This what made me stop being a progressive. Awesome quote from Aldous Huxley

[StarfoxEpiphany]

Quote

“The surest way to work up a crusade in favor of some good cause is to promise people they will have a chance of maltreating someone. To be able to destroy with good conscience, to be able to behave badly and call your bad behavior 'righteous indignation' — this is the height of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats.”
― Aldous Huxley, Crome Yellow

 

[Dryas]

Doesn't sound specifically directed at progressives, though.

[StarfoxEpiphany]

@Dryas Yeah, saw it in the military too

Edited June 26, 2021 by StarfoxEpiphany
shortening

[Tim R]

@StarfoxEpiphany And what exactly is it in this quote that made you "stop being a progressive", whatever that means? 

Because what Huxley is saying there has nothing to do with progressivism.

Anybody could fall for the trap of doing evil in the name of good. Don't be foolish. 

[StarfoxEpiphany]

@Tim R

One day I realized how much I enjoyed painting people as sexist, racist, or fascist.   And that's when the cracks started to form.

Edited June 26, 2021 by StarfoxEpiphany

[Tim R]

4 minutes ago, StarfoxEpiphany said:

One day I realized how much I enjoyed painting people as sexist, racist, or fascist. 

@StarfoxEpiphany It's very god that you have realized that it's not helpful or good to do these things. But then you need to move on, not "stop being a progressive". Again, I don't even know what you mean by that. But I hope you haven't retreated back into some sort of conservatism where you now dislike progressivism. 

This dynamic is very common among younger people these days; they grow up in stage Blue/Orange, start moving into Green and then experience a backlash which catapults them back into (sometimes an even deeper form of) Blue. 

The healthy thing of course would be to move on into Yellow. But then you are still, in a sense, a progressive. Only a stage Yellow progressive instead of edge case Green. 

[sholomar]

I think we incarnate here to learn lessons and undo karma and the best way to do that is to subject ourselves to discomfort and fall on our asses and have to pick ourselves back up on our own. To me the idea of an over-reaching socialist utopia that tries to save everyone from everything and make it so they never have to be a wage slave, get bailed out from everything, etc, is counter to the idea of growth, spiritual or otherwise.

Also in the US it seems to me like it's the progressives that promote the racism they claim to be trying to solve, by constantly playing identity politics, telling minority groups how supposedly oppressed they are and thus stirring anger within them, and when they don't play the oppression game suddenly they don't matter. For example more and more asians aren't being considered people of color, because when they come to this country they work hard and make something of themselves, rather than sitting and screaming "victim." I've heard Leo talk about community responsibility in his videos but to me that only goes so far.. you have to have personal responsibility also. US politics in general turns me off... both sides are so corrupt and try to buy people's votes while spending the majority of their time in politics raising money for themselves. The amount of blatant hypocrisy is astounding.

To me all this political stuff is really not making me happy, and a waste of time though. I know what I should be doing, versus what I am doing. I avoid this place because lately in the last couple of years it's taken the direction that campaigning for causes is a good thing, but that's not what enlightenment is really about. Advanced yogis transform people merely by their high vibration, and that high vibration comes from a state of radical acceptance of what is, not making the dream real and trying to be some spiritual warrior. It comes from living by example... focusing one one's own development rather than what everyone else is doing.

Honestly I'm surprised the reincarnation aspect isn't discussed here more. If there's no reincarnation there's literally no point to to undoing karma at all.. if we just die and nothing in this life actually matters or carries on into future lives. In Leo's video on addictions he said that when you die that's it, you are gone for billions of years. Perhaps his view has evolved since he made that video... Why not just take the blue pill? There's plenty of happy people in my state that some might call "asleep" ... they work hard, own a house, have a family that makes them happy, they take that family on vacations, post pictures of their kids on social media, take them to sporting events, and all that traditional nuclear family stuff. Utah is one of the happiest states in the US because they follow these traditional values of Mormonism... so who's to say what the right way to live is, what kind of politics are right for a culture? This is why I want to ditch my politics.. I see it as largely pointless. Chuckle. I just get turned off by the state green elitism here sometimes... I'm so progressive so I'm so much more evolved than the peasants... no, you are not. It would do all of us good to get off our high horses and ditch our spiritual egos... myself included.

Edited June 26, 2021 by sholomar

[StarfoxEpiphany]

@Tim R

I haven't found a good away to approach progressives about how the rest of the dissolution begins without seriously creating arrogance or resentment in the progressives I speak to.

[Opo]

30 minutes ago, StarfoxEpiphany said:

@Tim R

One day I realized how much I enjoyed painting people as sexist, racist, or fascist.   And that's when the cracks started to form.

Did your opinions change or did you just stop identifying as a progressive? 

[StarfoxEpiphany]

@Opo Yeah a lot of my opinions started changing as more and more illuminating observations and consequences started occurring in all sorts of areas  

[Opo]

1 hour ago, StarfoxEpiphany said:

@Opo Yeah a lot of my opinions started changing as more and more illuminating observations and consequences started occurring in all sorts of areas  

Did you went from a leftist to a lib or a con and could you give us some examples? 

[StarfoxEpiphany]

@Opo Now, I don't easily fall into any category since I don't think very many people can easily read subtext like I've been learning to.

But the best way to gain grounding when I broke out of progressivism at first was to look at the political compass as a whole.  That's more than just left vs right.

[Opo]

7 minutes ago, StarfoxEpiphany said:

@Opo Now, I don't easily fall into any category since I don't think very many people can easily read subtext like I've been learning to.

Then stop playing around and give us explicit examples. 

[StarfoxEpiphany]

@Opo Too many people will get offended and start filling in false blanks if I don't do it articulately.   I'm not ready.

Edited June 26, 2021 by StarfoxEpiphany

[Opo]

12 minutes ago, StarfoxEpiphany said:

@Opo Too many people will get offended and start filling in false blanks if I don't do it articulately.   I'm not ready.

So what? 

We all make idiotic statements. At least when you bring it to the light you can observe it and grow. 

If it becomes a shit show just ask the mods to lock the thread. 

[Bojan V]

@StarfoxEpiphany

4 hours ago, StarfoxEpiphany said:

@Tim R

One day I realized how much I enjoyed painting people as sexist, racist, or fascist.   And that's when the cracks started to form.

What do you do when people really are sexist, racist or fascist?

[StarfoxEpiphany]

@Bojan V Last year I ended up leaving a city in Thailand and switching countries because the military and provincial government was ruining the economy in that area.  In fact a lot of the citizens left as well. 

Not sure if they ever ended up switching back to elected government.

Edited June 26, 2021 by StarfoxEpiphany

[Jodistrict]

The problem is that people in politics are motivated by anger and that affects their policies and behavior, like shaming people, cancel culturing people, creating victim narratives, etc.  A high consciousness approach would be to create environments where people can heal and connect with each other.  That is how to overcome our surface differences.

[Jacob Morres]

yeah i agree. people are rationalizing bad behavior because they feel it's the right thing to do... fighting injustice with unjust behavior.