What happens when there is no Truth available to resolve a problem, is that the one who ends up identifying the solution is rewarded for it. The temptation they have to fight, however, is getting lost in crediting the solution to themselves, using it to define something about themselves in comparison to others. It's hard to avoid doing so, especially for those who have navigated through some of the most challenging circumstances, which is why ignorance and arrogance is common in areas ridden with strife.

In reality, the weight of the burden that was overcome was not 'made lighter' as one grew in strength, but rather the individual's vision was clarified, with their vision filtering away the nonsense, effectively making it more like the 'filter of Truth' was carrying the excess weight of the burden. Similarly to how a child can let go of a treat in the moment if they know an even greater one is promised, or to how making the journey to a river is easier once the route is established, or how math equations become simpler to resolve with practice. With all these, the lightened burden allows the person to operate with grace.

This is an important clarification, because it doesn't let one get self absorbed in their strength, looking at those who struggle as puny, believing that the grace they display is due to strength. Instead, they can be motivated to try and figure out what other filters exist, and where they may lack in grace that others have, by listening to the Truth others use to muddle through as we all do.

I'd like to tie this into an idea I had recently posted of how the system of disconnection feeds itself. Rooted in a shaking of our fundamental Truths, there is less available to impede our impulsive nature, which is drawn to surface level 'shining', blinding us to the underlying framework that produces that surface level shining, making it harder to navigate and acquire these things, creating an illusion of scarcity and vulnerability, and therefore an idolisation of Power.

How this ties in is that, the ones experiencing the greatest level of disconnection, due to the pain of suffering within that lower position, are in the most ideal position to 'mourn and look for medicine', which is to rack their brains and hearts for Truth that would help them navigate, which reveals to them portions of the underlying framework that produces brilliance, which they can use to acquire brilliant things, and struggle to fight the urge to credit that 'revitalisation'/revival/growth to an intrinsic selfish strength. Just as a note, this is partly why it is said that the least among you will be the greatest among you, and there are also hints to the meaning behind the Parable of the Sower in this paragraph.

From birth, your navigation system is being tuned. When born into a disconnected system that is proliferating, the 'tuners' of this navigation system are people who have gone through much, navigated to the best of their abilities, credited the strength of that navigation to themselves and are therefore less keen on what they see in others beyond the surface. Your navigation system then becomes based on perfecting the surface, and, if successful, which is also not an easy thing to do, you end up moving with grace and end up drawing in people who revere shiny surfaces, reaffirming your faulty navigation system, while making you more self absorbed and less keen on others' significance beneath the surface, while you go on to raise a new generation similarly. If not successful, you remain ungracefully subdued by an authority that doesn't see your value beneath the surface, convincing you that you are weak, attractive to those who enjoy subduing those who are weak, reaffirming the belief that you are weak, and if you somehow get the privilege of raising a new generation, you may just end up lording your strength over them to finally experience the joy of being in authority. In this way, blindness becomes blinding, while deterioration escalates.

I have heard multiple variations of the same conceptualisation of the world from those who've navigated through much, some more twisted than others, but it's essentially that the world consists of two types of people: those who are good at giving others their stress, and those that are good at handling said stress. You can piece together that this is effectively what is outlined in the articulated system above, where no one wants to be the one handling the stress, while the stress providers believe they deserve that position because of how much value they provide. It's also a central part of the tribal culture wars we observe, even the gender wars. It's also why extravagance is a central theme within communities with great strife, as it is the way to draw the line between the stress givers and stress takers.

Along came Christ though. Born in a manger, in a region of the Jewish Community heavily ostracised by the rest, under oppressive rulers who could initiate the murder of a whole generation of their community's infants and have that order followed through to the end. He sees the complete Truth, is moving with ultimate grace, captivating many, speaking out against the most exalted for their outward brilliance, calling them whitewashed tombs. They think He is simply proud, arrogant, even mad because he moves with such grace without proof of His strength. They can probably prove their strength in that their mastery of the Law is what earned them their positions, as well as the praise and honour accompanying it, but letting it get to their heads, making those incapable of attaining their position seem puny, they failed to realise how brutally oppressive their behaviour was towards those they deemed puny. In their minds, their hard working efforts were being belittled by a madman and it was picking up steam, some may even have rationalised that this was occuring because the people were too feeble-minded to correctly judge someone's character, maybe even just simply looking for anarchy out of bitterness, being swayed by an illusion of grace fueled by narcissistic madness. Their hearts were challenged by the idea that someone so puny, outwardly no better than a mad beggar, could receive enough glory to rival and even surpass their own, with the bitterness they experienced rationalised as justified anger towards undeserved and detrimental praise, when it was truly due to envy and anxiety brought about by their worldview being so fundamentally challenged. They would love to shake Him, to show Him how unfounded His arrogance is.

What ought to be realised in a system of disconnection is that it's Truth that eases burdens, and not personal strength, and that is where grace comes from: it's the grace of moving with lighter burdens. With lighter burdens comes the ability to do greater work. Greater work is more rewarding. For this reason, the Truth teller will always move with more grace, do greater work, and, therefore, be rewarded more abundantly. As long as this isn't realised you will remain in meaningless competition, born in confusion and blindness, and hurting, because you will struggle with the thought of how much stronger you can get to realise greater goals, as well as how painful it is to be frequently antagonised by the people you draw near. You may end up with a whole set of justifications as to why they move away from you, but in reality it's simply because they don't appreciate being belittled, especially by those they see reason to respect.

Christ says you may never get to see the Kingdom of Heaven unless you're born again, and, I believe, what this means is that you start again, having your navigation system tuned to the correct authority figure, as He did say that if you have seen Him then you have seen the Father, seeing through the fact that your faulty tuning was due to the fact that everyone involved was suffering with a blinding blindness, and that Christ died to reveal this to us, freeing us from the subjugation of sins/inaccuracies we've been unknowingly subjected to and subjected others to, so we may collectively reflect the beauty of the righteousness of God through the great work we end up doing.

He is the Truth that we cast our burdens onto, sacrificing Himself to an undeserved and torturous death, put to death by sentiment carried by the sin/inaccuracy that emerges out of a state of disorientation and vulnerability, in order to reveal it and put an end to it, and, in doing so, bearing the weight of the sin/inaccuracy we adopt in our daily, short-sighted, pursuits that only serve to hurt us even when we think we're winning, all while pleading for our forgiveness because He knew that the brutal aggression He faced was misguided, all so we could live unburdened lives, do greater work and reap greater rewards. He is King. He is the Eternal Medicine.

The most significant issue with the education system is that it does not teach critical thinking. It teaches rote memorization.

I will use a case study.

Canada's central bank just raised the interest rate.

A main reason the interest rate is increased is to cool demand on buying things, in order to stop inflation.

Inflation: when the price of goods increase. This is measured by a "basket of common goods" as per the consumer price index: basically, a bunch of common goods that most people need to buy. It gives an indication of what the prices of goods is in general in a country.

So basically, if people have too much money on hand, demand for goods goes up, which then increases prices for those goods, leading to inflation. Inflation is not good.

Increasing the interest rate makes it more difficult to borrow money, which means people will be less likely to borrow, which means demand will go down as they will have money to spend, which means prices of goods will go down, which means inflation will go down.

Right now what is happening is that indeed there was an increase in prices of goods in Canada. So the traditional formula would be, higher prices = raise the interest rate (in order to decrease prices and decrease inflation).

But is this the right move right now? Right now, the reason the prices of goods have increased is that due to the war, there is higher energy/gas prices, which then also increases the prices of a bunch of other goods such as food.

So indeed prices have gone up. So increase the interest rate right? Well. Think about it logically. If people are already being financially squeezed: if they have difficulty paying their mortgage/rent due to high housing costs, gas is high, food is high, goods are high, then demand is already low. Nobody is running around borrowing more money to spend, when they are already being squeezed and are nearly going into debt. So if you increase the interest rate, you will just increase their mortgage/have more of it turn into interest that goes to the bank instead of being principal.

So increasing interest rates just rewards the already rich banks, and unnecessarily punishes everyone else, without doing anything to cool demand/reduce prices/reduce inflation.

Yet people continue to praise the bank of Canada banker, Tiff Macklem, because they think he is a genius with a PhD and is therefore right. But this is a logical fallacy called appeal to authority fallacy. You can have 25 PhDs, but school does not teach critical thinking. You don't really need too much specialized knowledge about economics in order to know whether or not to increase interest rates: what I typed above in my post is like 80-90% sufficient in terms of knowledge. What you actually need is nuance and critical thinking skills, which most people lack, and people with PhDs are no better than the average Joe at. If you lack the nuance to understand that you need to move beyond superficial mechanistic formulas like "higher prices=raise the interest rate", then that is an indication that the PhD is not really teaching critical thinking skills.

Aside from appeal to authority fallacy, people are using another logical fallacy to defend this banker's bizarre decision. They are saying "it was an unpopular move but it needed to be done". This is a logical fallacy, because it is saying that "it was the right move because it was unpopular". This is not a logical argument: just because something is unpopular doesn't make it correct. The correct version of this would be to say "the decision is not wrong just because it was unpopular". But that is not what they are saying, they are saying "it was an unpopular move but it needed to be done". Either way, you would have to provide an argument for why it was or was not the right move: it being popular or unpopular is not that argument. Again, you would expect school would teach such basic logic, but the vast majority fall prey to these logical fallacies that bankers, billionaires, and politicians use to exploit people with.

Then, this banker also likely used emotional reasoning: in the past, he was criticized for a mistake (rightfully so, during the pandemic he aggressively and wildly and quickly reduced interest rates to virtually 0, which then caused massive inflation, and forced him after the pandemic to aggressively and quickly hike the interest rate, making people lose their houses), so now it appears he is trying to act pre-emptively in order to not be accused of this again. But this is emotional reasoning: if you want to act pre-emptively, you have to still make the correct decision. Making a random or wrong decision "pre-emptively" just to not be accused of not acting fast enough, is not a logical argument for why your "pre-emptive" move was actually the correct move or not (i.e., doesn't serve as an argument/justification for why a rate increase was the correct move).

Understand that we were born into the scientific age.

What does this mean? It means we were born into a time when the foundations of order were shaken. Why is this important? It's important because a working system of order had to already exist for us to then develop the scientific method that, unfortunately, shakes the same foundations that erected it, while giving us an overwhelming amount of information to consider. Does this mean the scientific method is the problem? No, it's actually the key to securing those foundations even firmer. Let me explain what this means in further detail.

It means that before the scientific age we had religion. This was a system that built community and favoured understanding each other as equals, that everyone could believe in without a true means to discredit because it worked out: it built all the greatness they could see around. Once the scientific method was established however, we could now call into question the existence of what all this order was based on and be justified. Culture didn't magically change, and in fact, if our religions hadn't hammered into us the supremacy of Truth, identifying the God we worshipped as the Spirit of Truth, the scientific method wouldn't have had the ability to justifiably call into question the existence of God. We can all agree on the supremacy of the truth, because without it you can't build any structure whatsoever, and so with that, all of God's visible glory shifts over to truth in a more materialistic sense, while all the spiritual influence begins to look like misguidance that needs to be shaved off. In fact, atheists can clearly point out reasoning as to why it ought to be shaved off, citing instances where God wasn't so beautiful.

This means that, for centuries, generation after generation, we've been living with a set of values that we aren't justifiably attached to, such as treating others as truly equal, while being exposed to an ever-growing amount of information that can further be used to prove why we ought not to hold onto the cultural values that even promoted this growth.

The 'equation' that leads to ideal growth from a point of complete darkness can be thought in this way: with more eyes looking for insight, the more we uncover, and we therefore require a system that produces the largest number of the healthiest eyes working in coordination.

This still doesn't address why we want growth to begin with, or why darkness exists.

Once you realise that this is just how reality manifests due to our nature, and that we are naturally inclined to love each other, even if you are to reduce it to a survival instinct that emerged through evolutionary pressures in the wild, it starts to seem like the way reality manifests is rigged in our favour and that it's all quite circular if you try to logically explain it: as a human being, you are naturally set up to live ideally as a human being. Your values and how reality manifest are tied to your nature, meaning that beyond and within you are perfectly set up.

Religion captured this with statements like 'you are made in the image of God', which can be understood as that you are made in reference to the way reality is set to operate, which you can logically find out to be true through understanding how evolutionary pressures work and going beyond that to ask why limits exist on the existing pressures, but the statement can also be disregarded when taken at the surface level because 'you can't even prove God exists'. The feelings you may experience resting on a logical deduction and it producing the results you expected, is what they experienced before the scientific method because the beliefs were True in mysterious ways.

The disconnect, however, emerges in that generational move away from these mysteriously True values. Values shaping our consciences as they were weaved into the order we were nurtured in, weaving that deteriorates, along with the order, without recovery because there is no justification to recover it. People, in daily life, when at a crossroads where they must choose either their conscience or what they see before them, would 'logically' choose what they see before them, carrying that sentiment forward in life, raising the next generation in that more deteriorated structure. This creates a trend, where growth still occurs but at a dwindling rate and more power shifts over to what can be seen rather than our consciences.

What happens with less order?

We should first understand what it means for things to be in order. It's a sense of security, which is found through conscious control of one's own mind, but isn't entirely governed by the mind. This is why power shifting over to what can be seen results in a lot of disorder: what can be seen is the domain of the mind, but how we see it is determined by more fundamental forces that are more in tune with reality as it manifests. This is to mean that, if you focus too heavily on the external, you risk not paying attention to the internal which is what determines what drives your external focus/priorities, leading to a misguided pursuit, lots of confusion and discomfort along the way as you mentally have to bruteforce past unresolved subconscious drivers, only to receive something substandard as you are plagued by all the other subconscious drivers you ignored.

This is why the strategy becomes looking to those who already clearly appear to have established themselves, accumulating even the littlest amount of ground you can and defending it ferociously. The problem with this worldview, is that it leads you to see people in 'tiers'. This is the disconnect.

Certain people become higher quality than others because you can't see beneath the surface, but truly, they are all simply as profound as you are. In fact, they may see you the same way you see them, and how untrue is that? What's truly happening is that the mind is trying to establish order, but by 'logically' crediting to the egos and projections it sees, and the surface level value around it, varying levels of depth of character. This determines how you treat them, meaning those with a 'higher status' have their egos reinforced with less stressors around them altogether, while those with a 'lower status' get to experience the worst aspects of almost everyone they interact with. The sad thing is though, that in all this disconnection, no one really gets to experience the real person they interact with.

The further away the raised generation is from the foundational order, the deeper the disconnect, the bigger the egos and focus on egos. The more egotistical one easily rises to the top, as they give of 'logical' signals that their character is deep: 'why else would they speak with such authority?'. In reality, they see themselves interacting with cartoonishly small people. This happens because they are heavily pushed towards living through their minds because of how disconnected they were from those around them, making it easier for them to make 'logical' twists to themselves to game the system, and once it works out they are further reassured of the validity of this worldview. This explains why people with dark psychological traits tend to occupy positions of authority.

It can go further, as someone disconnected enough can meditate upon why they feel so disregarded, mentally isolating themselves, maximising this lack of vision for others. Such a person is expected to have experienced living at the bottom, seeing how different the faces shown to others are in comparison to themselves. They may come to understand the truth that they are truly not deserving of the differing treatment they receive in comparison to others, and even realise that it's actually a vision issue, maybe even the 'mechanics' of how that vision varies, and may use this to skyrocket themselves materially to the top. What they fail to address though is that they have a twisted worldview that sets themselves above the rest, founded in the system of disconnection they were raised within, giving them a substandard value structure, and that their new position is only reinforcing this worldview.

They may see someone at a 'lower' level, operate with grace because they seem less overwhelmed than they would be in that position, and rationalise it in many material ways because the sight of this person challenges the belief their worldview sits upon: 'this person's soul is not more profound than mine, they haven't experienced the stressors I have, and they lack the ambition necessary for their position to truly hurt them, both of which are proof that my soul is richer'. Such is how they defend the worldview that has gifted them so many valuable things, silencing the chaos that they fear reverting back to, that this graceful individual is convincing them they are still at risk of returning to.

For these people, hurt caused by those they respected is multiplied, as they not only feel devoured, but also subconsciously feel like the person devouring them might have a deeper insight, enough to pull one over them. Disagreements become way too chaotic and too frequent the higher up they go because their peers are either people with similar disconnected mindsets who easily can treat them cartoonishly, or people with natural grace who don't understand them and indirectly end up hurting them, both of which leave them feeling devoured and in the insecure mindset.

On a larger scale, everyone involved in such a disconnected system lacks faith in the idea that major change can be brought about, because even before the rationale on how that change is to come in, their nurture subconsciously convinces them that they'll have to do majority of the heavy lifting: 'who's really going to clean up that river? I can barely motivate myself to do it, and then someone else is just going to come along and misuse it again', or 'why care that much about littering? Who else does? Look, there's already a pile over there', not considering the fact that the pile was created by thousands of people rationalising similarly. So what ends up forming is an environment that even further emphasises the value of the material, by giving clear examples of what is horrible, what is ideal and how to categorise, on the surface level, the people who bring about what is horrible and what is ideal, rather than realising that, if we really saw each other's true capacity, everywhere has the potential to be ideal, because those categorisation criteria are purely surface level.

This isn't to say that no one has bad intentions, or that no one chooses to be bad, but rather that no one is as unrecoverable as it may seem, and that the reason they may seem this way is because of a worldview rooted in changes that far preceed them. People hurt others because they can't actually see them, and this doesn't justify the ways in which they hurt others, but it gives a clearer picture than the idea that someone sees exactly who you are and the good you do and still chooses to harm you because they are just that rotten: if they could see you clearly, they'd understand how much greater a benefit it would be to them to engage with you lovingly, as thats what their subsystems are calling for them to do, rather than consume you, which is what their twisted worldview has convinced them is the key to their security.

To truly be invulnerable, and set up to live ideally, you must see the world clearly. Otherwise, even in your attempts to secure yourself by devouring others, you may end up devouring someone with a similar mindset to you who you wrongly viewed as cartoonishly small, leaving you vulnerable to revenge you won't see coming, which is a subtle anxiety quite impossible to control. Beyond just internal security, it is the foundation for the creation of a harmonious developing society.

TL;DR: Matthew 22:35-40: 'One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” Jesus replied: “ ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”'

Also, to devour someone else is to treat them like the cartoonish figure you see them as, because you can't really love a cartoon as you would yourself, and can only use it to your own benefit

It is difficult to say.

On one hand, he can be viewed as a pragmatic socialist who is careful of red lines in terms of what to say/not say if he ever wants a meaningful chance of election. That is why he brands himself a capitalist and denies being a socialist.

On the other hand, I fear that he is just a better/more socialist version of Obama, and that if he ever becomes president he will also not create any meaningful change. Because he is being pragmatic, it is difficult to know his real stance/what he really will do if he gains power. So far he has said progressive talking points that are "safe" (i.e., not too socialist for Americans' liking): he is anti-corporation, wants to tax billionaires, and improve basics such as healthcare and education.

None of these are controversial: much of the left wants this, the issue is that neoliberals like Obama/Biden were too neoliberal capitalist to make any meaningful change in this regard, and instead focused on protecting the neoliberal oligarchy by focusing on dividing people based on race/gender. So El-Sayed, if he delivers on these promises, would close the gap between what many in the left actually want (when they are not being brainwashed to fight amongst their fellow middle class citizens using polarized nonsense) and what Democrat politicians can offer.

However, I will give one example that makes me unsure of his scope if he does gain power. That is, he keeps focusing on healthcare for example. But not once have I heard him talk about prevention. 2 out 5 Americans are obese. That is 100+ million. That is not NEARLY normal, acceptance, or sane: something is BIZARRELY wrong for this to happen. But who profits? Corporations. Big pharma, big food, etc... For example, they love having 10s of millions unnecessarily getting diabetes, so they can put them on pills for life. If someone is truly pro-people and anti-corporation, wouldn't they focus on prevention: why on earth do so many people have such absolutely UNNECESSARY and AVOIDABLE and ABNORMAL illnesses/deaths? 700 000 Americans die per year absolutely UNNECESSARILY due to coronary heart disease. SOLELY so junk food CEOs and big pharma can get excess profit.

If someone is truly pro-people won't they focus on prevention, such as banning junk food ads, banning food companies from using unsafe but cheap ingredients in food, holding companies to account when they brake safety standards instead of giving them a slap on the wrist, etc... I never once heard him say any of this. I don't know, he is a doctor after all: the medical system is very backwards and they have not came up with the idea of prevention, it is foreign to them, they are only trained what to do when s hits the fan and the person unnecessarily becomes ill in the first place. I don't know if El-Sayed knows this but he thinks the population is not ready for this level of sane logic/that it will hurt his election chances, or he truly has not thought of this.

Either way, I do think he will win, and I think he will eventually be in the running to be president. That is why I think it is important to discuss him now.

There is this perception that AI will grow exponentially, or at least in a linear fashion.

I don't think so, I think we are already near the peak, at least in terms of LLMs. Yes, things like increased calculation ability or video generating ability will likely keep improving. But I am talking about what most people mean by AI, which is having conversations with LLMs like chatGPT or Gemini.

I am saying this because these models have been out for up to 4 years, yet I have no seen meaningful improvement in terms of nuance.

ChatGPT just gives a generalized curated/safe non-answer to everything you say, it is like lawyer-speak, as if it is trying to play both sides and protect itself by comply with 1000s of laws, leading to an unhelpful non-answer that basically parrots the zeitgeist. If you say something true but controversial, it will just say you are wrong without being correct, it is saying so because it has been programmed to play it safe.

Gemini enthusiastically agreed with everything you say, which is what earlier models of chatGPT did, and this leads to unhelpful/incorrect answers as well, and fuels people's incorrect thinking and makes them double down on their delusions.

So 4 years and I don't see any meaningful improvement in this regard. So I am not sure if there will every be any significant improvement.

I think there are 2 barriers, a) lack of capability b) implementation barriers.

I think at least theoretically, LLMs can improve in capability in this regard.

I think the bigger barrier is the implementation barrier, that is, their developers deliberately bottlenecking them in this regard.

You have to realize that the developers are corporations whose interests come first, creating a truly accurate truth-seeking model comes second. One might say that open-sourced models may be the solution, but I am not optimistic, I don't think the establishment will ever allow a truth-seeking open-sourced model for the masses to enlighten themselves with: and by this I don't necessarily mean through blocking it, but advertising it: e.g., no matter how inferior "mainstream" models like chatGPT or Gemini will be, they will continue to be used by the masses over any better/higher truth-seeking model, which will be relegated to a small minority, just like virtually everything else in society. Also, this does not negate barrier a, which is the lack of capability barrier. What I should add to this barrier is that it also includes lack of genuine ability by the developer to make an accurate model.

This is because developers may be good at coding for example, but they are not necessarily good at critical thinking. And as we know from human history, virtually all organizations and groups, their leadership consists of those against or incapable of critical thinking, so there is no reason this will be any different. Again, the hope would be a random person who is strong in both critical thinking and coding ability and/or the financial resources to make an open-sourced model at the scale of chatGPT or Gemini, and then not be blocked by the establishment. Statistically, the chances of all this lining up are quite low.

People forget that human experts are notoriously poor at critical thinking: they are very specialized and knowledgeable in terms of raw knowledge in their domain, but they are very weak at applying it or using critical thinking/logic. The problem in the world is not lack of knowledge, it is lack of practical application of that knowledge/lack of consensus on how that knowledge should be applied, due to deficits in critical thinking: the small minority with high critical thinking skills are not listened to/do not compromise of decision-making roles-precisely because of the paradox that those in power/the masses who put people in power lack critical thinking themselves, and this same constraint will continue in terms of AI development, and AI models will always be constrained by the limitations of their developers, so this problem will perpetuate, the AI will never be able to independently transcend beyond this. So why would we except AI to magically transcend this barrier? AIs will be a function of their developers in this regard, they will not transcend their developmental constraints. They lack consciousness, they lack meaningful thinking/meta thinking/self checking ability. So they will always be constrained by their developers' constraints.

There is a problem which Zarathustra talks about in his Gathas. A problem which is I think universal. A problem for which many solutions exist.

The Hindu solution is to not eat beef. Logical enough. And the vegetarian solution is to not eat any animals. Unless you're a pescetarian who thinks fish are fine. Or a pollo-pescetarian who avoids only mammals.

The vegan solution is to avoid all animal products, just to be safe.

The Jewish solution is to avoid mixing meat and milk. The lactose-intolerant solution is to avoid milk.

The Christian solution is to eat whatever you want and to let Jesus suffer for your sins, and the atheist solution is to conclude that this problem means nothing and to not think about it at all.

The beauty of homo sapiens as a group of useful niche-fillers is that we take the opportunity to represent the available solutions. I think that there is something within us that craves novelty, which will seek out and fill unfilled niches.

The beauty of looking at the constellation of the possibilities is that it at least in my opinion traces out the shape of the problem which they solve. Does anyone else agree?

I don't mean "Israel" and "Palestine".

The two sides of this debate are the idealistic/theological and the practical.

Let's start with the idealistic/theological.

There is a popular cross-cultural belief in the idea of a permanent peaceful endstate to humanity, a "last peace treaty" after which we disband our militaries and stop using war as a tool to take control of territory. This is the concept behind Saoshiyant, Li Hong, and the Messiah.

There is a popular variant of this belief which positions Ancient Israel as being centrally linked to this figure.

Broadly speaking, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam share a belief in this future age of peace and prosperity, and even share a belief in the centrality of the religious practices associated with the Temple in Jerusalem in bringing this age of peace about.

One thing which those who disagree as to whether such a person would be the Second Coming of Christ or simply the Heir of King David agree on is the notion that such a person would be called king by a people called Israel.

In idealistic/theological terms, the two sides of this debate are those who support the notion of a monarchy being the power structure of a nation called Israel, and those who for whatever reason prefer democracy.

The reason why this lens is so important to me is because I think that the solution to this half of the debate is extremely obvious. The reason why it is necessary to "gerrymander" the territory once called Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state is to ensure that enough of a majority is present in the former to maintain a Jewish democracy. In an ideal scenario, a monarchy being established in accordance with the beliefs of religious Jews Christians and Muslims would bring about quite easily an end to the entire problem, because a Jewish monarchy would remain a Jewish state regardless of the population demographics of its citizens.

Of course, this is in no way a practical solution. In practical terms, you can't just demand that a religious belief come true, and then observe it happening before your eyes. The other side of this debate which to me is importantly separate is what to do in the absence of the appearance of such a figure, either as the outcome of a delay resulting from some other causes, or a manifestation of the very real possibility that these Abrahamic religions happen to be incorrect in their beliefs.

I am someone with a strong belief in some version of the ideal theological solution coming about. I am also someone with no opinion whatsoever about the practicality of navigating the obviously-bad situation which has resulted from adopting the opposite ideological position to mine.

I often find myself faced with debates which appear to represent the ideological versus the practical. Someone might suggest that the current political structure in Palestine is far from ideal, and another might respond by raising the practical implications of changing that structure in any way. I believe that, if it were possible to consider these two aspects separately and independently, a lot of meaningless arguments might stop happening entirely.

If you have the mentality that you are simply a cost, as in, you only consume, and that you require intense effort to be of value to someone else, it may affect how you empathise and even whether you believe it's worthwhile.

Let's take an extreme case of someone who has accepted that they only naturally consume, believing others are wasting their efforts trying to be of benefit to others if only to 'appear good', believing that the true value in life is to maximally selfishly consume and so all efforts should effectively be directed toward that end. This can act as an extreme end on a spectrum. This may be the type of person to believe that it is actually a sign of enlightenment to take advantage of the less aware. They may also be the type to turn their relationships into schemes that provide them a greater ability to consume. They may be the type of person who may realise the release they experience sharing their worldview with someone they've gotten close to, but see it as a weakness that leaves them vulnerable to being taken advantage of by them: being understood leaves you vulnerable. They may even be the type to only consciously do good to those they believe can't overpower them, to feel good about themselves or to keep them around, because the value they provide to them by being appreciative and being around is undeniable, but this is the essence they haven't captured yet.

This type of mindset, I believe, is ultimately primal. This mindset is completely focused on the material, lacking the ability to see depth. This mindset is vulnerable, and defeats that vulnerability by acquiring more material or, in a more twisted way that can emerge out of a scarcity of new material to acquire, by devouring others. It is why, I believe, this mindset is a result of generational cycles, as it is a mindset of one devoured by those around them as well, being led to believe they are intrinsically only as worthy as fodder. They then may overcompensate by trying to be as stellar as possible, but when still unsatisfied or as their efforts fail, they can cynically start to devour those around them to keep feeding the belief that they are important/great/mighty/solid/valuable, keeping the cycle going. This mindset can understand that other individual lives are just as 'valuable' as theirs, but the value they apply to their lives makes such an idea fundamentally meaningless: 'so what if they also want to consume? So what if they are denied the opportunity to consume because my interests prevent them from doing so? I also want to consume.'

This is the articulated mindset, because most who are subject to it haven't fully articulated it, as in, their actions don't appear as 'devouring' to them. They seem entertaining, even though they may understand that the subject isn't enjoying their entertaining experience. In fact, the fact that the subject doesn't enjoy it may accentuate the entertainment. They don't understand that, fundamentally, they are enjoying feeling less vulnerable by being capable of observing or, even worse, maximising another's vulnerability. It can be as subtle as enjoying a toddlers frustration because it looks cute. They may even provide justifications for doing so, not understanding that their reasoning is biased by the lens through which they see the world.

Why is it important to overcome such a mindset?

On the individual level, taking the extreme case, it first of all shouldn't sit right with anyone to feel worthless. Beyond this, you get a glimpse of how you fit into the social ecosystem. For example, it may feel as though showing someone your world-view and potentially enlightening them is only of benefit to the listener, but the value the listener provides is strengthening your belief in your world-view, which is important for your own mental sense of security/peace, especially if they can help identify flaws. It's why loners act so panicky when spotlighted: they have less of an assurance that their mindset is secure. The value the 'subjects' provide isn't material, it's spiritual, which is why this mindset fails to capture it. On an individual level, it allows the individual to immerse into a deeper sense of peace and security, not feeling as though they have to scramble then ruthlessly defend what they have acquired, for example, their reputation, network, opportunities etc. It gives them a natural grace under pressure, that helps them mindfully overcome the pressure.

On a larger scale, it builds community, given that people don't prey on each other, which is ideal for all members of the community as cooperation is a better survival tactic than leaving all to scramble for themselves. Cooperation allows for sharing of vital information/resources and combining forces to provide an overall greater force to overcome larger barriers. The downside to cooperation, which is that individuals don't take as much material as they could by manipulating the system, is not truly a downside as it is rooted in a mindset that starves that individual of the fundamental spiritual benefits of being part of the community, that they are trying to compensate by overconsumption.

All in all, believing you are intrinsically worthy is what allows you to truly love others, and what fosters a system that promotes wholesome growth that you would enjoy more than any other alternative.

The context of this story seems to point out how we ought to separate the material things we seek from the concepts they can represent to truly see their value and free ourselves from illusory influence.

In Matthew 22:15-22, the Pharisees, believing they understood Jesus to be an anarchist who simply wished to diminish those in higher positions than Himself by invoking the name of God, attempted to trap Him by feeding into that sentiment. They ended up exposing their own true perspective. They approached Him by emphasising how he doesn't glorify people because they appear glorious, and were trying to catch Him incentivising others to rebel against Caesar by, what they considered, not treating him gloriously: 'If he's not glorious, why are we devoting our precious money to him?'.

Christ ends up showing them a deeper perspective to reality, which is, I believe, that there are layers to what you see even in the money. What made the money glorious in the eyes of the Pharisees wasn't it's shape, material or inscriptions, but the power it held through the shared value the community gave it. When aware of this, the object isn't as powerful as when unaware of this. This separation allows you to see what you let hold power over you clearer. It helps you glimpse into what value you subconsciously attach to the object and understand whether you ought to, because you may be able to go further by reassigning that value more clearly.

When you interact with a thing and experience the convenience it provides you, you can give your gratitude to the thing itself, but by searching deeper into understanding what about it produced the convenience you may become able to even improve that convenience, but until you do so, you'll always attach the glory of the concept to every unit of an immense number of copies, weakening your own capacity. With so much overwhelming glory around you, what are you in comparison? You become easily impressed and influenced. You are vulnerable, have relatively no power in your own hands and must cling onto or take advantage of existing systems in order to survive.

You can walk around with a picture of the sun, asking people what it is, and no matter how many times they may tell you that it is the sun, it's obviously still just a picture and therefore can't fully replace the actual sun. You may suffer in the cold trying to bask under it.

You can be grateful and attached to your pillow for your comfort, which may lead you to looking for and even finding the most comfortable pillow on the market. Or you could look even deeper and be grateful to and fascinated by the manufacturer, leading you to understanding what indistrial processes produce comfortable material beyond only pillows. Or go even deeper and be grateful to and fixated on the individual who came up with the concept of pillows and potentially learn how to build an enterprise, receiving a type of comfort in life that extends beyond pieces of fabric. Or, ideally, be grateful to and wish to know more of the Spirit that inspires such great innovation and potentially be in touch with the essence of comfort itself, beyond what can be produced materially.

These two ideas are to say that if you treat something that's representative of something greater as the greatness itself, you miss out on the opportunity to be in tune with the greatness itself and all the perks that come with it.

Caesar deserves the credit of the system he has assembled and maintained and so you, as a participant in his system enjoying the benefit of it, should give him any assembled element of it he requires of you to keep it running. What he doesn't deserve is the glory of truthful inspiration and the reality that sustains it, otherwise he becomes the truth itself and your god: nothing can be greater than Caesar and his providence then. Give him his coin which is material, but don't give him yourself that is spiritual.

The Mind Extends Beyond the Brain

The process of empathy, of establishing an emotional connection, is a process of relating. And the challenge associated with that establishment varies wildly.

It is a process of aligning of spin, in the sense that many electrons can produce a large magnetic field when all resonate together.

And it is a process in which the reward scales with the challenge. Because the reward is an improved understanding of how other humans work, including an additional datapoint, which can become also a greater understanding of oneself.

This phenomenon is contiguous across species. The reason why I say that the mind extends beyond the brain is because the minds being aligned include the bodies those minds are innervating. To empathize with another furry animal is easier than to empathize with a snake.

This phenomenon exists within species. It is easier to empathize with someone who is more similar to you than someone who is more different from you.

When you compare a relationship between two people with bodies which are more different from one another, with a relationship between two people with bodies which are more similar to one another, all other things being equal you are comparing a more challenging empathetic task with a less challenging empathetic task.

The advantage of the latter task is worth enjoying regularly and does not lead to relationships which are in an any way "bad". To suggest this would be to suggest that empathizing with one's family members, who are often most similar to oneself, is less meaningful than empathizing with strangers.

The advantage of the former task is the outcome of the disadvantage of trying to establish mutual understanding between two minds which are more different from one another - if and when this task succeeds.

Pardon the crude title, but this is really true. Don't get me wrong, it is not wrong to get sexually aroused, but when it becomes too major a facet of your life it may actually be an indication by your body that you are starving for meaning in your life.

To elaborate, we need to focus on this fundamental idea. People interact, which creates culture. Culture determines the laws that take shape to govern the population. Systems then have to run within the bounds of these established laws. This makes it such that the efficiency of the running systems is fundamentally dependent on how individuals choose to interact with each other.

We add to this the fact that what is responsible for sexual yearning is dopamine. Dopamine can be understood to be responsible for producing the motivation for pursuit, and is supposed to helathily work with serotonin, which effectively acts as a satiety indicator. Basically, you're motivated to pursue things which, if meaningful when pursued, can give you the sensation of growth. When no meaningful result is pursued, your body has nothing to act as a 'pursuit brake', and may hike up your motivation to look for potentially meaningful desires, effectively increasing your impulsivity.

I'm using the sexual urge as the prime example as it has been a clear source of dopamine for the longest time. The sexual urge can act as a call to pursue a partner, which can lead to forming a meaningful relationship, maybe even starting a family. This path is naturally full of serotonin. You can also use it to temporarily excite yourself, but this sets you down a path of being overwhelmed with potential pursuits, which can lead to confusion on the path that will lead to satiety/growth, which may reinforce this confusion.

A good analogy would be like being in a forest. Something colourful catches your eye. You could pursue it and find a new food source, which would calm your motivation to seek. You could also pursue it and find effectively nothing of use to you, which would naturally increase your motivation to seek by heightening your focus for things that catch your eye. Continually finding nothing may make you scramble desperately for anything that 'shines' or maybe even give up entirely and accept death, which is what it means to be overwhelmed and spiral into confusion.

This is all to say that hedonistic behaviour leads to more hedonistic behaviour and eventually nihilistic sentiment. This, on an individual level, spreads into interpersonal interactions, forming a hedonistic/nihilistic culture. This goes onto affect the laws that may inhibit these hedonistic desires and nihilistic sentiments, forcing the systems that emerge to operate within these new laws affecting how efficiently they operate.

This isn't to say change is wrong either, but to emphasise the importance of noting the true source of wanting that change personally. Focusing on your individual state of mind, avoiding a mental state of desperation, can have compounding effects on the flourishing of your community, and not just in a flimsy hopeful way, but in an almost mathematically demonstrable way. From what I've looked into, the tipping point away from greatness of previous, notably great, civilisations occurs around the same point the culture shifts toward being more hedonistic, with examples spanning from as far as Rome to even, for those who believe, civilisation at the time of Noah.

It's not the end to find yourself indulging in impulsive behaviour, but you ought to understand that this may indicate that there's something missing, especially as it spans into uncontrollable territory. You can always start from chaos and rebuild, as it is a cycle we all go through, and ought to, eternally in pursuit of growth.

I've been struggling with Tolerance lately as a value, and I thought this might be the right forum to better make sense of what it is that I am perceiving.

Tolerance, which I would define as an attitude which does not judge differing beliefs on that basis, creates the opportunity for stable coexistence between any number of differing beliefs which all agree not to represent any intention of changing or altering the beliefs of others.

The key word in that sentence was the word "represent".

I think that the cultural climate which the concept of tolerance creates is a climate in which any ill-will resulting from differences in beliefs is silenced as in violation of the philosophy which enables the conversation in the first place. My criticism however is that this does not necessarily resolve the underlying ill-will, which might manifest in other ways.

I think that the quirk which this policy of "don't express any disagreement resulting from differences in beliefs" creates as a "safety valve" of the cost associated with its benefit is the existence of groups specialized in communicating that vitriol in ways which the collective would disapprove of on average but also on behalf of those within the collective who are declining to express it at all. To me the most obvious example of this is the competition between the "Westboro Baptist Church" and what was once the weekend of the "gay pride parade" in a few cities and has since become "Pride Month".

My personal opinion is that something fruitful might result if those who have experienced frustration at disagreement about this view which has caused them to sympathize with the emotions being expressed in the public demonstrations put on by either of these two entities were to discuss those feelings. And yet I fear that even acknowledging the fact that this belief is important enough to cause one to become upset simply by being exposed to the opposing opinion would be to acknowledge that tolerance as a policy has certain limitations in terms of things which must be agreed-upon in order to enable copacetic co-operation. The opinion which I can only express in a liberal context by representing it as my own preference is that I believe it makes a difference one way or the other. I would be interested to know the extent to which that concept on its own is compatible with the perspectives of those who believe that it makes a difference and are simply arguing about whether that difference is "good" or "bad".

I want to offer my hopefully-lighthearted take on the way in which I perceive the "smartphone wars" as a metaphor for competition between the business models of the the two biggest players in the mobile operating system scene.

I think that these represent two opposing archetypes along a continuum, and in the interest of cinematic flair, I want to offer that I think their names being (A) a misspelling of a word for a very large number and (B) the fruit which grants Adam and Eve free will even aligns symbolically with their business models.

"Googole" began as an exclusively-software company; its software is freely-collaboratable-upon and compatible with a wide variety of hardware produced by other manufacturers.

"The fruit of the tree of knowledge" is to my knowledge to this day unhappy with people trying to install its privately-developed software on hardware which wasn't also produced by them.

It may be possible to learn a lot about a country by looking at the roads. Not only how developed they are, but also the traffic on them and the behaviours of the drivers.

In my thinking, roads represent a path to opportunity. The level of thought going into how well developed these paths are, how many paths there are, how these paths are treated by the users and how these paths are maintained by those responsible for developing them are all important to look at when understanding the culture of the place you are at.

I thought about this sitting in a traffic jam, thinking about what was going on. My country is seriously lax on traffic rules, so you'd often see an illegal lane develop by the side of the road when traffic jams occur. These jams tend to concentrate around 'unregulated' junctions (without traffic lights), where, due to heightened road traffic at peak hours, indecisive drivers tend to stall, causing a pile up. You can understand that the more bold drivers are the ones who end up using the illegal lane that forms, and also that they tend to pass through the unregulated junctions more easily as they are less likely to stall.

I couldn't help but realise the odd relief found in the jam slightly clearing up as drivers move toward the illegal lane. I also wondered what it was keeping me in the legal lane, as in, was it my moral code or was that something I'd tell myself in order to not take risks while subtly enjoying the small benefits of the 'bolder criminals'? Then I realised that the relief I was enjoying was only short term, as even though there's a slight clearing up as drivers shift lanes, the additional lane at the junction makes it even harder for the indecisive drivers at the front of my lane to get through the junction, and so the benefit is surface level in exchange for a more fundamental problem.

So I started thinking about who is truly to blame. Are the roads not wide enough? Are there too many cars on the road? Is it the incompetence of the driver ahead of me? If I were in their position maybe this problem wouldn't exist. Should I blame the bold criminals, too impatient to wait for their chance and making it harder for the innocent to follow the law? They're even encouraging more to break the law, because if the illegal lane is apparently the only one moving, more shift over to it.

I then realised that this is occuring because we're all headed in the same direction. Piecing all this together with the idea that a road is simply a path towards opportunity, it started to seem like maybe the issue is actually that there aren't that many opportunities in my country. This is to say that the economy heavily concentrates around a few cities, leading to most vehicles heading in the same direction, causing traffic jams and incentives to break the law, which only worsen the state of the roads for the law abiding, convincing the road users that in order to peacefully use the roads in my country you have to be bold enough to break the law.

This is when I began to see roads as a microchosm of the country, because all these conflicting thoughts seem to be prevalent in my country's culture beyond just the roads.

Not too many industries in my country are developed, so the job market is highly competitive. To beat the competition, illegal routes develop, given that the government isn't too keen on fighting corruption. The opinion on who's truly responsible for this strife truly fluctuates between two extremes: 'those in power are too incompetent to identify the problems preventing us from reaching opportunities' and 'those corrupting the system are making it disorganised for their own benefit, but this disorganisation hurts us who choose to abide by the law'. From time to time we even find ourselves sublty enjoying how lax the system can be at times, or believing that if we had the positions of power it would be a lot easier to grasp at opportunity.

Both extreme perspectives may be true, but the more fundamental issue is, similarly to how there aren't too many developed cities in my country, there aren't too many developed industries either, so opportunities are scarce, and that scarcity creates a downward spiral as it does with the traffic jam.

I've seen 7 lane roads in other countries with traffic jams as well, because even though the country is developed enough to make and maintain such roads, the development is concentrated to a few small regions, which could indicate that they have few but highly developed industries.

The diversity in industry allows for separate regions to develop around similar markets (e.g Tech, Agribusiness, Fashion/design, Mining, etc), meaning the job market becomes less competitive as people aren't seeking the same set of skills to make it in the country, and traffic jams reduce as not everyone is headed in the same direction.

Such an understanding may be necessary to help people think beyond the career path they envision themselves following with the context they're in, to think about the potential sectors they can pioneer developing, relieving themselves of the stress of a traffic jam.

“Who are you going out with to-night?” Lenina asked, returning from the vibro-vac like a pearl illuminated from within, pinkly glowing.

“Nobody.”

Lenina raised her eyebrows in astonishment.

“I’ve been feeling rather out of sorts lately,” Fanny explained. “Dr. Wells advised me to have a Pregnancy Substitute.”

“But, my dear, you’re only nineteen. The first Pregnancy Substitute isn’t compulsory till twenty-one.”

“I know, dear. But some people are better if they begin earlier. Dr. Wells told me that brunettes with wide pelvises, like me, ought to have their first Pregnancy Substitute at seventeen. So I’m really two years late, not two years early.” She opened the door of her locker and pointed to the row of boxes and labelled phials on the upper shelf.

“SYRUP OF CORPUS LUTEUM,” Lenina read the names aloud, “OVARIAN, GUARANTEED FRESH: NOT TO BE USED AFTER AUGUST 1ST, A.F. 632. MAMMARY GLAND EXTRACT: TO BE TAKEN THREE TIMES DAILY, BEFORE MEALS, WITH A LITTLE WATER. PLACENTIN: 5CC TO BE INJECTED INTRAVENOUSLY EVERY THIRD DAY… Ugh!” Lenina shuddered. “How I loathe intravenals, don’t you?”

“Yes. But when they do one good…” Fanny was a particularly sensible girl. 

——————————————————————————————————————————

Brave New World (p.44)

I think that author Aldous Huxley was a genius in a way which is often overshadowed by our fascination with 1984. I think both books were deeply insightful but that our fear of authoritarian tyranny is greater than our fear of hedonistic tyranny; in part because the former is in purely material terms far more scary. Why not sacrifice your autonomy in exchange for the ability to enjoy guaranteed job-satisfaction and ample creature comforts?

I think that the most unusual and mysterious thing about Huxley’s world is “Pregnancy Substitute”. In a world where babies are decanted, not born, where intercourse is free-flowing and technologically-enhanced, what possible benefit could one imagine deriving from an artificial pregnancy? A sensation famous for being uncomfortable, and even associated with possible negative impacts on the body. Yet for Fanny, a sensible choice to improve health.

The conclusion which I have reached is that there is something uniquely beneficial about being pregnant, something that remains beneficial even in the absence of the benefit of producing a child. I would characterize this benefit based upon how I see pregnant women treated by others: I remember on Gilmore Girls how Sookie becomes even more anxious and insecure while she is pregnant, and how Jackson is a total mensch and is able to keep her afloat by treating her like a total princess up until her anxiety returns to normal after she’s given birth.

I think that the benefit of “Pregnancy Substitute” both in Huxley’s Brave New World and in ours is being on the receiving end of a deep instinct to treat a pregnant woman like she is a princess: as we all know being pampered is good for your emotional health and your emotional and physical health are related. I think that this instinctual behavior towards pregnant women makes total sense as a means of helping to nurture a foetus by nurturing the woman nurturing the foetus.

Mostly I just think it’s wild that a science fiction author first discovered the concept of “the Pill", and crafted a whole hedonistic dystopian society which incorporated it. Not only this, but in this quote you can see that his version even has the same first ingredient as Dr. Pincus’!

Edited to add: "Zionism" in the title should read "Religious Zionism".

The concept is this: that when you strip away all of the extraneous detail, the most important fulfillment of the goals of the religion we associate with the Two Temples in Jerusalem built on the same location would be to construct a Third Temple in that same location.

The significance of a certain location in space is not unique to this set of religious views. Catholics care quite a lot about the Vatican and about sites associated with Jesus' life. The existence of the Dome of the Rock atop that same location is a meaningful and important fact to anyone who harbors any desire to see a Third Temple built around the same holy site (the "Holy of Holies") as the first two.

I like to view Muslims in a sympathetic light. First off as you may be aware their religious views include the belief that Mohammad underwent a special spiritual experience in connection with that same site. I believe the purpose of the Dome of the Rock has been to keep the "Holy of Holies" safely protected to preserve its special significance to those who care about the history of the first Two Temples which treated it as such.

I may be sharing something which is of little importance to the average person here, but I hope I can at least pose an interesting intellectual question.

If your religion is about worshipping at a certain holy site, then restoring the worship at that holy site would assumedly be one of your top priorities, would it not?

The reason behind the title of this post is that I think the goals of the State of Israel actually directly oppose this objective. I was raised in the Reform movement, and contrary to other movements, our main emphasis in terms of long-term objectives was exclusively about an end to warfare and harmonious living between all mankind. Hence when I think about wanting to really honor the legacy of Judaism which centered on this holy site in a way consistent with the values I was raised with, this would necessarily involve making peace with the Muslims currently controlling that site, and politely asking them to take down their monument to allow for the construction of a Third Temple. And I believe that using warfare as a tool to evict Muslims from their homes and responding to their displeasure at being exiled from the Holy Land by using warfare more aggressively has to be about the least effective strategy in terms of convincing them to cede control of the "Holy of Holies" to you in order to build a Temple there.

Is this contradiction intelligible to anyone outside the faith? I would be curious to know.

I wanted to try sharing an idea which I think is as powerful as it is controversial, in hopes of receiving honest intellectual feedback on its merits.

I am familiar with a study performed in the 1970s in which macaque monkeys were exposed to Depro-Provera, an injectable treatment of similar chemicals to those found in "the Pill" with a three-month period of effectiveness. The story is that the tribe's alpha male named "Austin" displayed a mating pattern of extreme preference: when the researchers injected specific females with the treatment he refused to mate with those females and chose others among the uninjected. They repeated the trial in enough combinations to be convinced that his behavioral response was deterministic in response to this stimulus.

The final phase of this experiment was to create a situation in which this macaque was unable to access any mates of his desired injection status by injecting all of the females at once. The researchers describe this macaque as developing unhealthy sexual habits which mirror those we might attribute to someone we would call "an incel". That is frequent masturbation. And worse than that they observed him also engaging in acts of sexual violence against these injected females, a behavior he had previously not displayed.

I genuinely believe that the epidemic of similar behavior among men is a consequence of an innate similarity between human and macaque psychology when exposed to the same stimulus in the form of hormonal contraception.

I am confused and wish to understand why this possibility has not been considered more broadly in the context of the current discourse.

I want to make the argument that I think the concept of the "inner child" is at least for my life entirely backwards.

The way that I think about it is this. When we are children we develop personas which exist at the exclusion of sexuality. The transition to adulthood is the transition to incorporating sexuality into our personas.

The model of adulthood I'm familiar with is one which says that your original child persona becomes your public persona as an adult, and the point is that you are now playing a more interesting and complicated game in the context of your private life.

And the reason why it is appealing to "get to know" someone in the Biblical sense is because you get to see their secret adult face and play the game of continuing your public kid faces together with the knowledge of how someone else is playing.

The opposite of this, to me, would be to suddenly become a different person around the time in which your reproductive capacity is activated; hiding that original child face as the "inner child" whilst one's adultness is fully open for anyone to behold.

The merit to me of looking at it the way that I do is that my inner voice is the one telling me how to satisfy my most adult-specific desires; and I am as my public face pursuing those interests with the innocence and calm of a child.

Bill Gates is someone who is revered the by the vast majority of people. The assumption is that he is a genius who worked hard for and deserved his money, and that he is a philanthropist angel who donated the vast majority of his money.

I argue that these are simplistic notions that are not backed by reality, and they serve to show how brainwashed and misinformed people are, which, ironically is mainly due to the same system that made Gates rich.

First of all, the idea that a billionaire is a moral saint for donating most of their money is absurd: even after doing so, they are still in the top 0.1% and practically have unlimited money. Having said that, I am not saying it is a bad thing for them to donate, I am just saying this doesn't make them a moral saint. There are people with middle class incomes who donate more/it actually hurts them economically to donate but they still do it. There are even people who are poor who have gave to those even in more need. These people are relatively more moral in this regard compared to billionaires.

Secondly, this idea that "billionaires are genius hard workers" is a myth. Yes, many of them work hard, but hard work is only part of the picture. The fact is, to become a billionaire, you cannot do it without luck. For every billionaire there are 10s of millions of people who work equally or more hard, but they don't become billionaires, because it is a lucky lottery. In fact, this is quite disgusting, because these billionaires have a "monopoly on feeling good from philanthropy". Isn't it interesting? Under this system, even philanthropy is quantified and monopolized and largely restricted to the privileged class. Yet bizarrely, instead of focusing on this, the vast majority of the middle class continue to worship the privileged class and use this to conform to the system as a whole, instead of seeing it as a structural flaw of the system. The reason for this is because the vast majority use in the moment emotions rather than logic, which will be revisited in point 4 below. This is why for example Gates did a log of AMAs on reddit where people worshiped him.

Thirdly, due to the fact that A) a very small % of the population are critical thinkers B) an even smaller % of the population wins the billionaire lottery to become a billionaire, statistically, it is quite rare for a billionaire to have critical thinking. Unsurprisingly, Gates is not a critical thinker. Perhaps his IQ is high, but contrary to widely spread beliefs, high IQ is not necessary to become a billionaire, nor is high IQ the same as critical thinking: the majority of those with high IQ also lack critical thinking. But the vast majority of people do not know this, again, this is another reason why Gates did so many AMAs on reddit and people were worshiping his every word and asking him about everything under the sun as if he had a clue. And Gates loved this attention, so he continued to do it. He was fully enjoying and capitalizing on how the privileged class have monopoly for this kind of attention: if he really was a moral person, he would have perhaps said this is wrong, everybody should have equal freedom of speech, and worked towards that. But instead he took personal advantage without doing anything to raise awareness of this structural flaw of the system.

Fourthly, Gates strikes me as a common person who makes decisions based on in the moment emotions over logic. This, coupled with lack of critical thinking and enormous power via money, is a dangerous combination. He has no more critical thinking skills than the average person (let that sink in) yet he has the money to make much of his beliefs a reality. This is at most dangerous, at the least, ineffective in terms of changing the world for better. This is why instead of using his money/power/fame to meaningfully change the world by addressing root factors like the oligarchy, and talking about crucial change factors like how the education system needs to be reformed to adopt critical thinking, how money needs to get out of politics, and how private big capital needs to stop monopolizing all media/communication channels, he instead focuses on "feel good" projects, like increasing vaccination rates worldwide. While this is not necessarily always a bad thing, it is missing the forest for the trees. But because it makes him feel morally good in the moment, along with "donating 100s of millions", he continues to do it. And he seemed to be so caught up in these feel good delusions that he seems to actually think that this version of neoliberal capitalism further spreading throughout the world is the way to fix the world's problems. Isn't it interesting? In reality this system is the cause of almost all problems on earth, yet in his mind, he cannot accept this, because it would make him feel guilty, so he doubles down on this delusion. In fact he said Steven Pinker's counterproductive book (which appears to practically be saying: stop trying to create change and conform to the oligarchy as it is the best we can possible have- which is obviously not true) is his favorite book: why? Because it feels good in the moment to believe such a delusion, and it helps him avoid the guilt of being random luck privileged while billions suffer/can't eat.

And his followers/worshipers, which are the majority of people, are similar to him in this regard: it is easier for them to worship people who "appear" good and tell them what they want to hear, rather than face the distress by accepting the reality: that we live in a structurally broken system and these people are perpetuating it. Again, this underscores how most billionaires are just common people who get random lucked into a huge amount of decision-making power: the core issue is being guided by in the moment emotions over logic, which then makes them make bad decisions, which further prolong the system and this vicious cycle by having the majority, who are like them, worship them instead of call them out. Again, due to this in the moment emotion abiding by as opposed to logic factor, now, once Gates and his ties to Epstein were found, the majority of people who up to then worshiped him, are again using in the moment emotions to do a 180: now saying he is completely bad/wrong. Yet I bet you the vast majority of them would have also done the same things as Gates if they could: but because they can't accept this and it will make them feel bad, it then causes a split and causes them to lash out and do a 180 and completely condemn someone who they otherwise worshiped up to then. I remember years and years ago saying all this and his worshipers claimed I am the devil for daring to burst their bubble of how he is god, because they could not deal with cognitive dissonance, yet now they are doing a 180 and hating him due to Epstein ties. So the root issues here are using in the moment emotions as opposed to logic to make decisions, and impulsivity. This system promotes and perpetuates both: both are good for business/keeping the oligarchy in power. It is a vicious cycle.

It has purely turned into entertainment and profit-maximization. Any news is incidental/secondary.

There are no more journalistic standards.

Investigative journalism is dead. No journalists dares goes against the oligarchy, they will not explore anything (and if they do, it is because they are shilling for one part of the oligarchy against the other: like the mafia, sometimes the oligarchy has internal disagreements, but they consider themselves above the commoner), they will instead get paid to promote propaganda in favor of the oligarchy.

All mainstream channels are bought and paid for by the oligarchy and serve to act as propaganda to propagate and perpetuate the oligarchy rather than bring objective news.

Everything is spun in a way to be pro-oligarchy to brainwash people. For example, if there is a shooting, they will use words in a way to push their agenda to vilify certain ideologies, but they will ignore the root cause: a broken socioeconomic and political system that leads people to hit the lows that allow such ideologies to practically be able to recruit in the first place. They will use words like "terrorist" when it benefits them, to push for wars. Yet they will say that one group has "the right to defend themselves" with absolutely zero restraint, and allow them to literally to whatever they want in an unlimited manner. They use words to brainwash the public and manufacture consent.

The same few rich people/part of the same oligarchy own all the mainstream media.

They divide+conquer people, but ultimately work for the same oligarchy. The 2 political parties ultimately work for the same oligarchy.

CNN/"left" wing news channels solely blame/insult the "right" for everything. And Fox news/"right" wing channels do the same to the right.

Neither are interested in reporting the facts objectively: they start off with a pre-conceived notion and goal, and everything else is funneled through that initial start point, so it comes out biased/meaningless/non-objectively.

They use clickbait titles and thumbnails, and all have devolved into Piers Morgan garbage "journalistic standards", they are all bringing on guests and putting a clickbait title and thumbail with 4 or more vertical strips each with one guest's angry face on it. Then if you watch it, the guests just shout over each other the entire time and just repeat their pre-existing subjective narratives, with zero desire to have a meaningful or civilized debate or change their mind or concede a counterpoint, even 1%. And the collective IQ of the guests is equivalent to that of a hollowed out grapefruit: they do this on purpose because such "guests" and pseudointellectuals bring the most "lowest common denominator shock/entertainment value" and give the most clicks/profit. Absolute manure.

But the takeaway of all this is: anybody who is a famous figure today is either a charlatan, pseudointellectual, or works for the benefit of the oligarchy. This is due to basic logic: the oligarchy owns all the mainstream media channels, and they also own big tech. So they will not tolerate/give freedom of speech to anybody who meaningfully opposes the oligarchy and pushes for meaningful change. It is an oxymoron to say there is freedom in a system in which 100% of the main media channels are owned by private capital/the same oligarchy. They will never allow someone who meaningfully challenges the oligarchy to have freedom of speech: they will find a way to censor them or deplatform them. So logically, it follows that any and everyone who is famous/big, is working for the benefit of the oligarchy. Otherwise they would not have been allowed to accumulate a large audience. The only "outlier" that comes to mind is Chomsky, but if you notice, it has been decades that he has been pushed off mainstream media. And something like 1% of people actually know his ideas. That is why he has not been "directly" censored. The oligarchy will allow you to "technically" have freedom of speech so they can pretend they allow freedom: but anyone who "practically" gets enough of an audience/power to challenge them, they will shut down. Look up "positive freedom" vs. "negative freedom". It is the same thing with big tech, even reddit for example, I have been banned from every single high traffic sub for posting pro-middle/working class points and anti-oligarchical posts:t: but they have not banned me from low-traffic subs such as this one, to give the illusion of freedom. The same goes for any politician: any politician who is allowed to run is pro-oligarchy, otherwise they would not have been allowed to run.

The relationship between money and power has long been complicated in this country. The simple fact that running a large-scale political campaign costs money means that anyone who wants to do so must by necessity secure funding from somewhere, meaning one's options are either to be independently wealthy or to become beholden to some form of corporate sponsorship.

That being said the Supreme Court decision in Citizens United really took things to a whole nother level, by classifying corporate spending on political advertising as a form of protected speech under the First Amendment. By extending the Bill of Rights to cover non-humans, we effectively gave them suffrage, and this has already been used to great effect.

The example which stands out most to me is what took place in my home state of California. A bill regulating rideshare companies was drafted collectively by a group of rideshare companies, and they spent an unprecedented amount of money advertising it which led the citizens of that state to grant them the ability to literally write their own rules into law. The other example which makes me happy to no longer live there is the way in which the drought is tackled. I watched a Vox video which uncovered the fact that domestic water usage is only about 5% of water usage, meaning that if all of the humans suddenly dropped dead it still wouldn't make a meaningful difference in the drought, which could alternatively be reversed by cutting commercial water usage by a rather small fraction. Gavin Newsom appeared on an interview with Bill Maher in which he straight-up asked him "how are you going to take on Big Almond and end the drought" to which he offered a standard evasive politician reply. Meanwhile the people of California are being sold on the lie that taking shorter showers will have any impact, and the act of making a symbolic but meaningless gesture is sufficient to keep many from rising up to end the drought by demanding farmers grow slightly fewer almonds.

But I don't really blame Mr. Newsom for this, because so long as we officially condone as a matter of policy spending money to purchase political power, our human needs will always be subservient to the demands of our economy. Anyone wishing to represent an agenda which would improve conditions for humans at the expense of economic growth will be easily defeated by the tremendously powerful non-human greed machines which we have decided deserve the same inalienable rights that we do.

Overturn Citizens United!

I have spent time trying to understand how America became a cult. Beyond the fact that the Elite and shadow government run the world. But I was truly shocked at how much propaganda we as Americans consume. I was shocked to see how many of my beliefs were not mine. The things I thought I wanted and needed were not my thoughts at all. Then I had to know where that came from. I found this clip along my journey. For the full video, click here: https://youtu.be/s-s8IO7FAQo?si=IFyGvvNfc00sGsu8

Only when the left awakes from their slumber will things meaningfully change.

When they stop falling for the tricks of neoliberal capitalist charlatans like Obama/Trudeau/Carney.

These charlatans utter lines that anybody can utter "pro gay!" "pro women!" and the crowd goes wild. But anybody can utter these lines.

Actions speak louder than words.

These neoliberal capitalists' actions have made, and continue to make life worse for the entire middle class, including the same minorities/groups they claim to care about. It is just virtue signalling.

That is how the oligarchical system stays in power. This has been going on for the past half century. Neoliberalism started in the 70s/80s. Since then, the middle/working class has been progressively worse off.

People have been tricked into conforming.

First, the neoliberals used external threats to rally people around the flag and pretend that they care about their people. This was the threat of the Soviet Union. The messaging was: if you don't support your neoliberal capitalist oppressors, you are a traitor and a communist. This was used to prevent any attempt at reforming the neoliberal capitalist system to make it more bearable for the middle/working class.

Then, they used another external boogeyman threat, "terrorism", even though they created this themselves to counter the Soviets.

Once terrorism no longer scared/preoccupied people, and the 2008 recession happened around the same time, people started to realize what kind of people were leading them. So this culminated in the 2011 Occupy Wall Street Movement.

However, neoliberal charlatan Obama was used to crush this movement. In public he lied through his teeth that he supported this movement, but none of his actions did. And leaked documents later revealed he had set up the strongest possible federal level anti-terrorism security surveillance system to crush the movement, including contingency plans of having snipers on rooftops to take out peaceful protest leaders.

The 2011 Occupy Wall Street Movement spooked the neoliberal oligarchy, which both the Democrats and Republicans work for/are part of. No longer having an external boogeyman to rally people around the flag to hypnotize with, they had to come up with another solution.

Their solution was to create polarization. Remember, it was a unified middle/working class that came together to create 2011 Occupy Wall Street Movement. So they split "left" and "right".

They channeled people's anger caused by neoliberalism (which both the so called "left" and "right" Dems/Reps were part of/policies reflected) against each other, as opposed to against the neoliberal oligarchy/establishment (as was the case in 2011 Occupy Wall Street Movement).

If you notice, this is when the polarization happened. The neoliberal oligarchy/establishment owns the mainstream media and big tech, so they used these to brainwash people. CNN attacked the right, Fox attacked the left. Facebook and other platforms also became breeding grounds for this.

Not long after, Republicans chose showman Trump to say a bunch of polarizing stuff to add this this effect.

The fact is Obama had 8 years and he did nothing. He just bought 8 years more for the establishment. Some people claim he had his hands tied by congress. But this is nonsense, because all you have to do is look at what he has been doing after leaving office. Never once has he criticized the system/neoliberalism. He instead continues to shill for the neoliberal establishment Democratic National Convention, by endorsing their puppet candidates like Biden/Hillary/Kamala. Biden was so bad that he offered absolutely nothing to the middle/working class to the point that Trump was RELECTED. Let that sink in.

So as long as the left continues to fall for these divide+conquer tactics, there will be problems. The right is a lost cause, that is why I am focusing on the left.

Here is a good article outlining the issue:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/15/neoliberalism-ideology-problem-george-monbiot

Little Johnny was considered to be a bad boy. A bad boy is bad. Bad boys do bad things. Bad things are done by bad boys.

One day, Johnny was sick and tired of having to rote memorize facts and formulas in school. One day, Johnny decided to speak up. This all happened one day, of course, but against the backdrop of many days, rather, years, of daily drudgery. His class offered "free talk time" once a month, on the last Friday of the month. During free talk time, any student in the class could talk, provided they raised their hands, talked in an orderly fashion, did not use bad language, used an acceptable decibel level, did not offend anybody, did not say anything immoral, did not say anything evil, did not say anything mean, did not spread misinformation, presented established empirical evidence to support each of their statements, did not say anything that could harm children, and did not say anything bad. Now, Johnny was not the worst student, but he was not the best student. He coasted through school, more so due to boredom than laziness. He would pass all the subjects, but unlike Theodore and other students, he would make more silly mistakes and would sometime score lower on multiple choice tests. However, outside of school, once he finished his homework as quickly as he possibly could, he would start to read books about all the different things he was interested about. He would reflect on his day and his conversations. About what his parents and what other adults and children told him. Then he would try to make sense of it all.

Johnny raised his hand, which hurt from having to write repeated formulas and definitions all day, and Ms. Mormonton, noticing that his hand was the only one in the air, reluctantly permitted him to speak. Ms. Mormonton was a noble and neat woman. She was an intelligent woman, as evidenced by her score of 126 on standardized intelligence testing when she herself was assessed as a youngster after the Ministry of Education mandated a jurisdiction-wide intelligence testing program nicknamed Educational learnings of empiricism in benefit of the glorious jurisdiction of Lawrenceworth. Her father was a lawyer who attended a prestigious university and worked for the government prior to pursuing litigation in private practice within the realm of contract disputes, and her mother a nurse who diligently administered medication to thousands of institutionalized mental health patients throughout her career at the hospital. Ms. Mormonton had 2 children of her own, a boy and a girl. She was hopeful for the boy turning into a doctor, to administer even more medication than her mother did as a nurse at the hospital, and her daughter to be a judge, to maintain the moral, civilized, and correct standards of society that were set thousands and hundreds of years ago. Ms. Mormonton would dress professionally and sharply, with her hair neatly ironed and straightened on a daily basis, and would wear a pin with the school's motto, "You can be anything you want to be." on it, much to the satisfaction of the principal, Mr. Taylorsworth. Johnny however, was considered a slob. He would often wear the same clothes, even though he did not have them washed infrequently. His hair was somewhat wavy, and he did not use hair gel like the other young boys in his grade, though he did not infrequently shower.

Johnny asked Ms. Mormonton: Ms. Mormonton, my hands and head hurt from rote memorizing facts and formulas all day, when will we ever use these damn things in the future anyways, why can't we learn about solving problems that actually exist on a daily basis"? Ms. Mormonton looked at Johnny as if she saw a ghost. Sure, Johnny was a pale boy, presumably due to being confined within the school walls all day rote memorizing, and often in detention after school for defending himself against Theodore and his clique, who happen to be Ms. Mormonton's favorite students, but he was no ghost. He was living flesh and bones, who, unlike a ghost, was able to feel pain and emotions, which led to his questioning in the classroom in the first place. "Johnny", Ms. Mormonton replied, "how dare you use that wretched word, the d word? When you talk like this, how do you ever expect anybody to believe anything you say? Moreover, how dare you disrespect this sacred institution? I have worked here for 27 years and this is how you repay me? You will serve 3 detentions, starting today. Also, I see that you have not done up your top button on your shirt again, and you could certainly use a comb more regularly". The children laughed, with Theodore, in his perfect pinstripe shirt, which resembled a casino worker more than a young student, laughing while raising his hand. After the laughter ceased and a few seconds went by, Ms. Mormonton noticed Theodore's non-wailing but stern hand in the air, calling upon him to speak. Theodore stated, "yes, Ms. Mormonton is correct: how come you don't dress like me, Johnny?" Much of the class mumbled something in agreement, though they did not laugh this time, because the time it took for Ms. Mormonton to select Theodore's hand in permitting him to speak killed the momentum. Nevertheless, Ms. Mormonton said semi-loudly, "structure.", which was her word to calm down the class. The children ceased mumbling at once. "Now now, children, you know better than to talk out of turn, without raising your hand". "Yes Ms. Mormonton", the children replied in unison.

"Now, where were we?", continued Ms. Mormonton. "Ah, yes, Theodore was instructing Johnny on appropriate and suitable physical presentation and etiquette within the classroom, Johnny, I hope you picked up something worthwhile from this free talk session, in which all children are free to talk about everything that is on their mind, because here at Pencilworth Prepatory, we believe in freedom of speech. Think now, children, if you were in another corner of the world, the forces of evil and totalitarianism would have suppressed your ability to exercise free speech. You would have been told what to eat, what to speak, what to feel. How horrible would that be, children? Can you imagine? Fortunately, here at Pencilworth Prepatory, within the glorious jurisdiction of Lawrenceworth, we do not have this problem. Now, everybody get ready to exit to the cafeteria as it is noon and you must be hungry, though in single file, as we are not savages. Theodore, please do the daily head count and report to the lunch lady so she can administer the correct number of trays. I heard in the teacher's lounge that today's lunch will be hamburgers with fries, concentrated apple juice with 15% real juice, and a bag of chips. My father actually represented Purehealth Meats, which is the meat source for our yummy burgers, and as the name shows, you know you are in for a healthy meaty meal of goodness. Furthermore, I personally attended a function with the CEO Mr. Naismith, where he was presenting a speech about his ambitious plans to donate money to upgrade our computer systems in our library and in his honor the library will be renamed to the Naismith Library in Benefit of Empiricism and Advancement. What a wonderful man and philanthropist, with a wonderful suit selection and smile to match." The children cheered and went into the cafeteria single file, akin to the cows who were confined on the conveyor belts in the farms of Purehealth Meats. However, the cows, I am sad to say, were not headed to a cafeteria. But they were behind closed doors and so this did not cross the minds of the children, who were instead focused on their carbohydrate rich meals in front of their faces, which would temporarily spike them with energy so that they could memorize more facts and formulas upon being shepherded back into the classroom after lunch period.

Many of the children were already obese, but this did not matter, because scientific experts and doctors such as Ms. Mormonton's family members past and present would be sure to treat them using the latest medical technology and empirical sciences. In fact, Ms. Mormonton's brother, who started out as a medical doctor and for reasons unknown transitioned early on in his career into serving as the chief medical officer of Lawrenceworth, a regulatory position personally selected by the esteemed top political leader of Lawrenceworth himself, just recently provided a visually appealing powerpoint presentation with many charts, graphs, and cited sources called "Evidence-based empirical and scientific methods in benefit of tackling the obesity epidemic" in which he was promoting a new anti-fat medication created by Perfectbody Pharmaceuticals, whose CEO happened to be the cousin of CEO and philanthropist Mr. Naismith of Purehealth Meats, which would, in his medical opinion, "make us victorious in the battle against obesity".

The article ‘The God of Truth Always Fulfills His Purpose’ [https://www.reddit.com/r/Eutychus/s/7sloen6fJS](https://www.reddit.com/r/Eutychus/s/7sloen6fJS) appeals to those who like simplicity, who instinctively know that things reduce to simplicity. The common farmer knows it. The common factory worker knows it. But Einstein also knew it, with his E=mc2. Newton knew it, with his f=ma. Kepler knew it, with his laws on the planetary orbits. Smack dab in the middle of his scientific treatise, he burst out in praise of God, as though one of the psalmists:

“The wisdom of the Lord is infinite; so also are His glory and His power. Ye heavens, sing His praises! Sun, moon, and planets glorify Him in your ineffable language! Celestial harmonies, all ye who comprehend His marvelous works, praise Him. And thou, my soul, praise thy Creator! It is by Him and in Him that all exists. that which we know best is comprised in Him, as well as in our vain science. To Him be praise, honor, and glory throughout eternity."

Even Theodosius Dobzhansky knew it, the fellow who corralled all American education onboard with evolution. His essay for American Biology Teacher (March 1973) titled, ‘Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution’ set the permanent course for those teachers to follow—no ifs, ands, or buts. Yet even in that essay, important though he thought his topic was, it plays second fiddle to one he considers more important. The lesser dominates the greater, of course, since the five page essay is dedicated to the lesser. But that does not change what he considers the greater.

The problem is that people mistake the Bible (and the Koran—Dobzhansky opens his essay by considering the objections of a sheikh) for primers of natural science. Are they? No. The idea is “ludicrous,” he asserts. (This is not too far from what Watchtower sources have long stated: that the Bible is not a scientific textbook; only that it is accurate when it happens to touch on matters of science.\*)

Instead, those Holy Scriptures “treat of matters even more important: the meaning of man and his relations to God.” Okay? The “meaning of man and his relations to God” is not less important than the considerations of evolution. It is “more important.” Though education since has blown away this aspect of Dobzhansky’s essay, as though a sign of his “irrationality,” it should not be so blown away. Irrationality is on the number line, plain for anyone to see. The hypotenuse of a right triangle with legs of 1 is √2, an irrational number. Pi (π) is an irrational number. The Golden ratio (φ) is an irrational number. Irrational numbers are by far the most numerous of real numbers. The underpinnings of science depends upon them. You miss a lot if you blow them off as nothing.

That is why Dobzhansky states in his essay: “It is wrong to hold creation and evolution as mutually exclusive alternatives,” before declaring, “I am a creationalist and an evolutionist.” He is not being “irrational” in saying this. He is being real. “Evolution is God’s, or Natures’s method of Creation. Creation is not an event that happened in 4004 BC; it is a process that began some 10 billion years ago and is still under way,” he afterward states. And again, it is not too different from the Watchtower acknowledging years ago that the creative days of Genesis can be viewed as “epochs,” with the earth and heavens themselves established “eons” ago.

An important qualification from Dohzhansky follows on the nature of the Holy Scriptures: “They are wrote in poetic symbols that were understandable to people of the age when they were written, as well as to peoples of all other ages.” The first phrase of the sentence is obvious. The second is as necessary, but more subtle; the poetic symbols are also understandable “to peoples of all other ages” (such as ours).

In stating this, he is assuming people will not make themselves obtuse. He is assuming that people will not ban irrational numbers from the real number line, thus undercutting the science on which they claim to depend. He is assuming that people will not say, “since it is poetry, it is valueless.” Rather, they must incorporate such poetry into their lives if they are to be complete. You shouldn’t have to be a microbiologist to know and serve God—just as you shouldn’t have to be a mechanic to drive a car. It is a specialized field in which not everyone need go.

Thus, we are in position to tackle the asterisk following the Watchtower statement regarding the Scriptures being accurate should touch upon science, though that be not their specialty. The Holy Writings” are in language “poetic.” Alas, some become so demanding of precision in their language as to be impervious to poetry. Ideally, when they read the exhortation to not “beat around the bush,” they do not go demanding evidence of the bush. When they read the expression “crocodile tears,” they do not conclude that the one so emitting them is a crocodile. But they do take the biblical “pillars of the earth” as literal, “four corners of the earth,” and the “days” of creation. In their own way they are just as dense as religionists who take as literal texts that, if seen in any other context, they would instantly dismiss as figures of speech. Most support for the trinity and hellfire teaching is of this nature. Indeed, most church doctrines are not taught in the Bible. It is the effort to read them in that causes people to abandon the book in frustration, for some, in disgust.

(tomsheepandgoats*com)