Carl-Richard

That's why bringing up "woman are x" on this forum is tone deaf (and by consequence, sexist) because most women who like to engage with the forum (a male dominated space) probably aren't like most women in certain key ways in the first place. So your generalization doesn't land, at all, and hence forcing the generalization is exceedingly sexist. I "dated" this girl once (had one meeting with her lol), 8 years older than me, extremely intelligent, extremely confrontational but with finesse (a bit like some people on here 👀). She would obliterate this forum, and she would be nothing like "women just like to be right". She would put you down in a logical chokehold or absolutely not care. (She coincidentally said she grew up with only boys until high school). But even the generalization itself is up for dispute (such generalizations in themselves can be quite sexist because they land for relatively few people that the generalization describes). That said, I often make such generalizations, but I won't spend time arguing for them like it's some divine insight into reality. They're the most general of generalizations. It's something you have one thought about and then you proceed to something more relevant and insightful. That you want to spend any more than one second on it, and that any confrontation of your point is met with "it's obviously true; but yes, it's just a generalization, but why are you trying to argue against it? — see what I'm talking about?", could be indicating that you just want to win.

Good that we made that clear.

Being mentally healthy, as in free of mental conflict, with yourself. Because if you are in conflict with yourself, all the resources of your body are turned against themselves. Then it matters less that you better any single resource, because the resource goes into supressing another resource. What you want is all your resources to align under a shared goal. That's what an organism fundamentally is. When a part of the organism deviates from that goal, you have cancer, you have civil war, you have neurosis, inner conflict. It eats itself up. To be healthy, to be whole, the whole organism must be playing on team with itself. Self-determination in behavior, on all levels.

Ok. So you didn't for example have a sudden spiritual awakening during meditation that transformed how your mind operated on a day to day basis? For me, the difference in health was absolutely palpable, and the change was for all intents and purposes mental (except I had been withdrawing from serious weed abuse at that time, which was a catalyst but not the transformation itself). Then after that, I remember eating a pizza and I was looking for that usual spike of excitement when eating it, and it was to my surprise not there. That made me start going from sensory hedonism to eudaimonia like you're describing, doing things that lead to greater stability and clarity of mind, things that increase adaptive capacity, things that elevate your baseline rather than creating temporary spikes, gradually aligning the body with the new state. The change in consciousness revealed which behaviors were conducive to that state and which were detrimental, merely through feeling.

@Ramasta9 To put it in another way: did you feel more healthy after you became more spiritual? Did you body feel more blissful, did you mind feel more empty, did your body feel lighter, your muscles more loose and relaxed? Less tension in your body, less weird random aches and pains? Spirituality is the dissolving of mental compulsions and conflict, which have a fingerprint and reflection in the body.

And they might feel the same way too unless they realize you're just different. I've peeked into what other people see that I cannot see that I was surprised in my arrogance that I couldn't see. What comes off as loud obnoxious behavior sometimes hides layers you might not see. They're still loud and obnoxious, but you're aloof and detached. You might feel them more in a certain way, but you might be entirely closed off to certain dimensions they're not. Not that you should gaslight yourself about your experiences, but just a curious observation.

This is a New Age circlejerk sauna session.

Meanwhile me and average forum users: *monke see post* *monke attack post* *monke shred post into pieces* *monke smile* *monke find next post* *monke laugh* *monkey find next post* *monke run away never want to see again* *monke find next post* *monke peel eyes intrigued* *monke find next post* *monke sleep* He is sharing a he-specific problem. Oh wait, you said that.

@Schizophonia No NSFW images on the forum plz. My man, @Schizophonia doesn't speak for anyone but himself 🙂‍↔️ 85.37% now 😗

"It's genetic" "It's 50%" Anybody else in the thread, did you expect 100% or 50%?

You're neuroleptic-pilled on genetics: if your identical twin has schizophrenia, you have a 40-50% chance of getting it. That's still a lot, but it's still not a perfectly genetic disorder (unlike say Huntington's disease). Severe (hospitalizable) depression has essentially identical numbers to schizophrenia (40-50% monozygotic twin concordance and 5-10% life expectancy reduction adjusted for suicide, smoking and obesity [AI]). It goes to show that even in the most severe forms of mental distress, on average, people seem to manage it quite well. But again, averages are illusive: if you go to the extremes of the extremes (say the top 1% of most severe depression), that's probably not anywhere you want to be. Same with smoking 3 packs of cigarettes a day or weighing 600 lbs.

I don't think people appreciate how profound conflict can break your health. People with schizophrenia have a ~15 years shorter livespan on average (granted like 70% of them smoke, but still). Actually, adjusting for suicide, smoking and obesity, probably 5-10 years lifespan reduction remains [AI]. That's on a similar level as lifelong smoking and severe obesity. But that's just an average, and the thing is people aren't usually in a state of conflict all the time, people are actually quite resilient, those who survive of course. Those who get truly stuck in conflict I think deterioate very quickly and die, but those cases are extremely rare.

Your genetics do not stand alone. If somebody forgot to feed Einstein enough when he was younger, no big brain. And if he hadn't received aristocratic tutoring, he would've most likely had less exceptional math skills (being tutored has been linked to being better than 98% of non-tutored students).

"If you can't find 12 examples on the top of your head, ChatGPT will". Jking.

Sometimes your feet need a break from stomping the juice.

You're making the case that meat makes you bigger, but bigger doesn't necessarily mean longer life.

That requires the body working as a coordinated unit.

Calorie restriction is associated with living longer.

It's in the first sentence: free of mental conflict. Read up on neurosis, psychological flexibility, factors that predict resilience.

Don't think of mental in the dualistic sense. Think of it like your bodily units are working in a coordinated fashion. Even if you have good genes and good environment but you somehow put your bodily units against each other, your body becomes a battleground. It's true that some genes and some environments, or karma, makes this more or less likely (or more or less impossible). But it's like if you're the richest country in the world with the highest average IQ but there is an insurrection and toppling of the government and collective hysteria and lawlessness, that suddenly doesn't matter as much. Maybe "richest" and "highest" are generalizations that belie a more complicated reality, but nevertheless, the master regulator, or the umbrella term for when genes and environment are leading to favorable outcomes, is the existence of harmony or conflict. The larger point is to not look at just one factor but all the factors, and the experience of mental conflict is an indicator of that (because mental conflict is a conflict of all the factors and is reflected in the physical; there is no true dualistic divide; if you're in mental conflict, there is a fight or fight response in the body, resource expenditure increases, oxidation products and age-related markers increase). If you want to be very dualistic, then you can say chronic fight or flight, chronic stress, that's the big killer. (But remember that we're talking about "stress" and not "eustress"; the former is destabilizing and chronic, the other is self-consistent and short-lasting — the body is working as a unit, and this difference can be felt, experienced, hence the mental side is a good indicator; see the CATS model).

You have discovered the gas pedal, the executive functioning. Now you should re-integrate the brakes, the limbic system (or the gas and the brakes can be flipped depending on how you interpret the metaphor). Why does watching the YouTube video feel compelling? Maybe it's something you want to do or feel like doing? What is that feeling that you just want to do it for the sake of doing it? Maybe that is not just a valuable resource but fundamentally the basis and point of your life? The trick is to not just do what you don't feel like doing but getting to the point where doing the right thing is what you feel like doing. Then the inspiration and wonder of the YouTube video is what drives your action. That requires getting a sense for what your values are like @Miguel1 mentioned.

I ask because vegans are 3-4x more likely to be single.

You desire to know, to awaken, to know the truth, to eliminate suffering, etc. You're in your ego and adopt the identity of pursuing these things. That's ok. You adopt practices, follow traditions, engage in communities, plan retreats, exchange ideas and experiences, learn frameworks and doctrines. You're religious. That's ok. You conform to your community, you trust in its legitimacy, you follow the teachers, you rank some teachers over others, you prefer some teachers over others, you take on their ideas through faith, what they're saying might be true. You're not currently awake (some of you) or enlightened (most of you), but yet you're setting your sights towards these things. You're a self-described spiritual person with a plan for themselves, you're engaging in religious traditions and communities, and you conform. That's ok. Accept what is true, deny it less, and you'll have less blindspots, less self-deception, less bias. What you deny becomes unconscious, and what becomes unconscious rules you without you being aware.

And as for deconstruction of your worldview, I think deconstruction can go both ways: not through just less reading, but more. That's how Thomas Kuhn did it. The horseshoe theory of deconstruction. "It'S a sTrAngE lOop". The more you read, the more perspectives you get, the more biases you become aware of, the more traps you uncover. The more layers you find, the more you realize layerlessness is absolute. But you might get lost in the layers, but that I believe is just an intermediate thing, just like the normie philosophy readers are bottom feeders, the top are the producers. The producers become the destroyers, uniting the opposites, through diversity, not through reclusivity.

@Eskilon You know it's a good topic when nobody answers 😆