Pretty much. I don’t see how we can fix what’s wrong with this country from within the system. The US is fundamentally broken because we have lost any semblance of a shared reality. There are four distinct and incompatible realities fighting for dominance: MAGA, republicans, democrats, and leftists. All four groups believe in a different set of facts about the world we live in and let their fear and cruelty drive their actions. It’s not sustainable.

I wish there was something we could do to reunite our understanding of the world we share, but it’s too far gone now.

As an outsider, I promise the grass is not greener over here. Being part of a community, be that family, friends, or local groups gives you much more ability to affect change. Alone you have no chance of changing even the most local and basic issues.

The best thing you could do is have this conversation offline with the people in your life. You’d be surprised how willing people are to work together towards a larger goal if given some direction and concrete goals.

In my 20’s I had three dreams. The first I was at my parents house preparing for a zombie invasion. I knew we would be fine if I found “it” (no idea what it was) but was unable to in the dream. The second dream I was at the office trying to find “it” again and knew I only had three chances. The third dream I was in the desert at the mouth of a skull shaped cave. I had a shovel and knew it was my last chance to find “it”. I failed and awoke knowing I had lost something important but undefinable. The dreams were all about a month apart and so vivid they felt real.

Another interesting note on my dreams is almost all of the really intensely real dreams I’ve been able to recall take place in different parts of the same “world”. Sometimes in the dream I can recall other dreams and where they are in relation to the current dream, most often I make the connection after waking.

I can’t find a link, but I saw an article the other day that said /r/assholedesign was going to be one of the first in protest of the move.

Don’t feed the trolls. If you find a bigot willing to have a good faith debate, maybe, but there is no reasoning with cult members. They have to want to change.

This was years ago, but I was driving around listening to music with my windows down and a couple guys in a van pulled up next to me and asked if I wanted a deal on stereo equipment. Being the naive idiot I was I followed them into a parking lot.

They claimed to be home stereo installers and had accidentally received two premium stereos for a customer order instead of one. They wanted to get rid of the second one for beer money and asked for like $200. They had a magazine that showed the stereo was worth several thousand and I thought I might make a quick buck by reselling it to a pawn shop or online.

I didn’t have $200 but I had overdraft protection so I thought I would pull that money out anyway and pay it back once I had sold the stereo. The guy at the pawnshop was the one who told me I got scammed and I have never felt more embarrassed.

Oh for sure, especially with the ghost and alien abduction stories, but I always got the sense a lot of the callers were either, bored, lonely, crazy, or some combination of those three.

For me it was a call on Coast To Coast AM. I used to be suuuuuuper into all that shit. I was a regular listener to C2C and believed 70% of the crap they shoveled. The 30% I didn’t believe (ghosts and the supernatural) were because I had personally tried astral projecting, recording evps, ghost hunting, etc. and none of it worked for me.

Anyway the call was in the early 2000’s and Art Bell was hosting. The caller claimed to be a scientist working for a secret government lab working on portal tech and had accidentally opened a doorway to another where filled with hostile beings who took control of the facility. When the caller identified themselves as Dr. Gordon Freeman I realized anyone could just say any bullshit and these idiots would believe it.

It took like 10 years to fully flush conspiracy thinking out of my brain and I overcorrected hard by becoming one of those obnoxious skeptics for a while.

Though given the times we live in today I’ve seen a few theories online that have an uncomfortable amount of truth to them and have to admit I have been tempted.

Realistically, no. You need luck more than anything.

Besides, what value does telling him that have?

Billionaire “genius” unaware that to find leaks you tell different people different things and see what gets out.

Earlier that summer my father had made me clean a deer that had been shot in the gut and he did some hollywood style child abuse when I barfed about it, so I was pretty numb to the gore. What really bothered me was some of the dialog. I shudder 30 years later when I think about the line, “where we’re going we don’t need eyes to see.”

My stepdad was horrified he’d taken his stepdaughter to see something so graphic and made me and my friends promise not to tell anyone what we saw and to downplay the gore.

I saw Event Horizon on my 13th birthday in theaters with some of my friends.

There are a lot of things that have to happen for us to go from the world we are in today, to a world where individuals need to avoid being critical of the state online or face reprisal.

Advice like this seems helpful, but regular citizens being punished (by the government) for what they say online is very unlikely. Instance owners and influencers sure, but not your average netizen.

The world has changed significantly since you were your kiddo’s age, but it sounds like you might be stuck thinking you can regain the things you’ve lost. Time only goes one way and you have to find new ways to live and express yourself.

Look for parts of your life where you are just killing time. Browsing social media, watching a streaming service, playing video games, etc, and see if you can do less of that. Look at what things you buy and see if you can buy less, used, or local to free up some budget for pursuing other interests. And if you feel tired all the time, get some exercise, it really does help with fatigue over time.

Both your partner and kiddo can also help, they would prefer a happy, authentic husband/dad and probably would support you if you asked them for specific assistance.

Ultimately you have to make it a priority or nothing will change.

First, I am a woman. Second, this is no longer fun. I’m not interested in continuing this discussion. Perhaps join a bible study group or something? I’m interested in discussing philosophy, and religion is not that.

Collecting stuff is basically the ultimate hoarder hobby.

The extent of my experience as a “pastor” was spending a couple summers leading teen bible studies and acting as peer support for the other kids my age along with some (non-problematic) grooming for one day leading a sermon. The reason I lost my faith though is because I’m queer and could not accept that I would have to go to Hell because I was made “wrong”. In fact, at the time I was kicked out of church (both my uncle’s mission and the “normal” church that was supporting his effort) after I tried coming out to family and my uncle hasn’t spoken to me since (and that was over 20 years ago). No loving God would make someone transgender (I didn’t choose it, nor would I given the chance to) and condemn them to eternal torture for doing nothing more than accepting they are who He made them to be.

God as the source of inspiration for selflessness and morality is certainly a popular position among some Christians. Please don’t take this as an attempt to talk you out of your faith, but I would offer that many cultures have existed in the world who have never known a God and they have been just as selfless as those that have. The capacity for altruism and selflessness is an inherit trait of most animals. Humans may subjectively seem like the best, but even mice in a lab will go hungry to make sure a younger or injured mouse can eat. Old Elephants wander off to die alone so they won’t be a burden to the herd. These sorts of selfless actions are present throughout the animal kingdom and none of those creatures “know” any god at all. (Probably. For all we know, whale song is them preaching the gospel or singing hymns.) But a God is not needed to be selfless and I would offer that selflessness for it’s own sake, rather than for the hope of eternal reward or to emulate a role model, is more profound and precious.

Love (and hate) can blind someone to the truth because they might not be able to see the subject of their love as they are, but rather as what they imagine them to be in their heart. Curiosity however puts us in an open minded state because it forces you to shift how you evaluate the world around you from judging and assessing to observing and exploring. Love has lead people to do horrifyingly terrible things throughout history, take the crusades and inquisition as an example. Hundreds of thousands of lives were ended because the Christians loved their God and hated the non-believers.

The stories in the bible have many interpretations and the spiritual journey all Christians walk is best served by independent study of the text and arriving at their own conclusions. The sign of Jonah, at least the way my uncle taught it, is a sign of rebirth and renewal. Jonah spent three days in the belly of the whale only to reemerge with new found dedication to his faith. This foreshadows and predicts Jesus’ three days and nights in the tomb after the crucifixion and His return, reborn as His (fully) divine self. In both cases each character leaves behind their fears, anxieties, and sorrows to become a better version of themselves. I’m not sure I see how you’re arrived at the Sign of Jonah being a mandate to teach selflessness, but I also don’t think there is a wrong way to interpret the book (unless you use it to justify hate or cruelty, which many have and still do).

To me the story of Jonah has always been troubling. Jonah heard a voice in his head commanding him to go to Nineveh, but instead he boarded a ship traveling in a different direction. On their journey a storm ravaged the ship, the crew blamed Jonah and decided to throw him overboard. I was raised and taught that the bible was a literal historic account (which I no longer agree with) but through that lens the story of Jonah is tragic and appalling. Hearing voices in your head is mental illness. God offers no proof of His existence because proof denies faith. However hearing the voice of God would very much be proof, which to me means anyone who claims to hear it or know anything about His plan would either be lying, trying to fit in with their peers, or mentally ill. If you assume Jonah wasn’t lying or just trying to fit in, then he would have likely had something akin to schizophrenia. Being blamed for the storm and thrown to his death would be extremely traumatic for someone vulnerable like that and the story of the whale is better explained by a psychotic break triggered by the attempted murder when viewing the story this way. I take the story to be a cautionary tale about the dangers of superstition and careless action (and the importance of seeking help if you’re in distress).

I very strongly disagree that nature doesn’t need explaining. Science and empirical study is one of the greatest achievements of humankind and has lead to progress beyond anything those who have come before could understand. Our study and attempt to understand silicon is the reason we’re even able to have this conversation. Without understanding of our world we never would have created medicine, computers, or gone to the moon. Personally I’m of the opinion that is it our duty and responsibility to know and understand the world we live in because the more we know, the more opportunities there are to experience the wonders and mysteries of the universe. If there is such a thing as a God, I’m sure they’d want us to marvel at the complexity of their creation.

It’s taken me a few days to respond because my attention has been elsewhere.

We’ve gotten a little into the weeds, and I think we might be best served by trying to return the focus of the discussion to your original point.

To summarize my understanding of your argument you are saying that the pursuit of happiness or the desire to avoid suffering leads to more suffering. Therefor in order to eliminate suffering one should learn to accept it as the nature of existence and focus on selflessness as a way to cope.

I think I got sidetracked on the specifics of your argument because I thought you were offering your post as philosophic proof of your arguments rather than a more casual discussion. With that in mind, allow me to start over.

Many philosophies suggest something similar. The Buddhist believe that life is suffering and that trying to change things only creates more suffering. And that to attain enlightenment one should live in harmony with reality. The stoics believed that accepting reality as it is presented to you is how you attain happiness. Though the happiness the Greeks mean is actually what a contemporary philosopher might call contentment.

Camus, an existentialist and absurdist, wrote a book about Sisyphus and used it to explain a similar concept. Sisyphus is doomed to spend all of eternity rolling a boulder up a hill only for it to roll down once he reaches the top. It is grueling and pointless toil and should he ever stop he would be chained to the boulder and crows would peck out his eyes and organs; only for it all to start over the next day. Camus suggests that for Sisyphus to find solace in his existence he must not only accept that his life is meaningless but laugh at how absurd it is to exist at all and for existence to be so utterly awful.

In Christianity there is also Liberation Theology which is rooted in an idea almost exactly like yours. They view God more as a metaphorical ideal to aspire to than a real entity and that through helping others we are all helped.

I agree with you in a broad sense. Life is a bunch of bullsh!t and there isn’t much we can do about it. We’re better served focusing our energy on the things we can change and finding things that give our suffering meaning because we’ll never be rid of it.

I think we mostly disagree on the causes for the state of reality we live in and some of the conclusions and arguments you’ve made to support your position.

Just so you know, I’m not an atheist. I was raised American Southern Baptist and was very involved in the church. My uncle was a pastor and tried to push me into the ministry too, but around 16 I lost my faith. From there I explored skepticism and as many religions as I could, including, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Atheism, Satanism, Occultism, Zoroastrianism, and a bunch of post-medieval western philosophy. In my early 30’s I discussed Christianity at great length with something I dated for a few years that had their masters in Theology and was a former youth pastor (but had lost their faith prior to meeting me).

Today I would consider myself agnostic because I don’t see God as needed to explain anything about the nature of existence, but am willing to examine any evidence presented for the existence of a God.

I agree, but what else would you call being forced into a facility you can’t leave? Especially if the pigs brought you there. The way people in crisis are handled in this country is appalling.

I have been in several mental health crises that I should have been in involuntarily hospitalized for, but was too afraid to ask for help because I would rather die than lose what little freedom I have. So I might be biased (and very bitter).

I mean to be fair if you were involuntarily hospitalized, you actually were a prisoner.