When you are raised in a certain culture it’s near impossible to see it clearly. It is simply the air that you breathe.

It’s like when there is a bad smell in your home. You only realize it when you walk back in after you’ve been away for a while.

And this is why travel is so incredibly important. If at all possible everyone should leave their culture of origin for at least three months in order to be able to see it clearly when they return.

When people say "traditional" you should ask for clarification. Are we talking 1950s'? 1800's? 2k years ago? Or perhaps 95% of human history during our hunter gatherer phase?

I was watching a YouTube video on home decor and the narrator is like, "Does your home have a signature scent?"

And I'm like ya, probably does, probably the scent of dog urine.

And then she's like "You should consider giving your home a signature scent!"

And I'm like ya, you're right, I should put the phone down and go give my home the signature scent of purple Fabuloso.

I heard an interesting thing the other day. We are generally scared of meeting aliens as we imagine that they will take over, or kill us, or enslave us, etc. But why? Perhaps we envision that because throughout human history quite often when one civilization met another, the civilization with the more advanced technology took over, and killed, and enslaved. Essentially we are projecting our behavior onto aliens. Maybe.

And then I saw that theory taken further. There are some men in the world that seriously resist women having any real power. They see that as the collapse of civilization, it really freaks them out. Perhaps they are projecting? Perhaps they are assuming that if women are “in power” they will treat men in the same way that women were treated in recent history. They fear that then men will have to be second class citizens treated like property.

What do you think?

how would you define love? What do you think it is?

What is love?

and what is the difference between romantic and non-romantic love?

Spanish!

and what is that?

When I was maybe 10 I was in the car with two adult women. A love song came on the radio. I asked questions about it and was told “you’ll understand when you are older… you’re too young to be in love.”

And so I waited, many years, to experience and understand the mythical love.

When I would have romantic connections with men I would ask myself, “is this love?” …”is THIS love??”

I experienced what others would call being “in love”, that wild attachment and infatuation, even addiction to another. But not one of those experiences were healthy. Looking back I can see those were insecurity fueled unhealthy attachments.

We tend to “fall in love” with people who we perceive as having what we want, or of being able to save us, or people who match our old wounds.

Often we “marry our unfinished business.” We “fall in love” with people who match our old wounds as we subconsciously try to fix the old wound with a new person who will play out that story line with us.

We are blind to what’s really going on, and we refuse to look at it by simply calling it “love”. And in our mass delusion, no one questions it.

There is no such thing as romantic love. Really, it’s a collective fairytale, like believing in Santa Clause.

Being “in love” is how we excuse our poor coping mechanisms and unhealthy attachment.

Loving people, caring about them… when we use love and care as a verb, are of course very, very real. But if you should find yourself “in love”, go get some help.

If you are looking to see women as flawed, bad creatures, you are going to find some supporting evidence.

If you are looking to see men as flawed, bad creatures, you are going to find some supporting evidence.

But that doesn’t serve us well. Anything that tears down half of humanity does not help us progress.

If this is what works for you, cool. But making important life decisions based off social media peer pressure is a rather dangerous thing to do. And please don't glamorize that.

I am allergic to elitism vibes. ...2025 is going to be a rough year for me.

While having a chat with a friend I mentioned that a few months back I was at a vegan restaurant with a bunch of Bitcoiners, and he stopped me. “There are vegan Bitcoiners? I thought they were all like dudes with beards and guns that eat steaks?”

Sigh. Ahh the ways that social media distorts things.

There certainly are Bitcoin dudes with beards and guns that eat steaks, and those are generally the loudest people on social media. There are also, vegans, and ladies, and non-Americans, and yogis, and cyclists, and anarchists, and communists, and pacifists, and carb lovers, and gardeners, and grandmas, and grandpas, and teenagers, and artists, and neurotypicals, and mothers, and fathers, and anime nerds, and gamers, and knitters, and ...and ...and ...

Good morning.

Yesterday I won DuoLingo 💪

Be impressed 😉

...and you say "chill out" as if that were simple. If it were the field of psychology wouldn't exist.

for some people I'm sure. this stuff can be very individualized.

I am utterly convinced that a leading cause of depression is inflammation.

Now there are books about this, I’ll drop some links in the comments, but also, I’ll tell you a story. This is a thing that has happened to me a few times, but this is the most recent and clear.

Wednesday evening, I’m starting to feel a bit of a sore throat coming on. I drink some water and try to get some sleep. At about 2am I wake up hot and with body aches, but I was woken up because I was having racing very dark thoughts. I woke up because I was suddenly in a depressive episode! Now this isn’t my first rodeo, so I knew what was happening and I also knew it was caused by the inflammation raging in my body. At first I tried some meditation and some breathing exercises. But it didn’t make a dent, the thoughts raced. You know the ones, “you’re a horrible person”, “nothing will work out”, “your life won’t be anything but suffering”, on and on.

When my initial strategies failed I woke my husband up and told him what was going on and asked him to help. He went and got me some Ibuprofen, I took it, had some more water, waiting a bit. Things calmed down. I went back to sleep. I woke up Thursday morning still sick, but without the racing thoughts.

Do any of you experience this at the start of an illness?

Agreed.

Good morning! Happy New Year!

Give me some wild predictions for 2025!

I'm not arguing for communism, I am understanding why some may be drawn to it.

We have a real lack of community and community support in the modern world. This puts a hole is people's lives and I understand why they would want a different, more supporting structure to the world.

Ya I think it is fairly new. The CERF stuff isn't that new, but the score is maybe a ~6months old.

I did it! It only took 2 days of obsession, but I reached a DuoLingo Spanish score of 60. That corresponds with the CEFR level of B1, which means I'm kinda conversational... old news as I've been busy having lots of conversations for a while now 😝 But it's nice that it's DuoLingo official 🙌

there certainly are people like you describe! but that's not who I'm thinking of here.

No. These are people that I know well. They are good people.

Yes some people are simply hateful/lazy and want an excuse to take other people's stuff. But that I generally find easy to spot. For me it was always the very kind and thoughtful people who I know who wanted communism that confused me.

And now I get it, what they want is community, and that I very much understand.

This is exhausting. I'm going to call it. Have a good one.

No, capitalism and communism are fundamentally different.

This isn't about automation, it's about community.