Kasper wrote:Another problem is: My father and mother think like this: It's healthy, or its unhealthy. As they can't believe roasted nuts are unhealthy, they should be healthy. There is nothing in between
LOL
Kasper wrote:Is there a place I can order brazils or macadamia's online ? I have searched, but I can't find it.
Nutsonline has them, but unfortunately they don't ship outside the US. Maybe you can make a deal with someone to ship it to you?
I became a vegan raw foodie when I suffered from swine flu.
What did you experience while eating like that? And how long did you do it?
How much should the shipment cost if I get 20 kg of macadamia's from USA to Holland ?
The raw vegan diet was not that bad, the problem was, I ate too much products not tasting well... So I felt good, except when I was eating...
I think I also felt good because my face was looking better than ever. I hated that swollen face, and with raw food it became much better.
But on Wai even my hair also became to look good. And my face even better.
I was for like 2/3 months I think. But not really strict, I ate sometimes herring or smoked salmon.
panacea wrote: Knowledge is power, and lack of knowledge in the masses is a cash cow for those that have it.
I'd just like to highlight this - it's a precious saying.
As long as we (I mean, most of us) don't stop wanting money 1000x more than everything else, without scruples, all our problems are gonna keep on coming up.
We need to start progressively destroying this mad "money above all" culture, and start injecting humanism and culture. Make the powerful see that these two are more important and more pleasureful than money, and make the masses see that they gotta keep their eyes open. It's a work that's being done for 5 centuries, and that we must always keep.
I'm kinda preaching my religion here also, lol... but just a thought, anyway.
it's in our nature to want more and more - there will always be this problem until our nature changes or our desires are satisfied
morally brainwashing people might work for 90% of people but it's not enough to stop a few from taking advantage of a wholistic minded society. A perfect example is our own body - all of our cells are designed to work for the good of the many and sacrifice themselves for the benefit of the entire organism - if all the cells didn't work like this consistently then we quickly find problems and suffering. If we want to act like this we will have to rely on further knowledge of psychology, and scientific development in technology/psychology interfaces in order to change our human nature..
Some things in the future I can see leading to this are:
-Technological progress to where cost of living drops for everyone and working to survive is no longer needed - automated robots/computer systems run the 'foundations' of society
-Lucid dream machines that allow people to have what they want using their imagination, and since it would seem very real, they would not be so greedy in real life, as they are satisfied.
-A single global nation/government so that all people speak the same language and can better communicate, like a whole 'organism' does. In this way, the person on the other side of the worlds family/children are somehow 'important' to the other side now, and are not as seperate and therefore 'competing'.
-Better education system which taps the enormous potential of the human brain and allows further technological/scientific innovations in the future (Someone in japan memorized Pi to over 80,000 digits, just to show our potential)
-Population control, since chaotic population growth causes inability to keep up with demands of society and leads to poverty and need - and therefore greed/crime/immoral behavior.
So as you can see, the change we want to happen isn't going to happen because we voice our opinions really well, or because you vote for something, or because you forecast it.. it's a numbers game - with the almost 7 billion people and new minds coming in to the world, there is bound to be people somewhere who are innovating and inventing the technological stepping stones, and researching the psychological stepping stones, etc, that will inevitably lead our species to Civilization Level 2, or 3, or whatever. The more advanced a society, the more it will act like a symbiote to the world and to other human races, and until these things happen then all of the efforts to get the current model of the world to 'act the right way' will be in vain.
I completely agree that technological advance and advances in psychology are essential, and I really liked the 5 ideas you marked, I see those things as major vectors to a better future too. But I really don't agree the way you devalue the power of communication and culture.
For instance, in my country, Portugal, we have been under a dictator government until 1974. If it wasn't for the people's nonconformity in general, which was in big part conducted by interventionist singers like Zeca Afonso, it wouldn't have happened the '74 revolution.
Scientific advances are indeed very important, maybe even more than communication, but you are certainly devalueing the power of communication. Communication isn't just spreading your opinion. It's creating humanism, and culture, and good values, within a community. It's jornalism (all kinds of), it's literature, it's music, it's art, it's politics, it's education, it's even the way you play your professional career, whichever it is. It's even in the way you threat your family, you friends, your opponents. It's in your attitude towards life, in every option you chose in life, basically. These are the ways we must start creating consciousness in people. Not making them have our opinions, but making them think for themselves. Making them have spirit. And humanism.
Going back to my country's example, I think we're still living quite a bit in the culture than 50years of dictatorship have implanted on us. A friend of mine likes to call it the "average" culture. Everyone wants an average car, an average house, an average job, and an average sexual partner. No one primes for originality. Originality is seen as something weird, and dangerous. If it wasn't for our people that "communicate", we'd certainly buried 100x more in this averageness, waiting for lucid dream machines to come and satisfy us all and make this country a living heaven...
But btw, I don't only want all my dreams and pleasures to be satisfied, and no hunger and etc! I want humanism! I wanna live among people than have spirit!...!
Another good example is Wai Diet. Ok, Wai and RRM did scientific research, but what if they didn't publish it on the web? What if they didn't show that care? What if they even just published it, and didn't bother to make a board and answer our questions and participate in our discussions? Do you think it'd be almost the same? I really don't think so.
I wasn't saying that communication didn't exist or wasn't a big factor in society - I was saying it's impossible to control it to change the world or as you said, 'make' people have spirit.. Most of humanity is involved with some religion which is heavily resistant to outside forces, and if not religion, some culture which clashes with another or some other separative barrier like different nationality, race, sex, class, occupation, background, criminal history, etc. Then you have the problem of not enough resources for everybody, unlimited desires, but limited money, which equals greed in people without moralistic barriers to it. So as you can see, moralistic barriers create confusion and other problems, and greed also creates confusion and other problems. In a society with limited resources and a billion different perspectives, there can be no symbiotic relationship.
When you said this,
"We need to start progressively destroying this mad "money above all" culture, and start injecting humanism and culture."
I was pointing out how this kind of thing is impossible. You can't 'destroy' or 'drown out' this kind of culture even if you could devise a way for it to happen as with mass propaganda, because those who control the media are not interested in your long term plan or your view, they got to be in power because they followed the path to power which is greed and immoral business decisions. The entire world is founded on money and that is why you can't destroy it by using the current system, all solutions exist outside the current system, new inventions and new or largely unknown technology which liberates the past environment and creates a new one for human nature to react to in a different and hopefully better way. You can't rally together a 'movement' that would be anything more than 'yeah I agree with you but 90% of our members still act greedy when it comes to more than their spoken word' because once again the fundamental problem is our human nature reacting to the environment and not a lack of discovery of 'what things that currently exist can we do to fix everything'.
Almost everyone has been exposed to the 'what's better for everyone is better for me in the long run!' concept in some way - whether it be by choosing to throw something in the normal trash can or walking a few feet further to get to the recycle bin, not going for a joy ride and polluting the air for pleasure and nothing sensical, donating money to various places instead of buying new fashion of clothes when your old ones are perfectly fine for functionality, etc, there is limitless ways we behave 'greedily' even when we don't realize it, and many have been made aware of it at some point. The human nature side of us however says, 'well someone else can behave like that, I'm going to do what I want', and since most of us say that, there is no way to convince everyone at the same time to 'leap' forward, that is why we are stuck in this behavior until something new comes out and changes the game.
One of my favorite examples how truly stuck we are is when I see people who will donate some money to some charity trying to feed starving poor people in a third world country (I live in the US). They do this to stroke their ego - but they believe they do it because they are simply 'good' apples while people who don't are 'bad' apples. (Good/bad supernatural forces). Then, out of sheer irony, they also fail to research or even care if their donation is doing any good. For example, if that donation is going to feed some starving people in a third world country, how is that really helping them? Now they will have another meal - more energy, more capability to reproduce and expand their poor starving population and create an even greater demand for food. They have learned nothing and still can't support themselves, they are simply feeding a tumor instead of correcting it. I'm only saying it in this way because this situation would actually create more human beings who have lives of suffering while only very temporarily relieving some hunger. You would be surprised how much of the 'humanist' movement is like this, pointless and vain and ignorant of the big picture. There is almost no work being done on global population control in comparison to how many millions or billions of dollars and ad campaigns are raised/created per year to save house pets of some kind or other pretty useless tasks like 'controlling co2 emissions' when the real research shows that the global co2 in the past millions of years is decreasing and causing us harm.
Nobody is ever interested in the full story though - they dig into it only deep enough to feel like they are a part of something or doing the right thing, and it all comes back to our human nature being flawed - 10000000 people will try to fix the world in the way they see it needing to be fixed and there is no common perspective to say 'this one is the right one', only science can tell us what that way is through innovation and technology just as it has led us out of the misery and madness of the past where doctors cracked peoples skulls open to cure diseases or sacrificed animals to their gods to save the herd.
I understand, but I'm not saying there should be more moralistic barriers, like religions. I'm asking for something which is like an update of that. That thing is counscience, humanity. And how ppl achieve these? With culture.
If people had more culture, and therefore more humanity (in most cases), they wouldn't be so greedy and with "unlimited desires"(well said), because they'd see that material goods aren't the most important things, for instance.
The poor wouldn't be so poor, because they'd have the power of their knowledge both to fight the poverty and to fight the ones who were making them be poor.
They'd be more tolerant about other religions, races, etc.
"In a society with limited resources and a billion different perspectives, there can be no symbiotic relationship."
That is very true.
But even if we can't contribute to a symbiotic relationship for the whole world, we can start building one for our country, our town, our circle of people.
"Rome and Pavia weren't built in a day". (portuguese saying)
"When you said this,
"We need to start progressively destroying this mad "money above all" culture, and start injecting humanism and culture.""
You didn't pay enought attention to one very important word of my sentence: progressively.
I wasn't talking about any movement, not even ellaborate solutions or something like that. I'm just talking about giving culture to people, making them become more humanist, and at the same time making them become more counscious about the world we live in.
Because if everybody would be as counscious as you and me, I believe the world would be very different. Why? Because greedy people would have a lot more work to mount their plans to decieve the people, and there would be a lot less greedy people, because they'd see having lots of money isn't the most pleasurable thing in the world.
"the fundamental problem is our human nature reacting to the environment"
I believe we are biological machines, but not to that extent. Not like other animals, that just react. We can also act, and history has shown us that many times.
'well someone else can behave like that, I'm going to do what I want'. You believe we need something scientifically new to change this mentality - ok, I respect your opinion and I guess it's reasonable. But I believe more in progressively changing this mentality - it's a slow, long run we have in front of us.
On your 2 last paragraphs - That's a very good point, specially the part about hungry people in Africa.
But even science doesn't make us see the big picture. Nothing does. The study you mentioned about CO2 is interesting, yet questionable, since we definitely have provoked an extreme fluctuation of the CO2 emissions over the short time period that were the past 2 centuries. Maybe global CO2 is "meant" to be decreasing over the past millions of years. Even if it's causing us harm, do you think it's the capitalist chimneys that are gonna save us from that?
The point is: we never can tell. So, just don't mess (too much) with the environmet, with our bodies balance, etc. That's what I believe, anyway, since I can't know for sure.
"Save the planet?! The planet?! The planet is just gonna be fine! The people are the ones who are gonna get fucked" George Carlin, on environmental changes.
In conclusion, science is very, very important, but so are other fields. Philosophy and art, for instance, are i.m.o. as much imporant, in the way they elevate our souls.
mario91 wrote:I understand, but I'm not saying there should be more moralistic barriers, like religions. I'm asking for something which is like an update of that. That thing is counscience, humanity. And how ppl achieve these? With culture.
If people had more culture, and therefore more humanity (in most cases), they wouldn't be so greedy and with "unlimited desires"(well said), because they'd see that material goods aren't the most important things, for instance.
Ok spread your culture lets see if you can get the majority of 7 billion people to hear and understand you and change their perspectives to yours while you compete with the people with all the money and power to spread real propaganda instead of word of mouth.
Saying things like 'IF people all believed this way..." is just wishful thinking, there's no way to actually achieve that, until the science/technology molds us into that behavior. Whether the world is led by 'democracy' or 'communism', it's still a monetary system.
There was absolutely no technology or human 'harm' going on when the dinosaurs went extinct - there is no reason to think that our planet has our best interests in mind and somehow 'will take care of us if we leave it alone'. Informed scientific decisions are always better than either extremes of 'lets do whatever we want to the planet' or 'lets leave the planet to be as natural as possible!'
I think you're not completely getting my point, but ok, you've got your opinion, I've got mine
(by saying this I'm not depreciating your opinion, I think it's reasonable, it's just that mine is different)
When you make art, perform art. You will experience a certain kind of flow. I've experienced alot about this flow with psychedelica, ritual dancing, drawing and poetry. When you're in this flow, you don't think! You just do, without the thinking or reflections about it. I first experienced this on the dance floor. Hours of dancing and learning some basic steps, my technique. Then all of a sudden, I was in the groove. All went by itself, I didn't think and just experienced the NOW. I saw Flower patterns everywhere and all kinds of grid systems everywhere. This was without the use of drugs. Just a few beers and a good mood. I wasn't in a state of questioning, or even in a state of language. I just recieved answers, but not in a language, just a feeling of knowing and connectedness. Mystic experiences. Explaining it is useless, but that's also part of the fun. The glimpse of the cosmic giggle. Because language is a map of this state. A conversion to a causalistic kind of knowing instead of just knowing. Relating things, communion. The way to think about it is a mathematical formula, like f(x)=x^2. The mold (the function) is already there, it are the rules. Then putting different numbers in, creates something that now can have a meaning. It will become ordered pairs (x,f(x)). This gives it a meaning, a relation! And my guess is that the nature just is a sort of fractal. An equation of symmetries and operations. If really interested, also see E8 and string theory.
Artists have these kind of flows in all different kind of varieties. My dad for example, can make exceptional drawings. He can do this by first deciding what to draw. Or being in the flow. He then doesn't think, but just puts his pen on the paper and just lets it happen.
Now comes my point: It doesn't matter what you do to get some kind of flow. Everything that let's you get a flow just feels awesome and brings answers, but not answers that have a linguistic meaning. You don't need to 'get' it, because it can't be done, just do it. If people can get in this flow, we will recieve a lot of internal luck. You just have to see for yourself, and that's the big problem. People just don't experience this state, because they aren't inspired to do so. This state of flow will also halt the search for materialistic, short lasting pleasures that only give you an illusion of happiness. The linguistic communicatable way of happiness. Just being in the flow in the company of other people will communicate this happiness in other ways. Or you just won't feel the need to.
We only need instruments and technique. The proud of your profession needs to come back. We MUST not cut ourselves out of this gift from nature. People need to be more creative, that's what got us so far in first place. This will inspire other crafts too, to cause a boom in development of the whole human race.
Inspiration and creation!
In the moments we don't need to be in the flow. There must be good scientific thinking. And I agree to alot of points of panacea. Certainly when it comes to never stop questioning and taking something for granted just because someone else does it, or because most people do. This is the other part that nature gave us and is now explored in these ages. We are now at the, I believe, end stages of this part. We now begin to see the need for a combinaton of these two qualities. We need to bring back the balance. We need to connect the feminine principles: negativess, something that pulls inward, passive knowledge of the divine. With the masculine: the action, the aggression, positiveness, something that ejaculates, active knowledge of the ego. When looking in mathematical functions. The feminine is the form of the function itself and the masculine that what you put in the function. To create something new which is meaningful.
We already have the flow in us (feminine), it's just that we need to DO something (masculine) to combine the two to get in the flow and we recieve/become meaning.
Bit of a rant, but I hope that you'll get the point. It's just all about balance.
I couldn't agree more with everything that you just said, overkees. It was extremely well observated (even if you can't explain the "flow" with words, but that's part of the fun right? ) and extremely inspired and creative, indeed! I really enjoyed reading your comment, really, and I'm not just saying this to flatter you or to be politically correct or something like that.
overkees wrote:
We already have the flow in us (feminine), it's just that we need to DO something (masculine) to combine the two to get in the flow and we recieve/become meaning.
Agree, even if I don't like that much the feminine/masculine metaphor.
Science is very important in the moments we are not in flow! Science is like mind's work, art/philosophy/culture are like mind's leisure, even if this metaphor isn't also perfect.
But like you said, we need BOTH sides/fields/whatever. The way doesn't only hides in one of them.
overkees wrote:
People just don't experience this state, because they aren't inspired to do so. This state of flow will also halt the search for materialistic, short lasting pleasures that only give you an illusion of happiness.
Again, you couldn't be more right.
But now I have something to add:
My guess is that giving people culture and education highly increases their probabilities of getting into some kind of flow. I speak by myself, cause I can honestly say that culture just saved my soul. It made me see/get into the flow you talk about. (And how I know what you're talking about!)
