The so called wise men are fools...

[pmv]

Thick as bowl of oatmeal!

"entirely opposed to helping those at the bottom of the class system" - that's at least a bit of an exaggeration, but yes, I had NO idea when I moved here exactly how selfish the culture could be. See, you talk about the POLITICAL culture, but it all starts with the PEOPLE.

Now, I'm not "demanding" anything, YOU ARE. You would shut down EVERYTHING in a desperate attempt to save yourself, and with you many others. Even though it was clear from the beginning, at least according to Osterholm, that we could not stop the virus from infecting just about everybody. We got lucky, very effective vaccines were developed before it got to everyone, so any delay was perhaps worth the damage that the lockdowns did. Now, YOU have the opportunity to protect yourself from serious disease, and it's clear that the vaccination status of others will not make a material difference in how many will eventually get infected. Most doctors are now saying everyone will get it. You can't lock OTHERS down for as long as you want arbitrarily...

I would (have) shut down as much as possible, largely to protect my elderly relatives and friends with chronic medical conditions. But I would have provided financial support for those at the bottom who are adversely affected by it - as, slightly surprisingly, even our Tory government has to a significant degree done (trying to keep on-side all those former Red Wall voters, I guess). The right in the US has been pretty consistent in trying to avoid providing any such support.

There's no absolute rule that says it has to be those 'waitresses and barstaff' who suffer economically as a result of pandemic measures, that's a political choice.

 

[eikelbijter]

I would (have) shut down as much as possible, largely to protect my elderly relatives and friends with chronic medical conditions. But I would have provided financial support for those at the bottom who are adversely affected by it - as, slightly surprisingly, even our Tory government has to a significant degree done (trying to keep on-side all those former Red Wall voters, I guess). The right in the US has been pretty consistent in trying to avoid providing any such support.

There's no absolute rule that says it has to be those 'waitresses and barstaff' who suffer economically as a result of pandemic measures, that's a political choice.

Oh, you're English?

The weirdest thing is that Trump, the Orange Disgrace, of ALL people, DID implement "unemployment payments" for Independent Contractors which never paid into unemployment insurance. Anyway, in the meantime, the rich got WAY richer, California had a bigger than a BILLION dollar tax windfall, and the homeless population is growing EXPONENTIALLY.

You know, in the middle of a great career, I'm getting ready to move back to Europe once shipping container prices come back down. The sheer amount of mentally ill people, drug addicts, and even whole families with kids living in a tent underneath the freeway overpass is just unacceptable. I'm talking spontaneous crying in the car from the hopelessness I see in their eyes as I wait at a red light. All the while, half my neighbors have ZERO compassion; you know, that typical "pull yourself up by your own bootstraps" thing. The vicious circle of despair is completely lost on them....

 

[cytg111]

Thick as bowl of oatmeal!

"entirely opposed to helping those at the bottom of the class system" - that's at least a bit of an exaggeration, but yes, I had NO idea when I moved here exactly how selfish the culture could be. See, you talk about the POLITICAL culture, but it all starts with the PEOPLE.

Now, I'm not "demanding" anything, YOU ARE. You would shut down EVERYTHING in a desperate attempt to save yourself, and with you many others. Even though it was clear from the beginning, at least according to Osterholm, that we could not stop the virus from infecting just about everybody. We got lucky, very effective vaccines were developed before it got to everyone, so any delay was perhaps worth the damage that the lockdowns did. Now, YOU have the opportunity to protect yourself from serious disease, and it's clear that the vaccination status of others will not make a material difference in how many will eventually get infected. Most doctors are now saying everyone will get it. You can't lock OTHERS down for as long as you want arbitrarily...

Why do you keep coming back to this so someone ELSE has to keep coming back with a fact about how it was always about controlling the speed of infection so as to hospitals can keep up with demand.
Why do you do this?

 

[feralkid]

As someone just banned from posting, this will be my only contribution to this thread.

Yet Another Lie.

What is it with you?

You. Just. Can't. Stop. Lying.




.

 

[Jaskalas]

The worst part, and then I'll stop, is that those around here who are SO sure they picked the right team...

They may have, but we are all human. And we latch onto belief. In times of stress that turns into a crusade against the unbelievers. Right or wrong it becomes tar and feathering. It becomes witch burning. No matter how correct one is, they will tend towards that path. A natural corruption of righteousness born of our fallible human tendencies. We are wise, death to the stupid.

At some point, whether they were right or wrong becomes immaterial. It is a base, tribal, fight for survival. True enlightenment would be to find a way to dance around these baser instincts. That, even in the face of great challenge, we would seek a way to overcome without thinking we have to eradicate the "other". It may even come down to it in the end, but we should never seek it out. We should never jump to that as a first resort. Or even a second. It needs to be our last resort.

What I see today is that there are many people on the street, on the "correct" side, who view it as a priority to take the fight to the "enemy". I know they act in desperation to claw back the power to right wrongs. But I cannot escape the feeling that, like the French Revolution, they will finish with their enemies and turn on one another. Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory and extracting a terrible toll, a reign of terror. At that point, who cares if they were better if in the end all they brought was death?

Those with that bloodlust, I see myself in them. Before I took the time to ask question and seek answers. Before I was scolded here for wanting to stereotype and generalize a people. Two decades later, those same wise men are now doing what I did. Very strange, until you remember they are only human.

 

[Moonbeam]

They may have, but we are all human. And we latch onto belief. In times of stress that turns into a crusade against the unbelievers. Right or wrong it becomes tar and feathering. It becomes witch burning. No matter how correct one is, they will tend towards that path. A natural corruption of righteousness born of our fallible human tendencies. We are wise, death to the stupid.

At some point, whether they were right or wrong becomes immaterial. It is a base, tribal, fight for survival. True enlightenment would be to find a way to dance around these baser instincts. That, even in the face of great challenge, we would seek a way to overcome without thinking we have to eradicate the "other". It may even come down to it in the end, but we should never seek it out. We should never jump to that as a first resort. Or even a second. It needs to be our last resort.

What I see today is that there are many people on the street, on the "correct" side, who view it as a priority to take the fight to the "enemy". I know they act in desperation to claw back the power to right wrongs. But I cannot escape the feeling that, like the French Revolution, they will finish with their enemies and turn on one another. Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory and extracting a terrible toll, a reign of terror. At that point, who cares if they were better if in the end all they brought was death?

Those with that bloodlust, I see myself in them. Before I took the time to ask question and seek answers. Before I was scolded here for wanting to stereotype and generalize a people. Two decades later, those same wise men are now doing what I did. Very strange, until you remember they are only human.

Nice. I think you are right about this and I agree with the sentiment expressed.

It is that we create what we fear. We project evil that is within us onto the other to allow ourselves permission to hate. We were taught as children what would happen if we showed our parents hate. The way out of this as far as I can see is to see this happen within oneself, to notice how the other is a projection of the feelings we are not allowed to feel when others freely to express them. It is because of this that fear of the other makes us act like them. In my opinion the problems we see with a growing authoritarian left are just the mirror response to the increased insanity and real threat that is coming from the right. The answer in my opinion isn't weeping and wailing and shaking ones fist, the demand for some insane leftest orthodox conformity, but the dispassionate dispensation of justice. The issue I have is that it seems to be taking way way to long to arrive. The right fears the left which makes the left oblige and off we go into open warfare. The trick is to step off that Karmic wheel and that implies psychological understanding. Most of the psychological understanding in the west is tied up in psychoanalysis and religion with precious little in either in practice.

We do not know how we feel, do not want to know and do not want to know we don't want to know. This motivated ignorance destroys everything that seeks the light. One must never leave the misery of the herd. There must never be any hope because disappointment is all we have ever known. This is the machine but a single mind with intention can get free. That possibility only exists for you or you. Unlearn everything you think you know

 

[Moonbeam]

Yet Another Lie.

What is it with you?

You. Just. Can't. Stop. Lying.

I guess is people say things that trigger an emotional reaction you don't like having what we need to do is to put them down so they never do it again. As if that would work. It can never be that people say things they believe that may or may not be wrong and that some common understanding could potentially arise by listening carefully, calmly expressing your own opinion and entering a dialog. Oh, I know, the other is brain dead and can't consider anything rationally. But then there is that small matter of projection the truth of which we conveniently ignore.

 

[dank69]

So much to respond to just in your first paragraph alone:

They may have, but we are all human. And we latch onto belief.

Who does? Some of us consciously fight not to latch onto "beliefs" assuming we are using the term beliefs to distinguish between assumptions that are or are not based on solid evidence/logic.

In times of stress that turns into a crusade against the unbelievers. Right or wrong it becomes tar and feathering.

This implies that you are talking only about people who A) make a lot of major assumptions without supporting evidence, and B) have significant trouble distinguishing right from wrong. That sounds like your average conservative or a very below average liberal. We don't take direction from below-average liberals, so you don't need to worry about us.

It becomes witch burning. No matter how correct one is, they will tend towards that path.

How do you determine the difference between witch burning and justified reaction? Surely you are not implying that humanity is incapable of determining and/or executing justified mitigation efforts?

A natural corruption of righteousness born of our fallible human tendencies. We are wise, death to the stupid.
...

Yeah, you are describing conservatives and implying that liberals exhibit this behavior on a mass scale in the same way. That's not supported by evidence.

 

[cytg111]

As someone just banned from posting, this will be my only contribution to this thread, which I've been following with great interest. It PAINS me to see how some of the same characters that attacked me like rabid dogs, completely missing the point of many things I said, are acting the same with you.

"typical science believer zealotry" sums it up PERFECTLY. Even though I've made a career as a musician, I did graduate comfortably from one of the best high schools in the Netherlands, and spent a few years studying Electrical Engineering at TU Delft. Didn't graduate, but I was certainly taught the scientific method, and truly free thinking. The incredible arrogance of such large part of the scientific community and its reluctance to consider anything from outside its well-defined, approved box of reality, scared me off.

That first video you shared, in my opinion, is a must see for anyone who wants to have an opinion on the subject, EVEN if you disagree with most of what he says. Full disclosure: I found it a very reasonable and plausible theory, brought by a guy who's clearly quite knowledgeable. Of COURSE he could be corrupted by some outside force, but hilariously, these "good citizens" around here can't even fathom that Fauci might be susceptible to the very same! I've spent this pandemic as an unemployed musician, trying to learn as much as I can. Serious questions I asked here were ridiculed, ignored, or at best answered in that snarky "how dumb are you?" tone that I remember from University!

The worst part, and then I'll stop, is that those around here who are SO sure they picked the right team, are unwilling to admit that there was and will be a SERIOUS price to pay for the measures we took. In THEIR world it's, as they described, "a minor inconvenience of having to wear a mask"; half the musicians I know were not so lucky, not to mention the waitresses, bartenders etc. I know, boot-straps.... More arrogance from those with brains to become a doctor or nurse towards some guy in his 50ies that doesn't know much else than music. Of course the effect on the rest of the world is going to be millions dead, simply because of shrinking of the economy, disruption of supply chains etc. The WHO recommends AGAINST boosters for healthy westerners, but all those calling me selfish for not wanting a booster all of a sudden don't believe THOSE scientists anymore, because they MUST have been corrupted somehow...

Just want to THANK YOU for bringing some greys, and even colors, to this black-and-white world so many seem to have resorted to.

1. Those folks you’re referencing as clan minds actually follow the data and those people in office whos jobs it is to parse the data… and not some cherry picked scientist with an alternate opinion cause it fits they feels bias and preconceptions.
Sorry. Wrong door.

2. You know why the WHO advices against boosters? Of course you do, but pretend not to so as to claim ignorance in your jab. Bad faith man. The WHO considers this a global issue and their solution is of global nature, better get third world vaccinated than healthy westerners. And yea that would be the dream scenario. Right now individual governments cant even agree with themselves that climate change is a thing, good luck with that. In the meantime your local hospital is a out to burst cause of overload.

Why present it as something as simplistic as you just did? You must surely see your own frantic rationalization process to make it connect to your bias? Or something else? I dont know…

 

[cytg111]

I guess is people say things that trigger an emotional reaction you don't like having what we need to do is to put them down so they never do it again. As if that would work. It can never be that people say things they believe that may or may not be wrong and that some common understanding could potentially arise by listening carefully, calmly expressing your own opinion and entering a dialog. Oh, I know, the other is brain dead and can't consider anything rationally. But then there is that small matter of projection the truth of which we conveniently ignore.

Yes. You and Peterson. Martyrdom. The oppressive left. I think you’re right, you two got so much in common.

edit: Also, congrats on your first sub, many more to come Im sure. I told you, this shit is a goldmine.

 

[Moonbeam]

Yes. You and Peterson. Martyrdom. The oppressive left. I think you’re right, you two got so much in common.

edit: Also, congrats on your first sub, many more to come Im sure. I told you, this shit is a goldmine.

Oh my God... I am so so sorry. I had no idea how much my victimization was victimizing you. I will immediately check myself into a Soviet Psychiatric Institute for the Politically Ignorant and hope my shock therapy will make me strong and orthodox again. I am a rock, I am an island, and king of the mountain. You poor poor baby, I am so sorry I stepped on your big sore toe. I hear Donald Trump is saying the Jan 6 thingi was government instigated. If think if I could see the world as you do I'd believe it's true. Nice bit of jujitsu.

 

[pmv]

They may have, but we are all human. And we latch onto belief. In times of stress that turns into a crusade against the unbelievers. Right or wrong it becomes tar and feathering. It becomes witch burning. No matter how correct one is, they will tend towards that path. A natural corruption of righteousness born of our fallible human tendencies. We are wise, death to the stupid.

At some point, whether they were right or wrong becomes immaterial. It is a base, tribal, fight for survival. True enlightenment would be to find a way to dance around these baser instincts. That, even in the face of great challenge, we would seek a way to overcome without thinking we have to eradicate the "other". It may even come down to it in the end, but we should never seek it out. We should never jump to that as a first resort. Or even a second. It needs to be our last resort.

What I see today is that there are many people on the street, on the "correct" side, who view it as a priority to take the fight to the "enemy". I know they act in desperation to claw back the power to right wrongs. But I cannot escape the feeling that, like the French Revolution, they will finish with their enemies and turn on one another. Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory and extracting a terrible toll, a reign of terror. At that point, who cares if they were better if in the end all they brought was death?

Those with that bloodlust, I see myself in them. Before I took the time to ask question and seek answers. Before I was scolded here for wanting to stereotype and generalize a people. Two decades later, those same wise men are now doing what I did. Very strange, until you remember they are only human.

Crickey, you're only a mention of 'self-hate' away from turning into Moonbeam.

This all seems way over-the-top given you are talking about liberals and the 'soft left' at most. If we were talking about Bolsheviks, believers in the violent overthrow of capitalism and the instigation of the dictatorship of the proletariat, I'd concede you had a point. Something I find dispiriting about this world is that the only people who are capable of overthrowing an ensconced ruling elite, are the very people you really wouldn't want forming the _next_ ruling elite.

 

[Moonbeam]

Crickey, you're only a mention of 'self-hate' away from turning into Moonbeam.

This all seems way over-the-top given you are talking about liberals and the 'soft left' at most. If we were talking about Bolsheviks, believers in the violent overthrow of capitalism and the instigation of the dictatorship of the proletariat, I'd concede you had a point. Something I find dispiriting about this world is that the only people who are capable of overthrowing an ensconced ruling elite, are the very people you really wouldn't want forming the _next_ ruling elite.

Rather dispiriting, in my opinion, to have the such a regret as if any other kind would want to.

 

[cytg111]

Oh my God... I am so so sorry. I had no idea how much my victimization was victimizing you. I will immediately check myself into a Soviet Psychiatric Institute for the Politically Ignorant and hope my shock therapy will make me strong and orthodox again. I am a rock, I am an island, and king of the mountain. You poor poor baby, I am so sorry I stepped on your big sore toe. I hear Donald Trump is saying the Jan 6 thingi was government instigated. If think if I could see the world as you do I'd believe it's true. Nice bit of jujitsu.

What lies is this? You’ve done nothing but paint everyone here as victim, victims of our own limited realization of self, others, and the grace that is the god of nothingness for the enlightened.
So surely you know I am a victim. I mean you keep telling me.

 

[Moonbeam]

What lies is this? You’ve done nothing but paint everyone here as victim, victims of our own limited realization of self, others, and the grace that is the god of nothingness for the enlightened.
So surely you know I am a victim. I mean you keep telling me.

I pointed out, as any liberal will do to any Republican in denial, the truth about that denial and why they have it. I said that the ideas that duality collapses with a certain king of conscious experience happens to people in the world and that those to whom it happens also report they are glad they experience it. Occasionally I will read a restaurant review and visit to see is what I read as true. I don't say to myself I am a victim because somebody is claiming they eat at a place that has better food than I do. I don't know anybody personally who I would say isn't limited in understanding in some way. Sorry if that makes you feel a victim but if it does I can think of no other reason than that you are nuts. Also, all I personally know of the millions of paths that seem in the past and the present to bring people the enlightenment experience, the only one I have any personal familiarity with is via surrender to hopelessness, the only place that grace can appear that I know of. I am saying that your victim mentality is the result of hidden feelings of inferiority that any words about are very unwelcome, sort of like telling a Republican they live in an altered reality. They do because in the real world they would see and feel their self hate, the last thing anybody wants to do. I gave you facts, just facts about the reality I believe you inhabit. I think I can see it because it is my reality too but I am less defensive about admitting it to myself. That, I think, is because as I have said, I killed all the things and ego identifications that gave my life meaning and then it was Christmas.

Merry Christmas, it is all around you, the water of being. You won't find it by looking because it doesn't register to the eyes. You feel it in your heart. But you used to have a wide open loving heart and it was because of having it that you were able to be killed.

 

[dank69]

I pointed out, as any liberal will do to any Republican in denial, the truth about that denial and why they have it. I said that the ideas that duality collapses with a certain king of conscious experience happens to people in the world and that those to whom it happens also report they are glad they experience it. Occasionally I will read a restaurant review and visit to see is what I read as true. I don't say to myself I am a victim because somebody is claiming they eat at a place that has better food than I do. I don't know anybody personally who I would say isn't limited in understanding in some way. Sorry if that makes you feel a victim but if it does I can think of no other reason than that you are nuts. Also, all I personally know of the millions of paths that seem in the past and the present to bring people the enlightenment experience, the only one I have any personal familiarity with is via surrender to hopelessness, the only place that grace can appear that I know of. I am saying that your victim mentality is the result of hidden feelings of inferiority that any words about are very unwelcome, sort of like telling a Republican they live in an altered reality. They do because in the real world they would see and feel their self hate, the last thing anybody wants to do. I gave you facts, just facts about the reality I believe you inhabit. I think I can see it because it is my reality too but I am less defensive about admitting it to myself. That, I think, is because as I have said, I killed all the things and ego identifications that gave my life meaning and then it was Christmas.

Merry Christmas, it is all around you, the water of being. You won't find it by looking because it doesn't register to the eyes. You feel it in your heart. But you used to have a wide open loving heart and it was because of having it that you were able to be killed.

Duality? Try quantum collapse roughly 40 times every second. Duality...if only it was so easy.

 

[Moonbeam]

Duality? Try quantum collapse roughly 40 times every second. Duality...if only it was so easy.

Jesus, dank, i mentioned a conscious state where time slows so you can see individual frames. The cycle is probably as much the result of the rate at which neurons fire as some cosmic state or they could simply be consciousness mimicking nature.

The duality I am talking about is strictly related to language and how language is required for thought. We were born in the Garden of Eden in a perfect state of oneness with everything because we could not divide the world into self and other because we had no language to think in. As soon as we learned to speak we learned two things, that words divide and that they can carry emotional memories. You find out soon enough that the world isn't indivisible and whole but that you are a person separate from it and also that some of your behaviors evoke pleasant feelings if you are luck enough to not have complete monsters as parents. But in all cases a set of moral standards to varying degrees of strictness will be imposed on you along with physical and emotional experiences of what deviation brings. You will soon feel emotional pain connected to being called things that have bad connotations and the pain can be intolerable to consciously bear. You will soon develop an new good person who follows the rules or die emotionally with nothing left but to seek refenge by showing those who put you down how right they were. This is the duality I refer to, that this is good and that is bad when in fact the only things that make them true is past memories of pleasure and pain. And all this will happen in thought, you can't hate yourself without think it in works, without having learned how painful it is to be seen as evil when you never were.

This, I believe, is why so many paths to enlightenment practice techniques to end thinking. Without thought there can arise the memory of the experience of unity. Once you were enlightened be had no words in which to be aware of it. Now you are enlightened but thinking prevents you from feeling it.

So we could say that enlightenment is a state of being into which thought does not enter in, but that is not enlightenment, that is only words that describe it. Enlightenment is being in that state. Trying to find enlightenment creates thinking so enlightenment is always 180 degrees from where we look. Nobody can know when thought will stop but it probably happens more to people looking for it because a real search always takes you to a dead end where one can see one can't think one's way into it.

So it's pretty easy in one way. People are pretty enlightened when they are asleep.

 

[Moonbeam]

And so it goes on:

It's Time for the Scientific Community to Admit We Were Wrong About COVID

Intellectual elitism, credentialism, and classism must end. Restoring trust in public health—and our democracy—depends on it.

www.newsweek.com

 

[fskimospy]

And so it goes on:

It's Time for the Scientific Community to Admit We Were Wrong About COVID

Intellectual elitism, credentialism, and classism must end. Restoring trust in public health—and our democracy—depends on it.

www.newsweek.com

Always a good time to remind people that the Newsweek we all remember no longer exists and it was bought and turned into a garbage clickbait site.

 

[Moonbeam]

Always a good time to remind people that the Newsweek we all remember no longer exists and it was bought and turned into a garbage clickbait site.

Agreed. I have to believe, a silly thing to say, is that the author actually believes what he presents. It just keeps going. I can find no evidence to support his claims

 

[woolfe9998]

Always a good time to remind people that the Newsweek we all remember no longer exists and it was bought and turned into a garbage clickbait site.

Yes, there's also not many facts in that opinion piece. He makes a lot of pronouncements and provides very little in the way of specifics to back them up. It's a hollow piece that reads like a partisan broadside.

 

[pmv]

Always a good time to remind people that the Newsweek we all remember no longer exists and it was bought and turned into a garbage clickbait site.

Wow, I wasn't aware of that...though a web search produced this description of it, which seems consistent.

Not that I ever had a high opinion of Newsweek even when it was a real respectable publication (always seemed a bland centrist follow-the-pack kind of publication to me, that is, a particular form of conservatism...but if this article is right it's now just a legacy name attached to a right-wing propaganda site)

Newsweek and the Rise of the Zombie Magazine

How a decaying legacy magazine is being used to launder right-wing ideas and conspiracy theories.

newrepublic.com