goldisheavy

Vortex, Why don't you read up on Communism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communism For the record, I think the problems that Communist thinkers have pointed out in society, are real, and need to be addressed. I never suggested that Communism should be a solution to those problems. For example, I think Ron Paul is correct in noticing the problems with fiat money and fractional reserve banking. Ron Paul offers a gold-standard as a solution. I strongly disagree with Ron Paul's solution. I strongly agree with Ron Paul's diagnosis of the problem though. You see how you can agree with someone's formulation and diagnosis of the problem, while you can disagree with their solutions? It is possible! Just because I think wealth disparity is a bad thing, does not mean I am out to steal your stuff. I don't want your stuff. You can keep it. I don't give a fuck about your stuff. Enjoy it. Fuck your stuff. Stick your stuff in your arse. Sleep with your stuff. Marry your stuff. I don't care. I do begin to care when you use your stuff as a leverage and means to fuck with my life though. I am not hot for Communism or for Socialism. I am not hot for Capitalism. I like freedom. I like democracy. I like freedom of speech and I support freedom to bear arms. I support free enterprise when it's reasonable, socially responsible, and moral. I like small business. I dislike big business. I dislike big corporations. I like small to medium sized corporations if they are moral. I detest health insurance companies as they currently exist. I detest finance "industry." I think starting a business should be easy and non-bureaucratic. I think businesses should grow organically and not rely on leverage/loans (The Ben and Jerry model of business growth vs Amazon model). Leverage is evil. More leverage is more evil. Fractional reserve banking is evil. The way our current money works is evil. Gold standard is also evil. I prefer a society that aims for sustainability instead of unsustainable and environmentally dangerous explosive exponential growth. Educated people tend to have fewer children later in life -- this is good -- helps us control population growth. Uneducated people have more children earlier in life -- this is bad. Religions are bad. Religious extremism is extremely bad. Moderate religionism is only moderately bad. Non-dogmatism is good. Critical thinking is good. Consensus is good. Authoritarianism is bad. Over-reliance on experts is bad. Over-reliance on credentials is bad. Monopoly is very evil and should be mostly outlawed. Cable infrastructure companies should be separated from ISPs. A company that lays cable in the ground can be granted a monopoly, but companies that provide internet service on top of those physical lines should compete among each other and should be completely prohibited from laying their own cables. Currently companies can lay their own cable AND provide service on top of that cable, which creates a conflict of interest and restricts competition. I like competition. Sometimes competition should be created through laws (like forcefully breaking some monopolies) and by force. I also like collaboration. Companies should collaborate more. As an example, many companies can collaborate on a common tech platform, like Android. And they can compete by offering various services on top of that common platform. So collaborate when it makes sense and compete when it makes sense. But don't go into extremes. The end result should be whatever is good for the consumer and not whatever is good for the business owner. If something is good for the business owner but it hurts the consumer, it should be prohibited. Business is good. Hurting the consumers is bad. Free market is good, but abusing freedoms to hurt people, to swindle people, is bad. Freedom shouldn't imply freedom to hurt (health insurance companies). Thank you for your time.

This gave me a good chuckle. Seriously though, I don't mean to be a punk, but what do you want? Do you know what you want? If you close your eyes and slowly visualize your perfect teacher, the kind of teacher that you would truly enjoy learning from, and accept, what do you see? Can you describe it? I am not asking you to actually describe it, because this information might be sensitivie/intimate. I'm just saying, do you see anything? Do you see what kind of teacher you do want? Or are you looking for something you don't know what. Are you in a fog? Are you sure you even want a teacher? What if it was someone who is a good friend, who is a few steps ahead of you, but is also learning?

Nobody likes to be challenged like that.

Very similar story here. I'm different in this regard. I am very critical, but not skeptical. There is a difference! Because I am not skeptical, when I read about some teacher or technique, I often think "Yes, I can see how given the right mentality this could work." But then I think, "Does this method introduce unnecessary concepts? Does this method complicate things unnecessarily? Does this method raise more questions than it answers? Is this method logically consistent?" So instead of demanding hard evidence, which is not practical, I subject the method to the fire of reason. Yea, I know something can be done, but should it be done? That's the question. I know about the power of mind these days. Given that I know about it, why should I accept lower forms of that power? For example, why should I believe in some "chi" as an intermediary energy that flows along meridians? Why can't I just use intent directly? Of course I can. "Chi" is an unnecessary complication. And many other methods and systems are like that. They all depend on the power of mind to work, but at the same time, they impose unneeded complications and unnecessary restrictions on the full power that the mind is capable of. It's like the people who invent these methods lack imagination. Or they lack understanding. They think that these subtle energies are actually substantial and not mind-made -- this would be a serious flaw in their understanding. Skepticism slows down change and brings more stability into your day to day experience. Is this reasonable or not? It depends on what you want. If you enjoy a stable and predictable experience and if you do not want magic, you should remain very skeptical. Without knowing your aim I cannot tell you if it's reasonable or not. Things are reasonable if they are consistent with your aims. We could bring convention into this analysis too. I am too lazy now to do so. I am critical of teachers, but not skeptical. I think that a lot of things teachers advertise can be done, but they are stupid and useless. You can do the same things they advertise with fewer restriction, with more fun, using your own wisdom and imagination.

I like these questions. My goal is to live a better, more enjoyable, more interesting, more magical, more fulfilling, more contented life, with more leisure time. Game plan of my practice is threefold: first I pay attention 24/7. I practice mindfulness. And then I also question and investigate my own beliefs. Then I also talk about what I find with others, so as to not disconnect from convention too much. This has the dual effect of grounding me and making the convention more "high" (the oppose of grounding).

vortex, You are so deluded, it hurts. You don't have the slightest understanding about how the world actually works. So why don't you move to Mexico then? They don't finance any wars, have low taxes, and have no socialized medicine. http://www.heritage.org/Index/country/Mexico Looks sexy, right? The numbers are sexy, I mean. Mexico is Ron Paulian/Ayn Randian wet dream of a country.

Yea, fuck American poor, right? Fuck the lazy bastards.

Sorry, I was only agreeing with you. I just reiterated your point as a way to agree. The growing wealth disparity cannot be caused by that sugar pill. Are you familiar with fractional reserve banking? Anyway, here's a good table to look at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_employment_rate Check this out. Notice something? Countries with the highest employment rates are Socialist, or at least, what Americans would call "Socialist." I am pretty sure that all the countries at the top of the list have a good social safety net system. So the argument that having a good social net encourages laziness doesn't seem to stand up in the face of evidence. In this context I was mostly talking about economic integration and not cultural integration. I think you're overreacting. The way USSR evolved is pretty complicated and I don't think anyone really understands all the motivations that went into shaping it as it was. For example, did Lenin really care about keeping diverse cultures together? Maybe. I am not aware of it. From what I was told, the primary goal for Lenin was to end Czarism. As I understand it, Soviet Socialism arose as an answer to Czarism and not (!) as an answer to Capitalism. I think Lenin read Marx's papers, and thought something like, "Aha... so Capitalism is unsustainable, OK... so we shouldn't switch Czarism to Capitalism, why it will just collapse. So what should we do? Aha! I got it. We will implement Soviet style Socialism instead. It will be durable and much better. But whatever we do, we must end Czarism." So the main goal was to put an end to Czarism. I haven't studied history much. I am just going from what I remember in my time in USSR. Maybe if someone is a scholar who studied Lenin's writings, they can say more. But then right after Lenin, Stalin rose to power. And Stalin was completely, completely different from Lenin. And after Stalin, Kruschev, who was again, completely different. When Kruschev came to power he immediately denounced and demonized Stalin. So USSR is not something that evolved with some kind of uniform ideology. It's a hodge podge of dictaroship, mono-culturure, pseudo-Socialism, materialism, just to name a few things. I don't think USSR presidents/premiers knew exactly what to do. They were playing it by ear. And I doubt modern presidents know exactly what to do either. Well, I was reading wikipedia and I found this article, which I think is relevant and interesting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_consensus

The numbers would be interesting indeed. This is pretty much what Marx predicted. Basically, as the wealth disparity continues, the bottom layers of society begin to riot. If something isn't done, revolution soon follows. So in a way, British capitalists were quite clever. They found a sneaky way to stop the revolution. But did they fix the real problem? Is wealth disparity stable in UK? Also, the system wasn't designed for the influx of immigrants who would refuse to assimilate. This is an absurd caricature.

I don't buy this argument for one second. In USSR people didn't want to work for other reasons. It's not because there was a great safety net or something like that. As far as I know people were forced to work. You couldn't just hang out at home, even if you wanted to. I didn't know anyone in USSR who didn't work. It just didn't happen. You might have a crappy job or a job you don't want, but you'd get some kind of work most of the time. The reason why people in USSR were so demotivated is that they didn't see any connection between personal effort and success. It would appear to those people that no amount of personal effort would result in any kind of influence or improvement. The Soviet Union operated like one giant machine where people's wishes were irrelevant. So if you have a great idea? Too bad. You can work faster? Ok, the first year, you get a medal, but the second year, your quota of widgets is raised and your faster rate is now the required rate. Etc. So the presence of safety net or government support had absolutely nothing to do with demotivation of people in USSR. I disagree. I think that no one can stand too much idleness. There are some rare people who can tolerate a lot of idleness, but most people like to keep busy. If we didn't have to work for a living, we would work for fun. We would probably do different kind of work. There would be less drudgery and less stupid work. But people would work no matter what. All you have to do is look at Europe. Look at the countries there with great social safety nets. Most people there want to work. Read why J.K. Rowling doesn't mind paying taxes: The Single Mother's Manifesto. Too late for that. We are already socialized. When all of us bailed out bankers for insane amounts of money, we were already socialized. We are socialized whether we like it or not. Our choice now is this: should we have corporate and bank welfare, which is what we currently have, or should we have welfare for the people instead, and let the banks go bankrupt. In a good capitalist society mismanaged institutions must go bankrupt, no matter the cost. And yet USA government routinely bails out big businesses and banks. So we are already socialized and the people getting the benefits of the safety net are rich guys who don't need any benefits. I like computers, but what I want the most is for relations between human beings to change. I want corporate douchebags to stop treating people like commodities. That would be a good start. And wealth disparity is a huge problem that will get fixed either peacefully or violently, but it cannot continue as is, and it will get fixed.

This is absolutely crazy thinking. First of all, there is no guarantee that if you have kids you'll be reborn as one of their descendants. That's not how reincarnation generally works. Secondly, you have a lot of hubris, and in your hubris, you imagine that being your own descendant is a plus. In fact, being your own descendant can be a negative. What if you become a descendant in someone else's family, and that family is a family of enlightened people? Wouldn't that be better? Why would you forgo that simply out of pride for your own bloodline? You worry about becoming an ant too much. That's just a superstition. When you dream, are you an ant in your dreams? No? Then you are not likely to be reborn as an ant. Unless you become obsessed with being reborn as an ant, you won't be. Rebirth is not a punishment. It's not like some God hands down rebirths based on what you deserve. It's nothing like that. Being reborn is no different than walking down the city streets. You go where you turn. If you turn left, you go to the street on your left. The fact that you end up on that street is not a punishment from outside! You went there yourself! Rebirth is like that too. Rebirth is what happens due to your own volition and it reflects your will. OK, so why do sages warn about being reborn in hell? Simple -- many people want to go to hell without knowing it. Many people have contradictory desires, and if you cling to both contradictory desires very strongly, you create hell. So it's not that it's an external punishment, it's just that some people unwittingly use their own volition to will hell upon themselves. So what you should be worried about is this unwitting-ness. You should become more and more aware of what it is you really want and why. This will prevent any kind of "hell" surprise from happening to you.

That's simply not true. You just don't know what you're talking about. You've demonstrated that you're willing to talk out of your ass on numerous occasions. I keep correcting you and giving you more info, to show you that your assumptions are wrong, but you keep assuming things. You are brainwashed. By the way, Canada and Australia have first-rate socialized medical care. Something USA doesn't have yet, and is struggling bitterly to acquire. OK, so when I point out some problems with economic and class stratification, it's equivalent to me asking you to help gangbangers? My parents are not gangbangers. But thanks for bringing gangbangers up. That's very kind of you. I keep talking about diagnosing the problems and you keep reacting to your imagined solutions. I didn't even put forth a proposal for a solution. I didn't defend Communism or Socialism. I simply said that some of the things Communists noticed were correct. How is that a defense of Communism? Even Hitler made one or two correct observations, but does that mean I support Hitler? Cut down on your kneejerking tea bagger loon. Quote me one line where I suggest FORCED collectivism & charity as a solution. Emphasis yours.

Things are not black or white. USA had a lot of problems. We would have preferred to go to Canada or Australia, but they had stricter requirements for acceptance. The people that made the decision to move were my parents. We didn't leave USSR due to Socialism. We left it due to ethnic prejudice. Understand? My family used to be a well-to-do family back in USSR. In USA my parents live a destitute life. We didn't come here because Capitalism is so fucking great. We were running from unfair ethnic persecution. What debate? You ignored most of what I said and you just kept repeating your idiotic party line. You're a moron. It is obvious now. Intelligent people respond directly to points raised, which you never did. I responded directly to all your assertions while you dodged every worthy statement of mine. That's not a debate. That's posturing. Now, when revolution rolls around in this country, and you get slaughtered, you will know why. Don't say no one tried to talk to you and don't say no one tried to share their problems and pain with you. I have tried. You ignored. You don't give a fuck about anyone other than yourself. You are killing civility by that kind of attitude. Morals depend on people willing to care for one another. "What?? Care for one another? That's Socialism!!!" No it's not. You can call it Socialism, but it's not about that. If you don't care about other people, you won't get the benefit of civility or morality. If you don't want to help other people even a tiny bit, then you are excluded from moral protections.

It's very dumb to use the word "science" to try to bolster the credibility of Taoism. Taoism is not scientific and has nothing to do with science and never will. Scientists themselves hate when spiritual people co-opt science for their selfish purposes. Most scientists categorically disagree with "What the bleep do we know" material. And by most I mean 99.999%. There are maybe one or two scientists that are considered "loons" that do agree. Leave science be. If you want to know what science thinks, talk to real scientists. Don't use propaganda movies like "What the bleep do we know" for your information. As spiritual people we should try to be intellectually honest. It is very dishonest to say that science backs Taoism. In this way we hurt both science and Taoism.

That's just not good enough. Lawful behavior is often immoral. Supply and demand alone are not sufficient basis for good culture. It's downright offensive. What Gates did is unskilled labor. Making deals is natural to human beings and is not some special skill. Even kids make deals among each other. Get some perspective. Mining takes a lot of skill. Why don't you go into a mine without skills and see how long you last. You'll probably lose an arm on your first day. Learn some respect for ordinary professions. I know how to take over a hornet's nest. I won't get stung. That's dumb. Why not just kill the bear? It's not that hard. All you need is a good spear. Heck, there was a dude who killed a bear by smashing its face with a log, in the news not too far back. Bears are fast and strong and if they get close to you, they can kill you. However there are ways to deal with it. People routinely kill animals larger than themselves. In fact, it's a common occurrence in an animal kingdom for a smaller and better adapted animal to kill a larger one. Get it through your stupid thick head that the reason I don't use force is not because: 1. I am afraid. 2. I don't know how. 3. I can't do it. 4. I don't know how to build alliances/gangs/groups to support my mission. It's none of the above. I don't use it because I believe in civility. But my belief in civility absolutely requires that I am surrounded by compassionate and sympathetic people, and you are not one of them. You are a chickenhawk who thinks he's all tough, but will run at the slightest sign of trouble. You go around puffing up your chest and proclaiming how the world is Darwinian and how we need to all make our own money and how "it's every man for himself." You don't know what the fuck you are talking about when you take that kind of ideology. I am warning you -- you need to wake up. You should try to see things from other people's point of view. I understand greed. I understand the desire to own property and to refuse to share. I understand the desire to be 10000 greater than your neighbor. I know these impulses, because I have defeated them in myself. I am not out to lord it over anyone. However. When assholes like you promote "every man for himself" heartless capitalism, you ruin my life and I will resist. I will resist with words and arguments, but if it comes to that, I will use force. This isn't what property is, moron. Property is a social contract that roughly states, "The government, vested by the people, will guarantee and protect your belongings in return for some obligations from you back to the government." Property is not the ability of the strong to keep their shit from the weak. Property is when a smaller weaker guy can keep his morally earned stuff due to government protection, even though there is a bigger stronger guy next to the smaller guy who would prefer to take those belongings. Get it? Property is precisely the opposite of "might makes right" Natural law. The mighty don't need protections or governments. The reason government and social contracts exist in the first place is to protect the weak and the vulnerable. Your lack of compassion is leading you into a dangerous territory. Your arrogance is boundless. Don't think you are so tough. Don't think that people who have empathy or compassion are helpless and fearful bleeding heart liberals. You don't understand shit about the world if that's what you think.

I left USSR in 1989. I grew up there.

I liked this talk a great deal. Here Sam Harris uses reason to examine the situation we have with the big organized religions of the world. As usual, I almost never agree with anything 100% even if I think it's the best thing ever, and that's also the case here. However, I do think Harris says a lot of things really worth considering seriously. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6734321991450996691#

1. West Virginia coal miners work their ass off much harder than Bill Gates ever will. They sacrifice their health and sometimes their very lives for that coal. They put their lives on the line every day. Bill Gates does not put his life on the line every day in an air-conditioned office, sitting in his nice office chair. If the amount of effort was the determinant for compensation, then Bill Gates would earn 1/100th of what a coal miner earns. 2. Thieves also put a lot of planning, thinking and effort into theft. This doesn't make theft any more moral. The amount of effort you expend neither indicates the morality of your labor nor the deservedness of compensation. Nature doesn't have property rights. The way Nature works is simple: I see it, I take it. That's it. If you want us to stoop to that level, I am willing to oblige. I am a warrior and I will easily blow greedy pansies like you away. You won't even see me coming. If you want to be civil, you will have to take my preferences into consideration and not just your own. You will also not pretend that your preferences are the very Nature itself. What hubris.

This example shows me that you don't actually understand what I am saying. Nor do you understand the real grievances of people. You think that people like me just want to take from the haves and give to the have nots. In so thinking you severely degrade my argument to the point where it's not even worth responding. You have a serious knee-jerk reaction going, I can tell. Why don't you put your prejudice aside and try to understand what I am talking about? I feel like you're worried I will steal your hard earned money or something. Nothing could be further from the truth. If I want to steal your money, I am not going to consult anything with you or have a discussion. I'll just take your money without questions and chit chat. And if you stand in my way, I won't hesitate to blow you away. Obviously I am not doing that. Obviously I am here discussing things. Any intelligent person would understand, given these facts, that I don't want to grab your gold bars that you so desperately protect. Your greed has caused you to be blind. You can't even understand what I'm talking about because all you can think of is how me and people like me will come and take your gold and redistribute it to the welfare moms and such. You need to take a cold shower, calm down, take a deep breath, check your greed at the door, and try to understand what I am saying anew. No matter how intelligent my points are and no matter how nuanced my presentation is, all your ears can hear is "He's coming for my gold, fuck, I must hide my gold and get into a defensive stance! I MUST PROTECT CAPITALISM!!! COMMIES ARE COMING!!! AAAAAAA!!!!" I specifically said that I don't support brute force and yet here again you talk as if I am about to force something using brute force on you. You're making a big mistake.

I distinguish between two kinds of fear. There is conscious fear and unconscious. Conscious fear occurs when you are fully cognizant of your preference, and you become aware of the potential to deviate from your preference. So for example, if you want to solve a mathematics problem correctly, you might be afraid to make a mistake. This is a conscious fear because you're creating that fear on purpose. It's not that you're terrified of mistakes, you just don't want them. This kind of fear cannot control you, and you can make more of it or less of it as you wish. So if you want to be really careful, you'll be more weary of making a mistake. And if you don't care all that much, you will be less weary of making a mistake. So in this manner you can adjust how much fear you feel and it's completely self-imposed in a way that you're aware of. You know you're doing it to yourself. Another example of a conscious fear is a Buddhist monk who is afraid to violate his vows. And then there is unconscious fear. Unconscious fear is the one we have hard time controlling. It arises when you are about to violate your unconscious preferences. It can even arise if you wrongly think you're about to violate your unconscious preferences. So for example, we all want to maintain a certain image of ourselves. If we get sick, that image is threatened. If we get sick with cold, that's no problem. But if we get a more serious disease, we can become very afraid. We can also become very afraid if we think we might catch an infectious disease, like say plague. When you first learn to drive an automobile, there is a lot of unconscious fear there as well. Sure, you don't want to hit anything, but at the same time, you're worried that things you cannot control will hit you on their own. This creates anxiety that's not easy to control because you're not creating it 100% consciously. What's bad about the second kind of fear is that it's unconscious. It means there are some causes behind it that you believe you cannot control, or that you think are not up to you. It can also mean the causes of fear are not well understood by you. You may not understand all the subtle relations that are tugging at your identity and your preferences to create that fear. So a fear that you don't fully understand and control is an unconscious fear. This is a bad kind of fear, but it's only bad because it's out of control. It's not bad because it makes you afraid. If you're afraid due to your own conscious intent, in other words, if you want to be afraid and are, that's fine. Fear is only a problem when you feel like you don't want to be afraid, but you are. When fear is against your will, that's when it seems like a problem. And every time the fear appears against your will it is because it is unconscious. It means you don't fully understand the true magnitude, scope and direction of your will yet. So the cure is to become more and more aware. You have to practice mindfulness. Then eventually you'll become conscious of all your fears and all your fears will eventually become your choices and not something that's seemingly pushed on you by the world against your wishes.

It's tricky to compare ideas like yin/yang to physics and materialistic ideas in general. Yin and Yang transcend thing-ness. Yin and Yang appear when One is split. So Tao gives birth to One, and One gives birth to ying and yang, if I remember correctly. Either way, the point is that neither yin nor yang have any individually established standing. So if you want to convert all this into a materialistic thinking you could say, "Tao gave birth to undifferentiated whole and undifferentiated whole was then spontaneously differentiated into presence and absence." In other words, the absence of stuff is just a feeling. It's not an actual absence. It's an artifact of cognition. The same is true of the presence. The presence of stuff doesn't mean there is actual stuff there. That too is an artifact of cognition. And Tao is the root of cognition. So when we say that cold is just absence of heat, that's only by convention. In practice, you sense cold just as you to heat. It's a sensation. It's an artifact of cognition. It's not presence or absence of anything. Now, in a materialistic convention we will take these equal feelings and assign to them different meanings. When we feel hot, we assign the meaning of presence to this. And when we feel cold, we assign the meaning of absence (of heat) to this. But these meanings are conventional assignments. They don't speak of the ultimate nature of cognitions. From the point of view of unbiased awareness, feeling cold is just like feeling hot. Cognitions don't have inherent meanings. We are the ones that attach meanings to them. When we do this together, it's called a convention. When we do it alone, it's called "Crazy." But it's the same thing ultimately. If there was nothing beyond yin and yang, and if yin and yang were the ultimate qualities, then the materialistic interpretations of them as absence and presence would be completely correct. But they are not the ultimate qualities. Yin and yang are children of the whole. Yin and yang have no meaning without the whole, so they don't have ultimate standing but really depend on something else for their standing. That something else is ultimately Tao, in a crude way of speaking. Here's one more way to understand it. Long and short define each other. So long is not the absence of shortness. Short is not the absence of longness. Long and short define each other. Hot and cold define each other just like short and long do. It's only by convention that we attach more baggage to hot/cold than we do to long/short. What it means for something to be hot completely depends on what it means for something to be cold. And vice versa. Because neither polarity has meaning by itself, they are contingent. So you have two mutually contingent polarities. This means polarities are purely of the nature of mind. They are artifacts of awareness and nothing more. Any other meanings we attach to the polarities are just conventions.

I'm open to varying definitions. Nothing in particular would happen to me. I would need to adjust what I am saying about God based on how the definition changed. That's not too big of an imposition. How does that work? If I had no definition of God at all, then anytime I heard other people talking about God, I would have no idea what they were talking about. This could put me at a disadvantage, since I care about people and want to be able to communicate with them (at least right now, who knows about the future?). Reason is a faculty that generates insight. I think it's possible, with sufficient insight, to simply feel no need to think. I don't know this for 100% sure, but that's what my intuition is telling me. The less insight I have, the harder I need to think and the more copious my thinking is. I doubt this can enter the extreme of absolute non-thinking though. I think even with the best insight, thinking would become very slow and relaxed, but it wouldn't be reduced to zero. How can definitions be immutable? I don't think I understand what you mean. As far as I can tell, we have a conventionally accepted set of definitions, like for example in the dictionary. And then we also have the power and the freedom to define things between ourselves for the purpose of each discussion. Even dictionary definitions tend to drift over great periods of time. Some concepts become archaic and die off. Others become introduced. I think that language is a living and breathing organ. There are many possible reasons to jostle so much around definitions. For example, if you are enamored of a concept, then some definitions are more conducive to getting that concept accepted, and others are less. So personal preference for some concepts is a good enough reason to try to keep the conversation centered around the best definition you can think of. Another reason people can be found jostling around definitions is when someone is using two or three subtly different definitions of something throughout the argument. It's an underhanded technique that allows to change the definition of something so that each time you can argue against a slightly "straw-man-ized" version of the concept, instead of arguing against the real deal each time. Another way to think of definitions is framing. Whoever controls framing in a discussion controls the discussion. So framing a discussion sets up the table for that discussion, and by being a master of framing, you can make sure the table is tilted in your favor. You want the real answer to this? Definitions exist in your service. Who decides who wins? You do. You do it all the time. You may not be aware of this. You might think you're a tiny little mouse of no consequence, but deep down you determine who is right and who is wrong, which line of thinking you will take up and which abandon, which action you'll take and which one you will not take. People can flash all manner of credentials to you, and even the entire society can arrange itself before you in lines, millions upon millions of people, and announce upon you: we say the sky is blue, but ultimately you are the one who either accepts or rejects this. The reason we feel so much difficulty in standing up against convention though is because we define who we are as people through convention. We define our egos in relation with other egos. Our egos are completely intertwined with the egos of all humanity. This is why it's not easy to stand up to someone, because every time you do so, you are being somewhat self-destructive. It's not the total truth. It seems like you are destroying yourself if you define yourself in terms of other people and this world and nothing else, but if the more you define yourself as something else and the less you entwine your own self-image with the images of other people and this world, the less it feels like destruction when you stand up to others or disagree with them. One should be cautious here though, because this way there is a possibility of complete disconnection from humanity. When this happens to me, I just relax and pay attention. As days and weeks go by, I return to that gut feeling and try to feel it again. As I keep getting in touch with it, eventually I am able to articulate in words how I feel. And then I also begin to understand why I feel like this. Sometimes it takes me months to get some subtle feelings into words. Yea. It's the danger of language. One color also blinds the eye. I think we just have to be careful and do our best.

Learning to rise above fear is part of spiritual training. We all have some fears. That's normal. Feeling fear is natural for any being that has even the slightest preference of any kind, which is pretty much all sentient beings right there. The important thing is to not allow fear to sit at the steering wheel of your ship. Don't let fear make your decisions for you. It's true that society may collapse but it's also true that you can get hit by a bus or lightning at any moment. But is panic the right attitude for this insight? It's good to be aware of one's mortality so as to not waste precious time, but at the same time, if you're panicking or feel frenzied, that's an undesirable lower reaction that you should not indulge yourself in if you can help it. Fear should teach you to be diligent and attentive rather than hurried. Don't hurry, but don't needlessly waste time either, and you'll be OK. Avoid the extremes.

Why is it such an either/or, 1 or 0, black or white choice for you? How about this approach: 1. Get a job you enjoy. It doesn't have to be a dream job, but it should at least be moderately enjoyable to you. (Or start a business that you enjoy.) 2. Pay attention! This "pay attention" bit is what spirituality is all about. Being mindful 24/7 is the source of all wisdom and spiritual power. It's the opposite of being mindless or careless. You'll always have moments for reflection. Even at work you can catch a moment to pause and to reflect or meditate. If you choose this route, your father will not even have to know that you are developing spiritually. He'll just think you are like everyone else. If you want to do nothing but meditate, you have to arrange something to make your situation stable. There are many ways to do it, but if you go this route, get ready for your father's initial unhappiness. How much is spiritual development worth to you? Is it worth pissing off your father? Buddha famously pissed his father off by becoming a homeless ascetic. My advice, since you already seem to be enrolled, is to do your best to pass your classes. Try to graduate. It doesn't matter what your GPA is. Practically no one cares about it. Just do the best you can. Try to at least pass the classes you hate. One way or another, you'll have to learn some skills. College teaches you survival skills in a sense that you can get a job with those skills and earn a living. College also gives you a credential, which while not absolutely necessary, makes life easier. So if you can at all stomach it, hang in there and graduate. Think about it this way. Even if you don't go to college, but instead go into wilderness, you cannot avoid learning survival skills. You'll have to learn how to find water, how to heal yourself, how to hunt and gather food, how to build simple dwellings, how to make a fire and so on. Or let's say you become a bum on the street. That too requires learning. You'll need to learn how the shelter system works, where to get food, where to take a shower and so on. If you think about it, none of this learning is necessarily more pleasant than what you are learning in college. No matter where you go you will be learning things. So basically you will end up with a college-like experience pretty much no matter what. See my point? Spirituality is not diametrically opposed to worldly life. It's not the same as worldliness, true, and sometimes worldly passions can interfere, but in general it's not at odds with the mundane. Even the purest spiritual life has mundane repetition to it, a routine, like getting up every morning. That's mundane too. So I would advise to try to avoid extremes if you can. Try to avoid black or white, 1 or 0 types of choices. It's not an all or nothing proposition. You don't have to polarize your thinking so much. The decision is always yours to make, no matter what you end up deciding.