Fleetinglife

10.8.2021. 30 minutes attempted vipassana session: thoughts and feelings that came up; Extreme anxiety of not feeling safe and fear of killing myself and dying. Of losing everything I have and everything I know to be. The fear came up of me killing myself in the near future or feeling extremely unsafe in my objectively non-threatening environment that I was going to die and lose everything I know about myself, my identity, my current achievements and level of development, EVERYTHING, FOREVER, and would therefore throw the waste the life that was given to me and all the perks I am enjoying now with it, that I would squander the gift of life and being born in the environment that I am born given to me by my mother and my ancestors, especially my grandfather from my father's side - for whom I'd always almost had deep respect and admiration. Fear of losing all that privilege given to me by my ancestors that I just simply inherited from them. And I felt deeply bad that was one of the main things causing my fear of death and not the fear of losing my life itself as it is and myself as a person that I am and an identity - like I did value my own life and personality enough but only the fact it was given to me by others before me. I felt like a slow state of depression and dying - or to say more appropriately losing myself into nothing. A deeply ingrained and non-resolved complex of inferiority detected that was allowed to fester in the unconsciousness in my psyche? Well, yes it certainly seems that way. Why am I afraid of myself killing myself and why did I feel so insecure about my environment feeling that at any moment it was going to lead to me killing myself? Why so much insecurity and a lack of self-confidence and faith? Why? Why did it feel so tiring and draining? Like I was trying to let go of myself and be consumed by the abyss. Why am I afraid of getting tired and weak? Why do I fear it would lead me to death? What am I anyway? What is this? Why is letting go into dying so contrasted and opposed to the feeling of living and being alive? Why so much fear and resistance? Why am I so afraid of dying? Why does it feel so tiring and draining? I do not want to just die this way. I can just let go of my life now. Why do I feel that the memories of the personalities of my ancestors haunt me? Why do I feel that I am not worthy enough of them with the way I am living and experiencing my life? It feels almost like an unending road of depression, aimlessness, hopelessness, and a lack of motive and purpose in life? Why do life and my experiencing of it feel so bleak and alien to me? Why do I feel like I am an alien to experiencing existence? Why do I feel like an alien and stranger to existence and life? Why does nature seem alien to me and yet I feel bleak familiarity, safety and take comfort in its presence, and have a distinct and unexplainable feeling if I go I will be welcomed in familiar arms, its an unexplainable slight feeling of ease and security and hope and comfort around it. Like it will open me with open arms even if I decide to go now, earlier than I should. Why are so many thoughts of suicidal ideation popping out briefly and then going away? Why do I feel uncomfortable with my present life so much, why do I despise it and hate it so much? 7.10. 2021. Around 10 PM yesterday something. Walking Contemplation Near Trees by the Danube River in Zemun quay, Why do the trees and nature around me feel like the only thing familiar around me despite my feelings of depression? Why does the breeze feels so good, and making me feel like I am a part of the life-world and natural world even though I feel like currently a human person? It feels like even if I wasn't and ceased to be I would still belong there and return there like some long-forgotten home of mine before all these personal experiences, history, and memories. Like a place, I sprang from an intuitive level and I will spring back to once I am no more here as a person. Only my experience of the leaves rustling in the night breeze and of sensing and seeing the bark of trees, of a various different kind, te names of and species of most I which do not know, in the night by the flowing river like a long lost lifeworld to me which I was once a part through which I know now only intuitively through same faint remembrance and recollection only through the intuition of my senses. The surrounding artifacts and remnants of human civilization seem so alien and dry and foreign to me even though I am a part of it experientially all my life and depend on its system for sustenance for me to sustain and facilitate this experience of enjoyment and pleasantness with moving around, observing, sensing and experiencing the pleasantries and smoothness of the natural world in vibrant and alive phenomenology appearing before me. The natural world's pull I sense from time to time is where I feel I want to belong. Yet then why do I feel anatural to myself then? Why do I feel so corrupted and perverted from the natural order? Why do I feel estranged to it, like I was damned not to ever feel it in its fullness by the corrupted and perverted ways of mind? When will I free myself from myself? Nature - the breeze, trees, and the river feel very soothing and calming they feel like a part of me. Does nature want to talk to me in the language I have forgotten and no longer understand? How and why did I allow myself to forget it deliberately and cast it aside as unimportant to my life, which I have brief realizations is inseparable from it even if I fool myself in my day-to-day experience and mind it isn't so? Why did these low consciousness fleeting desires and their brief pleasures and always temporary void filling stemming from succumbing to neediness take precedent over wanting to experience nature in its pure and undiluted form? Why the sacrifice of wellbeing for the fleeting, why the succumbing to fleeting desire and fleeting instant gratification and wish fulfillment, over experiencing life more fully, vibrantly, and lively as much of the time as possible when I make opportunities for it? Why the selling myself short of wanting to take care and retain this experiencing ability? Why lose myself in this transient, temporal, and not lasting for the sake of wish fulfillment and instant gratification and lose out on the serenity, peace, and calm of nature and the natural in attune with it. My thoughts are full, my mind empty. I need to go back to my ancestor's residential beehive building. I will finish this and try to remember more of this later when my thoughts untie themselves around each other, my mind remembers itself and my feelings feel themselves again and not tiredness and burn out. To be continued when my thoughts and memories catch up.

The part also where he talks about the underlying structural causes and the culture that neocons fostered among the American Right is also very indicative: Horton: ''Trump's election was a reaction to the military and economic legacy of the preceding fifteen years and its central liberal establishment champions, including the neoconservatives. And who? A guy who builds his political capital proclaiming on talk radio that Obama was a 'secret pro-terrorist Muslim from Kenya'. In other words, your nemesis Trump was exploiting your movement's previous cultivation of this illiberal sentiment among Republican voters back when it was still useful for your ends building support for the wars. Now that the anti-Muslim chauvinism is no longer useful, now you claim that the Right is itself the greatest threat to democracy. If so this is the nationalist movement that the neoconservatives have done so much to cultivate and promote, for Bin Laden and his friends were few, but would-be enemies who happened to be Muslim were many. So Bush and the neocons supported the worst sort of nationalist right-wing populism in America, especially with their nod and wink approach with the Muslim hating hacks on the AM talk radio. It was central to Karl Rove's plan for his permanent Republican majority...This deliberately deceptive campaign did much to make the Right worse.''

This is peak stage orange analysis exposing the hypocrisy and failure behind discredited stage Blue/Orange Neoconist Imperialism with historical facts and evidence. Hortons prepared speech is full of insightful historical facts, gems, and insights. Great Opening Statement: "America is in real trouble, for the last few years my opponent has been at a forefront of those warning against the death of modern liberalism and that far-right Trumpist populism is taking this country in a very dangerous direction, towards authoritarianism and maybe even dictatorship. But Mr. Crystal, you and David Brooks promised us 'national greatness' you said, quote: 'America needed to be called to its grand destiny', 'nationalism', we needed, 'national strength and moral assertiveness abroad advancing the cause of freedom around the world', 'we needed a big project we can all do together'. As Christopher Beam Brooke's friend wrote: 'Invading Iraq suited his quest and yours for this greatness'. In his 1996 article Towards a Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy (so these guys also started popularizing these almost meaningless and vapid 'neo' prefixes to their political and ideological beliefs - that I see more often than in the online political sphere used as meaningless moralistic condemnatory and panic spreading buzzwords aimed to dismissively project and sum up your assumptions about the political beliefs, stance, and economic and social positions of the person on the other side that you are having an argument against or accusing of holding said beliefs - anyway I digress) arguing for benevolent global hegemony, my opponent wrote that John Quincy Adams was wrong that 'that the U.S. should not go abroad seeking monsters to destroy'. 'Why not' he asked. For the exact reasons Quincy Adams delineated: 'Our principles would turn from liberty to force, we would become the dicatrists of the world but no longer the ruler of our own spirit', he said. Adams was right, the wars did not make America great.'' Important historical info about the backdrop behind the modern terrorism phenomena: 5:14 "When David Wormser wrote his clean break plan for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's first government in 1996 he acknowledged that targeting secularist dictators Hussein and Assad for regime change in Iraq and Syria could further fan the flames of Islamist Anti-American Terrorism but he said the solution to that problem will just have to wait until the war against them was over. Maybe in 1996, this was somehow understandable, from a hawks perspective at least. According to Richard Schultz in the Weekly Standard, the Pentagon Joint Cheif of Staff would repeat as a cliche, quote: ''Terrorism is a small price to pay for being a superpower.'' This quote by Horton at 10:54 I found as a gem of hidden truth: "The U.S. government has not spread liberty but the tyranny of the majority, not free markets but corrupt crony contracting, not peace and security but mass sectarian violence and destabilization, this has led to increasing support to left and right-wing 'socialism' around the world in reaction.'' This part is gold since it captures, in my opinion, one of the main causations behind the truth of the justification of the current moment of the popularity of this mass anti-liberal and illiberal sentiment politically among people in America, Europe, China, Russia, Iran, and elsewhere around the world: ''Liberalism and democracy have been discredited in the broadest sense as meaning nothing more than supplication to American demands or cheap excuses for our violent intervention...no wonder that here in America as well people are moving to the socialist left and nationalist right since the disastrous consequences of militarism and regime change are what passes for liberalism in the center'' Its 18 minutes long but in my opinion a gem worth watching if you want to be quickly informed on the extra causations of the genesis of the contemporary state of the U.S. and the world politically, U.S. foreign policy in the last two decades, and a half, and the origins of the structural underlying causes behind current global political polarization. Horton masterfully details and explains how he views the reasons for that from his libertarian anti-interventionist perspective.

Stage Red Transition to Blue Warrior Culture Society of the Taliban brilliantly explained and testified from his own experiences by a Former US Marine (CounterIntel) with the Twitter handle Lysander the Conqueror. He explains the functionality of such a cultural and social system in such a particular environment and historical background from almost an objectivist, neutral, and meta-point of view almost worthy of stage Yellow - though it can be seen as a solid and healthy scientific orange and combination of blue honoring of the opponent's virtues and bravery in my opinion. Without further ado here is copied transcript of his long thread on Twitter (which I first spotted by the libertarian anti-war activist, politician, and intellectual Scott Horton): About the 10 lessons he has learned from the Taliban, this is full of worthy insights into understanding such a culture better from the comfort and complex system of dependence on a stage Blue or Orange modern state society individual perspective: 1/ 1- Unattachment I used to be an interrogator with the objective of finding out more information about “terrorists” and their plans. We had to use “sanctioned” emotional techniques in order to get information. 2/ Let’s just say none of the techniques we used would work on the Taliban. Why? These dudes were so unattached to any of the shit that we here in the West are attached to. It may sound like they are cold, but they didn’t care about the dumb shit we do. Why? 3/ Because they didn’t have any of the dumb shit we do. We couldn’t threaten his position in a corporation, or his job in general, which would then put his family at risk… because he didn’t have one. 4/ We couldn’t threaten his social position, or his bank accounts, or his house, or anything really for that matter, because they didn’t have the same pain points that we do here in the West. Furthermore, due to their religion and culture, 5/ they were just generally more unattached from possessions and more connected to their cause, Allah, and their fellow warriors. 6/ 2- Warrior Culture Now, some would say, “you could threaten his position in the Taliban”. These dudes knew we would do that so they trained against that defense. 7/ The fact is, captured Taliban were more scared of what the Taliban would do to them if they ratted than what we would do to them. This is where the warrior culture came in. 8/ Taliban were raised to be warriors from childhood, and most Taliban had a lineage of fathers, grandfathers, and great grandfathers who were also part of the warrior class. Pashtuns were the tribe that most of these men belonged to, and that’s the Tribe they were warriors for. 9/ The Taliban were in essence just Pashtuns fighting a new battle against us, the invaders. Due to their warrior culture, these men were more concerned with their reputation within the tribe than within our model. 10/ These men were also tough and had been through far worse than anything we Americans have been through, so spending time away from their mud hut wasn't that big of a deal. The only thing they had to do was not rat so when they came home they were still welcomed as a brother. 11/ 3- Higher Purpose As crazy as this sounds to us Westerners, these men were driven by the “divine”. That was their purpose. They were willing to go toe to toe with the baddest Military in the world because they believed they were ordained through God to protect their land. 12/ They were also driven by the belief that their way of life, through Islam, was far better and they were willing to fight and die to defend it. This just goes to show that the spirit of man is the greatest fighting force and tool in the Universe. 13/ When the spirit is aligned with a higher purpose, there is no stopping the men who are on that mission. The greatest armies can fall to tribesmen whose beliefs are so pure in their purpose and calling. Compare this to the US’ purpose and you can understand the outcome. 14/ 4- Decentralize The Taliban, or Afghans in general, are very decentralized people. They are scattered in different tribes and towns all throughout Afghanistan. They don’t have banking institutions, they don’t have malls, they don’t have neighborhoods. 15/ Everything they do is decentralized to the core. When they want to connect and achieve something together, it is done through low-level communication. 16/ This low-level communication is either done through a walkie-talkie, cell phone, or in person, and they are very good at being disciplined in this manner. 17/ If they want to move money, they call people and tell x person to give it to y person, then they will have a courier bring more money to repay x person. They have a system of trust and word. 18/ Because it is all people and communication-oriented, a man must keep his word or be ousted from the system. 19/ Because the system is established through reputation, word, and face to face interactions, it makes it very difficult for other people to enter into it and corrupt it, and due to the warrior culture, if someone does try to harm this system, they are killed and it’s justified 20/ 5- Know Your Enemy When I got out to the more kinetic environments, I began to really witness and understand how the Taliban fought. As I would speak to my sources, or interrogate guys we busted, I began to learn more about what they knew about us. 21/ Nothing is more demoralizing than knowing that your enemy knows all your tactics, timelines, movements, and objectives. These guys would tell me all those things about us. “You can only hold me for 3 days before you have to move me or let me go, I can hold out longer” 22/ “You Americans can’t beat me, you have to feed me 3x a day, and you have to let me pray 5x a day. I’m happy here” “You found me digging a hole, but I didn’t have any weapons or anything, you have to let me go” 23/ These men knew everything about our operations because we publicized everything. We had zero advantages over them, and they knew it. 24/ 6- Own Your Land The Taliban were always watching us, every hour of every day they had someone watching our bases, our patrols, and all of our movements. When we weren’t patrolling, they were planting IEDs along the path that we patrolled earlier. 25/ 24/7/365 these men observed and moved around their terrain to get the advantage on us while we sat in our FOBs and rested, ate food, lifted weights, and cleaned our gear. They were always 3-5 steps ahead of us because of this. 26/ The Taliban were so good at dominating the land, that in Sangin AFG we were practically isolated to our base. 27/ The Taliban had practically surrounded our base with IEDs that every patrol we went on, either on foot or in a vehicle, we would hit one or two, either causing damage to our vehicles or killing/injuring our men. They owned the land. 28/ 7- “We have the Time” I was in a Shura at one point, talking to key Taliban leaders in the area and key Afghan tribesmen and diplomats. We were attempting to find out what they needed, from a Western mindset, to see if we could reach a ceasefire, and help build infrastructure 29/ Needless to say, it didn’t pan out well because they didn’t want our Western way of life and looked at us as invaders. They said they wanted us out! To which we said that wasn’t going to happen any time soon so we needed to work together. 30/ Then this one Taliban leader spoke up and said… “We have pushed the Soviets from these lands before, we are not worried. You see, you Americans may have the watches… but we have the time” 31/ Right there I realized the game they were playing versus the game we were playing and we weren’t ready to play that game. 32/ 8- Use What You Got Let’s be honest, when it came to equipment and technology, the Taliban were hundreds of years behind us, but why were they so effective? Why were they able to win? It’s because they used what they had to the fullest extent. 33/ The L-shaped ambush spawned from a detonated IED was their main attack and we knew it, but we couldn’t do anything to stop it. The IED was their main means of attack, and it was massively effective. 34/ Their IEDs were made from fertilizer put into palm jugs with little metal and buried properly to evade detectors. The pressure plates were hidden so well we couldn’t see them and the pressure plate itself was the perfect device for vehicles and foot soldiers. 35/ Once an IED would go off, the Taliban would engage from well-hidden locations in a specific formation at a max effective range. They would rarely engage openly. 36/ This method may not seem effective to most, but what it was meant to do is keep us busy and isolated enough where our injured from the blasts would most likely die, and due to the pressure, would cause us to make mistakes. It was a war of attrition, not a direct battle. 37/ 9- Pick Your Battles The Taliban used this same strategy to know when to fight openly and when not to. They mostly operated from the IED/L shape, but would also know when to fight and masse to cause a bigger stir. 38/ These guys knew the politics and played it well to their hand. They would only attack en masse when they needed to push something politically or there were optics. 39/ This would then lead to the media having some presence, and from there, they would claim the US killed X amount of civilians. Even if it weren’t true, they would make a spectacle of it. 40/ The Taliban also knew when they were outgunned and outclassed and they wouldn’t engage. Furthermore, they would implement tactics that they knew we were not willing to engage in. 41/ They were there to win at all costs, we weren’t, and they knew how to bring the fight to their terms. 42/ 10- Merit-Based This is the last thing I truly noticed about their organization which I was really impressed with. 43/ Of course they had a rank structure and hierarchy like any other organization did, but what was different about them versus us is that they allowed for anyone who was a true leader to rise up. 44/ There was one leader in Sangin who was my age at the time, 26 years old, and he was the best fighter amongst the Taliban in Sangin. Most of the Hajis were older with grey beards and such but not this guy. 45/ He rose up quickly due to his merit and was highly esteemed by the community. He was also a tough SOB. The biggest factor about this guy was his ability to inspire and he motivated the Taliban to fight harder and keep going. 46/ His reputation for not being killed or captured grew him an even bigger reputation. Younger men quickly became inspired to be like him and took up the cause. 47/ This led to more and more foot soldiers for the Taliban in the area and the promotion of other men into leadership roles. The more these men achieved, the more funding and prestige they would garner. It was one of the best strategies the Taliban implemented!

Thanks for taking the time to write out in-depth and honestly and openly share your insights, perspective, and experiences on this post about the seemingly uncomfortable and sort of controversial subject at hand! Much appreciated. Very interesting analysis on its undercurrent and formative background.

Note: There is no graphic footage in the video that violates the guidelines of the forum here. Found this video posted in a Twitter retweet of a guy I follow that went viral on TikTok. An interesting one-minute exchange video that very graphically shows the conflict of values and perspectives of people raised in very different cultural backgrounds - shows the extent of how the level of development of a culture to sensitivity programs your mind on even a very emotional and feeling level to feel emotionally abhorrent about doing some stuff (to the point of feeling that you are committing a murder) while others see it as part of their daily survival sustenance or as a delicacy or a 'treat' for themselves. I think the video also provides a nice perspective on the culture of first-world vegans and vegans in other countries cultures or people wanting to become vegans and vegetarians on the indifference of the large part of the underdeveloped world to some of their sensitivities on animals and animals that we see as, like the American guy, as having some sort of souls - since we were programmed in our culture to feel reverence to not violating this norm since we see them as our friends and companions while the rest of the animals as valuable property with feelings that we take care of until its time they are sacrificed on the altar of our sustenance and enjoyment of our taste buds - the more refined and well-spoken savages. They both wear the same NBA jersey to top things of - I saw it as the superficiality of the worldwide proliferation of economic globalization and global pop-culturally recognizable brands digitally broadcasted and dispersed to the world audience and consumer to change deeply seated and locally or nationally culturally programmed norms and belief system realities that go much deeper in shaping and determining a single mind nodes best adaptation and accommodation to the culture of their local societies for the vast majority of people on Earth. Here is the controversial video: Btw I personally feel bad for that dog there - when I peered well to look into his eyes in the video I felt that he had a soul inside him or humanity towards him in my personal projection that I would see in other humans.

What a hypocrite! Piggies are considered even one of the most intelligent animals in the animal kingdom, I think I heard somewhere at the same possible level perhaps as five to six-year-old human kids if I am not grossly mistaken. Well so am I unfortunately

Thanks, found this randomly on Twitter and it got me thinking so I thought I share my thoughts here on it

A nice and comedic way of exposing some of the unmentioned hypocrisies, double standards, irrationalities, and long-term adverse effects for the Australian public behind this military deal and alliance. Or even better said military pact.

The OST from a game I was addicted to playing briefly not so long ago before but have since then reframed it in my mind to use as an inspiring call to keep striving on winning and achieving and realizing my dreams in life and to not waste it into nothing and pure getting by survival mediocrity and also a call for overcoming obstacles, threats, and doubts in life despite adversity and seeming hopelessness. In short a sort of blind optimism dopamine injection when I need it to renew my own faith in myself and overall positivity for life.

This first song I've Got To Go Home sung by Florence McNair didn't only awaken and stir emotions in me. It made me weep in pain and regret several times to the point I rarely did in my life resurfacing some of my memories, trauma, and regrets - reminding me that I need to honor somehow the lives of those I lost that I keep in my head. The Second one Host of the Seraphim - The Dead Can Dance just awakens despair, depression, and hopelessness in me when I first listened to it and before several times when I was in such states. The Third One - Le Chant de Roma which I first heard back when the first time I watched the aforementioned anime (a mediocre and action-filled superficial entertainment experience with not much depth except in several instances and themes but for which the soundtrack is the one thing that most stands out) which it was composed for in 2018 stuck with me since then for me to listen to when I am feeling sad, trying to imaginatively empathize or feel the pain, misery, despair or loss filled lives of others (especially the lives of some Gypsies) or remember being impacted by a feeling of a loss of my own of someone (it for some reason reminded me and got me thinking about the life of my now passed mother and the kind of Gypsy music she liked, cried to and enjoyed when she was alive even though this song is totally unrelated to that except for some brief similarities here and there in the vocal, tone and instruments used) it had a cathartic and releasing effect on me several times when I remembered to listen to it with the vocals. The Fourth Song - Melancholia by the band Caravan Palace also had a cathartic or soothing effect on me depending on my state and also made me feel nostalgic about some memories or experiences I had experienced (one example lone drive rides in the night with a couple of friends) in the past

Clint Mansell - Death Is The Road To Awe (The Fountain OST)

''Sorrow prepares you for joy. It violently sweeps everything out of your house, so that new joy can find space to enter. It shakes the yellow leaves from the bough of your heart so that fresh, green leaves can grow in their place. It pulls up the rotten roots so that new roots hidden beneath have room to grow. Whatever sorrow shakes from your heart, far better things will take their place.'' That one pulled an emotional string for me. ''This being human is a guest house. Every morning is a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor...Welcome and entertain them all. Treat each guest honorably. The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing and invite them in. Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.'' Thank you for finding and sharing this.

Interesting movie rundown and recommendations on this channel as well, thought sharing it if anyone sees anything sparking their interest on this thread opened around the subject of films. The Greatest Films You Don't Know.

The original term in ancient Greek meant someone who is foreign to the Greek civilization, culture and to someone whose language the Greeks couldn't understand. Barbaric has become a more nice polite way to say to someone online that he is an underdeveloped savage without being confrontational and overtly denigrating I have noticed that lately. No qualms about the phrase I like it and I think it's a nicer way to say to someone that they need to develop their humanity and empathy more. Not exactly threatened but possibly socially ostracized and made fun of in some more traditionally-minded and conservative environments, however, there is still not a small number of vegans in Serbia even in underdeveloped places in the country who are vocal opposition and have managed to integrate their lifestyle into the countries culture without being heavily demonized just made fun of, scoffed and stereotyped in the aforementioned environments as being almost exclusively more wealthy and well-off overly sensitive elitist urbanites detached from the overall majority's population culture and lifestyle in a relatively poor country from the stuff I have seen online. Though now that I think about there are a few prominent and well-known Orthodox monkswho are/were also vegetarian as part of their fasting (though mostly not because most of them the included fish in their diet as part of emulating experience and keeping the Orthodox Church tradition of fasting on a low caloric diet of early Christians) who were seen as an exception to that rule ascribed to it being a part of their traditional spiritual undertaking and thus granting them immunity from the same aforementioned judgments to the average traditionally-minded and venerating Serb. Yep, those monks were conscious enough to know, but for themselves mostly, that but the official church line not so much. Perhaps and probably maybe earlier in Serbia and among Serbs, if they still exist by then :D, and yes hopefully so.

Yeah, I get it self-integrity, independence, and self-reliance I need some more of that to cultivate in my own life, especially in a very hostile and dismissive overall culture when it comes to this question - that somehow even ties into the idea of the 'preservation of the Serbian traditional and ethnic identity since during the Ottoman Muslim occupation times it was seen as a way of maintaining the Orthodox Serb identity in opposition to the Sharia law mandated occupation and later in former multiethnic and multireligious Yugoslav states to differentiate oneself from the other religious groups through the maintenance of that traditional identity through the consumption of pork. Just wanted to give you this brief exposition of how certain meat consumption is tied to ethnocentric thinking and the maintenance of traditions and customs tied to keeping that ethnic group identity afloat, strong and present in the community in order for it to gain its manifestation, hold, relevance and prominence in opposition to other ethnic groups and their traditions and customs. A national identity that gains its legitimacy, is forged upon and maintained only through the opposition to other ethnic identities as they ultimately do.

The problem is I never see the pig, not to mention I was kinda forced to eat pork fairly recently a couple of days ago out of respect as part of the guest inviting tradition hereafter the anniversary visit of the grave of my deceased grandfather as part of the Serbian Orthodox feast tradition with invited guest after a forty-day or anniversary visit to the grave of the deceased that we knew - it's in the folk tradition a way of showing you are alive and well to the ones that cared about you and loved you that are no longer here (a part of the culture's norms programmed magical thinking and superstition what can I say), I probably could have avoided that if I started a vegan diet beforehand and declared myself becoming a vegan to the dismissiveness and judgment of others that know me as suddenly resorting to an 'anatural diet' due to a popular trend among the youth but I know some of my acquaintances and friends that managed to pull this off while remaining respectful to the people that are closes to them and care about them widely practiced folk and religious traditions and customs such as this one when inviting guests, if I had to kill it myself probably I couldn't until I've desensitized myself enough and it became a necessary survival routine for supporting myself hypothetically and hypothetical my family with that job but in real life now how and where I live I don't know if I could force myself to do it - I find pigs kinda cute when I look at them at least when they are alive - I know I am hypocrite in my mind to that physical reality that I don't feel that when they are already processed and consumption ready -how would I feel not the same way if I was told it was and that I am enjoying eating human flesh - damn that would feel abhorent and disgusting and would cause me to puke my guts out probably.

Some background on some journalists involved with the International Consortium for Investigative Journalists other organizational ties and partnerships and the sources of funding of those organizations by GreyZone 'independent' (I haven't seen them either anywhere disclose some of the sources of their funding either) media co-editor Ben Norton: One of the main groups behind both the Pandora Papers & Panama Papers is top @ICIJorg partner @OCCRP OCCRP (The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project) is funded by -US State Dept -USAID -NED -EU -the UK -Sweden -Denmark -billionaire Soros -billionaire Omidyar -Ford Foundation (CIA front) -Rockefeller Brothers Fund (CIA front). Not calling into question the legitimacy of their findings but the posing question in the reasons behind its possible selectiveness and absolvement of potential others involved. Does there exist the culture among the information intake and consumption by the US and other Western media affiliated public to be interested in following the money of their own media houses and be thus skeptical of the objectivity of their full coverage?

The Fountain (2006) from Darren Aronofsky with Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weiss in the lead roles. The ending scene coupled with a haunting score where Jackman playing three different characters in different historical timelines have different experiences and relationships to their ultimate quest in striving towards attaining themselves or granting others immortality or preventing death and metaphorically trying to communicate the universal answer to each of the different motives of the different characters he plays for wanting to become immortal or to prevent death - and that is to paradoxically let go to the attachment and clinging onto their lives or other lives as they know it in the first place and accept death and dying as it is, as I understood it. The question in the whole movie revolves around the relationship towards life, death and exploring implications and understanding of the want behind immortality as its title implies referencing the legend of the existence of the Fountain of Youth and the Tree of Life. This movie hit me hard emotionally with the themes it delves on as it did because of the references and associations in it reminding someone of my own experiences, and afterward desires and wants that have to do with the loss of relationships in the past in my own family background and the trauma behind it and the needs, wants and desires that stemmed from it and this scene also hit me emotionally because it delved on some of my thoughts and feelings of wanting to feel what's it like to let go the clinginess and attachment of my own life and experience existence as it is more fully and completely and to accept and fully experience that experience of letting go and not having fears, suffering, pain, resistance, and attachments to my own self and to experience everything else in existence and life as truly a part and parcel of me and to feel it that it is part and parcel of me and that there are no boundaries and resistances between us - to feel everything as one as me as I feel myself, if I am making sense in the way I am writing this and phrasing this. In retrospect is it has some goofy scenes and visuals but overall I think the message that it delivers coupled with the emotions it awakens is still powerful to me. The Mist (2007) by Frank Darabont this ending is filled with despair with a piece of gut-wrenching music by the band Host of the Seraphim - there is a complete 11-minute analysis of the film's themes and messages on YouTube but if the ending scene of this film's message can be simplistically summed up it is even when faced with hopeless and impossible circumstances never give up on hope and the courage and the will to live life and to live through with what might seem that there is no escape from and is hopeless until the last second and moment when there is still hope - escaping from pain, fear, suffering and hopelessness and despair to a painless and quick death and eternal sleep can be shortsighted in the grand schemes of the possibilities that life can give you and be merciful to you - don't let your sacrifice, death or perceived noble act be in vain, fight and last until the last moment you are able to do so. This movie still gives me a remainder not to until the last possible second and moment lose hope on the will to live life no matter how bad, painful, insufferable and bleak the prospects of my future might seem to me now - to never lose hope until the last possible second. Those are the two of my most memorable movie scenes that I can think up one now on the top of my head and that stuck with me the most for all these years when I first saw them and rewatched them later in my life.

''No one on the internet is your friend. There is no such thing as friendship on the internet. You can accept this as a fact or learn it for yourself over years of disappointment. People on the internet are combatants-- that's all there is in the spiritual animal kingdom. There is no Friendship on the Internet-- & so there is no Truth to be found in "internet relations"-- the Truth of all internet relations is that everyone involved is a combatant in a perpetual total information war operating in defense of the global anglo empire. By participating, you are engaged in the defense of the global empire. If your participation is to "attack the global empire"-- then the internet directs combatants to eliminate you by any means necessary. Scapegoating rituals create solidarity amongst combatants. "Ratio!" DARPA Presents: "the Internet", a Psychodramatic Roleplaying Combat Simulation for "the Public" On "the Internet" you & a team of randomly selected cyber warriors from across the planet will be Live Action Role Playing as DARPA Globe Planners. What do YOU think about Taiwan? You can try to play a different game on the internet-- you can go "Hey guys, we're currently LARPing as DARPA Globe Planners, but we don't have to do that-- we can talk about anything we want-- we can read poetry & share music!"-- but then you'll just be scapegoated. Fun! The Internet was not made to "make your life better." The Internet was not made for "creative collaboration." The Internet was not made for "Finding Friends." The Internet was not made for the proliferation of Beauty, Truth, Wisdom. The Internet was not made for you. The Internet was made for the 24/7 perpetual defense of unipolar anglo-Atlantic hegemony through superior intel gathering, sorting, filing, & dispersal via decentralized network "hive mind" consciousness of any army. This is all it ever was & all it ever will be. This is Hell. If you act like a human being on the Internet, you'll be swarmed by combatants seeking to instrumentalize your humanity toward some "mission objective" of theirs that only exists in the virtual reality of "the Internet"-- the medium is the message. Paradise is seeing the Eternal Good everywhere & in everything, which is always already there-- it's just that people only see it except in brief moments. Anything that keeps you from seeing the Good everywhere & in everything is from Hell. The Internet is designed to maximize your engagement with it-- this is done by keeping your attention to the trivial temporal "not Goods" that are everywhere expiring & annihilating themselves. Only the Good has eternal existence-- anything that is "not good" is Nothing. Memories of "using the internet" don't exist in specificity-- because internet social media is Not Good, it is composed almost entirely out of Nothing. This is because it is Hell. The Internet seeks to annihilate the Good. That is why it exists-- to create Hell on Earth. The Internet is succeeding in annihilating the Good & annihilating all that is True & Beautiful, replacing the Good with the sublimation of immediate libidinal desires. A state of pure sublimation of libidinal desire is called "Hell" Hell is where you get everything that you desire. Have at it.'' I am just quoting and parroting the most recent post I saw from his Twitter account R. CAM. He takes his inspiration and has featured quotes and excerpts on his account from Christianity, Marxism-Leninism, and Hegels work those that I know of.

What about a godmother and a godfather - fitting for a multipolar world? The one teaches grace, sensitivity, and compassion, and the other strength, conscientiousness, and willpower. The U.S. can become a godmother and China the godfather for example in the future. An idealistic, utopian, and hopeful outlook from my perspective.

''The hijackers who carried out the attacks on 9/11, like all radical jihadist groups in the Middle East, spoke to us in the murderous language we taught them. The explosions and collapse of the towers, however, were, to me, intimately familiar. I had seen it before. This was the familiar language of the empire. I had watched these incendiary messages dropped on southern Kuwait and Iraq during the first Persian Gulf War and descend with thundering concussions in Gaza and Bosnia. The calling card of empire, as was true in Vietnam, is tons of lethal ordnance dropped from the sky. The hijackers spoke to America in the idiom we taught them. The ignorance, masquerading as innocence, of Americans, mostly white Americans, was nauseating. It was the worst attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor. It was the greatest act of terrorism in American history. It was an incomprehensible act of barbarity. The stunningly naïve rhetoric, which saturated the media, saw the blues artist Willie King sit up all night and write his song “Terrorized”. “Now you talk ‘bout terror,” he sang. “I been terrorized all my days.” But it was not only Black Americans who were familiar with the endemic terror built into the machinery of white supremacy, capitalism, and empire, but those overseas who the empire for decades sought to subdue, dominate, and destroy. They knew there is no moral difference between those who fire Hellfire and cruise missiles or pilot militarized drones, obliterating wedding parties, village gatherings or families, and suicide bombers. They knew there is no moral difference between those who carpet-bomb North Vietnam or southern Iraq and those who fly planes into buildings. In short, they knew the evil that spawned evil. America was not attacked because the hijackers hated us for our values. America was not attacked because the hijackers followed the Quran — which forbids suicide and the murder of women and children. American was not attacked because of a clash of civilizations. America was attacked because the virtues we espouse are a lie. We were attacked for our hypocrisy. We were attacked for the campaigns of industrial slaughter that are our primary way of speaking with the rest of the planet. Robert McNamara, the Secretary of Defense in the summer of 1965, called the bombing raids, which would eventually kill hundreds of thousands of civilians north of Saigon, a form of communication with the communist government in Hanoi. We did not, and do not, grasp that we are the mirror image of those we seek to destroy. We too kill with an inchoate fury. The lives of Iraqis, Afghanis, Syrians, Libyans, and Yemenis are as precious as the lives of those killed in the twin towers. But this understanding, this ability to see the world as the world saw us, eluded Americans who, refusing to acknowledge the blood on their own hands, instantly bifurcated the world into good and evil, us and them, the blessed and the damned. The country drank deep of the dark elixir of nationalism, the heady elevation of us as noble and wronged people. The flip side of nationalism is always racism. And the poisons of racism and hate infected the American nation to propel it into the greatest strategic blunder in its history, one from which it will never recover. We did not, and do not, grasp that we are the mirror image of those we seek to destroy. We too kill with an inchoate fury. Over the past two decades, we have extinguished the lives of hundreds of thousands of people who never sought to harm the United States or were involved in the attacks on American soil. We too use religion, in our case the Christian faith, to mount a jihad or crusade. We too go to war to fight phantoms of our own creation.'' "The manipulation of the images, however, had already begun. The scores of “jumpers,” those who leaped to their deaths before the collapses, were censored from the live broadcasts. They seemed to wait for turns. They often fell singly or in pairs, sometimes with improvised parachutes made from drapes, sometimes replicating the motions of swimmers. They reached speeds of 150 miles an hour during the ten seconds it took before they hit the pavement. The bodies made a sickening thud on impact. All who saw them fall spoke of this sound. The mass suicide was one of the pivotal events of 9/11. But it was immediately expunged from public consciousness. The jumpers did not fit into the myth the nation demanded. The hopelessness and despair were too disturbing. It exposed our smallness and fragility. It illustrated that there are levels of suffering and fear that lead us to willingly embrace death. The “jumpers” reminded us that one day we will all face only one choice and that is how we will die, not how we will live. The story is fabricated out of the ashes of the twin towers was a story of resilience, heroism, courage, and self-sacrifice, not collective suicide. So, mass murder and mass suicide were replaced with an encomium to the virtues and prowess of the American spirit." ''The intoxication of violence, the anodyne of war, is a poison. It condemns critical thought as treason. Its call to patriotism is little more than collective self-worship. It imparts a god-like power and licenses to destroy, not only things but other human beings. But war is, ultimately, about betrayal, as the defeat in Afghanistan elucidates. Betrayal of the young by the old. Betrayal of idealists by cynics. Betrayal of soldiers and marines by war profiteers and politicians. War, like all idols, begins by demanding the sacrifice of others but ends with the demand for self-sacrifice. The Greeks, like Sigmund Freud, grasped that war is the purest expression of the death instinct, the desire to exterminate all systems of life, including, ultimately, our own. Ares, the Greek god of war, was frequently drunk, quarrelsome, impetuous, and a lover of violence for its own sake. He was hated by nearly all the other gods, except the god of the underworld, Hades, to whom he delivered a steady stream of new souls. Ares’s sister, Eris, the goddess of chaos and strife, spread rumors and jealousy to fan the flames of war.'' ''This moral fragmentation, where we define ourselves by tangential and often fictitious acts of goodness, is a psychological escape hatch. It allows us to avoid looking at who we are and what we have done. This willful blindness is what the psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton calls “doubling,” the “division of the self into two functioning wholes so that the part-self acts as an entire self.” This doubling, Lifton noted, is often done “outside of awareness.” And it is an essential ingredient to carrying out evil. If we refuse to see ourselves as we are, if we cannot shatter the lie perpetuated by our moral fragmentation, there is no hope of redemption. The gravest danger we face is the danger of alienation, not only from the world around us but from ourselves." https://scheerpost.com/2021/09/10/hedges-the-evil-we-do-is-the-evil-we-get/

This was the mess that was made worldwide by the pumping of funding and armament and positive public opinion, support, and propaganda for the mujaheddin while at the same time having a military presence and meddling in Middle Eastern affairs and was used as a justification for the crimes and legitimacy of other nationalist leaders across the globe for their vendettas and oppressions and for some to hold on to power still on the basis of using this justification to demonize others and to legitimize and paint over their own war crimes, ethnic cleansing, crackdowns, discrimination on the one hand and all this with separatism on the other: Yugoslav Wars: Bosnian mujahideen: "A former US State Department official in October 2001 described Bosnia and Herzegovina as a safe haven for terrorists and asserted that militant elements of the former Sarajevo government were protecting extremists, some with ties to Osama bin Laden. According to Middle East intelligence reports, bin Laden financed small convoys of recruits from the Arab world through his businesses in Sudan. Among them was Karim Said Atmani, who was identified by authorities as to the document forger for a group of Algerians accused of plotting the bombings in the United States. He is a former roommate of Ahmed Ressam, the man arrested at the Canada–United States border in mid-December 1999 with a car full of nitroglycerin and bomb-making materials. He was convicted of colluding with Osama bin Laden by a French court. A Bosnian government search of passport and residency records, conducted at the urging of the United States, revealed other former Mujahideen who were linked to the same Algerian group or to other groups of suspected terrorists and had lived in the area 100 km (60 mi) north of Sarajevo, the capital, in the past few years. Khalil al-Deek was arrested in Jordan in late December 1999 on suspicion of involvement in a plot to blow up tourist sites. A second man with Bosnian citizenship, Hamid Aich, lived in Canada at the same time as Atmani and worked for a charity associated with Osama bin Laden. In its June 26, 1997, report on the bombing of the Al Khobar building in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, The New York Times noted that those arrested confessed to serving with Bosnian Muslim forces. Further, the captured men also admitted to ties with Osama bin Laden. In 1999, the press reported that bin Laden and his Tunisian assistant Mehrez Aodouni were granted citizenship and Bosnian passports in 1993 by the government in Sarajevo. The Bosnian government denied this information following the September 11 attacks, but it was later found that Aodouni was arrested in Turkey and that at that time he possessed a Bosnian passport. Following this revelation, a new explanation was given that bin Laden did not personally collect his Bosnian passport and that officials at the Bosnian embassy in Vienna, which issued the passport, could not have known who bin Laden was at the time.'' Albania: "SHISH's head Fatos Klose said that Osama was running a terror network in Albania to take part in the Kosovo War under the guise of a humanitarian organization and it was reported to have been started in 1994. Claude Kader, who was a member, testified its existence during his trial. By 1998, four members of Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) were arrested in Albania and extradited to Egypt. The mujahideen fighters were organized by Islamic leaders in Western Europe allied to him and Zawahiri. During his trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, former Serbian President Slobodan Milošević quoted from a purported FBI report that bin Laden's al-Qaeda had a presence in the Balkans and aided the Kosovo Liberation Army. He claimed bin Laden had used Albania as a launchpad for violence in the region and Europe. He claimed that they had informed Richard Holbrooke that KLA was being aided by al-Qaeda but the US decided to cooperate with the KLA and thus indirectly with Osama despite the 1998 United States embassy bombings earlier. Milošević had argued that the United States aided the terrorists, which culminated in its backing of the 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia during the Kosovo War." September 11 attacks: ''God knows it did not cross our minds to attack the Towers, but after the situation became unbearable—and we witnessed the injustice and tyranny of the American-Israeli alliance against our people in Palestine and Lebanon—I thought about it. And the events that affected me directly were that of 1982 and the events that followed—when America allowed the Israelis to invade Lebanon, helped by the US Sixth Fleet. As I watched the destroyed towers in Lebanon, it occurred to me to punish the unjust the same way: to destroy towers in America so it could taste some of what we are tasting and to stop killing our children and women.'' — Osama bin Laden, 2004 ''After his initial denial, in the wake of the attacks, bin Laden announced, "what the United States is tasting today is nothing compared to what we have tasted for decades. Our umma has known this humiliation and contempt for over eighty years. Its sons are killed, its blood is spilled, its holy sites are attacked, and it is not governed according to Allah's command. Despite this, no one cares". In response to the attacks, the United States launched the War on Terror to depose the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and capture al-Qaeda operatives, and several countries strengthened their anti-terrorism legislation to preclude future attacks." Sources: All from Wikipedia The mess that was made and was consistently ignored or not given proper attention.

Yep, this: ''The lives of Iraqis, Afghanis, Syrians, Libyans, and Yemenis are as precious as the lives of those killed in the twin towers. But this understanding, this ability to see the world as the world saw us, eluded Americans who, refusing to acknowledge the blood on their own hands, instantly bifurcated the world into good and evil, us and them, the blessed and the damned. The country drank deep of the dark elixir of nationalism, the heady elevation of us as noble and wronged people. The flip side of nationalism is always racism. And the poisons of racism and hate infected the American nation...'' It can happen to any nation's people and is in fact even more pronounced and present to nations outside of America and the West. The self-bias of peoples is present more or less everywhere, the question is only to the extent of what degree and denial and alienation of other people's humanity and interests.

George W Bush on 9/11: "We have seen growing evidence that the dangers to our country can come not only across borders but from the violence that gathers within. There is little cultural overlap between violent extremists abroad and violent extremists at home, but in their disdain for pluralism, in their disregard for human life, in their determination to defile national symbols they are children of the same foul spirit and it is our continuing duty to confront them." Bush is publicly comparing 9/11 to Jan 6. Guess Bush went from his nationalist and neo-conservative arc during his presidency to his solid liberal arc in old age and retirement due to the effect the wars he helped initiate and start had indirectly on the changing circumstances and public opinion climate in his own country.