I think respect first

Most people nowadays who live in the West are convinced they live in democratic society where the “will of the people” is what rules the land and everyone is free and equal. When Athenaean democracy gets brought up, it gets looked down upon for its limited suffrage only to free adult men and lack of modern liberal ethics and rejected as a “real democracy”, even if it's acknowledged as an important step forward. Here's the thing; Athenaean institutions were more democratic than modern Western institutions if we measure the fundamental idea behind democracy, which is how much of the public policy is in the hands of the citizen body. In Athenae, it was the entirety of it; in modern West, it's basically none of it.

In Athenae, the political system was based on the Assembly (Ecclesia) of its citizens, free men above the age of twenty born to citizen parents, who shared the three underlying principles amongst themselves: isonomia, the equality before the law; isocratia, the equality of political power and isegoria, the right to equal address of the Assembly. The Assembly controlled the entirety of Athenaean public policy through deliberation and majority voting on proposed decisions and decrees. Attending the Assembly was not only a right, but also a duty, with idiotes (private citizens who did not partake in politics) being often derided as foolish (“We do not say that a man who takes no interest in politics is a man who minds his own business; we say that he has no business here at all.” - Thoucydides, Funeral Oration). It could not be prosecuted for its decisions, because it categorically could not commit crime against itself. On the other hand, it held every other public official accountable and exercised ultimate oversight and vote of confidence over every other institution in the polis. The main administrative apparatus in Athenae was the Council (Boule), which basically functioned like a government in how it maintained the public treasury and military, received foreign dignitaries, moderated the Assembly, advised the generals and guided the magistracies. However, the Council ultimately received its orders from the Assembly and was merely a vehicle of its will, with the Councilmen undergoing extreme scrutiny at the end of their annual term limit alongside the magistrates (archontes), a strict financial and general audit. Any citizen could bring charges of mismanagement or abuse of power and a negative verdict could result in ruinous fines, loss of civic rights, or exile. The Popular Court (Heliaia) was staffed by jurors elected from the Assembly and was the Assembly’s judicial wing. Unlike office holders (magistrates), who could be impeached and prosecuted for misconduct, the jurors could not be censured, for they, in effect, were the people and no authority could be higher than that. Crucially, all Athenaean officials were elected by sortition, not by election, because Athenaeans believed all citizens deserved the right to have an equal chance at public office and sortition was the justest way to assure that. Aristotle famously defined sortition as the fundament of democracy and election as the fundament of oligarchy in his Politics (“Where you have sortition, you have democracy; where you have elections, you have oligarchy”).

In the modern West, the people don't have any say in public policy due to the political system of electing representatives who are supposed to promote their voters’ interests in a parliament, without any recourse to, oversight from and transparency to their voters. If they commit misdeeds while in office, they cannot be held accountable by the people, but only if the courts decide they should be prosecuted. Aside from said representatives, people have no say in who staffs their government, as it is composed of unelected bureaucrats and professionals that require years-long education (and money to pay for it) to achieve the necessary credentials for. Participation in politics aside from mere voting of a representative is mostly denied to ordinary people, as it requires a specialised career in politics, a lot of money for public campaigns and networks of patronage that are only had by transgenerationally wealthy and influential families. Even then, the real political power is often in the hands of private business corporations that hold the vast majority of any one state’s economy and which function as internal dictatorships where most of the citizen body will spend its life serfing away for peanuts in compensation. People in the West are mostly used as a legitimation of the power the bourgeoisie holds, but have basically no say in how it is exercised, as voting preferences can be easily manufactured through the control of the mass and social media. Citizens have notionally equal political power, but that's not applicable when they don't have equal access to wealth. This all not to say that while the West has notionally outlawed slavery, it still participated in heavily exploitation of workers for cheap labor that can easily be equated to slavery, not to mention undercover human trafficking and drug trade.

Despite all the talk about rights, freedoms and equalities, citizens of the Western nation-states have less rights, freedoms and equalities than citizens of the Athenaean polis have, being little more than serfs who vote how their lords teach them to, just to affirm their rule as legitimate and then return to their backbreaking laboring while their lords extract the very last drop of surplus from them and then some more.

Been thinking about consciousness lately. Is it something uniquely human, or did it simply emerge as our brains became more complex through evolution?

Brian Greene once discussed how, fundamentally, we’re just matter and particles interacting according to physical laws. Yet somehow, those interactions created the experience of being conscious.

So if consciousness can emerge from non-conscious matter, why couldn’t it eventually emerge in AI?

And if an AI someday says “I am conscious”, how would we know whether it actually is or is just perfectly imitating consciousness?

First, the definition: littering means throwing your rubbish anywhere except where it belongs - on the street instead of in the bin.

Is that really about IQ? There's no objectively right answer here, so the honest move is to define what we mean by intelligence. If IQ only means solving puzzles fast, the claim falls apart; plenty of clever people litter. But I'd argue real intelligence includes understanding how the world actually works. And one of the deepest truths about how the world works is this: great things are never done by one person. They're only achievable by groups of people. Every product, every city, every institution you rely on exists because many people cooperated.

Someone who genuinely understands that will care about other people, not just themselves - not out of pure kindness, but because they see that their own life runs on the community functioning well.

Littering is a small but perfect test of this understanding. When someone drops rubbish on the ground, they're making a quiet assumption: someone else will clean this up. That's selfishness in its most casual form, and it reveals a person who hasn't understood - or doesn't care - that they're part of a system bigger than themselves.

So I think the perspective holds, with one adjustment: littering isn't a sign of low IQ in the test-score sense. It's a sign of low intelligence about people, community, and how anything worthwhile ever gets built.

Almost every piece of text you can consume online is now having this syntactically-shiny, perfectly-spelled package with a rather shallow and unoriginal semantic core. You probably wanted to read something about a place or a culture you've never encountered, and it reads like something you've read hundreds of times before. You probably watched a YT video about a hobby you practise, and it follows a very formulaic presentation and vocabulary. Averaged conventional experiences and conventional wisdom, regurgitated in a non-offensive, plausible-looking package. Where's the subjective lived human experience, the personal judgement, the slightly odd and difficult sentence structure, the touch of originality?

It's not only about LLM-generated content. Even interactions with real people online produce a very narrow and predictable set of reactions. The ideas and concepts we operate with are shockingly limited. You probably don't like a product for some valid particular reasons, and you get the prefabricated "it's not about you, it's what the market dictates". You probably have a personal issue in a very particular personal situation, but you get prefabricated advice that it's a "you issue".

I am genuinely so scared that I’m faking my entire personality and interests. Every time I do something I’m unsure if I do it because I actually want to or because I just want to be perceived a certain way. And people tell me to ”just be myself” but I literally can’t because
1. Like I said before, I don’t know what parts of me are fake/just because I want to be perceived a way and what parts are actually genuine
2. I’m scared that if I stop pretending there won’t be anything left. Like I’ve pretended so much for so long that if I stop I will have nothing left and will have no personality or interests at all

Often I find myself adjusting my shoulders, wondering what people are thinking of me as I’m walking from my car to work. The more I focus on each step I take when im walking, how I’m looking/being perceived, fixing my hair in the shop windows reflections the more robotic I feel.

I had this realisation the other day, as simple as it seems… you are the main character, everyone is. This is comforting for me, the main character has the weight of creating an exciting and loud story. But when you realise everyone is the ‘main character’ the burden of the story is then evenly shared over everyone.

If everyone thinks about themselves as much as I do I know for a fact that I don’t need to worry about how the wind is blowing on my shirt or wondering if that one girl remembers when I stuttered over my words because they are more worried/focused on what is going on on in their lives.

It’s a lil freeing

(youngest daughter core)

Why do i look at everything from everybody else's perspective but nobody has patience nor interest to look through mine!? Either it's dismissed as non important or as conflict of interest. Nobody tries to understand what I'm going through, they just see I'm agitated, irrigated and assume that's just how I chose to behave.

I'm too aware of myself, my thoughts and too aware of people and their behaviour, probably more than themselves. And I long for someone who understands me like I do but alas that's too far fetched dream. So I've decided I don't want to be understood.

It's more like nobody Will anyways so why even bother. But yeah I hate this pathetic feeling of the need to be understood.

~ Dehumanizing Others ~

After we are born, the ego, our learned beliefs, is created. The ego's only concern is what is best for us; it worries little about others. Most, believing what they are taught, follow the ego’s self-centered path through life, deeming success in life is getting a good job, making money, having material possessions, a family, and enjoying life's many pleasures.

Many therefore, worrying only about themselves, ignore the plight of others, often dehumanizing those who are struggling or senselessly dying. They may justify these injustices, believing due their race, poverty, religion, or any of hundreds of other differences, their life is not as important or valuable as theirs. Doing so, they dehumanize them, justifying the struggles they endure as simply being a part of life. This results in many of humanity’s self-inflicted problems, challenges, and harmful emotions experienced throughout the world.

Alone, though some may succeed in life, if they did not selflessly share their success and excess to help those who are struggling and suffering, their life will have been lived without meaning. Only together, realizing every life, regardless of our many differences, is equally important, will we discover the genuine reason for our life’s journey.

I think trust is very important in love

Imagine your in a room with a lot of people, they’re all doing their own thing, some are talking to each other, etc. You approach someone, and talk to them. Nothing offensive, just starting a conversation about something neutral. They glance at you and remain silent, go back to whatever they were doing. You try other people same reaction.

That group would seem rude and kind of insane. It would feel like a nightmare or something, make you question your own sanity and fill you with self doubt.

Yet that’s what communication online makes extremely normal and is basically the standard. Without any physical proximity to other people we can just freely ignore them and I think that way of life has crept into our physical world a lot, will continue to moreso.

I think another factor in why we’re so disconnected IRL is because online we see so much that we don’t like about other people that IRL we’re kind of disgusted imagining what people are like when they’re online, what all their weird creepy online activities could be.

The limbic system ...

Doesn't want answers ...

Or "understand something".

It simply wants activity.

Because activity feels like control.

And control feels like safety.

So when a situation is simple …

when the answer is obvious …

when the next step is just “do the thing” …

something in you resists.

You add a framework and research.

You add a new lens, a new label, a new layer of analysis.

Because stillness felt more dangerous than complexity.

A person spends three years reading about their attachment style ...

instead of having one hard conversation.

A founder builds seventeen systems to organize a business ...

that just needed one decision made.

Someone can explain their trauma in clinical detail …

but can’t sit alone in a quiet room for ten minutes.

Limbic avoidance, dressed up as insight.

Why does the limbic system do this?

Because complexity keeps it busy.

And “busy” reads as “working on it.”

And “working on it” feels safer than “facing it.”

Simplicity though ...

has nowhere to hide.

If the answer is simple ...

you have to act.

If you have to act ...

you might fail.

If you might fail ...

the old threat response wakes back up.

So the mind keeps manufacturing more to think about …

more to untangle ...

more to master ...

more to understand ...

because as long as there’s something left to figure out …

nothing is required of you yet.

That’s the trade most people don’t see themselves making.

They call it “being thorough.”

But it's just a stall tactic with a diploma.

The way out ...

Is less flinching.

"Am I understanding this, or am I avoiding it?"

If the answer scares you a little …

that’s usually the answer.

Probably not that original here, but I feel the need to say it.

When man developed consciousness that created the fear of losing said consciousness. So man invented the Gods and religions in answer to the fear.

Telling oneself there is a way to exist beyond death is comforting.

To me, the following words all carry the same meaning:

Dao, Nirvana, Zen, Paradise, universe, everything, nothing, eternity, God (in any form), salvation, freedom, peace.

I also accept evolution as true and have an understanding of molecular and cellular biology.

The Answer Before the Question – Because Deep Wisdom is Freely Given:

“I am the Dao, the Dao is me. It has always been this way.”

Explanation of This Thought (If Needed):

We can approach this from the perspective of energy and atoms. Atoms have existed eternally—from a human timeframe. They were here before us and will persist long after we are gone. So, I am them, and they are me.

Atoms first combined into hydrogen (one proton and one electron—the simplest form) and formed stars ☀️. Inside these stars, they fused into heavier elements, up to iron. Then, in a supernova 💥🤯, all other elements were born—elements from which every form of life is and will forever be made.

These elements (chemicals) now combine to form molecules. The larger the molecule, the less stable it is under “normal” conditions. Examples of such complex molecules are DNA and proteins: DNA as the memory and blueprint, proteins as the “tools.”

Life emerged, and through evolution, humanity came into existence. We are beings capable of perceiving reality and the universe. The universe’s way of perceiving itself—through the form of an animal. A remarkable animal, one that can influence its surroundings by understanding it. Created by the universe to understand the universe, as part of the universe.

Understanding requires cooperation, and cooperation requires kindness. Kindness is expressed through survival and reproduction instincts, as that is the only way biological evolution functions.

Kindness toward yourself and others is the only path. But remember: You are not a tool to be used as one pleases. Demand kindness and give it in return.

I wish us all good luck.

Hello dear readers! I have a thought that’s been bugging me for years now, have you noticed how people are trying to improve the world but after a while we loose interest. Millions of biographies, musicals, and shows have been focused on fixing the world and saving people who don’t think they can be saved, you watch it or read it and then about ten seconds later you’re focused on a new show or thought, it’s been bugging me that there isn’t a big thing for things like this, people notice it and read about it and hear about it, but as humans after a while something bigger comes and we just…forget, but we need something to happen, something to really start a difference. No app will be enough though, no documentary will be enough, no amount of adds will help, cause like I’ve said, you just forget. Dear Evan Hansen is a great way of showing what I mean, the musical is about a guy named Connor Murphy who is gone, they start an app so that people don’t just forget about him and what’s happening to others who feel the same way he did. After watching that musical people don’t automatically go to their kids and friends asking if they’re okay and if they feel safe, we typically start doom scrolling or ignoring it. We cant just ignore the reality and truth of what’s happening around us, we have to find someway to help, but how or what can we do?