Akim

My mind is sometimes just grabs on topics and think on them obsessively. Have anyone dealt with it, what would be your advice?

In your search be humble and respect opinions of others. Learn about that thing called projection. When you read scriptures, religions or speak to people for that matter, be careful not to put your inner psychological problems on them like ancients populated the sky with constellations with meaning for them. When thing is complex, like Bible, people find lots and lots of thing in it, and many don't agree. But may be it is useful for them, hard to tell. Just keep that in mind in your research. Also keep in mind, for many people it is a dear thing.

How I see this video in light of the title "Is this Science or Rhetoric -- Exploring the Arrogance of Psychological Explanations". Some preliminary definitions. This comment is my narrative weaving. The guy in the video also has his narrative. Science is the narrative that holds up to very high standard of verification. Rhetoric is a technique of creating narratives so that they are more persuasive. The narrative of this guy holds up at least in that it allows him to do his job. And also allows him to provide a feeling of insight in people listening to him. It is arrogant in a sense that psychology is a handmaid of current cultural narrative. Some people in current times who are vied as damaged would be saints or god's fools and have high position in medieval times. And conversely some people who are admired now would be viewed as sinners and persecuted. Society as a whole tries to maintain a consistent narrative of reality and hold itself together. But reality is really complex, it is very hard to do that, there are infinite number of specific unique situations ans so on, so that arrogance is understandable. It doesn't mean that psychology is not useful.

That as an interesting way to look at it. Come to think of it looks like he does focus on the negative more. Even his Easter message is somewhat sobering and a little bit tragic not joyful and happy as in traditional Christianity. But may be the current culture needs and craves it. Reminded me of: from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Campbell, who is another great researcher of myths.

Check out Jonathan Pageau WARNING: these videos have some political, archetypal and egoic charge, be meta about it, don't let it distract you. but instead use as a guide to understand yourself and other people.

Half of scientists now believe in God or higher power http://www.pewforum.org/2009/11/05/scientists-and-belief/

I tried, as far as I can understand they are experiences extracting patterns from other experiences, symbolizing and simplifying them.

I don't follow, why thought can't be rational, logical and reasonable even if it runs me? Those are words that describe qualities of good thoughts.

I can try to answer from their side. What is the point of using words if they don't grab on something stable, some persistent pattern and can't be verified by other people I communicate with? There is a consistent vocabulary, way to live and view the world that was refined by many many people. Why rationalist should stop listening to scientists who have a consistent narrative and can demonstrate the result of their work in experiments and working technology? Why should they listen to some guys saying truisms that feel good?

It is also traditionally often used as a sort of affirmation of how you want to change yourself, not only what you want from the outer world. For example, Prayer of St. Ephraim the Syrian: from An Explanation of the Prayer of St. Ephraim the Syrian: the whole text

Several suggestions, may be some of them will work for you. Accept that you have have lower threshold for negative emotion activation than most people ans so you need to be more compassionate to yourself and also more creative in finding ways to deal with it. Try to improve your social situation, cultivate bonds with good people. If you are in relationship, sex, physical touch can help. If you are not you can go to massage or something like that. Try some bath or other raw body experiences like that. Find small or big things that make you feel more happy, confident, in control and do them. Try to face and become more conscious of the problems that you have without repeated negative thoughts. Try to look at them from different angles, think what can you improve in your situation. Try to act in opposite of negative feeling. If you avoid something, it can reinforce negative pattern in your brain, if you approach it and survive negative pattern becomes weaker. If you are stuck in negative loop think something like "OK, this is bad, but it is no good to think how bad is it, it is better to think what are the solutions or things in other areas that I can do to improve my overall situation". Walk outside, preferably in nature, if you can. Meditate, for example loving kindness meditation If you are religious may be prayer can help. Try to verbalize something that bothers you, write it down. May be you can do something about it. Or you can let go, you can try to burn the paper down it or destroy in other way and see if it helps. Build routines, so that you can go through your day and have a good one without having to make too much decisions. Have meaningful rituals in your day, to give it structure. Consume wholesome information. It may be stupid like https://www.reddit.com/r/wholesomememes/ and also it is not stupid if it works or you can watch some comedy, try older movies, I personally find many of them calmer and warmer. Try fiction books. Avoid information that is not helpful to you. It may be news, resentful negative memes, nihilistic relativistic philosophy and so on.

Seeing this thread is making me reconsider the value of debate but I will post it anyway. I get that if you cling to a set of concepts as absolute truth or trust every word of some person this is going to severely limit your growth. But what is wrong with hierarchies? He is not advocating corrupt third word system where there are slaves, lower cast or your worth is nothing and you have no rights if you are not politically connected or rich. On the contrary he says it is a bloody miracle that in some developed countries all individuals are supposed to have equal rights. How hard it is to build such a society and people should be grateful to live in it and take responsibility for it's maintenance, constant revitalization and development. What he is saying is that some things are better than others. There is hierarchy of values. There is good and bad. And some good can be better than other good. Like in the video about hierarchies in the beginning of the thread he says that speech, vision and ability to confront terrible unknown is at the top of hierarchy. What is wrong in prioritizing some things over others? Also what is wrong with competition? If a person is good in creating a Youtube channel that helps people he gets money, recognition and higher status for that. People admire and want to emulate him and his opinion is valued more that a stranger you encounter. People like Peterson and Leo compete with each other in a place of Youtube for views and their outcome is different. What is wrong with that? Are those dangerous controversial ideas? That there are hierarchies, that some things are better and some are worse? That some people are better at something and some are worse at it? He is not saying that competition and hierarchy is always the guiding principle. Mother can love all her children unconditionally and help all of them regardless of their success, and that is great. Inequalities of outcome lead to hoarding of opportunities by some people, and it is not a good thing, world as a whole is worse because of that. And people lower in the hierarchy rightly feel injustice and have nothing to loose so it leads to violence and instability. But it is not clear what to do about it, how we can tune and improve a complex societal system without it breaking. We should be careful instead of calling for revolution and violent redistribution. People tried that, it didn't work. What is wrong with disagreeableness? Isn't is good to stand up to yourself and be assertive? Isn't it good to challenge people ideas? That is how ideas get stronger. It is good to have your ideas get dismantled, may be a little bit ego hurt, but may be it is a good thing, it is probably too coddled anyway. People help each other improve their knowledge graph. What is wrong with intelligent debate for that? It is easier than self inquire, other people are probably more motivated to dismantle your knowledge graph than you and they have ideas new to you. I get there are trolls that just enjoy sowing mutual hate and other negative emotions. But should we give up all debate because of them? They may want to live in hell they are creating, but most people don't and it is our responsibility to not give up and make things right.

I would love to hear a good case for relationships too. There is a lot of work and investment involved. When I was younger I cared, but was not very successful, now I don't care much. I thought that I was porn addicted and that screwed my psychology. So I quit porn. Life is much calmer and pleasant without erotic stimulation. I suppose it is good to have a close understanding friend, but I didn't really feel deep connection with girls I talked. Also I live in a concept bubble different from them, we care about different things.

He is not. This lazy fluff is slacking off his meditation routine.

As I understand it, not having a lot experience myself, in normal consciousness there is somewhat persistent set of experiences/interpretations that frame the world as (active subject)/(objects to operate with). When it is subdued it looks like there are just experiences. Also something like "all separations are arbitrary and everything is just flowing interconnected one".

May be non duality without duality is not true non duality?

I think brain simplifies and conceptualizes things by itself. You just need to put what you are trying to explain in front of your attention and contemplate on it. Analogies, pictures and phrases just appear.

But how to navigate this crazy infinite wonderland? I personally view it in dual terms. Like I can be more conscious or less conscious, contemplate or read news, help someone or greedily consume and so on. So you kind of need a pointer, idea what is good and wholesome and what is not. Also I think one needs to build and maintain habitable order around oneself that works for him. Or how to live without it?

from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrology_and_science Even if it works like placebo why would you want placebo that makes you a victim? If this is the case why would you want to believe in astrology and live in a world where astrology works? There seems to be more attractive alternatives, like a traditional religions, for example, where there is entity far wiser than you, that you can asks things. And if it would be good for you and others this entity can grant your wish.

I think Peterson believes that he is defending western culture from descending into left-wing or right-wing totalitarianism like it happened in 20 century. So he wants to strengthen western values like independent individual, free speech, plurality of opinion, strong work ethics and so on. May be he is doing it a little bit too strongly and charismatically. But do we want others to take this role? It looks like in US people crave for charismatic leader who can speak emotionally and appear sincere. Just look what happened with Ron Paul, Bernie or Trump. Peterson says that you can tell what person believes in by how they act. And it is much more important than what they say. What Leo does: Strong individualism. Thinks for himself, compares different traditions and experiments instead of joining some cult and giving some eastern guru total control. Values free speech, creates forum for people to freely discuss different opinions, including outrageous. Values articulate speech, practices it as a domain of mastery, probably practices talks hours every week and publishes the best online. Is very proactive, logical, hard working. Creates a lot of content. Does not just peace out in some forest and goes with the flow. Leo himself said as @Outer pointed out, that what he is doing is only possible in the age of free information exchange and technological improvement that were created by western civilization. Leo himself said that we should not take democracy and freedom for granted and posted talks about trump. Is it dangerous to blindly follow Peterson? Probably. I would say you should diversify your sources and not consume more that 30% from one, with may be only temporary exceptions. Also many right wing people are using Peterson as a ram against left wing, while Peterson himself said he doesn't like either extreme. If you go into Peterson communities they are often overran by posts about outrageous things left did, which I think is not very good.

Leo provides interesting research and makes experiments with himself, but it is up to you how you use it. You can turn anything into a cult if you are dedicated enough. Spiritual practices are especially dangerous for that, it looks like they tend to create cults more often then not. There is also a danger of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiritual_bypass. Ask yourself following questions: Is actualized.org alone more than 30% of spiritual/self improvement material I consumed in the last 3 months? Do I approach actualized.org content critically? Do I feel more empowered or more disoriented? Am I becoming more at peace and alive or restless and unstable? Do my relationships suffer in a way that I regret about? Can I still have meaningful connections with other people? Are my long term life prospects actually improving, am I learning new skills, more productive at work, building a business or acting out other plans for my life?

Regarding one or multiple goals I think one should be strategic here. It makes sense to concentrate willpower on one most valuable goal. On the other hand if you already have genuine desire to do something else productive from time to time without using much willpower, why not. Probably the best way to answer it is with experimentation.

You could say that you have a somewhat stable system that you fall back to when your willpower is drained. You current balance is somewhere between the lower system and your higher productive system. Each bit of effort you put in being a better version of you slightly changes you for the better. You can think about how to put your effort the best for the long term improvement of "you" system. If you have little willpower left you can at least change the type of information you consume. Like watching more productive people on Youtube, reading something inspiring. That way you slowly rewire your brain and change the baseline to fall back to. It is a long hard work, but after some time you will have a better default "you". With higher lowers and higher peaks. Also this https://www.actualized.org/articles/mastery.

I personally would prefer him to do more new original lectures instead of twitter rants. But may be he believes he is doing more good that way, hard to tell. Regarding free will. Words are tools. Expressions "there is free will" and "the is no free will" are two tools. Here are two more tools "A person can make his life and life of people around him better" and "A person can't make his life and life of people around him better". Why use second expression in your knowledge graph if you can use the first? If nothing matters then expression "nothing matters" doesn't matter either, then why bother with it? Why not strive for good then? If it wouldn't matter, so what, you don't know that for sure, how can something even be known for sure? You can make good out of nothing, out of thin air. Even breathing slower and more conscious can make a person feel better. You can help someone, cooperate and build something useful, cure some illness. There are things in this world that you can do to make it more wholesome without any obvious drawbacks for anyone. How amazing is that? What are the limits of it? I guess it depends on what kind of experiences you irrationally prefer and is ultimately based on faith. So what?

1. He teaches the importance of deep thinking, reading dense literature, developing capacities to think, speak and write clearly. This is very important for people in the age of twitter and emoji, where people's ability to concentrate on something, pay attention, think deeply and articulate their thoughts is probably degrading, though it may be true only for some people. 2. He is providing an example on how a person with depression can overcome it and be very productive. 3. He is a clinical psychologist and teaches how to deal with many problems like anxiety, depression and his advice is very useful at least for me. 4. He is building the bridge between Judeo-Christian tradition and science. For me personally, this is very valuable. Not only because I have Christian background and for a long time felt manipulated by it. Now I know there are great many good things there and I can integrate them. 5. He is showing the value of reading classical literature and myths that cultures develop. I personally haven't read fiction for years before I encountered Jordan Peterson. 6. He made some very interesting and wise thinkers famous. Like Bread Weinstein, his video below is very deep and wise. and Jonathan Pageau who explains how people in middle ages thought. They were not just superstitious simpletons, their view of the world was deep and profound. 7. He has an interesting way to look at the world. It is complex and deep, I can't formulate it shortly, you probably have to watch Maps of Meaning lectures on Youtube. The world is not a set of billiard balls floating and interacting under some physical laws or karma laws. It is a potential that you can interface with and work on actualizing parts that you want to actualize. And you have the free will to do so, you can move toward hell or heaven. Sure, things fall apart constantly, there are many traps on the way, but if you try to clean yourself from from bitterness and resentment, set a wholesome aim, and genuinely work on it, things will improve.