Carl-Richard

Go to high school. That's of course partially a joke, but find something that follows the same patterns: a place where you go to almost every day where people meet people and make friends, not because that is the main goal, but simply because it's bound to happen. Team sports, hobby groups (e.g. I was invited to join a local Facebook group that hosts small events and discussions on psychedelics), even Discord groups are other good alternatives. Notice again that the goal with these groups is not as much to socialize for its own sake but to share something you have in common, something you like, and creating an environment for each other where you fit to and amplify each other. Socializing comes naturally in those environments; it's not something you have to think about. To separate "socializing" from building actual long-term relationships, engaging with a community and congregating around shared values, is to put it mildly, really such an ugly part of American culture especially but also just modern Western culture in general (nightlife, pickup, hookup culture, party culture). Socializing is about connecting your soul to another, and not just many souls, but a larger soul created by those souls.

This guy made a song based on a virtuosic drum solo by Marco Minneman. The songwriting becomes really interesting when you use drums as a starting point, also when you base it on a largely improvised solo. It has a kind of freshness to it and gives a different angle on music than most normal songs, besides that it's a good song and that you're dealing with a genius drummer:

"Proof" is so hijacked by the narrow intellectual notions of black-and-white logical propositions. You have to expand your notion of proof to perception and reason. When you experience another person crying, you can cry and understand what they are feeling by virtue of that you're crying (whether it's about the same thing or simply crying). You don't see that by some logical deduction. You literally see it. Like get seriously out of your own head and experience things. The fear that drives so many questions about solipsism (fear of detachment from other people) is created from the same thing: detachment from other people. It's like how people who are crippled by indecision and inaction simply aren't used to making decisions and actions and need to start making them more so they get more used to it. So get out of your head and experience things and solipsism will seem like a deranged fantasy. If you're stuck in your own head all the time, no wonder you go around worrying about whether the world is just inside your head.

WTFFF I thought Norwegian black metal had cornered the market on obscenity

Man o man the world is turning to shit pretty fast, time to call your friend from high school that prepared for the zombie apocalypse and ask him to spare you a few hunting rifles and cans of beans

It's a good bonus.

All of Cynic's full-length album covers are like this:

Yes, I could imagine really going in for it and treating it like a high-end project, getting real professionals onboard. And that's really the effort and investment it would take to properly execute the vision I have in mind. Damn when I think about it, my dad is actually a professional photographer as well; he used to film for national television 🤔

Art project Filming a person meditating seated and silently with extreme close-ups and pristine HD quality. Make it into a short film that is trying to capture the extreme levels of stillness and calm that are possible in deep, seated, silent meditation. Multiple cameras are set up in multiple places, every shot is preset and ready to film all at once, no other people in the room, no movement of equipment, no camera zooms. The film is edited in a quiet and etheric cinematic style. Styles that come to mind is morning routine scene in American Psycho, and shampoo and cosmetics commericals. These are merely analogous, I have a vision of the style, and it's something entirely of its own if executed properly. The film can serve as an inspiration for what is possible during meditation, and if executed properly, could popularize not just meditation as a practice but the kinds of deep meditation that are associated with deep transformation. Research project Filming a person meditating seated and silently with extreme close-ups and pristine HD quality, but with focus on capturing any subtle movements or phenomena that the meditator would report as movements of energy. Physical measurement instruments like body temperature cameras and perhaps microscope technology can also be used. The aim is to provide insight into subtle energy phenomena often experienced during meditation, e.g. feelings of pressure and tension building up and releasing in the face, neck, forehead, etc. It would involve correlating footage and timestamps with the meditator giving retrospective accounts of the experiences. The findings can uncover potential subtle physical mechanisms of these phenomena or support the hypothesis that these are non-physical phenomena (not capturable by physical measurement). If anyone is interested in trying any of this out (especially the art project), I'm open to give advice so that it meets the vision I have mind. I think if especially the art project is given a serious attempt (which I might do some time, I have a friend who is a photographer) and perhaps some financial investment, you could create something unique, beautiful and powerful.

Ironically, the conundrum of "does free will exist?" falls into the same trap of forcing an either/or answer. You experience yourself analyzing, judging, weighing and making choices based on what you want, thus in this sense, you have free will, but you can't will what you want, thus in this other sense, you don't have free will. Likewise, you tried to fail but you succeeded, so in one sense, you succeeded, but in another sense, you failed.

So what will you do to make sure this doesn't happen again?

Relativity can either make you feel groundless and skeptical of everything, or it can make you see how everything has a context or is referring to something else, i.e. there is always a ground, but the ground always changes depending on what is placed on it. If you feel groundless, start to focus on what the ground is in any given situation, try to focus on the structure of that ground, and accept the changes, and maybe you will also start to see larger structures that connect different grounds. Then focus on that, even though those grounds also change. The difference between letting relativism fuel a cynical and disparaging epistemic attitude (ultimate skepticism/nihilism) vs. letting it fuel a more sober and mature approach, is in large part what you choose to focus on. Instead of focusing on the ground, get really interested in the relationships between things and their ground. After all, there are many things, so maybe looking towards one thing (a ground) is the wrong attitude. Instead of asking "how can I ultimately justify this ground?", ask "what does this ground support?", "what is it useful for?", "what does it refer to?". Again, what are the structures, the patterns, the "relationality" of the relativity? Ultimate skepticism is more like a feeling or a way of appraising a situation rather than some metaphysical bedrock. Recognize how itself is a frame you interpret things through, rather than ironically being some kind of absolute. Then you can also ask "what is ultimate skepticism useful for?", "what does it relate to?" Again, I would suggest cynicism, reacting to change, complexity and uncertainty with fear rather than openness; seeing change as groundlessness rather than relationality, seeing complexity as chaos rather than beauty, seeing uncertainty as danger rather than oppurtunity.

I just ran across this gem (I found their vocalist on Boo 😂😂😂, I just downloaded the app to see what it's like ). It's progressive, folk, grunge and extreme/black metal 🥵: Something about the black metal tremolo picked chords and grunge drums and vocals hit me. And femole vocalist ☺️

That's weird, I just had a dream where I had to fight a Lynx and a fox the same way (or not really the same way, we only fought a little and then we backed away). I sometimes imagine scenarios like this where I have to fight a dog, so I have at least some sympathy for your situation, but of course the way it went down for you seems quite unfortunate.

I'm not sure if this is possible because such a scenario is to my knowledge unprecedented (a human growing up and surviving with zero socialization). We know that severe neglect leads to severe brain abnormalities and reduction in function, problems with emotional regulation, etc. But it's also hard to decouple those real-life examples from abuse and physical neglect (lack of nutrition, etc.). But it's an interesting question indeed and maybe some mad scientist with zero ethical scruples could answer that question (not that I'm encouraging that, of course). But nevertheless, we're now dealing with the outmost extremes of human existence. Likewise, properly integrating mystical experiences, at least in this stage of society, is also at the extremes, and again, I can't find any real-life examples of that existing without some prior socialization. So putting the extremes aside, socialization seems very central to creating happy, healthy and functional humans. You could of course go the first 15-18 years of your life socializing and then stop and not necessarily "die", but again, extremes aside, that too will probably lead to quite a few less-than-fortunate outcomes. He wrote some things and then somebody else collected, translated and wrote about those things. which is not the same as being retarded in this case.

Ads like you suggested 🥰 (Meta ad campaigns). My ads have 50% lower CPC than similar campaigns (it's about 0.11-0.15$ per link click). I have met and measured 22 participants, 20 more are scheduled next week (but the drop-out/exclusion rate for scheduled meetings is about 15-20%). Only yesterday, I got 5 new meetings scheduled and it was only 5 PM. I need 30 more participants before March 9th (3 weeks and 1 day from now). Also, some interesting things might be happening next week which I might share later. I didn't get to thank you yet for the idea, but I was planning to do that soon 😝 So thank you 🙏🫡

Yes, it's probably possible to survive and "thrive" as a retarded non-verbal savage. I can concede that my first statement has extreme edge-cases where it doesn't necessarily apply. But if you ask most people, they would probably want to avoid anything that moves them closer to such a state of being. Humans don't really "need" anything. They can be hooked up to a machine and fed IV and kept in an artifical coma. But again, most people probably wouldn't want that. And the reality is most people, even the most isolated and lonely people, have been social for most of their life and still are somewhat social, but they're currently just half-assing it and slowly degenerating. Ramana Maharshi, who's writings culminated in a famous book with the foreword written by Carl Jung, is retarded? Sadhguru, who runs one of the largest voluntary organizations on the planet, is retarded? Ok.

And those children are being brought up in a warm, prosocial home with loving parents that feed them and teach them how to speak, walk, etc. But they will be retarded. Show me a retarded yogi.

Try putting a baby out in the forest by themselves and see if they become yogi. Sure, if we assume some baseline level of healthy prosocial upbringing without brain-crushing levels of trauma and neglect, you could at some point discover the path, awaken and legitimately transcend many types of psychological and even physiological types of lack and maintain a very healthy level of functioning despite them. But, again, getting yourself to that point, and also getting there sincerely without the "I want to be something I never was" Puer Aeternus spirituality, will definitely require some level of prosocial engagement.

It's only a modern psychotic delusion that you can survive and thrive without being social. Your brain and body is literally wired for being social. If you find any holistic psychological/health model worth their salt, they will include a social aspect in them in some way or another.

When I bought my new phone last Christmas, I gave my old phone essentially the type of attention and respect that you would give at a funeral, before I slowly laid it down in my bedroom drawer and pushed the drawer shut. So no, you're not the only one You develop emotional attachments to anything you assign emotional significance to. It doesn't matter if it's a piece of lint in your room or a warm fleshy human being.

Shit, or rather "short". I've been spending the last month working until like 7-9 PM, eating "dinner" at 8-10 PM, then working out, then eating again, and then it's like 3-4 AM before I'm in bed and I'm up at 7-9 AM. But that's what I gotta do to get 90 participants for my study when my advisor hasn't yet given me bachelor students to work for me (And it's not like spamming surveys on internet forums like I did for my bachelor's; it's running ads, updating them, scheduling meetings, doing the meetings, giving the participants surveys, screening them based on the surveys, measuring their brains pre and post study, emails, etc.).

Either decide beforehand that you will 100% have a trip, or do one retreat without a trip and one with a trip. Your mind might want to treat it like an escape if you leave it as an option that you can take based on some impulse, and then you'll possibly avoid facing some really deep problem. I generally recommend in spiritual practice to choose one practice at a time and focus all your attention on it for a while. When you leave your mind with too many options, too much uncertainty and complexity, your mind will take over and make it a game. Keep it simple, commit, stick with it and then maybe try something different later. It's also just inefficient to switch between tasks too often. There is an analogy to government bodies (in democratic systems). An efficient government has a chief executive that makes decisions based on established laws approved by the legislature. If the laws are constantly questioned or re-written, you'll experience bureaucratic malaise and little gets done. An efficient government divides the activities into separate bodies, allowing each body to focus on their own activity and limiting task-switching (task-switching from a simple cognitive standpoint is an inherently costly activity). So separating your activities into different clear-defined chunks and focusing on them separately will reduce task-switching and increase efficiency.

I just ran across an old meta-systematic observation I've had: What climate vs weather is to meteorology is what phylogenetics vs ontogenetics is to biology. Climate type = species, weather type = individual phenotypes within that species. This also gives new meaning to the idea of "weather gods". And if for example tornado weather is a phenotype, then an individual tornado is an individual organism. And like biological organisms, tornadoes are self-organizing structures ("spontaneous order"), but they are not autopoetic (they don't eat and metabolize food in order to build and conserve their structure).