Natasha Tori Maru

@BlessedLion Obviously, there will need to be a flow to the structure of your conversation - so naturally not all questions will be attended to. Organically it might not even cover all questions and could reveal something totally different. What a great opportunity !

@LoneWonderer Cheers I appreciate that! Not everyone sees it like you do. Something something 'don't shoot the messenger' Kudos to yourself for speaking out also - I admire a steel pair Social approval is a big deal for survival.

@LoneWonderer Lots of verbal hazing goes on - and TONS of 'I had it hard, so now you get your trial by fire also' without circumstances being the arbiter - the site crew being the ones to put a newbie through the trial by fire. Totally wrong. Lots of repeated harassment / humiliation attempts that aren't simply pranks; shit like sending apprentices off to find 'left handed hammers', 'sky hooks' or asking them to request non-existent tools from other site crews / trades. Really playing on new guys ignorance and making them look stupid. Some of these guys really aren't the sharpest tools in the shed themselves. So to be cruelly hazed when they aren't confident is evil. Giving newbies pointless grinds with excessive harder jobs when there are easier ways. I saw one guy make an apprentice re-dig a trench that was fine and within spec for no reason. In the heat of summer. The poor guy had to go home feeling unwell, and being so new he had no idea his work was fine. The most insidious part about this is that it makes the hazee feel like this is all part of it. That it is acceptable to do this to the next lot of new crew. So the behaviour perpetuates as a form of hierarchy. Many of these guys do not know how to assert boundaries or stand up for themselves. I think this breeds a lot of that 'cup of cement' ' harden the fuck up' culture on construction sites that leads to really caustic and abrasive conduct. Moralizing toughness - but it is a destabilizing pressure. Not pressure that sharpens someone. I do not work as OH&S but I engage in in-depth social dynamics (I am logistics and coordination primarily) so I work to dissolve a lot of this stuff without having to call in force. Sometimes it is a simple matter of gently, but repeatedly and incessantly, calling out these tactics. Essentially, I nag these guys into submission. But this only works in my case because I pay their bills directly, so there is the potential for force to be used if they do not comply. I am comfortable calling people out without asserting my own power over them. I give them honest and candid feedback. I never explain myself. And I always focus on behavioural feedback and never character feedback. Emotionless delivery.

@Basman Yes hazing is really terrible. Nurses do it to each other - and it is RIFE on construction sites.

🦘🤍

Yeah I think low T could be an issue. I think there are a lot of new studies coming out about this being caused by microplastics in male gonads (if I am not mistaken). Really scary stuff. Apparently it effects men more than women. Man we are fucked as a race lol

Men have always been hardcore rejected by women. I do not think this is new. I do think many men these days are more hopeless and less 'what is the point'. Women too. Social media, nihilism, black pill. I don't think we can cleanly blame either sex for the issue. It is societal. People are the issue and not sex 🤣 Theres a privileged sort of expectation present formed though comparison, social media & lack of understanding of true intimacy. It might be important to realise many users are applying their own language and meaning to others here. More open enquiry is needed to understand all of our perspectives, instead of a cheap, easy label.

Disappointment is on the same axis as expectation. It is a projection and fantasy of a future outcome - which isn't inherently bad. We need to expect so we can plan. For survival. To learn and avoid danger. The sting is probably coming from some form of entitlement to the future projection. This might come down to conditioning. What are we consuming to form the future expectations?

This is a good question !

Many of my male friends/colleagues report novelty is what is not satisfied in LTR. Just an observation, but it appears sexual novelty is a larger component of the male sex drive. This is just from my experience in the social domain (family, friends, colleagues). When I reflect on it, this need for novelty would be an essential ingredient to perpetuate the species. Without men's drive for sex, I suspect we would not have proliferated the planet so extensively I think there is also a huge variance in sexual appetite for qty amongst the population - as @mmKay raised. Some men may have a very high ceiling there. One if my mates is completely asexual.

@Breakingthewall No, thank you. This is a thread for questions directed to Ralston for his answer. Not presumptions about me.

Appreciated

@AtmanIsBrahman no one said there ain't truth in it. One can twist anything to sound more profound than it really is.

Good catch. This can lead to emotional suppression, bypassing and all sorts of bad juju.

Exactly. You just get over the time and money investment in appearance. Obviously we still do care and attend to appearance. But the vapid and hollow nature of it all becomes so apparent when real meaning takes over in life. And that is at the crux of it - we create meaning in our lives. When you are young and dumb you invest in that shit because you haven't formed fully as a person. Or are still discovering who we are. Real meaning comes later. In my experience. No judgement on the youth of today either - I was once in the same boat. I find it amusing my half brothers generation really think they have touched on something completely 'new'. Billy even said to me 'every generation was lied to, they lied to us that looks don't matter'. My eyes seriously - popped out of my head. NO idea. All generations have known looks matter. It is just with the proliferation of social media the younger ones place more emphasis on it. I do not think all youth think this way - but many are getting tied up in this shit.

Accurate

I will join you. Not direct. Presupposes thought and concept. There has to be a concept of 'inside and outside' prior to it. Concept dependant. Presupposes a self, a mind, inside/outside, concept of existence, concept of other. All interpretive overlays. Solipsism requires a conceptual boundary not present in immediate experience. It also requires us to 'identify' with a certain locus of experience (egoic attachment). Egoic ownership 'MY experience'. Equanimity dissolves this immediately. This is all within the 'relative' space and time domain. Not speaking of absolute. Just had to sperg that out for some reason. Lol

High standards are usually about work, values and outcomes. Ego is normally about identity protection. Sort of how I loosely approach it with interpersonal relationships. People confuse the two all the time as you can ovarlap them and justify egoic attachments.

rofl wait let me get the hammer, working in construction has benefits

@Miguel1 I have a half brother who is 17 - I hear all that toxic shit / heavy social media gen stuff and language from him. Bone smashing is from Clavicular 'Braden Peters' - really toxic kid who is hardmaxing, been on test since 14, does peptides and uses a hammer to smash his bones in his face because 'Wolff's Law' says the bones with grow back tougher and thicker. So he uses the hammer to reshape his face. I think he is getting jaw surgery also. But there is something wrong with the kid for sure. He also takes methamphetamine to stay shredded / stimmax. He also ran over a dude because people in his car egged him on. He is the kid who has been huge on PSL and rating based on looks - mogging, htn, ltn, htb, chad etc is spun by him. All this looksmaxing stuff came from male incel message boards around 2010. It has just become mainstream recently.

Does the role of language enhance suffering? It seems to me, if we were to somehow remove language, or just our instant habit of making distinctions with it, the lines between emotion and cognition would be more blurred. I have noticed language can act to enhance my suffering (rumination). But in some contexts it can also reduce suffering. Sometimes I feel as if language removes me from experiencing a more honest state of 'being.' Conversely I can also use it to guide myself closer to direct experience. Do you consider language something that separates us from reality? Or an abstraction? I've been stuck on the above for a bit in my contemplations. Might be too elementary for Ralston

To be really clear - it is actually called 'Bone Smashing' ...I know

💀💀💀🤣 The hardmaxx route

From everything I read from you regarding women, he appears to understand women to a greater extent than you. The difference is you appear to be unaware of the bias and misunderstanding in your own thoughts. Experience and age will help you.

There's a Ralston exercise in one of his books - I fucking forget which one. His body of work is all one thing to me. But it is called 'inside out thoughts' or something. You pretent like all your inner thoughts and states can be received and understood by others. Strangely - when I do this - I engage in my own bullshit much less. I reduce my own drama and story. It also helps me be more loving in my actions.