Only hope for peace is changing the culture

Instead of arguing what's right for politics, we should instead try to change the culture, and this will inevitably change the politics. World peace will never happen unless we will change the culture. Even most criminals with serious brain abnormalities had a bad environment that caused them to take on a life of crime. It's not in the true nature of people to be mean, but the contrary. The ego is merely a robot that operates through thoughts, nothing it says is true reality.

World peace is entirely possible, but it requires a mass effort. Of course I will try as hard I can to promote a better culture. There are no enemies, there are only people who you can help awaken to their true, compassionate selves and people who aren't ready for it. Let your focus be the world, not your close friends or family, a world focus is true selflessness.

Promote media that embraces love and peace among all people, but not romance, that's often egoic because people end up believing that partners will fulfill them, in reality nothing but flow will, and concepts and ideas like "soul mates" never will, and they are ultimately selfish in nature. Do not label ego-ideology media as wrong. Simply disarm it from credibility if the opportunity comes up. Selfishness is as insane as any delusion. We will all die, and dying doesn't even result in suffering, nor does pain. What causes pain is resisting what is, what you truly want to do, benefit the entire world. The question is not how long someone lives, but how they live it. If there is flow, there is no suffering.

No matter how the laws are, if we change the culture, we can change the government, and they will eventually put love and compassion above cold rules.

I've tried to help some close-minded people, otherwise known as sheeple. It's not possible to help them unless you change the culture around them, a study showed the brains of close-minded people are less flexible and they typically have a lower IQ. Therefore, don't waste your time on them. Meet lots of people, help whoever is ready, and the change in culture will help change the inflexible sheeple. Good media will also help them change, so promote it if possible for them.

Everything is done with baby steps, but these steps are cast in stone. Once a person is awakened to true reality, there is no going back to insanity. And this is entirely valid on a massive scale as well. World peace is inevitable, whether we first destroy the entire planet with our selfishness or all of us awaken, but progress can be sped up. With each person awakened to sanity, there is also another working toward that goal.

Do not try to fight politics, or try to change the world alone. It's a massive metamorphosis of society, and everything will be included, not just politics. Law, medicine, education, government, the environment, everything will be included in the change. There are very many problems with these fields as well. Big picture is what we should be thinking, with a change in culture all of the numerous complicated problems in the systems of society will melt in love and compassion like an impossible ice maze in hot water.

 

So true SC.

It starts on a micro level. I've been stunned by family members' attitudes towards using violence as a means of solving a problem. Just as an example, an in-law beat someone up because they called him a dickhead. My grandson was proudly telling the story of how his uncle beat that person and I sat there open mouthed at how it could possibly be seen as a good solution.

I had to explain that the person who was beaten said stupid words and nothing more. Beating him was a moronic, caveman reaction. Humour would have been a better reaction.

 

Agree with the OP.


But again I wonder if that doesn't apply to all types if humor, because some jokes are more insults than jokes, and it's a matter of perspective.

Humans are taught to belittle and turn on each other, it's one of the very few ways besides disease, that the species solves the issue of overpopulation. This is a dark truth, but violence also causes the problem of grudges and more violence to form, which tends to hurt innocence rather than the guilty.


Also violence for verbal insults tends to not help the offender learn or engage in self-improvement.

As the species gained more knowledge, more is now expected of ourselves, and those who don't like and would rather not use violence understand this.

 

I agree with you monkjr. Humour should be well used and not intended to belittle or demean anyone. I like a bit of self deprecating humour in tense situations.

 

I like universal observational humor (I made the name/term of this type of humor up) the kind of comedy that Bill Cosby practices because it's not meant to belittle or insult, but rather to find joy in things that occur naturally, and has an innocence about the origin of the joke.

A genuine misunderstanding, like what comes out from the mouth of children.

It's like when a child goes running around the house with unmentionables or intimate objects from their parents room when company is over. It's funny because nobody is at fault, but barriers and something unpredictable and unexpected happened that breaks a cultural limit on what is and isn't socially acceptable.

For a time, we are reminded our rules and taboos are all artificial and aren't as serious as we make them out to be....we have a negative stress relief...and we laugh.

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Although more uptight cultures, like America's Puritans or like societies in the Middle East under Sharia law or other oppression heavy places, can't enjoy this type of humor.

And look what happens when a society is that oppressed, upset, and serious? The society begins to break down and then deteriorate into violence usually because of a power vaccume.

 

What a great descriptor! Bill Cosby is hilarious and you are right, I've never heard him put someone or a group of people down.

I love the type of humour that goes against societal norms and makes you cringe but when you think about it, its not really offending anyone. I remember seeing Billy Connolly talk about a guy wearing waterproof pants because he was incontinent and it was hilarious. He wasn't belittling people with incontinence but finding the humour in a tricky situation.

 

Yeah and it takes a HIGH level of intelligence to make those logical connections and that commands respect, and sometimes it's genius like the waterproof pants idea...pure genius but again funny because it's unexpected and doesn't jive with societal norms, yet it makes a genuine logical attempt to jive.



Now humor and the art of comedy began to degrade once "jackass" movies were starting to be made.

It was like taking the concept of college hazing, and then ramping it up for theaters...or DVD/blu-Ray or other home media medium.


It's the taking of someone's innocence, or their naive nature and defiling them in a sense through manipulation and a power game....IMHO that's a form of rape psychologically speaking and it's very sadistic and evil.

Now as a Christian, if those are the kinds of people God ends up denying the kingdom of heaven too, I can almost understand why the minority enter because even a speck of evil like the enjoyment of the "bad jokes" is a type of evil that can't exist in a "perfect" place.

 

I can't stand that Jackass sort of humour. Its not clever, subtle or witty.

Sometimes humour is found in the most obvious, commonplace situations. Thats when I find it most funny.

 

Ok you’d first need to identify what you see as the ‘bad’ traits within US culture. You might then work out ways of curbing, or adapting or removing those traits.

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Someone identified violent behaviour.

First I’d point out that statistically in nearly all developed countries that seems to be on the wane and nobody seems to know why although there are many theories here are just a few - the reduction of lead in petrol (lead poisoning increase violent behaviour) , women getting more rights and entering the workplace (which some claimed has ‘feminised’ society, calming it) liberal abortion laws. (a theory advanced by the authors of Freakonomics who argued that making it easier to get an abortion has diminished the number of children born into the underclass.) an ageing population (oldies are less violent) even the popularity of computer games (people are getting their aggression out on pixals rather than people).

But having said that i have noted that there seems to be a general attitude among many Americans that accepts threat of violence, intimidation and suppression as legitimate means of societal control and this mindset gets in the way of them seeking alternative solutions to their social and political problems.

I’d go further and say that it seems to me that this mindset was born from how many Americans view individualism and have a belief in competition that verges on (or steps over into) Social Darwinism.

 

We need a formally more advanced Sociology explaining the "sociological" inadequacy of our existing educated society. Demons from heaven of conscience above the run of the mill professor shall change the structured law and order of the trusted humanized. Know how the other side makes you human when your own side makes a spectacle of the dehumanization you learned from the original professor.

 

It's not just America though.

If I recall the UK had a HUGE increase in riot activity with robbing, destroying of property, and random stabbings of random people.


No this is not unique to America.


And obviously the 3rd world has people clinging to violence, for both survival reasons, drug highs, and just desperation, only the "desperation-self defense" garners some understanding and sympathy from me.

But the other reasons I have no patience or sympathy for, and the first world's influence on the third world in terms of drug trade is to blame.

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@Anaximenes, you're absolutely correct that God is real.

I actually understand your first sentence, and most of the last one you said. The middle part is incoherent, but I can see you tried this time to be understood.

 

Violence isn't all I mean. How many women do you know that get into physical fights? And are these women...feminine? The only ones I know are the ones that look and act more masculine. Testosterone makes people more aggressive, so what do very egoic people with low testosterone do? They gossip, they con, they manipulate. You can't control this with laws.

We are in fact a low testosterone society, and our social problem is bigger than the violence problem. Look at how many people try to fit in, to be popular, to get rich, to be pretty, to be educated, to be intelligent, at the expense of living life, like these things will fulfill them. A culture that portrays these things as important only fuels the fire. Nothing is bad, not even aggression, unless the ego is involved. And love as average people experience it, is often bad, because it's egoic. Suddenly they have demands and expectations, and love turns to hate before they know it. The ego disconnects us from True Love which is felt for the whole world, regardless of its expression.

If we continued to have high testosterone like our ancestors, we would of never created the impressive technology, rules, and systems found today. We would still be primitive, and incapable of functioning in such a structured society. Now humanity must realize the silliness of the ego, to enter the third stage in which peace, love, and identification with the real self happens once again, but as advanced beings. Then politics, and everything else will change.

 

Well I see what you are saying, but again I think you are looking at testosterone too linearly.


Also I disagree with you saying that personal efforts to become more intelligent and educated, are for one's ego in of themselves.

Intent matters in if one is prideful about self-betterment or not. If one wants to gain skills, and spread those good skills and knowledge rather than to bolster themselves up, then I don't think that's egoistic anymore.

But I agree that, to be popular, rich, and trying to fit an unrealistic type of beauty and wasting one's life on those goals, doesn't yield much merit in my opinion, except to serve the ego, or society's macro ego.

 

Ya, actually I think I was, that's why I looked back. Testosterone makes egoic men aggressive for dominance and possessive, and like I said, not bad for non-egoic men. Our shift from primitive man INCLUDED a reduction in testosterone, I think, but simultaneously identification with systems and the ego, which is the important part. My point is, we're not an aggressive society with a big violence problem, but mostly social problems, and laws can't solve the social problems.

 

And I agree I believe they are cultural and psychological.


I think some nations more so than others in their mass culture, need to be examined on the philosophies they hold, through psychoanalyst type methods.


But cultural-political shifts are hard.

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Anyway this is one of my last posts as I am leaving this site guys.

I will be fully gone from here in 59 days, but I have to ween myself because you guys are addicting conversationalists.


I wish ya'll were here 4 years ago .

 

monkjr

As I said crime is coming down in most of the developed countries

As to the general attitude among many that accepts threat of violence, intimidation and suppression as legitimate means of societal control and this mindset gets in the way of them seeking alternative solutions to their social and political problems.

That can be seen in many places (usually amongst more right wing groups) but it just seem more noticeable in the US, it can be seen in the attitude of many pro-gunners and in the astronomical size of the US prison population.

(the us has the highest prison population in the world of around 700 per 100,000 the UK has the highest in Europe of around 100-150 but that’s still way behind the US and places like Sweden (67) and Denmark (73) are much lower)

Can you give me more - I mean I live in London and that’s not happening, crime is actually down. We had the disturbances in 2011 but that was 3 years ago and very localised and mostly non-violent. (It was shopping with extreme prejudice)

Not just third world countries but as you say put people in bad situations and it will breed bad situations.

And I agree the world drugs policy (driven mainly by the US) is madness.

 

Yeah on that last point STP had a very strong argument to decriminalize and pardon a HUGE chunk of USA's prison population who are only caught and criminalizes because of weed charges and non-violent offenses involving drug sales.

It's time we started identifying skills that ex-cons can use in a positive way to join the rest of us in society, and let them get educated while they spend time in prison, so they can get manufacturing jobs or invent something useful and leave the criminal underworld.