Space Lizard

I'm not sure what a Zen devil is, but it sounds pretty cool. I think I might be one.

Nothing. Hope is a delusion. Let go of it and deal with reality.

Law abiding citizens need to fear abusive police and gangsters who make themselves the police. NATO is more like the enforcement arm of the Godfather across the Atlantic (America) than a legitimate European police force. If NATO was a European police force, it wouldn't be dominated by a foreign country. The most accurate description of NATO's purpose was given by British general Hastings Ismay in the 1950s:

Invest in your ability to think and act independently of social pressure. Read. Travel. Meditate. Spend time in nature. Use psychedelics rarely and treat them as something sacred. Turn off mass media and popular culture. Decondition your mind. Learn to value your own thoughts, experiences and creations over any social construct.

This is the “god-emperor” style of government. In practice it means rule by a totalitarian cult. They present themselves as enlightened beings, but the reality tends to be much darker. Tibet was like this for centuries, and there are a lot of horror stories about the lamas’ abuses of power. We got a taste of it in the USA when Osho set up his base in a small town in Oregon. His followers tried to take over the town; they put poison in a salad bar to prevent people from voting. That’s the kind of thing you often get when you’re ruled by an avatar or all-powerful spiritual master. There’s a great book called Darkness Over Tibet that describes this kind of society.

What a strange comment. Europe is a large place with lots of people and wealth. Afghans defended themselves from both Soviets and Americans with little more than rifles and sandals. All you lack to defend yourself is the will and the balls.

So you enjoy being a vassal of the USA then? That's what the EU is until it can defend itself. Europeans will not be respected players in the world until they take responsibility for their own security. World leaders will just ignore you and go to your daddy in Washington. Props to Macron, he at least seems to get that and wants to get Europe's sovereignty back. You might as well move to the USA, at least you will be where the real power is.

The human psyche. I agree with Carl Jung: (Source: https://youtu.be/wop91_Gvwos )

Hell exists in your mind as an idea. It's not an objective place like the moon, or at least there's no evidence for it. It's hard to prove that something doesn't exist somewhere, I don't know how to do that.

Probably hell is an archetype deep in the human psyche. Or it could just be a way to scare you into following their religion.

Why mind-fuck yourself like that? How can you be so sure a T-1000 isn't gonna arrive from the future tomorrow and try to terminate you?

A big challenge for the rest of the world: to realize that what comes out of Hollywood and American media is largely propaganda and illusion. I wonder how many people move here thinking it's gonna be like Baywatch and get a rude awakening. That's a strange one. To me the USA is the least social, most atomized society in the world. People are not community- or family-oriented and stay in their little cocoons. I've been all over Europe, and it didn't seem less social to me.

My thoughts are that it sounds delusional. I used to get thoughts like that when I was really high.

Hell? Get a grip dude. Hell is fiction.

NATO is a relic of the Cold War when the Soviet Union had a universalist ideology and was aggressively trying to expand its borders. These days only one empire is like that: Pax Americana. NATO is no longer necessary; it's just keeping you subservient to the American empire. You aren't actually sovereign if you rely on the USA to defend you. Macron, being a proud Frenchman who wants to make France great again, probably doesn't like that. The reason NATO still has problems with Russia is because it continued to expand eastward up to Russia's border after the Cold War, breaking promises it made to Russia. There is no natural reason for hostility between the EU and Russia or China; economically it makes better sense to be friendly to them, since they are on the same landmass and have a lot of resources you need. Russia's natural gas is cheaper, and China's Belt and Road Initiative is going to connect most of Eurasia. Why would you make an enemy of them to please Americans, who are across the ocean from you and not reliable allies (see Afghanistan, Iraq, etc)?

The point is if you set up a system of global government, it's only a matter of time before some Stalin type takes it over. History shows that no matter what kind of system you set up, this can happen. So building a global government creates the architecture for a future global dictator. Doesn't seem like a good idea. As someone said above, if we had a Chinese style system ruling the world, who could overthrow Xi? Since we don't know how to build a system immune to tyrants, it's a bad idea to rely on one government. The best defense we have is multi-polarity; many states and systems that can prevent any one dictator from taking over the world.

I seriously doubt it. And why would anyone want that? Imagine if that state gets taken over by some Stalin type; now you've got global dictatorship, and no states that can oppose it. Sounds like a very bad idea to me (unless you're a tyrant). How so? Do you define progress as "everyone uniting and no one having distinct cultures"? Are you hoping for some Borg-like collective where everyone is the same? Sorry, that's not my idea of progress, or anything desirable. But it does show how "progressive" thinking can become the basis for totalitarianism and tyranny. Stalin thought he was uniting humanity and bringing progress--as he piled up millions of bodies.

Why do nations want to join into these larger unions, which can easily turn into tyrannical, expansionist empires? Does Europe want to be another Rome? What’s wrong with preserving your sovereignty and culture and minding your own business? I think Macron is a dangerous guy, with a bit of a Napoleon complex and dreams of imperial glory. Europe doesn’t need an EU, let alone an EU army.

Why does it matter?

A lot of threads on this forum get lost in word games and over-abstraction. Asking what [some word for an abstract concept] means is not very useful, imo. Why do you need to know what "aware" means? What relevance does it have to anything going on in your life?

When I see a story like this suddenly appearing in a coordinated manner across the media, the first thing I ask is not whether it's true, but why is it being promoted as news? Why is this narrative being pushed? What agenda does it serve? As we've seen with the Trump-Russia stories, Saddam's WMDs and many other stories, the media is very good at pushing false narratives to advance certain agendas. If you aren't asking these questions all the time of the media, you're a dupe following their script, imo. Remember, the "mainstream media" in the USA is almost entirely owned by six corporations, each run by a small group of people, which gives them a powerful ability to coordinate their messaging, but whose interests don't necessarily align with yours.

I see Islam as a useful antidote to many of the excesses of secular, progressive, materialist civilization. Some of the best critiques of this civilization come from Muslims living in the West. The idea that Islam is about terrorism or killing apostates or whatever is mostly propaganda. If there are powerful extremists operating in the world today, it's the secular technocratic elite, whose primary goals seem to be the total dehumanization of the world, the destruction of the human soul, and putting themselves on the throne formerly reserved for God.

@Federico del pueblo Yes, I have a similar perspective. This kind of spirituality, that emphasizes becoming, progress, "harder, better, faster, stronger" is part of the pathology of this age. It fits well with the ethos of neoliberalism so it is encouraged by the powers that be. The idea of just being, that you are already fine, is almost heretical--like being content with not owning a Mercedes or not getting plastic surgery or whatever. For me higher consciousness includes becoming aware of this "hamster wheel" mentality, and not buying into it (literally, in many cases).

Five years ago I was perfect. I haven't changed a thing.

The concept of evil is the root of all evil. Evil doesn't exist.