Leo's Blog: Infinite Insights — Page 3
Tis a thing of beauty to watch Anand Giridharadas demolish the neo-liberal fantasy.
This is what exposing devilry looks like:
This is a top-notch example of Stage Green at its healthiest and most cogent. This is what Jordan Peterson and his fanboys are missing. This is what JP smears as "Cultural Marxism". This is what the right-wing is in denial about. This is what the culture wars are distracting from. This is the real political discussion that is never shown on TV.
Neither nationalism, nor libertarianism, nor technology, nor higher economic growth can solve this problem. We face a new set of collective challenges which require a Stage Green worldview to start to address.
BTW, if you're not in America, you might wonder, "But Leo, how do your American examples help me?" Not so fast! The principles we're studying here in these mostly American examples apply to all countries. If you're in a less developed country then these are the problems you'll face once your country reaches peak Stage Orange like America. And it will happen sooner than you think. Maybe it will take 50 years, but your country will face these same problems, and probably already is. That's what Spiral Dynamics shows us. That's the value of studying structure. Don't get hung up on local details. China, India, Russia, Brazil... they're all gonna have to find solutions to corporatism run amok, gross income inequality, and what is fundamentally plutocracy.
To be clear, I don't recommend you ever experiment with heroin or opioids because they are super addictive and run counter to our work.
But it's psychologically and metaphysically illuminating to read about why people do heroin:
Vice.com - Former Users Describe the First Time They Tried Heroin
The bottom line is: people do heroin because it brings them closer to God, and they don't know of any other healthy way of getting there. Most of them don't even know that what they're connecting with is God. That's how ignorant the situation is.
God is the greatest high in the world. What do you think monks, mystics, and yogis are chasing? They are heroin addicts minus the heroin.
Once you experience God, no other feeling will satisfy you. And in true going-full-circle fashion, that's how the best thing in the world becomes the worst thing in the world. Heaven becomes hell. So the wise find ways of reaching heaven without the life-shattering side-effects. It takes more work, but it's worth it.
P.S. Psychedelics can take you even closer to God than heroin and are anti-addictive. But they will still leave you with the suffering and heartbreak of losing your connection to God after the trip ends. Of course your connection to God cannot ever truly be lost because you are God. But you will lose awareness of this basic fact, sucked back into the Matrix of ego and social obligation.
Noam Chomsky has done some excellent work exposing how the media serves as a self-deception and reality-construction machine for the survival of the status quo and various collective egos.
If you want to learn more, you can read Chomsky's classic book: Manufacturing Consent. It's a great lesson in how self-biased American media is. But of course this dynamic isn't only limited to American media. It's all media worldwide. In fact, the less developed the country, the more self-biased and corrupt the media tends to be. America is actually one of the best, compared, say, to Russia, China, or Iran.
The most amazing thing about this entire ideological machine is that the people at the top are not themselves conscious of what they are doing. The people in positions of power most engaged in deceiving the masses are themselves fully self-deceived. Chasing money & profits, as media elites and CEOs like to do, is the chief self-deception.
The key mistake that conspiracy theorists make is that they give those at the top too much credit. They assume those at the top are acting consciously and intelligently, but actually, they are the blind leading the blind. The media executives, the shareholders, the CEOs, the presidents, the VPs, the millionaires, the billionaires, the tech tycoons... they're all very unconscious people. They just happen to be great at manipulating and making money — which must be distinguished from true intelligence and consciousness.
Society is a conspiracy of idiots who are so ignorant they do not understand that they have formed a conspiracy to deceive each other! — a circular firing squad of ignorance. And the conspiracy theorists are some of the biggest idiots of the bunch, feeding the cycle even further by distracting from the root issues. Plot twist: conspiracy theorists are the false flag! This machine of ignorance is so deep and wide-spread that it's almost impossible for any one conscious human to dismantle or change. Small efforts at reform are made around the edges by visionaries and sages, but this takes decades and centuries to be felt. Which is why something like awakening or God cannot be made mainstream. Awakening is the most dangerous thing to this whole machine because Truth cannot be monopolized for profit or power. Which is why awakening is not taught in schools and universities. Of course schools and universities are all part of this machine, since indoctrinating the children is the most important piece of the self-deception.
This is the cleverness and devilry with which the illusion of self is maintained. Quite jaw-dropping when you realize it for what it is. It takes so much energy to maintain this house of cards. And all ultimately because... fear of death, fear of love, fear of God.
Of course it does no good to demonize all this, as that only adds to the problem of ignorance. You must accept all this as what you are and approach the problem with compassion for all involved.
The biggest business in the world is not oil or computers, it's eyeballs. He who controls the most eyeballs controls the world. See my videos: The Deep Problem Of Marketing and How To Escape Wage Slavery.
Biologists are only starting to get an idea of how complex and astounding life truly is:
"I still remember the moment. It's something I will never forget. The hair on my hands just stood up."
Why did the hair on his hands stand up? Because his mind caught a glimpse of Infinite Intelligence. That's God! But he doesn't realize that yet since he's looking at these cells from the materialist paradigm. How much more awesome it becomes when you realize that these cells are occurring within an Infinite Mind — what's more — YOUR Infinite Mind, created by You!
When some spiritual fool tells you life is simple, remember this video. Life is infinitely complex, and the only way it can work at all is because it is managed by an Infinite Intelligence that tracks every single detail with infinite precision, perfectly.
Only a naive human can convince itself that this whole process can be modeled and analyzed by the human mind. No model will ever do it justice. This is just the tip of an infinite iceberg.
This is a leaked training video that Amazon shows to all of its workers. Pretty gross North Korean -style propaganda.
Keep in mind, the right to unionize is a legally protected right in America.
That's some world-class level bullshit.
Next time you order cheap stuff from Amazon don't forget all the suffering caused by your survival.
Don't underestimate the power and shamelessness of the human mind to justify its own survival to itself:
"We're in soul ego business here."
Seem absurd? Structurally, your mind does exactly the same thing every day. Does this kind of thing outrage and baffle you? That's because you do it yourself! But of course you deny it. You get offended and upset that you might have any structural likeness to the above example. You project your own self-bias onto others as outrage so that you can feel innocent and righteous by comparison.
See how sneaky your devil mind is?
Justification, self-bias, devilry — these are all structural. Don't get distracted by the content of private jets or religion. This has nothing to do with private jets or religion. This is all about survival. You might be the most rational, scientific person in the world, and still you do this kind of self-justifying structurally.
Here's a candid real-world account of what it's like to work for a Spiral Dynamics Stage Red leader:
The people who work with Trump on his policies have no idea of his level of cognitive development. They assume he is a stage Orange CEO type (like many of them are). But he's far less developed. This is only shocking if you've never studied developmental psychology.
It was obvious before his election that this would be Trump's leadership style.
The problem with a selfish leader is that eventually most of his followers and supports get so hurt and disgusted by his selfishness that they turn on him and start a mutiny out of a need to protect themselves. This is proper, as it is the karma which selfishness creates. There cannot be an extremely selfish general on the battlefield, for example, because eventually even his most loyal troops will be forced to turn on him, because his selfishness will threaten their survival agenda.
A leader who is more selfish than his followers cannot last. Sooner or later they will eat him alive. Just like there is a problem with leading from too high on the Spiral, there is a problem with leading from too low on the Spiral. Successful leadership requires that the leader be one or two levels above his followers. Otherwise things become unsustainable. Trump is less cognitively, morally, and spiritually developed than most of his cabinet. If this happened on a ship, they'd throw the captain overboard.
The funny thing about selfishness is, people are too selfish to tolerate a selfish leader for long. Sharks eat their own kind. A leader needs to be someone a follower can look up to and aspire to be like. Otherwise, why follow him? Who wants to follow someone who is less developed than they are? Such situations breed resentment and discontent since they are fundamentally backwards. The more capable resent having to follow the less capable. The more moral resent having to follow the less moral.
The Trump admin is rolling back new Obama-era light bulb efficiency standards, which is sad enough by itself, but Trump's justification for it is just such a classic example of egotism:
"Number one, to me, most importantly, the light's no good. I always look orange. And so do you."
It's little gems like this that tie a bow on all our work about ego and self-bias.
FYI, CFL bulbs are very toxic when shattered (don't buy those), but the new LED bulbs are not toxic and they produce high quality light at any color temperature you want. Personally, I upgraded all the incandescent bulbs in my apartment to LED bulbs 3 years ago and have been very happy with them. The new LED bulbs have a great quality of light and they last for 5-10 years! I have not replaced a light bulb in 3 years. It's so convenient. It's a revolution in lighting. If you haven't upgraded to LED, you're missing out. They are 5x more energy-efficient than incandescent bulbs, produce zero heat, and only only cost about $3-$10 each. Every building in the world should be using LEDs. I like the 2700K color temperature best. It gives off a warm homey yellow glow, almost the same as the classic incandescent bulbs. Or if you prefer white light, go for the 5000K color temp. There's no need to buy incandescents ever again.
An eye-opening look into how corrupt chemical companies can be:
BTW, if you cook your food on those black, cheap, Teflon non-stick frying pans, I recommended ditching all of them and buying yourself a set of high quality stainless steel pans without any kind of chemical coatings. For example, Telfon is so poisonous to birds that if you roast some nuts to feed your pet parrot, the parrot will die from eating them. Now imagine what those kinds of chemicals are doing to your body and brain.
If the future I will release some videos about how to detox heavy metals and chemicals from your body and brain. This is actually a crucial elements of improving your life. If your brain is filled with toxic chemicals like mercury, lead, arsenic, and others like Telfon, you will not be able to self-actualize properly. This can seriously affect your health and mental function, including your ability to meditate, concentrate, and do consciousness work.
Chemical toxicity is the leading cause of things like auto-immune diseases, thyroid diseases, cancers, ADD, autism, crime, and overall societal dysfunction. Most people have no idea how bad it is. You could be suffering from it and have no idea. The good news is, there exist effective methods for detoxing this stuff and healing yourself.
These days you have to be very careful about what you put in your body and keep in your household. You never know when you're consuming something filled with toxic chemicals. It could be your make up, shampoo, soap, mouthwash, toothpaste, paper towels, drinking water, coffee, tea, food packaging, laundry detergent, carpet, dental fillings, etc. So watch out. Educate yourself and be a mindful shopper. If you have kids, be careful what you feed and wash them with. Toxic chemicals in their brain will affect their ability to do well in do well in school, socialize, and self-actualize.
In a nutshell: clean up your household and pay a bit extra for more natural products which contain less chemicals. The cheaper things are, the more toxic chemicals they usually contain.