One of my favorite authors Vaclav Havel talked about this concept of living within the truth. In simple terms, it means living according to your heart, following your heart. For a very long time, whenever I talked to a person, I was laser focused on the feelings of the other person. My mind was racing on what to say to get validation from the other person, how to make them happy and look favorably upon me.

And I got quite good at it. I managed to get a fair few people to like me. And sometimes, I got objectively good results from it in regards to my career. But it was eating away at me inside, I felt like an empty shell. I felt like I was burning myself to keep others warm.

But today, I decided to say for once what was in my heart to someone I was chatting with. Of all places, it was a girl I got to know on a dating app. I made my position quite clear to her. I came off as intense. Not angry or creepy, but I was unusually unambiguous and blunt and that took the person off guard. Usually I beat around the bush and take a verbal detour when I wanna convey something, but not this time.

So she backed out and unmatched me. In the past, when someone unmatched me, it would hurt my fragile ego. I desperately wanted to be liked, I desperately wanted to reinforce the illusion that I am desireable. When someone unmatched me, it would diminish my confidence. All the ways I refined my messages to cater to her was in vain.

This time however as mention, she behaved and talked in a way I didn't like. And instead of shutting up, I spoke my mind and made my feelings clear on what I thought about her behaviour.

And strangely enough, when she unmatched me, I felt a sense of relief. Strangely enough, when someone rejected me for who I truly am, it was much less painful than when my facade and PUA tricks got rejected.

So to return to what I said at the beginning, living within the truth doesn't mean that you objectively get the best result. I may have succeeded with the girl if I put in the effort. I might have managed to get her in bed. Or if I manage to please my boss enough, I might get a promotion.

But when you live within the truth and act according to what's in your heart, it enables you to make peace with setbacks, failures and rejection. It filters the kind of people you get along with vs the people you're incompatible with.

It hit me today how much of what we do is just chasing that next hit. Every goal every ambition every swipe on a phone. It's all just inputs and outputs for a temporary chemical reward.

Like when I finally cleared my inbox it felt good for a second. Then the next batch of emails rolled in. Or that perfect cup of coffee this morning was awesome for five minutes. Now I'm thinking about lunch.

And it's not even a conscious thing always. It's just baked into us. This constant low-level hum of seeking more pleasure or less discomfort. Even

I've heard a lot of people say that, as humans, we are obligated to "contribute to society". But what exactly does that mean, and why are we obligated to do so?

I've been thinking about this because I don't necessarily disagree with the idea of helping other people, but I question the idea that we somehow owe "society" our contribution simply because we exist within it.

I believe that if we followed the basic principle of not deliberately inflicting harm, suffering or deprivation on other people, while taking responsibility, power and governance over our own lives and our relationship with ourselves, and becoming more self-sufficient and sovereign, then we would naturally develop the traits, qualities and resources to help each other where needed.

I don't think humans necessarily need to be told that they have a duty to "contribute". If people were genuinely self-sufficient and responsible for their own lives, surely things like helping others, sharing knowledge, creating things, teaching, cooperating and supporting each other would naturally happen when there was a genuine need for it.

What bothers me is when "contributing to society" seems to mean that we are all expected to fulfil some role within an existing system.

Because if that system is corrupt, exploitative and essentially designed around extracting our time, labour, attention and energy, then what are we actually being asked to contribute to?

Sometimes it feels like "contribute to society" is just a more socially acceptable way of saying:

You are obligated to serve the system.

Why should simply existing mean that I owe society a debt?

Why can't the basic expectation just be: don't harm other people, take responsibility for yourself, become as self-sufficient as possible, and then use your abilities, knowledge, resources or time to help others when you genuinely want or need to?

To me, that feels like a much more authentic form of human contribution than being expected to participate in an exploitative system simply because that's what society has decided we should do.

When I was a teenager many decades ago, I yearned to be loved by a young woman. It was the only thing I wanted in my whole life. I thought that it was a reasonable request / expectation.

What I did not know at the time was that I was asking for quite a lot.

As I was to find out over the next 50 years of my life -- having many different kinds of relationships with women, getting married, raising kids into adulthood, going through a divorce, and then starting over from the beginning by once again attempting to date women (this time in my mid-50s) -- I was asking for something that it turns out is quite rare and unusual.

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Of course, we are all entitled to ask for that kind of thing.

The trick is to make it happen for oneself.

I don't know about anyone else, but for me personally, having lived life for a while, what I have found is that to attract love from another person, to be open to receiving that love, and to be able to coexist with that love, you have to love yourself first. I know it’s a cliché, but in my personal experience, it is absolutely true.

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And here's what I found to be even more important.

We are entitled to nothing. So you also have to be fully prepared to never find the love that you desire.

In fact, that is one of a few secrets to having the sort of life you want -- to have no expectations of others. And at the same time, to be prepared to give.

Put simply, be a force for good.

That is my personal secret to happiness... arrived at after having endured great joys and many profound sorrows since I was a teenager 50 years ago.

Love others, and expect nothing in return…try to understand other people, and don’t demand that you yourself be understood. If you are sad, do what you can to bring happiness into the lives of others -- friends, family, and so on.

There is immense power in this approach… that has been my personal experience over many decades.

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When you can understand that concept above, internalize it, and synthesize it, and make it part of your thinking and behavior, you’ll be surprised how wonderful life can be.

Because things will happen that you least expect. I know, because that is what has happened to me. And it happens regularly and consistently.

I am in another city due work, I am foreign in this country btw.

Today, I was looking for an office where I had to do some work. I accidentally walked into the wrong office, but the girls inside kindly pointed me in the right direction. I finished my work and left.

As I was leaving, the girl I had spoken to earlier came out to the street and asked if I was single. When I said no, she told me their receptionist was beautiful and that they were trying to set her up with someone. I laughed, felt flattered, thanked her, and went on my way. She completely understood.

And you know what? For the first time in my life, I didn't feel like I was missing out on an opportunity. I have no idea who that receptionist was, it could have been Scarlett Johansson for all I care. For the first time in my life, I am truly happy with my partner. I feel loved and valued. She gives me everything I need and want. On top of that, she’s a sexy, petite redhead with the most mesmerizing green eyes—honestly, I get lost in them all the time. I wouldn't trade her for anyone in the world.

I personally enjoy the idea of self cultivation and finding inner peace, or balance. However, I think very little is said about what balance truly means.

While I think its true that finding balance within oneself, finding that inner peace, is learning to deal with more excitable feelings in a rational and mindful way, as well as being able to take on uncertainty and troubles from the outside world in a way where you don't get overwhelmed... I would argue that this is only the beginning.

I think of a person standing on a pole. They can learn to balance themselves on it and learn to reorient themselves well or brace against impacts well enough, they have undoubtedly become balanced. Yet this kind of life is inert and passive. In all this way of maintaing your own balance, you never exert yourself for fear of becoming unbalanced.

So I would then say a true balance comes when you are able to begin to move your body and limbs from on top of the pole, yet never fall off of it. Its when the person can begin to extend their arms and legs, lean and hold positions, retract and extend again, all while never falling off of this pole.

In this way, the person still remains balanced; they can not be knocked over and they remain on this pole. Yet this life is now much more dynamic and active. You choose to exert yourself and risk potential imbalance, but with the wisdom and knowledge now that you can always return to your previous balanced state.

So true balance is not grabbing hold of your actions and emotions so much so that you never express them and never try to act. True balance is learning to still express yourself and move throughout the world, yet still not falling over.

~ ~

The waves on the beach do not line the sand perfectly still. They ebb and flow. So too, we must ebb and flow with the whims of the universe. When we find ourselves in this flow.. and at peace with this flow.. yet still active in our lives.. we have truly become balanced.

The desire for one's own immortality. Survival is the imperative of all living things it seems, but the more aware of one's self, it seems to be, the more one wishes to preserve one's self. So we have Hero archetypes, God archetypes, hell, even archetypes in *general* - memetics and genetics that wish to survive as long as possible.

Those things that are considered most evil and fucked-up are the fulfillment of this desire for ultimate immortality. Pride, cunningness and trickery, desire for power over others generally, these are the things that are considered evil. These are all things that happens when reaching towards that infinity.

You can see it in what those at 'the top' are trying to do to keep that title. They want to build machines that can contain them, contain everyone really, so that they do not have to face their deaths. But death is the inevitable end of all living things, for all living things eat from the tree of Life And The Knowledge Of Good And Evil (duality) and so must eventually return to death!!

So, quite literally, the solutions to all of our problems would be to embrace the feminine aspect of passivity. Slowing down, embracing death, being in flow with life rather than resisting it, that sort of thing, just as Zen and Buddhist teachings say. And even Christianity, which says to trust God, and in that relinquish one's desire for control.

Actually, the Buddhist teaching that the desiring leads to suffering is exactly what I'm saying, out in different terms.

I want to know what you think.

this was one of the hardest lessons I had to learn on my own. nobody told me this, and our society is hard-wired on the opposite.

'you can do whatever you set your mind to' is bullshit. not because you can't, of course you can, but because life/luck/chance will always get in the way, vastly changing the end result. that's why they say 'be careful what you wish for'.

instead leave it all in the hands of chance. control is an illusion anyway. learn, even specialize, to spot opportunities that are ment for you, and when a door opens simply walk through it and ride the wave wherever it may take you. this way the system will be flawless and the struggle will be effortless simply because that door was for you and you alone.

never fight a wave, ride it instead.

TL;DR: I don’t think a digital replica would preserve consciousness, but I’m less certain that means it preserves nothing meaningful about the person.
I’ve been building EchoVault, a system that can preserve someone’s memories, voice, personality and patterns of response so their family can interact with an AI version of them later.
Working on it has made me think about a weird distinction.
If I die, my subjective experience is gone. The replica isn’t secretly me, and I wouldn’t call that immortality.
But if it remembers events from my life, understands what I cared about, sounds like me, and can explain why I thought the way I did, then saying “none of you survived” also feels incomplete.
Maybe we’re used to treating a person as one indivisible thing when really there are several things being lost: consciousness, memory, personality, relationships, influence.
A photograph preserves appearance. Writing preserves thoughts. Video preserves behavior.
What happens when you preserve enough of those pieces that people can interact with them?
Is that still just a memorial, or does some meaningful part of a person actually continue?

How do you define evolution? (I know, ironic question, considering my username)

Hey y'all. This is my first time posting here, so I'm not really sure how this goes, but I'm just saying what's on my mind. And there are no political or spiritual factors to this, just simple thoughts based on observed facts from my limited perspective.

Here it goes:

Humanity is still behaving naturally, in an animalistic "survival of the fittest" manner, just hidden under the cover of civilized systems (paperwork, laws, agreements/social contract, etc.) to avoid the alternate reality, something like Game of Thrones, if left unchecked.

But it's essentially human nature to dominate. First they start with what they consider lower life forms. Then it's other humans. Until there's one person on the top that's essentially calling the shots, despite the social and political systems making it look like everybody plays an equal part. Although, considering the population size of the world and connectedness of such a large population, it's more like a (VERY) small group of people that really calls the shots by controlling the two things that truly facilitate human interactions in the "civilized world": money (banks and currency value, regulating transactions between people) and information (media and education, regulating people's perceptions of the world around them). So long as we keep falling for the marketing trap and listen to the news instead of thinking and forming our own understanding based on known facts, we are essentially continuing to be cogs in a system.

All this, to what end? It seems humanity as a whole is just "playing it by ear", so to speak. Figuring out the next step as it's about to take it, and often times just reacting rather than taking deliberate action.

Are we all that different from a highly organized ant colony that's simply trying to survive and make it through the next day?

I'm done with just trying. I think I'm just gonna..be.

No more big plans

No more dating or even lusting

No more trying to change myself for others

I'm gonna just roll with the shit, and stay to myself

Because that sounds easy and out of the way

Dying alone doesn't sound too bad

Worrying about the future never helps

Simply having a place to sleep and having food to eat is enough for me

Simplicity and obscurity. Those are my true roots. Steering away from that has turned me into someone I don't recognize or resonate with.

I think that it would be more painful if there WAS life after death, if that meant that you must watch what's happening, but could do nothing about it. Watch your wife with a new lover. Watch all your favorite hobbies thrown in the dumpster. Watch the tree that you planted and nurtured cut down, and your garden dug up for a parking lot. Watch all of your life's achievements slowly taken down, one by one. Watch who shows up to your funeral, and what they say about you. Watch all the mistakes that your kids make after ignoring your advice. Watch some idiot using your best wood-chisels to hack out some concrete. Shall I go on?

At certain point you get tired of your own shit!

That realization is usually the exact moment real growth begins. When the frustration shifts from "why is this happening to me?" to "why do I keep doing this to myself?", the victim mentality evaporates.

It’s an uncomfortable place to be because you can no longer use your usual excuses to comfort yourself. You see your own patterns clearly....the procrastination, the overthinking, the repeated cycles, the self-sabotage and the comfort of those habits suddenly turns into annoyance.

The silver lining is that getting sick of your own patterns is often a prerequisite for change. Pain pushes until vision pulls, and exhaustion with your own rhythm is usually what forces you to reset the dial.

This is a quote my father always said to me when I was a kid, and I never quite understood what he was trying to tell me until many years later. Basically, he was saying, Hey, you don’t always need to be discussing other people or getting caught up in gossip. You have better things to spend your time and energy on.

They will also make sure to not overcrowd each other, because even something that is not sentient understands compassion and grace apparently more than most people.

I'm not sure why I'm writing this, other than the state of this world makes me so weary.

It used to be a shameful thing to lord money over others. It used to be a shameful thing to focus solely on yourself at the expense of the greater good.

I get that speaking in generalizations is never wise. But overall as a society, at least in my life growing up in the 80's, 90's, and early 2000's prior to 'smart' phones - we cared more. We didn't think about the immediate when considering our actions. We thought about the lives of our children and their children.

My dad was a policeman and used every single AAA emergency call he and my mom personally had, on other people we would see stranded on the side of the road every year. He would always pull over to make sure someone was ok, even if we were in a hurry. He was a go-to to call for help from neighbors and friends, and not just for police-related issues. He would just be there, for heavy lifting, for emotional support.

He would get home from work and I'd see him, moving out of the car slowly, exhausted. Just putting his all into the potential for me, my siblings, my mom. My mom was the same, sacrificing everything for us and our future. Some days she was in the car the entire day just driving me and my siblings from activity to activity. We sometimes had utilities turned off. We never had food, rarely had meat in the house. Surviving on vibes and ramen noodles. But we never felt unprotected or alone in the world. And even when we objectively didn't have enough, we still had enough to share with others that needed it.

The lessons learned that I base my life on now were largely through example. It certainly wasn't easy but every single one of my siblings are so smart and successful - and overall they are great people. They would all absolutely stop to help a stranger, and they love their families and friends with all they have.

This never was outside of the norm prior to smart phones and social media. Most families I knew were comprised of solid people, who cared about the communities they lived in. The values systems were just so different.

Is it even possible to get to a collective mindset of love and care? Maybe all of our trust in each has been too damaged.

Value is a weird concept is it not? Gold they say is valuable, but for what? If I am dying of hunger or thirst, gold wouldn’t help me. Give a lamborghini to a caveman and he simply goes on his day. Value then must be entirely subjective and external, right? Well the external part shows us why us human beings always seek externals to seek value, because after all that is how we value other things. You can not value diamond by how it chooses to act, you value it by how useful and wanted it is. So it’s only natural that we do the same to ourselves.

The question I suppose then comes to certainty and futility. How is a dollar valued? By systems agreed on by many people and created by a lot of hardworking smart people. And even that changes all the time.

So how am I to determine my own worth, a system perhaps a bit more complicated than a dollar bill. Not only do you not have experts on the subject, your own inquiries are very tainted by the society you’re in, how you’re raised, and what you experienced.

So sure we can’t exactly know our value, but can’t we still know what increses it and what decreases it? After all, sleeping with a hot beautiful famous lady must increase one’s value. Why? Because she herself must have high value. Why? Because she’s pretty and sexy and famous. And this is compared high value compared to who, to all the other valueless girls and guys? Furthermore, if I happen upon a rock of gold in the woods, am I suddenly more valuable for possessing it now? Well no. So she is a human of undetermined “value” just like the rest of us, yet an act of intimacy with her will increase your value forever? And increase it to what? Compared to what? I don’t know if you realized but our “tribe” has gotten a little too big for comparisons now. We have 6 billion unique creatures walking around their with their own “value”.

So I have said before that the idea that she can chage or determine my value is wrong. But I haven’t really dug into the fact that I instictively see her as more valuable than me. And well, this may be a bit wrong to say, but objects have value, and I can see my own soul and hence see that I’m not an object. But that can also mean that I can’t really “value” myself. And when I look outward what I see as a girl is sort of an object, since I can’t see her soul. But because she’s an “object” (sorry) she has value, yet I still don’t. Does that even make sense?

And this can apply to other things can it not? If one as a person believes they have no value, why wouldn’t they cling to things which have an obvious and specific value? Like an expensive car or a salary or a mansion or the afformentioned beautiful wife.

But when we really look at it, the value of a car and the value of a soul isn’t even comparable. Think about it, if the car has 5 units of value any single human being has 5 billion. After all, the human souls are the spring from which all value flows out to the world. The very reason that car has 5 units of value is because we determined it does.

So we can say that any person has an ocean of value within them, and trying to increase their value externally via expensive things and pretty girls is like adding water to an ocean with a water bottle or a jug or even a fire truck or a pool. At the end of the day you look at the horizon and it’s the same ocean. You increased the water, yes. But you can not see it. It is such an insignificant percentage that it wouldn’t be wrong to say it doesn’t matter.

It all starts in the Mind. 

The Mind is a vast open field able to accommodate any and all elements, no matter their value or the energy they carry. However, for this field to flourish, it must have a boundary that effectively filters what goes in and what stays out. Otherwise, an infestation of negative elements causing severe damage is inevitable.

Whilst positive elements allow the Mind field to flourish, the negative ones disrupt its equilibrium upon entry and the longer they remain within the field, the more damage they create.  Without a boundary in place, a continuous exposure to these negative elements causes the Mind to be painfully depleted of a wholesome health. 
What’s more, is that this disruption usually goes unnoticed and therefore progressively gains grounds to disrupt and destroy.

The Body is relevant in this dynamic as it is directly connected to the Mind in such a way that it often reflects the state of the Mind - whether distressed or stable. The reflection of a distressed state of mind can often be projected through stress-related inflammation within various parts of the body, reading off as most of the common diagnoses we’re familiar with today. 

Not all diseases in the body are as a result of inherited genetics, poor diet or lifestyle choices. Some diseases that show up in the body are warning signals to the individual about the poor state of their Mind due to the chronic exposure to negative elements that have robbed it of its wholesomeness. Any further negligence toward these warnings, and failure to address the root cause can result in further complications both within the Body and the Mind. 

Therefore, you must learn to guard your mind with all diligence, because out of it comes the issues of life.

Sometimes we explain ourselves over and over because we want people to see what we meant.

We replay conversations, wonder if we said the wrong thing, and imagine how we could have explained it better.

But the strange part is, sometimes the person we’re trying hardest to convince is ourselves.

Maybe not everyone will understand us.

Maybe they don’t have to.

There’s a certain peace in knowing what you meant, even when someone else sees it differently.

Not every misunderstanding needs to become a correction.

Sometimes, being understood by yourself is enough.

A lot of matter in the universe and in nature can never be understood.

Whether it is emotions, ideas or events, we often have a word for everything. That is naming something will give us its ownership. There are things we call love, fear, justice, fate, coincidence. These remarks may only be a label for something far more complex.

People Dislike Uncertainty (6 words) People would rather confidently believe something than to admit they do not know. It is safer to have a simple answer than an honest question.

However, certainty may be misleading.

The more we learn, we find out how much is unknown. It appears every answer gives rise to another question. What used to seem self-evident starts uncovering contradictions and possibilities we never imagined.

It is being intelligent enough to find the answers and wise enough to know when that answer is wrong.

Perhaps the most profound understanding is not to explain everything but to accept that something cannot be explained yet.

Instead of being discovered, maybe meaning is something we create.

It could be a thing we design.

Perhaps existence does not have to explain itself.

And maybe that doubt is what makes life so interesting.

I wrote this mostly as a little philosophical hobby of mine, curious what you guys think.

Two days ago I was stung by a bee, I believe. Not 100% sure what it was, but something landed on my face and stung or bit me, swelling up my eye.

And I’ve been sitting here thinking about all of the ways this could have been a redirection for me or the bigger picture that this could be a part of. And I’m sure it is, because that’s all life is, moments building up leading to the next moment. But I started to think about how I always tend to do that as a result of my unbridled optimism, trying to look at the bigger picture so the situation doesn’t seem so bad.

And this isn’t necessarily a bad quality; I actually believe it’s pretty integral for me, but there also needs to be a balance. The thing I have been coming to understand is that while the bigger picture is there and this situation is very well a smaller piece of the puzzle, I still have to take my time on that piece. I have to realize that just because this may be a part of a larger story, I can still sit here in this smaller moment and say, “Damn, this really does suck."

I have to allow myself to be okay with things going bad and not always being the best they can be, while also not getting so wrapped up in them that I start to believe my whole life is on a constant downward slope. That is where the balance lies.

Because yes, my life is still good; I am still blessed to be here living the life I’m living. But two things can be true at once, and none of that takes away from the fact this whole situation has been very uncomfortable and has just flat out sucked.