Scholar

I'm at my wits end. I just can't stabilize my thyroid, it keeps acting up. Taking iodine will cause insane irritation and inflammation in the thyroid. I feel better for a while and then symptoms get worse and worse. But I also just feel terrible without iodine. I tried all the things to try. Selenium supplementation, which for a while I thought had helped, and dozens of other things, but it keeps being unstable. It's beyond frustrating, even something as simple as the weather changing from summer into colder weather just is putting me completely out of balance, with severe symptoms of depression and all the other ailments that come with Hashimotos. I tried things like probiotics too, and various supplements, as well as dietary adjustments. This is by far the worse problem in my life.

Do you think sometimes feelings of guilt could help someone? Can you see how this statement, if applied the way you did, could be applied to things you wouldn't deem acceptable?

Purple, step outside of the box right now. Look at your own post, and think about why some of the things you wrote here might have deep flaws in them, that you on further reflection might not believe in. Can you spot something?

I am a person who is very much driven by purpose and meaning, making an impact in the world. Doing something that is lasting, that matters. This central to my life. The problem is that the realization of impermanence, beyond a mere intectual realization, is pulling the rug from underneath that foundational pillar. The realization that death will come, and that all things I relate to, I connect to, I love and cherish, I create and work on, all of them will dissolve, dissipate. Life is about connection, love. But this love and connection creates attachment. But all of this will be lost, to such a degree that one day I will even lose myself. All the memories I have will be gone, and I will never again experience them. My friends and family, my art and knowledge, it will simply no longer be. How have you guys truly accepted this? And have you accepted it in the first place? Have you been truly confronted with impermanence, through death and loss of that which you are most connected to?

What does Israel have to do with any of this? No I don't refuse to accept the CIA backed a coup, that never happened.

This is not an honest framing. The "creeping eastward", firstly is exaggerated, secondly it is in response to Russias invasions of sovereign countries. You can't just ignore the reason why NATO acts the way it does. And what you say makes no sense. The US has the capacity to destroy Russia with ease, they don't need to station anything in Ukraine. Nuclear weapons are a thing, what do you think would happen as soon as someone attacked Russian cities? It would end in mutual destruction. The reason why the Cuban Missle crisis was such a big deal was because it happened during the cold war, in a completely different historical context. Today the US, nor Russia, have no need to station nuclear weapons so close to the border of their enemies. The reason why Russia invaded Ukraine is because it was losing it's influence over that country. And it should have lost influence given it was coercive. You can't complain someone will team up with the other side, when the other side will offer them economic prosperity and independence.

Sure, america did many bad things. But it doesn't make sense to be crying about america's past atrocities when Russia right now is invading another country. They are hunting civilians for fun with drones, and happily posting these videos on social media. You can't compare the americans to the russians. Look, in my view every country engages in nazi-equivalent holocausts. What am I to tell you? Yes, humans are depraved, barbaric monsters. But in this instance, we have a sovereign people who wants to be free from russian corruption, so their children can grow up not in a country without hope and perspective, but in a country which offers them prosperity and a future. In this case, the conflict is fairly black and white. Independent of what the US was doing to position itself well, or exploit the situation, that doesn't change the clear perpetrator-victim dynamic here. Ukraine deserves support, and Russia must be defeated if possible.

Yeah, sadly we will have to wait until they die from old age before this gets better. That's the hope at least.

The problem with stage green today is that it is mutating, thanks to social media, into a collectivist, almost stage blue perversion of itself. The most judgemental, hypocrtical and witchhunty people nowadays are stage green, which is very disappointing. Stage green was supposed to transcend things like peer pressure and normalcy, but it is attempting to actually enforce such things. It lacks creativity, looseness, compassion. Deviants are demonized. It's sad, I think Spiral dynamics predictions no longer hold because of what social media does to individuals.

Again, I want to stress that this is unacceptable. Everything in our society is based on norms we abide by. If people stop believing in civility, then civility will cease to exist. And don't think you are going to create some sort of socialist utopia from the ashes of capitalism. What you'll get will be worse than feudalism.

There is always a vying for power, and thankfully, in the 21st century most of that happens through non-militaristic means. People don't realize this, but that is progress. We don't want to go back to a time where countries steal land from each other through military force. That is something that as a world community we should deem unacceptable and punish harshly, even if countries still engage in self-interested coercive ways of manipulating the world. Instead, people here seem to justify this regression by pointing to some sort of hypocrisy in the present. You can argue that the US shouldn't engage in various ways of coercion it does, but using that argument to excuse away the violations Russia engages in is inappropriate and whataboutism. It's just the America-Bad culture. It's the deep self-hatred western societies have engrained in themselves through remnants of self-hating Christian ethics, exploited by various propaganda apparatuses.

But this is not true. Other sovereign nations being worried about Russian hostility, after they experience decades of abuse from the USSR, have the right to invite anyone to their territory including the americans. If Russia doesn't like it, they need to build better relationships with their neighbours instead of invading them. Of course the US will act in it's geopolitical interest, but all of it was justified given that Russia has been invading and attacking nations even after the soviet union fell. If China were to establish trade relations with Mexico, and in Mexico you had corrupt US oligrarchs filling their pockets in favor of a corrupt US regime that keeps the mexican people poor, then of course I would criticize the US for invading Mexico, even if China was playing around in it's backyard.

The logic of this is like, an abused girlfriend cheats on her abusers with another guy, and once the girlfriend breaks up with the abuser, he uses that as a justification to rape her. And everyone nods "Yes, clearly this is the abusers girlfriend, he has all the right to rape her, it is none of the guys business to protect his new girlfriend from her ex! In fact, he is the one who provoked the rape by making the girl cheat on the abuser! His evil non-abusing influence brainwashed the girlfriend into wanting to break up with her abuser, horrific!"

This is a profoundly naive and silly view. The entire world should be interested in upholding the standards of national soveignty. The only reason why nations don't go into wars over territory in this day and age is because we as a world community have decided it is unacceptable. If you no longer enforce this norm, it will cease to be a norm. By your logic, Hitler should have simply been allowed to invade whoever he wants, it wasn't the buisness of the US to get involved. What a silly and myopic view of politics. The fact that Ukraine aligns with western values, and that this is in the interest of the US and NATO in general, they should help Ukraine against this Russian invasion. The genocide alone is a valid Casus Belli against Russia.

CIA didn't orchestrate shit. Stop dismiss the will of the proletariat you capitalist enabler! I don't think this makes sense. The reason why nations join Nato is not because they are forced to, but because the benefit from it. Past soviet slave-states wanted to join NATO because they knew Russia could at any point have the desire to enslave them once again. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. If Russia wanted to maintain it's sphere of influence, it should have offered the eastern block a better alternative to the US, rather than using KGB to inflitrate their political systems so they can use dismiss the will of the people in favor of corrupt oligrarch business. The people have chosen, they want democracy, they want prosperity. They don't want corrupt russian politics in their country. Everything else is utterly irrelevant.

No it's not at all as simply as that, this is an absurdly bias and simplistic viewpoint. You are not a systemic thinker whatsoever, you just like to be controversial by playing one-sided moral relativism.

It makes no sense to cooperate with a nation that invades other countries. The whole reason why nations wanted to join NATO is because they wanted self-determination. Putin, as his first act in office, invaded another country and genocided it's people until they submitted to his rule. That's what happens to nations that want to be independent of the corrupt influence of the russian imperialist dictatorship. It's gaslighting. Russia keeps invading soveirgn nations, the nations react in fear and seek western assistance, which is then used as a reason to further invade these countries. Nobody has ever invaded or attacked Russia. It doesn't make any sense because nobody cares to rule over moscovite barbarians. They can have their empty, worthless land all to themselves.

I agree, that is why we must support Ukraine and destroy the Russian empire, with guns.

Given that Kiev is the founder of "Russian" culture and society, maybe Ukraine should invade Russia to get it's vassal in order? Why exactly is it that Ukraine belongs to Russia, and not the other way around?

Everyone understands this perspective. The point is, it is imperialist. And of course western nations, and the whole world, ought to fight for the sovereignty of nations. This relativism you engage in is irrelevant to the discussion.

I actually can't believe you are making these arguments. You can't think of any reason why these things are fundamentally different? Both in essence and historically speaking? No, the problem was that he invaded sovereign nations. You are actually propagandized, lol. Ah, because Ukraine is slavic land, all Slavic nations have a claim to it? You realize Moscow once belonged to Poland? Ukraine also once belonged to Poland. Maybe Poland should invade Russia and Ukraine to get it's historical lands back, given it is the same slavic culture. This is just excuse making for actual imperialism, I can't believe you are making these arguments. Russia itself gave Ukraine and every other sovient nation the choice to either remain in their union or leave it. They decided to leave, and Russia ACCEPTED this.

Russia has not only invaded Ukraine. And no, the Ukrainian people have a distinct identity from the Russians, they have sought independence for centuries. Why do you think the Russians engaged in genocide and ethnic cleansings, starving them, deporting them and so forth to replace them with native russians? Even all the ethnic groups in Russia are not "deeply interwined" with Russia, they largely still view Russia as an imperialist force. The moscovites to them are imperialists. And by the way, this is how Hitler argued too. He viewed Austria and Switzerland as indistinct from Germany. That is precisely what an imperialist mindset is. You justify your imperial ambitions with various historical or ethnic claims.

It doesn't matter what they are doing. If germany invaded polish territory because in the past it was part of it's empire, then that is imperialism. And we aren't talking about just Ukraine, history didn't start in 2014. Are you unaware of all the invasions Russia engaged in since Putin became dictator? Why do you think Putin views the fall of the Soviet Union as the greatest tragedy in history? You don't think that has anything to do with why he wants to bring past Russian-Empire nations back into Russian influence?

What do you think imperialism means? If you invade countries to change their regimes and literally conquer their lands, that's imperialism. But more profoundly, Russia fundamentally is imperialistic in it's structure. Do you really know so little about how Russian politics works, and has worked for centuries? Let me ask you this: If Germany was going to invade poland, france and half of europe again to reestablish the Third Reich, would that be a form of imperialism in your eyes?

That is not a contradiction. Russia still engages in genocides today, it uses tribal people as cannon fodder in their wars. These stories do not reach a lot of people, but I spoke to multiple tribal group members from Russia. They view Russia as an imperialist force which is subjugating them, genociding them, destroying their culture. Russia is so large that because of the great distances, the only way you can maintain the empire (you have to look at how many ethnic groups exist in Russia, and inherently, many of them don't feel Russian at all) is through an iron hand. Just look at what Putin did in Chechnya only weeks after he stepped into office. This kind of offensive, imperialist war has not been wages by western nations for a significant amount of time. What happened in Georgia, and several other nations that Russia felt it had a right to pull back into it's sphere of influence through force? You seem to be unaware of the stark difference between a far less developed Russian imperialist culture and the current US culture, which is a more modern form of imperialism. I thought you are a realist? Under the realist perspective, nations will inherently act based on their interest. You can't apply this to Russia, to excuse away it's crimes, but then talk about the US as if it was excluded from this framework. Of course the US has needs to intervene in world politics, you just seem to not care about those needs because you seem to want to view all of this from a moralistic lense, which is not very explanatory of how the US acts. While you can critique US policy, in the end what you are engaging in to me is a whataboutism, which has little relevancy to the analysis of the Ukraine-Russia conflict. By focusing and framing it as a US-Russia conflict, you neglect the reality of the Ukrainain will. This is what geopolitics looks like. If you don't engage in such things, someone else will. This is the selective application of realism that I was speaking of. Fiat currencies are far superior to gold-standard currencies. And what you speak of I consider conspiracy theories which are not at all substantiated, but common america-bad talking points. With all due respect, but we will not arrive at any common ground because I view you as propagandized by alternative media sources. In the end, I don't have the time to go through a lengthy historical analysis to show why this viewpoint is simplistic and wrong.