Basman

He's too far gone. It's not possible to end up in Trump's state without cutting yourself off spiritually.

Tony Robbins is about self-improvement, not political analysis or collective struggle. It's about what you can do individually. What you could do collectively is a different matter entirely. He's right in that creating massive value and wealth to a certain extent depends on having certain qualities, like discipline and vision. Most people have very little vision and aren't ambitious. Individually you can accomplish a lot irrespective of your culture's center of gravity, especially if you live in a first world country. Most won't because they don't have the inkling that they even could.

No, because autism is a kind of disability depending on the severity. A lack of affect is a kind of mild disability at least since we are a social species. Severe forms of autism on the other hand are debilitating. Specialized treatment is how society accommodates for disabilities. I've seen autistic people not being able to hold a job because it was "too dusty" where they worked. How is society supposed to accommodate sensitivity to that level? By the way, when I wrote "acceptance" in my previous post, I was mainly referring to self-acceptance as a result of better self-understanding ("why am I such a weirdo?" etc.)

Try wiggling your toes to be more present. If you are more present it is easier to break the chain reaction of your thoughts causing you to feel bad. You have to recognize that thoughts themselves aren't real even though they can effect your mood and actions.

How people form relationships is reflective of a societies survival needs. Monogamy came to culturally when inheritance became a thing. In our modern society there is less strict need for monogamy which I think just means more casual situationships/boyfriend-girlfriend relationships rather than direct marriage or deliberate polyamory.

The cost of tariffs are just going to be passed on to the customer. The silver-lining is that it will hopefully lead to disillusionment with Trump and authoritarian grandstanding as people's quality of life are noticeably worsened. Everyone in the know knows it is a disaster but for Trump it is about creating an atmosphere of control where you have to bend and kiss the ring or get punished.

"Karmic justice" is the urban legend of the original Indian idea of karma. It's basically bullshit and shouldn't be taken seriously. It's a meme essentially.

The original meaning of karma has nothing to do with cosmic justice but is about the cause and effect of one's internal reality. It has more to do with how we create our own reality by the way we perceive things, the trauma we hold in our body. That is where the notion of past lives get slotted in. Trumps actions definitely has backfired on him, like the attempts that have been made on his life (though that has also benefited in him in terms of polling), but that is more cause and effect and less that he did a "baddie" and god then punishing him accordingly. When Trump creates an atmosphere of antagonism with his rhetoric then it's not surprising when certain people then act on that with violence, but that is not "karma". Trumps need for narcissistic supply also backfires on him as he loses the support of the public with his insane tariff war. Or another example, Putins lack of interest in peace is making Trump look stupid on the global stage after all his boasting about swiftly ending the war which infuriates him. These are all cause and effect and the bad things that happen to Trump is because of his delusions and narcissism is driving him to act in ineffective and dangerous ways.

I think vlogging would be more effective. People don't really read anymore.

The pros of getting a diagnosis is predominately about acceptance, unmasking and access to support and accommodation, but if those are all things that you don't feel you need you'll probably just find it stigmatizing I bet. In that case it is better do without in my opinion. You don't need specialized treatment if you don't have debilitating symptoms if it stigmatizes more than it helps. Just treat whatever issues you have as is.

Agreeableness. The negative consequences are just supposed side-effect of regimentation. Society and survival isn't about happiness.

I'd argue survival incentives is more consequential for social change. Women where a valuable source of capital so giving them more freedom was natural. In modern times you could make the argument that softer men is beneficial for a regimented and highly bureaucratic society. In comparison, I can't imagine there being that many soft men in Ukraine currently, which has a completely different survival situation. They are one step away from toddlers yelling "fuck the patriarchy". Freaky stuff. I don't understand why boys and girls aren't equally taught assertiveness and sensitivity though. Both are good, but neglecting teaching boys to be men in particular sets them up for a dissatisfied life in my opinion. I know that my life would be better if I was taught to be more assertive and confident when I was little. It's not a given but they act like it is and therefor you need to "compensate" by teaching boys to be girls and vice versa. It's also not even about equality either but equity. This is an attempt at making people more uniform. Also, the fact that it is predominately the elite managerial class that pays for this program says everything.

Medieval civilization was quiet advanced for its time actually. Grand cathedrals still inspire awe. Preaching to the choir is one thing but what do you think would meaningfully change our culture for the better?

@zazen It's not an expansion. It's a defense pact. This is a fact. And it is appropriate to take those measures since appeasing Putin only leads to escalation. Russia has to be stonewalled militarily in order to maintain security. Europe is in fact very slow to act on Russian aggression. They hope that it all will just blow over if anything and go back to business as usual, something that gives Putin the confidence that there won't be a significant European response. Your not acknowledging that Russian aggression is largely ideologically motivated. It's not about security for Russia but the freedom to set terms on the global stage and be a "great power". Being at war is actually beneficial for Russia because the world pays attention to them. When the war is resolved they go back to being a regional power. Russia also seeks to destabilize democracies since democratic institution undermine Russian authority, which is why you see them engaging in so much disinformation, like with Brexit. People have an ideological interest in ambiguity about the war. I find that most people who support the Russian invasion are predominately anti-west and/or think Russia represents some kind of alternative to western capitalism. I don't find these views to be grounded because Russia is a corrupt capitalist oligarchy. It's more libertarian than the US.

We live in a farmer's society that rewards regimentation and agreeableness. The benefits largely outweigh the cons, but I believe that this sense of anxiety, insecurity and lack of spontaneity is due to being taught to reject new experiences. You have to teach young boys to not kick over sand castles. This whole thread comes of as somewhat performative, whiny and lacking in substance though. You could just mind your own business.

In terms of self-learning art, in my experience you mostly need to just practice with the occasional theory to help you create particular distinctions that make your art and your understanding of what you are drawing better. And you practice by mostly drawing the things that you are interested in, as opposed to thing you think you should draw. You also need a large collection of references and inspiration to draw from.

I'm not convinced that Jewish paranoia isn't primarily ideological first and foremost and what genocidal hatred does exist and is aimed at them today is due to their own ethnic cleansing and terroristic acts. The Jews aren't at serious risk of being ethnically cleansed in the modern world. It's just winging at best, justifying barbarism at worst.

The Israel-Palestine war is not about preventing ethnic cleansing (in of itself though it is part of the war as a consequence) but about territory and ideological conviction over who rightfully owns that territory. There won't be an end to the conflict unless Israel first relents its territorial ambitions. It's also my impression that Jews overall live very successful lives in Western countries, so I don't see much merit to the notion that there is a necessity for their own country or that they have an inherent right to any kind of land simply due to their religious affiliation. That is not an argument for that Israel shouldn't exist by the way. We should recognize that the creation of Israel was first and foremost an ideological conception of Zionism.

Drama slop farming is relatively low effort and makes the rounds. Make daily videos where you react to ideologically opposed unhinged people and/or become a propagandist. You could also become a nuisance streamer where you stream yourself harassing strangers on the streets, ideally in a culturally meek country like Japan where they just take the abuse.

NATO expansion being the cause of Russian territorial aggression is part of Russian disinformation. Countries join NATO because of Russian escalation. The notion of "expansion" is itself a myth as individual countries have to ask to join in order to become part of NATO (it's an open door policy). It's a wilful process. For Russia this is an ideological war is about maintaining that idea of greatness and a sphere of influence where they can project power unto the global stage as opposed to being a mere regional power.

https://edition.cnn.com/2025/05/23/business/denmark-retirement-age-rise-70-intl-scli One of the worst aspects of Danish culture is their placidity politically, bordering on apathy. A complete lack of willingness to meaningfully engage politically when the social contract is being renegotiated against their interest. Like with the removal of a national holiday, the illegal destruction of the mink industry, the gutting of the education system and the general generational theft occurring. While raising the retirement age is common globally Denmark stands out with its lack of meaningful civil discourse on the matter. The French would riot over less.

Since the retirement dilemma (the prospect of unsustainable retirement ages financially/demographically) I've been contemplating that it's a consequence in part of the atomization of society, because in the past families would take care of the elderly and the elderly would help raise children and pass on experience but that kind of dynamic is more or less gone. You'd be lucky just to live in the same zip code as your family these days much less the same house. That sort of communality provides tangible value to society that can't be bought with money which has been lost. In general, I think that in the modern age we need to consciously take responsibility for creating our communities to fulfill us socially and help us survive as opposed to relying on externalities to create and maintain communities, which then results in the gradual diminishment of communities as those externalities evaporate with modern inventions and infrastructure. I think we as a society of people should take greater responsibility for our own survival and not just rely on institutions to baby all of our needs. We need a culture that emphasizes community. And the benefit of having let go of old traditions as a culture is that you have more freedom to choose your own "tribe". Medieval people get a lot of flak for being backwards but they knew how to survive without relying purely on the state. We could combine the best of both worlds much more effectively.

Yeah, it's like one thing to work till 70 but another to be actually employable at that age. If you fall off the train in your 60s, what are you supposed to even do? I can easily see there being a welfare class of older people who can't get a job but are too young to get a pension in the future. The dastardly thing about it is that it potentially saves on paying out pensions to people who reasonably are too old to work.

People who's job is a singular task are at most risk at getting automated, like spray painting cars at the assembly line, unless you underbid your work to the point that its cheaper to hire you than it is to build the infrastructure needed to automate your job (for the time being), like sweat shops or the ladies that sort crabs at the crab factory. You can't underbid AI though if you work exclusively in the digital space. Quality holds AI back however as well as creative collaboration. AI can't build a creative vision for you (that is good).

AI and by extension machines don't automate jobs but specific tasks. A windmill isn't the automation of being a grain farmer but of milling specifically. AI can do programming specifically but it can't effectively go to meetings, make important business decisions, etc. This is why the jobs most affected by AI currently are jobs that deal in media and information. Being an illustrator is essentially a single task whereas a low-skill manual labor job consists of various different tasks but also require infrastructure to be physically built in order to be automated which costs more than an AI model producing content endlessly in the digital space, which only requires the computers that are already in place. Counter-intuitively, it's to a certain extent harder to automate manual labor than it is creative jobs like writing or art. To that effect, I think it is more likely that AI will undermine job security depending on the brevity of responsibilities you have if looked at pessimistically. AI could also boost productivity on the other hand. The fact that you need in demand skills hasn't changed nonetheless.