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techstepgenr8tion
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10 May 2020, 1:12 pm

I don't know about any of you, one of the things that does my head in with life and it's a push-pull with respect to survival, it both gives meaning to life in it's better moments but then makes me vulnerable to predation on the other side, is how 'gentle' life is when we're by ourselves with our physical needs met.

It's a bit like I can be going to bed, be under the comforter, and some horribly naive sense that 'the universe loves me' can set in to my deeper machinery, then I fire up my work laptop, see some of the emails that come through, the entitlement of 'sharp elbows' where if you're not violent or carrying the threat of violence you can be whipped to death while doing work they could never do in their wildest dreams and they can stack expectations up to the moon because they're living gods, you're a slave, your mom should have miscarried if you dare inconvenience them, and after a few hours of cursing existence and wishing the light of consciousness would go out on the universe for all of eternity you go back to bed, back under the comforter, where something in you is smiling and telling you that God loves you.

The thing that drives me absolutely mad about that - it's not a gap I can close. There's no squaring it. Zero consistency. It's a bit like this is almost a sort of proof that any sort of convergence we'd want, technically a convergence I've always sought, of being able to house my core/internal center of gravity as a human being in a particular place that optimally handles all problems and is optimally prepared to handle all problems from the most 'high road' level available - is literally impossible as these problem domains are mutually exclusive at the deepest levels.

What's most disturbing to me - that's genuinely a place where you can't 'have it all', a bit like you can either have a soul and be a slave or be a soulless sadist and own the slaves but going back to some of the old adages from the patriarchs of my family - the 'there's two types of people in this world - hammers and nails' - it's as if you can't be a hammer without becoming a hammer in every sense, at most you'll just become..what... a bolt?..., you can't simply have the moral priorities of being a nail all the while taking on the firepower of a hammer to prevent other hammers from smashing you like a nail. What's involved in taking on that firepower seems to destroy the perspective that made the 'nail' morality possible and it comes down to that need to have a legion of demons on a leash to terrify the world with - and if you don't have that legion of demons on a leash to terrify the world with you're just a nail playing Halloween dress-up.

That makes me wonder how many proper psychopaths and sadists go to bed and feel like their blankets are a warm hug from God at the end of the day, and just how permanently unresolvable a mystery we might be sitting on top of. Especially if we would ever hope for deep problem solving in our culture the most worrying thing about this - the domains can't be 'transcended and included' in the way Ken Wilbur's system of 'integral' thinking would suggest. That thought horrifies me because it means no one can be guarded or protected on all flanks - ie. anything you become both closes one set of vulnerabilities and opens a brand new set, and trying to move through those hoping to grab up all the goods and all the strengths to cover all of your vulnerabilities almost seems like it's Sisyphian in nature. The death of any ability to 'transcend and include' seems like it's, if not the last nearly the last, nail in the coffin for my more transcendental or 'gnostic' impulses to believe that through wisdom and learning I can somehow transcend the world's problems. Some knowledge might give me some left if it translates into economic power or job stability but there's not a lot else. What I have learned might help some people whose interior lives are a wreck or survive living or working in an environment so dysfunctional that they just about need to drop acid on the weekend to stay sane, but it still points to the notion - anyone can be thrown in a gulag or whatever else or get trampled by nature and it's a fantasy to believe that preparation actually has the power to save you in all events.

Maybe I need to start accepting that about reality and perhaps about the fundamental nature of the rest of my life - ie. that the gaps in reality I wanted to close can't be closed because they exist in mutually exclusive domains, ie. like hoping to mix yellow and purple together to get a purplish-yellow or blue and orange together to get a blueish-orange.


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10 May 2020, 1:28 pm

techstepgenr8tion wrote:
I don't know about any of you, one of the things that does my head in with life and it's a push-pull with respect to survival, it both gives meaning to life in it's better moments but then makes me vulnerable to predation on the other side, is how 'gentle' life is when we're by ourselves with our physical needs met.

It's a bit like I can be going to bed, be under the comforter, and some horribly naive sense that 'the universe loves me' can set in to my deeper machinery, then I fire up my work laptop, see some of the emails that come through, the entitlement of 'sharp elbows' where if you're not violent or carrying the threat of violence you can be whipped to death while doing work they could never do in their wildest dreams and they can stack expectations up to the moon because they're living gods, you're a slave, your mom should have miscarried if you dare inconvenience them, and after a few hours of cursing existence and wishing the light of consciousness would go out on the universe for all of eternity you go back to bed, back under the comforter, where something in you is smiling and telling you that God loves you.

The thing that drives me absolutely mad about that - it's not a gap I can close. There's no squaring it. Zero consistency. It's a bit like this is almost a sort of proof that any sort of convergence we'd want, technically a convergence I've always sought, of being able to house my core/internal center of gravity as a human being in a particular place that optimally handles all problems and is optimally prepared to handle all problems from the most 'high road' level available - is literally impossible as these problem domains are mutually exclusive at the deepest levels.

What's most disturbing to me - that's genuinely a place where you can't 'have it all', a bit like you can either have a soul and be a slave or be a soulless sadist and own the slaves but going back to some of the old adages from the patriarchs of my family - the 'there's two types of people in this world - hammers and nails' - it's as if you can't be a hammer without becoming a hammer in every sense, at most you'll just become..what... a bolt?..., you can't simply have the moral priorities of being a nail all the while taking on the firepower of a hammer to prevent other hammers from smashing you like a nail. What's involved in taking on that firepower seems to destroy the perspective that made the 'nail' morality possible and it comes down to that need to have a legion of demons on a leash to terrify the world with - and if you don't have that legion of demons on a leash to terrify the world with you're just a nail playing Halloween dress-up.

That makes me wonder how many proper psychopaths and sadists go to bed and feel like their blankets are a warm hug from God at the end of the day, and just how permanently unresolvable a mystery we might be sitting on top of. Especially if we would ever hope for deep problem solving in our culture the most worrying thing about this - the domains can't be 'transcended and included' in the way Ken Wilbur's system of 'integral' thinking would suggest. That thought horrifies me because it means no one can be guarded or protected on all flanks - ie. anything you become both closes one set of vulnerabilities and opens a brand new set, and trying to move through those hoping to grab up all the goods and all the strengths to cover all of your vulnerabilities almost seems like it's Sisyphian in nature. The death of any ability to 'transcend and include' seems like it's, if not the last nearly the last, nail in the coffin for my more transcendental or 'gnostic' impulses to believe that through wisdom and learning I can somehow transcend the world's problems. Some knowledge might give me some left if it translates into economic power or job stability but there's not a lot else. What I have learned might help some people whose interior lives are a wreck or survive living or working in an environment so dysfunctional that they just about need to drop acid on the weekend to stay sane, but it still points to the notion - anyone can be thrown in a gulag or whatever else or get trampled by nature and it's a fantasy to believe that preparation actually has the power to save you in all events.

Maybe I need to start accepting that about reality and perhaps about the fundamental nature of the rest of my life - ie. that the gaps in reality I wanted to close can't be closed because they exist in mutually exclusive domains, ie. like hoping to mix yellow and purple together to get a purplish-yellow or blue and orange together to get a blueish-orange.

perhaps you have just verbalized a conundrum of reality ?


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techstepgenr8tion
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10 May 2020, 1:36 pm

Jakki wrote:
perhaps you have just verbalized a conundrum of reality ?

It's a bit like any path forward to understanding what we are and where we're at involves learning to surf a wave of permanent disorientation - as a species - without fatally wrecking.


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10 May 2020, 1:47 pm

Just turn off your computer. And stop watching the TV news. :lol:

Get outside more.



techstepgenr8tion
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10 May 2020, 2:05 pm

naturalplastic wrote:
Just turn off your computer. And stop watching the TV news. :lol:

Get outside more.

Gotta pay the bills somehow - for better or worse.


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10 May 2020, 2:07 pm

naturalplastic wrote:
Just turn off your computer. And stop watching the TV news. :lol:

Get outside more.

There's something to this, although, it may happen that work related stress won't go away from merely taking a walk.

I do what the US military does to prrvent PTSD: I play challenging videogames for a day or two, strategically, to get ... Something between the thing that's stressing me and myself.
It works well, kinda like an eraser of everyday worries.
Of course, that comes with dangers of its own, like getting addicted etc., so I only play like one game every other year, only the single player campaign, never online, and only when I really can't get work related stress out of my head.


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10 May 2020, 3:30 pm

Would holocaust survivors who have maintained their faith be an example of a successful synthesis?



techstepgenr8tion
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10 May 2020, 3:44 pm

Persistent Reader wrote:
Would holocaust survivors who have maintained their faith be an example of a successful synthesis?

Depends how they connected the dots. Some people cut the Gordian knot with leaps of faith and if they do IMHO it's an unsuccessful synthesis.


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10 May 2020, 4:12 pm

naturalplastic wrote:
Just turn off your computer. And stop watching the TV news. :lol:

Get outside more.

Wait a minute here ? if turned off puter,,,,, would lose planetery orbit of WP,
Who would read these tidbits of insight anymore ?


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aghogday
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10 May 2020, 5:33 pm



Remembering My Life at 40; Working for the Military
Slave to whatever was served on my Plate Attached to the Golden Hand-Cuffs
of the Promise For Lifelong Pay, Health, and Life Insurance; i surely can relate here to
the Do or Die Feelings of Life that come; and for those Most susceptible; the Canaries in the
Coal Mine Who Burn-out Doing all the work while the rest of the Folks in the Group of Social Comfort
continue to Cruise through; Particularly, if one is in the 'what makes a man club'; surely the Situation
in the 'Deep Trump South States'

Honestly, if Computers did not come along; and i did not have Natural Systemizing Skills that College did not
Even Require too much; as i only had a Couple of Computer Classes with one Intro to 'Basic' Programming Language
And Data Analysis in Sociology Class; I really don't know what i would have done without any comfort of Social
Skills that it truly took to Survive then; If the Folks at the Military Bowling Center didn't have a Clue how
To Operate the 1984 Computer Scoring System Gifted by a Military Grant then; 'free stuff for all'; And
A Part Time Job for me; truly one i could Handle, until i was pushed up the Administrative Ladder
Eventually Going toe to toe with A Female Captain of the Base Over Financial Management;
Selected for Athletic Director With None of those Skills specific to being the Last Kid Picked
on Sports Teams; with No Team Sports Experience in my Life at all. Swim or Sink; my
Entire Life Felt a Bit Like that; except for the Years of Just Serving
Out Shoes at the Bowling Center as a Federal Employee then.

Anyway; it didn't take but about 11 Years of Chronic Stress
And 2 Years at the End of that of Work Related Social Stress
Until i retired; not because i wanted to; but with a Synergy of
19 Life Threatening disorders that took 66 Months of My Life
To Return to something i never was before; That Something is comfortable
in my own skin; i determined for myself at that point what was missing most in my
Life is Comfortable in my own skin. I had problems doing the Smallest things; like Feeling
Coordinated When Walking In Walmart By Myself; Driving to another Town; Overwhelming
When i First Started Driving; Generally Feeling Out of Synch with the 3-Dimensional Environment.

Computers surely became a World for me; but that only exacerbated the Mind, Body, Feelings, Senses,
Disconnection i already had then from Childhood on the Autism Spectrum; additionally, Not Able to Speak
Until Four With A Condition that may Be Described As Hyperlexia as great at decoding the Environment Around
me in Symbols; and Of Course Eventually being able to Create them as well In Poetry of Writing too. The Poetry
of Song; The Free Style Ballet-Like Dance; And Free Style Martial Arts, all Solo, Took me out of that World
of Disconnection and Integrated me finally into a whole person; assuming that is how the other folks
who seemed so easy in their life experienced life, more than me then as well; Now, there is no doubt
i am more comfortable in my skin that most; simply because i rarely ever experience illusory
Fears associated with Physical Anxiety now. From what i have learned, Success Starts
in how we move most; not what we come to say, the most, as far as inner success
Where Comfort is What We Orchestrate ourself; of course that has nothing
to do with making money; and by the Time i early retired, the Golden
Hand-Cuffs already took that problem away for the rest of my life.

It Most definitely is Possible to Totally Integrate as a Human Being
In Balance of Peace And Harmony, 365 Days a Year; and Leap Years too;
But Yes, Taking away the Slave to Money Makes it much more possible than not.

i honestly feel Younger, And Stronger, and More Confident than i did at 16 or 21
or 30 or 40 or 50 now moving to 60 on 6.6.2020 for i find that freedom Now is a totally
Within Game of Dance Over Song to make this a Moving Reality of Life; The Covid19
Issue has taken away some of the tools to increase Human Potential; However, i
Adapt and find New ways, i never used before; Other than that Autism Spectrum
Burn-out is a real Organic DisEase; Stress Hormones do destroy all
Bodily Systems Chronically; and will actually eventually Kill with
fight or flight Total Human Exhaustion as that is most
definitely what happened to me at 47 Years-old.

The Doctors Gave me No Prognosis for Recovery
And Said i would always require strong anti-anxiety
Medications just to Mentally Survive; okay, now i've Danced
in Public for 13,144 Miles and Proven everything wrong they thought
was impossible for me; So much, in fact that my Psychiatrist of 7 Years
And 7 Months who could do nothing to help me bring my Emotions Back
Or Take any of the Pain away, saw what my Cure of Moving Meditation and Poetry
Did for me; He Shut His Private Practice down and went to A South Florida Teaching
Hospital to teach Movement Therapy to folks similar Functionally Disabled in Moving
And Emotional Regulation; along with Sensory Integration as Moving Therapy will actually
Remedy all of these Functionally Disabling Problems of Humanity in many Disorders of Life;
So Yes, He Told Me my Cure Was an Inspiration for Him to Cure His Career Disease; Yes, quite
A change, since he told me there was no prognosis of recovery for me; as none of his Pills worked.

Yes, Something as simple as a Free Dance Where Flow continues to take one higher and higher
in the sweet spot between anxiety and continuing complexity of the Moves; no different than
the Poetry as there is No Dance or Writer's Block for me As Fearless takes all the Problems away
And what i actually do is the Inherent cure for all the Functionally Disabling issues from before;

Now, of course that won't make a Living; but it will make a life worth living, at least for
the folks where it works; as different stuff works for different folks. Other than that
Most folks who are 'Jerks' are 'Jerks' because they are empty inside someway.

The Poster Boy for Lack of Empathy; the President of the United States, rarely
if ever sleeps comfortably; always catching up to hell within with more Twitter
Spasms to Put out the Fire of Discontent that never goes away for him; true, if not
that You'll find 'those folks' Drinking or doing something else to ease the void within;
Yes, of course Bullying folks they think they can get away with doing it to; in an attempt
to Raise their Serotonin Levels of Status that way too; But all of that most definitely is
possible to Master With A Bio-Feedback of Both Dance Attached to Emotions and Song
of Poetry and Music the same; but again, it takes lifelong practice; there are definitely
limits of course, when one is working for a living in what they may hate to do lifelong.

Life does stink for many folks;
but it does not stink at all now for
Folks Who Master Their Emotions
And Senses within; obviously, what
Makes us Happy with a Life content or not;
starts and ends in how we feel and sense within.

Emotions are the Neurochemicals And Neurohormones
That Do Heal Us From Head to Toe in Balance; Those who
Think they are Just Mush are just missing out on the Healing power in Balance.

i've heard that here more than once from folks who say they have difficulty with
Cognitive Executive Functioning; Ironic as Finely Balancing Emotions and Integrating
Senses Do Power Both Our Focus And Short Term Working Memory of Cognitive Executive Functioning.

Our Emotions Run through our Body;
Miss out on that kind of Emotional Intelligence
of yes, the Dance of Life, and simply miss out on so much more Human potential;
Pretty much the Difference in running on just water and Super High-Test Fuel within;
Finely Tuned 12-Cylinder Human Ferrari's and the Such in Fruition in all cases Pure Love
Force Carries Us Higher; but some folks call that 'stuff' 'things' like 'falling in Love' that by
Very Nature Means Lower Levels of Serotonin And Anxiety of losing rather than gaining Love in Life....
True Love
is What
We Practice;
It is the Faith
And Belief that
is Our Emotions Within
that are as guaranteed with
Proper Practice of Bio-Feedback
in Practices like Moving Meditation;
No less of a Guarantee now than not running off
the Road as an Every Day Driver; But Yes, other Cars
may run into us, and try to Rain on our Love Parade.
It Happened to me a few times but i understand the cure;
And it works every instance it does; like No Clock Work of Eternally Now.
But
Again
It's
Just
A 'Shiva
Dance' one of those
Guarantees of life we use or do not;
Most folks don't understand the actual
Science behind How something without
words becomes a Human cure-all; so true,
i'm literally the only one in the Deep South
Who Experiences real heaven this way everyday
in Life in just a Meditation of Dance that is Just that Flow of Heaven real now.

In Asian Countries this is Discussed in the Daily Practice of Tai-Chi In Large Corporations.

It Helps them Conquer Stuff In Life like 'Twilight Zones of Pandemics' So much Greater than 'US'..:)

The Cure to just about Everything
In Life Starts Within; But This Society
Is a Quick-Fix External Cure Society for most all
Who Breathes by Consuming something else whatever THAT comes to be.

It's Not Working; Really, It Never did; and is not working more than ever now;

That Much is Crystal Clear; i am reminded of it in every Walmart Crowd i see; Just Dancing by Within Heaven.


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10 May 2020, 6:46 pm

techstepgenr8tion wrote:
Persistent Reader wrote:
Would holocaust survivors who have maintained their faith be an example of a successful synthesis?

Depends how they connected the dots. Some people cut the Gordian knot with leaps of faith and if they do IMHO it's an unsuccessful synthesis.


I don't think the people who survived the Holocaust did it through faith. The study I heard was that the people who survived, no matter how bad the conditions, were those who helped others. If someone was sicker than you, you held them up. If someone was failing, you gave them your piece of bread for the day. The people who were unflinchingly giving to others persevered. I am sure that is not always the case and I don't know what led them to give so unflinchingly. But that is the behavior that was seen as correlating with survival. Assuming you weren't just carted off to the ovens right away.

More to the point, I certainly have spent most of my life trying to reconcile the dichotomy of material success and spiritual comfort. So, assuming your words and mine actually are about the same topic, yes, I do know how you feel.

If you recall, I am a Quaker, but one does not have to believe in any kind of "faith" to reach an internal congruence with the rest of the world. Especially as an aspie. At least in my case, I changed my "outside", masking if you will, depending on who I was with. I often agonized over who I was and how to find out.

This is not to say that I always find myself in that congruence. I think it happens, perhaps, just a few minutes per day. Not necessarily all at once, but in splinters of light throughout the day. And I know how it feels and I crave it. But not enough to give up the life that I do have. And this is, I expect, wherein some of your difficulties lie.

As far as I can tell from reading your posts, you are looking for answers in other people's words and theories. Other people and other sources, while helpful, can never (IMO) give us the whole answer. I think the whole answer may well be ineffable and outside the human experience.

As woo-woo as it sounds, one has to find one's center. For aspies, it may be we have to find a center. Any center. :D Different people find this center in different places and with different practices. And some people may not able to find it at all, but substitute instead a practice that includes a lot of ritual and rules. And that is okay for them, for each person has to find his/her/their own path.

Futhermore, the span of life is a process. I can recall revelations at 25 and 35 and 45 that seemed to me to be the "answer." Of course it wasn't. I now know that I know very little, understand little, but implement practices to the best of my puny ability, that increase my daily, monthly, yearly, decadely (word? :D ) opportunities to experience that congruence.

If this means nothing to you, my apologies. It is just my understanding. Take what you like and leave the rest.


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techstepgenr8tion
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10 May 2020, 7:27 pm

aghogday wrote:
until i was pushed up the Administrative Ladder
Eventually Going toe to toe with A Female Captain of the Base Over Financial Management;
Selected for Athletic Director With None of those Skills specific to being the Last Kid Picked
on Sports Teams; with No Team Sports Experience in my Life at all. Swim or Sink; my
Entire Life Felt a Bit Like that; except for the Years of Just Serving
Out Shoes at the Bowling Center as a Federal Employee then.

Lol, what bureaucracy does best.


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techstepgenr8tion
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10 May 2020, 7:40 pm

blazingstar wrote:
This is not to say that I always find myself in that congruence. I think it happens, perhaps, just a few minutes per day. Not necessarily all at once, but in splinters of light throughout the day. And I know how it feels and I crave it. But not enough to give up the life that I do have. And this is, I expect, wherein some of your difficulties lie.

Yeah, it feels a fair amount like I'm taking some deeply sacred relic that I own and grinding dogs--t into it to prevent some assured theft.

blazingstar wrote:
As far as I can tell from reading your posts, you are looking for answers in other people's words and theories. Other people and other sources, while helpful, can never (IMO) give us the whole answer. I think the whole answer may well be ineffable and outside the human experience.

So I think I need to give this some gentle redirection. It's less that I'm trying to find myself through other people and more that I'm trying to either locate - or build if I have to - my tribe (people doing the same thing that I can match ideas, creativity, constructive criticism, and coverage with). I feel like I've found it a bit with The Portal and Rebel Wisdom unfortunately I'm watching it from a distance. I feel like I've found it a bit when I watch Alex F interview magicians on Glitchbottle, it's a bit like I live on the attempt to superimpose rigorous logic on what's around me in the physical while the mystical is some combination of my relationship to myself and perhaps the 'searching' hand which is trying to pick fruit (ie. solutions) from a higher branch of the tree and that only works IMHO if it can be reified in quite practical and direct terms.

blazingstar wrote:
As woo-woo as it sounds, one has to find one's center. For aspies, it may be we have to find a center. Any center. :D Different people find this center in different places and with different practices. And some people may not able to find it at all, but substitute instead a practice that includes a lot of ritual and rules. And that is okay for them, for each person has to find his/her/their own path.

It feels more like attempting to rebuild / recalibrate it after a gang ran through smashing windows, breaking things with baseball bats, and trying to steal anything that wasn't nailed down. 2018 to present have been quite difficult in terms of narrowly missing my execution by incompetence of others several times over and having to do things to myself that I considered practically inhuman all in order to survive the mistakes (possibly even grifts) of people higher up the chain of power. I think a lot of people have probably noticed it in my 'red in tooth and nail' Darwinian language lately where I often seem to imply that people simply see human as another form of meat to be rendered with an ax into a bucket. That video I posted yesterday (ie. Teal) was sort of recounting how many millenials, younger than myself, hit the wall of cannibals waiting for them with forks, knives, and chainsaws a lot earlier.

blazingstar wrote:
Futhermore, the span of life is a process. I can recall revelations at 25 and 35 and 45 that seemed to me to be the "answer." Of course it wasn't. I now know that I know very little, understand little, but implement practices to the best of my puny ability, that increase my daily, monthly, yearly, decadely (word? :D ) opportunities to experience that congruence.

Every 'new' idea that seems to tie together the information you've had up to that point will quite often seem like 'the answer' provisionally at that time. The mistake would be if anyone ever eschewed further knowledge for enshrining what came before. That and I'm sure with every decade the pressures tend to be different and consequently what thing is more important than the next things rearranges order a bit - and accordingly so does the weight of analysis. A person in peace time for example quite often can't see war and a person in a battle for their lives can see little else.


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11 May 2020, 12:48 pm

techstepgenr8tion wrote:
I don't know about any of you, one of the things that does my head in with life and it's a push-pull with respect to survival, it both gives meaning to life in it's better moments but then makes me vulnerable to predation on the other side, is how 'gentle' life is when we're by ourselves with our physical needs met.

It's a bit like I can be going to bed, be under the comforter, and some horribly naive sense that 'the universe loves me' can set in to my deeper machinery, then I fire up my work laptop, see some of the emails that come through, the entitlement of 'sharp elbows' where if you're not violent or carrying the threat of violence you can be whipped to death while doing work they could never do in their wildest dreams and they can stack expectations up to the moon because they're living gods, you're a slave, your mom should have miscarried if you dare inconvenience them, and after a few hours of cursing existence and wishing the light of consciousness would go out on the universe for all of eternity you go back to bed, back under the comforter, where something in you is smiling and telling you that God loves you.

The thing that drives me absolutely mad about that - it's not a gap I can close. There's no squaring it. Zero consistency. It's a bit like this is almost a sort of proof that any sort of convergence we'd want, technically a convergence I've always sought, of being able to house my core/internal center of gravity as a human being in a particular place that optimally handles all problems and is optimally prepared to handle all problems from the most 'high road' level available - is literally impossible as these problem domains are mutually exclusive at the deepest levels.

What's most disturbing to me - that's genuinely a place where you can't 'have it all', a bit like you can either have a soul and be a slave or be a soulless sadist and own the slaves but going back to some of the old adages from the patriarchs of my family - the 'there's two types of people in this world - hammers and nails' - it's as if you can't be a hammer without becoming a hammer in every sense, at most you'll just become..what... a bolt?..., you can't simply have the moral priorities of being a nail all the while taking on the firepower of a hammer to prevent other hammers from smashing you like a nail. What's involved in taking on that firepower seems to destroy the perspective that made the 'nail' morality possible and it comes down to that need to have a legion of demons on a leash to terrify the world with - and if you don't have that legion of demons on a leash to terrify the world with you're just a nail playing Halloween dress-up.

That makes me wonder how many proper psychopaths and sadists go to bed and feel like their blankets are a warm hug from God at the end of the day, and just how permanently unresolvable a mystery we might be sitting on top of. Especially if we would ever hope for deep problem solving in our culture the most worrying thing about this - the domains can't be 'transcended and included' in the way Ken Wilbur's system of 'integral' thinking would suggest. That thought horrifies me because it means no one can be guarded or protected on all flanks - ie. anything you become both closes one set of vulnerabilities and opens a brand new set, and trying to move through those hoping to grab up all the goods and all the strengths to cover all of your vulnerabilities almost seems like it's Sisyphian in nature. The death of any ability to 'transcend and include' seems like it's, if not the last nearly the last, nail in the coffin for my more transcendental or 'gnostic' impulses to believe that through wisdom and learning I can somehow transcend the world's problems. Some knowledge might give me some left if it translates into economic power or job stability but there's not a lot else. What I have learned might help some people whose interior lives are a wreck or survive living or working in an environment so dysfunctional that they just about need to drop acid on the weekend to stay sane, but it still points to the notion - anyone can be thrown in a gulag or whatever else or get trampled by nature and it's a fantasy to believe that preparation actually has the power to save you in all events.

Maybe I need to start accepting that about reality and perhaps about the fundamental nature of the rest of my life - ie. that the gaps in reality I wanted to close can't be closed because they exist in mutually exclusive domains, ie. like hoping to mix yellow and purple together to get a purplish-yellow or blue and orange together to get a blueish-orange.

Okay, I have a bit of an idea of what you're talking about but I need clarification; it sounds to me like you have a problem with "hammer-type" people either, messing things up for others, or forcing others to in act in immoral ways in order to survive, is this a correct understanding of your issue in any way? If so, am I correct in understanding that you want an answer that applies not just to you an a personal and interior level, nor to others and excluding yourself, but to humanity as a whole?


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Don't bother with me, I'm just a narrow-minded bigot who does nothing but "proselytize" not because I actually love the Faith, because no one loves the Faith, we're just "using it to justify our bigotry." If you see any thread by me on here that isn't "proselytizing," I can't explain that because that's obviously impossible; because again, all I've ever done on here is "proselytize."

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Greatshield17
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11 May 2020, 12:52 pm

blazingstar wrote:
techstepgenr8tion wrote:
Persistent Reader wrote:
Would holocaust survivors who have maintained their faith be an example of a successful synthesis?

Depends how they connected the dots. Some people cut the Gordian knot with leaps of faith and if they do IMHO it's an unsuccessful synthesis.


I don't think the people who survived the Holocaust did it through faith. The study I heard was that the people who survived, no matter how bad the conditions, were those who helped others. If someone was sicker than you, you held them up. If someone was failing, you gave them your piece of bread for the day. The people who were unflinchingly giving to others persevered. I am sure that is not always the case and I don't know what led them to give so unflinchingly. But that is the behavior that was seen as correlating with survival. Assuming you weren't just carted off to the ovens right away.

One of the first things I've learned after reverting to the Catholic Faith, is how consoling it is to help others and pray for them when you, yourself are in a tough situation. I hope and pray I have the prudence and fortitude to respond like that if I'm ever in a situation ever remotely as bad as the holocaust.


_________________
Don't bother with me, I'm just a narrow-minded bigot who does nothing but "proselytize" not because I actually love the Faith, because no one loves the Faith, we're just "using it to justify our bigotry." If you see any thread by me on here that isn't "proselytizing," I can't explain that because that's obviously impossible; because again, all I've ever done on here is "proselytize."

WP is the 2nd worst forum site I have ever been on.


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11 May 2020, 6:26 pm

techstepgenr8tion wrote:
blazingstar wrote:
This is not to say that I always find myself in that congruence. I think it happens, perhaps, just a few minutes per day. Not necessarily all at once, but in splinters of light throughout the day. And I know how it feels and I crave it. But not enough to give up the life that I do have. And this is, I expect, wherein some of your difficulties lie.

Yeah, it feels a fair amount like I'm taking some deeply sacred relic that I own and grinding dogs--t into it to prevent some assured theft.

blazingstar wrote:
As far as I can tell from reading your posts, you are looking for answers in other people's words and theories. Other people and other sources, while helpful, can never (IMO) give us the whole answer. I think the whole answer may well be ineffable and outside the human experience.

So I think I need to give this some gentle redirection. It's less that I'm trying to find myself through other people and more that I'm trying to either locate - or build if I have to - my tribe (people doing the same thing that I can match ideas, creativity, constructive criticism, and coverage with). I feel like I've found it a bit with The Portal and Rebel Wisdom unfortunately I'm watching it from a distance. I feel like I've found it a bit when I watch Alex F interview magicians on Glitchbottle, it's a bit like I live on the attempt to superimpose rigorous logic on what's around me in the physical while the mystical is some combination of my relationship to myself and perhaps the 'searching' hand which is trying to pick fruit (ie. solutions) from a higher branch of the tree and that only works IMHO if it can be reified in quite practical and direct terms.

blazingstar wrote:
As woo-woo as it sounds, one has to find one's center. For aspies, it may be we have to find a center. Any center. :D Different people find this center in different places and with different practices. And some people may not able to find it at all, but substitute instead a practice that includes a lot of ritual and rules. And that is okay for them, for each person has to find his/her/their own path.

It feels more like attempting to rebuild / recalibrate it after a gang ran through smashing windows, breaking things with baseball bats, and trying to steal anything that wasn't nailed down. 2018 to present have been quite difficult in terms of narrowly missing my execution by incompetence of others several times over and having to do things to myself that I considered practically inhuman all in order to survive the mistakes (possibly even grifts) of people higher up the chain of power. I think a lot of people have probably noticed it in my 'red in tooth and nail' Darwinian language lately where I often seem to imply that people simply see human as another form of meat to be rendered with an ax into a bucket. That video I posted yesterday (ie. Teal) was sort of recounting how many millenials, younger than myself, hit the wall of cannibals waiting for them with forks, knives, and chainsaws a lot earlier.

blazingstar wrote:
Futhermore, the span of life is a process. I can recall revelations at 25 and 35 and 45 that seemed to me to be the "answer." Of course it wasn't. I now know that I know very little, understand little, but implement practices to the best of my puny ability, that increase my daily, monthly, yearly, decadely (word? :D ) opportunities to experience that congruence.

Every 'new' idea that seems to tie together the information you've had up to that point will quite often seem like 'the answer' provisionally at that time. The mistake would be if anyone ever eschewed further knowledge for enshrining what came before. That and I'm sure with every decade the pressures tend to be different and consequently what thing is more important than the next things rearranges order a bit - and accordingly so does the weight of analysis. A person in peace time for example quite often can't see war and a person in a battle for their lives can see little else.


I'm not very good at doing the split quote things, or even reading it. But I'll try to respond.

In regards to #2: I apologize for misunderstanding your search. I do understand you are searching. I expect to be searching my entire life. I have given up looking for a "tribe." Instead I find bits and pieces of what resonates with me in other people and to a lesser extent in writing. You are articulate and, when I can understand you, express thoughts I have had better than I can myself.

In regards to #3: I was not referring to the sort of daily glimmers of intuition and assimilating of new ideas that comes along rather frequently if one is listening. Nor I am looking at the changes that come from different life stages. Rather I am talking about shifts of tectonic proportions. The decades were just approximate and I didn't really have one around 55. But now, at 67, I am experiencing another major shift. It is scary, exciting and wonderful all at the same time.

All that said, I am not very good at expressing my experiences. And when I put words on paper, I suddenly think of all the exceptions and additions, etc. that would be necessary to fill it out. And then I realize there aren't enough words to express it all. I think this is why aghogday dances for example.

And as I wrote before, some days the assimilation is brief, other days it is longer, perhaps an hour or more. Some days there are none. IMO, I don't think you (editorially) find it without letting go of the words.


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