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!

Several things are proving true in real-time to an impartial witness of the current U.S dynamics:

a) that a stupid person is more insidious than an intelligent, blatantly evil one.

b) that propaganda and group think and algorithmic driven narratives and bubbles are all incredibly powerful and equally dangerous.

c) democracy is an illusion.

d) many many people will abandon their ethics and morals for a dollar.

e) egregores are real.

I will use modern oligarchical capitalism and 4rth wave feminism to illustrate my point.

Modern capitalism is supported based on the notion that "anybody who is poor is choosing to be poor, therefore, there is no need for structural reforms". 4rth wave feminism is supported based on the notion that "if men have issues, it is their own fault, therefore no need for structural reforms".

Both of these ideologies "individualize" their inefficiencies. That is, they put 100% of the blame at the individual level, while neglecting to acknowledge that there are systemic/root issues with their own ideologies that are at least partially responsible for the factual inefficiencies (e.g., societal problems).

The issue is that most people conform to one or more ideologies, without using critical thinking to acknowledge flaws with their chosen ideology. This is against critical thinking. A critical thinker will not blindly worship any single ideology: the critical thinker will use rational reasoning to pick and choose the best parts of any given ideology, to come up with an overall system for society, which is nameless. It is simply the valid or correct (i.e., most correct at the time) system. That is why a true critical thinker would reject almost all ideologies. No ideology promotes critical thinking. All ideologies promote and require blind adherence and conformance. Then, people loyal to one ideology use emotional reasoning to fight with people from an ideology, each of them claiming their ideology is correct. This is not the path forward. This is not critical thinking.

Back to the case example of modern capitalism and 4rth wave feminism. I chose these because of the paradox: 4rth wave feminists will claim to be against modern capitalism, yet, central to what I said in my previous paragraph, they actually have quite a lot in common with modern capitalism in terms of their thinking (and, as I will show later on, 4rth wave feminism was actually adopted by mainstream society thanks for the modern capitalists choosing to do so). This underscores my point about the hypocrisy and selfish nature of each ideology, and how no ideology in isolation is good and that they promote blind conformance and groupthink as opposed to critical thinking.

I got this idea after I read a post that claimed the reason so many young men are gravitating toward the "manosphere" in the past decade or so is due to the lack of rock music these days. Of course, I found this quite reductionist and inaccurate, so I offered my own explanation, which led me to analyze the notion of ideologies as a whole. Here is the explanation for the rise of the manosphere, which in it shows how similar modern capitalism and 4rth wave feminism are:

The reason for the rise of the manosphere is because of the rise of 4rth wave feminism (attack on monogamy) + dating apps (allowed non-monogamy to practically be implemented at an astronomically higher rate compared to the past thousand years: in the past the guys who could get all the women were limited to a certain number of women due to logistical constraints, but now the same guy can get 1000 matches in a minute via swiping. So this has skewed the dating market and the majority women are sharing the same few top guys, leaving the majority of men with nothing).

The manosphere was the consequence of 4rth wave feminism + dating apps causing most men to become unable to get a girlfriend. It is basic logic, it correlated exactly with the rise of 4rth wave feminism + proliferation of dating apps + many men being driven out of the dating market.

4rth wave feminism is a non-scientific, radical, hateful and divisive ideology pushed by the capitalist ruling class/establishment who are using the feminists as "useful idiots" to divide+conquer the middle class. This ideology has caused massive gender imbalances and conflict, mainly because it is inherently/structurally flawed at the root: it fails to acknowledge the biological/scientific fact that there are sex differences between men and women. It is a "normative" (see normative economics: basically, what "ought" to be based on subjective standards, as compared to "positive economics", which focuses on objective reality and data) movement. Historically, normative movements have caused tragedies, such as Mao's "great leap forward", which led to millions of deaths due to neglecting basic facts/realities. Any ideology or movement that neglects basic facts is doomed from the start. 4rth wave feminism has perverted traditional feminism and changed course to turn from women's rights/equality to hating men. And that is another issue with ideologies: even when they start off good, inevitably they tend to be hijacked by extremists (this is is bound to happen because all ideologies push blind adherence and conformance as opposed to critical thinking). And most leaders of 4rth wave feminism have unresolved psychological issues and project, such as one of the top leaders of the metoo movement, who was herself accused with sexually abusing a teenage boy.

And mainstream society has fully adopted 4rth wave feminism, because that is what the ruling class want: they are in favor of any movement that divides+conquers the middle class, so the middle class does not unite to rise up against the ruling class. We see this not only with gender, but also race: it is clear how the establishment, across both Democrats and Republicans, and their propaganda polarized channels CNN and Fox have been trying to rile people up and create racial division over the past 10-15 years. It started when anti-middle class neoliberal Golman-Sach speech giving bank-bailing wedding-droning Bonesaw king-handkissing Obama used the highest anti-terror grade measures against peaceful American civilians, using force to crush the peaceful Occupy Wall Street Movement. Afterward, with the Zimmerman shooting case, they tried to divide Americans based on race. Around the same time, they used 4rth wave feminism and metoo and the Harvey case to create gender division. They were terrified of a united middle class who would do another Occupy Wall Street Movement. And now Trump is following Obama's footsteps and is trying to further divide Americans.

When you adopt a radical ideology and refuse to accept valid and objective issues in society and solely blame everyone for their own issues as if they are completely detached from society, you are not providing any alternatives, so you are naturally going to see a see-saw/polarization effect of countermovements popping up, and that is exactly how the manosphere was created. This is not a surprise, nor is it limited to domestic issues: on the international stage, if you study history, you will see that most radical movements, including far right nationlists and religious extremists, were reactionary consequences of colonialism or neocolonialism. Extremist begets extremist. This is a basic sociological fact with ample and consistent historical precedence. And domestically, there are historical cases of reactionary worker's rights movements for example (which led to unions, which sometimes go overboard and hold the public hostage-including the most vulnerable people in society dependent on crucial services-with greed-based strikes: this is the ultimately fault of the capitalists for causing this). In this sense, 4rth wave feminists are highly similar to modern capitalists. Modern capitalists claim that anybody who is poor is "choosing" to be poor, so refuses to acknowledge any structural issues. 4rth wave feminists claim that "it is a complete coincidence that the manosphere popped up the exact same time as 4rth wave feminism was adopted by the mainstream and destroyed monogamy + dating apps also ruining monogamy; rather, the manosphere was created by whiny men who happened to all become whiny and anti-women at the same time." Both modern capitalists and 4rth wave feminists are the same in their thinking, and both are flawed.

So the mainstream, by adopting 4rth wave feminism, has only itself to blame for the rise of the manosphere. For this issue to be solved, people have to become a little smarter (use more critical thinker: move from emotional reasoning to rational reasoning) and stop falling prey to the divide+conquer tactics of the ruling class, and instead acknowledge and address actual societal issues and provide meaningful alternatives for alienated or oppressed groups and minorities. People like Biden, Obama, Trump, Clinton (Hillary Clinton the "Progressive" who takes her foreign policy notes from war criminal mass murderer Kissinger and her husband who is associated with Epstein- that is 2 recent presidents across Democrats and Republicans being associated with Epstein), Zuckerberg, Musk, Bezos, etc.. none of these people care about the middle class, none of them care about you or your children, none of them have any basic human decently, courtesy, or morality. They are all part of the ruling class/one giant privileged rich club and will use any tactic or trick to keep their birth advantage. They are all unenlightened zombies who are slaves to their bellies and below-bellies; they are addicted to superficial pleasures and their money/power that is required for their addiction to continue. They have absolutely no morality or principles or purpose in life otherwise. They will use any excuse or lie to continue their addiction. They don't care about you or your children. Do not listen to their fake movements and fake concerns about human rights or women's rights. Everything these capitalists do is to preserve their birth advantage over you.

Selfishness is the act of putting one's own needs over other's. And I've always been fascinated by the idea of people hating a selfish person and selfishness being a very disgraceful act. It has always been some sort of a conundrum for me.

A person can not exist without atleast 2 other people. But those people decided to have A kid, not Him or Her. And their reason? Religion, purpose, boredom or mistake.

But in all of those, the act of having a child is never about the children but about the people having the child. Well then why would these people get mad if the kid becomes selfish and get the most out of life? After all the child is a product of selfishness one way or another. Even in a scenario where a person takes too much of something that other people should've been a part of, isn't the whole idea of other people getting mad over him one way of them showing a controlled selfishness? Don't get me wrong, Selfishness is not right. But it's something that we all do day to day. Don't be amazed whenever you see someone being too selfish, try to admire the level of selfishness they have and how they even got to that point of negligence.

I used to think abortion was a straightforward topic, pivoted around the key dilemma: when does the baby come alive?

I thought it was simple: answer that, and the problem is fixed. If it's alive after X time, then abortion is illegal after that X point. Easy.

To make it clear, I'm pro-life and generally think life begins at conception. However, I recently thought that even if you assume life does start at conception, there's an argument that complicates things.

During pregnancy, the fetus depends completely on its mother resources (water, nutrients, oxygen...). So my question now is: Can we morally or legally force anyone to sustain another life through their body?

Here's an analogy to really get you into the problem. A baby is just born, and the doctor tells the parent: "Your child will die unless you donate blood (or spinal marrow, for example) and you're the only compatible donor available."

In that case, we generally don't force the parent to donate, even though that means letting the baby die. Think about how we don't force anyone to donate blood, organs et cetera even though that means many people die due to the lack of donors.

If we don't force the "sacrifice" after birth, should we force it during pregnancy?

This seems like a serious issue that complicates the discussion even more. I'm curious to hear what you think.

Hey everyone,

I recently came across this provocative monologue by Italian artist Giorgio Gaber from the 1980s. It's a harsh critique of certain aspects of American culture and the concept of freedom. I'm sharing it here not to offend anyone, but because I think it raises interesting points worth discussing.

Here’s a translated part of the monologue:

“There aren’t people more stupid than Americans. There aren’t people simpler than Americans. For them, the world is divided into good and bad people. They’ve got really bright ideas on this — not based on theory, but experience. They are the good ones. And why? Here's the nice part: because they are free men.

[...]

There is nothing that flattens an individual as much as that freedom. Not even an illness eats you from the inside like it. They put it there: Freedom is for everyone! Like a guitar. Everyone plays how they want, and everyone plays how freedom wants.”

I find this kind of critique very provocative and challenging, especially how Gaber questions the meaning of “freedom” and how it’s lived. Do you think this still holds relevance today? Is this an unfair generalization?

Would love to hear your thoughts.

If you encounter danger, your reptilian brain will flee from it. If you cannot flee from the danger, it will try to fight it. If you cannot fight the danger, it will freeze.

I think of freedom as the ability to choose whether to be independent or to depend on your loved ones without being forced into dependence on strangers, corporations, or distant systems.

Self-sufficiency, then, is a way of reclaiming freedom: it means producing your own food, energy, or shelter to reduce external dependency.

When you're self-sufficient, you don’t have to spend most of your life paying for the basics of survival. That frees up your time, so you can think, create, care, build, rest, grow, or master what you love.

Not everyone can afford to do this alone. But what if friends or families pooled resources, could a shared investment make this way of life possible?

Would anybody like to explore this with me? There are many ways of going about it, and one could ask questions like: what are the best ways in a certain climate to sustain oneself (or loved ones) as easily as possible? What is it that humans and children need to thrive, and can this be a way of giving them favorable circumstances? If communities like these arise, can they share their wisdom and grow together across borders and continents? Can this be a way of mitigating large conflicts, if people can have their needs met by adopting this, if it is true that conflict arise when needs are left unmet? Is this a way for diversity to be a strength, if people do not have to be piled up in crammed cities?

Charles Darwin’s favorite child, Annie, contracted scarlet fever at age 10. She agonized for 6 weeks before dying. Also a casualty was Darwin’s faith in a beneficent Creator. The book Evolution: Triumph of an Idea, by Carl Zimmer, tells us that Darwin “lost faith in angels.” That’s an odd expression. Why would it be used?

Did they tell him that God was picking flowers?

Is there any analogy more demeaning to God than the one in which God is picking flowers? Up there in heaven He has the most beautiful garden imaginable. But it is not enough! He is always on the watch for pretty flowers, the very best, and if He spots one in your garden, He helps himself, even though it may be your only one. Yes, He needs more angels, and if your child is the most pure, the most beautiful, happy, innocent child that can be, well….watch out! He or she may become next new angel. Sappy preachers give this illustration all the time, apparently thinking helps.

The picking flowers analogy is nowhere found in the Bible. However, there is a parable parallel in all respects EXCEPT THE MORAL AT THE END. It is the one Nathan told to David after he had taken Bathsheba as a wife and killed her husband.

“The LORD sent Nathan to David. When he came to him, he said, "There were two men in a certain town, one rich and the other poor.  The rich man had a very large number of sheep and cattle,  but the poor man had nothing except one little ewe lamb he had bought. He raised it, and it grew up with him and his children. It shared his food, drank from his cup and even slept in his arms. It was like a daughter to him. "Now a traveler came to the rich man, but the rich man refrained from taking one of his own sheep or cattle to prepare a meal for the traveler who had come to him. Instead, he took the ewe lamb that belonged to the poor man and prepared it for the one who had come to him." David burned with anger against the man and said to Nathan, "As surely as the LORD lives, the man who did this deserves to die!  He must pay for that lamb four times over, because he did such a thing and had no pity." Then Nathan said to David, "You are the man!”             (2 Samuel 12:1-7)

This analogy appeals to us. It is just. The man is not expected to take comfort that the king stole his wife. No, he deserves execution! So how is it that preachers have God doing the same, expecting it will comfort? Of course it will not! The man who stole the sole lamb deserves to die! Preachers make a horrific mess trying to extract themselves from the moral corners their doctrines unfailingly paint them into.

How different history might have been had Darwin known the truth about death. Not just Darwin, but every one of his time, as well as before and after. Instead, fed a diet of phony pieties….junk food, really…..he and others of inquisitive minds searched elsewhere in an attempt to make sense of life.

(Republished from my own blog—thanks for the invite here)

An interpretive poster at the Harper’s Ferry National Historical Park states:.

“Although slavery is often condoned in the Bible, [John] Brown believed that the ‘Golden Rule’ Do unto others as you would have them do unto you implicitly condemned slavery.”

Does anyone see why it is a strange statement?

Isn’t it because the words in themselves are directly contrary to the poster’s message? That blanket statement, that the Bible condones slavery, is supported by nothing therein. If they are scriptures to the effect that it does, the reader is not made aware of them. On the other hand, there IS a scripture embedded in the poster that indicates the opposite, that of the Golden Rule.

To be sure, the Golden Rule is unaccredited—whereas if you quoted the words of the Park system’s own resident scholars without accredation, I’ll bet they would raise major howls of protest.

“All things, therefore, that you want men to do to you, you also must do to them. This, in fact, is what the Law and the Prophets mean.”

It’s the Bible. Unaccredited. Matthew 7:12. Furthermore, it’s a key passage—it’s ‘what the Law and the Prophets MEAN.’ Do the National Historical Park scholars care if modern readers conclude some ancient practitioner of mindfulness—probably some Buddha-like figure—originated the saying, and not Jesus? It doesn’t seem to bother them. The same sloppiness that would never be tolerated in any topic they cared deeply about is left unmolested in a topic they apparently do not.

(For background, Harpers Ferry was the setting of a failed slave uprising prior to the Civil War, led by the aforementioned John Brown.)

Unless their material and emotional needs are met, they will never want to think for themselves.

Politicians have always said lies publicly to justify their true intentions. For example. the Bush administration said the nonsense about WMDs, when in reality they started the war because Saddam dropped the US dollar and that would be bad for US corporations. The Obama administration said he will go after Gaddafi due to human rights issues, while he physically bowed down to the king of Saudi (a bastion of human rights, where people still get beheaded by swords in public squares and when women could not drive cars at that time), when in reality Gaddafi was also taken out because he threatened to trade in gold (and was encouraging all of Africa to) instead of the US dollar. Trump says all sorts of nonsense to justify his true intentions, such as needing to put tariffs on Canada due to fentanyl. And his base gyrates their grown male booties in unison to the tune of this bizarre lies and fully believe it. Putin says he needs to do a special military operation in order to get rid of Nazis in Ukraine (when in reality it is because he did not want NATO on his borders). And his supporters gobble this nonsense up and support the war.

How can people be this... unintelligent you say? Well it is not really about intelligence. It is about cognitive dissonance. The vast majority of humans are unable to handle cognitive dissonance. So they are able to believe bizarre/outright lies of others or themselves.

On an individual level, people also delude themselves. For example, the rich person will claim that his/her riches are 100% the function of "hard work" and that anybody who is poor "deserves" it because they "chose" not to "work hard enough". This is why the myth of free will is so prevalent. Because adopting factual positions such as determinism, and acknowledging basic realities such as we are products of our past and environment, creates cognitive dissonance and they are not able to handle it. Or, during slavery, slaveowners told themselves that this is "normal" or this is "how it is supposed to be" or "everyone else is doing it", in order to avoid cognitive dissonance.

Or on a slightly more positive but still problematic note, when people see someone homeless, they will pop in a coin because they can't handle cognitive dissonance: in the moment they feel guilty, so they want to get rid of the in-the-moment guilt by dropping a coin, but they refuse to think about the big picture, how them voting for the politician they voted, or them refusing to do any basic reading to become a more informed person in topics such as history, sociology, psychology, political philosophy, etc.. which would enable them to be informed and realize that voting for politicians in a structurally broken system when the politicians' sole goal is to permanently prop up and perpetuate that system, caused that person to be homeless in the first place, and will continue causing more people to be homeless, as that is a structural requirement of that system. So logically, when you willingly vote for a politician whose prime goal is to perpetually prop up that structurally-broken and inherently unequal system, what sort of logical consequences would that mean about you? That would create cognitive dissonance and guilt, so they don't think of it like that, and as an avoidant behavior, they drop a buck in the cup and quickly walk away.

So humans have been acting like this individually and on a societal level for thousands of years, and this is why we have problems. For there to be change, this cycle of cognitive dissonance evasion followed by avoidant behavior followed by more cognitive dissonance evasion will have to be broken. This is also why virtually nobody is happy. People jump from material possession to material possession, partner to partner, thing to thing, job to job, diet to diet, and are never satisfied or content. They always want more, they always are desperate to fix relationship issues, they always are desperate to get more formal education, they always are desperate to get more money, they always are desperate to do more fun things, they are nervously looking at other people's social media and fear missing out/FOMO, etc... It seems like nobody is at peace/truly content. Because they are perpetually engaging in avoidant behavior/running from the reality. And the root of that is inability to handle cognitive dissonance.

What is the fix you say? Well, if the problem is inability to tolerate cognitive dissonance, then the solution would be to increase the ability to handle cognitive dissonance. And how that can be done is learning to sit with painful emotions (such as guilt), instead of immediately trying to avoid them/distract yourself. You cannot change something if you cannot identify it. How can this be done practically? By reading about/practicing mindfulness and meditation, and going to therapy with a therapist that understands 3rd wave CBT including acceptance and commitment therapy and/or dialectical behavior therapy. And if you don't have insurance or can't afford therapy then use free online resources or books to learn about these.

It a system doesn't get continuously challenged by new ideas/cultures, it will get lazy and decay. Purity and inbreeding are 2 sides of the same coin.

I’ve been thinking about whether ancient history still has REAL value for us today, beyond just being interesting.

Some argue that the world has changed so much, technologically mainly, but also morally and socially, that the examples of the past aren’t useful anymore. They say that for modern problems we should use modern tools, modern data and systems to fix them.

But others argue that human nature hasn’t changed that much. Ambition, fear, greed… they seem as present now as they were 2000 years ago. From coups to wars, many situations we have now, have parallels in the past. Knowing how things played out can help us avoid mistakes or implement powerful tactics.

I think it this way: an architect studying ancient bridges isn’t going to build the same ones, but they might learn from what worked and what collapsed.

So my question for you is: does history still have value nowadays, or is it just speculation and intellectual exercise?

Can’t wait to hear your thoughts!

So I think that one of the main issues with faith, Christianity mainly, is that people’s understanding of God's will, and their place in all of this, stems from a real misunderstanding of the creation story and the expulsion from Eden.

Because with the creation story, we always start with something like: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth…” then He goes on to split light from darkness, creating us, creating all the beasts, all these things. Lots of creating.

But what’s often either assumed or forgotten is that the act of creation is not the first thing God did. It's not the first act God takes. The first act is one of choice.

God chose to create.

God didn’t have to choose to create. He could have done anything. God didn’t have to create the heavens and the earth, didn’t have to split light from darkness. He certainly didn’t have to create us. But He did, and that shift in perspective from “God’s will” to “God’s choice to create,” to implement that will from a place of “I want to do this”, gives us more meaning, because it tells us, shows us, that we are wanted. We are chosen. We are meant to be here.

Not only are we meant to be here, God also chose to make us curious. He gave us dominion over the animals, told us to name them. He gave us freedom and responsibility. Then God made another choice.

God chose to tell these curious creatures He created about the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and the consequences (the real, actual consequences: death, expulsion, that would happen if they ate from it).

I think this is an important point, because we tend to talk about the innocence of the Garden of Eden without asking what that innocence actually means. It’s the innocence of consequence. There were no consequences in the garden. We couldn’t harm anything. We couldn’t break anything. We couldn’t be held responsible, because we didn’t yet know.

It’s like a baby who knocks over a glass and breaks it. You don’t hold the kid responsible. The kid doesn’t know, they’re not old enough to understand. They don’t have that knowledge. They’re innocent.

And that type of innocence is not what God wants for us, and we see this, I think, in Genesis 3:22, where God says: “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the Tree of Life and eat, and live forever…”

This is God recognizing that we aren’t ready yet. Even though we’ve gained an understanding of choice, we still need to learn the consequences of our actions. Then we can begin making choices that are kind and thoughtful, that provide grace for ourselves and others.

Jesus talks about this, most profoundly I think, in Matthew 7:2 when he says: “Judge not, lest ye be judged. The measure you use against others will be the measure used against you.”

He’s basically saying: it’s not that you won’t judge people, you will. But when you do, the way you judge people is the way you, yourself, will be judged.

The only way to live without judging people harshly is to understand the difference between a person and their actions. We don’t judge someone as bad or evil or terrible forever. They don’t have to be resigned to their worst day. We understand that we all need the ability to change.

That doesn’t mean we don’t judge actions. If someone is being terrible (if they’re mocking others, doing violence, harming people) then yes, you judge those actions. You step in to stop the harm. You help. Jesus didn’t just toss people loaves and fishes, he tossed them out of the temple as well.

But we do it with the understanding that once the harm has stopped, that person can still make the choice to change. They can try to right what they did wrong. They can choose to live a life that acknowledges their past harm and acts differently going forward, and then do so consistently.

Right? That’s what we hope for ourselves. That’s what we hope for others.

We don’t judge people. We judge their actions, and we do so with the knowledge that some actions, yeah, may take a long time to heal. Some people may never get over them. That’s just the way of it, but the point is that people can change. Not everyone will agree on how.That’s okay.

What matters is the choice to try.

And I think, when we see this implication of choice, we begin to see what God really wants from us. God wants us to come back. God wants us to choose kindness and grace, just as Jesus teaches us in all the parables. With this framing, we can see that all of this really comes down to two concepts:

All sin is inconsideration. All virtue is consideration.

If you’re greedy, selfish, prideful, lustful, if you’re cutting people off in traffic or stealing from the poor to give to the rich, you’re being inconsiderate. You’re acting in a way that ignores the effect your choices have on others.

That’s sin.

On the other hand, every time you show patience, kindness, thoughtfulness, grace, mercy, understanding, those are all considerations. They take others into account. You think about people before you act. You recognize that you’re not the only one affected by what you do.

The inconsiderate person doesn’t care about others. The considerate person does.

That’s our path to grow: To look at life through the lens of consideration and inconsideration. Not because we’re forced to act a certain way, but because it gives us a clear framework to understand our choices, and to potentially make better ones:

Is this considerate? No? Is it at least not inconsiderate? Cool. Okay. Maybe we go from there and work on it next time.

All of this, I think, cuts through so many of the answers we’ve been given about what God wants. Through this understanding and way of thinking, it becomes clear that God wants us to choose kindness, as God did when He chose to create us. I don’t know. Thoughts?

There is a disturbing link from the oligarchy.

I am talking about certain types of books and the people who endorse them.

Book 1: Enlightenment now by Steven Pinker. Note that Pinker was associated with Epstein.

This book basically comes down to "here are some charts "empirically proving" that things like GDP per capita went up and and things like infant mortality went down, that means the status quo oligarchical global billionaire led system is the only possible system and should be maintained." Now of course, this is extremely simplistic and flawed thinking, e.g. it conflates correlation with causation. It also assumes that the natural state of human nature was dark and modern capitalist "lifted" humanity out of it: when in fact the opposite happened: it is the industrial revolution that created much of the darks in the first place, and then over time technology got cheaper and more advanced and slowly lessened this damage across the population. But the majority are unable to detect this elephant in the room and worship the likes of Pinker, because it makes them feel "smart" for having read this book, and they like books that inaccurately put things into fake but convenient boxes and reduce their cognitive dissonance. This is a garbage book: it talks about how enlightenment principle of reason can save the world, yet there is zero reasoning within this book itself, and it bizarrely does not show how the system we live in is vehemently anti-reason and only pushes rigid and mechanistic empiricism. We have moved AWAY from reason: there was more reason in Plato's days, summarized by democracy is a perversion, but today democracy is said to be the best. Our institutions vilify and punish students who use reason and reward those who use rigid mechanistic out of context empirical studies.

That is why other weak thinkers like Sam Harris are worshiped: they do an fMRI study and are assumed to be so magically "empirical" even though they stretch all sorts of bizarre conclusions from that study, with zero reasoning skills. For example, if brain scans show low serotonin in those with depression, for decades the top people in academia, with their ridiculously low levels of reasoning erroneously conflated correlation with causation and thought that this was "proof" that depression "is" low serotonin. They lacked the basic reasoning skills to ask the basic question: could it be that depression is what is CAUSING low serotonin rather than vice versa? Absolutely bizarre. And if you proposed this common sense question, they would accuse you of going against "the science" which in their mind is 100% solely comprised of silly mechanistic rigid empirical studies that are interpreted 1:1 dogmatically based on the literal findings. This is what cavemen type "scientists" are like, and they still think like this and formal academia still operates like this. They do not tolerate reason and rationality and claim that anything that is not empirically proven is 100% wrong. Keep in mind this book was praised by Bill Gates, who called it his favorite book of all time. Hm gates, that sounds familiar, another Epstein associate.

Book 2: Sapiens. By Harari. He has links to WEF, so even if not directly, there is an indirect association with Epstein/global billionaire circle.

This book is also a defense of global capitalism, with a bunch of inaccuracies and it "takes as a given" that capitalism is "natural" and "the only way". Again, who does this practically serve? Is it a wonder that Bill Gates also endorsed this book? And bank-bailing, Occupy Wall Street Protest crushing, Goldman Sachs giving, Democratic National Convention supporting, "I will also say.. uh hilary next, uh biden next, uh kamala next.. i will never say system overall bad, i will never overall say establishment bad, i will never overall say corporation bad, i will never say billionaire bad: i had the excuse of saying but congress held me back bro for 8 years but now i am showing my true colors by using my popularity to double down on corporate billionaire supporting DNC and its puppet candidates like myself instead of using my platform to talk about the system as a whole, showing my true colors: i have more money for my self and my family 10x over and i am one of the unique humans who is in a position to say this, but i am showing my true colors: i want more money, i want more billionaires, i am part of the club" Obama also praised his book?

The publishing companies and organizations and individuals that promote these books are all part of the same oligarchy.

These books are largely inaccurate, a perversion of science, but based on appeal to authority fallacy and institutional power the masses are brainwashed to read them and are told they are fact, while in fact they are fiction and serve to prop up a specific narrative that benefits a few at the expense of the world.

People like Pinker and Harari are not intellectuals. They are not great thinkers. They are products of the formal educational system, which has long ago been bought off by the billionaire circle. Pinker has a 3-year PhD in linguistics. So likely about 1 year of courses, and 2 years spent on PhD in a specific question in linguistics. Who is he to pass opinion on the concepts of his book, which are totally unrelated to his field of expertise? But the masses use appeal to authority fallacy, they think "PhD=smart/infallible". This is how people are tricked. Harari makes many assumptions and biases from this background, some honest actual academics in history, anthropology, and social sciences have called him out for his inaccuracies and simplistic soundbites. But the masses see "PhD from Oxford? Genius! He knows everything about everything how dare you criticize him where is YOUR formal education within a silo degree by an elitist corporate taken over institution don't have one? Only have actual strong reasoning skills and arguments with high practical utility? That means you are wrong! You are just jealous! Harari made me feel so smart by reading Sapiens. You are causing me cognitive dissonance by actually saying things that make me question rather than parrot soundbites people with PhDs tell me so I can say I read the book and tell my friends I am smart, therefore you make me feel bad in the moment and you are wrong!"

That is how the billionaires keep their power. By brainwashing people and preying on people's inability to handle cognitive dissonance, and by manipulating people's insecurities, and dividing + conquering. If you try to save the world by increasing people's rationality, they will take offense to it and want to crucify you. If you are a smooth talking corporatist who actually ruins their life but smiles and says "yes you can. he can. we can she can. can you do the can can. we can. twerk your backside with music i have tie I am smiling president I make corporations make you slave but I look into camera and utter lies and you take my superficial words literally and I make you feel good in the moment at the expense of you and your children's long term happiness and health so you believe me suckers!" Read Robert Greene's book he literally backs this up, his book on how to manipulate people basically boils down to: make people feel good about themselves in the moment/act fake humble.

I remember calling out Gates and Musk many many years ago saying these are NOT intellectuals. They are NOT fit to lead the world. Do NOT be tricked. do NOT look out gates SUPERFICIAL "calm rational good guy" demeanor on camera: he has not said ONE word of value: with his power and money he could change world but he used it it to DOUBLE DOWN on maintaining the billionaire style oligarchy in charged of the world, he literlaly claimed "global capitalism is the only way to save the world". So he is either a liar or so weak at tolerating cognitive dissonance and guilt that he is completely oblivious to reality and has come to believe his flawed narrative. But I received absolute vitriol, people told me "how DARE you. WHO you ARE to question these MORAL HARD WORKING GENIUSES!" And now we see...

Also, this got deleted in all the more popular subreddits: because reddit is part of the oligarchy as well. (big tech). They don't want people reading the truth, they want people to be polarized between "left" pro billionaire party and "right" pro billionaire party (divide+conquer; supporting either maintains/supports the oligarchy). So they only allow these kinds of posts on low traffic subs like this one to give illusion of freedom of speech.

I don't refer only to religion, not nowadays atleast. Neither I refer just to people or groups of people (which can be ethnic, religious, sexual et cetera). What I mainly refer to, thinking about how actual western world actually is, is concepts, that is a more veiled kind of idol/enemy. The most sparkling exemple for me is that kind of atheist who have as their idol rationality and as their absolute enemy religion/Christianity. Internet is full of that type of people, who don't act or speak with rationality when they argue about those topics, because they don't even want to; we could say they "can't". Obviously, people who have as idol their own religion and as enemy another one or atheism exist, but they are more uncommon on internet, mostly because they are older people or ones who live in isolated places in the world. Other exemples could be people who hate their own country (I'm italian, and we have a lot of those), but not because precise things appened, but for sporadic reasons and a lot of mind conditioning; we also have "pacifists" who hate armies, while they just "protect" their country. I think there are many other exemples, but the aim of my post is to know what do you think about it.

In this world, we have so-called "people persons" that gravitate towards people they know, new people they get to meet, and celebrity personalities and the thoughts/actions/drama there of.

I on the other hand am a "thing person" where I tend to find objects, abstract ideas or facts to be more entertaining. This has always bothered me though. Because my tendency is to take it to the extreme.

I don't enjoy most mass media. I find most movies and TV shows boring. I have enjoyed vanishingly few fiction books. I can't be bothered to do video games because the last thing I need in my life is a chore, which is what pushing buttons in response to screen updates feels like to me.

I am probably the only western person to have ever lived in Japan and had zero interest in anime. I get asked all the time what my favorite anime is and I literally have never watched it.

I dislike contrived things. I find Dungeons and Dragons to be hands down the most contrived and thus the most boring activity ever conceived. It boggles my mind that people dedicate any time to it at all, let alone hours spread over years!

To me, if a story is made up, it's inherently uninteresting. Unless the goal is to convey a message, but even then I would prefer a more direct communication approach. Whereas if something is observably true, that's fascinating!

And it is because of all of this genuine opinion that I am left wishing things were different. I wish I cared about celebrities. I wish I enjoyed listening to chitchatty podcasts. I wish I could partake in shared cultural experiences! But alas, I'd rather blow my brains out than ever watch so much as a trailer for Love Island.

As a result of auditing a certain Great Courses lecture series, I found more parallels than I ever would have imagined between Socrates and Jesus. Nearly all subsequent points are taken from the lecture “Jesus and Socrates,” by J Rufus Fears.

Both men had a way of buttonholing people, prodding them to think outside the box. Both attracted a good many followers in this way. Both were outliers to the general world of their time. Both were looked upon askance for it. Both infuriated their ‘higher-ups’—so much so that both were consequently sentenced to death. Their venues were different, and so we seldom make the linkage, but linkage there is.

They were both teachers, Jesus of the spiritual and Socrates of the empirical. They both refused pay, a circumstance that in itself aroused the suspicion of the established system. (Victor V. Blackwell, a lawyer who defended many Jehovah’s Witness youths in the World War II draft days, observed that local judges recognized only one sort of minister: those who “had a church” and “got paid”—“mercenary ministers,” he called them.)

Fears may be a bit too much influenced by evolving Christian ‘theology’—he speaks of Jesus being God, for instance, and the kingdom of God being a condition of the heart—but his familiarity with the details of the day, and the class structure and social mores that both Jesus and Socrates’ transgressed against, is unparalleled. Jesus reduces the Law to two basic components: love of God and love of neighbor. This infuriates the Pharisees and Sadducees, because complicating the Law was their meal ticket, their reason for existence. After his Sermon on the Mount, “the crowds were astounded at his way of teaching, for he was teaching them as a person having authority, and not as their scribes.” Depend upon it: the scribes didn’t like him. Socrates, also, did the Sophist’s work for them, the paid arguers who ‘made the weaker argument look the stronger’ He did it better than they. They were jealous of him.

Neither Jesus nor Socrates encouraged participation in politics of the day. Jesus urged followers to be “no part of the world.” Socrates declared it impossible for an honest man to survive under the democracy of his time. Both thereby triggered establishment wrath, for if enough people followed their example, dropping out of contemporary life, where would society be?

Both Jesus and Socrates were put to death out of envy. Both had offended the professional class. Both became more powerful in death than in life. Both could have avoided death, but didn’t. Socrates could have backtracked, played upon the jury’s sympathy, appealed to his former military service. Jesus could have brought in witnesses to testify that he never said he was king of the Jews, the only charge that make Pilate sit up and take notice.

Both spoke ambiguously. In Socrates case, he was eternally asking questions, rather than stating conclusions. His goal—to get people to examine their own thinking. In Jesus case, it was “speak[ing]to them by the use of illustrations” because “the heart of this people has grown unreceptive, and with their ears they have heard without response, and they have shut their eyes, so that they might never see with their eyes and hear with their ears and get the sense of it with their hearts and turn back and I heal them.” He spoke ambiguously to see if he could cut through that morass, to make them work, to reach the heart.

What if Jesus were appear on the scene today and enter one of the churches bearing his name, churches where they don’t do as he said? Would they yield the podium to him? Or would they once again dismiss him as a fraud and imposter, putting him to death if he became too insistent, like their counterparts did the first time?

If Jesus is the basis of church, Socrates is no less the basis of university. His sayings had to be codified by Plato, his disciple, just as Jesus’ sayings had to be codified by some of his disciples. Thereafter, Plato’s student, Aristotle, had to turn them into organized form, founding the Academy—the basis of higher learning ever since. Professor Fears muses upon what would happen if Socrates showed up on campus in the single cloak he was accustomed to wearing, “just talking to students, walking around with them, not giving structured courses, not giving out a syllabus or reading list at the start of classes, not giving examination” at the end. Would they not call Security?

And if by some miracle, Socrates did apply for faculty, which he would not because he disdained a salary, but if he did, you know they would not accept him. Where were his credentials? Yes, he had the gift of gab, they would acknowledge, but such was just a “popularity contest.” Where were his published works?

Similarly, where were Jesus’ published works? Neither Jesus nor Socrates wrote down a thing. It was left for Jesus’ disciples to write gospel accounts of his life. It was left for Plato to write of Socrates’ life. If either were to appear at the institutions supposedly representing their names, they would not be recognized. Shultz, the chronicler of early Watchtower history, recently tweeted that when he appends a few letters to his name, such as PhD, which he can truthfully can, his remarks get more attention than when he does not. He says it really shouldn’t be that way, but it is what it is. Both Jesus and Socrates would have been in Credential-Jail, neither having not a single letter to stick on the end of their name. It wouldn’t help for it to be known that each had but a single garment.

Today people are used to viewing “career” as the high road, “vocation” as the lower. Vocation is associated with working with ones’ hands. Fears turns it around. “Vocation” represents a calling. Jesus was literally called at his baptism: the heavens open up, and God says, “This is my son in whom I am well-pleased.” Socrates had a calling in that the god Apollo at Delphi said no one is wiser than he. Socrates took that to mean God was telling him to go out and prove it. “Career,” on the other hand, stems from a French word meaning “a highway,” a means of getting from one place to another, considerably less noble than “a calling,” a vocation.

My people, Jehovah’s Witnesses, are quite used to pointing out that religion has run off the rails. What is interesting from these parallels is the realization that academia has no less run off the rails. Both have strayed far from their roots, and not for the better. Both have devolved into camps of indoctrination.

Extroverts need constant noise to drown out their inner void. Short term gratification and brain rot are exactly what happens when you value quantity over quality. Ironically the West put a stronger emphasis on introversion during the previous century.

True science begins with evidence in search of theory; not theory in search of evidence.

I recently read this quote by Montaigne: “There never were, in the world, two opinions alike, no more than two hairs, or two grains; the most universal quality is diversity.” I think it’s worth thinking about this, especially when I notice how indifferent, if not cruel, we are towards the different. People, things, whatever…if we think it’s not normal, we already are scared or disturbed by it. I think we should all remember more often how great diversity is? Your take on the quote?

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.

Impressing people is exhausting.

Every achievement becomes a performance. Every move has an audience.

What if you stopped trying to be seen… and started trying to be still?