People will always seek to understand the world and find meaning. it’s not something you can dismiss as irrelevant. If the concern is pseudoscience, the answer isn’t rejection but discernment. Buddhist philosophy and cognitive science, for instance, offer frameworks that are both rigorous and open to examination. Worth considering before reducing the conversation to absolutes.
Individual level, educate yourself and learn compassion:
https://youarenotsosmart.com/2022/06/27/yanss-236-how-minds-change/
https://www.streetepistemology.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Read_a_Book because we have a lot of people who really think they know more about things than they do, based purely on social media posts and sensationalized news. “bAn ALl ReLIGIOnS” is such a highschool tier take that speaks to incredibly poor understanding of human culture, society, philosophy and psychology. Religion is just organized and political spirituality. And we need things that spirituality can offer, and materialism (capitalism) has nearly robbed us of it. And spiritual does NOT have to fucking mean believing in some skydaddy, it can just mean being able to STOP and be with all of life, as it is, within any given moment. You can frame it with the awe of quantum fucking mechanics if you want. Go watch Carl Sagan at the very least. Christianity had one fucking job and they couldn’t have failed more catastrophically… But I digress… Though understanding the difference between RELIGION and SPIRITUALITY (and what NEEDS spirituality fulfills) would go a long way in guarding against cults.
A lot of the time dealing with cults or cult-like communities requires you to do things that go against your every impulse.
Respect your own boundaries but keep a door open provided your boundaries are respected.
Do not belittle the people in the cult. Do not demonize. I CANNOT emphasize that part enough. If you can’t stop yourself, you best avoid these situations because you will only make it worse.
Actively seek to understand what the person is getting out of the cult (usually it’s basic social acceptance - which is exactly why vilifying cult members only works in the cult’s favor - see MAGA). If they believe they are getting some spiritual need fulfilled, you better have really good understanding of what that need is before you try to talk about it. Read the relevant philosophy and so on. There are no ideas in the world that can’t be twisted into a cult rhetoric.
Cults chiefly work by predating on people who feel like they aren’t HEARD or SEEN by others. Their experiences are dismissed or straight up ridiculed. This seems to be an impossible pill for some people to swallow and they seem to legitimately think that calling people idiots will surely make them feel bad and get back in the route of sanity Spoilers: it just makes them run right into the welcoming arms of the cult’s spokespeople who shower them with (seemingly) unconditional love and validation.
Once the cult is their only social circle, it’s basically impossible to extract them. Unless you are willing to see them COMPASSIONATELY as basic humans whose behavior is ultimately dictated by very basic needs for human connection, you will have no hope of reaching them.
Most people make the mistake of thinking that if they can just communicate some very smart and clever narrative to the people in the cult, they will be able to change their minds. But what that tends to accomplish is that you just put the person on the defensive. It’s actually even worse if you manage to get through to their intellectual faculty because then you have effectively demolished some faith-based thing that they have but you are offering nothing in return. Instead all they have now is feeling like they are an idiot and YOU know it. But they can still run back to the cult and stick around on principle. So all you did was make them dig their heels in, because now they KNOW all the rest of the world is able to prove that they are stupid and nobody wants to feel that. Basically in the cult they will have all their social contacts, support network, possibly even their financial security. Few people are going to choose feeling stupid, alone and destitute over that.
Unfortunately most people will jump at the chance to tell another person that their beliefs are stupid. And even more so they will jump at the chance to tell another person that they are morally inferior.
Alto’s Adventure. One of those simple is powerful games. Though it can get really frustrating as there definitely are situations where the game just decides that actually, you’re done.
I personally hold a Consciousness-Only View, something like nondual Buddhism, and would say that your questions are on the right track but you’re understandably trying to reconcile them with the consensus opinion of a materialistic world. Which leads to a nihilistic “this is all a simulation” line of thinking that still runs into the wall of duality - you’re still putting an external force out there, acting upon you. As long as you believe that there are goal posts, you can move them indefinitely. It’s a simulation within a simulation within a simulation and depending on your inclination, you can put a really depressing spin on it (“I’m being tormented”).
But if you aren’t actually experiencing life from a nondual angle (as you don’t seem to be), the philosophy doesn’t mean much. And to experience life with the freedom that comes from not experiencing yourself to be only the things you think you are takes a lot of practice - meditation etc. with a secure and healthy community around you. Unless you get lucky.
Up to you what you want to do with this all though. I only saw the little glimpse of your life that you divulged in the comments and as such I’d say, focus on what is most immediate to you. Get food. Take care of your body. Try to find a real-life community. Occasionally poke at your thoughts about what you VALUE and drill down - do you value the thing you said or do you value what you believe you will get with the thing you said? Make choices in life that help you live more according to your values. Stop spending excessive amounts of time online, especially if all the stories cause you anxiety.
Or you can just join a Buddhist monastery or something. You’ll be taken care of and your identity as a second child or an immigrant inherently doesn’t matter, but of course you’ll be giving up a lot.
If there is ever any conceivable way to act as if one has the morally higher ground, 99.9% of people will use it with an Ad Hominem attack to avoid dealing with the actual point of an argument. ESPECIALLY on the internet. No matter what political, academic or just plain nerdy configuration of people you have, no matter what topic they are discussing. If anyone ever catches even the faintest whiff of a position that they think is morally inferior, they will unfailingly disregard any logic, context and relating in favor of demonizing the opponent. Because there is no sugar sweeter to the human mind than thinking themselves morally superior.
Look into Non-violent Communication https://www.cnvc.org/
And also this https://pastebin.com/ZHhS044M
Both require very, very stern honesty with oneself and understanding the difference between FEELINGS and NARRATIVES about feelings. You both need to commit to this, and NOT police each other - when one of you sees the other fail, it’s on them to translate, not to guilt trip.
(and yes, learning this will initially lead to very stiff and awkward speech, you’ll get over it)
The Alters. It’s great! Nice to see someone tackle ideas around some really deep philosophical questions and make an actually engaging game around them.
Yahtzee’s review: https://youtu.be/m0ViiBrey8E
Also playing Elden Ring Reforged with some friends.Not sure if I care for it, I don’t really enjoy the souls-like gameplay.
Can you prove that memory is a reliable way to determine reality without referencing memory?
I mean the reason you have to ask is kind of… why
We’re in mostly a capitalistic world. Capitalism makes utilitarianism seem easy since it becomes easy to assign a “value” to everything. That kind of thinking quickly gets you to naive cynicism. We’re conditioned to think certain things are more valuable than others - mental wellbeing and community have been steadily devalued.
There’s a saying “behind every cynic there’s a disappointed idealist”. We’re in a world where a lot of people grew up in a time of amazing technological advancement, but have been bitterly disappointed by how the world is today. These people are now getting to that age where they may have been working the same job for a while (if they got lucky with job security) and they just want to get the job done and not exert any more effort than necessary (since by their experience, it doesn’t “pay off”).
Let them be them, you do your thing. They don’t owe you any kind of behavior really, though it would be expected and polite of them to keep things at professional level of course. You don’t owe them either so you don’t have to let them bring you down. Don’t take it personally though because it really, really isn’t.
Obvs just my view. If you really want to know, you can try to just ask what they value and if you can work in a way that aligns with that while not disregarding your own values.
They can go to the cops. I get this may not seem ideal to them if they are in fact doing something illegal. And again: giving money to beggars encourages begging -> more human trafficking. It’s a very, very direct causation. I rather not get into that.
Vehemently against it. Far too easy to abuse - there’s been criminal gangs that force people to beg. I’ve even heard of criminal gangs crippling people they traffic to give them visible disabilities to make the begging more effective. Giving money to beggars - even if they’re not being trafficked - still makes begging worthwhile and increases the likelihood it will be made into a gang activity. We need government programs that handle it, or give your money to a charity instead, which makes sure the money goes to effective programs that help people in real need.
(Not who you were responding to but…)
EVERYONE else’s idea of what your life should be is the standard, and if you deviate more than the standard deviation you will suffer the consequence of eeking out existence with very few choices.
While this is true, it’s not an argument against doing exactly what you want provided that people understand that everyone else has the exact same liberty. We collectively tend towards certain values and people who deviate from those values too much eventually get sorted out one way or another. As one value most people tend towards heavily is safety, it’s in everyone’s best interest to find common ground with others for everyone to have safety. But it is necessarily a process with errors and learning - on everyone’s side; which begets more errors and learning. Thus we will never have a perfect solution. Of course, you “conforming” to majority is also you doing exactly what you want, ultimately. Because you value your safety.
Question the presupposed truth behind every statement.
Pretty much, unironically. Meaning is also a false hope you put into the future. But you’re better off paying attention to what’s happening now, within your sense-field. Is there something in there that you genuinely want to take care of there? There’s all the “meaning” people need. But the why-motor is really, really good at convincing you to chase after exponentially increasing complexity. And most people need to do it until they die, some need to despair at it so they get disillusioned with the mind (and the lucky ones find sensible wisdom traditions to get them to navigate that space without causing harm, like Zen Buddhism).
Sidebar: And as most people have their why-motor running until the end, we of course live in cultures that are built around catching the tail of stillness, giving you so many different avenues to explore. You can have fun while doing it but you’ll stop one way or another eventually.
I really recommend you check out Waking Up App . Ignore Harris if needed, it has tons of other respectable teachers of meditation and philosophy with interesting conversations.
Edit: Reading the thread I feel like many people here are at the “despair” but fall to nihilism. Which seems to be the natural result of intelligence meeting lack of wisdom. Abrahamic religions really dropped the ball on that one.
It doesn’t have a meaning. “Meaning” is just a concept we made up to forever have something to chase after. You can endlessly ask “why” so it’s like chasing one’s own tail. It’s the motor of the mind, fueled by the desire to finally be still.
Get Waking Up app, do the practices and listen to the talks.
Congrats, you’ve touched reality, from the haze of the rat race and the world designed to keep you distracted from the big scary pointlessness of it all. Yes, everything and everyone will die and then something else comes along and eventually dies and so on. Most people don’t want to realize this and rather numb themselves out, and encourage others to do the same as a shared delusion is easier to keep up. But the fleeting pointlessness is very beautiful if you let it be, scary if you resist it - makes no difference to the end result though, the truth is nice like that.
Take your time like this: https://www.how-to-type.com/touch-typing-lessons/how-to-type-home-keys/
Then try a typing game like https://www.typelit.io/
It will take time and it will feel so awkward at first.
Vibes. Semi-physical feel of things. Just guessing.
They are just trying to align everything that’s being said to their previously held beliefs. People aren’t typically all that aware of what their core beliefs are because an alternative, challenging core belief would have to breach all the way into it for it them to realize they have one. Without the salient contrast, they just don’t notice it’s there. It’s just blue against a blue background, and unless a yellow comes along, they’re not going to realize there’s anything there. The materialistic worldview is so prevalent that a random online conversation isn’t likely to get through, no matter how well argued. I’ve had similar discussions many times and sooner or later people just kind of “reset” and I find myself having to say the same things again and again because there’s just this impenetrable thought loop going on. Logic doesn’t breach it, it’s just that they keep asking for all the different ways we can reach the number 42. If I tell them 41+1=42, they ask again and I have to try to explain how 40+2 is also 42, and so on ad nauseum. “Hahaa, but there’s a 33-4347+132562+767368, I bet you can’t do anything to get that to 42”. That can be done all day. If the person isn’t truly open for new ways to think (and few people in these type of settings are), as in they aren’t actively looking for it with an open curiosity, it’s not likely they’ll realize much during that convo.
It’s really, really, natural and normal. I just thought it was funny because OP is behaving the exact same way they’re asking about in their initial post. They’ll probably eventually figure it out.
You said that you don’t know for sure if it’s matter or consciousness that comes first but everything you’re saying hinges on you very firmly believing that matter is prior.
If you had genuine uncertainty about it, you would be much more careful about how you go about asking for proof. If you weren’t sure that matter is prior, it would occur to you to question what “objective” and “subjective” means. I could also ask you, can you step outside consciousness and objectively prove to me that your matter exists? If not, why do you value objective over subjective so much?
So to round back to your initial question: you can intellectually acknowledge the difficulty of proving matter vs. consciousness, yet if we probe it, clearly you hold a firm belief about it despite not being able to rationally prove your belief. So you can ask your initial question from yourself now. Despite your reasoning skill, why aren’t you more skeptical about the materialist view AND it’s implications?
Feel free to criticize nonduality, which is my spiritual view. If you are sufficiently familiar with Buddhism (Zen or Dzogchen), you should have enough information to go on.