Whitney Edwards

Member L4
  • Content count

    8,396
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by Whitney Edwards

  1. To be brutally frank I was shamed right on this forum and I found it brutal and pathetic. The person came directly at me and insulted me. I won't name them. But they are also on this thread. They are still throwing insults around and I don't like their overly judgemental and condescending and moral superiority tone. If you use your intuition you can find them on this thread. I just dislike that approach. Nobody likes animal cruelty and some people don't take a strong stance, I get it. But this person assumes they are intellectually and morally great and others are fools. Somebody needs to call him out, maybe vegans? Ever since the shaming, I feel a bit guilty and uncomfortable while eating chicken because I am constantly reminded of the shaming. This is toxic shame and what I'm suffering is toxic guilt that I don't deserve to suffer. So when I watched the video, it suddenly clicked. This is not a click bait provocative video by any means. It's a real phenomenon. Most vegans think and erroneously assume that they aren't shaming others. But it takes only one hyper vigilant Vegan to get the job done. Like in the video. I myself didn't realize over the years that this could be a major problem. I used to assume that non-vegans blow it out of proportion. Until it hit home. When I was personally shamed, I felt awful and insulted and just like... I don't know... How to even say this... I mean.. I felt like I'm a criminal... It's shocking what the shaming can do to one's humanity... It's traumatic and soul crushing.... I used to enjoy eating chicken so much, it's my favorite. And having the vegan (I don't even know if he is vegan but he has a strong stance on veganism and he throws insults like in this thread he is calling everyone a bunch of clowns with zero intellectual integrity, it's awful) rub it directly into my face on a previous occasion sent me into a self-guilt toxic shame spiral. I felt bad like I'm some awful person when I'm not. I care about animals too. But I can't help my diet. I want a full diet and I want to eat something that fulfills me without feeling shame.. And even if I said that I enjoy, there's nothing wrong in enjoying the food you eat. I don't have to give ambiguous explanations to why I'm eating what I am, to supposedly apologize to vegans and act like "yes I care about animals but you see I'm eating for bla bla bla reasons...." no I don't need to do that either. I can be unapologetic if I want to. Those reasons aren't necessary to satisfy my conscience or their ego. I don't need a blemish thrown at my conscience to begin with. I eat with a clean conscience and why not. It's my fundamental right to survival and nobody should have the right to shame my survival no matter how unethical they view it. I'm not robbing a bank or stealing someone's grandfather's land to sit in guilt. This shaming is ridiculous. I'm simply eating. And eating is a basic and fundamental human right. These people act like I'm eating someone's child, the guy in the video even equated animals to children, this is beyond bizarre. I was shamed, maybe it doesn't appear a lot to that person or other people on the forum, but personally it harmed me badly. To the point I have trouble eating meat. Now this is real issue that I've only begun to experience once it happened to me. I know now and understand why people view vegans negatively and why such an uproar against vegans exists on YouTube and the internet. It makes sense. Maybe they were shamed too in similar ways? Then their outrage is perfectly legit. It feels like being encroached upon on our fundamental right to eat what we want to eat and what feels healthy to us. Yes as non-vegans we are aware of the slaughter industry and the animal cruelty issue, we aren't ignorant clowns and buffoons trying to outrage vegans. We are just simple people and doing things that people did for thousands of years. Shaming is not the way to make a point, maybe there are other solutions that might come up in the future to reach a middle ground. But if such problematic (I will call them problematic because they shame non vegans) vegans continue to do what they are doing, the whole veganism movement will suffer badly and get ridiculed and probably not set out to achieve whatever they want. Their failure or success is not my concern to be honest, but their tactic is. It's not fair to use this tactic, I don't know why they assume it will work. If it has worked and some people converted to vegan, then it's no different than cult or religious abuse, because religious people use similar moral shaming tactics for conversion. I think I can care about animal cruelty in other ways too. Like not wanting elephants to be used in circus or monkeys treated brutally in Thailand for tourist pleasure. Or pets being abandoned in America every year. Or crocodile farming for Hermes handbags which is absolutely absolutely cruel. And a luxury vanity dumbfuck handbag is not basic survival so the luxury company Hermès needs a serious banning. Issues like that. I even put the person on my ignore list to not have to read their comments. But it's still triggering. By the way, I was a vegan especially for ethical reasons. I tried being a strict vegan for a year and then I gave up because my weight dropped and I began experiencing some health issues. After that I switched back to eating meat again and those problems went away. I feel much better now and I regularly consume chicken as usual.. I just don't want to eat it with guilt. Because that won't be healthy for my mental health. This thread is both for personal reasons as well as to raise awareness about how vegans shaming non vegans is quite harmful mentally and not to be taken lightly and why people critiquing their approach on the internet, YouTube are actually legitimate in their frustration. It looks like I wrote this post out of anger, but realistically it's out of deep frustration.
  2. This is the perfect utopian reality I had dreamed of. Wtf.
  3. The craziness has just begun. There's another four years of it. Don't you think?
  4. What were you waiting for?
  5. I don't know how much of this is true. But it gave me the inspiration to follow people that I really like — https://www.actualized.org/forum/topic/106532-revealing-one-of-my-secrets-towards-higher-development-and-intelligence/ https://i.imgflip.com/9fz4rj.gif
  6. I always keep a picture of Leo with me. Sounds absurd I know. And Sadhguru as well. Somehow I can't connect with people who have died. Maybe watching their videos feels like they're alive for a moment. But it doesn't have much impact on me. I want someone who is alive, living the struggles I'm living with and is highly relatable.
  7. Do people remember that he used to talk incessantly about building a wall?
  8. He is literally giving an empty threat like a school boy on Halloween He might as well make a post on the second coming of Christ.
  9. Might work on a girl who possibly never had a boyfriend.
  10. Your answers are not even worth replying to, so I won't reply to them. You're always busy stroking your ego.
  11. She might actually feel disgusted that she is attracted to someone who was previously hitting on her friend. She most probably doesn't want to break the GIRL CODE.
  12. Housing shortage is a big problem in Canada. Canada is not as large as the US so comparisons are futile.
  13. People grow through relationships. There's massive growth. People who complain about relationships are generally those who never had one to begin with or their relationships have consistently failed.
  14. On government and guns. Leo's insight. Sounds nice in theory but don't work in practice. Many countries more developed than the USA have banned guns. Yet their government is more responsive and healthy than American government. America has endless guns yet the government is no better off for it. The guns do not help an advanced society better itself. You're not going to regulate Federal government with guns. It's just not a real scenario. You can do some terrorism and that's about it. This terrorism will not create meaningful improvement. It's a fantasy. A gun fantasy. A society in which people are using guns to regulate government is not a society anyone would want to live in. That would be like the Congo or Sudan. The truth is that Americans are lost in a gun fantasy. The bottom line is that violence begets violence. Which is the whole reason why the state has a monopoly on power. To effectively challenge the state through violence you need tanks and planes, not ARs. And even then it works poorly, as you can see from Ukraine, Iraq, Palestine. Palestine shows you what happens when you try to challenge a state with small arms and homemade bombs. The state will just hunt you down and execute you. People who think they can challenge a state with small arms guerilla tactics are delusional, living in a fantasy. That kind of thing can only work in very undeveloped and corrupt places like Afghanistan or Sudan. https://www.actualized.org/forum/topic/106515-has-eating-healthy-made-a-difference-in-your-life/ I can't really answer this question. Because I have never engaged in healthy eating. Healthy eating was never a concept in my life. My mom makes sure that I eat healthy still. But I wish I could answer this question. And I wish I could answer it positively. As in yes I have so and so benefits of healthy eating. But I can't. Because I used food as a cope. I engaged in comfort eating. I feel embarrassed admitting this.
  15. You can't regulate govt with guns.
  16. How does the universe being "fine tuned" account for biology. I don't see any connection.
  17. Please don't do this. You are going down a wrong path. Don't waste anymore money in gambling. It's a serious bad thing. Promise yourself that you won't do it again. Get serious about this. And save whatever money you have. Also no alcohol, no cigarette, no addiction. You're ruining your life. Take it seriously and try to love yourself. You need self love and serious self help. I hope you do well.
  18. I like the advice Michael gave. I'll add — Making a lot of money requires that you learn a serious marketable skill. You have to create massive value for people in the product you're offering them. Or. A high level corporate job that gives you a high income. For this you need to be able to give the company what skill and labor requirements it demands from you. For this overall — Work on your health. Work on your skill. Work on providing value.
  19. I acted foolish and I can't fix my past. I just have to let it go. There are just too many things that haunt me. https://i.imgflip.com/9fw80h.gif I have seen irresponsible people in my life. I just wish them the best. That's all I can do. I can't afford to give advice to people when my own life is in limbo. Also it feels a bit shameful of me to offer advice to people when my own life is not in order. Like who am I? Right? It's like a person who is not even in a relationship giving relationship advice to people? It will be absurd. Or someone who has no medical knowledge acting like a doctor!!! It's ridiculous. I am slowly realizing how much bashing I needed in the last 2-3 years of my life. I was suffering so much that I needed to be hospitalized. I was going through a lot, largely because of my family. Most successful people actually leave their families and live independently and that's how they prosper. I mean I can't see any other way. Toxic families ruin your mental state and health. https://i.imgflip.com/9fw82b.gif I will always keep Leo's guidance in mind. This is going to be a long list of my thoughts and a mix of my perspectives on life, dating, my past, my fixations, my goals, my frustrations and problems.. Just a gist of it. Letting it out gives me a meta picture of my life. It's like self therapy. https://i.imgflip.com/9fw83x.gif https://i.imgflip.com/9fw7y1.gif My perspective on dating — This is about some questions that some men asked me in the past regarding dating.... My frank advice. This might appear rude. But it's brutal honesty on my part. If you are someone who is struggling with your career or your footing in life, why are you even thinking about having a girlfriend? How is that gonna fix your life? Why are these men fixated on approaching and wanting women? It appears weird because you're only going to over complicate your life with a relationship when your life is already in the middle of deep unrest and struggle. You want your sexual and emotional needs met. But dating is effing hard... Even for men. Only the struggles are different. But it's hard for both gender. You have to build your life first. Or have a non complicated girlfriend. Most women are hard to figure out, even for us women. Women are very different from one another. We have a biology that sets us in a very different way from men. We simply cannot look at life and gender and sex the way men do. And our programming as women is wired from 1000s of years. How can this change to appeal to men suddenly? We were survival oriented in our own feminine and womanly way. A woman will always want her agenda — it's her survival. She is not a bed of flowers. Or your pet. She is a woman with her own set of psychological, emotional, mental, sexual, security and treatment needs. Every woman wants to be treated differently. Maybe some women like to argue, some do not. Some women want more sex, some do not. Every woman is carved a different way. So it's sort of funny when men put all women in the same box. What's the point? It's a fruitless exercise. You have to understand your woman. Because she is your woman. Her needs are gonna be different from another woman. But first you have to have her in your life. Next is responsibility. A woman is a responsibility, not a burden. This is a fact. It's unchangeable. You might admire a woman at first because of all the satisfaction and emotions and ego boost she gives you. Yet she is a woman. So she has needs like any human being. Are you capable of satisfying her needs? As your relationship with her progresses, there will be more needs. She might want to be the mother of your child. She might want children. She might need money. She might need you emotionally. She might need you sexually. You gotta ask yourself an honest question — are you ready for all of this? The fact of the matter is that most guys aren't. They treat relationship like a candy or a trip to the beach. Chances are that you can't really fulfill her the way she wants to be fulfilled. Whether it's a first world country or a third world country, a woman is a woman everywhere. A woman gives birth to babies. She has to raise them. Modern women have more pressures, they need to have a stable career on top of handling domestic responsibilities of children and family. How do you think she can do that? A woman is a woman. This fact won't change with time. It has remained the same for thousands of years. Women have needs for self sufficiency, community, society, health,kids, survival. We need dependable men. We need men who understand us. Even if a woman is not financially dependent on you, she has some basic expectations from you. She wants a wholesome relationship from you. She wants maturity in you. She will hate it if you act like a man baby. She will hate it if you always want her to step up and you never lead.
  20. Manosphere tactics. I like that. Leo almost saved my life. I was gonna lose my being and life with someone who constantly manipulated and blackmailed me. Leo told me to break up with him. I was very confused in that relationship. It had destroyed me. Time for a break.
  21. Some pondering....... Some bit of vulnerability. In hindsight, Leo helped me a lot and still continues to do so. Which is awesome. If I have to name one hero in my life, it's definitely Leo. He got me out of the ditch. He did me a great favor. I was trapped and he helped me get out of it. I will forever be indebted to Leo for this, I was going through a lot at that time in my life when Leo helped me. Even if my body leaves my body in death, I won't forget Leo's charity to me. I am highly grateful and indebted to him for his compassion in teaching me the right things. The next hero in my life is obviously my husband. My mom woke me up and did not let me sleep so I'm feeling a bit exhausted. She does this often where she won't let me sleep. Revisiting an old place in my life — To a person who I came across a few years back — I felt belittled by you. I mean who are you. This post is written in anger. Because yea, I still hoard some anger against you and someone else too. You judged me severely. I was going through a rough time and all you did was keep pushing me down. In hindsight a lot of people gave me good advice which I neglected. I wish I hadn't but I used to carry a chip on my shoulder back then, I had low social awareness, zero personal reflection, stuck in trauma and horrible conditions of living, I didn't even have money and I was suicidal nearly every day and I remember how you used to torture me nearly everyday. you were clearly manipulative. The memories flood back. I was sick of you and the mental torment. Thank God you're gone. I can breathe in peace. I mean who the f do you think you are. Huh. You're what. You are someone who lives in the basement in a dark room judging me with your keyboard and what good were you doing. How were you better than me, for you to judge me? You were like.... A truck driver or a fire fighter. And you would casually date whoever would f you in a club or something or some girl who you met on Tinder or some shit like that. And you thought you were a great dude. To look down on me. Thank God your true colors were revealed in time but you needed to be exposed. You had humiliated me and taken advantage of my weaknesses, manipulated everyone against me. And you think you're high quality I guess. I want to get this off my chest because it's been hurting me for so long. Thanks for all the trauma you gave me. You sick individual. You don't deserve happiness in life. Because your mind is full of sick ideas. You hate people and when that hate is reflected back at you, you feel sorry for yourself and play victim. I'm still recovering from all the trauma you created around me. I couldn't even block you. It was pathetic and painful to deal with..... In hindsight me getting removed was a huge blessing in disguise. I have ginormous self awareness now that I never had before. Time taught me things.. It was pure mental harassment. And you used everything in your power to manipulate, overpower and harm me. It was my misfortune to have come across you in my life. Some people are heroes. And some people are like you who bring others down by harming them covertly. I'll never forget the scars you gave me. The way you used to frighten me. I used to feel helpless back then in your presence. When you were gone, I said good riddance. I got freedom from your torment. In hindsight a lot of people were sympathetic to me. I never realized it. I used to judge them negatively. Because I was in a negative frame of mind and I needed more support, more advice, more guidance, more intimate conversations. Although this forum is a competitive place. So there's that. I needed a non-judgmental place, not a competitive place.. Because I came from a place of problems and not a place of privilege. But I did well for myself so far. Thanks to the people who supported me all through the time and still support, trust and believe in me. I needed them.
  22. Great. Awesome. Congrats.
  23. @retroAA thank you so so much for this post. It came at the right time. I had been thinking about this. So thank you.
  24. I'll sleep for an hour and then wake up and do some meditation. I use a timer app for this. Then I have stuff to attend to. I will focus on Michael's advice after that.
  25. Anyway I'm not very talented at chess. And I have an IQ of two digit. *feels inferior and flees.*