Aetherous

I just checked that out...seems like a great idea for defense, if it's legal to use in one's locale. Pretty hefty thing to carry...but good.

Is peace separable from conflict? "Peace" is in a sense defined as being not-war/not-violence/not-conflict...it's one side of a coin. Can we have peace without fighting, in the case of enemies seeking to destroy us? When we're pacifists, some will look at us as weak and take advantage of that opportunity...in some cases, taking everything from us. All people have the capacity for becoming good, but not all people do good. Is it not necessary to defend oneself against this? Doesn't that sometimes mean that our enemies need to be crushed into oblivion, so that they don't rise up and strike again? I suppose if we're at the level of Ueshiba, we might be able to not harm the enemy while subduing their attack. The question is - does it work in our reality? I think defending ourselves and our loved ones against attacks takes precedence over a losing strategy. Let's think of dualism...war and peace is a dualistic way of thinking. What if we master both arts simultaneously, rather than being averse to one? It is a truism that when our enemies are stopped (if we've had enemies who are unreasonably attacking us), there is peace. Perhaps the art of war is really the art of peace...it brings it about. Perhaps the art of peace brings about the necessity for the art of war. All good people love peace, and hate destruction and conflict...but I think part of an art of peace involves not leaving an opening for our downfall. Not everyone follows our way of peace...not everyone is still good.

What's scary to me is that these powerful hacking tools have been released to God knows who. That's a lot of power.

I think the pertinent question here is: what is Daoism? There are many different types. I'm sure there are Daoist schools that frown on it or prohibit it...just as there are probably schools that don't at all. And the schools can be: magical or ritualistic, philosophical, hermit-like, textual, alchemical, mystical and revelatory, etc. Daoism is a lot of different things, and you choose which way to go. I don't think there is a Daoist who legitimately does everything at once. Within each one of those trainings, there are probably differing schools of thought. I'm sure if you're homosexual you can find a form of Daoism that accepts it.

Did the White House actually remind these agencies, or was that by their own leadership? Was it actually in an executive order...and if not, what proof do we have of the White House instructing them as such?

Which executive order is that? I recall that this story was fake news...maybe I'm wrong. All executive orders are on the White House website.

Just presenting a basic concept... If we try to be good at everything, we don't master anything. The way that things change for the better is through revolutionary advancements, new insights, breakthroughs, etc...improvement of a subject is based on individual mastery of it, and a life dedicated to that subject. (I am pondering this because of looking at recent research that found a wasp whose venom can destroy cancer cells) It benefits society in the long run for us to focus acutely on a subject...to become an expert at something, and live in our field of work so much that we break the barrier of what's already known and thought about the topic. People who come after us can "stand on the shoulders of giants", just like we did, by depending upon the knowledge we were taught regarding our subject of interest...knowledge derived from other people's hard work. Imagine what the world would look like if everyone truly did this...if everyone mastered something. Does it really matter if we know everything about everything? We might be good at living and getting by, but we aren't contributing to the advancement of knowledge and society. By feeling the need to know it all, we end up becoming failures because of not being experts in any one thing...by becoming myopic and nerdy about one thing, we have a chance at success. What's your one thing?

The balancing of views is essential to the truth! I've been agreeing this whole time.

The label is so dumb that I just tend to ignore it these days...I figure enough people are smart or intuitive enough at this point to see that it's just a weak tactic of manipulation.

Yes, there was a new narrative about it toward the end of this election...I'm not at all referring to the remnants of Cold War sentiment, although this new narrative took advantage of that lingering distrust. I believe it was this debate in which we first heard how much the left wanted to start a WW3 with Russia narrative: In contrast to less than a decade prior...

I'm specifically referring to the anti-Russian rhetoric of the left.

In making this thread, it wasn't about the subject of controlling others...although I get why it seems that way, because of asking the question "what if everyone mastered something"... It was more so about pondering the difference in my personal life, between the dissipation of focus and force (for instance by always going to research what's behind the newest political drama so as to be informed), versus the concentration of focus and force (for instance, avoiding all extraneous stuff that has no bearing on my life, and dedicating more time to what matters). And maybe others would like to ponder the same thing...are they effective enough in life, or are they dissipated by things that waste time? It's been interesting to hear the inevitable balancing of views...I think it is true that human beings do best when somewhat well rounded (and especially maintaining a more natural and healthy lifestyle). I especially liked the idea that people should have their own "schema" of a collection of things they're good at (in my own view, if one thing was paramount and the others were secondary...if the one thing was focused on to like 70%). And definitely, everyone is different...it's important to follow one's heart, to be on their path and doing what they're passionate about...rather than specialization meaning working only at a factory doing one thing for 12 hour shifts. While that kind of job is a foundation of society, I don't think it improves society in the same way as something like what this woman did: Is modern civilization and society not a picture of a thriving humanity? Like anything in life, we can see two sides to that coin...one hopeful, and one skeptical. Both views are correct. We're doing great, and we can do better.

Knowing your gift is half the battle!

I don't always like surrealists, but when I do, I like Vladimir Kush

http://designyoutrust.com/2017/02/pushing-photorealism-to-new-levels-of-beauty-amazing-paintings-by-yigal-ozeri/#1ieJrYF75UKFAQA7.01

Truth right there.

There is no Russia matter. It's all baseless propaganda used for political defamation.

You avoided the very direct question...I'll wait until you come back with something problematic with the article and its sources.

It cites its sources. Any problem with those in the linked article? Also, I question whether it's truly a "conspiracy site" rather than a news outlet. And if these outlets were judged based on who they hired, the Intercept would be looking pretty bad right now (with its former writer, a Trump hater and Islamist, doing all of those Jewish center bomb threats).

This feels big... http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/03/03/mark-levin-obama-used-police-state-tactics-undermine-trump/

X

Yes, I think being in line with our talents and interests is very important for specializing...being in line with our destiny. Otherwise, what would motivate us toward pushing the envelope in that field?

It's true, most practitioners don't specialize. There are some who focus solely on gynecology and infertility, for instance...or others who primarily work with pain and sports medicine. Some don't take patients requiring other things. I personally want to be a general practitioner in that sense...to be able to work on anything. Aside from that, there are different schools of thought throughout Chinese medicine's history. If we expand it to "East Asian medicine", then we can see that there are Korean schools, Japanese schools, etc. There are also people who practice strictly from certain texts, like the Nei Jing, the Shang Han Lun, the wen bing texts, the Pi Wei Lun...in contrast to practicing from the modern textbooks of TCM, which took little pieces of many different schools of thought and tried to make it coherent as one thing. So there is some choice of specialization that way. The style I'm learning requires quite a bit of dedication, so it has to be a specialization despite being able to address any patient...and it has to be learned on top of the basic TCM required in colleges and licensing boards - in that sense, it's hard to specialize in it as much as would be ideal.