Carl-Richard

But will some of them also be "Unitive" and "Ego-Transcendent"? 🤔 If you study these people from birth and into adulthood, you will likely find a distinctive developmental course, probably with some similarities to Western models, but maybe also some differences. But we won't know that before somebody actually does the study

It's more like looking around at the selection of restaurants in the area and expressing exasperation at what you find. Or even better, you travel from town to town and you find that all the restaurants are essentially the same, like McDonalds: seductive on the graphic, consistent in delivery, actually decently tasty, but leaves you with a weird taste in your mouth and maybe a stomach ache. And as a consequence, you become a bit skeptical of McDonalds. It's not an overstatement: all famous linear, sequential developmental psychological theories have significant Western bias, both empirical and theoretical. What I'm most concerned about is the empirical aspect, and it's possible to work towards reasonably rectifying that. It will never be completely rectified, but no science is perfect. There is no absolute universality, no absolute statistical significance, causal explanation, etc. But there is still a reasonable level you can try to aim at, and it's at least above zero (which is basically the current norm in developmental psychology). A couple of cross-cultural samples that also controls for assumptions like modernity is a step in that direction. Some point out it has individualistic assumptions that doesn't translate well to collectivist cultures (e.g. Africa, Asia) and that it applies more to "American men" than other people. What does Wilber say about that? Again, what I doubt is that current models are other than Western, and I think you can make reasonable steps towards rectifying that. Well, for one, those things are made more explicit. It's in the name ("psychosocial", "ego development", etc.). But EDT is not for example called "Western Ego Development Theory". It's called "Ego Development Theory". So again, when looking at the name and the neat graphics, it has a facade (surface appearance) of universality. And when you suggest that it essentially doesn't matter that it's not actually universal, you subtly fuel that facade. This is a general phenomena that I believe happens when you survey Westerners about their "development" (particularly when not strongly distinguishing it from their "values"): On the almost top of the model, you will generally have Western, highly educated, rich people and their multiplistic, self-aware systems view of reality (the "intellectual elite"). And on top of those, you will have the ones who re-discover "spirituality" within that context (so-called "Unitive"), which is virtually always New Age. And in a sense, it is a logically "next step" in that context: people feel a bit better about themselves (stepping out from the spiritual black hole of modernity); people become more "open", "expansive", "flexible", "nuanced"; they get access to a "new" dimension of life (mysticism, "union with God"); etc. So this logically seems to place them higher. But of course, a step into spirituality can happen at any level of "true" ego development (which history proves and which e.g. Wilber has pointed out). Therefore, if you in your sample also control for cultures where spirituality has been shown to be stepped into at lower stages, then you can expect to conclude in your construction of the model that it's not a next step of "ego development" but rather something else (which Wilber identifies as "Waking up" as contrasted to "Growing up"). All in all, with a more culturally diverse sample, you would expect to shave off (at least) the top of the model and place it somewhere else (e.g. in its own developmental line). @Sandhu is not a Westerner (strictly speaking). We have many non-Westerners on the forum (again, cultural imperialism makes this more difficult, and us Zoomer internet kids are essentially all cross-cultural kids). Cross-cultural development (emphasis on cross) is also a whole other can of worms. It makes it specific in a sense, but it also makes it incoherent in a sense or at least unelegant. Namely, is it an "ego development model" or is it a "cultural development model"? Just look at what I described earlier: the model presents a cultural aesthetic that has been suppressed for cultural reasons at lower stages and which sometimes boils to the surface for other cultural reasons at higher stages, as the actual "progression of the psyche", rather than what it is: a cultural artefact. Also, because it's assumed to be an "ego developmental model" and not a cultural one, these cultural dynamics are not systematically accounted for. They are indeed only mentioned as a caveat about the limitations of the model and then brushed under the rug (something which Hanzi Freinacht has helped to address). And in this way, ironically, the model is quite Orange in its approach. Orange models routinely fail to systematically account for connections between seemingly disparate domains (and suffer accordingly). And you can expect to get such cultural conflation problems with all the stages, not just the higher stages (like with the earlier mentioned individualistic and male bias). Again, absolute universality is practically impossible, but my demand is at least some attempt at diversity, which aims at universality. It's possible to do it better than what is currently the norm (which again, is essentially zero). And it is extremely costly, but that is the story of science. Pushing the science requires pushing the boundaries, be it on a purely practical resource level or theoretically. Maybe AI can help us with that in the future. It could also inform us about what human development is rather than what happens in white collar suites where people happened to drop acid once and started taking more seriously the hippie magazine they just walked past.

I had the same thought, but you know what? I don't think these people are actually being "not careful" with their rhetoric. This is mostly Dave virtue signalling to his audience and strengthening his pathos. He is just as not careful with his clickbaity titles about whatever suits his narrative for the day as anybody else. Also, if we want to make some topics inherently off limits because of social risk, let's take Dave criticism of conservatism and religiosity. I don't imagine him being "careful with his rhetoric" there. If you're not "careful" about criticizing conservatism or religiosity, society will revert back to tribal warfare, crime and despotism. People will take drugs and drink themselves to death with unhinged hedonism, people will lose their meaning, connection, purpose, community, hope. Nope. At some point you have to let the grown ups talk and not let the babies dictate the narrative.

“I identified nine different self-stories, nine different ways of defining what is real and important in the Western world. These ways develop sequentially and represent increasing levels of individuation and integration.” That's exactly my point 😂. It's a Western-centric model. If you're interested, I have looked at her samples, and based on the information provided, you can deduce with virtually full certainty that none of the samples included people from pre-modern societies. She had UK and US samples and one "international sample". She mentioned nothing about the countries of origin in the international sample (for all we know, it could be 100% European). And when you call it "international sample" without specifying the countries of origin, the only reasonable explanation is that you used internet surveys where you didn't screen for the country of origin (probably because you wanted to maintain participant anonymity and simplify the ethical approval process). And of course, internet surveys skew heavily Western in general, either purely statistically based on the amount of Western internet users or culturally through Western imperialism. And of course, there is virtually zero internet in pre-modern tribes, almost certainly zero people surfing on their free time while randomly running into a survey on Western psychology. She could in principle (I re-iterate: in principle) have targeted such people through stratified sampling, but then it would be natural to mention at least something about that. So no, in no reasonable scenario were pre-modern tribal people included in the sample, and that is my request 😀 I doubt that claim. Source? It places a stereotypic, historically contigent, Western cultural phenomenon on top of the model: New Age spirituality. Yes, and I want to know how it develops independently of stereotypic, historically contigent cultural influences. Is my ego somehow less developed if I don't watch YouTube videos of Mooji and Eckhart Tolle? Feel free to read the part about the samples. Maybe I missed something 😗

That's understandable, because they literally don't.

Somebody help me from my cynicism towards Western-centric models and fly Cook-Greuter out to some island people or something and study them for the model. I can't stand the facade universality that oozes from the neat graphics and flashy colors.

It's more illuminating to say the absolute includes the relative, but the relative does not include the absolute. One is all-encompassing, the other is not. It's true that once we decide to speak, we have to concede that we're using concepts and diving things into parts (relative vs absolute), and the absolute is of course beyond any concept. However, when we have made that concession and we are willing to use concepts, we do it in a rigorous way, and that is when you should not conflate the relative with the absolute. We have different words for each for a reason. The contents of the frame are relative. If you make claims about the contents (e.g. "other apes are merely NPCs"), you are in the relative. That's conventional metaphysics (materialism), rather than science. Nevertheless, I'm not really a "conventional scientist" either. For example, I think psychic phenomena have legitimate scientific evidence. But I'm also quite comfortable with conventional science, e.g. the "role" of the brain (without assuming a materialists metaphysics), i.e. the brain seems to correlate with (not cause) certain phenomena (some thoughts, perceptions, sensations, etc.). But these are also just statements about the relative. Speaking has rules and boundaries. As a side note, what is funnily implicated by your conceptual nihilism is that there is no difference between apes being NPCs and apes being conscious in their own right, so again, we contradict solipsism.

No, only some, until you no longer see the point. Ironically, all of spirituality up until the point of complete surrender is lots of including; spiritual ego. The ego thinks it wants what it thinks to be enlightenment and constructs an identity around that and pursues a set of techniques, practices, ideals; all happening within the relative, all constructing an ego. So including is always happening and is unavoidable, and for many, it's really the only thing that that is happening while pursuing "spirituality"(because they get stuck). And the reason they get stuck is that they use it as a compensating mechanism for other things they are really wishing to include but which they are unaware or too bothered to pursue (because like the Puer Aeternus fears, it tends to involve some discomfort). You just have to come to terms with it and be aware of everything you actually want to include, which generally includes petty "non-spiritual ego" stuff as well. And when you are really done with that and no longer see the point, then you actually transcend.

You can re-define the words all you want, but at the end of the day, the true absolute does not exclude what your "absolute" excludes. Because it's absolute. It does not exclude, does not contrast, does not divide itself into parts. When you divide, contrast and exclude, you are in the relative. Likewise, there is nothing about the true absolute that suggests there is "nothing behind the scenes" in the sense that your homosapien perceptual dashboard is the only perceptual dashboard there is; that other homosapien apes are merely NPCs in your dashboard with no dashboards of their own. You are way into the relative when making those claims. And I don't think this is a problem of not having enough awakening experiences. It's a problem of drawing conclusions and seeing the implications of your awakening experiences. Because that requires a rigorous understanding of the relative, things like metaphysics, science, cognition, evolution, biology, physiology, etc. If you don't have a rigorous understanding of the relative, then of course you will confuse it with the absolute. You need to be very adept at drawing distinctions to see how the absolute clearly lacks these distinctions. I consider myself lucky in this respect as I had awakening experiences in my late teens and then had time to reconstruct a scientific worldview in university afterwards which forced me to reconcile my experiences and integrate them with the science, not sidestep it. And even then, it took a lot of deliberate work. If you are not in the same position, you have to work even harder.

You know the saying "you cannot be reasoned out of something you weren't reasoned into". I think this applies on some level all the time for all people; that you are never really reasoned into anything, which is simply in line with how survival and limited attentional resources produce bias. This is why I feel that when I listen to people who I think are being sincere, even if a part of me scoffs at them and thinks they are silly, there is always another part that wants to listen to their perspective, because I know deep down that I could be mistaken and it could have been me speaking from their position. I don't feel ultimately responsible for my beliefs. I inherited them through my biases, not necessarily from someone else (but that also), but simply from being limited. Now, that doesn't stop me from trying to follow what I think is right. But it's just an underlying sense of openness. You can hold both. Now, while I have had this feeling for a long time, I started particularly thinking about this while watching the Chris Langan interview by Michael Knowles. I share very little with these guys politically (they both support Trump), but both of them, even Knowles, speak decently coherently, I can understand what they are saying, and I even appreciate some of their ideas on e.g. metaphysics and religion. I would like to know if you have watched the interview and what your reaction to it was. Do you feel like you were able to hold multiple things at the same time? Did they not simply seem like the devil through all they were saying, despite how profoundly you disconnected with them on some issue? And if so, why did you feel that way? Let me hear about it.

Other than the standard curriculum on cognitive science (perceptual mechanisms, heuristics, schemas, biases, etc.), I don't. But these things are generally less about reading a specific source or a book and more about lived experience.

I rarely use Leo to make a point, but why do you think Leo chooses to not do "react content" or "debunking videos"?

I was specifically thinking about the format of taking a piece of content you have not watched yet, especially an interview, where you have also have essentially zero background knowledge of the person involved, and watching the interview from start to finish and severely picking it apart along the way and presenting it under the guise of "this person is being debunked". This is painfully obvious with Dave. It's his shtick. And it's extremely susceptible and effective for creating an inaccurate narrative, because it's such a limited representation of the person but yet so rife for giving an opposing take. It's of course especially pernicious when you add the humoristic commentator snark and hyper-reductionistic picking apart like Dave does where he is unaware of like 5 layers context and decides to focus in on something wholly inconsequential like the definition of a single word (which Dave only has one of for each word, because he views everything through the paradigm of modern physics), making claims like "hueee, he doesn't know what the word means, this is basic 5th grade physics, he has no idea what he is talking about". But even if you're not blessed with Dave's hyper-reductionist context-blindness, again, the format itself is like a random number generator for biased thinking. It constrains your cognition and attention to this very limited and linear format. When engaging in it (which we all do by watching videos), it shouldn't be presented as a final analysis on a person, which is generally what debunking videos do. Again, the real way to "debunk" a person is to take in their whole character through repeated exposure, many contexts and over long periods. You won't really find a video titled "partial debunking video from my unknowledgeable perspective". That would be a reaction video. It's not like a Destiny stream where he will say "well, that sounds fucked, but I will wait for more information before making up my mind".

Why does God in itself need to be limited to what is going on "on the scenes"? Does God in itself need to be limited by limited appearances? Why would infinity in itself need to be limited? Why does God in itself need to limit itself to what is happening "currently"? Is God limited by time? Is time (change, past vs future) absolute or relative? What is "the scenes"? You mention the human ego. You call it a "backstory", a story, a fiction to explain the relative world. What does this relative fiction have to do with God in itself which is absolute? How is the human ego and its limited and relative fictions somehow intrinsic to God? In summary, and I will reiterate: how is necessarily linking solipsism to God not to conflate the relative with the absolute? Feel free to describe more in detail "the scenes". What is its structure, etc. (and yes, structure is also relative).

Please elaborate on that.

Is God dreaming up things that you as a limited homosapien ape on planet Earth currently are not able to see with his naked eyes?

Day 4 of @Razard86 not answering my question

Or Cosmic solipsism. But many people don't understand it that way, hence the topic.

I have experienced no other, but there was also no me.

I watched some of his "debunking" of Chris Langan being interviewed by Michael Knowles. Besides making me want to facepalm myself into the afterlife, it made me have an idea of making a "debunking the debunkers" concept where I would watch through the entire thing unedited and comment on it, because I just found so many things to say about it. But then I figured that I would just buy into the whole debunking format and poison my mind (and my audience, fictive audience) that way. There are just so many in-built structural problems with it that caters to one's biases (generally a lack of attentional scope) that is essentially unethical in itself. The way you really debunk a person is by intently listening to their perspective, ideally because you're interested, and multiple times and from multiple angles, and then form a holistic image of them in your mind and see if it resonates or not. Essentially, get to know them. But that doesn't make for good entertainment, maybe a good essay. Then I thought maybe engaging with the debunking concept with the semi-ironic tone I had in mind could help show the absurdity of the format in itself. But for someone who only consumes information through that format, they would not pick up on it and instead need it spelled out in, well, an essay. Which is kinda what this is, so "you're welcome" (mmm-it's a rant). Meh, I feel like giving these people zero time.

I understand why Nilsi thought you said he was talking gibberish and not what actually you meant to say. It was something about the formulation, I had to double check myself 😄 I think one can do both (meaty and bare bones) depending on what is appropriate for the situation and as long as one is able to go from one to the other on request. Providing a lot of references does give a certain gravitas to what you're talking about ("convergence"), and often it gives added nuance. But of course, it does become confusing when done excessively, so then you have to know your audience and be choosy unless you want to spend a lot of time explaining yourself ("eating the meat" 🥴). Ah, the virtue of balance 😌

I read through some of the posts and it's scary to see how pervasive and relentless misinformation can be and how it starts with a single spark and echoes through the entire sphere by all these talking heads thinking they're driven by truth.

I have compiled a list of techniques for providing relief during spiritual emergencies, based on personal experience. The items in the list are ranked in order of significance. You should also obviously discontinue any form of spiritual practice when using these techniques: Again, based on my experience (although it could be different for you), be very careful asking AI for "tips on providing relief for oneself during a spiritual emergency"; it seems quite clueless on this. Other than what it says about engaging in spiritual practices, it has some useful tips. There are other real sources on providing relief during spiritual emergencies that mention some of the same advice I give. Maybe you can look more into those.

I added an extra 50-ish grams of lean meat to my daily intake over the course of this year as I had increased my workout volume by 50% and I noticed I needed more fuel. Then I recently cut back to 30 grams because I was getting fat and slow, and now a month or so later, I'm feeling better AND bigger. Any increase in intake has to be minimal and proportional to your progress and workout volume, protein or not.

A big thing psychedelics do is they reveal what is true about yourself and what your strengths and values really are. If you are unhappy about something in your life, and those things were largely set in motion or settled before you started taking psychedelics, that could indicate some re-evaluation is in order. What do you really value? What are you really good at? What do you really want to do? Now, of course this has to be balanced with your sense and a holistic real-life view, but still, a re-evaluation might be in order. If you do that in the personal domain and make the changes and still realize that something isn't right, maybe you need to work in the transpersonal domain (transcending the self).