Actualized.org Video Summaries!

[Nic]

16 hours ago, kev014 said:

This is amazing, thank you to all the contributors. Super helpful

You are welcome! I hope it helps!

[Nic]

Spiral Dynamics - Areas of Applications

 

Spiral dynamics is fundamentally explaining humans values and motives, it’s a model that allows you to very accurately explain why human beings, both individually and collectively, behave the way they do , and let you predict what they are going to do next. This is extremely powerful especially when dealing with social issues.

 

-Education: 

Perhaps the most important of all domain. Solving education would allow us to solve all the other problems in the world. If you are willing to become a great teacher, to transform educational system or running a great university, spiral dynamics is essential for you to understand. Education is not one monolithic thing, every stage of the spiral has its own ideas, opinions and dogmas about how it feels what is the best form of education. 

-To blue, it would be religious indoctrination schools, make the pupils learn the Coran with a stick, christians and evangelicals want the same kind of education in the US. 

-Stage orange is very success oriented education, becoming good at business, have a particular career. This is a very limited form of education which gets you chasing materialism, money and success. It leads to other social problems like environmental problems. It doesn’t teach you about environmental problems, systems thinking, higher spiritual pursuit, meditation, shamanism, self-actualization. It confuses spirituality with stage blue dogma or theocracy. Our educational system is now like a factory farming approach to educating our children. No customization to different types of students even though human beings have different brain types. Children are not taught how to be passionate, how to find their life purpose, the importance of meditation and holistic health.

-Stage green might teach you more about health, sex and love, relationships, environment, ecology, more what you learn in universities these days.

-Stage yellow education would acknowledge that different students of the world and in different parts of the country are all at their own level of the spiral. So before entering a school, you could have a test telling you where you are on the spiral and then do courses that allows you to evolve to next level of the spiral. Different ideas need to be taught and different technics need to be used at everybody’s own pace. You cannot go to Africa and try to teach stage green ideas to stage red and purple kids.

As a teacher you might want to think about how you introduce your students or pupils to spiral dynamics and take their level on spiral to help you understand their individual needs to rise up the spiral. As a teacher, you don’t have to teach them about spiral dynamics but you can still present your teachings in that way. The higher you are on the spiral, the better you will be able to deal with kids and students that are lower on the spiral than you.

In a couple of hundred years, we will start teaching our children from first grade about meditation, mindfulness, yoga, holistic health, not religion but spirituality, enlightenment, non-duality, basically all the actualized.org subjects. De-emphathize subjects like mathematics, history… which are also important but not as important for living a good life. We will be teaching them wisdom, how to be good human beings, how to be conscious of their body and mind, how to understand ideology, epistemology and so on, all the topics that are necessary for finding your life purpose, living a passionate life, for dealing with depression and emotional issues. Mathematics and history can also be more intensively taught after 10th or 12th grade if needed.

What the average person needs is practical psychology, how to manage their relationships consciously, what the proper and the wrong ways of pursuing happiness, they need proper technics like yoga, self-inquiry or meditations to rely on these technic to further build their level of consciousness. All this would eliminate the drug problem, opioid problem, the gun problem, the political and business corruption problem, economic problem, poverty issues, reduce stress on the justice and the prison system… All those problem comes from a lack of training and education.

The ego knows that if the educational system was properly reformed the ego’s games would vanish. Below yellow, all tier one stages, believe it thinks and knows best, it wants to teach everybody its own stage and wants to demonize all the other stages, and they will fight to make sure a stage yellow educational system is never put in place.

 

-Healthcare and medicine

Right now we have a terrible stage orange healthcare and medical system, done mostly for profit. The way it is taught in universities is in a mechanical/materialistic fashion such as a lot of holistic healing modalities are ignored. The spiritual and psychological sides of health are completely ignored, considered not valid because stage orange is very materialistic, so it looks like factory farming. The pharmaceutical industry is making sure that the system stays that way, bribing the educational system and the doctors with good paychecks and bonuses to keep proscribing their products. Nearly non of the doctors have a spiritual dimension of healthcare or medicine. They try to quickly treat the surface symptoms rather than helping you to address the root cause and often times making the problem worse.

So a stage green or yellow would not be done for so much profit and have better ethics, open itself up to modalities that are not as scientific like how they do healthcare in Japan or China or even in tribal villages with shamanism, open itself to the use of herbs and psychedelics, recognizing that there is a deep connection between our physical illnesses, our psychological illnesses and our disconnection with the Truth. We need to reform the whole bureaucracy behind the whole actual system.

 

-Helping underdeveloped countries

Unless those countries take a spiral dynamic approach to addressing these problems, you can pour hundreds of billions of dollars into those countries without getting return on your investments. The US invade Iraq believing they are going to liberate the people from Saddam Hussein. What is not understood is that Iraq is at a stage purple/ red level of development on the spiral, which means that you cannot install democracy just by killing Saddam. The Iraqis need a strong leader, Saddam was violent and blood thirsty, but that is what takes to be a successful leader at stage red, because there are other people there who are ready to overpower him if he is not like that. Prior to install a democracy, you’ve got to raise the level of development of the entire population. If you give a democracy to a stage red/blue middle eastern country, they are going to create a theocracy out of that, they will execute and ethnically cleans the religious minorities. Stage blue doesn’t acknowledge yet the validity of minority opinions and perspectives which starts only at stage orange and above. 

USA is not developed enough yet to properly help the middle eastern countries as the politicians and military leaders are coming from a stage orange perspective trying to exploit others for their own benefits or the military-industrial complex.

 

-Solving geopolitical conflicts

The Israeli/Palestinian conflict could be solve applying spiral dynamics. Don Beck had a lot but not complete success studying the matter. Israeli society has multiple strata, blue, orange and green, the Palestinian are less developed, are at purple, red and blue, orange and some at green. We could teach them spiral dynamics trying to make them understand that it’s not all black or white, that there are different kinds of forces, motivations and values at work and that makes it difficult to reconcile what is going on there. The people at purple, red or blue are radicalizing the political discussion, radicalizing orange and green, making everybody kind ultranationalistic, fighting only for their side, unwilling to see that they need to come together and to understand that there is some kind of a spiral at work beyond their religion differences, both evolving up the spiral at different speed.

For every person who wants to explain the spiral, de-radicalizing, de-polarizing people, they are hundred others who tries to do the exact opposite thing. We need more people who explain spiral dynamics that explains the concept in a non judgmental and non condemning sort of way, leading to deescalation of political violence. We need to found education programs and help them to cover their basic needs and that will help them to evolve up the spiral and in this way, we will have less terrorists. 

A lot of people blame Islam or religions for the problem in the middle east. Their issue is more their level of spiral development. Islam can exist at stage red up to turquoise. People see Islam as one monolithic thing without seeing the different nuances. Certain levels are aggressive and regressive, other levels can be very advanced, healthy and beneficial. If we try to eradicate islam, we are going to provoke an ego backlash and they are going to hate you, for them it would be like taking away your business or the US constitution. We have to recognize that there is validity within all religious traditions, we can’t dismiss them all as childish nonsense. A stage orange atheist like Sam Harris will not understand that. 

A lot of these geopolitical problems that happens around the world are simply due to lack of understanding each other, lack of seeing through other peoples eyes, lack of being able to take higher and higher perspective, this is what spiral dynamics is about. So by taking higher perspective yourself, you will be less judgmental, you will be able to help other people taking more perspective as well which will help reduce violence and animosity, racism, hatred, misunderstanding  and genocide, but it starts with you, otherwise you are going to turn into a devil yourself and polarizing people against other people, acting out of ignorance, not able to do any better from their level on the spiral.

 

-Economics

Right now the system is at stage orange so very capitalistic, everything is about maximizing profits, companies have no ecological awareness, don’t recognize worker’s rights, don’t see the damage their marketing and advertising is doing in the world. Green companies are more socialistic, more concerned about equal distribution of resources, more progressive taxation scales, holding corporations into account, higher wages and more of a say for employees, the companies would have more conscious business, maximizing relationships, fairness and equality.

A yellow stage business is not about imposing socialism or capitalism for everybody, it’s about finding the nuances in between, finding the right mix, fine tune our economic system not only to have more equality and eliminate poverty, but also for maximizing the amount of people moving up the spiral.

Spiral dynamics is also very useful to evaluate political candidates, political parties and understanding the culture wars. In the US it is stage blue/orange (republicans) fighting against stage green/orange (democrats). Basically the best candidates is the highest one on the spiral, at the moment, stage green is often the best one you can get. Voters generally only votes for their own stage, not smart enough to vote for a stage higher than the one that they are at. Not knowing about spiral dynamics, you might be tempted to do a false equivalency between the republican and  the democratic party. If you understand spiral dynamics, the democratic party (liberals) is more cognitively and spiritually evolved than the republican party (conservatives),but that might change in the future… These are just stages fighting against each other, preventing us from a good government. The solutions to all of our current problems will resolve at stage green or yellow. 

 

-Psychotherapy, coaching and consulting

As a coach, spiral dynamics can be very useful to understand where your client is at, like a CEO, and why he is refusing to move up his company from orange to green, and help him make that transition. Or you could give spiritual insights to a client who is at yellow to make him move up to turquoise. That would completely transform your coaching and therapeutic practice. You can realize why your stage green technics don’t work on you stage red client and tailor your communication style. By really understanding this model, in about 5-10 min of coaching or therapy, you’d know which level your client is at and communicate in a way that fits his or her value system. 

In order to help understand a stage orange CEO why he should already do the transition into green for his company, don’t tell him that he is going to save the polar bears, he doesn’t care, but because tell him that this transition would help him for his own future level of development, (which is what stage orange cares about) when he’ll be doing psychedelics and be more spiritually evolved. Having a stage orange company might drag him down when he’ll be at stage yellow five years from now. Make him understand how himself can benefit from the future situation. 

Spiral dynamics helps you creates bridges between the stages, that for example you can start a business that promotes spirituality. Spirituality and business are not in conflict with each other, both sides can benefits from it, you create win-win scenarios. 

 

-Developing and managing communities

Spiral dynamics helps also If you ever want to be a leader of a community like an ashram or leader of a religious community, a business organization or a non-profit organization. Spiral dynamics helps you take decisions who you want to make business with, it can be very useful when you start a new business knowing what your business, yourself, your employees and costumers are at and align them all together, it’s important to have a common set of values but also to know what niche you want to target, what the opportunities are, what we are moving forward to.

Business happens at every stage of the spiral, not only at stage orange, here are some opportunities: 

-building an online education platform that serves stage yellow

-building a stage turquoise community 

-business consultant guiding companies to transition from orange to green

-create a stage green marketing company

-building a stage turquoise university (we don’t even know what that is)

-become a stage turquoise artist (think about what kind of art would that be mixing art, spirituality and psychology)

-becoming a stage turquoise scientist or inventor

-building a stage turquoise hospital

 

-Evaluate teachers and gurus

What level of values they are trying to promote, evaluating religion, self-help gurus, media, entertainment, art and analysis.

 

-Evaluate you relationships, sexuality and dating

If you are stage green, do you want to marry a stage blue person, but think of all your relationships, spiral dynamics will often explain why you don’t get along with your family members. You can use spiral dynamics to resolve the problem. 

 

-Evaluate the environment you surround yourself with

What kind country and city do you live in? What kind of friends and people are around you? What kind of job do you do? Is it pulling you down or up? How can you find yellow people?

 

-Improve your communication skills

It helps greatly to evaluate the value system of your audience.

 

-Raising children

How and what kind of education do you give your child in order for him/her to evolve at the next stage.

 

-Historical analysis

Look at history with the spiral lens, you’ll see that most of the humans conflicts was a mismatching between the different stages.

 

-Evaluate future trends and what their obstacles will be

Within education, healthcare, politics, science

 

-Science

How can we make science evolve? What science means culturally, will evolve in the future.

 

-Art

creating a stage turquoise video games, music, movie making, writing…

 

-Becoming a spiritual teacher

 

-Your life purpose

Find a higher life purpose than you otherwise would, find yourself a stage yellow or turquoise life purpose, becoming a stage turquoise entrepreneur.

 

Spiral dynamics priorities:

1)Learn about the theory

2)Don’t waste your time judging other stages.

3)Develop yourself at least to stage yellow

 

When analyzing human inventions or systems, you can always ask:

1)which stage was it created by

2)which stage is it enabling 

3)which stage is it suppressing or demonizing

 

Use spiral dynamics to help you to grow yourself, architect a more functional society, to create amazing innovations, to get a glimpse into what the future is gonna hold and to help to raise the consciousness of mankind in some way.

[SoothedByRain]

What is Duality – Part 1 

Leo's smile and laugh are beautiful! I don't think he cut for the whole 2.40 minutes of that lecture . . .

Not my work. Copied and pasted from a Youtube User's efforts by the name of Ask Questions
---

All human cognition is dualistic, which has enormous implications for all intellectual work, including science, philosophy, and culture. This two-part mini-series presents a detailed list of over 250 of the most common dualities and how they ultimately break down. 

 

“Every stick has 2 ends” 

  

3 major groups  

  

Common dualities , scientific dualities , existential dualities.  

  

250 common dualities  

  

All thinking is dualistic any intellectual activity is creating duality,  we create dualities unconsciously  

  

Your own mind is creating these dualitistic opposing relative notions. What is the distinction between mind and world but a duality. We build our lives and societies and cultures on certain unquestionable duality which is very threatening to the ego.  All science is dualistic,  reality is dualistic. Your own mind defines and created these dualities and are not absolute where all dualities collapse. You're using your mind to create boundaries.  Reality arises from denial of duality which itself is a category   

Dualities  

  

Up vs down  

  

Left vs right  

  

East vs west 

  

Soft vs big 

  

Forward vs backward 

  

Clockwise vs counterclockwise  

  

Long vs short  

  

Hot vs cold  

  

Weak vs strong  

  

Slow vs fast  

  

Smooth vs roof  

  

Odd vs even (is 0 even or odd , is 3.14...even or odd) 

  

Easy vs hard  

  

Empty vs full  

  

High vs low  

  

Decrease vs increase 

  

Heads vs tails 

  

Shallow vs deep  

  

Narrow vs broad  

  

Good vs evil   

  

White vs black  

  

True vs false  

  

Love vs hate  

  

Positive vs negative  

  

Should vs shouldn’t  

Right vs wrong  

  

Moral vs immoral  

  

Worst vs best *how much time spent debating  

  

Sad vs happy* you can’t have happiness without sadness  

  

Old vs new 

  

Young vs old 

  

success vs failure* how do you know something failed ? 

  

Reality vs fantasy  

  

Life vs death  

  

Good vs bad  

  

Science vs religion  

  

Man vs women 

  

Human vs machine 

  

Progress vs regress  

  

Pain vs suffering  

  

Thoughts vs feelings  

  

Foreground vs background 

  

Useful vs useless* if you didn't need to survive nothing would be useful you wouldn’t even need uselessness when things become useful other things become useless  

  

Essential vs not essential  

  

Inefficient vs efficient  

  

Boring vs exiting  

  

Here vs there 

  

Near vs far 

  

Rich vs poor 

  

Normal vs weird  

  

Xx vs Xy* means nothing what is a chromosome? Why should we give importance to certain chromosomes? Wow.  

  

White vs black (race)  

  

Flawed vs perfect (absolute perfect) 

  

Straight vs curve 

  

Dark vs light 

  

Dirty vs clean 

  

Wild vs tamed  

  

Simple vs complex  

  

Wet vs dry  

  

Common vs rare\ 

  

Pro vs cons 

  

Up sides vs down sides 

  

Fair vs unfair (absolute fair how much do you complain about unfair? One being through all permutations * 

  

Winning vs losing 

  

Gain vs loss  

  

Fake vs genuine* 

  

Fiction vs nonfiction  

  

fearful/Cowardness vs bravery  

  

Slave vs master 

  

Superficial vs profound 

  

Abstract vs concrete  

  

General vs specific  

  

Growth vs decay * how much do you chase never ending growth whatever goes up must come down  

  

Agitated vs calm  

  

Arrogance vs humility* humble people were once very arrogant usually when you were young, you becoming humbled by your arrogance from self reflecting and get sick of your own arrogance  

  

War vs peace 

  

Violence vs peace * it's only possible to have peace through war and violence (long term design is absolute and absolute peace striving for greater unity  

  

Personal vs impersonal* both  

  

Innocent vs guilty 

  

Past vs future* 

  

Happened vs will happen 

  

Confused vs clear  

  

Capitalism vs socialism vs communism  

  

Conservative vs liberal  

  

Legal vs illegal  

  

Criminal vs non criminal  

  

Criminal vs police  

  

Terrorist vs not terrorist* who can say who is and who isn't a terrorist  

  

Hero vs villain  

  

Journey vs destination 

  

Ruler vs ruled  

  

Ugly vs beautiful  

  

Masturbation vs sex  

  

Art vs non art 

  

Discord vs harmony  

  

Student vs teacher 

  

Child vs adult 

  

Healthy vs unhealthy  

  

Product development vs marketing  

  

Biology vs chemistry  

  

Civilized vs uncivilized  

  

Spirituality vs politics 

  

Church vs state  

  

Important vs unimportant  

  

Mother vs father  

  

Democracy vs tyranny  

  

Sober vs intoxicated  

  

Beginning vs end   

  

Needs vs wants  

  

Pain vs pleasure  

  

Individualism vs collectivism  

  

Primary vs secondary  

  

Thought vs feeling  

  

Theism vs atheism   

  

Consistent vs inconsistent  

  

Extreme vs moderate  

  

attraction vs repulsion   

  

Contraction vs expansion  

  

Dominant vs submissive  

  

Popular vs unpopular  

  

Mainstream vs niche  

  

Gross vs subtle 

  

Incremental change vs revolutionary change  

  

Status quo vs change  

  

Stable vs unstable  

  

Temporary vs eternal *  

  

Addition vs subtraction  

  

Addiction vs non attached (added my own) 

  

Work vs play 

  

Content vs context 

  

Closed vs open  

  

Local vs global  

  

Minimum vs maximum  

  

Lender vs borrower 

  

Buyer vs seller 

  

Entrance vs exit  

  

Like vs dislike 

  

Ignorance vs wisdom  

  

Emotional vs rational 

  

Functional vs dysfunctional  

  

Employee vs employer 

  

Sexual vs nonsexual  

  

Leader vs follower 

  

Victim vs abuser a lot of times the victim is an abuser somewhere else   

  

Predator prey  

  

Us vs them  

  

People vs corporations  

  

Private vs public  

  

Competition vs cooperation  

  

Safety vs danger  

  

Drugs vs psychedelics 

  

Mediocre vs excellent  

  

Implicit vs explicit  

  

Culture vs cults 

  

Ordinary vs extraordinary 

  

Serious vs playful 

  

Cat vs dog 

  

Scientific dualities  

  

Mind vs brain  

  

Energy vs matter  

  

  

You can distinguish these things but just realize you are the one creating these distinguishes  

  

Existential duality  

  

Existential duality are dualities most people don't want to question  

  

 

Fundamental law of epistemology  

  

All dualities are fundamentally untenable and temporary all dualities are relative and must eventually collapse.  

  

Corollary; dualities only holds when they are not deeply explored the deeper you explore any duality to its ultimate route what you will discover is that the further away you get from the edges of this duality you will see it collapse and the edges will bleed and circle back around in a unity and the entire time the duality was defined in terms of one another.   

  

Authenticity is absolute start self reflecting  be weird ,stop looking in the mirror, and stop laughing at people.  

  

move yourself into integration  

 

 

[Rahul yadav]

Spiral Dynamics Notes.

Spiral Notes.pdf

[Dan502]

Really glad you're sharing these summaries

[Yahya]

Thank you.

[yangmilun]

Where is my fuckin favorite buttons? where is my bookmark buttons? Now, yes, now. quick save it! very useful.

[SoothedByRain]

@yangmilun You can Follow the thread up on the top right and you'll receive emails when people post

[Zul]

How Authority Works - Where does truth and credibility come from?

- extensive episode notes (practically a transcript)

- sorry for the errors, english is not my first language

How Authority Works - Transcript.docx

[SoothedByRain]

@Zul You went all in on your note taking for this lecture. Thank you for sharing dude. Love from England!

 

Edit: Have a gift in return for being glorious!

 

Edited July 13, 2019 by SoothedByRain

[Nic]

@Zul

Good man, that's how I like notes to be taken! Thank you buddy!

[Elisabeth]

Conscious politics - Part I (detailed, some places almost transcript, small parts left out)

prerequisites: (conceptual) understanding of non-duality, Spiral dynamics, self-deception, survival, collective ego, devilry (What is the devil, The mechanics of evil), how ideology works, relativity & relativism, systems thinking, Love. 

Politics & government is thoroughly self-deceptive, both politicians and voters. 

He'll be talking about republicans&democrats, but conservativism vs. liberalism is a global topic. 

Why deal with politics, and not just one's own spirituality?

The world's problems can't be solved by turning inwards. There are individual problems, but also collective problems. One way to contribute to collective problems is denying them or trying to reduce them to individual problems (as many spiritual schools do).

There are lessons to be taken from the Absolute to the relative, but not in a simplistic way. Don't create a duality between spirituality and politics.

A well-structured society helps in raising consciousness. If you want to be a bodhisattva and help enlighten the whole world, you'll not be able to do it one person at a time. If most people put their hands away from politics, the least conscious end up leading us. 

By doing nothing, the status quo (unconscious politics) prevails. Selfishness, fear, exploitation. 

Spiritual schools (Buddhism, Christianity, Advaita, ...) which emerged thousands of years ago are not good enough to solve today's problems. The don't understand ecology, system's thinking, modern psychology. 

The problems with today's politics

We are returning back to the Athens, where citizenship, philosophy, psychology, morals and ethics, politics were all integrated, and from great thinking, political advances emerged. Theory informs your practice. Today, the theory is insufficient, so practice is all wrong. 

First problem: Selfishness, bias, ideology, immediately corrupts this discussion. We get into culture wars. Distraction. We need to create enough elevation to open ourselves up to something new, above both sides. Beyond left and right. But the problem is, the sides are not equally evolved,  the right is usually less conscious - so for the person on the right, Leo might seem leftist, but he's trying to get above. Any view you have is limited and highly partial. Politics and government are a matter of life and death, so devilry takes over.

Second problem: Government is taken for granted. We do not appreciate, how far society has evolved, precisely because politics works so well. You can go about your life and be safe, use roads, subway, electricity, the internet... and not think of politics. This is not seeing what the government does for us. The government is a technology. A thousand years ago democracy seemed insane. Free speach, fair judical system, separation of church and state, religoust freedom, minority rights, the right to protest, a social safety net, diplomacy, environmental protection, police and accountable representatives, ... is all advanced social technology, radical in their time, someone had to think of them and then fight for them.

The government has to govern on a completely different scale than a company. Hundreds of millions of people sometimes. Somehow, life in the 21st century is amazing compared to previous. 

What has the government done for you?

• Protects from opression, enslavement and genocide !!!
• Also prevents internal oppression (exploitation, scam, cults, mafia, corporate oppression etc.)
• Ensures property rights. There are no property rights unless they are invented and protected. 
• Court systems. Peaceful means to resolve conflict - otherwise people go for each other's throats. Prevents torture and cruel punishment. 
• Police, firefighters, riot control, investigating all kinds of crimes, prison, natural disaster relief, emergency health care, ...
• Infrastructure: Water, transport, sewage systems, post office, ...
• Public education and universities. People used to be illiterate. 
• Grants, loans, subsidies. Poverty help. Insurance.
• Pollution regulation. Standards of living. National parks, protected natural areas.
• Minority rights
• Vaccines and disease prevention. 
• Research and development, space exploration, preservation of historical artefacts (imagine a pyramid owned by a shady corporation)
• Statistical data
• Food regulation and meat inspections. Meat used to be terribly dirty. 
• Banking regulation, currency enforcement, market protection, accountability for business
• Satellites, allocation of radio bandwidth
• Peace&arms treaties, diplomacy
• Foster homes, adoption services.
• Prevention of proliferation of nuclear weapons. Imagine corporations having them. 
• Certification and accreditation.

Critique of stage orange (and libertarianism):

Some of this the private sector can do (like space exploration), some of this it can't (protection about enslavement, uncorrupt police, ...). If given the chance to do so, the private sector will enslave you, you are going to be part of one emerging largest corporation, and you'll not have a vote in it. Human nature. Corporation today only have a selfish motivation, and are not accountable to anyone. Too powerful corporations are anti-democratic, because they can have more power than a government, but the employees have no say. 

For SD stage orange, freedom is taken as an ideology. Libertarianism is a fantasy. The "free market" leads to enslavement. There was never a truly free market anyway, they are always manipulated by someone and propped up by power-play and aggression. There is no "non-violence principle" - it has to be ensured with aggression. That's what government is. Individualism is also a fantasy, even apes don't survive as individuals. Being able to talk about how we're all individuals today is a result of collective development. You're part of the entire colony. 

Other problems with SD stage orange: 

• Doesn't see collective problems. It assumes anyone can take more responsibility for their lives. There's a sense of entitlement, that both winners and losers deserve what they have. This ignores systemic problems at work.
• They are about maximizing profit and economic growth. Never-ending economic growth won't happen and won't solve our problems, in fact economic growth makes them worth.
• Materialism and anti-spirituality
• Toxic masculinity and minimizing femininity and feminine values
• Me, me, me, my own survival at all costs. Survival of the fittest. 

What is government? Why does it exist?

Simplistic version: Government is a human invention. In the animal kingdom there are no rules. Anything that you can do to ensure survival is fair play. It's brutal. The government is here to protect us from that.

More detailed: A lion has to hunt every day. Humans accumulate resources. (Meat, houses, tools, weapons, corn!) Humans live in tribes. Short term, conquering a neighbouring tribe and stealing their resources is the best strategy for a human tribe. But a few years later, a stronger tribe conquers us. And then an even stronger tribe ... Think of a greek city-state. In ancient times killing all the men, raping women and enslaving them and their children was the standard. Understand that that is freedom! It's gang warfare. The most powerful ends up conquering everybody else. People don't like it.

That's why people unified under (quite brutal) governments at first. To protect them against even greater brutality of enslavement, murder and genocide. If you don't unify, you'll be enslaved. Morals were not evolved yet at the time. It was the brutality of the animal kingdom. That is what freedom means. 

Freedom is not an absolute good from the human perspective. True freedom is: I am allowed to do whatever I want, you are allowed to do whatever you want, and there are no rules. Freedom is something we need protection against. Therefore we accept limitation for the sake of fairness and peace. We need some set of basic rules. 

But how do you get a diverse set of people with different languages, and values and ethnicity to agree on the same rules? People by default don't know that it's wrong to murder and scam and rape, because that's survival. It's a very serious problem. Appreciate the depth of the problem that government solves - this is our most remarkable technology. 

Freedom is counterintuitive: 1) It seems like a great thing, but we have to limit it, 2) This seems negative, but united people can do much more than individuals or small groups, so counterintuitively by giving up some freedom we get new freedoms. (Like building airplanes and flying freely all around the world!, or watching youtube )

Community vs. individualism

We need community for practical reasons. But also, we are built for it. It feels good, gives us a sense of purpose. There are tradeoffs between individualism and collectivism, these need to be dynamically balanced. 

Society is a "holon". It's being a part and a whole simultaneously. My hand is a part of my body, my cells are parts of my hand, they are autonomous, but can't function without all the other parts. My hand needs my teeth and my heart and my brain. Human beings are also "holons", parts of society. 

It's not all about individuals. At each level of reality, many units together are more than the sum of its parts. Groups of people have emergent properties. You can't reduce society. Governments are not only responsible for managing people, but also groups of people, and collective ego's. And of course, society itself is a giant collective ego. You can see this is getting complicated, and none of this is reflected by usual political analysis. 

Fundamentally reality is dividing itself and finding ways to reunite with itself, on all levels. Mankind has started off as a united group of people somewhere in Africa, until it wondered of and divided into tribes and nations, and these clashed with each other, and eventually started to bleed into each other to a point where it's untenable to stick to one tribe. We are recognizing that we are a global species. If you deny and resist that, it leads to war etc. ... the proper way is to unite. Until mankind starts colonizing other planets, and divides again, then reunites again ...

An arc to human history: More equality and consciousness, less brutality and enslavement, greater complexity, greater freedom, greater unity (in the very long run). 

What is politics and government really about?

First of all, individual and collective survival. Survival is relative to an identity. Whatever you identify as is what needs to be survived. Identity is central to politics! It's not just right vs. left, everybody is playing identity politics, all the time. Collective identity being just as important as the individual on. 

Low consciousness = you are not conscious of your own selfishness. (America isn't conscious of how it's selfish as a nation.) Selfishness is karma. It becomes it's own worst enemy. In practice, selfishness has repercussions, it's quit tit for tat. Relationships need to be quite even. 

Politics is about

• Distribution of power and resources. Not just Marxists, everyone is redistributing power and resources! Every corporation lobbies their government. That's business, that's life, that's survival. But there are better and worse 
• Reduction of brutality and oppression. Creating a fair playing field. At least it should be about - and is in the long term. 
• Creating infrastructure and systems. That allow for greater complexity, greater freedom. 
• Community. Not just pragmatism. You can participate with others (in a festival, singing the national anthem, football, a religious gathering...)
• Evolution, and the emergence of higher holons. 
• Creating a consensus, amongst millions of people with different survival agendas. Not everyone can be satisfied, but there are some decisions, which benefit most.
• Seeking a consensus. But we also have debates, culture wars, actual war... it's about changing the culture in such a way which benefits you and your tribe. There's no objective "best", no objective right and wrong. We're making it up as we go. 
• ...

Government must be inclusive

Government must be inclusive, in a manner that other organizations don't have to be, which makes it much more difficult. Government is the highest structure we have developed. If I have a hippie commune, and someone troublemaker makes it in, we can kick him out. It's fine. The whole society doesn't have that option. It has to deal with the poor, the sick, the addicts, the crazy, the insane, the psychopaths and sociopaths, criminals, religious fanatics, terrorists... you can't exclude them. No other country will take them  You need to integrate them, and develop infrastructure to deal with them.

You can't just say fuck them, because then while you're sleeping in your comfy bed next to your comfy wife one of these poor mentally deranged people will break into your house and kill you. Wouldn't it be better if we found ways to solve these problems in a humane way, give them treatment, help, so they stop being harmful to themselves and the rest of society? Because hopeless people who have no nothing to loose and feel like nobody cares for them are those who will go into a school and shoot your children. Take fringe cases seriously. 

Likewise for other governments and countries. The poorest, least developed countries in the world have serious pathologies - you can't ignore them. These may be people who feel so oppressed that they get on an airplane and .. 9/11. It's smarter to integrate. Because happy people don't crash into buildings or start wars. 

So these kinds of isolationist policies where you build walls and jails and ignore don't work. 

Government is uniquely difficult

• because it must work for all people. You can't take your high-IQ or billionaire elite and build your own country.
• Because people have so many different worldviews and survival agendas.  
• Most people don't understand, what's going on. They are to desperate to pay bills and survive to think about philosophy. The government must be pragmatic because these issues are life and death issues. In a lot of countries, billions of people deal with famine, poverty, slavery, drugs, abusive relationships, exploitation by their bosses, toxic pollution, genocide... (So put away your culture wars.)

No human knows what the best design it for government. It's natural selection, but we are consciously participating in the evolution. This is a big responsibility. 

**

Thought experiment: Imagine you can be born as whoever. You can also pick your government.

But, there is a caveat. You know that after this life, you will also incarnate as everybody else. Now, what kind of government do you want?

**

What keeps people from having an objective sense of fairness is their own bias. A person born rich will never think they're going to be born in Africa, or exploited by some corporation who pays a slave wage, or as a young girl sold for prostitution because he's so locked into his own persona. He blocks all the suffering of the other people in the world out of his mind. But if you know you're gonna be all the people, you want a fair government which doesn't oppress anybody.

The trick with conscious politics is stepping out of our own egoic survival agenda. 

The true aim of government should be to elevate consciousness and love. 

This is what everybody wants. This is what life is about. Government should be creating a healthy ecosystem for raising the consciousness of all people. 

This is being easily dismissed. But if you don't know your aim, you can't reach it. Because if government is not designed for high consciousness values, it's by default being designed by devilry. Selfishness and greed. 

I'm not talking about creating a theocracy! (pre-trans fallacy)

Can you do that? Yes! That's what we've been doing all throughout evolution, it just has a lot of degrees. 

The entire reality is moving towards consciousness and love. Reality is an infinitely expanding love fractal. 

We can be aligned with the force of evolution, or against it. Create beautiful societies, or go extinct. The choice is ours. 

I'm talking about expanding our circle of concerns towards all beings. 

We need to have infrastructure which helps all people meet their basic needs, so that they can spend the rest of their lives raising consciousness. The more conscious all of your neighbours are, the better neighbours, coworkers and citizens they will be, the better inventions they will create, the more responsible they will be...

Government taxes people, a large pool of money is created, but then people (entire professions) leach off the system. But that doesn't prove government is bad. What you want is not a small government, you want a great uncorrupt effective government. You can't get rid of taxation, that's a fantasy. Solution is to end the self-dealing by becoming more engaged and holding people more responsible. Propper way to end government corruption is by getting educated and engaged as a voter. Don't undermine the government by privatising everything... there's no accountability with corporations. The government's purpose needs to be the well-being of human beings, not profit. 

The biggest problem of most government is white-collar crime, lobbying, subsidies to companies who don't need them, the revolving door... 
Starting a new organization won't help. We already have a massive organization called the government. We have to keep evolving it. Our best bet is engaged citizenry. 

[Leo Gura]

On 4/14/2019 at 11:57 PM, SoothedByRain said:

move yourself into integration  

 

 

LOL, I can't believe you dug up that song!

[Quicksilver]

Can this be sticky-ed? 

I was looking for the notes for those times I listen to the audio while commuting, and this thread is amazing. 

[Nic]

@Elisabeth Thanks, good job and thank you for sharing !!!

[Nic]

On 18.07.2019 at 11:42 AM, Quicksilver said:

Can this be sticky-ed? 

I was looking for the notes for those times I listen to the audio while commuting, and this thread is amazing. 

I think it deserves to be sticky-ed as well! 

[Elisabeth]

@Nic Thanks. I'm going to do part II and III as well, then go through it and see what I can share with our local politicians. I believe there are some people who might be able to understand Leo's material, but hardly any willing to watch 8 hours of video without a preview. 

 

[Leo Gura]

Funnily enough, I have been resisting stickying this because I feel that most people ignore stickied threads over time.

Life is so counter-intuitive that stickying a thread makes it less visible. What a sick world God has created!

But if you guys still want me to sticky it, I can.

[Forestluv]

@Leo Gura Perhaps it’s possible to create a locked sticky that links to the active thread - to get the best of both worlds?

[Nic]

9 hours ago, Elisabeth said:

@Nic Thanks. I'm going to do part II and III as well, then go through it and see what I can share with our local politicians. I believe there are some people who might be able to understand Leo's material, but hardly any willing to watch 8 hours of video without a preview. 

 

Let us know how they react to it! I think they might understand it in there own way. Those ideas aren't something you can understand on the spot, these are ideas you evolve and grow with.