entirely for this major life decision.

I don't want to encourage you to go to prison because there are dangerous people there. I will mention for the sake of being impartial that there was a criminal who went to prison, meditated constantly, and came out reformed as a Buddhist. It is possible, but there are much more dangers involved in prison including, but not limited to, violence, punishments by guards, and infections from poorly cleaned toilets if the prison is over populated. There was another man who went to prison because he was caught with marihuana. He spent most of his time reading, but it was not worth it because the objective of prison is to waste your life. Although you can read and meditate, it is not worth the trade offs especially if you have a family. I should also mention your long term criminal record when you get out. It can make it hard to get a job, leading to poverty. Please reconsider before you get yourself arrested. If you really want to be enlightened, become a monk in a Zen temple and scrub toilets before and after you meditate. This beats prison if you can still access Leo's videos.

I am at a loss for words. I don't know how to respond to what I just watched. I am even further stumped on how I would convince somebody that this video is true proof. The United States is divided to the point that information obtained from the news can instantly be rejected as fake. If this is real, then how would you convince somebody this is real? What would count as proof to somebody thoroughly bought into Trump's ideologies that Trump is not the kind of person who should be President? What should we do about this?

There are a couple of things I am confused about in this thread. First of all, I want to make sure I am interpreting the statistics correctly. When saying "the United States is the worst" it looks like news outlets and politicians are referring to the total deaths. The conclusion I am reaching from this forum is that I am supposed to look at deaths per million instead. I found that the United States has 979 deaths per million, but some countries have over 1000 deaths per million. The UK could be interpreted as worse because it has 990 deaths per million. The United States is the 12th worst country. Am I looking at reliable stats? https://epidemic-stats.com Secondly, I see multiple people agreeing that this news is misleading. How do you sort misleading news from a reliable interpretation of what is happening with COVID-19? What sources should I use for reliable information? So far the most reliable information I found about politics would be in books, but this does not work for current events. Thank you for clarifying that this news is misleading.

@Willie I have seen this idea on both sides. The idea that we must convince a significant portion of another group to change their minds. I hear the phrase "it isn't going to be easy" on both sides. One question I have is historically how successful has this strategy actually been? Is it even a realistic goal to sway 10 million Trump supporters into believing Trump was unsuccessful as President? I doubt these partisan maneuvers would be effective.

I think the government would be affected beyond recognition if it were required to be more transparent about its strategies. This would not pass democratically if people would die needlessly. This is the opposite of the greatest good for the greatest number. I have no idea how long this information can be kept secret among politicians.

I know I skipped many days by this point. It is still bothering me that I am not doing something on this blog similar to chessable. I could come back to this after I am done with my psychologist to see the difference. I also find it annoying to type everything twice since I am doing it for the psychologist already. I want to resolve any anxiety I have that comes up in relation to this blog. I am not sure what else can be done yet.

My name is Trenton. I am 21 years old, I have an associate's degree in general studies, and I am currently a bag boy at a Kroger grocery store. I like to play chess and some college courses I may be interested in include business, neuroscience, psychology, or philosophy. I am not clear on my life purpose if it is not going to be chess or truth seeking because my amount of income may be insufficient for self actualization due to my inability to travel. As I write this journal I am committing myself to live by my best and to not set obstacles in my way due to my fear of God. This is the beginning of a powerful vision for myself and there is no going back. I do this because of love and this is how life will be lived.

December 4, 2020 I have an idea for changing how I do these posts. Instead of making a daily report, I can use this as a place for writing out my thoughts concerning my life purpose and motivation. This might be more productive. Topic: why should I play chess? My passion for chess was lost overtime because I was pulled by money, college, and getting away from my family. I still don't have enough of those things and I am less happy because I lost interest in this hobby. Some toxic motives included not being a waste of potential or talent and not knowing what to do with my life. I enjoyed going to chess clubs to reach people and offer as much as possible. I no longer have a clear goal without a community and it seems useless. I could become a grandmaster, but it puts a lot of stress on me, I get stuck in chess improvement, I don't make enough money, and other problems. I feel like my life is being run in a direction I don't want. Higher values for playing chess. It is a strong source of energy for me and it creates a state of flow. I love the beauty of logic and understanding both sides of the game. I love to enhance my mind and logical abilities. Chess is a form of meditation. I am not sure what else. I will keep working on the life purpose course.

I waste a lot of time in YouTube. The most valuable information comes from high conscious resources. The problem is that I constantly slide back because I find it very easy to get pulled aside by a variety of funny videos. I have a plan to deal with this. I can cut off YouTube completely and go to actualized.org directly for any videos I want. There is also a part in spirituality about high conscious resources that I can go to. They might bring me back to YouTube where I easily get pushed off track. Do you have other strategies for cutting off time sinks? Can you share examples of other time sinks and how to avoid them? The internet is my biggest concern because The distractions are endless. The more time wasters I get rid of, the less stressed I will be to keep up with all of my upcoming demands by eliminating habits like procrastination that bothered me all throughout high school.

I deleted a bunch of the history recommendations to serve as a reminder every time I get in the computer. What is coming up now is that I need an alternative activity aside from YouTube. My alternatives are reading, writing, meditation, job hunting, college research, and other helpful things I avoid. I am about to try doing more of these things in place of YouTube. My progress has been slowed significantly.

@Christdas I just wanted to warn you that there is a rule stating that you can't use Leo's face in the profile picture. You could get in trouble if you don't change the picture to something else.

November 30, 2020 I wanted to tell you that this journal is starting to turn into more of a chore than a joy. It is hard to keep up with it because of everything else I am busy with. It is taking time away from meditation and interfering with my sleep when I attempt to keep up with this. I am starting to feel like this journal is another Chessable. I need to lighten the load of how much work needs to be done. I am still seeing a counselor and I have made good progress. My sleep is improving, my social skills are improving, my destructive thinking is going away, my family can see that I am becoming more mature, I may go to college for neuroscience, this will help me get a better job than Kroger, my consciousness is changing during meditation, my mind is more peaceful, I am less worried about my thoughts, I have clarified some of the life purpose course, I am becoming more open and honest with other people, and more. I have made some decent progress on self-actualization while writing this journal, but the journal is no longer helpful to me because I find writing in a notebook more helpful. This way I am only making a daily report. I still occasionally engage in less productive habits like YouTube and video games. I have been pursuing personal development in a neurotic way and it causes more backslides. I am trying to push and guilt myself less so I can naturally move into more educational material. YouTube is getting increasingly boring, but video games are awesome, especially Pokémon Rocket Edition. One last note I will make is that an atheist tried to make a response video to my comment. I find it cool that my worldview may have been useful for another person. The video was too long, so she will have to try again later. I don't plan on concerning myself too much with influencing other people because there is no rule that I need well thought out positions and it takes a lot of energy to maintain different perspectives even if they are helpful to others. I care about other people because it helps me to grow myself through encouraging self-reflection and overcoming my own corruption. I don't really care about being altruistic and it becomes a mask. I don't need to stress myself about being significant. I want to grow myself. I am glad you made decent progress, but this journal is getting to be an additional source of stress. I hope the followers of this journal found something useful because I may delete this or stop posting. "I love you all" came up when I was thinking about all of humanity. I can apply to you guys regardless of your agenda.

November 28-29 I missed one day again. I did not do much yesterday because I fell back into my old internet habits. I sense a negative motivation attempting to push me away from this. I am on some level guilting myself into doing something good, but this is not real goodness. I can focus on this inner work and create a better psychological approach than guilting for better results because guilt is not good enough for me. It only works in the short term until the consequences catch up to me with all of my drama. Guilt may be what causes me to overstrain myself and backslide more frequently. I feel like it is a bit annoying that I am typing what my day was like twice. I will just copy and paste what I wrote for my psychologist. There is no sense in doing this all over again. No suicidal thoughts. I slept better, but I woke up early and stayed in a daze for a while before sleeping a little more. I had a short workday before meditating. While meditating I noticed my consciousness changing and becoming more peaceful than it previously was. My racing thoughts are not keeping me up at night and my sleep is usually better. I am getting tired around 9 o’clock normally. I spent a lot of time playing that awesome video game. I plan to continue reading my book so I can get another book on Christmas. This gives me a priority. During my socializing with my family it came up that I am interested in neuroscience. I am more interested in this than business, but I thought it would be financially responsible to major in business. I explained a lot of the things I studied to Granny, but she did not understand the overlap I was making between philosophy, religion, psychology, politics, and neuroscience. I find this work and research fascinating. I plan to share a lot of the research with my family very soon. Good job. You are coming together with your psychology and becoming more peaceful. It is a lot, but it can be done.

November 24-27 I fell far behind. First I was working full time this week, so I was pretty busy. I don't think I will remember everything that happened over the past few days, but thanksgiving made it very crowded at kroger. I was tired at the end of it all. I went over to Nanny's house yesterday and spent time with her. We did more research on kamala Harris. She cussed about her a lot, so I read in detail about her. It mentioned one of trump's false accusations, but she doubted the validity of the source when it said that. Her bias is obvious to me, but I am still biased toward liberal media. I did not try to convince her she was wrong. Instead I listened carefully to her worldview out of curiosity. I do this with a lot of people and I find it very interesting. We presented some interesting arguments about guns. I learned about this issue in criminal justice after a nearby shooting. I argued that some weapons were more powerful than necessary for self defense. For example, you only need a revolver to shoot an attacker in the heart once. If we did not have access to more powerful weapons, then fewer people would be killed in shootings. Las Vegas is one example of an overpowered weapon. She argued that many criminals would simply get illegal weapons. I remembered this argument and I told her that American politics places a lot of emphasis on the NRA, and does not appear to have a clear plan for illegal weapons. Her mindset is "it is better to have a gun and not need one then it is to need a gun and not have one." I tried to see what issues she was most concerned about. She doesn't want the taxes to be raised for the environment and other reforms. She does not trust the government because she thinks they lie all the time. I remember trump ran on anti corruption. She argued that politicians should not be making claims about COVID and they should just relay what the doctors told them. I found this perplexing because trump made many false claims about COVID, but she likes him still. She mentioned that she trusted trump more because he is not a politician and he does not sugar coat anything. The counter argument is that she is underestimating the importance of experience. At least anti corruption is a bipartisan issue and it may serve as a bridge in American politics. when my sister visited she did not agree with getting Nanny fired up. At least she wasn't as fired up as usual when the others got here after our discussion. I did not argue with my sister because I silently observed my mind cherry picking interpretations in order to make me look good. The truest one is that I was curious and I wasn't thinking about getting her mad at all. I played videogames with Charlie. We had a lot of fun playing star wars galactic conquest on hard. We had many narrow victories and amazing stunts that we both pulled off to just barely win. We got stuck on battles like tatooine because the rebel command posts are in a strategically terrible position. I can easily be overrun by tusken raiders and the empire on either flank. The empire had Darth Vader helping them, and even if I destroyed their walkers, the raiders still took over my command posts. This was ridiculous. We were stuck until I devised a strategy to attack bespin. We used the consecutive victory bonus to overthrow tatooine without fighting. No more Darth vader. Then I used the planetary bonus from bespin to sabotage the empire's vehicles on ren var. It became a massacre. I was up by 80 men and I crushed them with my own tanks. They were defenseless now. My hours should lighten up until Christmas. Hopefully I can stay in track until then.

In this topic I am curious about what the external obstacles could be for a person getting what they want. The reasoning behind this is that if I think all limitations are self imposed for instance, then I could end up pushing against a wall. I don't want to end up blaming myself for things that are beyond my control because I think that I am the obstacle. This is how I could become a victim of myself which becomes very counterproductive. Some examples I have in mind are medical conditions, natural disasters, natural forces, the current pandemic, and there are some citizens who have a real stake in what policies get passed locally or federally. I am still responsible for my reactions to external problems, but if I find what serious limitations there are without falling for limiting beliefs, then that could take some pressure off of me in a more productive way.

November 21-23 Wow I did not know I fell this far behind. My hours were stacked for Thanksgiving week. I am working full time and I need to get in bed soon. It is hard to explain what is happening to me, but I will try. I am letting go of reasons to hate myself as they are meant to motivate me, but they don't deliver. It just leads to suicidal thoughts and my mind is very peaceful when I am no longer run by the same thinking patterns that cause headaches. I am confused about what I want with life because I wanted inner peace. I am becoming more peaceful, but I am not sure what to want next. So many things burn me a little when I consider other options. Maybe I should address them so I don't keep getting threatened. It includes financial independence. I don't want to be lazy and hurt myself. I don't want to hurt myself by judging myself too much. I feel confused and torn. I am crying a little. Your mission is to clarify your purpose. If I remind myself every night, it can filter into the next day. I see patterns in how my thinking depends on the previous day. I don't know how to love you more than I already do.

I think this question is important because there could be problematic assumptions underlying spirituality and personal development. For example, spiritual equality vs. spiritual inequality. If we believe that we are all as capable as a sage with many mystical experiences, it can lead to frustration. Leo mentioned that he finds it professionally dishonest to not mention that most people will never reach ego transcendence. If the pattern continues for personal development, then there may be limits to how high one person is capable of developing themselves. If personal development teaches us that they are limiting beliefs and we are responsible for our results, it may overlook genetics, neurochemistry, and other factors that could lead to people frustrating themselves. The paradox is that if I fail something once, I could try again. If I fail something 10 times, I could try for the 11th time. If I try 10,000 times and fail every time, I could still try again. Although I find it admirable to have attitudes like "never give up" or "conquer your fears," realistically not everybody can be as good as a champion. 1000 people could be very passionate about becoming the President of the USA and study all their lives equally hard for all the same material. There could be real genetic factors that allows one to perform better in studies, or simple luck for the one who wins. Belief can leverage us to be more productive, but from my point of view it becomes destructive if I think I could have done better than I actually did. Not everybody can be a champion. I am trying to find a more mature approach that does not overstrain me. This issue is a tricky thread in which I acknowledge some validity to a victim mindset from a narrow perspective, but I don't want to lock myself in that perspective. "A victim is someone who thinks the external world is a bigger obstacle than he is to himself." I am not sure how true this holds up if we account for all the physical material that makes up our brains and bodies. Is the self-help industry biased in the regard that people would not study it if they did not believe they would gain anything?