Leo's Blog: Infinite Insights — Page 59
"It is the cult of self that is killing the United States. This cult has within it the classic traits of psychopaths: superficial charm, grandiosity and self-importance; a need for constant stimulation; a penchant for lying, deception and manipulation; and the incapacity for remorse or guilt."
― Chris Hedges
Here's a prime example of the twisted ways one's mind can interpret reality:
The meta-problem with all such "intellectuals" is that they are not construct-aware. In other words, their own mind is not conscious of how it is constructing, imagining, and projecting symbolism and meaning onto reality.
The Universe is a field of consciousness that dreams up symbols, meanings, and ideas, and spins them into coherent, life-like narratives.
Consider this: your life is not a biological or physical process or phenomenon. Rather, your life is a narrative spun by Universal Mind, of which biology and physicality are sub-narratives. The Universe is a not a physical system, the Universe is a Mind which spins the narrative that physical systems exist outside of a narrative. "The brain", "the body", and "the world" are not things that Mind occurs in, they are elements of a narrative that Mind is spinning. Mind itself is unlimited and not bound by any physical constraints or needs. In other words, a brain cannot exist without Mind, but Mind has no problem existing without a brain. The key insight is to realize that Mind is more fundamental than brain or atoms. Until you realize this, you do not grasp the significance of what reality is.
But anyhow, the key for not deluding oneself is to be conscious that whatever interpretations you're making, to recognized them as part of your reality-construction-project. Until you accomplish this you will keep getting lost in your own interpretations, confusing them for an objective material world.
As much as Jordan Peterson rails against the dangerous excesses of the neo-Marxist/progressive worldview, how about the dangerous excesses of the Jordan Petersonian worldview? — as exhibited by the guy in the video above? When some conservative mind gets ahold of JP's philosophy — that's way more dangerous, even if JP himself is innocent.
Make sure you don't fall for the misinformation being spread about the Covid vaccine's supposed ineffectiveness.
All the vaccines are nearly 100% effective against hospitalization and death.
A stark documentary look at the madness that is MAGA.
This is what it looks like when the human mind is rotted from the outside-in with ideology.
Antifa my ass. This is the true face of MAGA.
I want you to see how bad epistemics creates catastrophic social and political situations. People think of epistemics as mere philosophy but as I've said elsewhere, you cannot avoid philosophy. The avoidance of good philosophy ensures bad philosophy by default, and bad philosophy does not confine itself to the classroom or the armchair, it spills out into everyday life.
For all the fear-mongering that right-wingers like Jordan Peterson do about the "radical left", the bottom line is that it was right-wingers, incited by the right-wing ideology and propaganda machine (of which Jordan Peterson plays a part) that actually executed an insurrection against the US government. Post-modernists and cultural Marxists did not storm the most powerful government in the world. It was people who's minds were addled by the likes of FoxNews, Rush Limbaugh, PragerU, conservative YT, conservative Facebook, and right-wing fear-mongering about "socialism".
The irony is that right-wingers are supposed to be the defenders of traditional hierarchy, yet there is nothing traditional about doing an insurrection against a democratically elected government. This is a classic contradiction within right-wing and fascist ideology: it tends to revere the past and hierarchy, but also will not hesitate to subvert it in order to exercise power.
When I say that the right and the left are not symmetrical, that the left is more developed and more conscious, this is precisely what I mean. I do not just say that merely because I have a personal bias towards the left (which I do). I mean that the right is more prone to low-consciousness mentality and behavior such as fear-based propaganda, conformist thinking, ideology, judgment, hatred, closed-mindedness, selfishness, corruption, oppression, and violence. Objectively, the right wing poses a greater threat to democracy than the left. The above video should make that obvious. Which is not the say the left doesn't have some of it's own ideological problems and group-think, but if you cannot acknowledge that these things are objectively worse on the right, you are the biased one and you are living in a bubble. But this is not acknowledged by the likes of Jordan Peterson. If people like JP were intellectually honest they would come out and say: "I was wrong. I miscalculated the political dangers of the left vs the right. The right is the greater political danger today." But he does not do that. Precisely because of bias. Instead they try to hand-wave it away, refusing to even call it an insurrection. But as the video above clearly shows, this was a serious insurrection attempt. This was a full-on coup attempt. Failure and incompetence does not make a bank robbery any less of a bank robbery. You can't do a bank robbery and then say, "Oh, but I wasn't serious" when caught.
The culture war that is so popular in right-wing media today is a smoke-screen, exaggerating dangers which are mostly benign while obfuscating those that are serious. The serious political dangers in America are not LGBTQ, not Antifa, not BLM, not SJWs, not socialism, not critical race theory, not immigration, not gender relativity, not post-modernism, not higher taxes, not a higher minimum wage, not stricter government regulation, not abortion. The serious political dangers are: corporate money/lobbying, a shrinking middle class, environmental pollution and climate change, demagoguery, corruption of the collective epistemic framework through toxic and fallacious media, conspiracy theories, overly lax regulation, and generally: inaction on badly needed basic governance.
At this moment America is missing a serious approach to governance, and this is largely due to the right-wing media's ramping up of the culture war — which pisses people off, gets them fired up, gets them clicking and foaming and buying guns, but produces no improvement in the quality of governance. Quality governance cannot be done off the back of heated emotions like fear, hatred, and conspiratorial thinking. And this all comes from a general ideological trend on the right which preaches that "government is bad". Which comes from a deep ignorance of the crucial functions of government.
This example also serves as a stark warning about the dangers of populism. Populism might sound good in theory, but in practice populism appeals to some of the dumbest, least developed, and least conscious members of society, foaming them up with a hate and fear -based ideology which cannot lead to better governance.
The solution to all this is simple: we need better governance. We need more intelligence, consciousness, and love in governance. And the only way to get that is to deeply care and value government and its functions, and to genuinely desire to improve them, rather than blow things up to spite the elites. It should come as no surprise that you cannot improve complex systems from a pissed off mental state.
If you love America, if you think America is great and special, recognize that that specialness came from the profound intelligence and sober contemplations of its founders. People like Jefferson, Franklin, Washington, and others. These were exceptionally well-educated elites. These were philosophical people who had the wisdom to design self-balancing systems. What we have today, especially on the right, is the empowerment (via democracy) of a horde of fools in the tens of millions, pissed off over silly culture war stuff, spurred on by right wing propagandists and social media companies like Facebook who profit from these toxic ideologies by the billions of dollars. It is a toxic mix of the worst aspects of Spiral stages Blue + Orange.
Lastly, some people will wonder: "But Leo, why must you be so political?" to which the answer is simple: if you want to live in a democracy it is your responsibility to do your part to maintain that democracy. If you have a public platform and you are not speaking out against this shit, how can we have a democracy? You see, I am not neutral when it comes to letting low-consciousness fools govern me. I suggest you shouldn't be either.
Guess what dies first when low-consciousness fools seize power? Consciousness, Truth, and Love.
Philosophy has practical real-world consequences. One of the key functions of philosophy is to discern how to create a better society.
This is an amazingly profound set of lectures. The 2nd one especially, but it builds off of the 1st, so you should watch them both.
Part 1 — Chaos & Reductionism:
Part 2 — Emergence & Complexity
This is an example of science done well, from a stage Yellow perspective. It shows you some of the limitations of classical science and how science is evolving. I have not yet covered chaos theory and fractals, but I will in the future and this is a good primer. You should learn the difference between linear and non-linear systems. This set of lectures sets a nice foundation for my series on Holons, Holism, and Holistic Thinking. Think of this as an intro to holism, but merely an intro. To fully grasp its significance you gotta watch and contemplate my holism videos.
And then stay tuned for my future videos on Chaos Theory and Fractals, which will tie everything together with nondual epistemology and metaphysics. And then Evolution and Creativity will tie things together even further!
OMG, sometimes I just can't bear the stupidity of scientific and rationalist thinking.
To say, "Infinity is fake", is the single most fallacious statement one could utter.
This clip epitomizes how clueless mathematicians and scientists are about the nature of reality, and even their own conceptual constructions:
Infinity is the only real thing there is. Infinity is reality itself.
YOU. ARE. INFINITY!
The reason scientists and mathematician and logicians and atheists and rationalists fear and try to avoid infinity is because the realization of infinity collapses all their finite, dualistic mental constructions. Modern science is built on a foundation of the denial of infinity. Because to realize infinity is to realize that science and rationality can have no foundation. It is also the collapse of all models, systems of knowledge, materialism, realism, and formalism.
These people have PhD's, but the epistemic intelligence of door-knobs.
Be ware of public intellectuals who sound like they are speaking intelligently or rigorously when they are really just parroting materialism.
I stumbled upon this cool form of therapy in Las Vegas: Ketamine IV infusion.
There are clinics in Vegas, California, and Ohio called Klarity Clinic. As their website says, they offer "off-label ketamine therapy for treatment of major depression, severe anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), drug and alcohol addiction, chronic headaches (including migraines) and pain syndromes."
I haven't done it myself (don't really have a personal need), but I'm sure plenty of you might benefit from knowing this kind of thing is available and legal. Here's a look at how it works:
This is basically legalized psychedelics available from legit doctors in the US. Now you have no excuse to not try psychedelics. Although it's not gonna beat a proper psychedelic done solo in the comfort of your own home.
P.S. Ketamine is technically an anesthetic and dissociative, but it still has powerful psychedelic-like effects on consciousness. Ketamine can be addictive and physically damaging to certain organs if over-used.