Trading the Myth of Progress for the Myth of Ingress

[Papus79]

I finally have a few minutes after knocking myself out on a particular leg of a programming project and I've been taking some refreshment time on Youtube to watch a few things that came across my feed - in particular a few channels where I have to say a few sponsored hikers have been doing a phenomenal job, cinematically, of tracking their hikes. One guy in particular did this with Torres de Paine and Santa Cruz Peru, amazing stuff and a clever little turn of phrase hit me - I'm clearly more of a glacier-person than a people-person. I've had the good fortune to get my taste buds wet for that sort of thing and maybe this year's Covid pandemic means I might want to get out and hike more this summer.

The other bit that's been turning over in my head is the notion that we are more than likely heading for, if not a deep recession, quite likely a depression of some level. Additionally I think of the nature of the Covid epidemic and what it's psychologically doing. I reflect back on reading John Gray's 'Soul of the Marionette' last year when I was waiting on a connecting flight between Denver and Calgary (headed to Banff for a tour from there to Vancouver) and he got into the religious substrate for something he tends to rip on more than most other things - ie. the 'myth of progress'. In that book in so many ways I think he identified something like the Gnostic escapism compulsion being rooted in technocracy and especially transhumanism (not a news when it comes to his previous writing) and I can see where through the course of the 20th century we started off a the end of the 19th believing the technocratic version of the 1960's or 1970's human potential 'we can do anything', to which WWI, WWII, Stalinism, and Maoism had clarified that we can at least 'try' anything, and will, and then what we try finally makes contact with reality - which is far more often than not a nightmare.

I was born in late 1979 so I'm on the cusp where I'm somewhere between gen X'er and millenial and for what I can remember of the public signalling I have to ask - is it just me or were we sort of on a diaphenous 2.0 version of 'technology can... maybe... solve everything... or we'll keep our fingers crossed....', thankfully that doesn't seem - so far - to be ending as quite as dark of a place as our last big run at progress but it still ends up with nature, whether evolutionary wiring in humans or just nature in the case of natural disaster, showing us that we're only a part of the world's machinery and that we can be humbled quite easily.

Is it likely that we're going to go into a very sort of self-deprecating 'make fun of ourselves before we can be let down' third grand run at it or do you think our myth of progress is going to transform in some significant way?

I'm not saying we'd throw away technology, used right it's what keep us well-fed, polite, and civil. Thinking of John Gray as I mentioned above and some of his conversations with James Lovelock, where they sort of got to in their dialogs, we're headed somewhere that won't be necessarily of our making *thankfully* won't be the chrome plated desert of the Beyond 2000 bumper or Naibu in Star Wars but far more a place where we take more of our meaning from our race's dialog with nature. In posting this the idea of calling that - as a structure the 'Myth of Ingress' seemed to fit because it's not 'progress' in the way we're used to thinking of it, ie. dominating the universe to either remake it in our image or escape it. At the same time It's not 'regress' either in the sense that giving up technology in the full sense is neither wanted nor desired but we're likely to have a significant shift in our sense of priorities. A 'Myth of Ingress' is another 'gress', ie. it's movement in a particular direction, but it's a dialing-in perhaps on our relationships with our environment and perhaps not just having that for our weekend or summer/winter excursions from where where Monday thru Friday it's full-stop myth of progress, something more like that same dialog between us and land, us and space, us and nature, permeating more of our 9 to 5.

It's hard for me to think of exactly what that will mean, but it seems like what will happen if we internalize the notion that if we want to survive as a species, with nature, we not only need to be able to roll with the punches but dance with them and make that dance part of our lives. Yes, better to come up with vaccines for terrible diseases, better to find as many ways as we still can to decrease human suffering, but similarly it's a good time for us to increase our priority on find finding ways to decrease our environmental load, ways to side step natural disasters or let them pass through or around us without resistance rather than crush into our structures. It's a bit like being less like stone and more like water.

All of that I'm sure sounds fuzzy, it is to me right now but it seems like there's a taste of something like that in the air, or at least a strong potential of it. Would be curious to know what your thoughts are (if you read this far without gagging).

[Terrapin Station]

One thing we'd better get out of this is a restructuring of our health care systems, especially so we're able to quickly increase the amount of people we can treat in an emergency, and so that we're more or less able to treat millions at the drop of a hat.

In this situation, we were able to make moves to slow down the influx of people needing medical treatment. In many other situations we'll surely face sooner or later--things like supervolcano eruptions, comet or asteroid impacts, large-scale terrorist attacks, etc., we'd not be able to slow anything down. So we'd better be prepared. This pandemic has shown just how ill-prepared our health care systems are.

The ability to suddenly treat millions of people certainly isn't the only issue with our health care systems, but it's a big problem nonetheless.

[Papus79]

Agreed, and I'm thinking a really good way to look at it - technology to flexibly handle very different bandwidths. I liked the way Jordan Hall when he was on Rebel Wisdom recently compared this economy and its actors to saber toothed tigers, very powerful apex predators of a very fixed environment and absolutely 'killed it' at what they did until the environment changed and they went extinct along with everything else. We're learning a particular kind of lesson about ossified/rigid specialization.

[Gertie]

I can see where through the course of the 20th century we started off a the end of the 19th believing the technocratic version of the 1960's or 1970's human potential 'we can do anything', to which WWI, WWII, Stalinism, and Maoism had clarified that we can at least 'try' anything, and will, and then what we try finally makes contact with reality - which is far more often than not a nightmare.

I don't think 20th Century Modernism had answers to these sort of lived Big Problems, or the fundamental questions raised by Einstein, Freud, or Nietsche's death of god. And we haven't found a replacement to either faith in religion or science to coalesce around.

So we're in this no-man's-land where the old certainties of progress in this world, or salvation in the next, look frail. And we're seeing all kinds of responses to that, but no settled answers. Perhaps because reality isn't that tidily comforting, that's my opinion anyway. But there's a huge desire for tidy answers, a new consensus might emerge, even in our complex globalised world of tribes and atomised indiviualism.

A major paradigm shifting technological breakthrough could be it, which satisfies this need in us. But for now we're in muddling through mode, and catastrophes don't seem to shake us into collective consciousness raising. And climate change looks likely to shift from abstract to very real before that moves us, and then it will be in crisis mode, and resource shortages don't generally bring out the best in people.

As you can probably tell I'm not everso optimistic! I'm British, and we just voted against a party giving us the chance to embrace kindness and fairness, a chance to experiment with creating a better future. We voted for a mini-me Trump instead. An infantalised population looking for a dysfunctional Daddy to sort it all out for us. That's where we're at.

[Sy Borg]

As humans place ever more of their knowledge in machine storage and rely on machines to do ever more for them, the machines will naturally become progressively smarter and more capable while humans become progressively dumber and less capable. More reliant. Increasingly subject to algorithms rather than human judgement. Sadly, in today's post-truth social environment, that will probably overall be an improvement on the status quo.

[creation]

If we just lived, mentally, with only what we 'need', like we did before we became greedy and started living for what we 'wanted' instead, then we will transgress back to our naturally inherent way, which is against all of these human created immoral laws and behaviors that we now live with.

[Papus79]

If we just lived, mentally, with only what we 'need', like we did before we became greedy and started living for what we 'wanted' instead, then we will transgress back to our naturally inherent way, which is against all of these human created immoral laws and behaviors that we now live with.

I'm starting to actually wonder if the greed/avarice issue might be something more like our cravings for fats and sugars, that is for nearly all of human history most people lived in dire privation and needed to be incredibly parsimonious to stay alive. That didn't set us up with the best impulses to have the kind of society we have now and so the question perhaps is this more of an epigenetic sort of thing that can actually improve within a few generations. I'd hope so but it's something of a 'wait and see' and obviously if we slip into neo-feudalism or a new dark age that re-emerges us back in the situation that caused us to be like this to begin with.

[creation]

If we just lived, mentally, with only what we 'need', like we did before we became greedy and started living for what we 'wanted' instead, then we will transgress back to our naturally inherent way, which is against all of these human created immoral laws and behaviors that we now live with.

I'm starting to actually wonder if the greed/avarice issue might be something more like our cravings for fats and sugars, that is for nearly all of human history most people lived in dire privation and needed to be incredibly parsimonious to stay alive. That didn't set us up with the best impulses to have the kind of society we have now and so the question perhaps is this more of an epigenetic sort of thing that can actually improve within a few generations. I'd hope so but it's something of a 'wait and see' and obviously if we slip into neo-feudalism or a new dark age that re-emerges us back in the situation that caused us to be like this to begin with.

Because of the amount of uncommon, to the non-educated like thy 'self', words that you use, then I do not know for sure what you are actually saying and meaning here. And, honestly I could not be bothered clarifying for now. However, once the knowledge is gained and truly and fully understood about how and why each of us became the extremely and very greedy person, which we all are, then through our deeper underlying love and devotion for our off-spring, then the two, True knowledge and love, combined sets us back on the right path and track in Life. Taking us ALL back to where we once started, and want to be anyway. Living in peace and harmony with one another.

Like you alluded to there is a very long history of human beings heading and going down the greedy and selfish path in Life, but this was ALL absolutely necessary in order to truly and fully learn and understand what is actually true, right, and correct in Life, and more importantly WHY, which, when we actually turn things around for the better properly and correctly, which we will, then it will only take a generation or two to turn everything back around be then be full steam ahead to where we all want to be.

Doing 'that' what takes us ALL to be where we ALL truly desire and want to be anyway, then there is no going back to that old, greedy way of life, and living. This is because of the HOW and the WHY that got us on such a wrong, distorted, and perverted path and way in Life is fully understood. But, as the old sayings go, 'We can only fix a problem when we admit that we have a problem', 'Only when we are being Truly open and honest' can we be and learn and know our True Selves', and, 'We have to solve our own problems and fix our own selves before we can help others'. We have to fix ourselves before we can fix others, and if we do not yet know our True Selves, then how can we Truly help others?

Learning what 'it' is exactly why 'we', as a species, have become so greedy, selfish, and wrongdoing, then teaches us how to be, and thus ultimately teach, what is actually truly right and good in Life for EVERY one. Teaching and being right and good is our True natural instinct and way of living, so once we gain that knowledge, then we will ALL only being what 'it' IS that we ALL Truly want and desire anyway, and NOT doing against our natural wishes and desires like we have been for "most of human history", or for at least thousands upon thousands of years now.

When 'we' take greed out of society, then society, life, and living will start instantly heading towards being such a Truly a better, stress-less, non-fighting, non-warring, pollution-free way of Being.

[Papus79]

A big part of me thinks it's a big mistake to be responding to this at all but here I am...

Because of the amount of uncommon, to the non-educated like thy 'self', words that you use, then I do not know for sure what you are actually saying and meaning here.

Not a good place to start, with me or anyone else for that matter.

Like you alluded to there is a very long history of human beings heading and going down the greedy and selfish path in Life, but this was ALL absolutely necessary in order to truly and fully learn and understand what is actually true, right, and correct in Life, and more importantly WHY, which, when we actually turn things around for the better properly and correctly, which we will, then it will only take a generation or two to turn everything back around be then be full steam ahead to where we all want to be.

How this proceeds depends on how divergent your origin story is for humanity.

I take the Darwinian evolution origin story - that the moment life (in the oceans) left a vegetative state it went through plenty of phases, probably the majority of life's history, where life was a perpetual arms race to survive. In the last so many million years (33 million used to be the figure for the earliest traces of the pre-human line, don't know what the figure is now) it's roughly been the same. To some degree when we had our intelligence explosion toward abstract thought (historically marked around 60,000 years ago) there were mixed results - some of those being tribal warfare for land and perpetual arms race, some of it peaceful villages, all of them that we know of with some sort of shamanistic / animistic story or set of rituals but ultimately living very close to the land and survival.

The agricultural revolution changed a lot of things, the agricultural revolution may have started 10,000 BC, it may have been started earlier and bombed out by comet impact (eg. Graham Hancock and Randall Carlson - not a crazy theory per say unless one posits something like Blavatski and Bailey's super-advanced Atlantis Theosophy story). Ever since the agricultural revolution we had cities springing up, human management of other humans, from there you have various utilization of organized religious mythos. Since animism and shamanism weren't something you could hierarchically organize large groups of people in and out of urban and city state situations you had the first axial revolution where origins of our 'Big 5' world religions come from.

One of the troubles we have, trying to establish human good will universally, is that nature only sees power. That seems just as true in a reductive materialist setting as it is in a pantheistic setting and the only story that seems like it would negate that are Abrahamic theisms, where it would be suggested that a very self-conscious and self-aware deity spends all of His time staring at earth and that our social dynamics, suffering, even going concern (non-extinction) is of his utmost concern, ie. every individual soul. Any in-depth look at history seems to rule out Abrahamic theism from that perspective - so we're back to a state of nature where nature only sees power.

The trouble with power - it's indifferent to decency. In a way someone whose armed with inescapable logic is no more capable of persuading others or unifying others than the person who has a lie that speaks to the needs of their own genes and their tribe or family's genes - and if someone comes to them speaking truth there's nothing forcing them to listen, in fact it's easier for them to kill that person if there's no larger social contract preventing them from doing so (at least if they'd get caught).

Really the whole history of just about every civilization that Earth has ever seen is checkered with genocide, and part of the reason for that is that morality and moral non-hypocrisy only applies to the in-group (so the sane moral standard or any kind of 'golden rule' need not be applied to other tribes) and then genetically within the in group there's the weak, the disabled, the less intelligent, and even the generally misunderstood which that society can't integrate - morality only extends to how society treats them in the most feeble manner and in many cases treating them terribly and taking everything from them has been perfectly fine - so long as one can twist together some sort of excuse, a great example of that during medieval, Renaissance, and even American colonial times was accusations of witchcraft where if society had really broken its contract with someone and they were properly embarrassed or just feared that the person might come back for retribution, or - even worse - if that person had been somewhat successful anyway and they just wanted a good excuse to raid what that second-class citizen they could just burn them at the stake, bury them under rocks, give them a Star Chamber Court swimming lesson, very tidy and expedient problem-solving that (almost as thrifty as knocking a hooker out with a baseball bat and burying her in Grand Theft Auto if you don't want to pay for her services).

When 'we' take greed out of society, then society, life, and living will start instantly heading towards being such a Truly a better, stress-less, non-fighting, non-warring, pollution-free way of Being.

You can probably see from some of what I said above - I think humanity is incorrigible for the most part even under phenomenal economic prosperity.

I think the only way we could get ourselves together again, even for just two or three generations who could remember it, is if we came within inches of going completely extinct and that every single one of us realized it. The question then is - what could be done to ensconce that understanding so deeply into the public conscious that three or four generations later we wouldn't be right back to living in a world where America or any other country wasn't just 'magic soil' where nothing bad can happen no matter how badly we louse things up because....well...common...we're us!. That sort of pathological narcissism seems like its almost part-in-parcel with our survival mechanisms and what's worse, if we ever had any serious hope of our cultural institutions guiding us, anywhere power exists is precisely the place where the least qualified, most egotistical, and most violent tend to gravitate and that process continues until that institution turns into a den of thieves.

The only other hope I can think of is CRISPR-Cas9 or some type of gene editing fixing the problem. Otherwise if the human inclination to make dishonest gains, climb the hierarchy by dishonest gains, and win the game of finding a mate and creating offspring by dishonest gains ever again finds open doors and potential (which it will even in a totalitarian state - just through the central government) then we'll perpetually end up back where we started which is a culture where nearly everyone agrees in their profound hatred of not only just anyone who openly speaks the truth but anyone who even so much as vibes up as if they have inner integrity. The high water mark of achievement in the 'gene' game seems to be rape and murder, and unfortunately the farther that game gets into taking culture, through lies and chicanery, the more human civilization turns right back toward being precisely what you see in the wild - ie. where a truth-seeking organism, in competition with an equally complex organism that sees none of the truth and only fitness payouts, will be beaten by the fitness-payout maximizer every time.

[creation]

A big part of me thinks it's a big mistake to be responding to this at all but here I am...

Because of the amount of uncommon, to the non-educated like thy 'self', words that you use, then I do not know for sure what you are actually saying and meaning here.

Not a good place to start, with me or anyone else for that matter.

Like you alluded to there is a very long history of human beings heading and going down the greedy and selfish path in Life, but this was ALL absolutely necessary in order to truly and fully learn and understand what is actually true, right, and correct in Life, and more importantly WHY, which, when we actually turn things around for the better properly and correctly, which we will, then it will only take a generation or two to turn everything back around be then be full steam ahead to where we all want to be.

How this proceeds depends on how divergent your origin story is for humanity.

I take the Darwinian evolution origin story - that the moment life (in the oceans) left a vegetative state it went through plenty of phases, probably the majority of life's history, where life was a perpetual arms race to survive. In the last so many million years (33 million used to be the figure for the earliest traces of the pre-human line, don't know what the figure is now) it's roughly been the same. To some degree when we had our intelligence explosion toward abstract thought (historically marked around 60,000 years ago) there were mixed results - some of those being tribal warfare for land and perpetual arms race, some of it peaceful villages, all of them that we know of with some sort of shamanistic / animistic story or set of rituals but ultimately living very close to the land and survival.

The agricultural revolution changed a lot of things, the agricultural revolution may have started 10,000 BC, it may have been started earlier and bombed out by comet impact (eg. Graham Hancock and Randall Carlson - not a crazy theory per say unless one posits something like Blavatski and Bailey's super-advanced Atlantis Theosophy story). Ever since the agricultural revolution we had cities springing up, human management of other humans, from there you have various utilization of organized religious mythos. Since animism and shamanism weren't something you could hierarchically organize large groups of people in and out of urban and city state situations you had the first axial revolution where origins of our 'Big 5' world religions come from.

One of the troubles we have, trying to establish human good will universally, is that nature only sees power. That seems just as true in a reductive materialist setting as it is in a pantheistic setting and the only story that seems like it would negate that are Abrahamic theisms, where it would be suggested that a very self-conscious and self-aware deity spends all of His time staring at earth and that our social dynamics, suffering, even going concern (non-extinction) is of his utmost concern, ie. every individual soul. Any in-depth look at history seems to rule out Abrahamic theism from that perspective - so we're back to a state of nature where nature only sees power.

Where and when did this "nature only sees power" idea or view come into the picture here?

The only ones that see power are animals, and especially it is really only the human ones that do.

Nature does not see anything. Nature just does what nature does.

The trouble with power - it's indifferent to decency. In a way someone whose armed with inescapable logic is no more capable of persuading others or unifying others than the person who has a lie that speaks to the needs of their own genes and their tribe or family's genes - and if someone comes to them speaking truth there's nothing forcing them to listen, in fact it's easier for them to kill that person if there's no larger social contract preventing them from doing so (at least if they'd get caught).

But that is not power in and of itself.

That is just a human being killing another human being because of a lie or because of an illogical reason. That was not power. That was just stupidity.

Really the whole history of just about every civilization that Earth has ever seen is checkered with genocide, and part of the reason for that is that morality and moral non-hypocrisy only applies to the in-group (so the sane moral standard or any kind of 'golden rule' need not be applied to other tribes) and then genetically within the in group there's the weak, the disabled, the less intelligent, and even the generally misunderstood which that society can't integrate - morality only extends to how society treats them in the most feeble manner and in many cases treating them terribly and taking everything from them has been perfectly fine - so long as one can twist together some sort of excuse, a great example of that during medieval, Renaissance, and even American colonial times was accusations of witchcraft where if society had really broken its contract with someone and they were properly embarrassed or just feared that the person might come back for retribution, or - even worse - if that person had been somewhat successful anyway and they just wanted a good excuse to raid what that second-class citizen they could just burn them at the stake, bury them under rocks, give them a Star Chamber Court swimming lesson, very tidy and expedient problem-solving that (almost as thrifty as knocking a hooker out with a baseball bat and burying her in Grand Theft Auto if you don't want to pay for her services).

I am not sure what you are wanting to express here, other than your own personalized version of 'history'.

When 'we' take greed out of society, then society, life, and living will start instantly heading towards being such a Truly a better, stress-less, non-fighting, non-warring, pollution-free way of Being.

You can probably see from some of what I said above - I think humanity is incorrigible for the most part even under phenomenal economic prosperity.

I hope what is actually obvious here is you are only obviously talking about the past whereas I am obviously talking about the future?

Also, what you think and assume has no bearing on what is True regarding 'Reality', Itself. Especially considering every Assumption you are making here is based solely on Past Experiences.

I think the only way we could get ourselves together again, even for just two or three generations who could remember it, is if we came within inches of going completely extinct and that every single one of us realized it.

Well we are, relatively speaking, not to far away from this scenario now anyway.

And like you are hinting to, it is not until we are on our "death bed", individually and collectively, that most wish we had more time to do things, and that we would have done things differently, if we had our time over again.

If we knew how to do things differently, which would have led us to a far longer and far more happier life, then obviously we would have. So, now is the time to discover and learn just HOW we could have done things far more differently, and HOW we could and would be living now if we had.

The question then is - what could be done to ensconce that understanding so deeply into the public conscious that three or four generations later we wouldn't be right back to living in a world where America or any other country wasn't just 'magic soil' where nothing bad can happen no matter how badly we louse things up because....well...common...we're us!.

Discover and/or learning HOW and WHY you do 'what is wrong in Life' ensconces people to understand so deeply HOW and WHY to only do 'what is right in Life'.

Until you either discover or learn WHY you are continually doing what is wrong in Life, then you will never KNOW why you do what you do, and WHY it is naturally just so wrong.

The reason human beings will not louse things up again is because they will FULLY understand what is right and what is wrong in Life. As of now just about every adult human being has no understanding of what is actually right and actually wrong in Life.

They will also understand absolutely obvious things like there is no place where nothing bad can happen, and to want or wish for that is just an absolute absurdity itself.

That sort of pathological narcissism seems like its almost part-in-parcel with our survival mechanisms and what's worse, if we ever had any serious hope of our cultural institutions guiding us, anywhere power exists is precisely the place where the least qualified, most egotistical, and most violent tend to gravitate and that process continues until that institution turns into a den of thieves.

Well that sort of pathological narcissism is only bred into a human being while they are alive and existing. That is not bred into the genetics of a human body.

And, thinking that any one "cultural institution" will guide anyone to what is right in Life is just a narcissistic absurdity itself. There is no one person nor no one culture that can guide anyone to what is true and right in Life. The knowledge of what is true, right, and good is within ALL of us, and thus it is a shared common knowledge. Although at the moment of when this is being written obviously this is completely unconscious knowledge to most people.

Again 'power' is just a human idea, which some want to have over others. The only True power is the power one has over one's self, and not over another. Thinking that one can have any real and true power over another is just illogical and irrational thinking at its best.

The only other hope I can think of is CRISPR-Cas9 or some type of gene editing fixing the problem.

The solution that will solve all of your problems does not come in the form of anything genetically.

Also, if you are trying to use history or your past experiences to 'think' of any 'hope', then you will not find any thing.

I have alluded to what the actual and only 'problem' really is, and how to fix and solve this one and only problem.

If you did not notice it, cannot see it, and/or do not want to recognize it, then so be it. But, you 'thinking' that you can 'think' your way out of this age old 'problem' of human beings hitherto doing wrong, then that will not suffice and so will never work.

Otherwise if the human inclination to make dishonest gains, climb the hierarchy by dishonest gains, and win the game of finding a mate and creating offspring by dishonest gains ever again finds open doors and potential (which it will even in a totalitarian state - just through the central government)

'States' and 'governments' are not any solution to human made problems. These things in fact cause and grow more problems along the way.

then we'll perpetually end up back where we started which is a culture where nearly everyone agrees in their profound hatred of not only just anyone who openly speaks the truth but anyone who even so much as vibes up as if they have inner integrity. The high water mark of achievement in the 'gene' game seems to be rape and murder, and unfortunately the farther that game gets into taking culture, through lies and chicanery, the more human civilization turns right back toward being precisely what you see in the wild - ie. where a truth-seeking organism, in competition with an equally complex organism that sees none of the truth and only fitness payouts, will be beaten by the fitness-payout maximizer every time.

Well I have only spoken Truth, and I am yet to be beaten. I may not yet be FULLY listened to, and so I may not yet have been FULLY heard nor FULLY understood, but I am obviously NOT yet beaten.

So, you can 'try' as hard as you like and 'try' as much as you like to believe that the genetically stronger, or that lies and deception, will ALWAYS win out, but your belief in such things is just as weak, irrational, and illogical as your belief in that we can never live Truly in peace and harmony forever more is.

You can keep attempting to fight and argue for such things, but eventually you will tire and/or die out.

[Papus79]

The only other hope might be structural, ie. shift people back to Dunbar's number-sized villages connected by internet, places where everyone knows everyone and where there's no anonymity that one can burn through.

For mysticism, spirituality, moral excellence on an individual level - that's a private matter which is true, anyone who can take that up makes the world one person better but the people who would do that, for the most part, already aren't the problem - which is precisely why taking the world we have, as it's structured, and asking people to think about doing things differently has no prayer of doing anything more than preaching to the choir.

[creation]

The only other hope might be structural, ie. shift people back to Dunbar's number-sized villages connected by internet, places where everyone knows everyone and where there's no anonymity that one can burn through.

If that is the "only other hope" you can see, then you are not very open.

I can see plenty of other things, which will actually cause and create a Truly peaceful and harmonious "world" for EVERY one. But I do look at and see things in a much different way than most do.

For mysticism, spirituality, moral excellence on an individual level - that's a private matter which is true, anyone who can take that up makes the world one person better but the people who would do that, for the most part, already aren't the problem - which is precisely why taking the world we have, as it's structured, and asking people to think about doing things differently has no prayer of doing anything more than preaching to the choir.

Lucky no one here, that I know of anyway, is asking anyone to think about doing things differently than what they want to really do.

You really do appear to be completely missing things here. But this is probably because of your very narrowed view of things here?

[Papus79]

If that is the "only other hope" you can see, then you are not very open.

I can see plenty of other things, which will actually cause and create a Truly peaceful and harmonious "world" for EVERY one. But I do look at and see things in a much different way than most do.

A funny thing can be said of people who see myriad answers to the world's problems and stand back agast that everyone else is so closed minded.

Strangely I spent a good portion of my life thinking positively and not being able to figure out why people were instinctively so mean. By dint of good luck my parents didn't abuse me but beyond that I went from maybe having a fairly good grasp on humans being simple apes and all of this being mould growing on a rock under a heat lamp to continuing to then have mystical experiences that suggested against reductive materialist forms of physicalism, just to have it then thrown back at me that yes - these are apes that can see very little past getting their genes into the next generation. Under the social fakery a great many of them hate each other, want to see each other dead, and coming to be that pragmatic they then feel total disgust when they encounter honesty or integrity in another person and almost instinctively need to destroy it.

To have a wide array of answers to the world's problems is a call to do some soul-searching and perhaps check those assumptions against people as they exist, not as you could conceive of them being. Your imagination, even if it hypothetically had some effect on nature when no one was looking, still would have very little effect on other people's imaginations past your interactions with them in the world of physical, visual, and auditory communication (unless you decide to break out some grimoires and call up jinn or the demonic hierarchies but that's its own set of problems).

The other thing I'd say - maybe as a shorter and perhaps even more digestible version of the above - Communism looked great on paper too.

Lucky no one here, that I know of anyway, is asking anyone to think about doing things differently than what they want to really do.

Then, simply put, you're seeing people as empty vessels and projecting yourself into the unknown. My honest opinion - thinking that way you'll be overly trusting, get taken (badly), and end up in a wreck at the bottom. You have to actually see the fundamentally predatory nature in at least 1/3 of the population, how it makes absolute coward of anyone else, and how honesty tends to go out the window. The mentality in George Orwell's 1984 says it well.

You really do appear to be completely missing things here. But this is probably because of your very narrowed view of things here?

No, I'm just not agreeing with you on observation, no idea if our facts line up or not but then again you've mostly just been dropping vague platitudes so I can't tell what the assumptions are that you're actually running on aside from that you seem to not understand why everyone's doing everything completely wrong. I came to see why (John Gray's book Straw Dogs encapsulates beautifully and phrases it better than I could) and it's profoundly depressing.

[creation]

If that is the "only other hope" you can see, then you are not very open.

I can see plenty of other things, which will actually cause and create a Truly peaceful and harmonious "world" for EVERY one. But I do look at and see things in a much different way than most do.

A funny thing can be said of people who see myriad answers to the world's problems and stand back agast that everyone else is so closed minded.

Well lucky that I am NOT one of those agast at WHY you and others are so CLOSED.

Also, "closed minded" is a completely WRONG term to use. But this is for another discussion. Unless of course you want to discuss this?

Strangely I spent a good portion of my life thinking positively and not being able to figure out why people were instinctively so mean. By dint of good luck my parents didn't abuse me but beyond that I went from maybe having a fairly good grasp on humans being simple apes and all of this being mould growing on a rock under a heat lamp to continuing to then have mystical experiences that suggested against reductive materialist forms of physicalism, just to have it then thrown back at me that yes - these are apes that can see very little past getting their genes into the next generation.

I would not be so sure about your parents not abusing you.

From my perspective, I can see how you have been very abused, although you are not yet able to see this yourself.

Under the social fakery a great many of them hate each other, want to see each other dead, and coming to be that pragmatic they then feel total disgust when they encounter honesty or integrity in another person and almost instinctively need to destroy it.

To have a wide array of answers to the world's problems is a call to do some soul-searching and perhaps check those assumptions against people as they exist, not as you could conceive of them being.

But there is really only One Answer that will solve all of human beings problems, which they label as being the "world's problems".

Your imagination, even if it hypothetically had some effect on nature when no one was looking, still would have very little effect on other people's imaginations past your interactions with them in the world of physical, visual, and auditory communication (unless you decide to break out some grimoires and call up jinn or the demonic hierarchies but that's its own set of problems).

Wow your imagination here is really skewed and way off absolutely anything I have been saying, and meaning here.

The other thing I'd say - maybe as a shorter and perhaps even more digestible version of the above - Communism looked great on paper too.

Did it?

This ALSO is way off absolutely anything I have been saying, and meaning here.

Some people have really become completely incapable of just looking at and just seeing the actual words I use, without putting their own distorted, skewed, and wrong thinking and views onto what I am actually saying, and meaning.

Lucky no one here, that I know of anyway, is asking anyone to think about doing things differently than what they want to really do.

Then, simply put, you're seeing people as empty vessels and projecting yourself into the unknown.

No. That is another completely and utterly WRONG assumption that you are making here.

My honest opinion - thinking that way you'll be overly trusting, get taken (badly), and end up in a wreck at the bottom.

Well luckily I am NOT thinking that way at all.

By the way, are you are all OPEN to anything other than what you assume and/or believe is true?

You have to actually see the fundamentally predatory nature in at least 1/3 of the population, how it makes absolute coward of anyone else, and how honesty tends to go out the window.

But I can SEE and ALREADY KNOW the learned predatory so called "nature" in ALL adult human beings. I KNOW how it got there. I KNOW where it came from. And, I KNOW why those people cannot see it nor yet even understand it.

I also ALREADY KNOW perfectly well WHY FULL honesty does not exist within an adult human being, in the days of when this is being written.

The mentality in George Orwell's 1984 says it well.

Okay.

You really do appear to be completely missing things here. But this is probably because of your very narrowed view of things here?

No, I'm just not agreeing with you on observation, no idea if our facts line up or not but then again you've mostly just been dropping vague platitudes so I can't tell what the assumptions are that you're actually running on aside from that you seem to not understand why everyone's doing everything completely wrong.

Have I ever said or suggested that everyone is doing everything completely wrong?

If yes, then where?

If thee Truth be KNOWN absolutely EVERY one is doing EXACTLY what they are meant to be doing, so that one day, relatively soon, EVERY one can and will learn WHY what is right and what is wrong in Life IS 'what is wrong and what is right in Life'.

I came to see why (John Gray's book Straw Dogs encapsulates beautifully and phrases it better than I could) and it's profoundly depressing.

What is the 'it' exactly, which you are referring to here?

[Papus79]

I would not be so sure about your parents not abusing you.

From my perspective, I can see how you have been very abused, although you are not yet able to see this yourself.

I genuinely don't care to prove that to someone on an internet forum. My advice - believe whatever closes the circuit for ya, it's what you're going to do anyway.

As far as everything else - I can't be arsed to even worry about what it is you believe or what 'truth' only you and a select few are seeing. People who have discussions on this board actually put their sacred cows up for examination - if they chose to talk about a given topic and take other people's beliefs and ideas on in any sort of opposition to them. When and if you learn to do that and do it politely your posts *might* be interesting. Until that point it's going to be half a page at go of empty can rattling.