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Every single person who sets out to put themselves together ethically is a net positive to everyone around them. There is no downside to that
Power in a hierarchy is the right way to be. Human hierarchies are very complex and that the way that you win human hierarchy is by being competent and reciprocal
You have to work to take care of yourself and what you want in this moment but then there's you tomorrow, and there's you next week and there's you next month the next year, ten years from now and when you are old... So because you are self-conscious and because you are aware of the future you are actually a community unto yourself. And if you are selfish and impulse all that means is that you are serving the person you are right now in that impulsive way but not the person you are going to be. That's not a good ground for any sort of ethical behavior
The antidote to the suffering and the malevolence is to take on more responsibility for themselves and for other people. That's aspirational
Value distinctions between things
You should be responsible because you need to have a deep meaning in your life to offset the suffering so you don't get bitter. And the way you do that is to bear a heavy load. To get yourself in check for you now and for you in the future and then to do the same for your family and your community. There's real nobility and meaning
If you don't get your act together then you leave a little space for hell
Anonymous accounts in social networks are problematic because it certainly enables people to allow their worst to manifest themselves, especially if they are resentful and angry
Rescue your father from the belly of the whale
The better the goal the more full and rich your experience is going to be when you pursue it. That's one of the reasons for developing a vision and for fleshing yourself out philosophically because you want to aim at the highest goal that you can manage
As you move towards the goal there are certain things that you have to accomplish that frighten you. Maybe you have to learn to be a better speaker, a better writer, a better thinker, you have to be better to people around you or you have to learn some new skills and you are afraid of that... whatever. Because it's going to stretch you if you pursue a goal and so that will put you up against challenges
What a behavior therapist should do when someone is afraid
If you put yourself in a new situation, then genes code for new proteins and build new neural structures and new nervous system structures. Same thing happens to some degree when you work out - your muscles are responding to the load. Your nervous system does that too.
Imagine that there is a lot of potential you locked in your genetic code and then if you put yourself in a new situation then the situational stress unlocks those genes and then builds new parts of you. And so that's very cool because who knows how much there is locked inside of you
In order to really truly learn about yourself and about life you have to overcome adversity, you have to experience things
in order to truly appreciate love you have to understand and really have felt hate and to really appreciate camaraderie you have to feel loneliness. This is just a part of being a person
We are built for adventure and not for peace and happiness
Positive ancestral father
One of the things you'd like to know if you wanted to know something deep about yourself is that you could face the worst that there was and prevail
Despite how tragic life is and how malevolent things are, our spirit has the capacity to confront it courageously and fix it, not only to deal with it psychologically but to deal with it practically. And that we could make things much better
The world is full of suffering and you should accept that as your responsibility past present and future. You are supposed to do something about that as much as you can
The two major problems that people face obviously are suffering - tragedy and malevolence. You are supposed to look at the capacity for human evil as clearly as possible
Christ does two things that are messianic
The cross is sort of a symbol of the place of maximal suffering. So you accept that as a challenge not as something that you are victimized by
If you face the malevolence and suffering that opens the door to your maximal potential. The optimistic part of that is although the suffering is great and the malevolence is deep, your capacity to transcend it is stronger
Technological revolution - online video and audio
I do believe that especially for the radical leftist types the whole notion of free speech among individuals is not only anathema but also something that is not possible within their framework of reference
If you are radically left and you are playing the identity politics game there is actually no such thing as free speech because you are only the mouthpiece of your group whether you know it or not
Mainstream media TV television dies
Equality of outcome is an absolutely deadly doctrine.
Equity doctrine is at the top of the list of radical left mistakes
I certainly believe that there is space and necessity for a constant dialogue between the left and the right
No matter what you are acting out some people are way better at it than others. Doesn't matter if it's basketball or hockey or plumbing or law it doesn't matter. As soon as there is something valuable and you are doing it collectively there is a hierarchy
Left and right wings positions about hierarchy
Hierarchy is inevitable
The distribution of the idea of individual sovereignty and property rights and free market economies out into the non-western world is making the non-western world rich really really really fast
Between 2000 and 2012 the rate of absolute poverty in the world fell by half. It was the fastest period of economic development in human history
You have to pursue things of value. If you do it with other people cooperatively and competitively, then you are going to produce differential outcome because people will be differently good at it
One way to not do very well in any hierarchy is to have a low IQ. If you have an IQ of less than 85 it's hard for you to read well enough to follow instructions. that's about 10% of the population. Might even be higher than that
Low IQ is good predictor of poverty
Hierarchies are complex tools to attain necessary goals but they dispossess people
"everything you do dear is okay" - that's the terrible devouring mother from a psychoanalytic perspective. No! It's not okay!
Life is not a game, even a game is not a game. Because most of the time game is the beginning of a series of games.
Let's say that you're on a soccer team. Winning a championship and winning a game are not the same thing. If you want to win a game the best thing to do is to let your star player make all the moves. But if you want to win a championship maybe the best thing is for your star player to do everything he or she possibly can to develop all the other team members. That's a different strategy and the reason it's different is because it iterates across time
What you should not tell your kid after he loses the championship game
Life is not a championship. Life is a whole bunch of championships. It's a whole sequence of them
You're not going to score on every shot. It doesn't mean you shouldn't take the shots. It doesn't mean you shouldn't try to hit the goal. But part of being able to continue to take shots is to have the strength of character to tolerate the fact that in that instance you weren't on top
The response is much more negative from the fans if you lose a fight and complain about it. It's ruthless because they understand that you've made a huge character error
The great athlete and the great person is not only someone who's exceptionally skilled at what they do but who's trying to expand their skills at all times and the attempt to expand their skills at all times is even more important than the fact that they're great to begin with because the trajectory is so important
What does the person who loses something important with grace do?
If you lost and blame referees
Victory is really the victory over the lesser you
Who should you defeat?
The question is - who should you defeat in the final analysis?
The answer is - you should defeat your former self. You should be constantly trying to do that. And you are the right control for yourself to because you're the one who's had all your advantages and disadvantages. So if you want to compete fairly with someone then you should be competing with you
If you want to compete fairly with someone then you should be competing with you
If you are improving yourself then what you are doing is competing with your lesser self
What is lesser self?
What is personal responsibility?
Could you be slightly better tomorrow than you're currently flawed self?
What's the right way of being in the world?
Things are tragic and difficult but there's always some stupid thing that you could do or someone else could do that could make it even worse than it has to be. So, that's life
Tragedy combined with betrayal and malevolence makes life even worse. Especially if it's self induced. You need something to set against that so you don't get bitter and resentful. What do you set against that? Doing something worthwhile!
What's the best thing you can do?
Where is the meaning to be found?
How to prepare for the flood?
Your best strategic position is how am I insufficient and how can I rectify that. That's what you've got. And the thing is you are insufficient and you could rectify it. Both of those are within your grasp if you aim low enough
Aim low enough!
Matthew principle
Incremental steps to success
Results of watching Jordan Peterson's lectures
Are you okay the way you are?
You could be way better!
You could be incompatibly better across multiple dimensions and in pursuing that better that's where you'll find the meaning in your life and that would give you the antidote to the suffering
Meta rule - you have to discipline yourself
I don't know what to do
Be honest with yourself about what you are doing
You have to face what you don't want to face in order to fix it
If you know that you're the one that can transcend your problems most fundamentally then you have the faith that would enable you to take stock of who you are
No one teaches kids these things in school
Why write?
When writing an essay pick a topic that matters to you
Something that matters effects how you make decisions in your life
How to write a good essay?
How do you know when you are incrementally self improving?
What's the antidote to the tragedy and malevolence of life?
Where is the meaning?
When are you sick of yourself?
Emotional story about one of the students
Deep online discussions with modern technologies
The fundamental measurement of unit is the individual and the fundamental task of the individual is to engage in the process of humble self-improvement
If enough people take responsibility for getting their individual life's together then we'll get wise enough so we won't let this process of political polarization put us back to the same places that we went so many times in the 20th century. I don't see another antidote for it. It's not political, it's ethical
Joe Rogan about Jordan Peterson
Your house needs a lot of work man. There's a lot of rot in the floorboards. The plumbing is leaking. The water's coming in. You're not the sage and Saint you think you are. There's so much work you have to do on yourself that it would damn near kill you to take a look at it, to do everything you possibly can
Noisy journalists generally driven by a very radical leftists progressive agenda
You are a young man and all the women are rejecting you. Who's got the problem? - It's not all the women, that's a bad road to go down. If all the women are rejecting you, it's you!
Women outnumber men so the men hypothetically have more sexual opportunity but that's not what happens. What happens is that a small minority of men have all the sexual opportunity, a fairly large minority of men don't. The women are not happy because they can't find a committed relationship. It's bad for most of the men and the men who have all the sexual opportunity gets cynical
Solution to the relationship between men and women fundamentally is monogamous social norms
To the degree that we deviate monogamy we tilt towards a more violent society
polygamous society
I'm not in favor of unbridled hierarches. The proclivity of a hierarchy is that all the spoils go to the person at the top and that can destabilize the whole structure. We have to have a dialogue about how to rectify that
The problem with hierarchies is that they can get too steep and destabilize everything. That does happen. That particularly happens in the sexual domain
The man who are winning should be allowed to win and the woman should be allowed to choose. Yes except that there's the problem of children
Women are high Pergamus which means they meet across a knop dominance hierarchies and so if you're a male who's successful in a given hierarchy the probability that you're gonna have additional mating opportunities is exceptionally high. It's an unbelievably good predictor of that
Women's market oriented sexual choice
Society's tilt towards monogamy across the world is human universal
Cheating is common but it's not the norm. It's still the norm not to do that. The norm is fidelity
The gender pay gap
What is enforced monogamy?
How much you make is not the only hallmark of success in your life
How much socioeconomic success are you willing to sacrifice to spend time with your kids before they're three years old? That should not be none!
Once you make enough money to keep the bill collectors at bay, additional money doesn't improve your quality of life. Other things do
There's a tiny percentage of men who are hyper-competitive along those single axis of competition and maybe they drive most things. They probably do. But that doesn't make them right. It also doesn't make them most people
A world of equality of outcome could not be achieved if there are actual differences between people
Main differences between men and women
Differences between men and women get more extreme at the ends of the distribution
As the societies get more egalitarian the differences between men and women get bigger. You make the societies more egalitarian men and women get more different
We have to have the hierarchy
If you get rid of the hierarchy you get rid of the value structure, you get rid of the tools that allow us to generate absolute wealth and stop people from starving it's catastrophe. You have to have the hierarchy
Soviet Union was motivated by the desire for equality of outcome
Who is in the 1% ?
You're not perfect man. There's hatred in you. And the probability that it's more powerful than love is pretty damn high. Look to your own viewpoint before you go out there and try to fix the hierarchies of the world
Agreeableness motivates aggression
The envious and the resentful can use compassion as a camouflage for their true intent which is to tear down anyone who has more than them
The biggest difference between men and women is an interest
The only thing that's worse than the pain of inequality is the pain of forced equality
We can't have equality of outcome amongst people with lower than 83 IQs
The norms around sexual behavior in the workplace?
Don't do interviews that will be edited
It's not necessarily a mistake to lay yourself open to attack because sometimes it reveals the motives of the attackers
Spoken word is now as powerful as the written word. That's never happened in human history
Maybe ten times as many people can listen to complex information as can read complex information in terms of their ability to process it
When you edit someone and take their words out of context and change them around you are being deceptive
Big things disappear when they get crooked and ideologically rigid
"New Your Times will die faster than you think"
Newspapers are dying so fast
Cable TV is dead
As the technology is supplanted the ideological polarization increases as the thing dies
One of the most deadly things for a fighter to do is to overestimate his own position
If you overestimate your abilities you're in deep trouble because you're gonna get a wake-up call. Objectivity is one of the most critical aspects of development. You have to be objectively assessing your strength and weaknesses at every step of the way
Ego is the enemy
This is why YouTube is going to kill TV
I can't imagine anything we could possibly strive for in our society that would make it into hell faster than equality of outcome. Historical evidence for the pathology of that root is so strong. You have to be historically ignorant beyond belief or malevolent or resentful beyond comprehension in order to think that that's a good idea
Hard work
If you have real true freedom, you'll never have an equality of outcome
Even if you don't know the history but have a complete understanding of human beings, you would say - well, equality of outcome does not make sense
Law of nature - Pareto distribution with stars and cities
Title IX
If you took a random woman out of the population and a random man and you had to bet on who was more temperamentally aggressive, if you bet on the man you'd be right 60 percent of the time
Let's pick the one in a hundred most aggressive person from the random population. Well, they are all men. And that's why all the people in prison are men
Differences at the extreme are where the differences really start to manifest themselves. So you can have a small difference at the level of the average but out at the extremes it starts to make massive difference
Differences in interest between men and women are big
Men are more interested in things generally speaking and women are more interested in people
Almost all the people hyper focused on things are almost all men and all the people who are hyper focused on people are almost all women
Relatively small differences in the average can produce walloping differences at the extremes
For people who talk about gender differences
Unfortunately many of the people who are talking about things like gender differences they have no idea what they are talking about. They don't know the literature. They don't know there is a literature. They don't understand biology
Experiment on child chimpanzees
Equality of outcome is a powerfully anti-capitalistic. It's powerfully anti-western. Why you would let that into your company? It's a big mistake
What the people who are agitating for equality of outcome don't understand is that you have to cede so much power to the authorities to the government in order to ensure equality of outcome that a tyranny is inevitable
"Nobody can have anything that everyone else doesn't have at the same time" - that's the ultimate outcome of equality of outcome
Necessity of the left wing
Age - one of the big drivers of inequality
The best game to play
There's an idea in Christianity that you should pick up your goddamn cross and walk up the hill. Dramatically that's correct. That's the right answer.
It's like you've got a heavy load of suffering to bear and a fair bit of it's going to be unjust. So, what are you going to do about it? Accept it voluntarily and try to transform as a consequence. That's the right answer
Power of negotiation
A fair bit of your political preference is determined by your biological temperament. It's strongly influenced
If you are a creative type, who is kind of disorderly, then you are likely to be on the liberal left end of the distribution. And if you are a non-creative type and orderly, then you tend to be on the right wing end of things
Liberals and the conservatives need each other
We need each other / we need to talk to each other
Path to becoming an individual
There is a hole in our culture where there should be a discussion about maturity, truth and responsibility. No one is talking about that
Take care
What should you do with your life?
You should be a monster, an absolute monster and then you should learn how to control it
Those who have swords and know how to use them but keep them sheathed will inherit the world
You should be a monster!
It's better to be a warrior in a garden then a gardener in a war
One definition of a winner is someone who never let losing stop them
Benefits of martial arts
Life is not a game, it's a series of games. And the right ethic is to be the winner of the series of games. And part of that means that you have to learn how to be a good looser because you are not going to win every single game
Losing is important
To be a winner...
You want to have a life that's so engaging that you think despite the fact that I am limited and that we are mortal and that life is tragedy and there is evil in the world, despite all that this is worth doing
In order to be happy you have to feed those things
It's a stupid game to betray your future self to gratify your present self
Confront chaos voluntarily
Establish and revivify order
Constrain malevolence
That's a good three-part for life
It's not like what's coming isn't dangerous, it's dangerous, but your best bet is to be dancing on your feet and ready for it, pay attention and be awake
Speak the truth because your life turns out better if you speak the truth
If you tell the truth, you transform the potential of being into a habitable actuality
How do you make the world better?
You should treat yourself as if you are valuable, especially in potential. But you should concentrate on who you should become, especially if you are young
You should understand how much potential there is within you to set that straight and then you should do everything you can to manifest that in the world and then it will set it straight
No matter how bad your situation is, if you stand up and face it, with a noble vision, with discipline and intent, you can go far farther to overcoming it than you can imagine. And that's the principle upon which you should predicate your behavior
Truthful conversations redeem people
We know two things in clinical psychology
If you are afraid of talking in front of a group
If you confront the world forthrightly, if you speak the truth and you expose yourself courageously to those things that you are afraid of then your life will improve and so will the life of people around you
Go out there, find the dragon, confront it. It's a dragon, it might eat you, it's dangerous, but it's worse to cower at home and wait for it to come and devour you. Go out there! Confront it! Get the gold! Share it with the community
It's painful to understand how much of what you are doing is not productive
Quit wasting time
Reasons of procrastination and depression
If you are not a disciplined person it's uncomfortable, it's going to be painful, it's frustrating... You have to force yourself into this things. It's a muscle that has to be developed. These patterns have to be developed in your mindset. Incrementally
Clinical psychologists don't stick with high level abstractions, especially the behaviors, they are really practical
Hell is a real place
There is evil in the world of all sorts and some of it's the evil in other people. And some of it is the evil in your brother's heart. But part of it that you can really do something about that's the malevolence in your own heart. You can actually do something about that and that's actually way more useful than you think. Because if you can face it in you, then you start to understand it and that also makes you strong enough to identify it and to fight it when you see it in the external world. Plus you don't do any harm
Stop saying things that make you weak!
Stop telling lies that you know to be lies!
Stop doing things you know to be useless and counterproductive!
Aim high!
Adopt some responsibility and then see what the hell happens!
You are much more inclined to let other people live their lives if you are living your life in a satisfactory manner. That's exactly it
How positive monster is?
What does "no" mean?
You want to lay your life out so that it's providing you what you need to not be bitter and to work for your best interests and for the interests of everyone else
You need to organize your family with a certain amount of discipline and a certain amount of structure so that you get to do what you want, so that you are happy to have your kids around, so that you won't take revenge on them
The thing that sustains people through life really is the lifting of a worthwhile burden. We are evolved to be useful to the people around us
The world is full of darkness. Each of us have a little bit of light. If we release that light, if we shine properly... The world is a lesser place if you don't reveal from within yourself what you have to reveal
If you are not everything you could be more people will die, more people will suffer, more evil will be unconstrained, more tyranny will reign, more chaos will remain...
Your family is more messed up than it could be, if you were less messed up than you are. So if you just got your act together like ten percent more your family would be one percent better.
Do it!
When you do something that you should not do, it's worse than you think and when you do something that you should do, it's better than you think
It's not that easy to cleanup your room. You want your room to be set up so that when you walk in there it tells you to be better than you generally are. It's organized, it has got direction, everything is in its place. You try to do that in your chaotic household
Everything around you is full of potential. Everything! Maybe more potential than you could ever possibly utilize
Maybe all you have is this little rat hole of a room in some run-down place in the world. Fix it up! There is more there than you think. See what happens if you fix it up. And you'll fix yourself up simultaneously because you have to get disciplined in order to fix up the room. Then you have a fixed-up room and you will be a more fixed-up person. All hell will break loose as a consequence of that
Rippling effect on the things around you
"I am fighting with my kid"
Archetypal stories have power
There is more to you than you think, there is more than enough potential to go around. There is definite suffering and malevolence in the world. We could fix it. You haven't got anything better to do
We are not going to run out of potential
You are not living up to your potential
What would happen if we stop making the world worse?
Aim at heaven!
How to monetize social justice warriors?
TV is dying / Television compared to YouTube
Whatever they are, ignorant superstition is not a right category
Different way of lecturing
Reason of becoming overweight
Power of lecturing online
Fun fact about YouTube / YouTube is a university
Best way of writing books
Best way of writing books
If the protesters show up, that's good too
pathological postmodern professors are not brave enough to debate me
I received 35 letters from transgender people...
I am not willing to cede the linguistic territory to postmodern radicals
Only few transgender people want to use those words
Post modernism is a complete assault on two things
Why post modernists don't engage in dialogue?
Idea represented neuron by neuron / Richard Dawkins idea of meme
Medicine is an applied science
Ideas are always at war
Post-traumatic stress disorder
Anything that is not part of your dominance hierarchy is a snake
Anything that's outside of the hierarchy is a threat. Any stranger, any strange idea, any animal manifestation, any noise, any spirit,.. it's a threat to the integrity of the dominance hierarchy in many many ways
correlation between prevalence of infectious disease and authoritarian attitudes
Words are a virus
domain of order / domain of chaos
Black dot inside the white serpent in the yin-yang symbol
In the face of a stressor you are better off psycho physiologically to act voluntarily
Dominance hierarchy is older than trees
Male dominance hierarchy
Ideal person is the person who tells the truth
When you start to realize how much of what you've constructed of yourself is based on deception and lies, that's a horrifying realization and it can easily be 95% of you. Things you say, things you act out ...
The truth is something that burns. It burns off deadwood, and people don't like having their deadwood burnt off often because they're like 95% deadwood
The unknown has two things
The fundamental rule when operating in chaos is tell the truth
The optimists that I hear say - well the pendulum swings and then it swings back - and I think yeah well, sometimes it takes a hundred years to swing back and it takes a hell of a lot of people out on the way and sometimes it never swings back at all.
Sometimes people go out to fight a dragon and it just eats them or it burns them, and that's the end of that
It's not a little thing!
If you want to change the world you start from yourself and work outward because you build your competence that way.
I don't know how you can go out and protest the structure of the entire economic system if you can't keep your room organized
If you can't even clean up your own room who the hell are you to give advice to the world
Don't be fixing up the economy eighteen-year-olds, you don't know anything about the economy. It's a massive complex machine beyond anyone's understanding and you mess with it at your peril
How to change the world properly
People can improve themselves I think to a degree that we don't understand. Because a human being for better or worse is something potential as well as something actual
Morality comes when you are a monster and you can control it
If you start to understand who you are, then you understand the Nazis. I can understand sex criminals. I can understand Nazis. And the reason for that is because I can see that as an aspect of myself, truly
It's a horrible thing to realize that you are a human and what being human means. Christ to Satan, that's the human being
I don't consider myself an intellectual precisely
The highest ideal that a person holds consciously or unconsciously, that's their God
People might say - "I don't believe in God"
It's unfortunate about the new atheists
Bible is actually a story. It's a whole bunch of different books written by a whole bunch of different people edited over thousands of years and then assembled by committee. It's a really strange book but it has a narrative structure and that sort of emerged as a collective decision across these thousands of years
The rough story of the old testament / Order, corruption, chaos... Six times
It's the truthful individual that's salvation / The new testament conceptualization
About Carl Jung ideas
You are not your own slave. You can't just tell yourself what to do. You have a nature
90% of my viewers on YouTube are men
Your life is meaningless if you are doing nothing
The proper goal of a Christian roughly speaking is to enact the meta pattern of Christ's life in their own to make it their own story
Accept your mortality!
you have to contend with yourself and the adversary that's inside you that seems to oppose your every movement
Our true environment
Just give birth!
I would caution any young women not to be deluded into the idea that their career will be of such high quality that it self evidently trumps having a family. You have to have a hell of a career before that's the case
Telling the truth is a good start because then you don't fool yourself about who you are
Why not lie all the time? Well, there is a bunch of reasons but one of them is that you can't trust yourself if you lie and there's going to be times in your life where you have no one to turn to except you and so if you've stuffed yourself full of lies then you're going to be in a crisis one day and you're gonna have to make a decision and you're gonna decide wrong and you're going to be in real trouble because you won't have the clarity of mind necessary to make the proper judgement. Because you filled your imagination and your perception with rubbish
What does it mean to have a meaningful life?
Male hierarchy is a sexual selection device
"I am so successful in a video game world and so unsuccessful in a real world"
Lots of things are going sideways
Artists have a hell of a time surviving
Why lot's of people are not creative?
Differences between Canada and the US
Rational mind falls in love with its own productions or even more that it tries to elevate its productions to the status of God
As you retreat from the chaos into your own little prison, you get weaker and weaker and the prison gets smaller and smaller and the chaos gets bigger and bigger. It's really an ugly pathway and you get more and more bitter and resentful and much more afraid of having your prison walls breached. It's a downward spiral
As a member of a culture, you are somehow responsible for the past sins of that culture
If your group at some point in the past did something reprehensible then you were de facto responsible in the present for that
It's not like any system is perfect, but there's a difference between imperfect and consciously murderous
Old Soviet Union joke - "They pretend to pay us, we pretend to work"
For everyone who thinks that equality of outcome is a good idea
Reasons of being poor
Reasons why women make less money on average than men
Agreeableness is a maternal instinct trait
Male human beings are very involved in the raising of their children which makes them quite different than many large animals
If you are very maternal, you are very compassionate and protective of those that are within your kin boundary
Differences between clinical personality psychology and social psychology
Social psychology experiment
Things get to terrible places one tiny step at a time
People you can't talk to are enemies
Don't forget it's wrong to eat your children!
Simple explanation is a good explanation unless it's too simple but distinguishing between simple and too simple is no easy matter
How clinical psychologist makes people less afraid
You can educate yourself endlessly online
Universities overcharges students
compelled pronouns
YouTube - social revolution
Cut the funding to the universities / What the university should be!
Listening vs reading / importance of listening to podcast
If you want to change the world, you should change yourself
It's more difficult to rule yourself than to rule a city
Cortisol makes you old
Write down uncertain things
There is only one reason to remember the past - to be prepared for the future.
What you are supposed to do it to take the past and extract wisdom from it
You are reorganizing your brain when you write
what scientific truth tells you is what things are, but genuine religious truth tells you how you should act
How to reconcile science and religion?
Here is how you should act
Music is modeling the manner of being that's harmonious
Meta hero - who sits at the bottom of the western civilization
Eternal death and rebirth
Dogma is necessary because it conserves the structure.
Spiritual aspect is necessary because it updates the structure
You have to believe things or you could not exist, you could not act. You have to hold on to the dogmatic structure of your belief.
But you have to be open for it's update on a continual basis. That's basically what consciousness is for
Your job between order and chaos
There is nothing more important than the ability to pay attention
Pay attention and speak the truth
Truth is the antidote to suffering
What caused the new Orleans flood?
God - transcended reality
There is nothing more complex in the cosmos than a human being
Hell is real
The apocalypse is always here
There is never a situation that's so bad that there isn't something you can do to make it worse
It's not an easy thing to live in a truthful manner but the alternative is hell
It isn't an alternative political structure that's the countervailing force. It's spoken truth that's the countervailing force
The ability to speak your truth is the bulwark against hell, and losing your job? That's nothing, compared to where things can go when they go badly
The importance of spoken truth
Intelligence and moral wisdom are not the same thing
Story of the soul, not the intellect
I am not saying those goddamn pronouns
Try to say the truth, no matter what, because the alternative is worse. And it is worse!
Sort yourself out, marshal your arguments and put yourself in order so that when someone pushes you a little further than you should go, you can say no!