Soulfire

We should treat others as equals in order to prove our superiority to animals. We should treat everyone as equals because it's the decent thing to do. We should treat others as equals in order to depart from our violent roots. We should treat others as equals in order that they might reciprocate. We should treat others as equals because it's the most disarming thing we can do, so that peace might come of it. Will that suffice as reasoning for you, my friend? PS: Auditory awesomeness, and I liked this song before it was cool.

PS: I have a -11 ranking now! WOOOOOOO, double digits! For every thumbs-down I get, I consider myself the more honoured, because it means I'm fighting the good fight against trolls and bigots. WOOOOOOOO!

Neeel: To treat someone as an equal would be to treat them with the same degree of respect as you would prefer to be treated with yourself. You know the whole Golden Rule thing? Literally every religion has a version of that rule: do no harm to others if you would not have them harm you, and so forth. As for why we ought to be peaceful, as I say, are we no better than animals or Neanderthals flinging rocks at one another? If humans are as great as we think we are when compared to the animals, as I do because I'm a humanist, I think we ought to put our money where our mouths is (mouths are?) and live up to what we have the potential to be. Besides, why not get along? It's easier. A4E: Your statement was that the West treats people as equals and I was responding to that statement. In terms of Islam, no, they don't. And neither does any other religion or philosophy. Except Pantheism but I won't go there unless you want me to. Point is, we can, collectively, as a species, do a lot better than we're doing.

A4E, are you kidding me? The West doesn't treat people like equals at all! Several examples incoming...also, disturbing content to follow so prepare yourself accordingly. 1. 1970s: Black woman (in America) on display in human zoo. Woman dies, zoo claims her body, puts corpse on display, inters all remains in 1980s other than her genitals, which they cut off, put on display, and didn't return to her family for interment until 2002. 2. White women gain right to vote in North America in 1930s, black women in 1950s, Native women in 1960s. 3. Tuskegee studies on black men and the deliberate spreading of STDs among them to see how their biology differs when under such conditions. 4. Japanese migrants turned away at British Columbia border in WWII, with the proclamation that "None is too many". Japanese families already living in British Columbia split apart according to surname and all made to move to different Provinces (i.e. if your sister were married and had a different surname, she'd be off to Alberta and you to Ontario, just as an example). 5. Anti-hijab and burqa movements in France and in Quebec, with Muslim woman being stripped at a beach in France by authorities for her "safety". Note that the image given to us in class of this happening was coupled by a picture of Catholic nuns in habit walking along beach in France, no one stripping them. Recent occurrence, I might add. Here, I'll find you the pics... Burqini woman French nuns I'm done for now. Any questions?

Damn straight, Killian! And yes, I'm aware of what sarcasm is. Here's the sound of me caring. ................................................................................................................................. But for serious, if we want peace, we have to start treating people like people, like equals. Are we not all biochemically equal anyway? Besides, human beings as a species are still 98.8% similar to our primate ancestors, so what are we bragging about? But we're smart enough to be able to evolve past that. Human evolution is significant in that, despite our physical changes, the greatest evolution took place in the mind. Why not use that for cultivating a life that everyone can live? It's bullshit to carry on as animals would, warring with one another and hoarding our possessions and creating false barriers between one another. If people are so great, and I think we are because I'm a humanist, can't we do better than that?

What, my Pantheism? To believe that everything is God (yes, including you) is not a crime. In fact, it's the greatest equalizer as well as the greatest affirmation of human goodness of which I am aware. And you can save your misogyny and xenophobia for someone who gives a feck. I do not, however, give a feck. PS: Beck. Just because.

@ Erwin, LOL...you're cute. ♥

Yay, gratuitous amounts of feedback! LOL, okay, one at a time here. RoseCordex: I can't believe I'm quoting him again, but as Stefan says, "To see the farm is to leave it." So get up and leave the farm, my friend. I'm waiting on the other side of the gate. And of COURSE I was ashamed of myself. I'm always telling people I know not to paint everyone with the same brush, and my stupid brain went on media-created autopilot and said "Oh, a Muslim...of course...". And I'm just like, brain, FECK OFF. Things like that shouldn't be there if you're me. I try to be as open-minded as I can be, see. Neeeeel: No, I think it's more of a creation of what we've been taught through ancestral tradition: that our people are better than any other people, and that our people should fit into a certain form (white, preferably male, heterosexual, able-bodied, Christian) in order to be considered our people. That's not cool, because, as I said, to create an "other", one that does not fit into the false archetype, is to create your own so-called enemies. That's bullshit. RichardY: Honey, you know I love you, but that's my point exactly. They weren't "playing fair", and nobody ever does when they're brainwashed and afraid. Fear will make you do as you are told, and to do as you are told is both stupid and boring, because you're not following your own compass. I believe in Tabula Rasa, yes, but in line with that I believe that all people are born good. We have to be TAUGHT to be bad. And unfortunately, if you're taught too thoroughly, you'll make bad things happen. No one has the right to attack children, or anyone in general who can't fight back. It's that early, negative conditioning that makes such a disconnect happen in the mind. A4E: I said nothing about appeasement. I said for "us" to leave well enough alone. Someone has to drop the gun first in order for peace to happen, and I don't care what so-called "side" it is, but because we're supposedly so intelligent and civilized, I figure it might as well be "our side". Are we no better than animals that we should cling to our weapons for constant fear of attack? Bullshit.

If we're going to talk about colonization, let's talk about the kind that our ancestors did, shall we? Mass cultural genocide, both in the forms of warfare (biological and otherwise) and in the form of residential "schools" (I will NEVER call those schools without adding quotation marks; they were brainwashing institutions, nothing more), cultural theft (Thanksgiving, anyone?), and still, after all the supposed progress we've made, America has never had a woman president. Black one yes, and that was great, but a woman in office? Oh no, oh no! We mustn't have that! LOL. But I'm diverting. What about the Muslims coming here, as we came here, do you call "colonization"? Bearing in mind the fact that America was in Muslim-occupied countries LONG before the migration crises began. Besides, if your country were overwhelmed by tyrants, wouldn't you want to get the feck out of dodge? And what better place to come than into nations that aren't so torn apart? Oh but wait, there's yet another gun aiming at you the moment you hit the shore, if you DO hit the shore, because a lot of them died along the way.

Well, no offense meant, but I certainly know I won't find any friendship in you. Mind you, RichardY has been rather nice, now hasn't he? And I just like talking to people, frankly. Besides, I wondered who on here would be receptive to my views, given Stefan's history of racism, misogyny, and general fear-mongering of the left and of anyone different. Take his views on immigrants and Muslims. It's fine that he's an immigrant himself because he's white and non-religious, while anyone who has brown skin or was taught differently than he was is an automatic threat. People in glass houses...but I digress. I'm not going anywhere, though. I'm here until I get banned, as I'm sure I probably will be at some point. But they can't ban me without reading what I have to say. Ba-BAM!

Left...in the middle of those two, I'd say. Middle Path, my dear Donna. Middle Path.

This might be a long one, and I apologize in advance for that. Also, if I get hit points on my account for this, I don't really care. I have something to say. This morning, when I heard on the news that it was a guy with an Arabic-sounding name who committed the bombing, I swear to God I thought to myself, "Muslim". I was SO ashamed, totally disgusted with myself. As if my brain were just on autopilot and thinking that it would have been a Muslim to conduct those bombings. Kids, don't do what my stupid head did. I know it's hard, because every single day in the media, there are those stupid little micro-aggressions that add up to a really big problem, directed at the minority group of the moment. Every century picks a new minority group to pick on: disabled people, gay people, people who just aren't white, anyone of a different religion, and so on. This decade, it's Muslims...and a whole bunch of others (thanks Trump), but mostly Muslims. We brand people as "other" or as "enemy" or as "different" in the negative sense, but it's these labels that CREATES the so-called "other" or "enemy". People honestly don't get this and it's REALLY annoying, but it's like saying to someone that they're a piece of shit. The more you say it, the more it gets ground into that person's head, and, despite whether it's true or not, the more the person will start to believe it. It's called the "thousand paper cuts" phenomenon: a paper cut is one little thing, but then cut and cut and cut away until BAM, you've bled out, or are so injured that you just can't function. I am NOT condoning what happened in Manchester. Not in the slightest. I think that people who attack others and especially children or animals (i.e. groups that can't defend themselves) are terrible. However, it may indeed be the case that they are terrible because they themselves have suffered greatly. Think about what's gone on in Syria: can you honestly imagine being so incredibly oppressed by your government that such a large proportion of people choose to leave a country? It's very difficult for anyone living in Europe (at least Western Europe) and North America to imagine this, because we have always lived lives of relative ease compared to those who live in war-torn nations. It's called white privilege. Whites, myself included, have had the privilege to live in these relatively peaceful, orderly nations, but very much at the expense of nations in which these privileges are not at all present. I've made this point on another page before, but it is fear that most often makes us revert to the mindset that we must kill in order to live. But why should we have to kill in order to live? I see no reason for that other than those reasons that are found in a mind that has been warped by fear: fear of death, fear of retribution, fear of the pyramidal structure that our world has become, and so forth. And it will be fear that makes people retaliate, and blame the "other", while in reality we create that "other" by aiming guns rather than reaching out hands. I do NOT believe that this issue is beyond repair, mind you. It's going to take some doing, but for God's sake, people, I have just two things to ask of you, and this applies not only to anyone here who cares but to the world generally, if I may be egotistical enough for a moment to make such a bold request... 1. Put down the fecking guns 2. Stop saying "us versus them" and "the other" and "the enemy"; it's not helpful And I'm done. Like I say, I don't give a damn if I get bombarded for this. People who feel the need to perform violent attacks are only ever doing so out of fear, which comes out as aggression because we as humans know of no other way to deal with fear. And that's all I have to say about that, except to express my condolences to anyone here who's from Manchester and witnessed this shit go down first hand. No amount of money or compassion towards the families that now suffer could ever compensate for such losses, ever.

Oh Richard, we just had this conversation in the class I'm taking today. What is meant by "noble" or "civilized" entirely depends on who you ask. For example, I live in Canada, right? And I'm the descendant of European immigrants. No one in North America is actually from this continent to begin with unless you count the Native cultures at large. But the settlers never considered the Natives to be their equals, which, as we previously discussed, is where they went wrong. Those settlers came in with their guns a-blazing and their smallpox fresh at hand, and look what happened. Not to say that there wasn't tribal warfare before that time, but they really fecked some shit up. So I kind of love the idea of pacifism because it would also (if used during colonial times) have GREATLY minimized the harm that was done and maybe would actually have led to peace in the Americas. As it stands, not so much. Donna, I'm a principled pacifist. I believe on principle, on my moral code, that that is the best way to go. If you consider that ignoble and...what was the term you used? Scandalous? If you consider it ignoble and scandalous...well, less power to you. As opposed to "more power to you". Also, I vote left. I told y'all, I'm a leftist.

Trust me, there's no shame in pacifism. If the whole world lived by the principles of pacifism, we would have no war. Do you know how huge a shift that would be? I mean, I understand why people WOULD shoot: our primitive instincts would compel us to do that. Frankly, though, is it not more noble, more human, to pursue the higher path of pacifism? You have to THINK about pacifism, and not just act on the trigger. See, even the word "trigger" denotes a gun. The only purpose of a gun is to injure or kill. I honestly don't think that we should have any use for such things in a civilized world.

Firstly, I'm pulling a Stefan here but I agree with this part: don't just say "him" when referring to a rapist. They can be females too. Secondly, no, I don't try to pull the rapist off, I pull at my loved one. Get them out of the situation. And obviously they would help me in that process so it's not like we would be working at cross purposes here. Yes, there is always a pacific option. And even if I were to get shot doing it, I'd rather the blood not be on MY hands. I'm a Jain; it's what I do. You're still trying to get my goat though. Didn't I tell you to abandon that option? If this is a game, I'm very, very good at playing games, so play on if you want to, but you're just going to make yourself look like an ass. RichardY, I think I'd want to visit, do the whole tourist thing. Besides, I wouldn't mind getting up to Cork. That's where mom's side is from. As for the whole "luck of the Irish" thing, I think I agree with John Lennon, but that's because no one ever says whether it's BAD luck or GOOD luck. They just say "luck", which is not very specific. Pretty sure it's bad, truth be told. But oh, what was it that my buddy told me about Irish people going to Scotland? There was some comedian who said that the Irish looked in the direction of Scotland, and were all like, "Hey, you see those dark clouds hanging over the mountains up there? Let's go there! It'll be great! Even more pissing rain and even more freezing cold in winter than it is here! Yay!" LOL. Also, Mr. Richard, would you like to join the Lilly vs. Donna game as well? We'll have some lovely sport, shall we?

God dammit, girl, you're pushing that damn family button because you know it'll piss me off! Problem is, it doesn't really work when I know what you're doing. So rather than getting pissed, I'm kind of just laughing at you now. What did I say? That I would stand and watch? No. I said I would get them out of the situation. Please read more thoroughly next time. Also, no jabs about the blind(ish)ness thing, 'kay? I can see, you know. Like how your profile picture is more or less a depiction of an evolutionary line from monkey to Christ Consciousness human. You're not doing the best job at attaining Christ Consciousness (same thing as Enlightenment) if you're going around pushing people's buttons for the sake of pushing people's buttons. Or for the sake of seeing how far they are willing to go along the line of their own ideology, rather, which is what you're doing here. Like I say, it doesn't work if I know what you're doing. So you can continue to make me laugh or you can abandon your futile mission. You choose though, because either way I'll be having fun. Also, there are never just two options. Never. I believe in Multiverse theory which states that all possible realities, which in fact are infinite, already exist in a concrete universe somewhere. So, my third option actually does work, and would work in infinite universes. Go read about Multiverse; it's fascinating.

Donna, no. I'd be a terrible shot for one thing because I'm, like, 75% blind, but other than that, I'd just grab them and run. What's the big deal? Said rapist, theoretically, wants to live just as much as I do and wants happiness just as much as I do, so a little empathy goes a long way, but yeah, I'd just grab and run. No biggie. I'm really not a violent person. RichardY, you want hard-truth sorts? Try Richard Dawkins. Stefan might be annoying but he is NOTHING compared to the jackassery that is Dawkins. Ugh, so much hate. Yes, Donna, I said HATE. LOL. Can't stand the way he deals with theists though. It's like, when he's talking to them, without saying it out loud, he's saying the whole time, "Oh, how cute and naïve, you believe THAT? Oh, well I'm so much more intelligent than you are, aren't I?" In terms of the agriculture thing, crop rotation is a definite must, of course, which the Europeans would have known, but they didn't know how to get the preexisting natural resources off the land, or at least not at that time. I mean in terms of plant life, whereas, as you say, hunting would be a must and especially in winter. Our winters SUCK. I live in Canada, by the way, and it's basically five months of darkness. Not literally like nighttime, obviously, but just cloudy and crappy all the time. Ugh. England, I think, is more moderate in climate because of the ocean currents. Must be nice to live on an island. My mom's whole side is from Ireland, mind, and I've heard that that can suck a lot because it never stops raining.

Yeah...kind of a bad idea if you don't know how to work the land properly yet. I'd rather get the info from you than Stefan, frankly, because he pisses me off. A lot. Sometimes. Actually no, it's more like 75% of the time he pisses me off, but sometimes I agree with things he says. It's not often though. The problem with them pooling their resources, though, was that they didn't honestly have enough resources to go around that way, and especially since they didn't listen to the Native Americans, who actually know the land and were very much willing to help them (FYI, Native civilizations were at that time collectivist as well). Take the cranberry thing as an example. The Natives tried to give them cranberries to help them avoid scurvy, which is a lack of Vitamin C, but the settlers thought they were trying to poison them, so a lot of them did die or at least get sick from scurvy. That though, that right there, that's a prime example of the whole "We're better than you" mentality, which is, as I have previously stated, bullshit.

Donna, I'm also a Jain, so I would remove my family from that situation as best I could. If I could avoid it, I would not fight with the person trying to hurt them. I would just shepherd them out. Mind you, I'm also one of the youngest in my family, so let's say it's my nieces under threat here rather than, like, my parents, who would be the ones to defend me rather than the other way around. But yeah, if it were my nieces, I'd just scoop them up and run like feck. RichardY, Jamestown was a collective...? Sorry; confused.

PS: If you mean my more specific political views, I'm a leftist. Dad calls me a communist but he's joking about that. Mind you, I don't think America knows this, but the early Christians, the ones they idealize, were all communists by their own definition, because they all lived together and shared all of their possessions in common. "Commune", to live in a common place, but also "commune" as a verb, which is like meeting together and making all decisions in common as well. That didn't quite work once Peter and Paul got too involved with things, wanting to be the bosses of the operation while using God as their mouthpiece. That wasn't cool. But at least there were a lot more women in charge of things back then as well, until Paul really got going, and until guys like Jerome and Augustine got involved, albeit much later in the timeline. But yeah, I'm a leftist. But other than my general affiliation, I couldn't really give a rat's butt about politics, at least not where I live, where people generally leave well enough alone, thank God. At least in the municipal spheres, anyway.

LOL, sorry, I didn't mean to dodge that question actually. I just kind of forgot to answer it because I'm stupid today. ANYWAY, my political views? I'm a pacifist, obviously, so I don't like the politicians who are all about war and shit, because that's just dumb and a total waste of time, money, life, and effort that could otherwise be used for much more productive things. Also a waste of the scientific fields because they could be putting their energy into finding cures for cancer and stuff, not that the military development field is related to biology, but anyway... Omnist? Ooo, I like that. That works for me. Omnist, Pantheist, whatever. I don't care much about the label though I do know what I like and what I don't, I guess. Accuracy works though, which is why Omnist works. Lilly learned a new word today! And I know you wouldn't diss my family, but you kind of crept into that territory when you were being all like, "You don't love him, you love yourself." Whatever, though. We're cool, we're cool.

Donna, I'm all the different religions at once, right? That means I'm also a Daoist, and Daoists believe in duality consciousness. Hindus do too, to a certain extent, at least in Shaivist circles, and the whole thing about the Chakras (my personal Yoga) is to awaken to the knowledge that you are God. I'm not there YET. Give me time. I'm a human with preferences in the now, but I am God without preferences in the eternal scheme of things. You're God too, by the way, and so is everything else, which, if you think about it, is the least egotistical thing to say because you realize that everything is equal, from the mud to the stars. Trust me, when I say I'm God, it's not an ego trip. I don't know whether you get that though. Either that or you do and you're just trying to see if you can piss me off by being all contrary. Good luck with that. I told you, there's only ONE button you can push on me to make me go mental and you haven' pushed it yet. Family. That's my button. Insult my family and your ass is grass. That statement applies to everyone, though, not just you. RichardY, is it not safe to assume that Enlightenment and a greater consciousness are kind of the same thing? Then again, I shouldn't talk, because I'm not overly familiar with Jung. But no, I don't disagree that God is paternal. I just believe that It is maternal as well, along with every other kind of relationship you could have, not just the top-down ones like parent to child or king/queen to subject. I worship Vishnu, but I worship Him as Krishna in His child form. I like Krishna much more as an infant than as an adult, because as an adult, He basically becomes the mouthpiece for the Brahmana's agenda of enforcing the Varnas. As a child, though, Krishna was so captivating that no one could help but love Him, and He was killing demons before He could even walk or speak. Those are some awesome stories. I think I prefer God in general as the gentler incarnations of Itself. You can see that with my picture, with Krishna there acting as the Gopa (cow-herder), which is a very domestic, pastoral, and calming side of God. Mind you, Shiva certainly gets the job done as well, as you can see in the iconography of Him dancing on the dead body of the dwarf that represents ignorance. That's Shiva Nataraja (King of the Dance), which is my favourite incarnation of Shiva. You'd know that image in a second if you saw it: the one where He's surrounded by a ring of flames, you know?

RichardY, good to see you, sir! How have you been? Thanks for coming and adding a little diversity to this: I had begun to feel that Donna and I were the only ones left. What do you think, though? I get the sense that our chat, mine and Donna's, has kind of begun to go off the rails. I won't say that she's intentionally antagonizing me because she's cruel. It's more of an experiment on her part, to see whether I'm as one with the Godhead. For future reference, I'm NOT, or else I'd be smarter than I am. I know that in reality all things are one with It but at the same time, you have to know it both mentally and emotionally to really "get it". I've only known it emotionally a few times and never been able to make it stick. It's what I was calling a "holy shit moment", see? They can happen at really random times too. Some of them make sense in terms of timing, like the first time I heard a lecture by Alan Watts, the first time I held both my nieces (like, I mean, separately, after each was born), when I realized I was in love, things like that. Those kinds of "holy shit moments" make sense, but then I had one late in the fall of last year where I was just standing in the rain, but suddenly everything began to look and feel just perfect, entirely unified, whole, and complete. That was a very quiet "holy shit moment" but they can, in my experience, take many forms. It's just that back-of-your-head moment of realization that you are one with everything. I like those moments but I can't MAKE them happen. Mind you, that kind of adds a layer of fun to it, because you can never predict when your own Godhead will creep up on you.

PS: You can insult me all you like, by the way. That's not the real "line". And I might have a bit of an oversized head at times but I really do love the one I'm talking about. So you be good.

And now we have the full foot across the ad homonym line. I know why you're doing it though: if I don't have preferences, I shouldn't ever be angry. Unfortunately, I'm also human. I'm not pissed QUITE yet, but I wonder whether you can guess which button to push to get me there? You'll love me when I'm mad because I get about five times as articulate as I am now. It's quite fun. For me. Less so for the people I get pissed at. But yes, being human, I do have preferences, and trust me, this one's a damn keeper. Now then... Here's the thing: we can only act our Godhead when we realize, both intellectually and emotionally (i.e. engaging both sides of the brain here) that we are God. Until we collectively grasp that, we are collectively fecked. The problem is, because we fail to grasp it, we give our power away to people who know it even LESS, or else they wouldn't grasp for power because they would know that they are powerful just by being who and what they are, regardless of their possessions and power and weapons and alliances. "Common" people do that sort of thing on a small scale but when you get the big egos combined with big power, and more influence than any one person should have, you get a ghastly mess indeed. But it's a self-perpetuating cycle: people rise to power, the power corrupts them at some point during that ascension, and then they corrupt themselves further while corrupting what is around them. It's a sad cycle and I honestly don't know how to break it, except to instill in anyone I meet that they don't have to grasp for the power they already have simply by virtue of being alive and sentient. We don't have to be tied to that lower part of ourselves that strives for dominance. We are already "It", capital I, which is the very Being of God.