Sammy's Smorgasbord

[Aragorn]

I like the new direction of desalination using amines. Aragorn posted about it. (it's very late and I'm sleepy and can't find the link right now).

Would this happen to be ye thread of which thou speakest?

[Chester]

Well - my little statement was actually an attempt at a metaphor. That which I was pointing to was based on that which NAP had once mentioned - the recent book by Mark Gober - An End to Upside Down Thinking.

If there was a single crusade I could embark upon (as if the world has not seen enough crusades) it would be dedicated to assisting humanity to shift the predominant metaphysical, cosmological world-view from materiaism to idealism (and the particular form of such... monistic idealism).

The metaphor was pointing out how materialists believe that consciousness is created by and from the individual brains of individual beings. That is (to me) like saying "In the oceans, water comes from the salt," which we know is absurd. So my metaphor was suggesting that materialism is an absurd world view.

Again, I am sad I cannot locate the thread (or the section of the thread) where (it is claimed) Giovonni first suggested the above referenced book.

If I had located the post I would have quoted the post in that very thread and kick started this discussion there. Oh well, maybe one day I will find it. I have more to add if the discussion goes further.

[Wind]

The only thing that rubs me the wrong way with the materialists is that they think that they know the ultimate truth while actually their belief system is just based on false assumptions. Yet that is the dominant worldview these days and is taken as the norm, such is the sad state of affairs. I often think that I was born too early, on the ultimate age of ignorance. I suppose everything is teaching us though, like these times too. There will be a time when people will truly know the truth again.

[Chester]

as Mark Gober speaks about here -

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ikaj7ofA3dk

[Chester]

and gosh... I find myself sometimes "put off" by those who just throw up video after video but man, oh man... this one has been outstanding -

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgNDr56gM-A

[Emil El Zapato]

I don't expect anyone to get excited about this but I started practicing Christian Meditation following an audible book from this guy:

Christian Meditation (Audiobook) by James Finley. He spent his early days living as a monk and then later transitioned to earn a PhD in psychology. It is the kind of thing I can trust...

[Dreamtimer]

As I recall, NAP first brought up Gober and the book on his Chaos thread. It did not have its own thread. I did a search, found some vids, and posted one.


...or not.

It was near the beginning of Gio's thread All Down the Line.

My recall ain't the best right now. I'm distracted by issues with my Dad.

[Chester]

This post is completely irrelevant to everything written in this thread prior...

But it will soon make sense as to why I posted it (don't you just love mysteries? ....mmmmhhhhhwwaaaaa hahah ha)

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qam1fbQmA_s

[Dreamtimer]

Ever since I left the desert, I've either lived near a river or a bay. Chattahoochee, American, Narragansett, Chesapeake, 100 Acre Cove, Patuxent, Patapsco... Most of those names came from the First Americans.

But I never lived near a River City. Riverside, yes.

[Emil El Zapato]

My hometown's nickname was River city because it was surrounded by two rivers...The Cottonwood and the Neosho. It was said that because of that we were safe from a direct hit from Tornados...Down the road that proved to be a false sense of security.

In Topeka Kansas there was another such myth called, Burnett's Mound. The theory was that because the city lay in the protection of the mound it was safe. Also not true...the city was devastated twice within a few years.

Ain't no escaping nature here in these United States. In my estimation the safest place is in New Mexico and they have the desert and sinkholes there.

[Chester]

You know... there's something about this place... There's this strange sense of... honorability - that's the word. That's what I feel underpins this forum.

[Aragorn]

You know... there's something about this place... There's this strange sense of... honorability - that's the word. That's what I feel underpins this forum.

Thank you for saying that, Sam. Your words mean a lot to us.

[Dreamtimer]

[Chester]

I am grateful that TOT has allowed me to make this thread such that I am enabled to jump from one thing to another and so here's the next jump.

I recently reacted [overreacted? probably, yes] to something posted on a different thread where I broke one of the main "agreements" of the original Four Agreements - The 2nd Agreement - Don’t Take Anything Personally.

My reaction created a micro-drama event where it might appear "I won." Well, today I believe that not only did I lose, everyone I dragged into the drama event lost too. The fact is that I clearly have an affinity to drama. Knowing this, admitting this is one thing. Making a core change within that eliminates the identified character trait of "drama queen" (not meaning to offend any queens but if a queen finds themselves offended, I refer you back to the 2nd agreement) is something else. I am not there. And here is why.

There's something else known as "acting out" when the action/reaction of "acting out" is linked to a previous action which in reality is a non-action action... the action of suppression of traumas. In other words, by NOT dealing with a trauma, that trauma becomes suppressed. And often what results is that the suppressed trauma creates a splitting off of one's mind. The primary operator hums along as if all is well. Yet lurking in a hidden corner of one's individuated mind is this buried nuclear device which one day may go off.

So on the one hand I am advised not to take things personally and yet, unless one has integrated this agreement at the deeper and more powerful level of their being (which results in what we call "maturity"), suppressing these perceived hurts almost always ends up bad.

So as many here may begin to "see" by now, I post on these forums in part to assist myself with processing. Since I entered the community in 2012, I have built relationships. In addition, I have found myself in circumstances where some of these relationships blow up. In some of those cases that this has happened, I initiated these blow ups. I could have handled things better and a few, far better. My desire to explore, my curiosity... leads me to take risks and sometimes I end up suffering but worse, it may cause others to suffer. Does "good intentions" get me off the hook? Does entering into relationships with pure intentions get one off the hook? Can this be chalked up to innocence or naivety and that then makes it pardonable?

And so, here I find myself once again in the strangest of circumstances where, my most favorite subject, synchronicity is at the heart of it all... but in the darkest of ways.

[Aragorn]

[...] My desire to explore, my curiosity... leads me to take risks and sometimes I end up suffering but worse, it may cause others to suffer. Does "good intentions" get me off the hook? Does entering into relationships with pure intentions get one off the hook? Can this be chalked up to innocence or naivety and that then makes it pardonable? [...]

I don't think the answer to that question would be a matter of black & white. I think that, first and foremost, it's a matter of perspective ─ by which I do not mean a change in your own perspective, but rather that it's a matter of both your own perspective and that of anyone else who gets involved ─ and that there are many grey scales in between the extremes of "getting you off the hook" and "not getting you off the hook".

There are various degrees of accountability, and in addition to that ─ but I acknowledge that this really does depend on whom the other person is ─ the other person may be more forgiving toward you than you would be willing to forgive yourself. And strangely enough ─ or ironically, if you will ─ it is my experience that for the vast majority of the people "out there", forgiving themselves comes a lot easier than forgiving someone else.

Finding it hard to forgive oneself is a trait of the conscientious and honorable. Those who forgive themselves easily have far less of a conscience than they like believing, if they even care at all ─ we do after all live in a world that feeds and actively breeds sociopathy. Likewise, those who find it easier to forgive someone else are the people who posses a great deal of love within them, and perhaps a stronger capability of empathizing with the person seeking forgiveness, and how they came to make the mistakes for which they seek forgiveness. Those who find it hard to forgive someone else are commonly the reactionary and selfish people ─ again, because this world breeds narcissists.

Narcissistic sociopaths have greater chances at survival in a competition-driven society model, and that's why the society model itself stimulates the development of narcissism and sociopathy. But it is exactly this very competition-driven society model that is The Wrong Path™, and that will lead to humanity's demise ─ and if certain history scholars and certain explanations of archeological anomalies are to be believed, then it won't be the first time, and probably not the last either, unless there will be absolutely no survivors anymore this time around.

Those of us with a conscience are slowly becoming a statistical minority. And politically ─ by which I mean "our ability to have an effect on how society is being run by The Powers That Be™" ─ we have so far always been a minority. Color me a pessimist, but at this point in time, my opinion is that we have no other choice anymore but to suffer mankind's stupidity, greed, decadence and sociopathy, and that the only difference we can still make is at the individual level, where we can alleviate some of the suffering for the ones we care about. To be a friend, to be an adviser, to be the shoulder for our loved ones to cry on.

Because there's no way we're going to be able to change how this perverse world operates. Doing so would take nothing short of a revolution, and there are only two ways of bringing about a revolution. The first way is to set an example and be the change we wish to see. But that has already proven futile, especially when the world is being run by oligarchs and megalomaniacs, and the rest of the population has sunken into apathy and navel-staring. The second way is through an armed revolution, but that is not our style. An armed revolution often turns out just as bad as the evil it seeks to overthrow, and we're not that violent. We're not willing to draw blood or pick up arms against the people who are supposed to be our brothers and sisters in humanity.

Hmm... Now I have the feeling that I'm derailing the topic, as the post I'm replying to was supposed to be about your conscience. But then again, it's all connected.