The dark forest
-The sacrifices I've made have pushed me far beyond my comfort zone—more than I ever anticipated. Like venturing into the woods to gather your own firewood, it's demanding work that most aren't willing to do. Your average college progressive, too confined by entitlement and predetermined narratives, would rather complain about the cold than make the journey into unfamiliar territory.
Holding progressive views is itself a privilege, not a burden. Our political consciousness needs breathing room for authentic development. You have a choice: remain confined by victimhood, or create space for thoughtful, sustainable growth while maintaining your integrity.
-Socialist services/non-profits are like a communal forest, planted and protected by our predecessors' progressive beliefs. Yes, this wood might burn faster than you'd like—social services aren't perfect—but they're sustainable and create space for transformation.
Yet what do I see? Progressives sitting in their cold apartments, using the bare minimum of private resources, shivering and complaining about how the right wing has made everything terrible. They'd rather blame conservatives for their cold room while a whole forest of resources sits unused, claiming they're "saving" it for others who need it more—a mask for entitled fears and delusions.
The painful irony:
They freeze in ideological purity while refusing to use the systems progressives fought to create
They talk endlessly about expanding services they've never accessed
They miss that using these services strengthens them and helps justify their expansion
Meanwhile, many who do gather from this communal forest either don't vote or vote against maintaining the very resources that keep them warm.
-Both liberals and conservatives trap themselves in narrow definitions of growth:
Endurance
Hard work
Achievement
Combativeness
These values are like trying to heat a home with Dura-logs—quick, showy, but ultimately unsustainable. True growth requires space to move beyond these constraints.
I stepped back from the suffocating proximity of competing ideologies, allowing for my own investigation. The quality of your growth isn't measured by how quickly you can burn through resources or how brightly your activism flares. I'm choosing sustainable development now—like choosing to gather wood instead of buying gasoline. The wood takes more effort to collect, doesn't burn as spectacularly, but provides consistent, lasting warmth.
To my fellow progressives: Instead of complaining that sustainable resources don't burn fast enough—while gathering none of them—learn to:
Build sustainable practices through direct engagement
Create room for personal growth beyond performance
Maintain space for reflection and questioning
Develop movements that can breathe and evolve
The goal isn't to create the most spectacular display of progressive values, but to build sustainable spaces and systems that can actually support long-term transformation.
Poof, death, infinity, oneness
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jntnUWWkZlA&pp=ygUab2xkIHRlbGV2aXNpb24gdHVybmluZyBvZmY%3D
Ego development is prime
Science loves to track statistics related to “differences in cognitive function” after using recreational drugs, but fails to test for changes in ego development.
Cannabis is effective at pushing the stage-orange, achiever archetype into the breathes of stage-green.
The jump to green is more gentle and subtle w cannabis!
“If you are progressive, recognize that you are a very lucky elite human being.”
very lucky elite human being. *Follow up from Leo’s reflection.
It was only by a great struck of luck that account for my current worldview and personal development. Thanks mostly due to a therapist that helped me meet minds w the feminine perspective and develop empathy for myself, the political environment around the city closest to me (Seattle), learning about spiral dynamics and actualized.org more serious content, and covid happening at a time advantageous for my independent learning.
I can’t express, how these genuine beliefs have made life less sharp around the edges and expanded my love of reality.
Through spiral dynamics, I felt validated, my development curve wasn’t a bug, it was a feature, and I love the model for that.
Wow… great analysis by actualized.org blog
“6) The anti-mainstream left are useful idiots for fascism.
Woke anti-war leftists and progressives who constantly whine about how centrist liberals are, in practice, just end up being useful idiots for fascists and conservatives. Such people love to whine about Gaza, genocide, war, empire, socialism, trans-rights or whatever, but in the end their ideas never win, they just mobilize right-wing passions on the one hand and demoralize and sour people to liberalism and center-left moderates on the other hand. This directly leads to fascists like Trump winning, which then makes all those important issues even worse. Such anti-mainstream leftists have good intentions but they are so politically naive they end up regressing society. They don't have enough self-awareness nor pragmatism to understand that their ideas are far too radical to be sustainable, and in the meantime they cause tangible and powerful backlash and division. I'm referring here to people like Krystal Ball, who detests Biden so much that she influenced millions of her viewers to basically elect Trump. This is what Lenin called a useful idiot, but for the right. All the left-wing RFK Jr supporters just became useful idiots for the right, and they are a major reason why Trump won. Even Chris Hedges, who I respect, ended up being a useful idiot for the right in this election. A divided left means victory for fascism. That's real politics.
Such leftists will make all sorts of excuses and rationalizations about the evils of centrism, but in the end this is what happened. It's just too ugly for them to admit to themselves. Gaza will now be completely destroyed thanks to their naive moralizing. You traded Biden for Trump — one of the dumbest political things you could do. My advice to you leftists is to be mindful of how your ideals work against you. It's a very counter-intuitive trap you fall into. Politics requires better calculation than that. Hating the center more than you hate the right is not wise if you are a real progressive.
Here's what these progressives do not understand: the country is not failing to go progressive due to centrists. It is failing to go progressive because very few humans are developed enough to sustain a progressive majority. There is no progressive majority, that's just your echo-chamber. So don't be mad at the center. The center cannot magically make tens of millions of people progressive. If you are progressive, recognize that you are a very lucky elite human being. Don't squander it by helping elect fascists and regressive right-wingers. As a progressive you need to understand that as an elite you will not get your way. Your way is too advanced for the vast majority of humans who operate on much simpler terms. You might care about genocide — the average human does not. This is reality.
Narrow questions
An Australian doctor asked me “what’s worse drugs or heavy metals”. Only the left-brained dominant individual would think to ask smth like this.
Tier 2 (spiral dynamic) thinking comes when you start defining the problem better. Usually due to being devastating and learning your ignorance to externalities causes evil (even though you thought you were doing good).
If you recover from the devastation, you realize you're not “nasty” anymore but still “dumb”. Lol
How I quit vaping in exchange for cigarettes
For one, I fw the cig aesthetic, I feel like a boss.
-One of the realest people ive ever met was an older women coworker who liked to smoke cigs cuz she “liked em”, and at the time I just didn’t get it. Then when I tried them, I understood where she was coming from.
-The reason I tried cigs: I was contemplating infinity, and one of my most empathetic and beautiful conclusions is: Reality is infinity, so any “pain” you endure in this reality, means in another reality you don’t have to experience that pain. Ofc there’s infinite realities (although each one is slightly unique) so this kinda contradicts itself, cuz there’s also infinite realities where I do indeed choose to smoke cigarettes. But either way the conclusions I made resulted in my “not give a fuck” meter to increase significantly.
-Think of like a single number, it’s unique in of itself, but in between say 1-2 there’s infinite numbers. That’s not a bug, it’s a feature. People like to think of themselves as a single whole number because it makes reality easier to comprehend, but that often leads them to underestimate the complexity of reality.