Emerald

No. That's the problem with the left. We become so strategic that we cede ground to the right. And then, it will become more and more taboo to support civil rights, trans rights, gay rights, women's rights, abortion rights, etc. That's the way the Overton Window works. They more you insist on something, the more normalized it becomes. And the left is always ceding ground to the right and trying to meet in the middle, while the right just goes scorched Earth and plays power games and insists that their view is correct... facts be damned. So, the right never goes "Should we stop hating on trans people?" or "Should we cool our language on immigrants?" They wear their freak flag out and proud, and tons of people jump onto their movement because they have a vision... a terrible hate-filled vision... but a vision. It's time to stop being strategic and start being honest and go on the offensive, instead of playing defense all the time. And the leftwing politicians need to have a vision that includes both human-rights and economic populist messages.

Shadow Work means 'the process of making the unconscious conscious.' And I don't see this as just being in the realm of psychology. Any time you're taking things out of the blindspot, you're engaging in Shadow Work. So, I see all those things as falling under the umbrella term of Shadow Work.

I just got off of a coaching call with one of my clients about an hour ago. And it shined a bit of a light onto how Fascism arises in individuals... which then coalesces in widespread collective Fascist patterns. And he brought up that he has been noticing some troubling patterns coming up in himself that he doesn't like. (Which is synchronistic because I've been thinking a lot about the topic of the underlying vulnerabilities that lead to the collective rise in Fascism, and he happened to bring up something highly relevant to my contemplations.) The pattern he spoke about is this... He consciously doesn't agree with racism and bigotry and never has. And he was raised in a family with liberal values. But he finds these emotional reactions arising where he'll feel all this anger and hatred towards immigrants and the LGBTQ community and see them as engaging in victim's mentality and taking what doesn't belong to them. And it's creating a fair amount of resistance and cognitive dissonance because it had never been the case prior to the past several months, AND he consciously is a very kind and caring person who doesn't agree with these perspectives. But there is a more emotional part of himself where feelings of hatred are beginning to arise and intensify in relation to groups that he didn't previously have an issue with. And upon deeper exploration during our session, it became clear that there is a part of himself that he's been repressing that has childlike and vulnerable parts of himself that are in need to assistance and attention. It's a part of him that needs compassion and care... like a child that needs their parents to care for them and kiss their boo boos. But because of his strong revulsion towards Victim's Mentality, he doesn't let himself ask for help and meet those needs and he represses the vulnerable parts of himself. And he doesn't let himself seek attention unless he has achieved something that people like or approve of. And he doesn't exercise any sympathy towards himself or seek for it from others. And it is his "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" mentality and a dedication to a kind of self-sufficient stoicism and personal responsibility and strength that causes him to gloss over the needs of this more vulnerable part of himself that needs unconditional compassion, love, and care. And now, there are lower Shadowy expressions of this vulnerable part of him arising since he hasn't integrated his vulnerabilities in a more conscious and exalted way. And the repressed Victim's Mentality is coming up where he is feeling victimized by the presence of these groups of people... and part of himself is reveling in the ability to relinquish personal responsibility and cast blame onto external scapegoats. And he consciously is the type of person who takes responsibility for EVERYTHING. But this Shadowy expression of Victim's Mentality is happening specifically because he has repressed and neglected to practice self-compassion in order to avoid "playing the victim." It's like horse-shoe theory, where his strong revulsion towards Victim's Mentality and hyper-identification with strength and self-sufficiency has caused the Shadow of Victim's Mentality to sneak in under the radar of his consciousness as he feels like a Victim in relation to people he sees as not taking personal responsibility. And because the judgment is about the other person playing the victim and not taking responsibility, that he wasn't realizing his own Victim's mentality at play. And upon further reflection on what came up in our meeting, there is perhaps even a deep-seated jealous drive because he feels he needs to earn every shred of support that he gets, while marginalized groups are advocating for their rights from the stand-point of rights being something that all people deserve. He only allows himself positive things through doing and earning... while advocating for human rights is all about being and an inherent sense of validity. And I know that he isn't the only person feeling this. I've been seeing lots of people being pulled towards the siren song of the collective Shadow of Victim's Mentality and getting sucked into Fascism. And this arises as a result of a total rejection and revulsion towards Victim's Mentality. Then projecting the repressed inner Victim onto marginalized groups... and then feeling victimized in relation to these marginalized groups. It's a common pattern. This client is just more aware than most and more willing to face his Shadows than most. But this is how the Shadow works. The more you push parts of yourself away with strong judgments and revulsions, the more Shadowy the expression of those parts becomes. And when people are collectively doing that, we can end up in some "human death spirals" where we end up falling into very maladaptive movements where we very well could destroy ourselves. So, my plea to you is to be kind and compassionate towards yourself. And if you deny yourself this kindness and compassion, it will lead to a world that denies kindness and compassion to all. So, here is a video that I made last year about "Victim's Mentality" and the opposite inverted dynamic of "Anti-Victim's Mentality Mentality."

The main thing is that these Red Pill influencer guys are grifters. The vast majority of them are playing the role of misogynist alpha chad because it's lucrative. They are actually fine with dating single mothers. And they're not going to pass up on the ability to love and be loved by an attractive woman if the opportunity arises to have real intimacy. But they know their audience. And their audience will eat up anything that tells them "Don't worry. You're more desirable than single mothers, promiscuous women, etc. because you're a man and your value only ever goes up while their value only ever goes down." And then the guys who watch it throw their money and views at them as they revel is schadenfreude that the girl in their poly sci class in undergrad is going to be sorry that she didn't pick him when she's a discarded valueless single mom with a body count over 1. All it is is just profiting off of the shame, bitterness, and grievances of lonely men and showing them an fake but aspirational character of the strong alpha male that takes no shit from women and feels totally secure... and is in the role of selector and rejector of women, instead of women being in the role of selector and rejector of him.

It's not about hating Trump. I hope he lives lives his long and merrily... just away from the levers of power. He's a very immature and dangerous person to entrust with this responsibility. In his last term, there were more checks and balances on his power. But in this term, there aren't that many checks and balances. And it's possible that he could erode the checks and balances of the system away so entirely that America devolves into Fascism or simply into pure chaos with the aftertaste of Fascism. Anyone who's talking about Trump in a serious way is really just concerned about the consequences.

It's more about emotions than about intellect. Someone with a strong intellect can use that intellect to trick themselves into ignoring issues with Trump... simply because Trump hits some emotional button for them. My guess is that he's in this community of men, who are largely right-leaning. And that's who respects him and where he has status. And he's gotten influenced by his environment that's very pro-Trump. He also could just be kind of anti-Feminine in general. Anyone who hates the Feminine, will want to vote Trump because Trump and the right wing movement is about controlling and eradicating the Feminine from society in any and all ways.

There isn't much that's Feminine about this culture at all. We have integrated some Feminine values over the past 100 years... but we've also polarized further into the Masculine principle further than we've ever been before in human history to the point where the Masculine development of our human society threatens the stability of Mother Nature herself. And as society develops more and more technologically (which is Masculine development), it behooves us to in equal measure integrate the Feminine principle (which means channeling and reintegrating nature) Just like if the Masculine branches of your tree expand to produce more fruit, so too do the Feminine roots need to expand. And that's been happening to some degree with all the focus towards equality and human rights and ecological issues. But it hasn't been happening nearly enough. So, it is very likely that our society will become hyper Masculine without the Feminine to balance it out. And our species will become so top-heavy and our societal tree will be uprooted because we kept trying to solve the Masculine excesses by adding more Masculinity to it... instead of truly integrating the Feminine. So, there's a pretty extreme Masculine Principled imbalance. And it is because of this Masculine principled imbalance that we get dynamics where men are killing themselves because they don't let themselves be emotional and vulnerable. And everyone's hyper individualistic. And it's profits over people. And all these other things like this. The issue is that most people think about Masculine and Feminine only as related to gender and gender roles and what men and women find sexy about the opposite gender or which gender gets rights and which don't... and things like that. But that's only has a little bit to do with the integration of the Feminine. If you really understood the archetypal Feminine and Masculine, you would understand that the Feminine is quite uncommon to be found in our society. That's why we're all so obsessed with Femininity... especially men... and especially men who try to rid themselves of all Femininity. Here are some Masculine and Feminine Principled phenomenon written with Masculine first and Feminine second, and you will see which archetypal values that society values more. You'll find that society values the Masculine over the Feminine the majority of the time Extraordinary vs Ordinary Hierarchical vs Lateral Technology vs Nature Strength vs Flexibility Economy vs Ecology Clarity vs Mystery Doing vs Being Branches/Fruit vs Soil/Roots Higher vs Lower Unlimitedness vs Limitation Impermeability vs Permeability Utility vs Beauty Mind vs Body Forward Movement vs Cycles Thought vs Emotions Loftiness vs Groundedness Individualism vs Collectivism Expansion vs Contraction Evergreen vs Deciduous Detachment vs Immersion Purity vs Integration Stoicism vs Vulnerability

100%

To be honest, I think it would be a bit dangerous for the receiving man to wear a condom during oral sex. It seems like a choking hazard. But you wouldn't be able to catch genital herpes from someone with mouth herpes unless they have an active infection. And you can usually see it when a person has a cold sore. But you can also ask the person if they have a cold sore if you're concerned.

When I think about human nature, I see it as an unfurling of new archetypes, inventions, and paradigms that already lay in wait in the recesses of the human psyche. So, I view all things that we invent, create, think, do, and subject ourselves to as part of that natural unfurling. And that will naturally take us into a state of opposition to our nomadic wiring as those are the stress tests necessary to bringing about greater changes as a collective. For example, we have evolved to be deeply immersed in community. And we have a profound need for connection. And yet, we have developed a society that takes us away from connection. And one might think. This is unnatural for us. And it's unhealthy. And on one level, that's true. It's very stressful to the mind and body of a human being to be alone. But on a deeper level, this age of Hermicism is also part of the unfurling of new potentials where we are driven apart for a time to help us come more into our authenticity and to experience freedom... only to coalesce again from a higher ordering principle that allows both social connection and authenticity/will/autonomy at once. And certainly, there is the possibility that we can be a stillbirth species, where we don't make it past the tipping point and we self-destruct before reaching the new birth. But in the grand scheme of things, I have a lot of faith in humanity to make it through these stress tests. We're adapting so quickly and so well to so many things. We're just way up close to the phenomenon, and so we can't see that we're actually sticking the landing. 97.5% of humanity's past is nomadic. And 2.5% of humanity's past is agrarian (which is where all the conservative values were technological adaptations to survival). And just a sliver of a percentage has been industrial and post-industrial living. So, the past 10,000 years is like a sudden peak of change and growth and evolution. And we're still in that 10,000 year growth spurt. And growth spurts are always chaotic with all sorts of stresses to the human system. So, it's quite natural that we be stress tested by collective dynamics that run in opposition to our nomadic wiring.

What are you defining as unnatural? Human beings aren't capable of doing things outside of our nature. It's just that our nature looks different than other creatures on this planet. One of the major issues as human beings is that we see ourselves as existing as something outside of nature and interacting with it as an outsider, as opposed to recognizing that we are just as natural as any other living organism on this planet. Can you see that cars, computers, and all the tools that we have created are just as natural as when a beaver builds a dam, or a wasp builds a nest? And when we are subjected to any conditions, we will have contrasts that arise... both positive and negative. And this creates both growth and decay. Regeneration and degeneration. Birth and death. That is the way of nature. And it is the weakness of the cell that is the vigor of the organism. Degeneration is what helps us slough off the dead skin and move forward. We're always moving 10 steps forward and 9 steps back as a species. So, usually when people start labeling out "degeneration" they are just pointing out the things that are naturally decaying that they wanted to hold onto. And then they start believing that the entire world is degenerating and going to hell in a hand basket because their personal squishy bears are dying. But in reality, there's stability, regeneration, and degeneration all around us. But this is just spoiled modern thinking. We take for granted how awesome things are. And we only see a fallen world. Also, I'm going to need a CREDIBLE source to show that boys who don't play sports when they're little have smaller brains and are less Masculine.

I never believed in the idea that strong men - good times - weak men - hard times cycle. That always just seemed to me that this idea comes about from a type of modern spoiledness and seeing the contemporary way of life only through a negative lens. It's clear to me that good times (where people have their emotional and physical needs met) produces less trauma. And that subsequently produces psychologically healthier people who are able to adapt better to the world, and who are less prone to self-destruction. It's evident to me that human evolution is both cyclical and progressive with a trajectory towards love, unity, and expansion... and an awakening of global consciousness. It's similar to giving birth... with its cyclical patterns of painful contraction of the pelvic muscles enabling the cervix to expand wider and wider and wider... until something brand new can come about. And I believe that we've collectively been in this process of labor and giving birth for the past 10,000 years as there have been many contractions and expansions over the course of written history compared to our nomadic past. Right now, we're about to go into a contraction for a minute. But if the pain is sharp enough and the contraction is deep enough, we will come back from that contraction more dilated and wiser and more able to step into deeper levels of consciousness and a more world-centric paradigm.

It's not a false equivalency because I'm not equivocating Harris and Trump at all, and my post had nothing to do with Harris or comparing anyone to anyone else. In fact, I don't think I was even talking specifically about Trump at first when I was making the point I was making. You brought Trump up. To make it clear where I stand, it's pretty evident that Trump is more harmful than Harris. But I can explain why he's more harmful in a much more accurate way, without using the moralistic lens of good and evil. Regardless of who we're talking about (Trump or anyone else), I was talking about the problems that arise when people start getting moralistic and labeling people as evil and as monsters... simply because of what that does to the human psyche when it latches onto the narrative of good and evil. And even if you call a serial killer evil, we invite shame into ourselves... and we become possessed by the archetype of good and evil. And it creates a split within the human psyche... and shame and ignorance arises within one's self as a result. And we start hyper-identifying with goodness and labeling out evil-doers... which is how most 'evil' acts are committed. And that's just the outcome of dualistic moralistic thinking... regardless of how objectively harmful the person is that you're labeling out as evil.

Very well said. I bolded everything that especially resonated. I see conservatism and its concerns about "degeneracy" and "sexual aberration" as operating off of the agrarian coping strategies for living in a mono-cultural village. I think this is why people in rural places tend to skew a bit more conservative as well, because it's closer to that agrarian village living lifestyle. And in an agrarian village, you need to control people's sexuality to maximize the society for growing as many children as possible to work the field and protect the village. But the issue with this, is that these are maladaptive coping strategies for living in a post-industrial society. It's like trying to stick a cassette tape in a cd player and then believing the cd player is fundamentally broken because it won't play cassettes "like it's supposed to". So, those in this conservative agrarian mindset always feel like everything is broken and working improperly because they haven't acclimated to the new societal technology. And it also leads these conservative agrarian-minded types to be very susceptible to demagogues who claim they will bring back the glory days of the past where we were just one people and one race and one religion... and people were all upstanding people who aren't sexual deviants... the man was the head of the household... and every woman was having 10 children to help the family tend the farm. But it's also difficult for someone with the paradigm of an agrarian peasant from 300+ years ago to adapt to post-industrial society. So, I have some sympathy for that feeling of disjointedness. But there's often this top-down kind of authoritarian control that they value in a leader because they want to believe that the leader will bring about an agrarian peasant paradise where women and women and men are men... and only the good race belongs... and only the good religion is practiced... and only the good kinds of sex are permitted... etc.

Thank you! I'm glad you like my channel! And yes, I totally agree.

I suppose with "harmful" lacking description, I would say to add more words for greater accuracy and thoroughness (like ignorance, causing suffering, intention to harm someone, etc.) instead of trying to boil them down into a catch-all word like evil.... precisely because of what human beings tend to naturally do with the belief in the good and evil paradigm. One thing that's important to note is that, when people consciously or unconsciously believe in the good and evil paradigm, people will develop a fundamental identification with goodness that runs very deep within themselves. And they will fragment themselves and repress anything in them that they would label as evil... and then project that onto other people that then become the targets of anything from hidden judgments that one keeps to one's self to outright violence and eradication. And if we look at things through that good and evil lens, and use these words which have such archetypal resonance... it causes a person to consciously or unconsciously paper over the reality of deeper root causes with an over-simplified "good vs evil" narrative which leads to all the evils in the world. So, I have a practice of unconditional compassion and not using words like evil to describe the harm that people cause. I'm not perfect at this. When I get mad at people causing harm to myself and others, I can get into "Fuck these evil bastards" mode. But I try to stay conscious of the deeper forces at play underneath the "symptoms of evil" which are inherently related to human vulnerability and ignorance... to which the only cure is unconditional love and truth, which are one and the same thing.

No. Because then you can't see the root cause of those behaviors that Trump and other like him engage in. And that means that we can't address the real human problems that causes people to become that way. And we start trying to fight the symptoms instead of curing the disease on the level of the germ. Anytime you call ANYONE evil (or synonymous words like "monsters"), it always leads us into judgment and ignorance and fragmentation of ourselves... and away from truth, understanding, love, compassion, and integration. And it becomes a cycle that perpetuates itself because we get caught up in patterns of judgment, ignorance, demonization, hatred, scapegoating, etc. instead of addressing the problems in an effective way. The fact of the matter is that, at our core, ever single thing in the universe is whole, innocent, and loving. And it is only ignorance and suffering that lead to a fragmentation and mangling of what is purely benevolent and loving. And if we label someone as monstrous "to their core", it is ignorant because it is totally antithetical to the truth of unconditional love that undergirds all things. And it causes us to go into a state of ignorance, judgment, fragmentation, and shame as we judge the other person as evil. And we become "evil" in our ignorance.

I have done 5 out of the 7 of my Ayahuasca journeys at an Ayahuasca church. But the Ayahuasca church had facilitators that have learned from shamans, but who aren't shamans themselves.

It's okay to call out someone's behavior as harmful as that is an accurate descriptive label that a person can actually reflect on and work on. And it's even okay to stop people from engaging in harmful behavior through setting very firm boundaries and systems of justice that discourage people from engaging in harmful behavior. All of these are part of wise discernment, justice, and boundary setting. And you can get a person to reflect on their actions far better by calling them "harmful" than calling them "evil". And that's because "harmful" is a practical realistic label that is reflective of reality, while "evil" is a moral label that is ambiguous and implies something fundamentally shameful and bad about someone's nature. When we label someone as evil, we tend to see evil as its own cause. And we paper over the root cause of those "evil" actions. And it cuts us off from unconditional compassion towards ourselves and others. And at that point, all root causes are unconscious to us... and all we can do is to try to defeat and eradicate evil... which makes us behave in an evil way. That's the trick. The second we say the word evil, we become evil and perpetuate evil. So, I don't use the word evil to describe anyone or anything unless I'm specifically talking about evil as a concept. And when we start labeling out the world in terms of the paradigm of good and evil, this is where the Devil gets us... and we feel shame. And we either internalize that shame and feel like we are evil. Or we externalize it and name off others as the evil-doers... which has led to all sorts of wars, genocides, murder, the crusades, medieval torture, etc. This is what happens when we believe in evil. If we believe in the paradigm of good and evil (because of a deeply engrained human bias to see ourselves as good) we start to believe that we are the "good ones" fighting the "evil ones". And this causes us to be "evil." In the Genesis story, that is precisely why the Devil tempted Adam and Eve eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. He knew that getting them to see the world through the moralistic lens of good and evil, would produce shame in them and cast them out of the garden... and that everything would become split apart (to Devil means to split in two, so he is responsible in this story for humanity's moralistic dualistic thinking). And this is the original sin for that reason. And it is the MOST important sin to avoid. That's why it's very unwise to start labeling other people (or ourselves) out as evil as it gets into the realm of moralism, judgment, shame, scapegoating, hatred, etc. and all the evil and ignorance that comes as a result. Instead, stick with practical realistic and descriptive understandings of pure non-judgmental discernment... like "x behavior creates y result." "Do I want y result? Yes or no?" My ethical compass is simple.... do your best to cause as little harm as possible. And this is plenty enough to discern which actions to take without the need to get into judgment and labels of good and evil. I made a video about this called "The Most Dangerous Archetype" where I talk all about the issue with operating through the lens of good and evil...

@Joshe This strongly described me back in my teen years. I held a really strong contrarian way of being because self-differentiation had been one of my more effective strategies to (on the positive side) embrace my weirdness and cope with feelings of alienation. As a child, I really felt like an alien trying to figure out how to pass as a human... and constantly failing at it and being ridiculed for failing at it. And embracing my differences and leaning into them heavily was the only thing that ended up working. And as a teenager, I really found my place with people who appreciated my weirdness. So, I started feeling like extraordinariness and divergence was an unquestioned good. And there was a strong judgment towards those who are mainstream... because it was more comfortable to feel like I was rejecting the mainstream... instead of the mainstream rejecting me. And what arose from this was a very strong fear of being ordinary and blending in with the crowd, which manifested in increased fears of aging and becoming more average. And when I felt average, averageness didn't feel like I was enough. It reminded me of trying to conform to normalcy as a child and failing. Then, in my 20s, I really started to recognize the shadowier side of contrarian thinking especially when people were against good popular things (like the ice bucket challenge for ALS)... and I soured on empty contrarianism. Yet, I still felt this underlying sense of differentiation based off of "not being the type that falls into empty contrarianism nor the type that falls into patterns of conformity." The tendency to slice myself away from the crowd was still there, but I had just started to see empty contrarians as "a part of the crowd that doesn't even know they're part of the crowd." But in my recognition of this, there was a pride in being different and not falling into patterns that so many people fall into. So, these Shadow patterns have a way of becoming sneakier and more subtle as you grow and mature. So, I was still looking to differentiate and separate myself. I had just dropped the more overt symptom of reflexive contrarianism because I saw the "ordinary human foolishness" in it. So, I was still carving myself out from everything else and seeing myself as separate and differentiated from the world. But in one of my Ayahuasca ceremonies, it brought me back and forth between two states. One was my usual polarization into extraordinariness to the exclusion of ordinariness... and it was showing me how disconnected I was from everything. And it really emphasized how cut off it was making me. Then, it re-integrated me with ordinariness, and I felt so deeply intertwined with humanity, nature, and the universe at large because I saw the sameness in myself to all other elements of the universe. I was not distinct from anyone or anything at the core. And all this existential pressure was removed from me. And it brought me back and forth between the state of polarization into extraordinariness and the state of integration with ordinariness. And ordinariness was always a huge fear. But in this, it was everything I'd ever wanted to feel and the entire reason I was trying to differentiate myself in the first place. But of course, these coping patterns run deep. So, even in my realization of the value of ordinariness, I can use that as a means to differentiate myself because "Look how uniquely wise I am to understand this when most people don't."

From the "shucking the bearded clams" comment earlier, I'm sure your sexting game is EPIC... Like "Madam, would you like to ride the bony pony?"

There is a strong sense of social cohesion that comes from being on the same team and fighting a common enemy together. It's a wartime bonding strategy that makes the bond feel much deeper, because it is a necessary level of care for the other members of your team when you're at war. It's the same bonding strategy that people feel with other fans of their favorite sports team, who get to 'boo' the opposing sports team together. And collectively believing conspiracy theories (the bigoted ones and the non-bigoted ones) is actually a pretty effective to produce a kind of social bonding effect. It sets up an enemy other (i.e. the government, the Hollywood elites, SJWs, Jewish people, NASA, the Illuminati, Feminists, etc.) to band together against. I used to enjoy conspiracy theories as a teenager, during the Bush years... back before I saw how most conspiracy theories devolve into things like scapegoating certain minorities. I thought they were pretty harmless. And my friends and I would smoke weed and start pontificating about all the wild conspiracies that the government was involved in... and how they were hiding things about Ancient Egypt and aliens. And I even had this pet conspiracy theory that I'd cooked up that human beings are half alien and half ape, and that the government is hiding this from us. And it was SOOO much fun! And we really bonded over the common enemy... the Bush administration and the government more generally.... or just a vague sense of a nebulous "they" that are trying to pull the wool over our eyes... but we know better. And this is a very common bonding strategy in little rural towns where people are fairly powerless to the powers that be. Now, it was all a bunch of hogwash. That's very clear in retrospect. And if I was honest with myself then, deep down I didn't believe these conspiracy theories either. Back then, I would have totally jumped on the flat Earth idea... not because I believe it but because I wanted there to be some secret organization of people Truman Showing us all so that my friends and I could figure it out together and reveal it all. Now, if we wanted a real conspiracy to focus on, we'd just have to educate ourselves a little bit on boring run-of-the-mill corruption in the government and the private sector. But it was so much more exciting to fight against a collective of two-dimensional comic book villains. But when it comes to the situation in Israel, I have been specifically avoiding watching too much about it because it's depressing and I don't have much I can do about it. It's just a matter of finding out what's happening there and knowing the facts... and having a consistent ethical framework like "murdering civilians is bad and should be avoided." And that's the problem with Piers and Dan B. Neither of them are operating off of a consistent ethical framework that "murdering civilians is bad and should be avoided." Instead, one is team-Israel and the other is team-Neo-Nazi... and they are biased towards their teams. So, it's "If my side murders civilians, it's fine. But if their side murders civilians, it's bad." They are deeply biased in the ways they apply their ethical frameworks. So, if we agree that murdering civilians is bad that both Hamas and the Israeli government have done bad things (which is an understatement). But if we look at the scale with which each group is murdering innocent civilians, Israel has killed more innocent civilians than Hamas has as a percentage and as a raw number by a wide margin. And Hamas is rightly called a terrorist group... except for Neo Nazis who are terrorism apologists if it's someone that's attacking Jewish people. But because of people's biases towards Israel and against the Palestinians, the murder of innocent civilians is being seen as justified and as "Israel's right to defend itself." But the Israeli government is murdering 90%+ civilians... most of them women and children. So really, if you want to be un-biased yourself, the number one advice that I can give you is to get clear on your ethical framework and apply that standard the same way to everyone. And don't pick sides, just stay on the side of your ethical framework and evaluate the Israel/Gaza situation based off of your ethical framework.

It can suck for young men. But that's mostly because of how society is structured to disincentivize social connection. And many men hold views that cause them to be hyper-independent and feel like they "shouldn't need anyone". And there are lots of ideologies that discourage men from being themselves. And they instead have to try to imitate the idea of what a strong man is in order to fit in. And the strong man is strong, stoic, independent, self-sufficient, and doesn't whine about things. He just gets on with it. He is the lone wolf that walks through the world with perfect resolve, and without any desire or need to lick his own wounds. And therein lies the problem. If someone is pretty good at matching up to these standards (like my client is), it leaves no outlet for vulnerability, pain, venting, reaching out for help, sadness, or getting any kind of sympathy. And that's why so many men are looking for sympathy through societal grievances and complaints, like in your post about society sucking for young men. And they may even find relief and a space to complain and revel in Victim's Mentality by scapegoating certain people and groups. But in the example that I gave, my client even acknowledged that he's in a very good situation across the board. His life is genuinely enviable in many ways, and he is aware of this. So, this pattern isn't coming from any real lack. It's coming from him denying himself of a need to express vulnerability because his paradigm is one that finds weakness repulsive. And he is not allowing himself to connect with that part of himself and meet those needs. So, his vulnerability is coming out in the form of grievances, and in these more bitter and unconscious ways.

He's always given me right wing vibes. But that's most men who are popular in today's independent media landscape. Yet again, it could just be a branding decision so that he can be part of the club.

It's unfortunate how common this pattern is of so many people (especially young men) falling into these right wing radicalization pipelines. And it's definitely a mixture of the propaganda, and a desire to fit in... plus whatever emotional vulnerabilities are at play that make Fascism feel correct and satisfying. It just shows how vulnerable people are to this kind of pattern. Now, the difficulty with the Piers Morgan interview is that Dan Bilzerian is saying a few true things about the Israeli government... and using those few true things about the Israeli government to justify his anti-Jewish terrorism apologia, antisemitism, and Neo-Nazi holocaust denial rhetoric. And then Piers Morgan is arguing back with perspectives that are biased towards the Israeli government that diminish the war crimes the Israeli government has levied towards the Palestinian people... and to see the Israeli government as totally innocent and Hamas as the only problem (despite the Israeli government displacing millions and slaughtering 100k+ Palestine civilians, mostly women and children). So, it's two genocide apologists arguing with one another... one who seems to believes there should be a genocide against Jewish people... and the other who seems to believe that Jewish people should be allowed to commit genocide against the Palestinian people. Really, both perspectives are highly unconscious because neither are actually ideological opposed to genocide... and I don't agree with either of them.