The Social Matrix of Global Mind Control

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Nationalism, globalism, political ideologies and parties, socioeconomic systems, just look at how the Believers of these structures act, the mechanisms of control that act upon them, and you will see the truth of this. The Enlightenment myth is that we are rational actors, able to judge claims and ideas by reason alone, that being in error is merely a matter of ignorance, not having enough information. The reality is that we are usually ruled by our emotions, especially when our beliefs and perceptions are deeply ingrained. Because we are immersed in these systems of control our entire lives, we do not know otherwise, the illusion if our own agency can be maintained. We are able to choose between a vast array of products and services.

The economic world is effectively owned and/or controlled by large corporations and banks - socioeconomic entities that only have the purpose of persistence and profit. Even their investors are enthralled, owned by ownership. Most of the time pieces of corporations are owned by other corporations, and corporations may even own pieces of each other and indeed at the highest levels we find an enmeshment of ownership such that it is like a single corporation controls the core of the global economy: https://www.sg.ethz.ch/media/medialibrary/2013/12/james_glatteth-2007-02.pdf The super-rich aren't even in control.

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We are immersed in consumer culture, from our birth we are bombarded by advertisements, marketing messages, and consumer media from all directions. It conditions us to focus on consumption, to love it. It plays on our basic reward and punishment mechanisms, giving buy highs, "buyer's remorse" and envy for not having. All of Maslow's hierarchy, every possible need is being serviced, including ones that cannot be commodified: buy this and you will be popular and belong, buy this and you will have self esteem and confidence, buy this and you will be like this celebrity, buy this will make you a good person in whatever way. Love and worship this celebrity, or hate and despise them, check out New Movie by Guy Everyone Loves. Just like religion hijacks all of human experience, so does consumer culture.

So r u or r u not a cyberpunk OP get to the point

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Memetic Entities: https://vimeo.com/129609470

Modern society is a factory built by Fallacy. A factory for the mass production of human thralls. Lord Sovereign of the Modern Fallacy is mechanistic reductionism, universe-as-machine, human-as-machine, consciousness-as-machine. This Fal'Cie has its roots in the Cartesian-Newtonian clockwork universe. Atop the machinery a soul and free will was placed. Modernism threw away God and the soul and worshiped the machine. Now everything is given computer analogies, "the universe is a simulation" is this same mechanism.

At the heart of this system is terrible emergent strategic logic: if the system loses, we all lose, if the system wins we lose a bit less. It is the logic of Too Big To Fail, of the parasite that cannot be removed from its host without the host dying, of economic mutually assured destruction.

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https://prezi.com/ybxwvr21r9lz/the-matrix-and-postmodernism/

The Wachowski Brothers were keen that all involved understood the thematic background of the movie. For example, the book used to conceal disks early in the movie, Simulacra and Simulation, a 1981 work by the French philosopher Jean Baudrillard, was required reading for most of the principal cast and crew. The Matrix Trilogy works specifically within the postmodern theory of Jean Baudrillard, whose Simulacra and Simulation makes its appearance in The Matrix in the "Follow Instructions" scene. Neo opens a copy of Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation to a chapter entitled "On Nihilism." The hardcover book is hollow, serving as Neo's hiding place for black market software. He opens the book at the halfway point; the opening page of the final chapter, "On Nihilism," lies to the left while the right half is a hollowed out storage area. First note that the opening page of the chapter was displaced to the left side of the book when it would normally be found on the right. Add to this the fact that "On Nihilism" is the book's last chapter, not a middle chapter, and it appears that the directors have deliberately placed this chapter in the shot to direct viewers to a specific referential point for the film. Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation, in fact, is so intricately woven into the narrative structure that the movie can be described as a conscious validation of Baudrillard's theory.

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Facebook and other social media platforms are massively multiplayer social acceptance video games. Likes, favorites, subscribes, replies, shares, follows - they're all video game mechanics with scores. Another way of looking at it is that social acceptance has been commodified - turned into quantitative values - and then monetized for profit to serve ads.

Social media has also commoditized our most basic social interactions as well, they are virtual reality worlds, simulacra of authentic social interactions, and because of the gamified social acceptance element one becomes part of the shared delusion of it.

These social interactions are then monetized to learn how to better serve ads and target demographics, which further undermines the agency of people by creating endless striving for products and services to fulfill the hole in their being reinforced by consumer culture, including ideological products. What flavor of emotion-driven madness do you prefer?

This is a hideous, self-reinforcing cycle we're in, and it's no wonder that politics has become even more of a dysfunctional circus than it was, with crazy identity politics on the right and left, the drive towards ever greater extremes. Nothing sells content, page views, and likes like fear, hatred, and wanting to find someone to blame, reinforcing the hivemind mentality of these increasingly insular social groups.

The true source of wrongdoing is bad habits of thinking and behavior, of which desire to fit in is just one. These bad habits reproduce from person to person and generation to generation, they are infectious mental diseases. If enough people share these bad habits they are manifested in society and culture, which in turn reinforces individual bad habits in a vicious cycle.

The problem isn't illusory "Cultural Marxism," it's the hyperreality of Cultural Capitalism.

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The Game of the Millennium: The Science of Strategy

https://vimeo.com/124736839

https://vimeo.com/127098837

What Robert Wright doesn't mention in this video is that there is another kind of nonzero logic: I lose you lose, I win you lose less. It is the logic of dependency, of the parasite that cannot be removed without killing the host. It is Too Big To Fail. Our system, with its fundamental humanity-grinding fallacies cannot be un-done without the whole thing collapsing on us and causing mass chaos.

BUT THERE IS A WAY OUT FOR US ALL. It is awareness. Here is the most accessible description of memes I've found, true to the book The Selfish Gene where the word meme originated: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfBx2C9Gsek

The solution is to be aware of our memes. AWARENESS is the key. Awareness lets us break free from memetic tyranny, selecting the ones that are good and killing the bad. Awareness can be trained and strengthened like a muscle, and the best way I've found to do this is mindfulness meditation.

Merton Memetic Antivirus is making a memetic viral antivirus of awareness, awareness of awareness, which cannot be subverted because they payload illuminates the very subversion attempt. It is free of any and all political and religious implication and so it slips under the memetic firewalls of these. The virality comes from out-selling cancerous memeplexes in the mind market by offering something far superior that actually works profoundly to liberate people and restore basic agency.

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Some prime candidates for selling and spreading the antivirus of awareness:

Swole Bros: You've cultivated self-discipline and used it to sculpt your body. Now do the same with your mind with the same virtues with mindfulness meditation. There is nothing more manly than training the highest levels of emotional regulation and mindfulness that one can. This truly is total fitness of mind, body, and being. Mindfulness meditation works superbly with physical exercise, and you have doubtlessly been cultivating it already without realizing it. Now spread this out to every part of your being.

Hardcore gamers: Success in Multiplayer Shooter Game requires mindfulness and awareness. Use the same talents you've cultivated in video games in the entirety of the rest of your life. This will make you an even better gamer in turn. You can even train mindfulness while playing video games, in addition to real-life practice.

Intellectuals: Experience philosophical truth directly, as opposed to thinking about it, and from there this experience will work its way down through the rest of your cognitive structure to give you profound insight. It is the top-down as opposed to the bottom-up, where reasoning results in awareness. It will enhance your creativity, your ability to learn, your ability to judge ideas neutrally instead of being attached to them emotionally. It will make you excel at your studies. It will make your whole life feel like existential poetry.

Star Wars Nerds: Be a real-life Jedi. This is the source from which the Star Wars jedi shit was inspired by. Mindful of the force, mindful of being.

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The Society of the Spectacle, a simulation of authenticity where being has degenerated into having, and having into merely appearing, will be dismantled by establishing a Society of Awareness. Person by person the antivirus of awareness has spread, is spreading, and will continue to spread, liberating people form the tyranny of the mechanistic memetic crushterfuck that has manifested itself in human social and material reality in an exponential process. When criticality is reached, humanity will begin to mindfully dismantle The Machine and replace it with a society that works for humans instead of humans being enslaved by it. World War III is happening now, it is a memetic war for our minds, and with this Ultimate Weapon there can be nothing other than victory.

Reader, if this thread speaks to you, you have joined the battle. You know what you doing, move zig.

>>1833445
how do i experience philosophical truth directly?

>>1833439
Lol
I know Robert Wright, he's really twitchy and not that interesting to speak to. His daughters are cute, they're both weird though

>>1833385

meme

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>>1833476
By cultivating awareness by practicing mindfulness meditation. I will explain how concrete this philosophical experience is. Under the framework of Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy there are two basic modes of mind: being and doing. to experience the being mode, look around you right now, perhaps stand up, or focus on your breathing. Try to push out thoughts about this conversation, the past, and the future, try to experience purely the present moment. Doing is what we are most familiar with: the temporal narrative in our head, cognition.

From the perspective of being past and future do not exist in the mind, there is only the present moment and change around this ever-present moment. From the perspective of doing the line of time is static, the reference point, and the moment moves through this. They're two different reference frames of time and moment.

Mindfulness meditation cultivates the being mode of the mind, which gives an understanding that doing/cognition alone cannot, and this understanding of awareness seeps into cognition to loosen the grip of mental habit and destructive loops, truly freeding the mind, enhancing concentration, clarity of thinking, creativity, and appreciation of everything.

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This book is excellent, it took me from the depths of depressive and anxious hell to the peak of mental health by tapping the mindfulness I had cultivated long ago and had forgotten, and then expanding it to the rest of my cognition, very much like an antivirus. Your experience may differ, but to me it changed me in every way.

>>1833515
>and then I posted on 4Chan

Ok.

>>1833385
>>/tg/
you're sounding like a oWoD Mage

and not the good crat kind, the filthy RD scum kind

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>>1833545
What better place to spread a memetic antivirus than a memetic breeding ground filled with meme-worshipers? This is just one of my attempts to spread the antivirus.

If this thread touches only one person, if one person absorbs this information, practices mindfulness meditation with all the intent they can, and then in turn seeks to spread this awareness, I will have been completely successful.

>>1833552
>Not realizing that fictional narratives are derived from reality and thinking they only reference each other.

I didn't know about oWoD, but from reading it it's obviously hugely inspired by postmodern philosophy, similarly to The Matrix.

This is an example of simulacrum.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulacra_and_Simulation

>The fourth stage is pure simulation, in which the simulacrum has no relationship to any reality whatsoever. Here, signs merely reflect other signs and any claim to reality on the part of images or signs is only of the order of other such claims. This is a regime of total equivalency, where cultural products need no longer even pretend to be real in a naïve sense, because the experiences of consumers' lives are so predominantly artificial that even claims to reality are expected to be phrased in artificial, "hyperreal" terms. Any naïve pretension to reality as such is perceived as bereft of critical self-awareness, and thus as oversentimental.

You are thoroughly plugged into the Matrix.

maybe like it only seems like mind control because people say "they are controlling" or whatever

basically we control our own mind, we just need to remember and all that we do and all good giuse

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>>1833666
Mental control isn't binary, it's a skill called awareness. Most people completely lack it because we don't even know what it is, and instead think it is "following your desires." From the meditative traditions we all suffer from extreme ADHD. Just look at us with our fiddly-phones, our headphones blurting music to drown out and distract our fleeting awareness, how we do,do,do all the time.

Mindfulness meditation trains awareness and mental control, and spreading mindfulness meditation practice in an exponential way is the solution to all the human ills that enslave us that are ultimately bad mental and behavioral habits perpetuated in a cycle between individuals and social structures. That's the completely real, absolutely concrete message behind all of this.

This is essentially open-sourced viral Buddhistic philosophical practice with the religious elements thrown out and balanced with Western rationality.

>>1833666
Right it's probably something very fake and people say it's real because they are afraid to think for themself

Basically it's conditions of the mind that control people and past habitual detriment, but this is easily defeated by accepting that your thoughts create your reality and that you are in control of your circumstances

>>1833640
Okay, you've gone full VA
never go full VA

>>1833841
What does this even mean?

Are you capable of actually making a coherent critique of what is in this thread, or only capable at gesturing at fiction? You're a disgrace to yourself.

>>1833777
I think I've explained in this thread what limits the ability for people to gain this. Please tell me if something isn't described well.

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>>1833552
>>1833841
This is exactly the fruits of the Society of the Spectacle: the decline from being into having, and having into appearing.

All you are concerned with in regards to this thread is appearance. Sounds like. appears as. Similar to. You've gone full spectacle. This is what "shallow" truly refers to.

>>1833428
I like that Baudrillard, true to form said that The Matrix "stemmed mostly from misunderstandings" and suggested that no movie could ever do justice to the themes of S&S.

I like most everything else about this thread. I just wanted to emphasize the distance the original author wanted to place between his provocative book and the spectacle it inspired.

t.author finishing a novel exploring many of themes you've touched upon in your jaunty diatribe

>>1833552

thats cause oWoD mages were made to the image of chaos magicians and other such 80-90s characters, who were full on unironic postmodernists, and went on and on, among other, about things like reality grids and and how a mage consciously and willfuly structures his own reality and his own self identity, as opposed to others who are dreaming some combination of personal-collective simulations, which then manifest trough mass thoughts, words and actions into systems that are then basicaly as incorporeal entities influencing and conditioning this dream and keeping people from awaking, a kind of earth-hell, black iron prison, but that the mage on the other hand takes hold of this process by choosing his beliefs and manipulating deeper parts of his internal functioning trough rituals of all sorts, so that magicaly his desires and beliefs manifest around him

today they would probably ad something on the subject of neuroplasticity and cognitive process, or epigenetics perhaps

this was all based on a combination of traditional western occult conceptions as they became popular in the 70is, tons of substance abuse and lots of widely read stuff like nietzsche, sartre, derrida, debord and such, or not realy

it all kinda makes sense since we are all basicaly running on pattern and protocol as organisms, our awarenes and our perception are often problematic and the subconscious parts of our mind seem to get beliefs or oppinions as basicaly orders, same with images and various connections betveen signifiers, all while having no other real way to discriminate against bullshit, since its not rattional, yet it seems that it, not so much the conscious/rattional self, operatively dictates a ton of what we feel think say and do, especialy while running on pattern and protocol, which might well be allways

any way, thats historicaly why oWoD mages sound like postmodernists after a couple of lines, but then again the guys were purpusefully off in the head

>>1833436
>Cultural Capitalism

lol

>>1833777
Yeah man all it takes is for one to actually believe they control their mind and their reality.

Being "mind controlled" is admitting a weakness of your own mind, and the only thing controlling you is a false sense of mind.

Control your own mind, it's that simple

>>1834409
It's like blaming someone else for your responsibility.

You control your self, and if you think other people control you, your basically making an excuse not to take ownership for your own mind

>>1833512

>wareness seeps into cognition to loosen the grip of mental habit and destructive loops

but how does that stop the pattern? most of behaviors you describe dont stop cause youre aware of them, its actualy realy hard to stop them consciously, they happen the same way digestion or blood flow happen, it takes training and method to manipulate them even a little

Read the secret, also a very "enlightening book" for "gifted" individuals.

>>1834497
Habits are temporal. By learning to be entirely or nearly entirely in the moment, you cut off that temporality. The craving or emotion is temporary and goes away, mindfulness meditation also allows one to accept these physical and emotional reactions so that they don't cause an endless loop of rumination.

Strivings of wanting to appear and have that are characteristic of social capitalism are future-facing and temporal as well. Cultivating the ability to truly be in the moment without your thoughts interrupting results in introspection, strivings that come from the core of your being and aren't based on desires to have or appear.
From this inwards striving comes a becoming, action based on the core of your being. This results in increased determination to fight the bad habits that contradict one's core values and virtues.

>>1834504
Magical rubbish. I'd recommend Martin Seligman's books on positive psychology instead, especially "Flourish." These books go superbly with mindfulness meditation and I should probably integrate them into my recommendations and the paper I am writing.

>>1834649
Yeah, I should definitely re-read them as a refresher and integrate them, as his books touch base on issues of core values or "signature strengths" as well as character and motivation.

Are you the same Dutch fuck that has been spamming ylilauta /int/ with this copy pasta horseshit?

>>1834715
Nope, I'm American.

>>1833447
OP great write up, but I disagree with you. I don't think society can escape the memetic perspectivism its locked in. Exceptional individuals maybe, but the mob can't. They're not capable of living in a self-created subjective universe, they're only intelligent enough to live within and make sense of a pre-packaged reality. The only way to make your Utopia happen is Eugenic advancement, and maybe not even then. The worlds too complex, we can't control it, we cant beat it

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>>1834762
If you haven't, read the whole thread thoroughly.

If you have, consider the idea of the memetic antivirus of mindfulness meditation. Anyone of any intelligence can learn it. The secret is to make it go viral, to outcompete all the other bullshit memes with messages like this.

I'm writing a paper myself that approaches all of this more formally and systematically intended for philosophers, artists, psychologists and other intellectuals. I'm going to mass mail out tons of copies - physical ones. Spam that shit. If it gets an in-road there it will spread to other "culture makers" and spread exponentially to the rest of society as a mass movement of ever-gaining momentum as people practice mindfulness meditation and liberate themselves.

Book image is absolutely relevant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tipping_Point

>>1834783
Gah, another book I'm going to have to re-read and incorporate into my paper. Oh well, the more info the merrier!

>>1834783
I've read it before and I get the concept, I just don't share your optimism. This complex web of calibrated subjective systems can't pivot on a dime, it has an inertia far greater than us. Mindfulness is an excellent practice, but too difficult, too long-term. The masses are like water, they follow the path of least resistance.

That said, I hope you're right and I respect your optimism. Good luck

>>1834783
Also, do you have a list of books you'd recommend that influenced your thought?

>>1834804
People have been cultivating mindfulness already in lots of different things, but it stays compartmentalized. For example hardcore gamers, athletes, students, etc. Anyone who knows "kung fu" in the general meaning of "any study, learning, or practice that requires patience, energy, and time to complete." Mindfulness meditation taps into this habitual structure that one has already burned into their minds and expands it.

Douglas Hofstadter is another big influence, especially his book "Surfaces and Essences: Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking."

Here's another curated art video featuring one of his lectures: https://vimeo.com/129280982

Mindfulness meditation is known for enhancing creativity and I believe that is because it enhances analogical thinking. For example "meme" is an analogous relationship between ideas/habits and genes/organisms. If this is correct mindfulness meditation would tap into cultivated discipline and mindfulness that is compartmentalized and generalize it via analogical cognition. In short, good mental and behavioral habits push the junk right out.

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In just a month of mindfulness meditation I went from having suicidal depression, anxiety, social phobia so bad that even being seen on the street triggered it, and being unable to concentrate so much I felt retarded, to being completely cured. I'm not enlightened, just perfectly mentally healthy. My mood is a calm, sharp neutral, I have variances in emotion as any mentally healthy person, but my mood always goes back to neutral. Bullshit doesn't effect me any more. There's no inertia in doing what I decide to do. This is what I have been searching for for 12 years, I thought I was doomed to a life of depression and anxiety, just waiting to die. The image is some autobiographical crap, but maybe someone else can relate to it and be encouraged to try mindfulness meditation.

Its fake.

Saying "leluminati control da world" is just an excuse to say "I don't always think for myself"

There aren't any non existent powers in control, rather you are in control of your own mind.

Hope this helps

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>>1834861
I agree that meditation is a valuable tool to strengthen the mind, but I also do not share the optimism about the possibility of a mass shift in consciousness.

The current system caters exactly to what people want. I exercise regularly, eat healthfully, and live in a reality almost entirely of my own devise.

I have taken extensive steps to get here, and have consciously rejected many of the pitfalls that are easy to fall into.

It requires effort, diligence, awareness, and regular practice. Most people want to feel good and be entertained. They like tasty, low-cost food, watching the screen, and sitting.

They have no desire to reach even a modest goal of deadlifting 3pl8 or it's mental equivalent. The idea of even going to the gym is just too much, and a 5 minute conversation with those who haven't started already will reveal the mental blocks that they have created for themselves.

Removing even one of these blocks is an arduous and stressful undertaking. In reality, there is more good information than ever out there for both mental and physical development, yet people would rather do anything other admit that they a.) want to improve their reality, b.) don't really know where to even big, c.) figure out where to begin, and most crucially d.) actually begin.

Improving ones "universal consciousness expansion" or however you would like to describe The Esoteric Path is great, but it will remain esoteric for a reason.

I commend your efforts, but not everyone wants to wake up, and if they did wake up, they would be in such utter shock that they wouldn't really know where to go. So they execute the program, and never learn to code, because that shit is actually demanding.

>>1835040
What you're saying is that it's a marketing problem. If there's anything our capitalist society knows how to do, it's market! One possibility: a rich philanthropic entrepreneur or a group of them get together, hire the best marketers they can, and inundate society with advertising promoting mindfulness meditation. Perhaps even a president, celebrities, etc. A war on insanity would be awesome.

More grass-roots tactics would involve culture-jacking consumerist narratives and using them as a platform to spread the message. I've done some of this in this thread, video games, movies, TV shows, anime, and pretty much any media is ripe for this culture-jacking because a lot of it references real philosophy and real social observations. Art doesn't come out of nowhere, out of context. You know how big nostalgia is, what you do is show people the sauce of the media they cherish, the absolutely real value and truth behind the narratives. You make it intimately relevant to the things they love the most. Holy shit, you mean I can actually be a Jedi, that this actually means something concrete outside of fantasy? Imagine an army of self-actualized Star Wars nerds that were formerly psychologically crippled.

>>1835114
>marketing
I certainly agree, and things like High Fructose Corn syrup, mortgages, leased automobiles, student debt, and dick pills are some of the easiest things in the world to market.

They cater to deeply ingrained myths, and prey upon people's ignorance.

The message of "university is probably a terrible investment, drop out and wander the Earth for 4 years" benefits almost no one, and I find it an unlikely cultural narrative.

Just like the current of message of "Keep living your shitty life, and here are these meds to allow you to do so" or "Stay in your shitty marriage, here are some dick pills so you can keep fucking your hideous wife" are infinitely more marketable than the real solutions which would address the true and underlying problems.

There could certainly be public meditation centers, but there won't be. People instead attend weekly guilt-inducement centers, and are encouraged to be at work for long hours and stay abreast of the hit new series.

Planet Fitness is immensely popular for a reason. It tells people what they want to hear and yields no actual results.

Islam is currently the fastest growing religion in the world, and it is the exact opposite of everything discussed in this thread. That tells you a lot about what people really want. People want submission in the form of simple answers. They want an enemy toward whom they can direct their animal drives. They want to produce a fuckton of children.

The past tells us more about the future than we would prefer to admit, sometimes.

>>1835165
>High Fructose Corn syrup
I think you mean sugar is easy to market based on organic food memes. Corn is easy to get subsidies for.

>>1835198
I actually meant HFC. It is even more concentrated in sweetness than sugar, triggering the tasty tasty sugar cravings in the human tongue. HFC is the crack to Sugar's cocaine, if you will.

Please post all of this in a paste-bin or something.

>>1835217
To clarify, HFC is the active ingredient in the most successfully marketed and addictive beverages on the planet.

>>1835165
Mindfulness meditation is a simple answer though, so it's got that.

There is another method I self-taught myself in 2010. I had built a successful 3D modeling business, but depression/learned helplessness made me stop working on it and my sales waned. My anxiety over my financial future grew, feeding the depression, until I reached a breaking point. I needed to do something! I approached it the best way I knew how, like I did in college: as an intellectual problem.

There was a gap between what I wanted to do and what I did (or rather, didn't do.) This was a paradox: how could I not do what I had every intention of doing? My answer is that I didn't truly convince myself because of self-defeating thoughts, a bunch of subconscious garbage was in the way.

So I got a journal and a pen and made an argument to myself of why I should do something, or an emotional problem, writing down any doubts I had and arguing against them until I was 100% convinced to do something now, or if I couldn't at that moment, set a time using my cell phone. It was literally writing my own victory, a self-fulfilling prophecy, There was no inertia.

When I completed a task, I went back to my notebook to write the "experimental results": I had acted exactly according to my intention, so as a result I logically must have positive emotion from it: a sense of empowerment and accomplishment.

This was emotional capital. I plugged this right back in to repeat this process again and again in an unbroken chain spanning two weeks. I had cured my learned helplessness. There was a problem however: I was cultivating the "Doing" mode of thought in a hyper-mechanical, logically determined way. I wasn't cultivating being at the same time. The drive to do, do, do became urgent, impulsivity increasing as I had next to no inertia to do what I thought. Meanwhile my mood was being elevated more and more as each doing grow the emotional capital.

>>1833385
I need scissors! 61!

>>1835165


I stopped needing my notebook, I had burned this habit into my mind. It was a BAD habit, it was totally unbalanced. I was able to increase my mood at will by thought alone, and this induced psychotic mania. I was thinking feel-good brain drugs into existence, breaking out into sweats merely by concentrating my thoughts, literally making mind crack. Addicted to my own thoughts, I sought out ever more good-feeling thoughts, I lost reality-checking completely as how good a thought felt became the sole criterion of truth. It was chaos, I would endlessly switch paradigms in a schizophrenic flurry, even my self-identity constantly changed. My emotions were completely unhinged. Without realizing it I had opened Pandora's Box. I ended up in the psychiatric ward and the 6 years until now have been a bipolar rollercoaster. Until now, I finally have the missing piece of the equation.

So maybe a less rigid, less insanity-driving methodology could be developed in parallel with practicing mindfulness meditation, used to initiate mindfulness meditation. Or maybe my insanity was the result of how my bipolar brain is, and it just triggered mania. As someone's being-mode is strengthened it can become more and more structured because there is balance. The idea of writing your own victory by convincing yourself to do something by writing an argument to do it overcomes the problem of an inertia of doing. It's also a dead-simple practice, if you can write, you can will yourself into doing something.

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>>1835254
vo-cal cord parasites

>>1835217
That's not marketing. That's utilitarianism.

>>1835165
I completely forgot: atheists would eat this up probably more than any other target group. Atheists are huge on reason, and this is all about cultivating rational habits and behavior and destroying irrationality both individually and socially. It subverts toxic religious influences. This shit has Richard Dawkins very central to it.

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John Maus?

>>1833385
So how do I mindfulness meditate? Do I observe my feelings and thoughts while trying to not react to them?

>>1835513
This book will teach you everything you need to know: https://www.amazon.com/Mindful-Way-Workbook-Depression-Emotional/dp/1462508146

>>1835406
Harry Tuttle.

>>1835546
Ok, thanks.
Are you the op btw?

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What has been going on for a very long time but at an ever-accelerating rate is millions of people working towards the same general goal: the cause of rationality, sanity and self-determination in themselves and those around them, including on larger social scales. While bad habits have been competing against each other, so have good habits, becoming more and more effective.

Society has become overall a better place than it was a few thousand or even a few hundred years ago, or in metrics such as violent crime in America, a few decades. The problem is that these larger social structures are much more resistive to beneficient social change and in the short term more powerful by virtue of being more encompassing. From the bottom you have this accelerating push towards rationality while at the top there's this desperate struggle for social structures to preserve themselves, resulting in social conflict. It seems like there's agency behind it, but it's just the result of the forces of cultural evolution.

In the long term, the push towards sanity wins because its methods are intrinsically more effective and beneficial towards people who are "infected" by these good mental and behavioral habits. There will be a tipping point where this bottom-up push will unravel enough of the tangled mess of bad habits at various levels that will be like a clogged pipe being suddenly unclogged from the build-up of water pressure behind it, and suddenly water blasting through it. At this point change isn't just accelerating, but the rate of acceleration (jerk) is accelerating. Societies will rapidly improve in sanity.

Coming soon to a sociocultural structure near you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_D8xDstZfz8

>>1835872
Yes.

>>1836887

OP, thanks for the great posts.

While I agree with almost everything you have stated, I can't help but ask why fix it? Why not just let it be? Is it something that should be fixed at all? I might not be as self aware as you, but I am aware that there are more ways of life outside of the dominant cultures we surround and immerse ourselves in. And the conclusion I always come to is that maybe it is the natural way of things to come to an end, even things seemingly too big to fail. The process of evolution still in works, if you will, on everything from the smallest most minuscule unit of life forms such as ant colonies to the grandest of coherent organisms such as corporations, global organizations, countries, nations, etc. Throughout history we have seen kingdoms and empires flourish then fail with the seeds of its own destruction sowed from within, and with a little help from external factors, result in a disolution/split of its coherence and the dispersion of its culture that in turn nourishes others. "Others" as in the next generation of countries and cultures (being anything from the most unsophisticated primitive cultures to global dominant powers) that have evolved in a more balanced way and is more fit for the changes of today as well as what is to come in the future.

My point is, under the assumption that nothing is permanent but ever changing and that the powers that be aren't as in control as paranoia rife on this board makes it seem to be, wouldn't it be narrow minded, unnatural, or selfish even, to allow our culture/society to remain in power and continue its ways of life? Why not let it run its course rather than try to fix what may be the problem itself?

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I'm just somebody with ADHD whose been getting really burnt out in college, where even if I starve myself of distractions and work hard, it's still not enough. I get anxious and self defeating, don't know if I might be developing depression or not. Had a nice boost in productivity and drive after my father died a few years back, was pushing myself to be better, but now that I'm in my upper coursework it just all seems to be tumbling down (sic).

This thread was a nice read, I'll look into mindfulness meditation, which is a part of ADHD treatment that I've been kinda too busy to look into, but I've been wanting to.

I have heard of my ADHD, as a form of time blindness, so I'd say it's related. I'll have so much inertia to just read threads, Combinded with my medication which has manageable side effects, that any focus gain from Vyvanse will just hyperfocus me onto not studying.

The times when I'm truly in the moment and content or just focused, and time doesn't feel like it's slipping just feel all too rare. I want control dammit.

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you only believe in conspiracy theories because it is emotionally comforting

>>1837209
For myself, it is because in terms of politics I consider myself a secular humanist. It isn't a political ideology but a life stance. The good parts of humanity have gifted me such wonder, such beautiful aspirations, and achievements that come not from desire for any sort of power or image but from their qualities of being. This awareness, this experience has instilled in me a great love of humanity. My sole wish that I value more than anything, more than all the power in the universe, is to see the conditions for all of humanity to reach self-actualization however they determine what this is for themselves. And so I advocate not any socio/economic/political system but rather the requirements for a sane society: a society of awareness. With these requirements fulfilled I trust in the self-actualized goodness of people to figure out and build a society that works for everyone instead of enslaving all.

This secular humanism is another one of my spiritualities. Carl Sagan was a huge rolemodel for me in my teenage years, as mentioned here >>1834924 . He lit the spark of a passion that would expand much greater, eventually arriving at this humanism. This video sums up how I feel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pfOFCUjmEU&feature=youtu.be&t=2m32s It ends with a quote by him:

>You're an interesting species. An interesting mix. You're capable of such beautiful dreams, and such horrible nightmares. You feel so lost, so cut off, so alone, only you're not. See, in all our searching, the only thing we've found that makes the emptiness bearable, is each other.


>>1837261
It will help you greatly, I have no doubt. Maybe this will help you too: >>1835253 Just be careful and remember of cultivate mindfulness with it first, so you aren't consumed by doing at the expense of being like I was.

>>1837277
>jewish bankers dont exist
>bankers arent up to no good

U fokn wut m9

>>1836887
I'm the guy who asked about mindfulness. I got the ebook but it didnt come with the audio files. Are thode necessary?

>>1837576
You can download them here: http://www.guilford.com/companion-site/The-Mindful-Way-Workbook/9781462508143

>>1835255
You can also, train your mind for a change in perspective, between the being and the doing, in traditional conductism they used triggers, plus hipnosis, to produce an awareness of the change, this awareness it's a meta congnition, this meta cognition works just like the previous modes, once you reach that state you find yourself in a choice of mind states.

Being
Doing
Knowing

You can literally make as much as you like, they're all different.

It's the way your brain chemistry works, that's why all religions can work.

Meditation it's a cheap commodity, extremely cheap, people we'll do it as long as it is trendy.

Just being aware of the world around you, and aware of yourself, it could work.

>>1833385
ITT: Babbys first introduction of Ideology
What you are saying is obvious,so obvious that isn't even a problem. The problem is where do we go from there being part of the trapped middle class.

Your reaction is as exaggerated as american culture. You must be american. Stop countering consumerism with more bullshit consumerism,video games will not help you and meditation is only a complementary element in your life. There is no such thing as "enlightement". You can re-shape your mind yes,but to improve your lifestyle not to change the world. It's good to be self aware but eventually you become frustrated and it becomes a loop where these revolutionary ideas are just repetitive poison in your mind. If you change thought for action you can change for the better. Don't forget to shup up in public so you can blend in and not be an outcast

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>>1833385
The universe is my will.

I've been trying to do mindful training last year for a few months but it always ended with me having the most intense panic attack - it felt like I lost some basic system of categorizing things and everything was just a haze. I think, mindfulness is definitely not for everyone - there has actually been research done that shows that not a small percentage of depressed people react negatively to mindfulness training, it actually aggravated depressive symptoms.

>>1837958
Let go of "me".

>>1837958
Depressed people react negatively to everything.

That's what depressed people do.

It's a good thing when it works.

>>1837846
By improving your lifestyle, you can change the world.

That's what society is, a recollection of lifestyles.

>>1837596
Thanks, man.

>>1838044
>life is a recollection of lifestyles
Implying 90% of people aren't living the establishment's "lifestyles" isolating and labeling any type of alternative as weird and detrimental

>>1837531
Yes that scene is wonderful and one of my favorites as well that has left a beautiful imprint on my mind :) But consider what happens afterwards, Jodie Foster's character is sent back with a clear message, one of which is that humans are still not ready. Your sole wish, "to see the conditions for all of humanity to reach self-actualization however they determine what this is for themselves", is very noble (and a wish of mine as well), and I truley believe this will ultimately happen. Whether in my lifetime or not I do not know, but yes we can still sow the seeds for future generations. But this in itself is also a desire nonetheless. And even good desires can bring about the bad when done incorrectly.

What I am trying to get at is, even if we act out of the purest of intentions, is it ultimately the right thing to do? (I am not saying its wrong, I do not know). I am asking from an efficiency point of view. I am not religious, but my conflict can best be described by the comparison of the methodologies of Jesus vs. Buddah. One sought change through external means while one sought answers internally, and both had its implications and consequences whether it be good or bad from todays point of view. From your posts, it seems your methods are more aligned with the external ways of teaching. However, by doing this, you are also empowering a culture, an already broken system, that may or may not have been on its course to dissolution. What if the social problems, mental illnesses, etc that you stated are not actually problems, but solutions to a much deeper problem that of which hinders the rise of more balanced cultures (e.g. native tribes of africa, cultures of the far east, etc. I dunno) who have the answers to what the curent dominant cultures/systems are failing at? What if the Buddha way (or "just letting it be") is currently more apt to current times that of spreading the message and trying to prolong what has evidently been failing?

>>1838141
cont.

I computer scientist and really have no interest in soci/economic/political systems, but an interest in systems in a mathematical/graph sense of which the same principles can apply. Your posts struck a chord with my current research and my interest is in a system that can do better and more up to date than what Jesus or Buddah sought out to do. And I use the term "system" in a loose sense, its more like a society of understanding, where more people like you or I share and care for each other not out of governmental laws, restrictions or by force, but out of pure compassion for one another because we have an understanding of the way things are, not just spiritually or mentally, but physically and efficiently as well. Unfortunately we do not have this understanding yet, and even though we seek to do good (intentions), it may not turn out to be good(method). My belief is that without some form of ever evolving structure/system temporarily put in place, the majority will devolve to animal like states out of pure survival and greed. Perhaps a balance between the two might work better. And for this to happen, the current broken system must fall so a better one can rise out of its ashes and take its place, one through learning and understanding the mistakes of the fallen.

Please note though whatever the truth is, youre doing good and in the end maybe thats all that matter. Much respect, OP.

>>1837596
Same mindfulness guy. Is your autobiography available online? Btw
Idk when I'll have time but it'd be nice to hear more about your story/how you did things green.afflatus@gmail

>>1838141
Crap, I wrote a long-winded reply but lost it. Basically it was this: in your own personal life, friends and family, do you practice true behavioral relativity, letting your loved ones experience suffering when you are able to help? Do you pass by someone who has been hit by a car on the street without calling 911? To truly live this philosophy would be to be a complete sociopath. Society at the concrete level is a system of relationships between people. There are mutually beneficial, healthy relationships and maladaptive ones. Healthy behavioral and mental habits result in healthy interpersonal ones, and ultimately larger social interactions.

>>1838335
I am writing a paper that will include a mini-biography as an addendum because I can only describe my own experience, and to serve as an example by detailing my own psychological/philosophical experiences in my life, and my experience with mindfulness in different forms. I'll send you a copy when it is finished.

>>1838142
I am not so good at mathematics, but there really seems to be true mathematical / physical / systems elements here. We're dealing with things like time, change, impulse, momentum, and structure. Some elements of human behavior have been captured by mathematics such as game theory and analytical thinking (formal logic,) but can phenomenological experience and analogical reasoning be described mathematically as well, and more importantly, can something be done with it along those lines? Being and doing are two different reference frames of time and moment. I think that there is a being and doing of cognition (the "doing" mode): analytical thinking, which is step-wise and temporal, this therefore that, cause and effect, while analogical thinking is structural and non-temporal: comparisons and interrelations between things. Category theory formalizes mathematical structure, I don't know if this is relevant. Analogical thinking is explored in Douglas Hofstadter's book "Surfaces and Essences: Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking," and here is a video lecture on the topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8m7lFQ3njk

One of my more out-there hunches, but if this all of this could be formalized who knows where it could lead...

>>1835114
Okay. Stop now. Think now. "War on insanity?" Are you being sarcastic?

Mindfulness is a beneficial framework of understanding the passing thoughts of our mind without attaching guilt or overwrought significance to them such that they distract us from participating in the present moment.

It's wildly popular.

If you go to therapy, basically anywhere, you will be taught mindfulness.

What I'm seeing here is a redemption narrative iterated over and over again, but instead of God or 12-steps or Yoga or Vegan cooking or Gardening or Psychoactive Drugs, it's Mindfulness.

That's not very mindful.

Please do not take this as a jibe or diss or any kind of de-emphasizing of how wonderful it is to find a balance of practice that you use to cope with living.

But please do consider that the path you forge is not meant for all travelers.

And it's just your post that triggered this response, and goes generally for the whole thread.

OP is most definitely onto some deep, applicable, salient, and timely truths, and everyone would do well to read through what's written here and think about it.

But the moment you call someone else "mentally unhealthy," you have made a grievous error.

Grievous. Error.

Know your mind, but know that you cannot know others' minds, because they are not yours to know until they become your mind.

>>1839601
>Mindfulness is a beneficial framework of understanding the passing thoughts of our mind without attaching guilt or overwrought significance to them such that they distract us from participating in the present moment.

>It's wildly popular.

>If you go to therapy, basically anywhere, you will be taught mindfulness.

All of this is of course true. The revolution is already happening. This is just about making it open-source and more viral. There aren't enough therapists in the world for humanity's problems.

>What I'm seeing here is a redemption narrative iterated over and over again, but instead of God or 12-steps or Yoga or Vegan cooking or Gardening or Psychoactive Drugs, it's Mindfulness.

This criticism is only about appearances, what you see, how this thread appears to you. Let's say that the vast majority of a society, say the U.S., rigorously practiced mindfulness meditation. What do you think would be the effects on individuals and society?

>But please do consider that the path you forge is not meant for all travelers.

The path is eliminating bad habits of behavior and cognition and replacing them with good ones, with this deliberately subjective and left open to the determination of individual people. How is this not universally a good thing?

If the source of all human ills isn't maladaptive and destructive habits, what else could it be?

>But the moment you call someone else "mentally unhealthy," you have made a grievous error.

Look at the state of the world. War, poverty, oppression, exploitation, domination, dehumanization, groupthink, fear, hate, irrationality, all the way down to broken family relationships. How do you consider this not to be insanity? We're all crazy.

>>1839687
You're not wrong.

It's worrying, though, the quickness with which you seem to use the terms "bad habits" and "good habits."

The binary is false.

>If the source of all human ills isn't maladaptive and destructive habits, what else could it be?

The belief in the self. All suffering begins when we imagine that we exist as a separate consciousness. Not a separate body, or physical being, mind you, but the idea that we can draw lines between our experiences that allow us to create a binary between self and other.

It's complicated, and I believe that your intentions are most benevolent, but it sounds like you are framing those habits you use and have developed in order to self-actualize as a universal template you seek to fit others into, using a category of "unhealth" to describe those who do not conform to your ideal.

You are the perfect you. You are not the perfect everyone. Things aren't simple. And yeah; we're all crazy, so what's the utility of trying to define or normatize mental health?

That being said, mindfulness *is* a very useful metaphor, and a practice that would be hard to imagine as damaging for anyone, so it should be increased as a practice on a systemic level.

>>1839838
>It's worrying, though, the quickness with which you seem to use the terms "bad habits" and "good habits."

I see them as based on consequences, not absolutes. It's hard to think of a situation where crippling alcoholism isn't a bad habit. There's rational beliefs and irrational ones, with a lot of ambiguity and neural ones in between, but the spectrum exists.

>The belief in the self. All suffering begins when we imagine that we exist as a separate consciousness. Not a separate body, or physical being, mind you, but the idea that we can draw lines between our experiences that allow us to create a binary between self and other.

Which is a false belief, and therefore a bad mental habit. Doesn't mindfulness meditation help to loosen this delusion by training the being mode of thought? In the being mode, when past and present are not considered, there is no narrative self as is present in the doing mode. The reality of inextricable interconnection between one's experience and the rest of reality, including other people, is habitually reinforced by mindfulness meditation over time. This experience in turn changes cognition.

>It's complicated, and I believe that your intentions are most benevolent, but it sounds like you are framing those habits you use and have developed in order to self-actualize as a universal template you seek to fit others into, using a category of "unhealth" to describe those who do not conform to your ideal.

The whole perspective is agnostic towards what habits are beneficial or not. It is about techniques to become aware of habits and to be able to change them.

>You are the perfect you. You are not the perfect everyone. Things aren't simple. And yeah; we're all crazy, so what's the utility of trying to define or normatize mental health?

I didn't claim to be. For myself, I am mentally healthy. There is no definition or normalization of mental health given, no catalogue of defined illnesses like the DSM-5. What is clear to me is that the world s heading towards disaster and there's nothing significant being done about it. Politics is broken. Economics is broken. Societies are dysfunctional. Nobody's at the helm and the gradual social change from the bottom-up, while present, isn't enough to handle continuing growing problems. There needs to be an acceleration of social change.

Society is concretely a web of relationships between people, and these relationships are based upon cognitive and behavioral habits. We need a revolution of mental and relationship well-being to save humanity, and if you think this isn't the case or that there is some other solution I truly would love and be open to hearing it. Because there is no top-down political thrust for this, it must come from the bottom up, between individuals. So yes, as long as I am alive I will be pushing for a war or revolution on insanity in some form, and if mindfulness meditation isn't the core, if something else better comes along, or other techniques exist, then it is just a matter of selecting the best means of self-help available.

With that said, do you have any other suggestions for psychological self-help methodology that could be useful for people?

>>1837560
Where did he say bankers aren't up to no good?

He is saying problems in the real world aren't due to reptilians and other conspiracy theories. If you can't even identify the actual problem how can you fight it?

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>>1839601
>>1839687
>>1839838
>>1840088
Show me 1 scientific study from a nonmeme source proving mindfulness is as beneficial and world changing as you claim.

MBCT is still a relatively new field.

>>1840118
MBCT improved attention in bipolar patients after an 8 week program:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/221871836_Mindfulness_based_cognitive_therapy_improves_frontal_control_in_bipolar_disorder_A_pilot_EEG_study

Empirically supported benefits of mindfulness with citations:

http://www.apa.org/monitor/2012/07-08/ce-corner.aspx

As effective as drugs for depression:

http://www.apa.org/monitor/2015/03/cover-mindfulness.aspx

>>1840118
dude this is well known. its been in psychological literature for decades and its been studied in neuroscience too.

>>1833385
wtf is this thread about, im so confused

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>>1840205
So there is some evidence it has some therapeutic effect in some (certainly not all) mental illnesses. Without a thorough analysis you can't be sure if this is due to mindfulness specifically or some element of it.

How will this cure insanity?

>>1840118
OP here.

Your simple question served as a reality test. Many of my claims were derived from philosophical analysis, with some science supporting it, but not nearly the strength of my claims. Because my claims insist that there would be profound behavioral changes, this places them into the realm of scientific scrutiny, and so I have been pseudoscientific in making the claims that mindfulness meditation would be world-changing.

This isn't to say that my claims are entirely false, but that there isn't scientific support for them at the present as is demanded. I will have to be more careful and inspect things more closely.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYEI6jWT244

>When you are studying any matter, or considering any philosophy, ask yourself only what are the facts and what is the truth that the facts bear out. Never let yourself be diverted either by what you wish to believe, or by what you think would have beneficent social effects if it were believed. But look only, and solely, at what are the facts.

I was wrong about the proposed solution, having gotten carried away by my desire to find such a solution, but I think the way that I have framed the problem has merit.

>>1833385
fuck you OP this is pasta and ive seen it before