The Profound Stupidity of Psychologists

[Leo Gura]

2 minutes ago, JTL said:

American culture* 

Stupidity and evil is much more fundamental than any race or culture.

This what the racists get wrong.

Edited Saturday at 08:15 PM by Leo Gura

[Ero]

1 minute ago, JTL said:

American culture* 

Nope, this is universal. Degenerates in the Balkans or Mexico are even worse.

[Emerald]

21 hours ago, Nilsi said:

The problem is that catastrophe is imminent - every day, 20 animal species go extinct, planetary boundaries are shattered, AI creeps closer to runaway superintelligence, and capitalism accelerates relentlessly, dragging us into ever deeper chaos.

There’s simply no time for such utopian projects, even if your intuitions are right. Immediate action is non-negotiable. It’s going to be rough, it’s going to be dirty, and neither a psychiatrist nor a divine deity will be there to hold our hands through it.

Also, isn’t this precisely the point of Jesus? On the cross, he wasn’t just dying - he was taking God with him. His followers asked, “How do we know you’re there for us when you’re gone?” And he answered, “When there’s love between you, I will be there.” If this isn’t the most profound atheist manifesto ever, I don’t know what is.

That's true. We do need more immediate solutions in terms of policy, institutions, and economy to manage the symptoms of what we have now and to shift to better systems.

My point to the OP was not to discount the impact of greater degrees of psychological and emotional awareness over time.

But that's never been the way I've conceptualized of the story of Jesus. I've never heard it framed as him taking God with him in any context. Maybe there could be some correlation there.

But I've tended to see him more as a divine scapegoat figure to serve as the infinite in a finite body. And we individually don't need to bear the burdens of the infinite because he as already played the role of the finite who bears the infinite. 

[Nilsi]

13 minutes ago, Emerald said:

But that's never been the way I've conceptualized of the story of Jesus. I've never heard it framed as him taking God with him in any context. Maybe there could be some correlation there.

But I've tended to see him more as a divine scapegoat figure to serve as the infinite in a finite body. And we individually don't need to bear the burdens of the infinite because he as already played the role of the finite who bears the infinite. 

Because you’ve likely only been exposed to bourgeois readings of the story of Jesus that encourage you to defer your authority to the court - be it the church, the state, or any institution claiming to embody the will of God, whether in theological or secular terms.

The interpretation I’ve offered isn’t some radical postmodern deconstructionist stance, by the way - it’s already present in Hegel:

Quote

"God Himself is dead; it is this that Christ experienced in His passion and death. The suffering and death of Christ is the moment when the Absolute itself is lost, negated, and passes into its opposite. This is not merely the death of a human being, but the death of the divine, of God Himself, who as Spirit overcomes this death and rises again."

Quote

"It is in the community that the Spirit becomes present; the community is the realization of the Spirit."

Slavoj Žižek put it perfectly:

Quote

"Christ's death on the Cross is not an event which took place on a specific day in history, but the eternal event around which the human universe revolves: it signals the point at which God Himself falls into His own creation and dies, negating Himself. This self-negation is not a failure or a catastrophe, but the very passage through which God becomes Spirit—Spirit as the community of believers united in love, where the gap between the divine and human is forever closed. The greatness of Christianity lies in this radical gesture of God giving up His throne, exposing Himself to the utmost vulnerability, becoming one of us and accepting the full burden of existence."

 

Edited Saturday at 09:04 PM by Nilsi

[Emerald]

4 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Progressives should be forced to watch 50 hours of road rage incidents to show them how the bottom half of mankind lives.

I've seen how the bottom half of mankind lives. I know a lot of people from my hometown who have a very low level of standards for their own behavior. It was all pretty normalized in my hometown to not think very much about the ethical implications of things.

And criminality-wise, I've known people who have been in and out of jail for a variety of petty crimes to more serious crimes. I even know someone who's in jail for life because he shot a convenient store clerk... and I have a friend from high school who recently got caught a couple years ago making kiddie porn with his 4 year old daughter.

To my perception, you'd have to be living under a rock to not encounter people doing very dark and evil things. Maybe some people are sheltered from this, but I really don't understand how. It's right out in the open.

Back when I was 20, I was technically homeless for a few months. And I was busking in the pedestrian area to make money. And there were tons of people who felt very comfortable showing me their evil side because I was downtrodden and young.

So, I am quite aware that human beings are capable of so much darkness. And most people do behave in evil and stupid ways. 

But in my medicine journeys, I sat once as God and myself at once... with thick book of transparent pages sitting on my lap. And I could understand the life of each person that came to my mind by looking at the top of the transparent pages. And I could see the patterns of ignorance and pain that mangled the pure goodness into neurosis, foolishness, and evil.

And in other journeys, I have recognized very clearly the inherent goodness that sits underneath all negative actions. And from that state, no judgment was possible.

And so, I had temporarily resolved my own stupidity and evil during those experiences because I came into a deeper alignment with truth and love.

And any claim that "humanity is evil" will put us into state of consciousness that's antithetical to truth and love. And it will cause us to over-focus on the symptom as "just part of our nature" and we will make no effort to resolve the root.

But it is only because we are stupid and evil that we make this mistake.

Humanity hasn't even begun to scratch the surface of our potential for goodness that sits as the foundation of our nature.

[Leo Gura]

42 minutes ago, Emerald said:

you'd have to be living under a rock to not encounter people doing very dark and evil things.

Tell that to leftists crying to defund the police.

[Emerald]

25 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Tell that to leftists crying to defund the police.

That's a bit of straw man about the "defund the police" sentiment. Though I also know that some lefties are too lost in the sauce of their ideology and don't believe that the police are necessary at all.

The idea that I've heard most often in lefty corners of the internet with regard to "defund the police" is to divert some of the money from overly-bloated police budgets that are used towards greater levels of militarization (like some police forces have a tank and military grade gear and weapons)... and instead to divert that spending towards other types of interventionists that are a better fit than the police in some cases.

So, instead of it being the police that comes out in every single instance of public disturbance... if it's something like someone who's got mental health issues or someone is reporting a sexual assault case after the danger has passed to send a different kind of intervention team.

It happens too often that the police end up swatting flies with cannons because they're handling cases that their MO doesn't fit very well within. And so, "defund the police" for many lefties is about diverting funds away from militarization and putting more funds towards a more multifaceted approach to intervention.

Now, I'm not saying that that's the way I think about reforming the criminal justice system because I have some different ideas.

But if you're thinking that most lefties don't recognize that crime happens and needs to be dealt with, you are uninformed.

[Lyubov]

You guys are too fucking nihilist for me sometimes. Please go outside and touch grass. Humans do not need saving. We are one, changing, unfolding and ever evolving. There is no value to gain and you are infinity valuable and whole as you are, you do not need to be let down by an old scholar who has no idea what he’s talking about. There is only one lesson to learn here and it’s following the way and returning to one. Humans will grow and evolve and make mistakes along the way. You either accept reality as it is or you don’t. It’s that simple. You accept humans learn through war or you don’t. You accept we change a little day by day and we are a bit more honest here and there. It’s not that deep. 

Edited Sunday at 03:31 AM by Lyubov