Carl-Richard

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Everything posted by Carl-Richard

  1. You can have breakthrough experiences on a microdose ;D
  2. Arguably, a central aspect of wisdom is holism. More specifically, it's the ability to see different aspects of life and how they're all interconnected, whether it's your mind and your physical body, other people's happiness and your own happiness, your finances and your life opportunities, your habits and your successes; the list goes on. Since I'm particularly interested in psychology, I have mostly realized this through learning different theories from psychology (and of course with a bit of help of other people I admire, particularly John Vervaeke, Bernardo Kastrup and Jordan Peterson, as well as my own experiences). I will present some of those theories here: Plato: "the monster, the lion and the man" Let's start with Plato's three aspects of the psyche: the monster, the lion and the man. The monster represents the more primal survival instincts, for example the need for food, sexual reproduction or safety. The lion represents the mammalian instincts of connection and social bonding. And lastly, the man represents the self-aware rational mind; the intellect. For Plato, in order to perturb self-deception and achieve wisdom, you must balance all these aspects of the psyche and give them life, not neglect or repress them. You'll see that many of these principles (promoting balance, avoiding repression) are common to all the theories I'm about to the present. Freud: "id, superego and ego" Next up is Freud's three aspects of the psyche: the id, the superego and the ego. The id is again the primal instincts, the fundamental driving forces of your survival, and it cares very little about higher moral responsibilities. The id just does what it wants to do. The superego is analogous to the voice of conscience, which tells you how you ought to act, and it's peculiarly often experienced as your mom's voice nagging you to do the right thing. You can ponder why that is (hint: it's highly socially conditioned). The ego is the thing that mediates between the id and the superego. It's the self-aware center of the psyche, and it chooses what it wants to listen to; the id or the superego (or at least it thinks it does). Similarly to Plato, Freud proposes that in order to avoid psychic conflict ("neurosis"), you must learn to balance the different psychic structures. Self-determination theory (SDT): "competence, belonging and autonomy" Not many people are familiar with it, but self-determination theory (SDT) is similarly a powerful theory of the psyche with three components: the need for competence, belonging and autonomy. SDT proposes that in order to achieve optimal motivation for a given behavior, you must address all these three needs. The need for competence says that all organisms have a need to express their innate capacities (for example their physical strength or agility), as this is in line with ensuring the survival of the organism. It's again about primal survival instincts. The need for belonging represents how your needs (psychological or otherwise) need to be supported in a social context (again, this is obviously about social needs). Lastly, the need for autonomy says that a given behavior must be in line with the individual's own wants, feelings and values. It's the more self-aware, rationally oriented part of the psyche. Modern neuroscience: "the Triune brain" The second last one is often the least expected, but modern neuroscience has its own version of this three-part split of the psyche, represented by the structures of the brain. It's called the "Triune brain", and it's of course a vast over-simplification of how the brain actually works, but there is still value to talking about it: the reptilian brain, the limbic system and the neocortex. The reptilian brain (a.k.a. the basal ganglia) takes care of lower-level survival functions like basic motor movements, the limbic system takes care of complex social emotions, while the neocortex takes care of the intellect. According to modern neuroscience, proper functioning requires an integration of functioning across brain structures. Deficits in one structure lead to deficits of the whole, which can happen when development is impaired (as the different brain areas experience different "growth spurts"). The biopsychosocial model of health To hammer it all home, you've probably heard about the biopsychosocial model of health. It's the most condensed summary of the point I'm getting at: life consists of multiple parts, and you must tend to all of them to live a healthy life. This approach to health is foundational to fields like health psychology, and it's a growing approach in various other health fields. Summary You might have noticed a trend of three levels of ascending complexity: biological, social, psychological. These different theories provide different perspectives on how the human psyche is structured and how the different parts need to be tended to in order to secure proper functioning and health. Whether you conceptualize it as avoiding psychic conflict like Freud, or promoting optimal motivation like SDT, or achieving wisdom and avoiding self-deception like Plato: it's all pointing to a common lesson about life. You don't have to subscribe to any particular theory to discover this lesson in your own life, but it often helps to get some pointers from the outside, and arguably, it will always follow the principle of holism (which often comes in threes).
  3. @Zedman Lol you ok?
  4. Let's go one level up: where are the people who hate people who hate normies? Get em! ?
  5. It's probably not very dangerous, but if you want to be 100% sure about everything, turn off your wifi and don't use your phone.
  6. I don't understand the question.
  7. I would initially experience some internal conflict, but I would quickly think it's a man, because like it or not, female genitalia is very central to womanhood, and it's why people are so inclined to equate it with biological sex. It also conflicts deeply with what I want in a woman. I don't know what that means. Is there an objective definition of man/woman? We can move towards more inclusive definitions over time, but in our current society, I think respecting people's preferred pronouns is the standard to go by.
  8. Ok. But pure linguistic utility aside, if we look at social utility and within our current society, I think respecting people's preferred pronouns is sufficient. You're not going to change your intuitive understanding of the words man/woman unless you undergo severe re-conditioning, which factors into the utility calculation. But yes, you can still consciously choose to call somebody by their preferred pronouns, and sometimes that is the intuitive response (as with the Ben Shapiro example).
  9. @DrugsBunny If you want a practical example of the utility in action, I will use pickup as an example (people seem to be familiar with that here): You say to your buddies "I want to find me a woman tonight!", and they know exactly what you mean. Now, what does that entail? It entails going up to somebody who looks like a woman, talking to them and then sleeping with them. So you do that: you talk to someone who looks like a woman, you take them home and you think "ah, I found myself a woman tonight ". But then you find out they don't have female genitalia, which surprises you. "Oh, I didn't find myself a woman after all " It's painfully simple, but this is what we're dealing with.
  10. You're placing a kind of teatime social situation frame on the whole thing. When I'm talking about immediate appearance, I'm talking about what you will see when looking at a person period (with or without clothes, it doesn't matter). There are times where you will see people naked, and that factors into you thinking they're a man/woman or not. There is utility lost, because female genitals tend to go together with other female things, and we call that statistically likely combination of things "woman". That is why I say the words don't fit neatly into either a social or biological category. If you see a pretty person in a dress with makeup and with curves, you will probably think it's a woman. If you happen to find out they have female genitals, you would again probably think it's a woman. If you're really concerned about linguistic utility, you should find a new name for the purely social genders.
  11. Welcome to reality. The psychedelic world is much bigger than the non-duality world. Don't get them mixed up
  12. Sense organs (although anything is possible)
  13. You stop compulsively talking to yourself for most of the day.
  14. I'm only talking about correlations on the screen of perception. If I perceive that poking myself in what I perceive as my eye leads to a change in my perception, then that tells me something about my perception.
  15. In that case, it seems like your concept of a boundary is almost indistinguishable from the concept of locality or form (that something can be located within transpersonal consciousness and be distinguished from something else). I would just put that like this: everything is occuring within transpersonal consciousness, and every "boundary" is just form. My idea of a personalized boundary is different. For example, there is a difference between placing a "camera of pure consciousness" so to speak in one place in a room and then me standing in that place and perceiving the room from my perspective. That difference seems to have to do with things like my sense organs and how they function (their limits, etc.). If I poke myself in the eye, my perception of the room changes.
  16. Make a transcript of it. It's just Leo speaking after all.
  17. What about genitalia? Is that gender expression?
  18. Does a car have a feeling of its boundaries? Why draw the boundaries around the car and not the components of the car? Why not draw it around each individual atom or each subatomic particle popping in and out of existence?
  19. I would say that if you deactivate your senses (or dissociate from them), you'll become a void without any boundaries. I've experienced this myself. The vibration of course exists as a part of the transpersonal field of consciousness (reality itself), and it will vibrate the rock, but there is no solid indication that the rock will have a personalized perspective of the vibration entering its body. Then why will the rock be in "total darkness"?
  20. What about genitalia? Is that gender expression? That is true. I edited my unnecessarily complicated response right before you responded to it:
  21. I think the words man/woman don't fit neatly into either category, and that you can't change how people intuitively understand those words, and that you can also request somebody to call you something that you want to be called without anyone having to treat you badly for it (but also, don't expect the world to revolve around you).
  22. Presumably, the reason you think it won't see anything is because it doesn't have eyes, but then why should it feel anything if it doesn't have any sensory receptors at all?
  23. He didn't say whether or not it would be fun to be a rock. That was your projection, and now you're spreading it.