Leo's Blog: Infinite Insights — Page 62
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.
"An aimless life is always a troubled life. Every individual should have an aim. But do not forget that the quality of your aim will depend the quality of your life. Your aim should be high and wide, generous and disinterested; this will make your life precious to yourself and to others. Whatever your ideal, it cannot be perfectly realized unless you have realized perfection in yourself."
-- Sri Aurobindo
Speaking of the media, here's an illuminating look into the inner workings of CNN:
I think Jeff Zucker is an intelligent and decent guy, but he does not understand the depth of the problem of what "reporting the truth" means. Truth is much more tricky than merely fact-checking some wrong information, because who gets to say what counts as valid fact-checking? You can't just assume that "facts" exist! What if "facts" are really how your mind constructs reality? Who's construction should we trust? Yours? Mine? Jeff Zucker's? A billionaire's? An atheist's? A Muslim's? A Christian's? A Buddhist's? A scientist's? A white person's? A black person's? etc. What if each person has their own "facts"? What do you do then?
I'd like you to notice that everything talked about in the above video is really an issue of epistemology (human knowledge). The question of "What is true?" is an epistemic question. Notice that this question is not merely philosophical, it has serious real-world consequences. How do you maintain a high quality society when people cannot agree with each other's perspectives on truth, or when some segments of society have really warped versions of truth? How do we deal with that as a society? How does CNN deal with it? How does Facebook deal with it? How does Google deal with it? How do you deal with it? How do your parents deal with it? What if the majority of the population believe in falsehood? How do you go about correcting that when they believe it's a fact?
Notice how challenging and deep this issue is. This is not merely a Trump problem. Epistemology has been a root problem for mankind since the dawn of civilization. We are always arguing about what is true, what is reasonable, what is biased, what is opinion, what is fact, and what is the proper interpretation of things. Have you wondered about why this is? What causes this? You'd think that if reality was an objective fact, we'd all agree on it by now. You'd think that if reality was an objective fact it would be impossible to mislead people about it. Yet human history shows the opposite. Masses of people are mislead all the time. How can this be? And can you be sure you aren't one of those who's misled? After all, if people are easy to mislead, you are person, therefore you must be easy to mislead.
Notice that before one can answer the question of the proper way to act, or make any proper plans, one must first answer the question of What is true? If your perspective of reality is so distorted that you see the world upside-down, your plans and actions will also be upside-down, doubling down on the problem. The solution to any serious problem is, first and foremost, to see the problem with undistorted perception. In many cases taking that first step is enough to resolve the problem. But most people want to jump straight into action, ignoring the first step by dismissing it as "mere philosophy" or "theory". But what good is pressing the accelerator pedal when you haven't first figured out which direction is True North? Undistorted perception is NOT "just theory".
Life's most important problems can only be solved by a shift in perspective & understanding. In such cases, there's something deep you're not conscious of about the problem which makes it manifest over and over again, and it will not stop until you see through to the root of it by properly using your mind.
Most problems are the result of the improper use of one's mind. Think about that.
People who casually blame CNN, The New York Times, "main stream media", "Jewish media", Hollywood elites, Silicon Valley, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and yes, even Fox News, do not understand the depth of the epistemic problem. The problem of disseminating "truth" is the most challenging problem that mankind has ever faced. We still haven't figured out how to do in over 10,000 years of trying. Schools, universities, parents, government, the media, science, religion, and every spiritual school all face this fundamental problem. Devils will ALWAYS corrupt the purest sources of truth because falsehood is necessary for survival. Not understanding this triples the problem.
When you understand the depth of what I'm saying here you will realize that epistemology is the most important topic that mankind can study, research, or teach. Yet precisely because this is so, it is not studied or taught almost at all. Devils are not interested in epistemology. It doesn't suite their schemes. So our problem then becomes: how do you teach 7 billion devils proper epistemology when their lives hinge on them not learning it? This problem is more challenging and more important to solve than the problem of building a colony on Mars. Yet it gets no attention and no funding.
Perfect timing!
On the day I release my How Corruption Works video, this video gets released:
This is the #1 most important political issue. Get all money out of politics NOW!
If you're not an American, your country probably has a similar problem, and probably worse.
Cenk is a great example of visionary leadership and life purpose. When you see examples of visionary leadership, take notice and study how it works. What are the principles of visionary leadership?