Dabidoe

HBO produced a pretty interesting deep dive into Ra Ma Yoga, 3HO, Kundalini Yoga populizers focusing on "Yogi Bhajan" and "Guru Jagat" that was not so flattering. There seems to be a lot of fuckery in the "spirituality business." Essentially appropriating Sikh culture in a very hamfisted bastardized way, rape and abuse of it's "disciples" and indoctrinating disciples children into some messed up boarding school in India. I've done some Kundalini yoga and found it useful, but didn't really like the "westernized yogi lifestyle brand/ideology." It's a shame that even the most well intentioned positive ideologies end up devolving into the same corrupt path taken by many mainstream religions and ideologies: corruption, greed, abuse of power.

Can I ask what you find disgusting about Apple? Their abuse of human rights or their products?

Well said. I wish people would see politics as the mind virus it is. I lived through 4 years of trump, my hair didn't catch fire. I lived through 3.75 years of Biden and turned out fine. At the end of the day there are checks and balances and many intelligent people in government that will self right the ship.

The term woke is so meaningless and outdated. That said Lex has always been a bit of a fraudster to me - loudly proclaiming peace and love in the hamfisted aspergerian way he does seems like virtue signaling.

Failing is always tied to perception. If your goal was to stay alive you're every breath would be victory.

Overthinking isn't going to get you anywhere. The thing about god, enlightenment etc. it's always going to be a single player game. Leo can tell you about his journey but that's like watching somebody else do a pushup.

The word seems to have been dilluted a bit so it would be nice to get a high level deep dive into the psychology, philosophy and etymology of fascism.

It's fair to criticize jokes told on stage at a political rally with more scrutiny. For people who are fans of Tony it's easy to say "well he's a comedian performing comedy" but also fair to say "well his psycho supporters won't see it that way." Curious as to what you think of Konstantin Klein's take on this? I found it humorous but given your seemingly spiral dynamics blue style "Moral authority" I can see that you'd invalidate the entire premise of the argument.

In my experience only two things have moved the needle, curious as to what others experiences are. 1. Hitting bottom - Getting to that point where you're in such a bad place committing to change and growth seem like the only path that will get you out. 2. Visualizing success - Only when I can "see it", and believe change is actually possible I can power through the discomfort required to make meaningful change.

Interesting bit of information. Highest IQ are in the top 10% but the top 1% actually has lower IQ and much higher EQ. Keep in mind these are all academic concepts and can easily fall into a "comparison trap."

I definitely thought this was about chicken wings

Certain kinds of conversations just aren't very effective. Talking about "the underlying nature of human psyche" generally falls on deaf ears.

120,000 displaced Jews immigrated to Israel. 400,000 immigrated to the United States. There are no easy answers to complicated questions like where to move hundreds of thousands of deeply traumatized displaced refugees who felt abandoned by the nations that willingly or begrudgingly sent them to slaughter.

What did poor Nazi Germany ever do to deserve such horrible treatment?

None of us are immune from the web of self deception. Only a select few can truly "undo the cultural programming" and for whatever reason the actualization this forum represents will only ever apply to a % of our lives/behaviors. Vast majority of humanity will inevitably fall into outrage, bias, idiocy especially when talking about culture war topics.

This conversation is a dumpster fire. It's not a valid argument that 6 pieces of garbage on video makes the entire army rapists. There will always be a % of rapists in the military when engaging in these kinds of conflict - you see it Ukraine, Iraq, Afghanistan let's not pretend it's unique to Israel to be brutally disgusting in their overreach of power. In Afghanistan people who we considered our allies had a "custom" of raping young boys, did anyone light their hair on fire about that? US Army generally has a policy of turning a blind eye to all sorts of injustice carried out by our allies. For the majority of American History nobody gives a shit about poor brown people getting harassed, murdered, raped 99% of the time until it's conveniently in the zeitgeist for political reasons majority of the time. People can cry foul all they want about brutality, violence, rape - both sides obviously dehumanize their opponents and don't give a shit. We're disgusted but most of us couldn't even imagine the idea of existential threat to our nation/peoples existence. Without justifying it it's just an unfortunate aspect of human nature that where dehumanization and warlords reign there will always be injustice, power imbalance, violence, rape, murder as long as ignorant warlords are in power. Westerners can feign outrage at brutality when no westerner can relate to the lived experience of meaningful threats to existence and fearing for our ethnic group/country's literal survival. It's cheap to criticize Israel as a nation that should "know better" and be held to higher standards of being "Western, powerful." Israelis may be western, modern but they live in the same cage match as the rest of the middle east. The whole Israeli Palestinian conflict comes to a dead hault because of dogmatic religious ideologues who refuse to see their "opponents" as human and therefore any hope of "reconciliation" is a pipe dream. You can't make friends with someone who wants you dead, and you can't make peace with innocent people if you dehumanize them.

@Leo Gura Passing along intergenerational trauma and collective paranoia is abosultely part of Jewish culture and is all over the Talmud, oral history and modern Jewish/Israeli culture. Remembering the pain of the past is in of our religious rituals. Dipping parsley in saltwater to remember the tears. Jewish mothers are notoriously overbearing and fearful, passing down the collective paranoia embroiled in modern Jewish culture. Our culture perpetuates a shared identity of persecution, largely why Jews were very supportive of civil rights - fighting against oppression is core to our identity. There are many aspects of our traditions designed to instill paranoia passed down about all the oppression. Paranoia is not without it's usefulness ("Only the paranoid survive".) Despite how "powerful" some claim jews are there's still plenty of rational reasons to be paranoid. Plenty of hate and oppression for jews all over the world despite success in America and Israel. Netanyahu and the zealots are so collectively paranoid/fearful of the annhilation of the entire Jewish people that they've decided to recreate the disastrous interventionist wars of the early 2000's. Israel is essentially an extension of the US military - it would have been demolished without international support given how many countries/people want them dead. Israel is very important to the US war machine and people have to pull their head out of their asses thinking it's just some "country we're giving foreign aid to." Israel is the size of New Jersey, has no real natural resources bunch of dried up rock. Israeli military behaves with same brutality and brashness as the US military, breaking all sorts of International codes of justice/international law when it can reframe initiating ideological warfare as fighting terrorists. We don't give a crap about bombing the hell out of our enemies, or going way out of our way to sabotage anyone who comes close to challenging our supremacy.

Green Pill Podcast. It's not a huge channel perse but I think it could be interesting https://www.youtube.com/@Green_Pill_Podcast Charles Eisenstein as well https://www.youtube.com/@charleseisenstein Healthy Gamer (Dr. K) about meditation would also make sense. Much bigger channel though https://www.youtube.com/@HealthyGamerGG

This still hits every time

I figure the Actualized.org crowd might be the right ones to ask about spawning infinity characters with AI. My ultimate goal is to have some sort of "true roadmap of what it means to be human/specific personality type." What sort of things would you like to see: meyers briggs, "big 3", significant life events, regrets? I'd like to really add something substantive to an AI character creation app I've been working on for years ( test.statsheetcb.io if you're curious.) I think one amazing feature would be incorporating very deep layers of psychology for roleplaying. Truthfully I also want to just play with the "use my face as an image prompt and see what it says" but ideally it would be helpful for others as well.

It should not surprise anyone that any presidential candidate that lacks broad-appeal, is unable to play to "middle america", garner outsized attention is incapable of winning the presidency. People like Bernie and AOC move culture (shift overton window etc.) but the people who "win" in politics are the ones who play the popularity contest of making promises you can't/don't intend to deliver on based on appealing to the middle, not the purity of virtues or ideology.

@abundance The reason everyone is playing to "the middle" is because they are the only votes that swing the tide of election. The states that are "100% blue, red" don't need to be catered to, many will proudly decree "I would rather vote for a corpse than the other side." So yes radicals that don't have any meaningful ability to convert the minority of "swing voters" will be nothing more than echo-chamber pandering partisan ideologues who are more cultural figureheads than political influencers.

Regulatory reform > deregulation. The concept known as "regulatory capture" (where corporations in power use regulations to bully competition, IE: defense "cost plus" contracts, telecom monopolies etc.) should be reformed. There are second order consequences to over-regulation as well. The lack of affordable housing in many places is due to insane nitpicking, general douchebaggery of local governments driving up the cost/difficulty of building homes to the point where developers would rather build elsewhere. Overregulation of nuclear power has had a horrible net-negative on the world. It obviously needs to be regulated but nobody can even build a standard nuclear powerplant without insane amounts of time and money, rendering the cost-saving (and carbon neutral!) benefits of nuclear null - forcing under supplied electrical grids to rely on fossil fuels.

People replace priests with therapists in the modern era. Both indoctrinate, spread ideology - for different causes etc. but same result in the end.

Rewritten as a comedy screenplay: Claude Sonnet 3.5 “Certainly. Let's dive into a scene that blends the absurdist humor with deeper, more existential themes. Here's the next part of our "Zero Dark Garfield" saga, with a twist of "The Labyrinth of Shadows": FADE IN: INT. MAYA'S SUBCONSCIOUS - TIMELESS We're in a vast, ever-shifting landscape. Imagine M.C. Escher designed a funhouse while on a lasagna bender. MAYA stands in the center, looking lost and confused. GARFIELD lounges on a floating piece of geometry, licking his paw. MAYA Where... where are we? GARFIELD (gesturing vaguely) Welcome to your mind, kiddo. Or what's left of it after a decade of government-sanctioned paranoia. MAYA My mind? But it's so... GARFIELD Messed up? Yeah, that's what happens when you spend your life chasing shadows. Speaking of which... A shadow of BIN LADEN darts across the landscape. Maya instinctively chases it, but it always remains just out of reach. MAYA (panting) I... I can't catch him! GARFIELD (appearing beside her) 'Course not. You're chasing the wrong thing, sweetcakes. MAYA What do you mean? GARFIELD You're not really after Bin Laden. You're after meaning. Purpose. A point to this cosmic joke we call existence. The landscape shifts. They're now in a 1950s diner. Garfield sits at the counter, nursing a cup of coffee. Maya joins him. MAYA That's... deep. For a cat who once got his head stuck in a lasagna pan. GARFIELD Hey, that pan taught me more about the human condition than any philosophy book. You think you're trapped, searching for a way out, when really... He pushes his empty cup off the counter. It falls upwards. GARFIELD (CONT'D) ...gravity's just a suggestion. MAYA (watching the cup float away) I don't understand. GARFIELD 'Course you don't. Understanding's overrated. It's like trying to explain Twitter to a goldfish. Now, unlearning... that's where the magic happens. The diner dissolves. They're now in a vast library. Every book has the same title: "The Meaning of Life (Spoiler: There Isn't One)". MAYA (pulling out a book) So what am I supposed to do? Just give up? Stop searching? GARFIELD (taking the book, using it as a pillow) Nah. Searching's what we do. It's the human condition. Well, human and talking-cat condition. The trick is to enjoy the ride. He snaps his fingers. The library becomes a roller coaster. They're in the front car. MAYA (gripping the safety bar) I don't like roller coasters! GARFIELD Nobody does! That's the point! The coaster takes off, hurtling through impossible loops and turns. Maya screams. Garfield laughs maniacally. GARFIELD (shouting over the wind) See, life's like this roller coaster. Terrifying, nauseating, and it'll probably kill you. But damn, what a rush! They hurtle towards a dead end. Maya closes her eyes, bracing for impact. Instead, they burst through into... INT. CIA HEADQUARTERS - DAY Maya jolts awake at her desk, drooling on a file labeled "Operation: Lasagna Freedom". Garfield sits on her desk, poking her with a stick. GARFIELD Rise and shine, Sleeping Beauty. Or should I say, Sleeping Duty? MAYA (disoriented) Garfield? Was that all a dream? GARFIELD Was it? Or is this the dream, and that was reality? Or are both real, or neither? (he pauses, then grins) Or maybe it's all just a badly written screenplay trying too hard to be profound? MAYA (rubbing her temples) I think I need a drink. GARFIELD Now you're getting it! Life's absurd, kid. Might as well enjoy the madness. He pulls out two martini glasses from nowhere, filling them with what looks suspiciously like marinara sauce. GARFIELD To the human condition! May we never understand it, but always appreciate its humor. Maya hesitates, then clinks her glass with Garfield's. MAYA To the human condition. And to talking cats who moonlight as existential therapists. They drink. In the background, we see Leon and Joseph chasing Bin Laden around the office with butterfly nets. GARFIELD (to the camera) And you thought James Joyce was hard to follow. At least I'm better looking. FADE OUT. TO BE CONTINUED... OR NOT. WHO KNOWS? IT'S ALL RELATIVE ANYWAY.