Nilsi

Is it relevant though? Probably not to the degree that you have, but you're really one of a kind

I'm still a little worried It's mainly about cutting our losses and avoiding overly dystopic futures, and I think this is a legitimate worry.

LOL Im glad you finally see that his spiritual insights are legit. Funny that I'm the one who is underselling him now

He literally called them "profound tools." Schmachtenberger is obviously not interested in getting people to "infinite consciousness", so of course psychedelics won't be as important to his work, as they are to yours. Also why are you calling it doom porn, when literally half of the episode was about why they are optimistic and that they are just acting from a place of loving Life so much, that it's worth it to protect it?

What are you saying?

This one got me fucked up good.

Italian girls are just built different. Monica Bellucci in her prime might have been the pinnacle of evolution

Calling it a cheeky attack is kind of misleading for those that will not actually take the time and watch the whole thing. All Schmachtenberger was saying is that it's kind of unearned insight and thus doesn't necessarily make one a more whole or wise person. He has spoken very positively about psychedelics in the past and this was not an attack on the reliability or legitimacy of psychedelic insight at all. The only reason I'm so nosy about this is, that some people here still don't take him seriously and dismiss any possibility of him having legitimate deep spiritual insight.

That's fine. I also think like this, and can certainly appreciate someone like Hendrix or Chopin or Davis being virtuosos on their instrument. But that's still not really talking about the actual music, but more about the ideas that accompany it. But yeah, I'm starting to split hairs and I don't really have a point I'm trying to make, so let's just leave it at that

https://testing.civilizationemerging.com/dharma-inquiry/ This is a great article about the concept of Dharma and aligning yourself with it.

That's all good, but the problem is that this doesn't help anyone (no pun intended). I've seen Jim Newman talk to mentally ill people, that were clearly troubled and looking for guidance and he just gave his classic spiel of "you are already free," "there is no one experiencing trauma" etc. That's clearly not healthy nor helpful.

Personally, studying evolutionary dynamics opened my eyes to the beauty and intelligence of the universe. If you want to equate evolution with God making choices, there you go - it's maximizing diversity and richness, and whenever I feel a really deep connection to life, it definitely feels like it's maximizing beauty and love.

The fundamental mistake is looking at all these things as separate issues. Obviously getting laid is a valid desire but so are having great friendships, having a great career, learning new cool things, enjoying art, experiencing different cultures, developing yourself spiritually etc. You should focus on becoming the kind of person, that can experience all these things, instead of optimizing for one narrow metric, to the detriment of all these other parts of yourself. You have to think more long-term about these things and focus on actually becoming a more whole human being.

All good. You didn't bother me at all. I just don't want to derail this thread too much.

You could maybe track the level of abstraction within a given genre, and equate that with higher "consciousness." But how you frame the genre and how you measure abstraction is also totally arbitrary. I could make the case that Bach is a low consciousness knuckle head, because his stuff is so simple and orderly and Ravel is a galaxy brain for his complex compositions, but that's still completely arbitrary. I have my own aesthetic preferences, and for all practical purposes, I will make value judgements of art, but it's really not grounded in anything objective. I don't want to be unnecessarily postmodernist about this, but I have yet to see any convincing way of systematizing and objectifying art (and I don't think that's possible, nor desirable).

You're just coming from a naive paradigm. I don't mean to mock you, but let's just end this discussion, ok?

I don't know. By what metrics is Chopin more reflective of reality than some EDM tune? I get where you're coming from, but this is really just a giant house of cards. This may be one of the corniest songs ever, but the enjoyment I get from it is off the charts.

I don't want to turn this into a discussion about metaphysics, so let's just leave it at that.

Same with raw sensations. It's not like they happen outside of your mind.

This discussion isn't going anywhere.

Feeling is a function of the mind. Also when you feel joy or anger or whatever, it is always entangled with some mental imagery and abstraction.

How so? You are a homo sapiens (literally the wise/thinking man). I suspect you have a rather naive materialistic worldview. You don't seem to appreciate how entangled your mind and the world are.

If you take that logic to its natural conclusion it leads you to being nothing but a hairless monkey, which surely can't be right, no? You live in the 21st century and your environment and culture can't be separated from you. I understand where you're coming from, but that's just a naive reductionistic worldview. It's not so simple as saying, I am just this body-mind in a vacuum - no you're not. Unless you are advocating for having sex in a state of complete no-mind (which is silly in itself), your view just doesn't hold. Fantasies and fetishization (which in itself is another can of worms), will naturally arise to some degree, so don't fool yourself here. This is just a silly discussion. Don't be so square in your sexuality and everything is well.

Whatever you think you are, language, technology, knowledge, art... are all part of you and shape who you are and how you experience the world. You can make the case that sexuality is more primordial than those things, but so is your body, but you still put clothes on it without having to be weird about it. Also I'm sure even monkeys had some kind of abstraction abilities and probably experienced all sorts of freaky fantasies and mental imagery when they felt horny.

Typical intellectual laziness.