Forestluv

You are not seeing nuances here. The “democratic state” position is too simplified. I’m not sure if you are from the United States, yet you don’t seem to have an understanding of how government works in the U.S. For example, I live in one of the states you would probably refer to as a “Democratic State with appalling crime”. I’m sure you would say the crime in Detroit is appalling and the riots in Grand Rapids was appalling. So, let’s walk through it. My state generally votes for a Democrat in presidential elections. The state also leans toward electing Democratic U.S. senators. So at the federal level, you would consider it a “democratic state”. However, the state level is very different. The state cycles back and forth between democratic and republican governors. However all the state legislatures are DOMINATED by republicans. They always have full control of all state legislatures. Both the state House and state Senate. At times, they have supermajorities and can override a governor veto. The state has been heavily gerrymandered to favor republicans. I live in a district that is centered two hours away from me on the other side of the state! The republicans drew a lil’ itty bitty line to pull some democrats in my old district into a safe republican district. So now, rather than the districts being split Dem and Rep, they are both Rep. . . As well, there is leadership at local levels, such as city councils and majors. So, is the “absurd crime” in my state because its a “Democratic State”? Pinning blame on individuals such as “fatherless households” will not solve the larger problem. That is a lazy, myopic view. It is only one piece of a larger puzzle. If you want to deepen and expand your understanding, read a wider variety of sociology and political science, not just the stuff that supports your world view. To say that “America was better of in the 1950s” is again a myopic conservative view. For example, go learn about the Jim Crow laws of that era. In terms of “government handouts” and “socialism” you have a very contracted conservative view. If you would like to expand your understanding, I would recommend listening to Anand Giridharadas.

Imagine a null void and the first distinction. We might say square appears. Yet that square has many distinctions. The color of it is a distinction. Each line is a distinction. It’s depth is a distinction. Even a single line has many distinctions. A single dot has many distinctions. It’s difficult to create one single distinction within a null void. The human mind takes for granted how many distinctions it can easily create without even noticing.

I look at it very differently. I look at it in in terms of how revealing and insightful it is. For example, the INP describes my personality patterns reality well. I a lot of it I already knew. For example, I already knew that I tend to be introverted and I don’t like structure and planning. This can be helpful information for a good career. As well, as I’ve looked deeper, more insights about my natural skills can be revealed as well as areas I could use improvement - if I choose. For example, yesterday I read an article about introverted intuition and extroverted intuition. Both types are very good at seeing the big picture and making connections. I already knew that about myself, yet hadn’t made finer distinctions. The author described a distinction using an analogy of two different people walking in nature. The first person has introverted intuition. They notice bees flying around and they start making connections in a bigger picture. Yet they do so internally. They take in a few details in their actual surroundings and then create introvertedly. For example, we could see the bees interacting as a society and create imagery about how a bee society is similar to a human society. We could observe the hierarchical structure of bee society and compare/contrast that with human society. With introverted intuition, the mind only grabs a few of the details here and now. The mind is half here and half not here. In contrast, extroverted intuition is very externally-focused. It will notice the bees and start making connections. Yet rather making connections in abstract ideas, it will make connections here and now. It will see how the bees interact with the actual flowers here and now. How the bees interact with other insects in the flower. How flower pollen gets dispersed. How the wind interacts with the pollen. It makes connections between details here and now. I hadn’t considered these two forms of big picture thinking. I’m more oriented toward introverted intuition and just assumed that’s what big picture, systemic thinking is. Yet MBTI revealed to me that there is another form of big picture / connecting dots in an extroverted form. This is not my natural skill, yet is something I would like to develop. So over the past couple of days, when I am out in nature, I’ve been working to use my natural skill of big picture / connecting dots / integration to what is actually occurring here and now (and not “out there”). I need to work on the being present in actuality part. This is an example of how MBTI can be revealing and useful. All this talk about wether it’s scientific is a distraction, imo.

What I am getting at is the lens the mind perceives through. It doesn’t matter if we are talking about crime, football or scuba diving. Notice how the mind keeps framing questions and interpretations to maintain a particular worldview. A mind that has been conditioned with a belief structure and is attached/identified with those beliefs will have a much harder time deepening/broadening understanding. If the topic here was about relations between the Quechua and Incan people in South America, the discussion would be very different because your mind hasn’t been conditioned with any beliefs about the Quechua and Incans. You don’t have any attachments or identifications to being Quechua or Incan. There is no desire to maintain any particular Quechua or Incan view or lifestyle. This allows space and fluidity to deepen/broaden understanding.

@aklacor727 It’s best to not to post on the forum while tripping. Have a wonderful trip and let us know how it goes afterwards.

The unfair part is a major issue for those on the wrong side of the unfairness, yet not so much for people that are insulated from the unfairness. For example, my parents are insulated from the unfairness. They are white upper-middle class that live in a safe affluent neighboorhood in a safe affluent town. Imagine that a cop in NYC is caught planting drugs on a black youth in an inner city. My parents would see this as wrong and that the cop shouldn’t have done it. Yet to my parents, it’s something “out there”. They have the perspective of watching a TV show from a safe distance. It doesn’t affect them. They would probably even soften the crime with things like “well, the kid probably did a crime anyway and law enforcement needed the drugs for a conviction by a liberal judge. The cop shouldn’t have done it, yet I can see why he would”. . .Or “maybe it was a misunderstanding. The cop may have seized drugs from another person and mixed them up”. They would be quick to make excuses for a cop committing a crime, yet slow to make excuses for a black youth committing a crime. As well, they would be quick to accept any excuse the police give, yet very skeptical of any excuse black youths give. This situation would be perceived very differently by people that actually live in that inner city neighboorhood. Being a noncriminal and getting stopped and frisked as a target of “The War on Drugs” is bad enough, yet if a cop planted drugs on a community member and got away with it - that elevates things to a whole nother level. It breaks the social contract of trust and creates a highly toxic dynamic between police and community members.

In terms of demographics, it’s not so much about “democratic states”. It’s more about rural vs urban and why uban areas are locally in democratic hands. For example, Georgia is conservative republican at the state level and very conservative republican in rural areas. Yet urban areas, like Atlanta, are democratic. Georgia has conservative republicans at the state level and more liberal democrats at the urban level. Urban areas are liberal (democrats) than rural areas, because they are far more complex. Conservatives would be much worse in managing urban areas. It’s not fair to criticize urban problems as being democrat, since it would be worse under conservative (republican) management. There is a reason Trump’s rhetoric and actions are inflaming urban tensions. He has a conservative mindset of the 1960s and that isn’t going to work within urban areas in the 2020s. It would be like a janitor criticizing a calculus professor when his student’s perform poorly on a national math exam. It could be that the calculus professor is average and needs improvement, yet it would be silly for a janitor to take over the job. For the calculus professor to improve, he needs constructive criticism from above, not from below.

@Onemanwolfpac It is U.S. law that immigrants are allowed to approach the boarder and seek asylum in the U.S. However, there are children that have been separated from their parents and are kept in cages. These children are are undergoing extreme trauma right now. These families have approached the boarder and legally seeking asylum. They have done nothing wrong. Stripping children away from their parents and imprisoning them in cages to discourage other asylum seekers is stage red behavior. Calling it “FakeNews” or turning a blind eye is being complicit and enabling stage red behavior. For society to evolve higher, it is important for stage blue and higher to be aware of stage red behavior and call it out as inappropriate and unacceptable. Masking or minimizing it allows the behavior to continue. Corporate welfare is much larger than poverty welfare. The so-called CARES act just gave corporate bigwigs 4 trillion dollars worth of leveraged money with no accountability. Meanwhile back at the ranch, regular people got a measly $1,200 stimulus check as unemployment skyrockets. Indeed, free shit for corporate billionaires is not helping.

To me you seem locked in to a small subset of aspects. Notice how you keep framing the issue to align with your view and saying I can see observe all the pieces. That is not a curious mind. That is a mind trying to maintain a particular view. It’s up to you if you want to maintain the boundaries of that view or if you want to go beyond your edges. There are pros and cons with each.

That’s not what I’m referring to. You are not seeing this systematically.

If a mind focuses on one piece of the puzzle, the mind will only see that one piece of the puzzle. If the mind is attached/identified to that piece and defends that piece, it will not be able to see or understand other pieces. It will create a “my piece” vs. “not my piece” mindset. It’s your choice wether you want to be a one-piece guy or if you want to see how pieces fit together.

This is a poor frame, imo. Consider another frame: imagine a running race in which 95% of blue-eyed people have to run with 30 kilo backpacks. And then consider the statement: “A person told me that blue-eyed people run slower than brown-eyed people. Can someone show me statistics that show blue-eyed people are running as fast as brown-eyed people?”. This frame is also incomplete, yet it offers another view of the system.

@Winny Right now, there are impulses of foot pain arising and there are impulses of bird chirps arising. What needs to happen for the foot pain impulses to be “mine” and the bird chirp impulses to be “not mine”?

No meaning = suffering Absence of meaning = freedom

A couple thoughts come to mind: You might want to spend more time and practice as the witness. What you describe as “I” is a witness to what you describe as “the separate self”. It seems like there is a desire to move toward the “I” witness and reduce immersion into the “separate self”. . . One way to do this is to consider this “separate self” as a character that appears. Sometimes we need to play the character to function in life, for example when we are at work or interacting with family. As well, there can be patterns that appear related to the character. For example, the body may feel like or dislike for certain types of foods, activities, people etc. . . I would keep returning to that witness awareness and notice when the mind becomes immersed into the character. As well, it’s helpful to spendi time doing things in which the character is unnecessary. Notice all the inputs in your life which re-enforces this character. There are hundreds of inputs daily. Get some space from that. For example, if you go for a hike in nature, the character isn’t needed. You don’t need to play the character of your life in nature. You can simply observe and be in nature. I’d also be mindful of the ego’s tendency to take ownerships of this witness as the new “me”. There can be new identification that “I” am some type of higher witness to this lower self I’d like to get rid of. This can create a “good self” vs. “bad self” dynamic which is all “self”.

Reduce the dose, don’t add in alcohol or weed. The wee prior to the trip, get grounded with things like meditation. Contemplate the questions and desires you would like to explore. Create a safe, peaceful setting for the trip. Afterwards, give your mind and body time and space to process, integrate and embody the realizations. This can be done in many ways: spending time in nature, contemplating, journaling, creating. . . It can also be helpful to communicate with experienced people that you resonate with. For example, my early trips revealed aspects of nonduality that I couldn’t make sense of. My mind was making up all sorts of stories to make sense of it. It felt unstable. One thing that helped was to watch nonduality speakers that had a lot of experience. As well, going in nature and just observing without all the figuring it out. Yet that’s just me. Someone else may have revelations about creativity during a trip and resonate with an experienced artist that explains how to unlock inner creativity. To me, it sounds like you have some intuition, feelings and a calling arising. I would get in touch with that and try not to get distracted by the background thinking noise. Thoughts can be insightful, yet they can also be noise of distraction.

Lots of ESFJ going on here ?

Below is a quote by a white sports journalist that grew up in Mississippi. It highlights the power of social conditioning, subconscious selective awareness and the inability to see another perspective. The debate of the confederate flag in south has been going on for decades, and this individual had an “enlightening moment” yesterday. Also notice the relativity of an “enlightening moment”. It was an “enlightening moment” for him, yet totally obvious to many other people that have been screaming it for decades. ”On Thursday morning, staring up at the confederate flag, I had an enlightening moment. In my youth, I spent years attending functions within its bowels—music concerts, Mardi Gras balls, monster truck events—but I’d never noticed the flag flapping overhead. Had it always been there? Why hadn’t I seen it? What’s wrong with me? I felt a moment of guilt. The flag has never meant much to me. My family never really embraced it. The image was scant inside their homes. While the flag means nothing to me, it generates feelings for others: fear, hatred and terror, a reminder of men who fought for the wrong reasons, and that includes my own great great great grandfather, a private in Louisiana’s 18th Regiment Volunteer Infantry. In my disregard for the flag as nothing more than assorted colors on thin fabric, I failed to realize the significance it holds for my minority neighbors. And maybe that’s rooted in this place I call home.” Also notice the attitude of “Gosh, how would anyone know?”. As if there was a super secret coded message that he became aware of. . . . It’s like someone living in a city with a large mural of a jungle painted on a building. There is a large tree frog in the mural. A man passes by it everyday. Hundreds of people have pointed the tree frog out to him. The tree frog is discussed in newspapers and cable news. Festivals highlight the tree frog. Politicians, athletes, musicians and movie stars all around him comment about the tree frog. Dozens of people have stopped him on his way to work to discuss the tree frog. . . After 20 years of this, the man has an “enlightening moment” in which he realizes there is a tree frog in the mural. He is so astounded by this that he uses his platform as a journalist to write an article to let people know there is a tree frog in the mural and he can now see it. . .

A few years ago, I went white water rafting in Alaska. Before we started, the rafting guide told us that he will be giving us instructions during the trip. He told us he is an expert and to simply follow the instructions without analyzing them. This would help us let go and get into the zone of white water rafting. . . Sure enough, he was right. His words of guidance such as “Left back!!,” allowed me to let go and fully immerse myself into what was happening Now.

For whatever reason you imagine.

I’m not sure of the statistics, yet I’d imagine that the majority of people that go through the prison system in the U.S. come out more messed up than when they entered. My understanding is that it is generally an abusive environment that breaks people down. I think movement more toward rehabilitation, learning and growth would be a better environment. Yet then again, I haven’t had to work in a prison system with criminals. I don’t know how feasible my good intentions of rehabilitation and growth would actually work.

I think it depends on the job and the degree of emotional breakdown. Some professions can handle emotional instability better than others. For a UFC fighter, emotional instability could actually be a good thing. It can be entertaining for fans and sell more tickets. Yet for a neurosurgeon, emotional instability is bad. We want neurosurgeons to be stable while performing surgery on people’s brains. I also think there is a certain amount of “keeping it together” that we all need to do to do our job. People go through breakups, divorces, have car accidents, pets die, loved ones in the hospital etc. and need to go to work. Everyone has some degree of difficulty in life we need to deal with as we continue working. While working, they need to try to set it aside the distress for a bit. Yet there are also times in which people need extra some relief time. Last week, one of my colleagues lost her husband to Covid. That is a extreme hardship. If she needs some time off to emotionally recover, she should get it. Yet if she lost her cat, she probably wouldn’t be given time off. Policing is a particularly difficult job. It’s not like they are a car mechanic. The stakes are much higher with policing. I would place “mental fitness” for a job in a separate category than emotional episodes. I write a lot of evaluation letters for pre-med students. One of the sections involves mental fitness. If a student is highly anti-social, manipulative, emotionally hyper-sensitive, prone to anger outbursts etc., they will not score well in this section. It doesn’t matter if they have a 4.0 gpa. There comes a point in which the person is not mentally fit enough to do the job well.

Some do, yet I don’t know exactly how it works. I’ve heard after a number of years without repeat offense some get masked from employers. And I don’t know if employers have access to all crimes - like if a DUI would show up. I’ve know people with minor infractions that were able to pass employer background checks. At my institution, ever person hired has to go through a background check performed by an independent party. We don’t know how far it goes back, what they have access to or what is in the report. I think only a couple people high up in my institution see it. We are only told that the person passed the check and are now a new employee.

I had a friend who was a pilot in the US coast guard. At one point, she went through a really hard breakup, which included stalking, and a bunch of childhood abuse issues came up. The coast guard “grounded” her from flying her plane. Yet not as punishment. She just wasn’t fit to fly her plane. They switched her to an office job and she got therapy. To me, it seemed like a supportive environment and she was able to fly again after a year. I think they key in this situation was they didn’t shame, stigmatize or marginalize her. Similar to a soldier with ptsd, shame, stigmatization and ostracization make matters worse. A police officer’s job is also highly stressful. They should be getting breaks and free counseling to help prevent nervous breakdowns and burnout. And perhaps they can rotate between relatively high stress and low stress duties. Yet culture is a important to. A cop that sees a counselor shouldn’t be shameD or stigmatized for being weak. It should be seen as a normal thing. I’ve noticed that in many areas of the U.S. there is a shame and minor stigmatization for seeing a psychologist. Seeing a “life coach” is fine. Yet a lot of people think seeing a psychologist means “there is something wrong with you”, especially for men. I know a lot of people that keep it a secret. Regarding interrogations in which police officers unskillfully tried to impose their will and get a suspect to talk. They try to badger the person and break them down. Yet a different approach is with some sociopaths and mentally ill - it would be better for a detective or psychologist with training in criminal minds to do the interrogation. A good example is the interrogation with the guy who kidnapped Elizabeth Smart. The guy likely had some derangement, yet he also knew what was going on and was playing with the cops. The police interrogators were being being reasonable and trying to force the guy to have a reasonable conversation and the guy kept playing them. After about an hour,, the cop became frustrated and started screaming at him. I think a detective or psychologist trained In criminal minds could have had more success in playing this game.