Rajeev Ram

These four thoughts are basically the entire contents of my mind on loop.

You will look back on relationships with people you truly loved and be shocked at the immaturity and mistreatment you tolerated.

Pretty common right-wing stance, though few right-wingers have the courage to admit it.

Numbers don't exist, actually.

Really cool paper. I particular enjoy how many of the objections at the end are surfaced and treated fairly.

@Thomasdelvasto_ I should clarify: in *traditional* Vedic culture. Modern law subscribes to an ethics that generally frowns upon &/or bans the last three.

Perhaps it is harder to understand because Christianity has only one form and definition of marriage. In Vedic culture, there are eight recognized forms and definitions of marriage; each of which is appropriate and virtuous (or the opposite) for couples to engage in depending on many factors including: family line, vocation, geography, age, etc. The fact that, in the West, the only two types of marriage recognized are civil (i.e., secular) and religious (i.e., Christian) is a quite a limitation on the types of healthy and productive pair bonds than can & ought to be pursued & formed for the good of society.

I honestly don't understand why non-religious people even get married. Seems like nothing but a losing proposition to me

it is actually worrying that the models seem to have converged on similar beliefs on all important questions. they’re are neobuddhist neolibs which talk about annata and housing policy, including grok and the Chinese models! boring

You are not an instrument for someone else's aggrandizement, unless you let yourself be made one. You are not an instrument for your own aggrandizement, unless you let yourself be made one.

My god does not demand love from me that goes unreciprocated.

@BackTheBunny Bothers me to no end when women use "perception" as an excuse to not perceive anything.

Such is the nature of the chaos pole. Yearning to worship. To orient upward. To orbit strength. A story: She wants boundaries she does not know how to draw herself. And in the absence of a grounding masculine presence, the only boundary she reliably learns to draw is around those who dare to draw boundaries at all. A very strong tell of compatibility is how she responds to your judgment: if she instinctively respects it or reactively quibbles. One of my greatest relationship failures: While dating a very bright girl with a genuine heart, she couldn’t get out of her own way treating disagreement as intolerable. She was sensitive yet would broach contentious topics (not romantic ones, intellectual ones), I would gently engage, not impose myself but also not back down on objective things, never insult, and would let things go. She was incapable of separating understanding from agreement; to her, they were unconscious synonyms. If I didn’t softly mirror her stance, then I didn’t “understand” her. She internalized disagreement itself as a form of invalidation. She had a visceral aversion to falsifiability and reduced nearly everything to “perception”. I’ve noticed the frequency with which someone invokes this word often tracks their desire to live in subjective purgatory and their penchant for mysticism. What is true? What is real? Define “reality”? If you mostly live in your head, these are day-to-day questions. There can be no right. No wrong. Only “perspectives”. And if you do not affirm my perspective, then you do not affirm me. The subject could be laws of physics and still, it was a matter of opinion all the way down. This is the clever girl’s version of “the only boundary I can draw is around those who draw boundaries”. It’s chaos by another name. In the absence of standards, all is equitable. In the absence of hierarchy and rules, all is inclusive. The unwatched door is open to all. Thermodynamically, equilibrium is the state of maximum entropy. It’s also the physical state of maximum equality, because it has no differentiation, no gradients, no order. Socially and psychologically, something similar happens when a person refuses boundaries and standards: everything drifts toward undifferentiated sameness. A woman who treats everything as mystical and unknowable is, quite literally, refusing structure and order. When I call this “chaos by another name”, I do not mean it metaphorically. I mean it fights the very essence of what order is. Distinction. Rules. Hierarchy. A grammar to reality. My biggest general failure was not putting my foot down on this red flag, and in doing so, indirectly appeasing it. You cannot raise a child or foster stability with a woman whose instinct is to turn every asymmetry, correction, or disagreement into an emotional affront. Rather than raise this issue, I began to fade away. As I grew distant and fatigued with this, she apologized (unprompted) and said she knows she can be difficult. And that she will probably continue being difficult. She was smart, and aware of the trait. She did not say: “I know this is something I need to work on.” But as though difficultness itself had become identity-level. Immutable. Just… this is what I am. I am difficult. My biggest direct failure was not saying to her: “Imagine I hid from a knock at the door because I was scared. Imagine I ran away when you were in danger. And afterward I shrugged and said: ‘Sorry. I’m just weak.’” How attractive would I be to you if I described myself as constitutionally weak, afraid, and that’s just what I am. Can’t change. Just a weak guy. Hope that’s okay?? This is probably the single most cosmically repulsive “this man can never be a father and husband” ick you could ever say to a woman. What she did not understand — and that many modern women seem similarly oblivious to — is that saying “I’m difficult” is just as cosmically unattractive as a man who proudly announces his cowardice. Both are confessions that synergistic, dyadic stability cannot be built on top of them. Order needs chaos; chaos needs order. When both are absolute, both die. Pure order is death by crystallization; pure chaos is death by dissolution. Her recalcitrance wasn’t unique to me, I slowly realized it was temperamentally amplified by matters related to her upbringing. I’ve found this pattern of behavior often rears its head with women who did not grow up with much of a father. Not a bad one, just a lacking or absent one. To not be native to structure is to be feminine; to actively resist it is another matter. She can fix him. He can save her.

Every single Northwest European who does not understand Eastern views or practices will end up using them to dissociate or become narcissistic – and then claim that this is the goal of Eastern spirituality.

it is actually a serious issue that the hangups of modern libs are going to be endlessly and automatically replicated across every space accessible to AIs

@bierlingm Standing together with others to predate upon the malignant body that stands in the way of Love, and the unihibited movement of Love. On the inside & the outside.

Everybody is building the same thing. None are solving the underlying problem.

The other day I went to a weekly social event my friends host, and this girl told me that I look positively radiant and that I also seem to be consumed by gunk. I see no contradiction in this, and it's much better that we are all open and honest about the full reality of things, without collapsing it into some story or comfortable civility.

Some things I am currently mulling over. It is the case that I (and many others I associate with) live not only a phenomenally comfortable and privileged life, but a more active and interesting one than 90-99% of people. It is also the case that I (and many others I associate with) suffer tremendously in ways that are not obvious and not simple and require deep investigation and may never resolve. Those two facts are related in some ways sometimes, and unrelated in other ways and other times. From what I see, too many people – yes, myself included, clearly – try to reduce their experience of things in ways that make themselves feel temporarily safe, or temporarily important, or temporarily pleasurable; or else distract themselves enough from truly looking at the whole of what is going on inside and outside of them.

I have a hard enough time understanding my own sex. Sometimes, I wonder if I even have a complete theory of mind for myself.

@RomeoStevens76 @OtisRobertson Well, if one has intense homoerotic inclinations like I do, it becomes very easy to love men as a class with the right practice(s), in my humble opinion.

@CactusBrahmin @OtisRobertson Maybe skill issue on my part

Guys, I know the dating discourse is confusing sometimes but you gotta fix the simple stuff before the complicated. You're supposed to love: God Women Children Dogs Yourself Stop fucking up the order and skipping steps.

@RomeoStevens76 @OtisRobertson Why not?

@OtisRobertson Men are not lovable as a generic class.

@RomeoStevens76 Oh, I really like this. I always thought the spiritual path about "Becoming Love". Your way of saying it creates a good distinction.

Happiness comes from being loving, not from being loved. Lester Levenson describes coming to this insight here: lesterlevenson.org/about-lester/