2017-12-09: Bible #2, Maps of Meaning #2

Meetings
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topic

https://discuss.bevry.me/t/bible-lecture-2/37

https://discuss.bevry.me/t/maps-of-meaning-2/23

podcast

What were your biggest takeaways from this week?

  • How to make this world a better place when you are not sure about whether you have the right worldview or not ?

  • Consciousness mind vs unconsciousness

    • When we encounter darkness rather than face it and admit your own potential for evil.

      • Don’t address the darkness inside you and when you do see others do it - you disassociate yourself from them.

        • Turning people into something that we don’t understand.

          • If you were in Nazi Germany you would never become a Nazi officer.

  • Dream about snakes.

  • Dragon protects the gold from us, but in a very real way it protects us from the gold. Because without defeating dragon we have not earned it and will most likely misuse it so the same gold will work to our detriment.

  • Charity - if you do it well you are trying to make your job obsolete.

    • Terrible mother aspect where you don’t let the child become independent because you derive pleasure/meaning from it being dependent on you.

    • When person is no longer relying upon you, they are competing with you.

  • Analyze your mind to figure out how much of what you say is programmed by society and how much is your thinking.

  • Why nihilism is so popular in society ?

    • It gives justification to people for not shorting themselves and this world out.

    • Rationality can promote it.

    • A question of necessity - people who feel a great deal of having meaning will be able to overcome this.

    • You have a responsibility to fix the problems you are able to recognize it.

  • Jiminy Cricket was Pinocchio’s consciousness. But the consciousness had to evolve with him and become better.

    • Making mistakes help the consciousness evolve.

    • Book: No ordinary man

    • Look to how people act to figure out what they believe and not what they say.

    • Running away from your shadow self because you don’t see the ugliness in yourself.

  • Project hate to other person because that person is reflecting worst parts of ourselves.

    • Domesticating the snakes and using them to your advantage.

    • Unit 731

Talking Points:

  • What other people think of you ?

    • What other people think about it does matter e.g. if you want to grow at your job so you don’t just want to dismiss this idea.

    • Being detached about what other people think of you.

discussion notes

bible #2

first meeting

@ExplorerSumit’s notes

  • Sharing a dream with someone without the blueprint to achieve it.

    • Sometimes all you need is a dream and you will find a way.

      • Not everyone is able to do it, just die in the struggle.

  • My own struggles with the western culture.

  • Indian culture making it impossible to do the right thing.

  • Rule 4: Compare yourself to what you were yesterday and not others.

  • Shared dream with the west allows you to grow and keep striving.

  • The big difference b/w what is and what ought to be in the context of India. The poor lady outside cummins building.

  • Children growing up - flaws of their parents.

  • Why the independence allows these issues to surface ?

  • Culture wars when you encounter Western values.

    • If you try to preserve their culture they end up alcoholics.

    • The case where you hate capitalism and working in private sector.

    • Why you want to preserve the culture in the first place ?

  • What is all this identity switch thing they are talking about ?

  • Why was Britain able to take so much lands ?

Resources:

second meeting

  • What to do if I am not sure my beliefs are right or will make this world a better place ? What to do if I don’t have the conviction ?

    • Acting out the beliefs allows them to evolve. Adapting our idea when they are faced with conflicts.

    • Take responsibility for your mistakes and expect them.

      • You will make mistakes along the way and there is no way around them. But these mistakes allows you to evolve.

      • You are assuming bad ideas don’t have any value. Maybe some people will find them useful.

      • What kind of personality you are ?

    • Fear of judgement, should you be sure before putting out ideas that go against the norm ?

    • Fear of convincing people of ideas that are utterly wrong. If I don’t feel my ideas are correct how do I advocate for them ?

      • Find out the most elemental ideas and check if your ideas conflict with them.

    • Two ways of looking at the world

      • The Zealot - Zealot is a true believer in the idea. Advocates it. Lives it and willing to fight for it and put himself/herself in harm’s way.

      • The Explorer - The explorer admits he doesn’t know everything and shares/tests news ideas. He is more like a scientist.

    • Start something and let it evolve.

  • The idea that the dragon is protecting you from the Gold. The fact that you have to confront the dragon means you will need to develop required courage, discipline, humility and know how. Those skills will enable you to make proper use of Gold or treasure, else you might fall prey to being robbed, use it for your addition, mismange it.

      * So the very obstacles you face are not necessarily your enemies. They are an invitation to grow and become better. If you are graduated to the next level using some cheat-code you will not be able to handle the next level of problems. So you may want to think about all the problems you ran away from - while doing that you also threw out chances of self-growth out the window.

  • Self-hypnosis - When you are mentally/physically tired, lie down in bed in sleeping posture. Start thinking about ideas you want to gain insight on. Eventually you will move into this half-wake/half-sleep state that might allow you to gain some insights. (Make sure you do it at a time that is different from your regular bedtime).

    • Ties in with the idea of lucid dreaming.

  • Advice on getting out of bed.

    • First try to wiggle all your toes.

    • Try to develop movement in all your hand fingers. By lifting first finger and putting it down. Then moving on to the next finger.

    • Do it with other body parts if needed, eventually you will gain enough momentum to actually move your whole body out of bed.

meaning #2

  • Very content animals stays where they are, humans have constant dissatisfaction with what they have. That is the force that moves humanity upwards.
    Greeks called knowing where you are and being where you want to be - Eudaimonia.

    • In which books, Plato/Aristotle talks about Eudaimonia.

    • In US, we are always trying to find happiness, change Eudaimonia instead.

  • Once all our basic needs are met, we get to stage where we can explore.

    • I’m not too sure about this, how many people do we know who are just satisfied and stagnant.

  • How porn destroys the pleasure center in the brain ?

    • Dangers of STD/STIs.

  • Motivation and drugs.

    • They can screw up your motivation systems and drives.

    • Hallucinogens doing permanent damage to your brain.

  • Competition as a cooperative venture.

  • Morality of meat consumption

    • What would happen to the animals we use for meet - will they just die off ?

    • Govt. subsidies to meat industry: https://meatonomics.com

    • Maybe Dolphins had shopicaticated language before, we humans killed off most of them.

      • These animals may not survive in their natural environment.

    • Humanity is not hold accountable for their ecological as much as other species would be.

    • How we steal honey from bees, and state of chickens in a farm.

  • Cascading of goals in life. Every goal will lead to some other higher goal.

  • Movie Recommendation: Bhag Milkha Bhag (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2356180/)

  • Idea that how sometimes verbalising a problem makes it more real.

    • If you call out a problem it becomes more prominent. If you try to focus on not watching porn you will end up watching it more enough.

      • It’s better to feel your time with positive things instead.

      • Find out the trigger that leads to bad behaviour and work on that trigger instead

  • Creative Endeavours

    • Work in terms of versions.

      • How do you know on which version to stop ?

      • Versioning in software developers.

        • You make it easy for people to contribute.

      • Ayn Rand probably shared chapters of her books with her group. Her protege Leonard Peikoff.

    • As an artist you try to make your work best that you can make.

  • Relationships

    • Anyone who inhibits your personal growth is not worth it.

    • As long as destination stays the same - you stay together. If destination diverge then difficult to stay together.

      • The choice space of destination has to be large enough and something both can agree upon.

      • Book: The Zahir - Paulo Coelho

  • John’s concept of God and trying to find common end-goal from both Evolution and Religion

    • We as God’s children maybe should aspire to be God like.

      • Is God really conscious ?

    • Country is an abstract idea, so is the being.

      • Is Robot arm part of yourself ?

      • Animals are so much similar to us except for 1. Language and 2. Thumbs.

      • We humans project our humanity on interpretation of the world.

        • If Dolphins were coming up with this stuff they will probably think of shark instead of a dragon.

        • So the idea of God created by humans only apply to humans only ?

  • I’ll try to refine those ideas.

    • Does our limitation of our understanding of consciousness matter in regards to actuality of existence?

    • Since Science’s frame of reference of the world is limited by the information we have currently…. Not sure how to extract these fuller, it’s still inarticulate

    • Humans are more than just their own consciousness, because our body works within us without our own control over it. Just as an anthill is more than any factual account of scientific details, number of ants, the current lives of the ants, and the size of the hill. All of these details can change while still being part of the same original anthill. The anthill, in it’s own simplicity is a collection of subsystems, all subject to change, almost like an unconscious consciousness. Humans are similar, as we are a collection of subsystems. Is our conscious idea of our own collection of subsystems technically inaccurate, as must of our body is not under the control of our conscious mind?

    • Since Humans are more complex than the ants and the anthill, so also is our universe we reside inside of more complex via our own minds. Not to say that our notions of a higher goal to work towards (God) is a projection as we do exist in the universe and we are technically rewarded from our sacrifices we make. Maybe our conscious idea of consciousness is mistaken to apply to larger, more complex subsystems, where our own minds only make up small portions of it

    • I think using an anthill for example is not optimal. I would instead use the microbiology within our own stomach with its own subsystems as a better example, as it can be applied upwards.

    • It still needs more work.

  • The dragon is protecting you from acquiring the gold before you’re ready.

Resources: