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Am I he? Anyway I've never heard of Tim Pool, I just say his wiki page and his views are quite a mixture of left & right and I don't have an opinion about him. Replacement theory? It only sounds racist in the literal sense of being race-ist ie a theory about race. Plenty of groups and tribes have been lost to history, including in my own country. I was rather sad when I learned that the neolithic people who built Stonehenge were replaced by the Bell Beaker people, who were in turn replaced by the Celts, who were then replaced by ... well you see what I mean. So yes I guess replacement is an ancient thing.

Well, keeping your culture alive means having a certain concentration of people living together in a neighbourhood so you can club together and have your own shops, religious centres, restaurants and schools. Historically there's been plenty of examples where a powerful culture made life difficult for the less powerful. Think of Christians and Muslims making persecuting pagans, or when Muslims, Christians and Jews had to live in each others countries. Nowadays there's more tolerance, yes, but still "quarterising" where people create neighborhoods like you said in your other post. We have "white flight" from London to outside counties like Essex, so we have pressures on housing, schools, public services, political policies like whether to allow Sharia law, Jewish Eruvs, arguments about Christmas and are we a Christian country, Saudis not allowing churches etc.

In my vicinity in western Europe there's quite a few depending on what you mean by nationalism. We have Scottish, Welsh and Irish nationalists, who are all left wing and funnily enough are also unionists because they favour EU membership. English nationalism is right wing, but not imperialist (English nationalism is very different from the British unionists who took over from the Normans in taking over the whole archipelago and then further into the "British Empire". ) Then there's Spanish nationalism: Spain was fascist under Franco but stayed out of WW2. They also have Basque and Catalan nationalists who just want separation from the motherland and independence. India had it's nationalism to escape from the British empire and actually split up into 3 countries rather than take over anywhere else. Thinking about it, a lot of nationalist sentiment comes from wanting freedom and independence from a larger entity.

Yes, there's different types of peace from the absence of physical conflict, all the way to psychological harmony and trust/kindness between people. But I reckon politics can only get us so far along this line, usually it tries enforce physical peace through physical/material means.

Thanks, and ok I'm not an expert on the spiral thing. Tho if the millennials are repressing their blue/red/purple then doesn't that mean they haven't fully lived those stages so aren't really ready to call themselves orange or whatever? I realised a while ago that I'm kidding myself to identify with orange or green, when I used to do that in my younger life it was really a delusion. Yes it's certainly ugly at the moment - but to be fair history has been very ugly before too. I just don't see us progressing any further up the spiral any time soon because the people/communities who arguably have reached orange or green, aren't raising enough children to replace themselves and are being repopulated by immigrants from less developed nations. No offense to anyone of whichever level of development they're in of course.

Thanks for your reply, there's lots of issues but just to pick up on this. There's the political axis of nationalist vs imperialist, which can apply to both left and right wing. The examples you're quoting here I'd categorise as imperialist where there's a totalitarian attempt to change other people's cultures to match their own, or to transfer wealth from 'them' to 'us'. For example in my own country there were some people who supported the British Empire and also Little Englanders who wanted a more isolationist approach, both being on the political right. Similarly I don't regard Hitler and the Nazis as right wing nationalists because they didn't respect the sovereignty of other nations which they invaded. Russia is already a large empire rather than a country imo, it's simply trying to expand its empire using the Russian-ness of the eastern Ukraine people as the excuse, similar to when the Nazis moved into Austria and the Sudetenland. You say that you want peace, but I would question whether that will ever be possible in a country where multiple and incompatible cultures are rubbing up against each other and competing for their own self interest. Maybe only when one of the cultures becomes sufficiently dominant to control the others. I realise that sounds pessimistic about human nature, but I don't think we're evolved enough yet to have true equality.

I think I must be the other one who's voted "right wing" so far. I haven't been active in the forum for a while, but this thread caught my eye when I logged back in recently. Sorry in advance for my long rant! Like folks have said so far, right & left mean various different things. I'm not a fan of big international corporate capitalism, I'm more of a traditionalist, socially conservative rather than a free marketeer. (But I'd better qualify that by saying that my pension fund is invested in the stock market so that makes me a capitalist of sorts). I'm an example of that old stereotype about being left wing when I was young, and became more right wing as I got into middle age and especially when I became a dad. There's another spectrum of individualism <--> collectivism and although a certain amount of individualism is useful for freeing up creativity, it's become clear to me that the western world civilisation, and increasingly the eastern world, has lost any semblance of sustainability. Community has declined, family life is becoming more difficult leading to fertility rates below replacement and the corporate capitalists have been relying on large scale immigration from other cultures to support their need for workers, leading to the melting pot known as multiculturalism. It all seems very unstable to me. So I suppose this puts me into stage blue on the spiral, looking at what orange and green have done with our culture and wondering how we're ever going to regain a sense of stable, cohesive, sustainable community and national unity. The modern world has all this identity politics with race, ethnicity, gender, religion etc; we are all endlessly profiled and encouraged to identify ourselves like this but when the natural consequence of in-group preference appears, there's a huge outcry about discrimination, inequality and bigotry etc. What's the logical end game of the left wing collectivists then, to dissolve the boundaries of human differences as "social constructions" and merge all identities and nations into a single global identity? If so then that's the opposite of what I want. It also comes back to how we want to collectivise. The left tries to create collective power through increasing the power of the government and other institutions become subservient. The right wants to do it through traditional structures such as religion, shared culture, family, even tribalism and keep secular government to a minimum. What I see happening is that governments which previously used to be ruling over mostly monocultural societies are trying to flex themselves to accommodate some very different cultures as society becomes multicultural. How is that affecting people's loyalty to their own country when it's all becoming a melting pot? Especially in very large countries like the US where there's such a mixture of competing interests? I don't have easy answers except to say I don't like Unions becoming too United. Perhaps the US, EU, Russia, China, even the UK would be better off radically decentralising and empowering more local democracy which fits the local culture. Just keep the Union for essential things like defence and overarching justice.

By the way, when we say "triggering" do we agree what this means? A trigger is a lever which sets off a process, but maybe we have a variety of processes - which could be pleasant or unpleasant. The discussion of feminism has reminded me of something else which triggers my pedantry is when the meaning of words are changed away from their original consistent derivation and we are all supposed to go along with it. And I am particularly noticing this in progressive or left-leaning political language. Some examples: -ism. Meaning something like "suffix used to form the name of a system, school of thought or theory based on the name of its subject or object or alternatively on the name of its founder" Eg Buddhism is the religion of the Buddha. But since the 20th C has been altered in certain circumstances to mean "Used to form names of ideologies expressing belief in the superiority of a certain class" Or in common usage, discrimination on the basis of. So, feminism deriving from feminine+ism would have originally meant the school of thought about femininity. Not implying any particular beliefs about misogyny, patriarchy etc. Other examples are sexism, racism, classism. -ist is similar to the above, when used for a person who belongs or believes in the school of thought. Ie a Buddhist is a member of the Buddhist religion. But in certain political discourse, this gets changed to mean an accusation of discrimination such as racist or sexist. -phobia which means an irrational fear but can change its meaning in certain arenas to mean discrimination against. Why do we use words like homophobia, transphobia or Islamophobia, when what is being described is some outward behaviour not the inner motivation, which is often unknown? Antisemitism is another current one where the term Semite originally means a whole language family, but is altered to just Hebrew speakers. But the -ism suffix isn't being used in the new way here, instead they're using the Anti- prefix. If we did the same thing in my other examples it'd create some confusion, such as antiracism meaning what is commonly meant by racism, if you get my drift.

We do carry a lot of stories about life that are generalisations, such as men are like this, women are like that, feminists say the other etc. Even if they are statistically true on average, it can put a discordant background colouring to seeing the actual situation clearly. And I don't know about you, but for me the negative stories are more prominent than positive ones, perhaps I have a vigilance about assessing a situation rather than entering it open mindedly. After all, the real situation may or may not conform to the stereotypes in the stories.

Badness isn't in the blame itself, but more like the belief that love is being withdrawn.

Could be. But what feels bad is believing I'm a separate person in a world of powerful groups, which I'm excluded from. So I'm theorising that my bad feelings are ironically a kind of self-preservation by encouraging me to conform to the group (eg the child-parent relationship) and obtain safety and needs met. Ok, digging down to the primal division into self/other, it creates a whole bunch of insecurity if I'm trying to preserve that split. Mind you, it cuts both ways because the separate "other" relies on separate "selves" for it's existence too.

Could be a number of things, and here's some theories off the top of my head. - Being shamed as a child when I did something "wrong", "naughty" etc, and that's set up neural pathways triggering anxiety response. - Blame is a form of social ostracism and therefore a threat to my membership of the society. - Perceiving a threat to survival against the background of insecurity and demographic decline of "my" in-group. Ie there's an in-group preference that's being attacked by an out-group.

I'm thinking about this as I go along, but what appears to trigger me is anything that sets off my survival instincts. And that includes survival of not just individual me, but in ever increasing circles such as family, community, tribe, nation etc. So in your example of "white cis males" which I don't identify with myself but other liberal people might project onto me, it would trigger me too because it might be intended as an attempt to blame me for things which aren't my fault. Most so-called "woke" social theory triggers me to be fair.

The conventional answer is for countries to first solve conflicts & wars, which are often a cause of famine because the farmers can't work, harvest and distribute their crops. Then when peace is established, if you don't have much natural resources to exploit like oil, then develop the economy, educate and industrialise, join the global markets and basically become capitalists like us. When we think of recent history, there have been far eastern countries which have progressed this way since WW2 like Japan, Hong Kong, Korea, China, India, Taiwan etc. Other places have been much slower to progress such as some sub-saharan African countries. What's the difference which allowed the far east to develop and others to lag behind? We can't really blame imperialism because both areas have experienced that.

@Phil what, you're posting here on your anniversary? Only joking, congratulations on your silver anniversary! I'm a few years behind and totally agree with your sentiments, tho it took me many years to recover enough from my childhood trauma enough to get in a position where I could get my basics in progress like my career, relationship, and finally parenthood. I now finally feel connected with the rest of life around me and invested in the family, the community and the future.

Perhaps you got this formulation from Buddhism? Interesting because there's another Buddhist teaching where the Buddha advises us to focus on the practicality of following the path out of suffering, rather than debate the details of why we're suffering. Using an analogy of being shot with an arrow if I recall. Perhaps that doesn't work for you, if not then is it any comfort to know that the existence of suffering and evil in a universe where the ultimate reality is supposedly good and loving, has also been a problem for mainstream religions. The fact that you've made this thread suggests this isn't just a theoretical debate for you but something you're feeling deeply. I don't like this analogy, that I'm a character in a game written by someone else. Too much separation in that story. But there is wisdom in what you said about human forms being fragile and tending to dissolve into other forms. Well, any form is unstable but life-forms especially so.

I think the appeal of so-called populists like Donald Trump or Boris Johnson over here is to do with the overall political and cultural situation, with certain groups feeling excluded by a political system that's normally dominated by perceived establishment elites who promise much more than they deliver. And deliver things they never promised, like wars abroad for example. It's as if the stage orange and green 'elites' have a lot of stage blue shadow, and the many citizens who are stage blue feel excluded, ignored, sidelined by the current world order and are just trying to make their point. Who else speaks for them in a two-party state? Add to this mixture a demographic decline of the existing majority race, which is a cause of great anxiety to stage blue, and if anything I'm surprised that the response was as mild as it was in electing a leader like Trump. I can't see that it changed any long-term trends did it? The fault lines in society are still with us. Trump allowed some letting off of steam for a while but I don't see much resolution to the divisions. Perhaps our countries are just too big to have a peaceful consensus. Further globalisation would only make it harder.

The non-scientific therapies such as Reiki (and I think much psychotherapy falls under this bracket) are experiential as you and Phil suggest. Whereas Science demands some physical measurements to satisfy its approach of objectivity. The definition of "works" is therefore different for scientific and non-scientific therapies. I thought the-ki part of Reiki was the Japanese version of chi, meaning "energy". And again, this is a different definition of the word to the scientific use of energy, leading to many unnecessary misunderstandings, arguments and crossed wires.

Expanding on my slightly pretentious comment. Infinite and finite (also absolute and relative) are just fancy words for awareness, and the structure or texture of awareness. When I read these words, I pay attention and focus on them, so the word becomes the foreground of awareness, and the rest of the room is the background. Then I shift my gaze to my cup of tea on the coffee table and I reach over, pick it up and take a sip. At that moment the cup of tea is the foreground and the computer screen merges into the background. Loses its thing-ness, its finitude, merges with the infinite. In this movement of awareness's structure, it creates and dissolves the boundaries which define all the finite things. Creation and destruction. Like a wave in the ocean is there when you notice it and delineate it with a boundary; otherwise there's just the ocean. Likewise with the TV screen analogy and the pictures "on" the screen.

Good point. Tho I'm not into LOA myself, it looks like most of us are after something akin to magic. Say a spell and your wishes are manifested through the power of the words alone. And that analogy applies to other forms of working too: meditation, mantras, rituals and even mainstream religion and psychotherapy. But have you ever met a real magician or witch rather than the Hollywood stereotype? The spells, crystals, magic wands and potions etc are just the outward appearance the real work being done within the mind. However I guess it helps to draw newbies into the work by thinking there's an easy 'magic' answer to their problems.

If Phil types a message and I'm not online to read it, does it say anything? (I'm joking brother). Seeing is believing.

Speaking from the dualist pov for a moment: 'I want' is fulfilled by a two -way relationship. The world 'out there' needs to give for you to receive. It's like double-entry book-keeping. You already say what you want, and now you need to align your wants with someone else's: being an attractive man, a friendly man, a good business opportunity or employee etc. But instead you're aligning yourself with laziness and solitude so perhaps these are fulfilling another 'I want' which I suggest will also benefit from being addressed and spoken about. Or dreamboarded about. Edit. I'm seeing a negative judgement towards the laziness, and a positive one for the other wants. But these are all based on feelings, which in themselves aren't positive or negative, until thought decides it's so. As a suggestion, instead of judging or fighting laziness, apply curiosity and kindly, patient mindfulness to bring it all into the light of awareness to see what's happening. Naming the feeling as "laziness" is already a negative judgement. Perhaps the avoidant behaviour is shielding you from something. In my case, anxiety is the root of my avoidance: knowing this lets me switch from blaming myself to allowing compassion.

Good question. We have a habit of sometimes saying 'you' when we really mean 'I', as a way of gaining social approval at the expense of owning our beliefs. We had a rule at the co-counselling to say 'I' instead of projecting onto others, it was a powerful tool. Not suggesting @Someone here is doing that, just taking the opportunity to share that memory.

Another thought occurred to me. Why do you want to be different from how you are anyway? Is your physical body and personality an end in itself, the meaning of life, or is there perhaps a deeper feeling or unmet need to which these desires for change are merely symptoms? Just a wild guess here, tell me if I'm wrong, but is it rooted in a need for social acceptance, friendship and love from other people? Perhaps your lack of self-acceptance is a reaction to thoughts of non-acceptance by others? If those others loved you unconditionally, maybe self-acceptance would come naturally. Unconditional love from others originates with the parent-child relationships (or should do) so I guess that's why psychologists and therapists want us to talk about them.

It's a tough one which we all struggle with to some extent. That's a first step, to recognise that self-criticism is very common and there's nothing 'wrong' or different about me doing it. There's a paradox here too, in that the thoughts and feelings of 'I don't like ...' are just as much me, as the qualities they're referring to. So self-acceptance means accepting the not-liking as well as the liking. In my view, this means making a commitment to not trying to change myself (let alone anyone else). Just focus on awareness of whatever is being felt and thought right now, and the process of judging it. Like a type of mindfulness perhaps, not a quick cure but a practice for the long haul. Is there a separation between me the judger and owner of my appearance, my personality etc? In my experience if you go down the road of trying to fix your imperfections, even if you succeed the inner voice just finds something else to dislike and it's never ending.