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Not sure how I feel about it. On the one hand, any extinction is obviously not going to be very much fun for whoever is involved. On the other hand, the future of mankind is of no particular interest to me. I, and everyone I love, and everyone else, is going to die either way. Is there some special reason we need to make our species survive forever? Other than arrogance? And I haven't much more attachment to homo sapiens than any other species. My dog is far better company than most humans. Eventually life will return. And eventually, the planet will be consumed by a black hole (or whatever is supposed to happen). Humans will have died off long before that. I just wish we could learn to do less harm to each other -- and all other life -- while we're here.

There was a topic about it, or at least a similar experience, not long ago: http://thedaobums.com/topic/37903-how-did-your-dark-night-of-the-soul-end/ There might be some helpful advice in there. I particularly appreciated freeform's comment (http://thedaobums.com/topic/37903-how-did-your-dark-night-of-the-soul-end/?p=615184)

bum bum. bum bum bum. bumbumbumbumbum. Hi

Do your best not to take part in the maddest of the madness? Realize that it's all a game? Realize that you do have power?

The power that drives corporations is the same power which has always driven the ruling heads of human society (monarchs, dictators, priests.. gods). That is the people. The people's willful ignorance, their acceptance of tyranny, and in fact their hidden desire to be governed. People are their own oppressors. People want something or someone to blame for all the nasty things that happen, but everyone is complicit. Everyone participates in it, daily. Almost everyone on this forum does. Most of you drive cars, buying petrol from Shell and BP and other huge, damaging corporations; most of you eat meat and dairy and eggs produced in corporate factory farms, and various crops traded by huge corporations (agriculture makes a bigger contribution to deforestation and pollution than any other process); all of you are using a computer or phone right now, and I suspect that for most of you that involved buying from a major corporation and using electricity and other services provided by huge corporations. Blah blah. Nobody's innocent..

No.. not an infinite regress. Eternity. No beginning, no ending. We don't start the discussion by asking "Where did it all come from?" or "How did it begin?" because we do then end up with an 'infinite regress'. Because those questions are meaningless. We might as well ask "What colour is it?" Where did it come from? It "came from" itself. 自然 ziran, self-so. How did it begin? It just is. (Whatever "it" is). The idea of an intelligent creator isn't much different than saying "It just is." How would the intelligence explain creation? "Well... I just did it."

Why? On the contrary. There cannot be a starting point. When did it start? How? What was there before? And before that? And before that? And when it ends? If there's a start, there must be an ending point. When does it end? Where does it all go? What comes after? Even if the answer is "nothing"..well, that's still a something, because everything turned into it.

I'm listening to the recent Rich Roll podcast with Wude. I haven't learnt much about Rich, but listening to Wude has been fascinating and touching. So thanks for that link, I will be tuning in to more.

I understand this very well. I've managed to skirt this issue in a couple of ways. 1. Don't (only) apply for jobs. You need to know people. The majority of vacancies are never advertised; people hire someone they know, or the kid of someone they owe a favour to, or their own family, etc (cronyism and nepotism are very much alive and well throughout the world), or they headhunt (or of course they fill the position from inside the company). Obviously many people do find jobs through recruitment agencies and job applications, but if you can find a way in by other means, do that. Of my last 4 jobs, I found 3 by knowing people (and one by just walking in and asking for a job). 2. If the competition is too much, make it less. Look for something else to do, get a new qualification, look elsewhere (in the country/world), etc 3. Lower your standards for a while. Not everyone can "be a winner" all the time (and I really think that looking at the world in terms of "winners" and "losers" is silly and damaging). I've worked a few fairly 'shitty' jobs; if you can accept it, be humble, and think clearly about how you can go about changing your circumstances...you eventually will. Well please stop thinking about the world like this. One can define life in terms of winning and losing, but it's basically meaningless. Read the Zhuangzi some time.

Yeah. I'm treading the middle path these days too -- try as I might, I will never convince most people I know that it's healthy, or preferable in any way, to remove animal products from their diet (even though I believe it probably is), and I'm not going to refuse to eat meat that friends and family have already bought and prepared for themselves. At the moment convincing people to buy 'happy' meat is the best compromise (I had a lovely rare steak last night at a birthday dinner). But when I prepare food for myself I'm happy to pretty much keep animals out of it. Yeah, the average kebap here is... well, let's just say they seem like a good idea when you're blind drunk and taste, health, and ethics play little to no role in your decisions. (But as with anything else there are exceptions.) I love falafels dipped in hummus. Double-chickpea heaven.

From your love of kebabs (Food Addiction thread) I assumed you were a meat eater. Silly to assume (that you meant meat kebabs), I guess So you are also a good example of a herbivorous long-distance runner, no? Lots of great examples of vegan (and vegetarian) athletes, but they're rarely covered in the media as such. People don't wanna hear it... is my current favourite (I love watching freerunning..any excuse) I recently watched the following video about Jim Morris. Quite inspirational.

That is a fucking lot of supplements. Wow... A few years ago I was into a bit of supplementation for the bodybuilding. experimented with various whey proteins, soy protein, even pea protein powder, plus creatine and multivitamins for a while. Done with all that. Just whole foods, lots of fruit and veg. Perhaps a little too much coffee. Pretty sure I'm healthier than ever now though.

THE WIRE The BATTLESTAR GALACTICA redux Neither are 'movies', but in my opinion television series have a far greater capacity for development, storytelling, relating and exploring what it is to be human... and these 2 set the standard, for me.

Guys... did you read the OP? He's not talking about the act of sex, he's talking about sexual relationships between men and women -- the relationship which may or may not lead to the act of sex...

I agree with almost all you said, but would quite like to mention that in my experience, and if we're going to phrase it in any particular way, I'd say that "men are capable of being as emotionally strong as women". If a group of men feel like they need to sit in a room together with a sign on the door saying "No Women", in a free society they should be free to do so. Same with women. But I might question the character of these men, or women. On TDB, there are now the Female & Male subforums, where either gender can go and talk about things that they might be uncomfortable talking about the others with. To me, that's akin to having separate toilets in a bar or separate locker rooms in a gym; in society as we experience it now, we feel uncomfortable sharing certain things with the 'opposite' gender, and many will often feel uncomfortable having the 'opposite' gender share things with them. And in general life, we can take our male or female friends aside, or spend some time with them, and talk to them about whatever. But the idea of a men's only club, or a women's only club, is akin to having a whole Dao Bums forum where only men are allowed, or only women. How stale it would get! Endless topics about semen retention and whose Dao is better, and whatever is being talked about these days in the Women's Sanctuary. Why would anyone want that?

Something great gave way to all form; Born before Heaven and Earth, Morphing and hazy, singular and limitless, It is the mother of all things; ... Man is of the Earth, The Earth is of the Heavens, The Heavens are of the Way, The Way is of itself I don't put as much stock in Laozi as I used to, but the brother did have some excellent insights. There are many things I can't even begin to comprehend. Nothingness has always been one of them. Eternity, too. When I was a child I would often lie awake at night trying to understand the concept "forever", and invariably need my mum to comfort me when a deep, seemingly inexplicable terror struck me. Not being able to comprehend a concept like "nothingness" probably stems from the fact that it is a meaningless idea. The question "What is nothing?" has no meaning, no value. It's like asking "Where is 5?" or "Why is yellow?" The problem is created through language, and no amount of extra language can 'solve' it. What I get from Laozi is that 'the Way' cannot be explained -- it just is. So accept it, and go with it. You don't need to comprehend it.

It seems like you are looking at things as 'something vs nothing'. The way I understand things, it's not like that. 'Something' and 'nothing' are different ways of describing the same 'stuff'. Iron is a thick, heavy, solid 'thing'. But as you will no doubt have been told by someone along the way, atoms are something like 99.9999% so-called 'empty space', and iron is no different than hydrogen in this respect. The most 'solid' stuff is still mostly 'nothing'. And the 'something' (hadrons > quarks > ? > ?) that makes up the not-nothing of an atom is still, when we get right down to it, only made up of whatever it's made up of. We can probably say that the idea that it is "made of something" is entirely meaningless; one can't keep going forever, asking every time "But what's that made of?" Then.. there is no 'fundamental' stuff, is there? Probably best not to think about it too hard.

Can't people complement each other, be strong together, and be equal? What is it you have against equality?

I stand corrected. That sounds like a pretty qualified interpretation.

Well this got deeper.. I don't think any of us are really 'qualified' to interpret dreams, especially one like that...so I would agree with Stosh. Forget about it. The fact that it shook you up so much means you clearly aren't seriously considering such an action, so it'd be silly to spend time worrying. Maybe you just had some bad cheese with your macaroni, or something... Moving on? Though I think we might have worn this whole butterfly dream conversation out for now...

Well, there's probably a more technical definition of calisthenics, but I think it's just a term for when you're using your body and minimal equipment to work out..? So (hatha) yoga would be included, I guess. Pushups pullups etc, many military drills & martial arts exercises, aerobics, blahblah... One thing I definitely prefer is pull-ups, chin-ups, and other climbing type stuff, as opposed to using weight machines for the back. I'll never bother with lat pulldowns again!

Yeah. I got too cocky. I think my form was OK, but I just would not let myself fail the rep, and...pushed too hard. Could barely walk out of the gym that day! Snap City, as they say.. Thinking about it, it was about 18 months ago. Something went wrong with the piriformis/sciatic nerve area. Took about 6 months to heal fully. I could've been back in a gym within a few weeks doing other stuff, but I was leaving the area anyway and instead of finding another gym just decided to take a break. And I've since discovered that calisthenics, yoga etc is just as effective. I never lifted more than 30kg/side on shoulder press at any gym, but now I can do a few handstand pushups (and I weigh around 82kg so that is an improvement, right?). And I'm getting closer to my first one-arm pull-up. The only thing missing is heavy squats & deadlift.... I will get back into it one day. How are you progressing with it?

As with anything, I'd suggest that balance is key. In my understanding, many systems/ that fellow Dao Bums practice lead to an understanding of soft power. Yin overcoming yang. In my sporadically humble opinion though, wouldn't an understanding of brute power be useful for a comprehensive understanding of power itself? Or something edit: and yeah I miss doing 5x5...hurt myself overdoing it on deadlifts a year or so ago and haven't been to a gym since...got into outdoor workouts. But the iron is great.

One of the most genuinely entertaining movies I've seen in a while ^_^

http://www.buzzfeed.com/mikehayes/silk-road-ross-ulbricht-dread-pirate-roberts-sentencing#.mmYkwqBq3m What do we think? The comments section on that Buzzfeed article is full of people lamenting the strong sentence whilst 'rapists and murderers only get 8-9 years' (or along those lines). I don't know the man, and I never used the site. He may well be a complete sociopath, but isn't it true that the major and only really relevant result of what he did was the enabling of truly free trade? ______________________________________ And this goes into slightly different territory, but: in a laissez faire (or wuwei) society, shouldn't drugs be legal anyway? I can buy knives, (3D printers to print) guns, cigarettes to give me cancer and emphysema, alcohol to give me liver failure and encourage violence, cars and trucks to run people over with...