Best Of

@marcitko
Ah, happiness resides in life's small victories.
After all, great victories are the sum of many small victories even as a lake is the summation of so many drops of water.

Peace to you
Peace to all

Their absolute lack of empathy, lack of compassion, lack of humanity, abundance of greed, avarice, gluttony, and vindictiveness is infuriating as it results in massive pain, loss and suffering for countless millions in the US and offshore.

I read about an Eskimo hunter who asked the local missionary priest, "If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell? "No," said the priest, "not if you did not know." "Then why," asked the Eskimo earnestly, "did you tell me?"
-- Annie Dillard

Thought you might find this interesting. It is a more detailed examination of the claims the AI industry is making that AI might lead to human extinction.

Abby Martin packs a lot into this 15-minute Double Down News / Empire Files video about the US war machine and its devastating ecological and environmental impact.

Abby was in Aotearoa at the end of July, where she hosted a sold-out screening and Q&A session in Tāmaki Makaurau (aka Auckland). Unfortunately, I was overseas at the time. Some friends did get to see her documentary Earth's Greatest Enemy.

The mindset that if the man is making less than the woman, he is "Less than" still holds weight for men in our cultural psyche. That is changing, but is is a fear that men do have that their spouses, partners, will see them as lesser, that the women will seek "Hire Status" men, who's income is greater than their own.
The key to eliminating the fear, to eliminating the status issue is open communications. Both men and women must agree and understand, not theoretically, but fundamentally, that the relative income is not or ceases to be an issue. When both understand and agree that contributing to the relationship/family involves the entire relationship, of which, who make more is but an insignificant element.
Social climbers aside, a partnership, a marriage, is an ongoing dynamic relationship of constant give and take , of adjustments to ever changing circumstances. If relative monetary position is a serious issue, it usually means there are other issues, issues of trust, of communication, of fear.
The "Manisphere" or at least the part worried or complaining about financial status when the woman makes more money than the man, is usually the fear of loss of control.
They have been taught or bought into the fallacy that men are the sole providers, and or men must be the dominant, not equal, the dominant partner.
In the wild, for wolves, the Alpha Male and the Alpha Female are equal. The support each other and jointly lead and protect the pack. Birds share the burden equally of tending their nests and raising their chicks. They do not keep records of who brought the most to the nest. The y communicate, they coordinate, they work as a team.
In a culture that has been trained to equate income with worth and status, the trap is set, the fear real. Yet, when the female college professor marries the male truck driver, she remains a professor and he remains a truck driver. Neither is deminished by their economic reality, both are independent, both choose. They both "tend the nest" together.
The choose, in their own fashion, the middle way.

Peace to all

@RobinH said:
I am finishing up Pema Chödrön's When Things Fall Apart.
I am looking for reading material that would help me embrace some form of a practice in the situations I often struggle with (like the constant need of communication and fishing for affirmation, or feelings like "unless I achieve this and that and that I'll never be a buddhist / good buddhist" and why even try? etc). You know, the usual hangups of an undisciplined mind I suppose. I find it useful if an author can relate to specific situations I've experienced in the past, so that's how I found the book. It's okay, probably a decent gateway read, I liked the part where it went into how when encountering negative things and aggression, our response comes from an angry place, we're putting more aggression out in the world even if we're right. That part really resonated with me, because I often feel there are more important things than being right about something, but in the heat of the moment it's difficult to rely on these if you can't even fully understand why.

I think I might read Tara Brach's: Radical Acceptance next. And similar books. Always open for some recommendations.

@RobinH said:
I'm also reading a novel inspired by my father's life (he is rather infamous). It made me think about (for the first time) how he might've had similar experiences as I have as a child. Like watching his parents breathe while they slept, afraid that they would just die. It was a very strange experience to read such, even if it's fiction and there's no way to know if it actually happened or not, it's probably not important either, the fact that it could've happened makes it real somehow.

That second post is pretty intriguing. I can very much understand not wanting to go into details and don't think you should.

I wonder how connected the two are, looking for acceptance and your father's story. What I'm hearing is largely a lack of internal confidence. Have you looked into the work on self compassion? A lot of it is how to be kind and accepting to oneself even if you don't feel like you're the greatest. It helps learn how to treat yourself as a friend rather than turning the critic on yourself.

@RobinH said:
I am finishing up Pema Chödrön's When Things Fall Apart.
…
It's okay, probably a decent gateway read, I liked the part where it went into how when encountering negative things and aggression, our response comes from an angry place, we're putting more aggression out in the world even if we're right. That part really resonated with me, because I often feel there are more important things than being right about something, but in the heat of the moment it's difficult to rely on these if you can't even fully understand why.

This reminded me of a story I came across about G. I. Gurdjieff’s childhood. He came from a poor family, and at about nine years old his father lay dying, and told him he didn’t have an inheritance to leave him, except one piece of advice, and that was whenever someone angered him, to not respond, but to go away for twentyfour hours and to respond after that. For Gurdjieff this was a life changing piece of advice, because it removed him from his immediate responses, and taught him to think before responding.