Owledge

I have come around a lot. I can walk in both worlds. Having experienced great pain enables appreciation for great joy. Lately I have been affected quite a lot by the fact that bullshit has such popular support; by the feeling that the world is chock-full of denial and lies, that I can get hardly anything done unless it's on my own, because the chance of bumping into yet another mask while trying to deal with a mask is so high. You know what they say: It's lonely at the top. Could just as well be rock bottom.

OK, when something triggers my bullshit detector so much, I am tempted to point it out, so I'm gonna comment on those points. Those that I left out will be ones I actually have no objections about, either because I agree or because I wouldn't even know how to comment. 1. Life isn't fair, but it's still good. What is "good"? Try to convince someone in really deep shit all their life that life is "still good". So easy for someone close to death who had an acceptable or better life to say crap like this. This is creating lack of empathy, ignorance to the real problematic stuff going on. 2. When in doubt, just take the next small step. Assuming there's always a next step. What about people who don't see it? 3. Life is too short – enjoy it.. Yeah, and, you know, if you're unhappy ... just don't be. It's so simple, isn't it? 4. Your job won't take care of you when you are sick. Your friends and family will. Unless your job pays well and you can buy the care you need in times of sickness. Furthermore, with a good job your chances of getting sick are reduced. 5. Pay off your credit cards every month. If you can. 6. You don't have to win every argument. Stay true to yourself. How about not having an argument with winning as aim in the first place? Then again, what if being highly competitive is being true to yourself? 7. Cry with someone. It's more healing than crying alone. In times of severe emotional vulnerability, call 1-800-CRYCOMPANION. 8. Save for retirement starting with your first pay check. But don't put the savings in a bank. You could end up SO FUCKING PISSED a couple of decades down the road. 9. When it comes to chocolate, resistance is futile. Another universally accepted Regina-Brett-life wisdom. 10. Make peace with your past so it won't screw up the present. And if you get really good at making peace with your past, people might screw you over all the time in the present. Then you need to make peace even harder. 12. Don't compare your life to others. You have no idea what their journey is all about. Don't believe your personal life wisdoms should apply to those others. Hypocrit. 13. If a relationship has to be a secret, you shouldn't be in it... Because love isn't the most important thing. If you're a negro worker and in love with a white woman, get your shit together. It's wrong. 14 Take a deep breath. It calms the mind. ...until you read my 42 life lessons. 15. Get rid of anything that isn't useful. Clutter weighs you down in many ways. Because beauty is irrelevant. If everybody made efficiency their prime aim, the world would be so much better off. 16. Whatever doesn't kill you really does make you stronger. By adding pain to your psyche that builds strong armor around your emotions. Then you are strong enough to write 42 life lessons without having to care about other people's walk of life. 17. It's never too late to be happy. But it’s all up to you and no one else. Just seen your wife and baby blown to pieces by a tyrant's bomb? It's your choice whether you allow it to get to you. 18. When it comes to going after what you love in life, don't take no for an answer. It is probably forgiveable that with your 90 years age, you've already forgotten what you wrote in #13. 20. Over prepare, then go with the flow. Why do the former when the latter negates it? 23. No one is in charge of your happiness but you. OK, this is really beginning to look like Alzheimer. Remember #17? 24. Frame every so-called disaster with these words 'In five years, will this matter?' Easy to say for someone who's 90 years old. How about caring for stuff regardless of whether you can just sit it out? Because, the answer of whether it will matter in five years is entirely unpredictable and could even depend on how you decide to answer the question. 25. Always choose life. Even if that kills you? 26. Forgive but don’t forget. Forgive ... eventually. At first your unforgivingness might serve as valuable feedback to those who did injustice. 27. What other people think of you is none of your business. It can very easily become it. This bears great risk of being interpreted as "Don't empathize." and thus requires a lot of wisdom when heeded. More wisdom than Regina Brett has. 28. Time heals almost everything. Give time time. And by "almost everything", I mean "some things". But if you extend the timeframe far enough, death will indeed solve any problem. 29. However good or bad a situation is, it will change. Not for you though if it kills you, lol. 30. Don't take yourself so seriously. No one else does.. Wow, you have no fucking idea. People who take themselves very seriously also tend to take others very seriously. 32. Don't audit life. Show up and make the most of it now. Leave it to others to call you careless/evil/sociopath/mass murderer. 33. Growing old beats the alternative -- dying young. So then eternal life would be the most desirable I guess. 34. Your children get only one childhood. Sometimes when they're adults. Or none at all. Or they had a childhood, then lost the spirit, then later in life redoscivered it. Oh wait, that would mean ... #34 is bunk. 35. All that truly matters in the end is that you loved. Spoiler alert: Nothing matters in the end. Or everything. No duality. 36. Get outside every day. Miracles are waiting everywhere. Do you know the definition of "everywhere"? Hint: inside. 37. If we all threw our problems in a pile and saw everyone else's, we'd grab ours back. LOL, not really. Having problems means we haven't solved them yet, because we still need to learn how. Other people more likely have problems that we would know how to solve. 39. The best is yet to come... DEATH. Enjoy yours. 40. No matter how you feel, get up, dress up and show up. In effect: Don't always do what you love. Appointments are important. If you just don't show up, people will think you're a dick. Better show up and act like one to kill the rumors and create facts. 41. Yield. Sometimes? Always? How about resisting? Is this doormat advocacy or just typing-laziness? You don't sound wise just by being brief if there's no point to it. 42. Life isn't tied with a bow, but it's still a gift." Because I didn't pay for this.

Consindering the amount of corruption, lies and deception involved in at least one of those topics, I'm not convinced it is "real". Extremely simplistic, detached from the actual scenario. Apart from that, I consider David Suzuki too narrow-minded, a preacher. I can't express it better what I mean with this, but listening to the guy makes me sigh a little. Let me express a related thought I just had: If there is one fake religion that is more harmful than the Church of Scientology, it's the Church of Science. To those people I tend to say: Set yourself as a positive example.

Could be Tara Strong. Did you see a purple unicorn in your dreams?

You can look, but don't concentrate.

1,2 and 3 already made me lose interest, since it's caring so little to make a reality check, and number 12 then pretty much hammers the nails in the coffin for me.

"By all criteria that we conventionally use to analyze patients, they're dead." Typical corporate marketing video bullshit. No heartbeat doesn't mean dead, it means no heartbeat. I have trouble even watching videos made by GE. ... I sense they are intested in covering a future cybernetics market. And as we know corporations, they'd probably encourage people to get more than what they need. And please stop the overpopulation talk. That's just as problematic a belief system as the climate change craze. With proper management, it would be no problem at all, and also not with proper living conditions, because it's a natural process that a species under heightened survival stress increases procreation rate. Fear-based mindsets further suffering. Only one solution: Making an effort to overcome fear. As many people and as often as possible.

How about... weak lungs = maybe not enough breating due to much distracting acitivity in the head? (intellectual work, worries, stress) low energy = long history of feeling down/frustrated due to burnout caused by being 'stuck' in life? (crudely summarizing) Are those things somehow removing iron from the body? I am considering iron supplementation though. Doesn't hurt to try. Just have to figure out where to get it from without using up too much energy. (I have hazelnuts and almonds here and not craving those though.) As you can see, I can identify psychological origins for my state. But in case there is an effect in both directions, I won't exclude the iron deficiency. (maybe malabsorption?) If the psyche can cause the physical symptoms in this case. But it would have to have been an old problem then. Then again... wouldn't this show in a blood test? Or are minerals gone from the blood a few hours after a meal? (The blood test was done after I got out of bed.) I generally get relatively little sunlight, if that's relevant. But all my psyche problems easily vanish once I do something that gets stuff done. There isn't really a sluggish reaction to those. That's why I'm mainly looking at psychological factors. I can't find it on the net anymore. It's a PDF titled "classification of things according to the theory of the five elements". No dizziness. No tingling. Holding breath: ~ 1 minute. No vision problems. Reduced concentation and memory: Only due to life circumstances. My memory hasn't had much practice and when I have to do stuff like reading or handling complex dynamic variables in a problem, if there's no motivating factor behind it, I get thinking-blockage. This is definitely stuff I want to talk about with a psychotherapist, but finding one (and a suitable one) is one of those very tedious things. I seem to have chronic low blood pressure. Often cold hands/feet (although lately often sweating feet), and the occasional non-annoying level of tinnitus in my left ear. Sometimes when I'm feeling impaired by fatigue, I take a caffeine pill and most of the time that makes me function a bit better, because the fatigue state itself against my intention kinda drags my mood down additionally.

@Freeform Breathing through a straw changed my breath while doing it: I felt muscle tension on the right side next to the lower parts of the spine, and to lesser degrees in some other areas. (Also happens without straw though when breathing in very much.) I don't know where exactly to massage below the ribcage, but I'll do it here and there. I definitely FEEL as if it could indeed be a problem with diaphragm and tension due to emotional stress. At the same time, my caffeine pills are kicking in and I ate some sweets. That seems to have helped a bit in chasing away the blues. I generally feel like fighting a losing battle (again) and almost sick of even trying. Nothing left to do and readily available that represents relaxation. And winter on top of that. Horrible feeling.

Those are some very narrow and special recommendations there. Some of it might not even be feasible. I did have somewhat more craving for Blockhouse burgers lately and I'm often making me some basic instant noodle soup. Most importantly: Those are all not adressing where a sudden deficiency of minerals is supposed to be coming from. I eat a handful of chlorella and spirulina every day as supplement, and my main diet isn't something you'd associate with deficiencies either. Did you assume iron deficiency solely because of assumed low oxygen? You know that it was shown in experiments that high oxygen or low CO2 levels in the blood don't solve yawning? At least Western science states that it's still a mystery to them what causes it in many cases. Before I start hunting for exotic foods (I'm low on energy anyway and dealing with crap as I mentioned), I'd like to understand what's actually going on at the root.

Only started a few days ago though.

After I've read about Eastwood's quite extreme stance towards Michael Moore, involving passive aggression, thinly veiled threats, the picture gets quite clear. Eastwood sees himself as a patriotic GOP guy with anti-warish filmmaking as a personal hobby. It's a troubling cognitive dissonance. He's a dinosaur. Someone who believes that those who caused the problems should solve them without changing their mindset. Anti-war yes, but only in the good old republican patriotic way. Hah. http://www.salon.com/2015/01/26/american_snipers_biggest_lie_clint_eastwood_has_a_delusional_fox_news_problem/

A bunch of people jerking each other off. The host adding a necessary disclaimer of loyalty that he is not a traitor to the glory of their beloved empire. USA is so damn similar to the Roman empire. Well, who did expect anything else? Just look at what architecture and symbology the government has been donning all the time.

I suspect he might have tried so much to make it a balanced movie that he forgot that the truth isn't balanced at all.

Sounds like that other movie about hostage rescue in Iran, where, AFAIK, they gave a brief intro revealing the US misdeeds and then the rest was all like 'But that just for context, what matters now is the heroic acts of our CIA agents.' (And even that being an insult to the Canadians who actually did the main work.)

I've seen a video a while ago and cannot find it anymore. Maybe one of you remembers it. Maybe I remember the title wrong. But I think it was called "The Dharma Trap". It was an animated sketch about someone in a dialogue with others, someone who would claim to have reached ultimate enlightenment and uses that claim/belief for disqualifying any critique he could have. Basically using "It's all an illusion anyway, so I am not doing anything, and you are all deluded" as a reaction to any argument thrown at him, and being trapped in a perpetual cycle of that type of 'reasoning'. I liked that video, because it sheds some light on a problem that can occur in spiritual endeavors/communities. Happened on TTB one or more times, too.

YES! That's it! Thank you!

If two "enlightened" ones still discuss enlightenment, they're not enlightened. And "fence with fencing masters" sounds like the exact antithesis, exactly what I'm saying. Problem is that as soon as the skill in question is intellectual in nature, people's egoes act up. 'Everybody' wants to be a master in that area.

I'm slow ... I'm slow. ... Don't race me, bro!

Just like slave labor is cheaper than automation, for making people docile and complacent the media is cheaper than genetic engineering. ... Hopefully.

Genetics won't create a nicer future. It's just a tool, and its mind-altering capabilities are dubious at best and very likely just as unwise as your robots idea. You said "but I cannot imagine it ever actually happening here... without the aid of major genetic modification.. or robot masters." Stop caring about "everyone" in this regards. Improve yourself out of conviction, regardless of what others do. It's difficult, but the only way to make a better future, because the only thing that prevents it are adherents of an adverse belief system and those who become convinced by it. I myself can be so realistic that it sounds very cynical, but that doesn't mean I have any sympathy for that awareness of things. The more people accept what actually is, the more it gives them potential empowerment to improve things. But acceptance shouldn't lead to favor.

I can imagine it. And there will still be differences, because perception adjusts to the range from one extreme to the other. There will still be problems to solve. But on average humankind can be much nicer. The lack of imagination/belief is exactly what prevents the process from starting. Without believing that the future can look better, you become an agent of the status quo. You have been overpowered by the cynical beliefs of others. Not me. ... And that's part of why my life is so difficult. A vision for a better future is an inconvenience. And people are too much trapped (by themselves, too) in mundane inconveniences to improve the situation. The common rabble thinks with their wallet. Even police in Germany manages to refuse to do work and only do the bare necessities ... not because it's the right thing to do, not out of civil courage ... but because their wages are being cut. They think of themselves as working together - solidarity - but in reality it's a bunch of egoists with a common goal. People who call you a conspiracy nut when you talk about Iran Contra can suddenly vigorously explain they've always known the moon landings were faked if it positively affects their income. Suddenly people 'wisen up'.I call it mercenary mentality. Dirty politicians, all of them.

I do believe she was expecting "Yes we can".

Ascent is not the end of all wisdom if there are mundane problems to be resolved. It can become an escapism. One step at a time is much more effective. And the path is the goal anyway. Try to skip a course if you want. I'll order what's on the menu.

You're versed in Western astrology? How much effort is it to check for things that might be especially noteworthy? If I gave you my chart, could you take a quick glance?