Carl-Richard

A reformed New Ager 😄 I want tradition, community and wisdom back.

Generally that is neither here nor there, but some subsets of it don't, like Neo Advaita or contemporary non-duality in general (as regularly seen on YouTube): Eckhart Tolle, Mooji, Ram Dass, Rupert Spira, Adyashanti, are a few examples.

I also struggled with maths and physics in high school, but I was also struggling with pretty severe anxiety, which severely limits your cognitive functioning. After I mostly got rid of those problems (about a year or so after high school), my math and physics abilities improved (although it's also that my brain grew and I had gotten more practice). But of course, I didn't end up pursuing maths or physics. You might have other gifts that you can use in academia.

I've been doing sprints for about a year now, and I've noticed the last couple of months that I've been experiencing some build-up of fatigue, and I think it had to do with me slowly upping my sets of sprints from the recommended number of 3-4 sets to 6 sets (and recently also an additional "sprint to failure" set on the 6th set: when the set is done, sprint the other way until you literally cannot run anymore). In hindsight, that sounds pretty foolish, but I somehow felt like I was progressing by doing it that way. But yes, it was foolish because it didn't just make me feel fatigued but it also made me less able to sprint with high intensity (which is the point of sprints). Recently, I've cut back down to 4 sets, and the difference is palpable. So if you are going to do sprints or other forms of super high-intensity work, keep your sets deliberately low. And I agree that sprints are something unique when it comes to boosting your cognitive functioning. The type of mind state I enter after a sprint session where I managed to hit extreme levels of intensity is so much different than times where I didn't or compared to low-to-moderate intensity cardio or weight training. It's like your mind just got bolted with electricity or fed some superconductive substance, which is probably because it had just been granted an extreme amount of resources (blood flow, glucose, oxygen, neurochemicals). I think I used to achieve something similar back when I did weight training with extreme intensity, but I partially stopped doing that to work on form, correct muscle imbalances and deal with various injuries. I think the reason high-intensity training in general is thought to increase intelligence is because of this effect of granting an extreme amount of resources in a short time period. In order to think clearly or solve difficult problems or have insights, your mind needs to be working at high intensity, and high-intensity bodily training produces a high-intensity mind (your body is connected to your brain which is connected to your mind). Also, thoughts themselves are fleeting and quick and are in a sense analogous to a sprint. Nevertheless, if you increase the intensity that your mind can handle in short bursts, then naturally you will be able to handle more heavy thoughts and thoughts in general.

Yes, and that second brain is you. Get to work 😝

New Agers don't lack "spiritual depth". They often lack community, tradition, wisdom, grounding, safety.

My brain is too small to understand what you mean.

I said "mostly". But think about this: if Christianity had been obsessed about mysticism and the other religions not, then Stage Green in the West would've probably been associated with a drop in mysticism.

Mysticism ("spirituality") brings you outside of the personal mind and into the transpersonal Mind. Spiral Dynamics (SD), as conceived by Don Beck, tracks the structure of the personal mind. There is no stage in SD where you step outside of the personal mind. Mysticism has existed since the dawn of humanity, before or around Stage Purple. The only pattern you could point to is that mysticism seems to become more prevalent at Stage Green in the West, but this is mostly a cultural artefact, in that mysticism was severely weakened in the West over the last millennia until the New Age re-capitulated it by integrating it from other cultures, e.g. Hinduism, Buddhism, Shamanism.

No. If you're into "spirituality" but you don't feel particularly "religious", you're New Age. The problem is that all these words mean something different to academics than most people (and the video we're talking about was made by an academic). It's really the only aspect. https://www.actualized.org/insights/history-of-the-new-age

Let me preface this by saying that I'm not denying that you might have had an authentic transformation away from being constantly lost in thought to living more peacefully. Nevertheless, that is not something Spiral Dynamics tracks, despite how popular a belief that is. The key feature of the transformation from Yellow to Turquoise is not less time spent on thinking. It's how you think. The idea that thinking is a waste of time is a religious idea you can put on and off like clothing. It doesn't have to reflect a deep transformation of cognition.

The idea that thinking is a waste of time is a religious idea you can put on and off like clothing. It doesn't have to reflect a deep transformation of cognition. As for the transformation from Yellow to Turquoise, the key feature is not less time spent on thinking. It's how you think.

Schizo sticker: a microcosm of a larger Schizo context

And some New Agers prefer distracting themselves with ideas like "community doesn't matter".

You became New Age, is what happened 😆 And I'm being serious.

Schizo poster

These are super famous people that appeal to the lowest common denominator of young people. It's like super famous sports stars meeting the president. Not surprising.

So I play Oldschool RuneScape sometimes, and today I lost a lot of money in a highly unexpected way (I was in Bounty Hunter and got killed by poison in the "safe zone" just after removing my Protect Item prayer). My first response was to buy back the lost money using the bond system (for real life money), because I thought that wasn't supposed to be possible (I thought it was a safe zone; turns out it wasn't). I have in good conscience bought bonds one time before when I died because my game client froze, but then it was due to a bug. Now it was due to a lack of game knowledge or skill, which doesn't seem like a good reason. I've decided over the years that buying bonds generally ruins the sense of purpose of the game, and doing it for bugs seems like the only exception. So I decided to spend the money on a good old-fashioned drop party (dropping items for people to pick up, generally in competition with other people). But of course, this begs the question: does a drop party ruin the sense of purpose for the people involved? This thought sat in my mind, and I decided to have the drop party in a place where I saw mainly decently wealthy people just hanging out. Maybe picking up the items won't change much for them. What I was mainly concerned about was having a new player 100x their bank and completely warp their experience of the game. So maybe if the gains are minimal, like in the 0.01-0.10x range, maybe that's less problematic. Maybe it could even enhance their sense of purpose, motivating them to pursue the next micro-step in their natural progression of the game. Besides, drop parties are exciting and an integral part of the OSRS experience, which itself gives meaning and purpose. So maybe the most ethical way to do drop parties would be to scale the gains relative to the people attending, in a way that pushes their progression just a tiny step forward and in a way that doesn't invalidate the preceding or future progression. So that means a drop party for example in W301 Lumbridge should include at most high-end bronze or low-end iron items as an example. Anyways, I partly regret the drop party because it had one item that was much more valuable than the others, and there was a chance that a noob would get it. That didn't turn out to be the case; it was a bot that that sits at Grand Exchange picking up items that got it (gratz on 10m bud); but there was a non-zero chance for a noob to get it, so it was not ethically optimal, but hey, it's only a game (which is what life is anyway ).

My guy, Trump has never and will probably never know who Leo is, ever.

The guitar solo played by the horns is it.

Haha, I've actually planned to create some YouTube videos going forward, spending parts of my sundays on that. It will involve probably some OSRS but mainly psychology, spirituality, science, philosophy, music covers and original music. When I was 10 or so, I asked my dad to buy me a license for an editing software that he used professionally to make videos, and he promised to give me it but never gave it (same for when I asked for double-bass pedals for my drum set, but that's a different story). Ever since that age, I wanted to make videos, and it has stuck with me as a shadow desire until this day. A few days ago, I revisited a video I made when I was 11 (over 15 years ago): It's simple and to the point, as you would expect from a 11 year old, but the potential was definitely there. When I looked at the date and realized I was only 11 when I made it, I was stunned for a good 5 minutes. The "what if" questions that popped into my head about where I would be in an alternate timeline, boggle my mind. Same with my passion for music and 15 year long guitar habit; the uncountable number of small audio recordings and the desire to create my own songs; the "what ifs" have kept bothering me for years. Also, my more left-brain zany side needs an outlet for more creative writing that I don't fully get in academia (and I already have pages upon pages of such writing from bookmarked forum posts and threads ready to be packaged into video format). This part is not just about mere self-expression either: it's to share what has been most impactful in my life and what I believe is of value to other people and is most meaningful (and a different angle on the same project that I want my academic work to be). So I thought where can I give all of that an outlet? And the answer is obviously developing my YouTube channel on my free time. And I've finally become principled enough to allow myself one free day where I am completely free to pursue whatever I want, so even if it moves slower than the continents, I will put something out there on that channel. And what better time to get started with this than in the age of AI-powered content? I will also revamp the stylistic design along the lines of my profile design on this forum. @integral It might be counting butterflies to explain the storm, but I think your albeit ironic but incessant suggestions over the times has helped steer me in this direction, and I thank you for that.

@Nilsi I have sort of a viral infection which makes music sounds funky to me, so I would have to come back to that on a later date. But it does sound like something I could probably appreciate.

Not really. You gave a different definition of truth, steering the conversation away from the original topic.

@Mafortu I've watched some MrGirl content over the years, and while he is definitely intellectually interesting, his personality and the way he chooses to conduct himself could be described as predatory.

I do think materialism has quite a few negative side effects, but I see this more having to do with the confusion around consciousness rather than life. What do we gain by redefining life that we don't gain by redefining consciousness?