Forestluv

A good example of seeking confirmation bias. If you typed “Blm for social justice and equality”, that would push a mind outside it’s contracted bias - yet there would also be the discomfort of dissonance which the mind will resist.

@Thought Art You seem to be using value judgements of “worse” and “better” and that higher up the spiral is “better”. There is immense value in stage purple tribal cultures. For example, we can learn a lot of healthy things about socializing children, being part of a community, valuing wisdom and developing intuition skills. Traditional blue-orange centered cultures have a lot to learn about purple. There are also limitations and unhealthy aspects to purple. Leo covers this well in his purple video.

@Gidiot That sounds like a great ideal to me. I would be curious what it would be like to live in such a world without gender constructs. To me, that isn’t the reality of what’s actually occurring. It seems there are gender construct norms and negative consequences for moving outside those norms. To me, that’s unfortunate - yet something we need to work with. At this time, I don’t think most people are able to fully transcend gender constructs and take a detached meta view. My preference is not to eliminate all gender constructs. I would prefer to eliminate all attachments and identifications to them. I think gender constructs and experiencing them is fascinating and amazing. I would actually like to see more genders arise. I see it like experiencing foods. If society only had two flavors of food - salty or sugary food - and everyone had to choose one, it would be boring. Yet rather eliminate tastes, I would want to expand and transcend. I would like to see more tastes we can experience - all sorts of new tastes and textures to be explored and enjoyed. I’ve traveled around the world and experienced so many forms of food, it’s amazing and a great part of life. Similarly, I think it would be amazing to explore and create gender. It’s the attachment and identification, marginalization, stigmatization etc. I’d like to see dropped. To me, losing genders altogether would make the world more bland - just like if we lost all tastes and all food was bland soggy corn flakes. ? I like to make a distinction between the attachment/identification to the ISness and the ISness itself. You say you like to hear about people’s experiences, yet we need some form of language to communicate that experience. There is a difference between eliminating the attachment/identification to an experience and eliminating the experience itself. I’d love to see 100 forms of gender experience we can all freely experience and communicate. Just like I’d love to see 100 flavors of ice cream we can all freely experience and communicate. It’s the attachement/identification to ice cream flavors, not the ice cream flavors themselves that cause conflict.

I’ve found “attraction rather than promotion” to work best. If I act aligned to self-actualization and personal development, some people may be attracted to that, others not. For example, if a friend asks me “What did you do this weekend?” And I reply “I tried a new form of meditation and got some cool insights I journaled about. Would you like to hear about it?”. I can also express the positive impacts self-=actualization / PD has had on my life - the greater peace, joy, wisdom etc. If they have interest, great. If not, great. They may have no interest and want to play video games. Likewise, if a friend comes to me for my opinion on a life issue - I may share some of my experience in self-actualization or PD that I found helpful. Perhaps they are interested, perhaps not. Yet it doens’t go over to well when I start trying to convince someone that they need and should do self-actualization / PD work. I’ve met many people that I thought would benefit with introspective work. People with issues holding them back and making them miserable. I had good intentions, yet they just weren’t interested - they didn’t want to venture into that realm. I’ve never been able to force someone into it.

This is exactly opposite of cultural programming. Nearly 100% of cultural programming is toward cis-gender. Identifying as transgender or ninbinary goes against the prevalent cultural programming. Currently, no culture programs children to be trans or nonbinary. My niece was born biologically female. She was not culturally conditioned to identify as a boy and behave as a boy. She was culturally conditioned that she is a girl. As a young teenager, she is realizing that she does not relate to the cultural conditioning and expectations placed upon her as girl-ness. She relates more to the cultural construct called “boy-ness”. When she came out and no longer expressed herself as a girl, there was extreme cultural backlash - because she (now he) is acting against the cultural norms, programming and expectations. The backlash became so severe that his parents pulled him from public school to homeschool him and he is seeing a psychologist - not so much for the gender confusion - he needs a psychologist more to deal with the cultural marginalization and stigmatization he is subjected to. Again, this is exactly backwards. The problem cultural conditioning, expectations and enforcement against one’s identity. As well as the marginalization, stigmatization and abuse that goes with that. To understand this dynamic, image society forced you to act against your identity. If you identify as a male, imagine society said that due to the length ratio of your finger : thumb, that you are actually a woman. You are now expected to behave like a woman. You must dress like a woman, speak like a woman, call yourself a woman, use the women’s restroom, wear make-up, have sex with men etc. If you are not acting woman enough, you will be subjected to ridicule and abuse. You will lose your job and be harassed. If you try to express that you don’t identify as a woman, you will be told to be quiet and stop playing a victim. That would likely be a miserable life for you because it goes against your true nature of how to relate within a culture. Another option is to dissolve all gender constructs such that there is no gender. This is happening, to an extent, with many forms of nonbinary arising. I think there are now 14 distinct nonbinary categories. That will loosen up the traditionally strict binary gender constructs of male or female. Yet having gender distinctions has practical value in society and is part of the human experience. I suppose one day they can all be transcended such that there is complete fluidity and no gender concept his identified with tightly, yet that would be a long way off, imo.

Justification and denial are common ways the mind tries to reduce the discomfort of cognitive dissonance. It can be shocking how far the mind will go.

@Knowledge Consider the distinction between direct experience and a contextualized experience. Why do you trust that now is now? Why do you trust that ISness is ISness?

What do you think of non-violent civil disobedience and disruptions?

This thread has run it's course.

How would you consider a leftist that would have voted for Bernie, yet is now voting green party?

This is a main difference between democratic socialists and leftist socialists / communists. Democratic socialists want to introduce socialist policies and remove toxic capitalism within existing governmental systems. They would prefer some rapid radical changes, yet can settle for incremental progress. Leftist socialists / communists want a revolution to dismantle existing capitalist systems and create a new socialist / communist system. They are not satisfied with incremental progress - and distrust those who call for incremental change. I would resonate more with democratic socialists. Vote Trump out, put pressure on Biden, elect progressives and try to form a viable 3rd party. Hopefully in 10 years there will be a power shift toward progressives shifting toward more socialist policies (green) and less toxic captialism (organge) in a socialist / capitalist hybrid system (yellow). Yet I can also see how untenable the current level of wealth inequality, corporate corruption and suffering is. Imagine an incompetent government have caused millions of evicted Americans to be homeless on one side of the street looking at vacant apartments / houses on the other side of the street. Law enforcement prevents the homeless from entering the empty apartments / houses, while trillions of tax payer dollars make billionaires richer. That system is rotten to the core. I can see it collapsing unless real action are taken. Greed for money and power goes deep. It can get much worse.

That's falling down low, yet there is still much further to fall. If a society is still able to elect which sexual predator they prefer in a fair election, there are still shreds of democracy left. There may be lots of corruption and unethical behavior, yet there is still some democracy.

Joe has some issues with personal boundaries and can enter inappropriate zones with touching, yet put things in context. Joe’s physical contact is often related to empathy and caring, not creepy sexual desires. The below video is full of contact in which one can take a single frame and contextualize it as a creepy predator. Yet consider the larger context. In the video below, Joe is introduced to a boy that is struggling with a stutter. The kid has been bullied and has low self esteem. Joe has also also struggled his whole life with a stutter. Joe shows empathy and compassion for the kid. Joe shares his experience and tries to empower the kid to overcome his stutter. Did Joe go too far with physical contact? Perhaps, yet also consider it in the larger context.

That is similar to what Cornel West is saying. He knows the problems and danger of neoliberal / corporate Dems. Remove Trump and then put pressure on Biden on Biden. If Biden and neoliberal/corporate Dems don’t budge, then start primarying them with left progressives. Cornel will be the keynote speaker for a new grassroots People’s Party that is emerging. I think this is putting healthy left wing pressure on Biden. Yet Cornel also says to vote for Biden to first remove Trump. To me, Kyle goes beyond simply criticizing Biden and revealing how damaging neoliberalism / corporatism can be. Kyle seems to go into demonization and damaging Biden. My impression is he wants radical change and can’t stand the thought of incremental change within more neoliberal corporate plutocracy.

@FlowerNote If everything is imaginary, then there is no longer any thing imaginary or non-imaginary. . . There would be nothing to contrast imaginary with and that concept would collapse.

At 1:25:10 into the video, Leo talks about how a closed-mind sees itself as open. For example, a religious fundamentalist will say that they are very open-minded and their beliefs are based on evidence. I re-watched the video today and posted Leo's opening Aristotle quote on my FB page: "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." And guess what?. . . Lots of people "liked" it and shared it. This includes people that have various ideologies. Both Trumpers and anti-Trumpers. People that I consider closed-minded in some areas. Everyone likes to have the self image that they are open-minded and their views are based on open-minded, objective reasoning. One comment to the Aristotle quote came from a member of my family that is an exclusive FoxNews watcher that I consider to be relatively closed-minded. "Always listen with an open mind. You never know when you might hear an option you hadn’t thought of before. PS: By the way, listening means just that. Replying in an aggressive manner is not listening." Interesting how she sees herself as being an open-minded listener. And she threw in some right-wing victim mentality for good measure. She doesn't like it when people challenge her ideology. Update: at 1:330:20 Leo talks about how ideology is like a castle and the moat around the castle is closed-mindedness to protect the castle. Notice how the above person saw those with truth as aggressive attackers to her ideological castle.

With the COVID crisis, anti-capitalism and pro-socialism sentiment is growing stronger. The below video describes a national “General Strike” being planned in an effort raise awareness of toxic capitalism and wound corporate plutocracy.

Biden does not appeal to the left. The left will be voting against Trump. Most on the left will vote for Biden as the “lesser of two evils”. Progressives are not voting *for* Biden because he is appealing. Biden is making a play for the middle and disgruntled moderate Republicans, such as in the Lincoln project. So far, it looks like the strategy is working in terms of winning the election. Biden also has the support of MSM such as CNN and MSNBC. They are very gentle with him and don’t criticize him much. There is very little enthusiasm Biden. Bernie had much more enthusiasm with his supporters. He was the only candidate drawing massive high energy crowds, which would have likely increased during the COVID and racial crises. Yet Bernie was not popular with mainstream neoliberals, capitalists, corporatists, MSM. He was very threatening to the status quo. In this scenario, it would be average centrist Americans deciding between the “lesser of two evils”. In terms of SD: Trump is red/blue ; Biden is orange ; Bernie is Green. The American populace ranges red to green is probably centered at Orange.

An old homeless man speaking Green

My impressions: In the U.S., Russians are low on the racism scale. If someone with Russian heritage was raised in America, they would blend in as white. Even a new immigrant with a Russian accent wouldn’t move the racism needle much. There might just be a vague sense of “other-ism”. One would need to be overtly pro-Russia and/or anti-American to crank up the racism. White racists in America are too busy being racist against blacks, Latinos and Muslims to be bothered by Russians. I think most white racists would in-group Russians with white Europeans.

Today would have been Michael’s 37th birthday. Here was Michael quoting a man he highly admired:

Mature stage green is a sweet spot for psychedelics. They can learn more in one trip than I could teach them in a year.