Scholar

The problem is that the blindness and horizontal thinking in any other group but vegans is equally as high or even higher. Just talk to your average person about meat eating and see how they respond. Creating identity, even if at some point these identities might be limiting, is a crucial part of social process. It is better to have a dysfunctional vegan movement than to have no vegan movement at all. Fundamentally it is about creating awareness of the suffering and destruction the animal industry is causing world-wide and locally. Sure, vegans have an us-vs-them mentality, but so do non-vegans. They hate vegans, as soon as you even dare to mention it you are an outcast. And this is relevant, because we are talking about a difference in morality that is quite substantial. Most people still think it is fine to kill animals simply for the pleasure they receive from eating animal-products. The conversation about whether it is healthy or not is not even in the foreground and is only used to dismiss veganism as a whole in current mainstream media. Sure there are dogmatic people, crazy raw-food flat-earthers who ruin their health and then go on about how ideological veganism is. There are also people who are very passionate about animal rights and are willing to make health-sacrifices for it and demand for other people to do the same. There are also vegans who only do it for health reasons. There is a difference between debating these issues and actually seeing animals being killed and slaughtered for the products that you deem necessary. The facts are most people can get by without eating most animal products, those who do need them probably can live by eating mussels or insects. Sure they will not feel optimal, but the right to feel optimal is in my opinion does not overstate the right for another beings freedom of deliberate slaughter. Additionally, if anyone here does indeed believe animal products are necessary for health, then it would be our utmost moral imperative to push society towards developing technology like lab-grown meat so that we can abolish the kind of exploitation that is currently necessary. Do I see any ex-vegans argue for that? Of course not, because they do not really care. We have an impact on this world and on other individuals, while it is obvious that we cannot demand people to stop consuming these products if they are necessary for their survival, in a society in which it is still fully acceptable, I do think we can have more deeper conversations than "Vegans are ideological, I was part of it and I know it!". That to me has nothing to do with integral thinking. It is a regression into individualistic paradigms that put the humans at the center of the universe. If we do need certain products to survive, we better reduce the impact we have on others as much as possible and also work on solutions which will do so in the future. Right now the awareness around animal rights and ecology is so low that the dogmatism in veganism and similar movements must be accepted. You can try to correct it, but to dismiss the movement as a whole means to regress and not to progress.

You lack passion. To have passion is to love. To love is to give, not receive. Everything you have listed are things you are going to receive, not give. The artist who creates art puts love into the creation of art itself, every brush-stroke is an act of love, is an act of passion. From passion there will come vision, not the other way around. From the love of creating you will find desire to create things. No artist ever paints one painting for his entire life, that would be absurd. An artist who is passionate does not create goals for all the paintings he will be painting for the rest of his life. The painter loves painting, he uses the excuse of a finished piece so that he can do what he loves more to paint. Look at the passion of Christ. His passion was for humankind, his love was for human beings. Give him anything that would make him able to help humans and he would have been satisfied and happy for the rest of his life. He would have never grown bored of helping human beings, as it is his passion, his love. From that love grows a vision, a vision of how to increase that love. How to help more human beings becomes the vision of the one who loves helping human beings. It is not artificial, it is true Love. A vision should be an extention of your passion, not the other way around. First you will need to find your passion, that which you are willing to give Love. It is not about receiving, it is about infusing other experiences with love. If you, for example, truly love feeding birds, it will give you joy until the very end of time. You could stand there and feed them all day long, even if it was only one bird. To feed 10 birds might give you even more joy. To feed 1000s even more and so forth. There is no end to it. All of Creation is fundamentally the Passion of God, God gives Love to Creation. God does not receive, God gives. The Passion of God, therefore, leads to a Vision which will Increase Creation. Because to Create is Love, there is no end to Creation.

Of course, so is everything else, including "figments of the imagination".

And the suffering of the animals is completely irrelevant? We have mussels, how can you possibly argue for torturing and killing animals for products that are completely unnecessary for survival? Sure you might feel a little less optimal if you eat mussels, but they will give you everything you need. Veganism is an ethical principle not a diet, it means to reduce exploitation where it is not necessary. Criticizing veganism from below is easy, a critique from above will not result in the same kind of justification of exploitation as orange gives, like appeals to futility coming from Leo. The assumption is that optimal human health is more important than everything else in this world, including the future of our ecology, the suffering of the majority of beings living on this planet and so forth. That is an insane, human-centric way of looking at the world. The fact that you think veganism is about being special, unique of having a label means you have not yet reached green whatsoever. Veganism is about an increase in compassion for groups that we currently view as objects, it is about equality fundamentally. The same reasons that give us the right to live and be free of exploitation are the same the animals deserve them. If you stopped having black slaves and joined the abolitionist groups what do you think would have happened if you at some point decided you want to go back to having slaves because of all the back pain that you have now that you have to work in the fields yourself? It is human nature to react agains that kind of "betrayal" far more excessively than against people who have not yet become conscious of the suffering they are causing to their black slaves. And recognize that Leo's way of looking at this would have easily allowed him to keep his black slaves, because "You cannot live without evil", and because "It would not help him optimally self-actualize because of the back pains he would have from working on the field".

That's what we have mussels and insects for. Humans might be designed for consumption of insects. It would be interesting to know whether you actually have ever truly faced the "evil" you talk about outside of mere intellectualization. If not, I would recommend visiting a slaughterhouse.

True Love is ruthless, it is the Destroyer of all Worlds. Love is inherently indiscriminate, it wields the sword of the merciless as much as it gives shelter to those who are in need of it. The Feminine and the Masculine are not better or worse, they are forces of Existence. They are in an eternal balance, in a play between the great Mother and the great Father. Both forces will eventually lead to your dissipation. This is beyond your ego, beyond your individual needs and wants. You are playing a game that will eventually lead to your death, your inability to accept that will be the degree to which you will suffer in this world. Stop viewing the Feminine and Masculine as that which serves you, and accept that it is you who is inevitably serving the Feminine and the Masculine. You are the ant who has confused itself for the colony. Fundamentally, suffering is the question of "What can God do for me?", whilst Liberation is the question of "What can I do for God?".

lol, I did not even consider that it could have been fake, how can this happen on amazon. I guess you gotta check your sources everywhere nowadays.

Humans fundamentally do not possess anything. We could say Free will is part of the condition of the Being of human, however that Freedom would have nothing to do with the Desire a human possesses. Free Will is Creativity, it is the Causeless Cause. It is the manifestation of Nothingness or Infinite Potential into Finite Form. It is not random. Imagine something that does not exist, in a world that does not exist, with rules and limitations that do not exist. Imagine that without having any knowledge of any kind of that which you will imagine. That process of imagination is Free Will, or Creativity. It is the Root of all Form. The closer a Form is to the root, the more "free" it is. Or in other words, the closer it is to non-duality and the further away from duality, the more potential it has to express in more ways. Full non-duality leaves room for full expression. The Human mind is already an expression and therefore limited in it's potential, yet where it carries the lose ends of non-duality is where it can express true Creativity. Free Will is Divine Will, and indiscriminate in it's expression.

I never said that adopting better integration policy and structures will solve poverty. The integration policy is for the benefit of war-refugees and the countries which adopt these refugees. Don't forget that these refugees are cheap labor and benefit the economy of a lot of the countries which adopt them. This has nothing to do with our culture being deconstructed by post-modernism. Solving the poverty of other countries requires far more systemic approaches and most likely great sacrifices to western economies which depend on the cheap and exploitative labor in third world countries. However, you claimed western countries would benefit from an increase, or mitigation of a decrease, in population, and adopting refugees with effective integration would be a solution to that problem.

What do you think about Geopolitics in this regard? When you look at countries like Germany who basically sustain their wealth by keeping surrounding countries economies down, is it really as easy as saying Socialistic systems work because these countries can sustain them? Europe is currently trade-wise dependend on the US as the sea is controlled by the american navy, however China is trying to establish a trade route from China to Poland so as to create a major trade-route via land instead of sea, disrupting the power-dynamics between the US and China significantly. Poland is the only country which does not have a mountain range obstructing a possible trade-route into Europe. Germany for that reason is trying to keep Polands economy as dependent on Germany as possible, so that they can control possible trade-deals between Poland and China. Creating a central distribution network in Poland would change the power dynamics between Germany and Poland, which once more creates different dynamics in that context. China on the other hand would rather establish a distribution network in Poland because they can expect more leverage against that particular government. We can look at domestic policy, but I don't know if we can divorce them from geopolitical dynamics. Germany has very aggressive foreign policy which has a huge impact on countries which are viewed as threats economically, and much of the wealth in that country can certainly be attributed to the fact that they have upheld a dominant position in that particular economical framework. Is scandinavias policy the reason for their success or is their geopolitical situation the reason for why they are able to introduce these domestic policies in the first place?

It is true especially in the western world. If the rest of the world will live by the same standard of living we do, there will be nothing of this planet left to exploit. There are millions upon millions of people who seek refuge, that is more than enough to replace the few people who choose to have less children. What we need is more effective integration of different people from different cultures into the western world.

I think the more useful notion of Ego is attachment and identification, and in a metaphysical sense the Structure attempting to uphold it's Structure. That way, all of existence is an extention of Ego, the very atoms which struggle not to fall apart into nothingness are in essence Egoic. Ego is not Good and Bad, however Ego is the attempt to hold onto Good and Bad.

Orange critique:

Fear the Love of God, as it knows no mercy. The Ultimate is suffering as much as it is joy. For the Ego talking of the Abyss is all fine and dandy, until the very moment the Abyss looks back at you. This is the danger of the path. When there is no ability to fully and completely surrender the greatest suffering will follow. When the Abyss, the Love of God, is pulling the very fibre of your being apart, then any hesitation, any attachment, will result in Hell. The Structure which structures itself cannot take Love that is so full and complete it would disintegrate all structure. This is the very reason why God forgets the the Acceptance of Suffering, the Illusion of all Duality. It is because in the Light of that Acceptance, there can be no Suffering, no Duality. The play of Maya requires for the Love of God to be veiled, hidden in the very essence of Being.

I would not be surprised.

@Zizzero lol, when I read your post it reminds me of how I used to respond to Sero. I had a very similar attitude. Guess perspective changes and now I am the Bad Guy. Good luck on your journey! I think I should have not framed it so bluntly. Actually I have noticed this happening lately more and more. I am so detached from criticism in general that I have a tendency to really speak my mind without too much awareness or care about the real impact it will have on the receivers ends. It's like it's more important to me to share my authentic perspective, even if it seems arrogant and belittleling, than it is to necessarily create a change in the person I am interacting with. The problem is that because I am not attached to criticism that comes my way, I assume that it is not problem to criticize and be completely honest about others. To them that seems like arrogance, while to me it is more of an honest expression of my perspective. There is no point for me to alter my perspective so as to suit the egoic needs of the other I am talking to, there is no true desire for that. Previously there was, in fact I know I would have felt bad for Zizzero leaving. Now, I am accepting it. I don't care at all, despite knowing that it might harm him on his journey towards self-actualization. It is like there is this ruthless selective process. My authentic expression means more to me than the effect it will have on the receiving party. Yet, part of my authentic expression is to create a positive effect on the overall progress of society, so in a way I am fully accepting of a sacrifice like Zizzero, who might forever be lost in thoughts due to my harshness. I'll have to be with that for some time. I have been lately having thoughts like "True Love knows no mercy", which seems to resonate with me more and more. There is a certain harshness to full acceptance, and I am observing that harshness in myself. I can clearly see when there are egoic mechanisms at play, but in a way I am accepting of them. I don't look at them as "bad" anymore, whereas previously I would have surpressed them to come off as more evolved or anything of the sort. "I am so conscious, I would never kill someone else even if they killed my daughter. I couldn't because I love them too much!", that to me resonates less and less. It seems so limited and inauthentic. True Love is to accept your will for revenge when it is there, to accept that in that moment, you are going to take revenge for the killing of your daughter, if it is you authentic desire. Surpressing that desire out of lofty ideas for Love is not true Love. True Love can be to not have the desire for revenge, but it can equally be to have and follow the desire for revenge, as true love must include that very desire. What comes to mind is the quote of Lao Tzu "the greatest love seems indifferent". Maybe what Zizzero speaks of, in his limited ideal of Love, is this very indifference. The coldness, harshness and mercilessness of Consciousness. I am not sure what the right path is forward.

You understood precisely nothing of what I wrote... but I think that is something we will not get passed in this conversation. I can once more only stress for you to get a proper meditation and self-inquiry habit. You are lost in thoughts. It will not help you, but it might someone else who is reading this: Zizzero is basically stage orange, and what is happening here is fundamentally an attachment to reason and rationality, and in a more fundamental way to abstract thought. He believes he can come to deduce the truth by thinking it through, he does not see that his way of thinking, reason itself, is being limited by Perspective, by the way his mind perceives rather than what kind of knowledge it holds and how accurately it represents logical structures. This is the rationalists trap. He is completely limited to abstract thought, thus anything pointing outside of it cannot be helped but put into the frame of thought. It is in a very real sense impossible for him to grasp my points as much as it is for an ant to grasp what abstract thought is. His perception if limited in a way that cannot be bridged by his current value system. This is a trap orange has a tendency to fall into, it will deem any critique of that trap as irrational, as unworthy to engage in. It will interpret every statement with it's own limited lense, which distorts what is communicated and thus makes it easy for the rationalist to deconstruct. The rationalist cannot point to anything but thought-formulas and figures of authority. The rationalist cannot see reality, he can only see thought. The ant cannot even begin to understand the limitations of it's behaviour, yet the human can. In the same way, anyone who went past the rationlist perceptions will have the no trouble in identifying precisely where the limitations of the rationalists are. Pointing out these limitations to the rationalist, much like pointing it out to an ant, cannot really work, because the perceiving of the limitations requires the extention of perspective which is the very thing that is not present in the rationalists perspective.

You think redness is a story? You believe the Color of Red is a thought? You are completely trapped in materialism, you have a lot more, very basic, meditation to do. Redness is not a story, it takes delusion of the greatest degree to think that it is. I am not saying that to offend you or put down your opinion. Obligation and "ought" is conditional and depends on a hypothetical imperative. It makes no sense to frame it outside of that, you are still viewing morality from the most basic and delusional framework. Even here you are trying to put what I am describing to you into some sort of intellectual framework like naturalistic moral realsim. It has nothing to do with that, it only on the surface resembles it. Increasing Goodness means increasing Goodness. End of story, there is no obligation for anything. If you were to further reflect upon it, the only obligation there is are the laws which govern our existence. By essence nothing that we can choose to do can ever be a true obligation. That framework falls apart if it is closer inspected. But once more, you are using utilitarianism as some sort of objectivist moral system. Utilitarianism can be used by a single person, to determined what their own actions should look like if they are to increase Goodness. To me it seems like you think Utilitarianism means that there is some sort of objectivity to obligations, when they can be hypothetical imperative of each individual. The problem is that you have not even create a simple distinction between "thought" and other experiences or dimensions of reality. This implies you have no foundational meditation or self-inquiry practice at all, which I would implement because right now you are basically completely unconscious of what I am referring to. The problem with Philosophy is that it was and is being constructed from an unconscious vantage point. The solution is not to do more philosophy and think about about these issues, the solution is for you to sit down and observe Isness without all the stories you are telling yourself. You are operating under a very particular framework which was evidently shaped by what you have self-indoctrinated yourself by reading about philosophy and the like. While not all of that is wrong per say, it's very foundation is corrupted. What I am describing to you here I don't think you will find in contemporary philosophy because it has to do with consciousness work, not intellectual work. Yet you think what I am describing to you is theory, what it I think redness to be redness, and Goodness to be Goodness. However, that is not the case. Redness being Redness is evidently the case, by the mere presence of Redness. It is undeniable, and once you are going to be aware of that, it will be as evident to you as your own existence. How do you know anything exist? How do you know right now there is happening whatever you think or experience to be happening? It is not "I think therefore I am". It is "Am, therefore Am.". If you deny red, you are literally denying existence. It is delusional, and the reason I call it delusional is because it is not about you being stupid or lacking knowledge, it is because the problems lies outside of your intellectual framework. The problem lies fundamentally in the essence of your being, or what you would call in the way you perceive reality. You cannot convince someone who is delusional with arguments, because their delusion is reality to them. What they have to do is see through the delusion, once they do, there is going to be no doubt about the fact that it was a delusion. It will require no argument, just an observation. In philosophy, all are delusional and nobody is bothering to observe or investigate that delusion. They just play with it, because after all everyone agrees with it. They construct castles after castles, with the foundation being that delusion. At this point, anyone who is new to philosophy will obviously learn about that castle, how it works, how to build new castles. Nobody is ever going to bother to look at the foundation, and thus the delusion continues. The most hilarious thing to observe is that, when they do look at the foundation, they look at it from the castles they have build upon it. After all, what else are they going to inspect the foundation with? And because the foundation is what determines the castle, of course the castles will confirm the delusion of the foundation. The whole moralistic debates are unnecessary. It's like people are trying to build these castles on a foundation which is simply distorted. Thus they build one castle, but yet it seems like that castle is incomplete. They build another one and still it seems incomplete. Because the foundation is corrupted, they cannot create a coherent castle, it is not possible, it will at some point simply fall apart. Thus, what they do might be to stop constructing the castle altogether. Deny everything that goes contary to the delusional foundation they walk upon. Deny all aspects of existence other than thought.

We have to make a distriction between moral normativity and descriptive normativity. Do you think that the normative statement "If you want to live longer, you should exercise and eat healthy" can be true? You don't have to denie normativity just because you are a moral anti-realist. To me morality is inherently magical and part of the human consciousness, thus it exist inside the world as consciousness is part of the world. More specifically, morality is the will, or the pull towards a certain object of consciousness. In essence it is irreducable and one fascet of reality. To say morality does not exist would be to say redness does not exist. "It is immoral to kill", that statement itself contains morality, it is self-evident. By making that statement, morality has been created. Obviously it would have to be made in an genuine fashion in which the morality is actually part of the statement. Goodness in that manner would be it's very own fascet of reality, or dimension of consciousness. Denying it to me is, as I said, like denying the color red while it is part of your conscious experience. To increase Goodness therefore means to increase that very state of Goodness within consciousness/the universe. Suffering basically is what badness is. Suffering is not bad, rather Suffering literally equals badness. As there is no subjectivity fundamentally, to decrease the experience of Badness in the universe means to decrease Badness itself. Anything else would be utterly delusional and fails to recognize Goodness and Badness as their own fascets of existence. That delusion, however, is what all contemporary moral philosophy is predicated on. The fundamental error of the moralist, or the anti-moralist like you, is to fall into the trap of Naive Realism. Of claiming that one Fascet of Reality (namely Badness) could possibly be attached to another one (like say, the act of murder). Because the experience of badness accompanies certain other experiences, we therefore confuse these experiences to be inherently part of these certain experiences. We then claim that torture is "wrong" or "bad", because torture creates the experience of badness in that consciousness. To denie badness or goodness would be to denie pain, suffering, joy and pleasure. When you look at your own experience, you will very clearly find Goodness and Badness. They are very much correlated to the workings of the ego. This is why in the absence of the devil, there is only Perfection left. It is not because reality has been revealed to be perfect, but rather that imperfection has ceased to exist, that Badness cease to be part of the experience of that consciousness. With that framework, it will be obvious what the Good thing to do is, it is in essence, and can only be in essence, whatever will incease Goodness. Much like the Red thing to do is to do whatever will increase Redness. Yet, nothing but Redness is fundamentally Red. No action, no object, no fascet of reality other than Redness itself could ever be red. This is very obvious to us, yet we struggle with it when it comes to other aspects, which our egos exploit for it's own purposes. The Moral Anti-realist, therefore, is simply unconscious. He is more conscious than the Realist, as he can clearly see that no object is truly Good or truly Bad. Much like someone could realize that no object is truly Red or Blue. Yet, the Anti-realist, following that revelation, cannot help but denie the entire existence of Good and Bad, because of how much it was part of the intellectual, egoic framework it has previously used. It is literally throwing out the Baby with the Bathwater. Goodness and Badness clearly is there, as their own independet experiences. Otherwise you could, what you deem to be subjectively, never find anything appalling or attractive. Fundamentally suffering and joy could not exist. Goodness and Badness are metaphysically embued in the substance of Life itself, so to speak. This is why Utilitarianism is literally the only true moral framework. Because in it's nature, to incease the experience of Goodness is more Goodness, and to decrease the experience of Badness is less Badness. This fundamentaly, it is undeniable once you can see it. To denie it would be like saying: "When I suffer less, I don't actually suffer less. When I feel more pleasure, I do not actually feel more pleasure." It is moronic, it is delusional in the most hilarious way. You could create a Utilitarian system that is basically about Redness. It could be to increase Redness. To increase Redness would by definition be more Redness. In the same sense to increase the Experience (!!!) of Goodness is to increase Goodness. It is so utterly obvious. Yet we have people like the realists and anti-realist who go on and claim "Redness is Good!". They claim that 1=2, that Roundness equals Squareness, that Sound is Feeling. It is delusional in the very essence of the word. And that delusion is what currently drives all investigation of morality. Ego hijacking the creation of God. In this context it is important to know that what they mean by consequentialism as it can be understood as a very particular and limited framework. Yet, I would posit that any framework they use, the reason why they are going to be using it in the first place, will always be to increase a certain Utility. Whether it is Order, Well-being, Fundamental-Principles, Consciousness or Love. As soon as you want to decrease and increase something, like suffering or well being, you are necessarily consequentialist. Why would they be concerned about morality at all if it was not to increase a certain experience? However, both Wilber and Kohlberg fail to see what I have described to you above. They are in essence moral-naive realists. They claim that Goodness can be anything else than Goodness, which is in essence incoherent and delusional. To see reality for what it is, to see each fascet of existence as it's own fascets, or in other words to see pure duality, is what even the most experience meditators fail at. How could WIlber have went through an entire life-time of meditation and self-inquiry without realizing that only Redness is Red? How strong the delusion of Mind is.

You would have to be more precise than that. Again, the argument was for marginalized, non-political groups. You would have to provide more context for specific scenarios, I am not going to construct arguments for every single edge-case there is. We can use many types of measurements like intuition, social consensus, social sciences. I am not in the mood to formulize this, as it is not a problem for most people to intuit which groups we should consider to be marginalized and which not. I can give you a basic definition, like people who are more proportionately discriminated against on the basis of non-political attributes like race, sexual orientation and the like. This is the entire point of creating protected classes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_group Gender identity is not inherently a political position. I would say what you call Social Justice Warriors might be a political group which I would not consider a protected class. Of course you are, simply not on the basis of their gender identity. Like for example it would be fine to discriminate against a Republican veteran on the basis of their political attitude, but it would be considerd "immoral" to do so in the basis of their veteran status. You can make fun of anyone, essentially, as long as it is not motivated by their minority status. There should also be extra consideration for people who are sensitive to that type of discrimination, for obvious reasons. I am not advocating for regulation unless it an extreme case. You know by learning. Culture changes, it is fluid. I cannot give you Ten commandmends, use your brain. If you are not dysfunctional you should have sufficient empathy to understand when you are stepping over a line and when not. Otherwise, society will nudge you into the right direction. What you are asking is like giving a small child a list of words and actions it shouldn't take. That is non sensible, that is not rational. You teach them principles from which they can deduce what it permitted to do and what isn't. lol that arrogance. How much have you read on SD? Utilitarianism stemmed from stage orange, it is not inherently stage orange. That's like staying "cars are stage orange". Utilitarianism is a tool which I would posit is the only sensible tool for coming up with moral solutions. What else are you, a deontologist? I would love to hear you critique of utilitarianism. And please, before you do, make sure it's more than "If you are utilitarian you think it's fine to kill one person to save 5!". I would disagree. Just because something generates happiness does not meant it is socially valuable. For example, if we stop using words like "retard", the harm to society is basically zero, because we can simply use another word instead from which we will derive as much pleasure. Additionally, I do not think minor pleasure in a greater amount of people justifies greater suffering in a minority of people. That's once more a silly strawman of what Utilitarianism is. The speech and jokes that lead to the stigmatization can be replaced by other speech and jokes that do not lead to that stigmatization. Other than that I would posit that in certain cases comedy can have certain exceptions as far as these rules go, for reason that go beyond the mere pleasure that we derive from laughing about minority group. You can stigmatize the group "Social Justice Warrior", but not on the basis of their sexual orientation and the like inherently, instead it would be purely on the basis of their political position. I mean just think one second about what you just wrote. If that was my position, you wouldn't be able to stigmatize against republicans because some republicans are homosexual. How can you believe that I hold that position? This is what I mean with uncharitability. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity Please read this. You have a brain, most of what we are arguing would be completely unnecessary if you were to use it to try to figure out what I mean instead of using the worst kind of interpretation possible.

I wasn't using that example as a comparison, I was using it to illustrate a underlying mechanism which you are unaware of. It is ingenius how you throw "strawman" at others while this entire thread and basically all of your objectivion have been an addressing an array of strawmans of what the position "Cultural Appropriation" is supposed to communicate. The last post I wrote was insanely valuable if you were to even attempt to get something out of it. But of course you were going to dismiss it because "I have lost all my right to judge others". I have not judged anyone, nor am I outraged. Better ignore my post though because it would reveal some uncomfortable truths about you.

There are two people, who is more "evolved"? Person A: Person A decided to stop wearing fur clothing because they saw how terrible animals are treated in the fur industry. Person A is talking about on facebook and shaming others for doing so, because of how much empathy Person A is feeling towards the animals that are abused in fur factories. Person B: Person B does not care about animals at all, yet Person B points out Person As hypocrisy. How can Person A stop wearing fur if they are the same time are eating meat? It's hypocrisy! And not wearing fur won't change anything. Perso B continues to wear fur and eat meat, and uses the hypocrisy of Person A to justify that. Notice that Person B is right that Person A is a hypocrate, yet Person A cares more about animals than Person B. Person A is in that sense a "better" person, they have taken a step towards less cruelty, even if they are currently remaining in an inconsistent position which actually doesn't change anything about the situation. Eventually Person A might stop even to eat meat, because they take one step further to reduce the impact they have on others. In the meantime, Person B has remained at their position, both wearing fur and eating animals. In a similar vein, people who are very much concerned about things like cultural appropriation and the like, even if it is neither the most effective way to reduce suffering and maybe means they become hypocrites, they are still more evolved than people who do not care about it at all, who use that hypocrisy as an excuse not to bother to think about the impact they have on others. Sure, sometimes the more evolved person might be overconcerned, but that is part of their evolution, of their increase compassion. You frame it as if these people were less evolved "hiding their white guilt", so you can comfortably remain where you are and dismiss any of these concerns as non-issues. It is fundamentally your frame of mind that is "less" evolved, even if this particular issue was a non-issue, the fact that you so easily dismiss it and show no concern and interest in it's possible validity is essentially what is "less" evolved about you. You concern is primarily individualistic, you have a priority about what you as a individual can and cannot do over what will have a better impact on others. You do not see it, but you are arguing from that desire and it determines how you speak, what arguments you provide, what things you view as non-issues and which you view as issues. It's not merely in this particular situation in which you show these individualistic, freedom, stage orange value tendencies. You have brought them up in our conversation about animal rights too. You put your individualistic needs infront of the life and suffering of others. We of course do that too, but to a lesser degree. We are concerned about these issues, we try to find validity in them, while you are biased towards rejecting them because they limit your freedom. This mechanism is what eventually leads, on a larger scale, to for example complacency towards the treatment of billions of individuals, like the animals we are putting in factories. For you that is pretty much a non-issue, as long as you don't contribute to it, you can do whatever you want in your life. However, if you truly were concerned without bias, you would see it as a problem, you would feel (!) it to be a problem. A huge problem, that does not just require an absence of action on your part, but an actual proactive approach so as to mitigate that kind of discrimination of suffering. It is not enough to simply not eat factory farmed meat, it is paramount to actually make others not eat factory farmed meat and to generally make efforts to reduce that kind of suffering. This is stage green, it is not about "live and let live", it is about "Help those who need the help most". It is a deep desire to involve yourself in the increasing of well-being of those who suffering the most. Orange is only interested in not being "hypocritical", in not being immoral, in not being "bad". See how self-centered that is? For green it is about actively identifying the issues, of actively going against discrimination, of actively participating in these movements which solve social issues. You show only very minor interest in that, which allows you to dismiss issues like cultural appropriation as non-issues. While I agree that there are far bigger problems that need to be solved, I cannot simply dismiss it like you anymore. I could have probably even a year ago, but now I feel like I need to take these issues seriously. It is an emotional transformation, which again will determine what kind of arguments you will find appealing in what you will view and dismiss as non-issues. I have noticed this shift in myself very radically the past few months. While previously I would have seen a insect and might not have bothered to help it because "I would be kind of a hypocrate if I helped this insect while eating products that kill insects", that kind of mentality just became obsolete. I helped the insect, even a tiny fruit fly, out of an innate desire to help that insect. I required no justification, there was a motivation that was just present. I did, at that moment, not care about what kind of person that action would make me, I just did what I felt was best. The carnist will focus on the hypocrisy of the vegan to justify his habits. This is hugely important. The carnist will be most concerned about "what kind of person" he will be in his own and other eyes. The vegan does not care that much, one that is truly concerned about animals. They will backwards rationalized to help the animals at any means possible. A very interesting shift, because many vegans start being vegan because of their own identity attachment, because "they dont want to be animal abuses". A more fully green person will be detached from that, they will help because of a desire to help, because of true empathy towards these beings, whether they viewed as "hypocrates" or the like is secondary and only relevant to the point it will be a detriment to the animals.

So we might say that fundamentally the ego is that kind of skepticism. The skepticism is it's own life-form and seeks to survive as long as possible. This will eventually lead to the skepticism to attempt to somehow solve the issue of mortality, so that it can be forever skeptical, or alive. So in essence the skepticisim is like a structure which seeks to uphold it's own structure. Maybe, in a metaphysical sense, that is in some shape or form what biological life-forms themselves are. There is a skepticism in the structure of the brain or mind, but the very organism itself, namely the body, the bacteria, any structure which attempts to uphold itself, is in essence skepticism. The physical form of skepticism is biological life, as it seeks to remain it's form as is, it seeks to perpetuate itself, to create more versions of itself, to basically uphold it's own structure for all of eternity. Maybe this is even what the atom is. A structure struggling to uphold a certain state, but susceptible to an eventual deconstruction or death. That would mean that the skepticism or ego in a more fundamental sense is embued in the fabric of what we call the physical universe. It would bridge the gap between "physical" and "biological" as both would fundamentally be one and the same. The complete dissolving of the universe into nothingness would then be what the dissolving of the human brain is on a smaller scale. It would explain why the physical material of the universe struggles to create ever and ever more complex structures. By that design, life is inevitable as it is even part of the very substance of the universe. The ego in the human sense would be simply a more complex structure attempting to uphold it's own structure, while atoms would be the same thing on a more fundamental scale. Thus the entire Universe is basically just Devilry. Duality attempting to remain in duality, but eventually collapsing into one. The genius of the design is that there can be something that self-perpetuates, a structure that in it's very essence structures itself. It is completely circular, it should be impossible. A structure which by the nature of it's structure creates it's own structure. Yet there is a fundamental weakness to that structure, which we can observe in the very fundamental particles of the universe and which scales up to all forms of life that exist. Imagine how smart you would have to be to create a design that works on such a small scale and yet works perfectly well on a greater scale. A design so smart it by it's very nature designs itself. It designs itself so well that it not only creates structure, geometry, consistency but also contains completely different aspects of reality, like colors, sounds and feelings, and which can create a being that by these different aspects can grasp the nature of geometry. A design so ingenius that it inevitably creates a being which can look at that design and grasp it's nature. A design in which all of these aspects are not seperate instances, but interact with each other in impossible ways. It's so funny how I thought intelligent design was an absurd argument, but at this point arguing against it seems the most absurd thing ever. This is akin to us designing an AI and then the AI forgetting that it was designed. It would look at all of the intricasies of it's own nature and explain those intricasies with the intricasies, like the physicist is explain physics with physics or the evolutionist evolution with evolution. They completely fail to see how much intelligence it took to create the physics, the evolution or the intricasies of the AI in the first place. It is so genius, so well designed, that we do not even realize it is a design. "Evolution is the way because that's just how reality is! There is no design behind it, the rules of reality create the designs." lol It's not even intelligence. This is like create a Tree by creating the rules that will eventually create a Tree. This is beyond problem solving, you create the Tree by creating the problems that will eventually lead to the creation of the Tree. Whatever that is, calling it intelligence is insulting. It is not mere intelligence, it is Intuition. It is true Creativity.

Also another objection of the skeptic might be the following: If we assume that the brain produces, or fundamentally in some shape or form is, the entirety of our subjective reality: The possibilities of what kind of subjective realities that brain can produce are virtually infinite. Any alteration of the brain and subsequently to the subjective reality, actually alters the perception and the following claims that are going to be made about that particular reality. In other words, an alteration of the subjective reality, or the brain, is due to the nature of what subjective reality is, an fully convincing experience. Because we assume, and cannot otherwise, that our subjective reality is reality, we will subsequently assume that an altered state of that subjective reality is reality as a whole. Therefore, taking something like psychedelics, or altering the brain by meditation, will actually change the reality for that brain. The skeptic might argue that the brain, once that alteration is present, cannot help but come to certain conclusions about reality, namely mystical claims about the nature of reality. He might argue that the mystical experience will be so convincing, so subjectively real, that even he will not be able to help but fall for that experience and recontextualize it as reality as a whole. Therefore he will avoid taking these substances. The problem is the skeptic will claim that even after taking the psychedelic and being convinced of whatever mystical truth he might simply have been tricked due to the limitations of his brain. He might say that once he has the mystical experience he will be utterly convinced of it, which is why he must avoid it to stay objective. It's similar to an argument of Enlightenment leading to a demon possessing your mind and body, a demon that will try to create as many demons as possible, meaning he will try to convince as many people of enlightenment as he can. If that demon did exist, nobody who would not be enlightened could know of him, and anyone who was enlightened would be controlled by the demon.