This near death experience maybe worthwhile to listen to: — boethius

I watched the Near-Death Experience video in full. I think her experience was a hallucination produced by her distressed and frightened brain. I have watched many NDE videos and read many NDE accounts over the years. She talks about how she chose all her life experiences as a conscious soul before she was born.

**A Rational Critique of Pre-Birth Selection of Life Events**

**1. No credible evidence supports it.**
There is no scientific or neurological evidence that consciousness exists before birth, chooses life events, or continues after death. While Near-Death Experiences (NDEs) can be vivid and life-changing, they are likely generated by the brain in extreme conditions, such as oxygen deprivation or neurochemical surges — not glimpses into a pre-birth realm.

**2. It can unintentionally blame victims.**
The idea that people choose everything before birth, including trauma, poverty, abuse, disability, or oppression, shifts responsibility away from those who cause harm or perpetuate injustice. It risks implying that:

* A child chose to be abused.
* A person chose to be disabled or ill.
* A population chose to be born to be victims of genocide or famine.

This is not only irrational — it’s deeply unjust.

**3. It can discourage empathy and social action.**
If we believe people chose their suffering during their life before they were born, we may be less motivated to help them. Why fight poverty, stop child abuse, or cure disease if these are “lessons” that souls selected? This belief can serve as a spiritual bypass — numbing our compassion and our ethical responsibility to reduce suffering in the real world.

**4. It contradicts what we know about biology and psychology.**
Our experiences are shaped by **genes**, **environments**, **nutrients**, and **events** — not by pre-birth selection of life events by conscious souls. Trauma has measurable, often devastating impacts on the brain, body, and relationships. These are not signs of soul-level "growth opportunities" — they are signs of harm needing healing, justice, and compassion.

**5. It appeals to comfort, not truth.**
Believing “everything happens for a reason” or “I chose this” can help some people cope. But comfort is not the same as truth. We must be careful not to turn tragedy into theology or fantasy, especially when it denies the lived reality of others.

it is only when depressed that it is possible to analyze our own ethical system — boethius

I don't think this is true. I have considered my ethical system both before being depressed and during depressive episodes. Here is a mood scale:

+5: Total loss of judgement, exorbitant spending, religious delusions or hallucinations.
+4: Lost touch with reality, incoherent, no sleep, paranoid and vindictive, reckless behaviour.
+3: Inflated self-esteem, rapid thoughts and speech, counter-productive simultaneous tasks.
+2: Very productive, everything to excess, charming and talkative.
+1: Self-esteem good, optimistic, sociable and articulate, good decisions and get work done.
0: Mood in balance, no symptoms of depression or mania.
-1: Slight withdrawal from social situations, concentration less than usual, slight agitation.
-2: Feeling of panic and anxiety, concentration difficult and memory poor, some comfort in routine.
-3: Slow thinking, no appetite, need to be alone, sleep excessive or difficult, everything a struggle.
-4: Feeling of hopelessness and guilt, thoughts of suicide, little movement, impossible to do anything.
-5: Endless suicidal thoughts, no way out, no movement, everything is bleak and it will always be like this.

I am at minus two on the mood scale right now.

You may need to reflect deeply on this and also perhaps study life systems in more detail to appreciate how life is and not what you wish it to be. — boethius

Thank you for your advice. I will do this.

Earlier you seemed to agree that this was not an achievable objective. — boethius

It is not an achievable objective. I am still thinking about it because it is so fascinating. I have no way to achieve the objective of upgrading matter-based lifeforms that need to consume air, water and food into energy-based lifeforms that can live forever without consuming anything.

Life has value, but predation is against that value. Predation involves prioritising the life of the predator over the life of the prey. This is selfish. This is evil. — Truth Seeker

A dragonfly eating a mosquito is evil and selfish? Fuck those guys.

I watched the Near-Death Experience video in full. I think her experience was a hallucination produced by her distressed and frightened brain. — Truth Seeker

Sure, but you have no proof.

There is no proof she experiences anything at all, as you could be hallucinating this whole conversation along with this video, or then there is a world as we commonly understand it but she just appears to be be conscious but is not actually conscious.

There is no box that you can put some matter inside and it lights up green if it's conscious or red if it's unconscious.

**A Rational Critique of Pre-Birth Selection of Life Events** — Truth Seeker

First this seems like AI output which is banned in the forum.

However, the reason I bring this matter up is because you find it entirely reasonable to be working on some sort of technical way to render mortal beings immortal.

Seems to me as plausible a theory in strict scientific terms these near death experiences of what appears to be immortality.

There are reports of the experience by people, which is the basic nature of science. The experiment is repeatable by anyone when they too die.

Absolutely scientific.

Though, to be clear, the reason for my postulating the immortality of the soul is in the process of determining a non-arbitrary logical structure to support a non-empty ethic.

However, since I assume people are conscious and souls are immortal it seems plausible to me that people may indeed have such authentic experience.

Of course, when I have similar experience after painstaking street heroine research nobody seems to assign any spiritual significance to my reports, and yet people dropping far large quantities of opioids on the operating room table is somehow entirely different and credible. Seems a complete double standard to me. (This is a joke, but there is also a point, that there seems to be a lot of opioids involved in the near death reports I've came across)

I don't think this is true. I have considered my ethical system both before being depressed and during depressive episodes. — Truth Seeker

And you feel there is nothing in the slightest to change?

I am at minus two on the mood scale right now. — Truth Seeker

Doesn't seem a complete crisis yet, hopefully the routine of knowledge seeking will see you through and also that you will find what you're looking for.

Thank you for your advice. I will do this. — Truth Seeker

Excellent. Life systems are quite remarkable.

It is not an achievable objective. I am still thinking about it because it is so fascinating. — Truth Seeker

But in the meantime there is existing life that in need of protection.

I have no way to achieve the objective of upgrading matter-based lifeforms that need to consume air, water and food into energy-based lifeforms that can live forever without consuming anything. — Truth Seeker

We definitely agree here.

There is no proof she experiences anything at all, as you could be hallucinating this whole conversation along with this video, or then there is a world as we commonly understand it but she just appears to be be conscious but is not actually conscious.

There is no box that you can put some matter inside and it lights up green if it's conscious or red if it's unconscious. — boethius

I agree.

And you feel there is nothing in the slightest to change? — boethius

The more depressed I am, the worse I feel, and the harder it is for me to do things. I have been at minus five on the mood scale many times.

But in the meantime there is existing life that in need of protection. — boethius

Only if solipsism is false and other living things actually exist. I think solipsism is false even though I can't prove it to be false. I am a vegan egalitarian because I care about other sentient organisms. Are you a vegan egalitarian?

The more depressed I am, the worse I feel, and the harder it is for me to do things. I have been at minus five on the mood scale many times. — Truth Seeker

Or perhaps the harder it is to keep doing things that led to your depression in the first place, but the easier it becomes to make some radical change.

For example, you say you're devoted to the protection of life. There is a genocide going on right now, perhaps consider connecting with people who are at least protesting it, not to mention all the rest of the madness going on in the US and world right now.

Day-dreaming of technological immortality seems, from my point of view, a distraction.

Not only the technical problems are super amazingly likely to be impossible to solve (no-cloning theorem in quantum mechanics) but it would not be actual immortality but just life extension and you'd be back quite rapidly to being anxious about death even in such a situation. Stars die, blackholes evaporate, but odds are some improbable fatal event would happen far sooner (1 in a million year freak fatal accidents will happen on average once every million years; and the problem with freak accidents is that there's a bunch of them; so even if you pushed your safety systems to 1 in 1 billion year fatal accident rate, you're likely to have 1000 such 1 in a billion year risks, resulting in a likely life-span of a paltry million years).

Even more likely, the mind cannot be maintained in a sane state over long periods of extended-life time (even if that was possible) and madness would be the result; a hellish madness that you may then just have to wait an expected time of one million years for safety systems to fail.

Now, simply assuming consciousness is immortal as we know it exists and there is no experiment that can prove it ever stops existing, or then my approach of requiring indefinite time lines to resolve decisions making so just going ahead and assuming those requirements.

Only if solipsism is false and other living things actually exist. I think solipsism is false even though I can't prove it to be false. — Truth Seeker

It's of course a faith. But your confidence solipsism isn't true is likewise faith.

Why limit yourself to only adopting this one assumption on faith due to its convenient nature to function, when assuming not only are people conscious but have immortal consciousness is of additional convenience to function?

You might be brought out of your day dreaming stupor and be able to focus on grasping the task at hand.

There is life all around us, if we're responsible to protect rather than destroy life then there is much to do.

I am a vegan egalitarian because I care about other sentient organisms. Are you a vegan egalitarian? — Truth Seeker

I was vegetarian for some years in France and as organic as possible.

However, in moving to Finland I did not feel I was maintaining the same health on a vegetarian diet.

It's not ideal, but I am not against predation and animal husbandry on principle (for the cycle of life arguments above), population density in Finland is low so animal husbandry is not as destructive as elsewhere, and we have far bigger problems to address so I decided is was best to be fully effective. The problem being little grows in Finland so most fruits and vegetables at the supermarket are imported, not so fresh, not so nutritious, super little organic options compared to France, and also really expensive.

At the moment I live far below the poverty line due to being harassed by police with a 4 year investigation as retaliation for reporting super obvious money laundering to police. 4 attorneys told me that's exactly what would happen "if you report money laundering to police, they won' investigate that but will put you under investigation instead and destroy your career" and then recommended I take what they agreed was a bribe to not-report-money laundering. However, my response to these attorneys was "big if true" and we should probably alert society to these alarming facts that seem common knowledge to the bar association that Finnish police and prosecutors and judges are in the money laundering business and not the stopping-money-laundering-business. And I had a lot of interactions with all sorts of attorneys and auditors in the many years before this, and they never sent me a memo titled "by the way, law means absolutely nothing when it comes to money laundering, all anti money laundering compliance is theatre so society thinks the legal community is looking for laundered money, but really what we do here is suck money laundering dick all day long, especially judges in Finland in exchange for being supplied child victims to abuse by organized crime," so what pisses me off the most is it's just false advertisement; no where in the bar association of Finland material does it explain attorneys can advise on what crimes to commit because police, prosecutors and judges in Finland are involved in those same crimes.

Long story short, the only way to survive in Finland on a tight a budget is a substance called "makkara", which is rumoured to contain meet. So, not ideal, but I need to compromise to survive in harsh conditions and continue my battle with police based organized crime here in Finland. In short, if makkara is required to be able to standup to police, prosecutors and judges both helping to launder money and sex traffic children, then that's a compromise I'm willing to make.

I am, in general, not caring much in the slightest about personal legal choices, but rather on political systemic change. The solution to bad laws, such as the true cost of meat not internalized in the purchase-cost, the ethical standards of the industry (which are better in Finland than elsewhere) or then the ethical implications of meeting eating full stop (which certainly has merit), is changing the law and not personal choice. I view "ethical consumerism" as practiced by most ethical consumers a placebo for political engagement and actual responsibility. That being said, it's of systemic importance to show good things are feasible so when ethical consumerism is combined with political action then that's effective, but for the most part corporations promote ethical consumerism to blunt political action; but the factor of primacy to optimize for is political effectiveness.

Or perhaps the harder it is to keep doing things that led to your depression in the first place, but the easier it becomes to make some radical change. — boethius

I first had depression when my younger brother died because of a doctor's error on 9 February 1988.

I was vegetarian for some years in France and as organic as possible.

However, in moving to Finland I did not feel I was maintaining the same health on a vegetarian diet.

It's not ideal, but I am not against predation and animal husbandry on principle (for the cycle of life arguments above), population density in Finland is low so animal husbandry is not as destructive as elsewhere, and we have far bigger problems to address so I decided is was best to be fully effective. The problem being little grows in Finland so most fruits and vegetables at the supermarket are imported, not so fresh, not so nutritious, super little organic options compared to France, and also really expensive. — boethius

I am so sorry. I didn't know what it was like to live in Finland. I have never been there.

"if you report money laundering to police, they won' investigate that but will put you under investigation instead and destroy your career" and then recommended I take what they agreed was a bribe to not-report-money laundering. — boethius

That's awful. Finland is supposed to be the second least corrupt country! Please see: https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2024 I am so sorry this happened to you.

I first had depression when my younger brother died due to a doctor's error on 9 February 1988. I would love to go back in time and prevent that from happening but I can't. — Truth Seeker

Unfortunate event, and understandably leads to existential crisis.

I have already signed petitions against the war in Ukraine and Gaza. I have also signed a petition against the US pulling out of the Paris Climate Accord. The petitions didn't stop the war or return the US to the Paris Climate Accord. — Truth Seeker

Political engagement is not reducible to signing petitions.

Things could also be a lot worse. For example, right now we have ecological destruction on a grand scale and also a live streamed genocide and the Western political system enables these terrible things to occur.

However, it could be a lot worse if people universally believed that it was good to destroy ecosystems and also good to carry out genocide.

Instead, most people on the planet do not value ecological destruction and mass torture and murder of children and others, so as terrible as things are we are in a far better position to be strategically than if we were in the position of needing to convince people on the basic principle of the value of nature and human life.

With respect to previous horrifying things like chattel slavery it took literally thousands of years simply to convince most people that this wasn't such a great thing.

There's actually more slavery today, so the world is not very good practically speaking at ensuring basic human dignity as well as for other species, but we have progressed at least to people mostly wishing there wasn't slavery.

I am so sorry. I didn't know what it was like to live in Finland. I have never been there. — Truth Seeker

Finland has many good aspects too, and I'm a Finnish citizen so I am co-responsible for what's going on here. There's (mostly) clean lakes, and (mostly) free health care and (mostly) free education and (mostly) comfortable and affordable trains.

That's awful. Finland is supposed to be the second least corrupt country! Please see: https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2024 I am so sorry this happened to you. — Truth Seeker

These statistics are mostly complete bullshit, measuring things like amount of investigations and convictions.

In a thoroughly corrupt system there are no investigations and convictions of major corruption.

I'm literally the "senior supervisory manager" of a 280 million diamond mine energy project for Angola, and I say it's money laundering as the senior manager of the whole thing, backed up with the commissioning papers that place me as senior supervisory manager (along with accounting ledgers, contracts, endless fraudulent statement) and police and prosecutors not only keep deciding there will be no investigation, but keep writing that there's "no evidence" or "no indication" at all. Which is truly mind blowing level of gaslighting.

Even crazier, they place me under investigation for defamation for accusing people of laundering money since 2021, and a defamation investigation is by definition an investigation into the validity of the accusations. An investigation is not into particular accusations but into circumstances and the law, as is common sense, is that an investigation is neutral as to what crimes were committed and by whom (the whole point of an investigation to try to determine what happened), so it doesn't even make any legal sense for police and prosecutors to write down there won't be an investigation into circumstances in which there is already an investigation. The only legally sensible thing to write down is there is already an investigation into the circumstances ... and that's it.

Unfortunately police thought judges were corrupt enough to be able to coverup money laundering (involving judges and prosecutors) and then judges could just put me in the slammer for calling them all corrupt.

Now, Finnish judges, on the whole, are absolutely worthless class of people that I have no respect for, but unfortunately for police (who just make shit up basically), judges do have to deal with actual evidence. Just because police don't collect evidence doesn't matter in a trial; you don't need police to collect evidence you already have and as chair of the corporation for 10 years I don't need any corporate offices to be raided because 99% of everything in the office is in my own personal archive. This is where police being absolute morons works against them. They don't collect evidence, don't accept my repeatedly offering to confess to the crimes I'm suspected of, but that doesn't mean the evidence doesn't exist already.

Hence, the only solution their tiny worthless minds could come up with is just having me under investigation until the statutes of limitations expires (so in 2026).

As wild, most normal Finns, as well as Westerners generally, or not alarmed at prosecutors saying there's no evidence at all when there's literally thousands of messages and documents, but my word as supervisory manager of the whole diamond mine energy project should anyways be enough to establish plausible suspicion if I say it's money laundering (including the prosecutor general, because not-investigating, even though there's already an investigation, doesn't resolve anything and you can keep complaining about each decision not to investigate, which requires another review).

However, it's not a sorry-for-me situation, I don't want corrupt police, corrupt prosecutors and corrupt judges running the country into the dirt and trafficking children for organized crime, their political and elite networks.

I am quite pleased that police and prosecutors and judges are stupid enough to try their corrupt moronic bullshit on me, self document their crimes, and just have to accept my accusing them of laundering money (because covering up money laundering is also money laundering) and trafficking children for years without being able to put me in prison.

And it also just disturbs the system a whole archive of obvious serious organized crime just sitting on the public internet for years and nothing done about it.

I'm never even asked to stop accusing people of laundering money in public the time for the investigation to complete. Which would be quite usual in most circumstances: there's an investigation, I should respect that and let the investigation take its course, if there's money laundering then the investigation will reveal that (and the whole purpose of making accusations public is to motivate an investigation).

Why don't police even ask me to stop accusing people in public of laundering money and trafficking children? At any point in their 4 year investigation? Because they know my response will be "how about you make me, you dirty swine money laundering pig" and they don't have a good followup move for that.

You might say that obviously they could just charge me with insulting a police officer. True, but I can defend myself against that charge to that it's not an insult but a perfectly accurate description of corrupt police officers which is trivially easy to prove with the corruption these police have self documented. You might say, "but surely corrupt worthless judges that deserve only to be spit on and then burn in hell will just dismiss your defence" ... but it just gets too complicated as the evidence is all in documents and easy to submit in a trial (it's not some story that could be subject to endless objections and he-says-she-says etc.). Also ... I'd still be calling them corrupt money laundering morons from prison, I can appeal, at least twice, so that doesn't really solve the problem even if they had some way to organize a circus court involving more of their worthless colleagues.

The situation is actually absolutely optimum that after 2 decades of senior management I use my skills to continuously insult, and more importantly expose as criminals, corrupt police, prosecutors, judges and politicians.

It's the best use of my skillset at this particular moment in time, so I'm glad these worthless corrupt morons came to me with their bullshit, because if they didn't they'd still be corrupt worthless morons harming a long list of people (less able to defend themselves), I just wouldn't be able to do much about it.

And anyone who thinks I maybe exaggerating the harm to society of police, prosecutors and judges laundering money:

NEWS: $750 billion in dirty cash is laundered through Europe per year

AN estimated $750 billion in illicit funds flowed through the financial system in Europe in 2023, according to a new study.

The finding comes from a report by Nasdaq Verafin, a Canada-based company which provides fincrime technology such as fraud detection software. It said the dirty cash is equivalent to 2.3% of Europe’s GDP.

The report also found that, globally, $3.1 trillion was laundered in 2023. It said this meant that, “Europe represents nearly a quarter of the total flow of illicit funds globally”. This is despite the fact that Europe has under 10% of the global population. — report By Paul O’Donoghue, Senior Correspondent, AML Intelligence

Europe outperforms the rest of the world in money laundering to GDP by a factor of x2.5!!

Why?

Because nearly all corporate CEO's in Europe would take a 1 million Euro bribe to shut up about money laundering and if they didn't most of the rest would be intimidated by skin head fascist police investigating them for defamation instead of investigating obvious money laundering.

But our choices are either CEO's should stop helping to launder money in Europe or then we all accept things like the corruption of our political class resulting in support for genocide, incompetent government policy, endless harms by fascist worthless police, I spit on their badges and names, (such as sexual violence against children and abetting organized crime) on endless victims.

So, be the change you want to see in the world, is my attitude.

Time for CEO's to stand up, let our voices be heard! We're not going to take it anymore!

Whenever I hear about someone exposing corruption and paying a personal cost for doing so, my reaction is never "oh, no, should have kept his mouth shut" but instead "fuck yeah, fuck up those fascists pricks".

In this particular situation, happens to be my turn to fuck with the fascists, and it's an honour and not a burden.

As for Finland.

While Finnish authorities coverup money laundering (including the Prime Minister and President involvement in money laundering and child trafficking), the country drops 12 places in child wellbeing.

Finland's ranking in a new Unicef comparison of child wellbeing in wealthy countries has dropped sharply to 17th place, down from fifth in the agency's previous report published in 2020. — Finland plummets in Unicef child wellbeing ranking

Why does this happen?

Because the country has been captured by organized crime to launder money.

So, if you empathize with police, prosecutors, judges, politicians, corporate board members, auditors and attorneys, and feel just soooo bad at the very possibility that they could ever be held accountable for their own actions, such as participating in organized crime.

Which I get, these people would feel really super terrible if ever held to account for being corrupt morons.

Well, you need to weigh that empathy against literally the entire child population that suffers the consequences of corrupt government authority and policy. Hundreds of thousands of children have a worse life generally, and many die of suicide or drugs or or abuse or human trafficking, and many traumatized for life due to failing systems, all because adults in Finland (hundreds that I've talked to in all sorts of positions, including politicians that might not be part of the money laundering) are comfortable with clear as day evidence authorities are laundering money for organized crime.

For once law enforcement and the judiciary and the highest political offices are laundering money for organized crime, the very next thing that happens is putting corrupt people in charge of all sorts of important positions such as child protection position to use state power to kidnap and traffic children, but mostly just launder as much government money as possible from as many departments as possible into this money laundering network. A syphoning off of tax payer money that results in a worse service to the taxpayer. Again, anyone who pays taxes in Europe should be pretty pissed of authorities, not just in Finland (as authorities in Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, UK, France, Italy, Germany, in the least, are also helping to launder African diamond money) and including the European Public Prosecution Office (who does not followup on clear fraud against the European Central Bank, as they too, and so every European, are defrauded in the scheme on secured loans from the ECB for PPA's that are totally fraudulent I was the only person responsible to deliver the power for those multi-million Euro Power Purchase Agreements, so can 100% tell you that is for sure fraud).

So it's really quite terrible the tolerance of money laundering in society. People keep saying they don't like children being raped ... but are absolutely fine with Europe outperforming the rest of the world by a factor of x2.5 in laundering money that finances the child rape industry. For me I really don't get it, but seems money laundering has been so glamorized by Hollywood that most people think it's sexy and actually a good thing.

I am so sorry that I can't right all wrongs.

I am so sorry that I can't right all wrongs. — Truth Seeker

Nothing to apologize for. You got to go easy on yourself a bit in terms of what's feasible to accomplish.

The movement to simply convince people slavery was bad and there isn't lower kinds of humans, or then not even humans, took thousands of years. Imagine being an abolitionists (which there were) 2000 years ago!

That our consequence is quite small is precisely what makes our choices moral tests.

For if something is good to do, it is good to do even if the good is only a little, even if the odds are that it will fail, even if the attempt is likely at great personal cost.

It is precisely the difficulty, the consequences far after we're dead, the dependence on others to also make a stand without any guarantee anyone will, that makes the difference between moral decisions and mere wish.

My attitude is to view moral stands as a form of extreme sport. Extreme Jobing I call it.

For, plenty of activities are more dangerous, more difficult, more painful but as long as labeled "extreme sport" then a perfectly normal, sane and laudable activity for people to engage in.

Fucking with fascist police is just as exhilarating as base jumping off a mountain, but the difference is far more people benefit from fucking with fascist police than just the personal experience of jumping a long way.

For example, police had me in their little van hole for a few hours. Got to go the whole way without a seatbelt (which the van hole doesn't have for some reason). Absolutely off the hook adrenaline rush.

Fucking with fascist police is just as exhilarating as base jumping off a mountain, but the difference is far more people benefit from fucking with fascist police than just the personal experience of jumping a long way.

For example, police had me in their little van hole for a few hours. Got to go the whole way without a seatbelt (which the van hole doesn't have for some reason). Absolutely off the hook adrenaline rush. — boethius

You are so brave. I hope you triumph against the corrupt.

You are so brave. I hope you triumph against the corrupt. — Truth Seeker

It's not bravery. Police can't do much. The can put me in their little van hole. They can put me in jail for a day. They have to give me free food.

It's just unusual for people to take issue with corrupt police. What's normal in our society, unfortunately, is to suck corrupt cop dick, no matter how putridly corrupt, rather than spit on their names, their badges, make it clear that respect is earned and being a corrupt sack of shit sexually harassing girls and trafficking drugs and humans and helping to launder money and coverup the perverted crimes of corrupt elites, is negative a million points on the respect scale.

You present me a cop that has earned some reason to respect him and I'll do. You present me a corrupt little sack of crap why would I respect him just because 99% of people would kiss his badge and suck his nuts.

Simply not choosing to defile myself with a single word of deference to corrupt swine pigs is not bravery, it's just an aversion stinking myself.

What can these little hitler loving skin heads that go around calling themselves officers of the law actually do to me?

In 4 years the answer is consistently nothing. These swine pigs are as useless at covering up their crimes and the crimes of the elites as they are at not-beating-their-spouses (cops statistically beat their spouses the most, the worthless maggots).

Who is actually responsible for covering up the money laundering and would do an actual good job of it?

CEO's! that's who.

Had I taken it upon myself to coverup these illicit financial events, no one would have ever heard about them again. Forever lost to the entropy of corporate email compaction.

Had I taken it upon myself to coverup these illicit financial events, no one would have ever heard about them again. Forever lost to the entropy of corporate email compaction. — boethius

I think you did the right thing by blowing the whistle. Well done.

I think you did the right thing by blowing the whistle. Well done. — Truth Seeker

It's self evident that exposing reasonable suspicion of money laundering is the right thing to do.

That our Western society no longer views it as self evident is basically why our society will collapse.

However, there will be survivors and passing on the message that it turned out letting hundreds of billions of dollar of laundered money circulate unimpeded and doing absolutely nothing when clear evidence of hundreds of millions, if not billions, of this money laundering corruption by public officials is exposed, wasn't good for society, and most people respecting money launderers, even in public office, because they have "money" in their criminal job description (and people like money) is not a sound basis for a body politic.

It's self evident that exposing reasonable suspicion of money laundering is the right thing to do. — boethius

I agree. I despair when I think about all the suffering, injustice, and death. My depression has gotten worse.

How does despair help any living creature.

Consider the possibility you are in a quite normal situation of your knowledge about problems outpacing your application to those problems.

The only sense of meaning possible once one is aware of how serious our collective problems are, how much suffering evil people cause, is to be finding the best option to address those problems, given ones situation and skillset and general disposition, and then carrying out those options.

Any actual good change to our social systems is incredibly slow and both the risk and the small nature of our individual contributions is precisely why moral problems are problems. If it was easy to make the world a better place just by wishing it so, then that wouldn't really be a moral problem in any meaningful sense. Might be an intellectual problem of what a better world truly is, but any improvement in our understanding we could simply wish immediately to be the case in such a scenario.

Navigating the objective conflict of interest (in terms of consumption of resources and simply staying alive) between oneself and others is what renders moral issues in the world we actually live in so tense and difficult.

Now, you list your objectives in your opening statement. Very far reaching objectives, as ideal as you can formulate.

But as for your actions, you list only things pre-approved by society as a good thing that gets you a pat on the back. Which, insofar as they really are good things, is perfectly fine to do. Society wouldn't last very long if it approved of only good things. A lot of people go around not randomly murdering people and I'd say we all recognize that deserves a little pat on the back.

However, when one recognizes society is sick, as you clearly demonstrate you understand, then doing only that which society celebrates ultimately only reinforces society's profound sickness.

And without acting to find out the real causes for things and call those things by their true names (like the true name of corrupt cops is putrid swine maggoty pigs) then your despair simply measures the extent you participate in and ultimately contribute to a rotten system while knowing it to be the case but fooling yourself about it.

The only way out is a radical leap into the unknown in search of truly effective action that overcomes critical scrutiny.

I do not fuck with fascist police because I am particularly brave, but because taking a bribe to coverup money laundering does not overcome crticial scrutiny.

And yet, nearly every member of our society would pat me on the back for taking the money and demonstrate zero concern for what organized crime is doing to children and other victims all around the globe.

Nearly all in our society would then demonstrate their own sense of bravery by showing they do not care about such consequences and care even less about critical scrutiny of anyones actions, mine or theirs.

However, if people not caring about critical scrutiny is not a decision making foundation that resists critical scrutiny. It is easy to join them or then feel a sense of security in not being criticized, and indeed patted on the back, but most members of our society, but insofar as you yourself can still think still know yourself that your decisions don't overcome critical scrutiny.

The only possible result is negative emotions about oneself for knowing one could subject oneself to critical scrutiny where others don't, but choose not to.

nearly every member of our society would pat me on the back for taking the money and demonstrate zero concern for what organized crime is doing to children and other victims all around the globe. — boethius

I wouldn't pat you on the back if you had taken the bribe. I think doing the right thing is important.

I am reading a book https://www.amazon.co.uk/Forgive-Good-Proven-Prescription-Happiness-ebook/dp/B003SE6Y28 that I bought today. I love it and recommend it most highly.

I wouldn't pat you on the back if you had taken the bribe. I think doing the right thing is important. — Truth Seeker

Always excellent to hear anyone against the taking of bribes.

Of course, there are some of us, and attitudes will change generally once the consequences of corruption are lived on a grand scale, which is already happening but I expect things will have to get much, much wore for Western society as a whole to become less tolerant of corruption.

I am reading a book https://www.amazon.co.uk/Forgive-Good-Proven-Prescription-Happiness-ebook/dp/B003SE6Y28 that I bought today. I love it and recommend it most highly. — Truth Seeker

This is great to hear. A good book is generally always excellent for the mind.

I haven't read it, but the title "Forgive for Good: A Proven Prescription for Health and Happiness" definitely seems exactly some wisdom that could be of great help to you right now.

For, what we control are our actions and decisions, and what are the best actions and decisions right now to take is a question that is independent of any grudges or past wrongs (of which there is nothing to do about).

Forgetting what is no longer any use is as important to focusing on what is currently useful in order to sharpen the mind and will towards right actions.

Why, not surprisingly, talk therapy has been shows to be not so effective for a lot of people, and even counter productive, if there is nothing really to do or analyze further about whatever it is.

Of course, if there's something to actually learn from some past circumstance, it's certainly useful to talk about it, but otherwise it's generally more useful to focus on what there is to do now.

Not sure if that's what the book is about, I'm just going with the impression I get from the title, but it does very much seem like a good message to me, and particularly suited to your current reflections.

Please report back when you have completed this literary adventure.

Please report back when you have completed this literary adventure. — boethius

I will. Thank you for your interest.

Finland is the 12th country on Earth in terms of HDI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Development_Index Therefore, I am surprised by the level of corruption you mentioned. Why is there so much corruption in Finland, despite its high HDI?

Why is there so much corruption in Finland, despite its high HDI? — Truth Seeker

I'll write a fuller account later, but the short version is the combination of several factors.

The sort of "zeroth factor" is the context of the global narcotics trade, and now also human and arms trafficking trade, which in turn mostly reduces to racism.

The war on drugs is an obvious failed policy, but it is implemented and maintained because it disproportionally harms black people as tool of control post-segregation. The foundation of a tyrannical system is always criminalizing normal behaviour in the targeted groups requiring systemic repression.

Unfortunately even for white people who like to see this racist system in operation, the long term consequences of drug criminalization is the generation of massive amounts of illicit cash in the global financial system.

The first thing this illicit wealth does is invest in ventures (such as political careers) that are going to protect it and the next thing it does is invest in more criminal schemes that require large upfront capital (i.e. present a barrier to entry, same reason large venture capital firms want to invest in high-capital startups with a large barrier to entry into the space).

For example, the child sex-trafficking (i.e. child rape, torture and murder on an industrial scale) industry could not be booted up organically as it's too expensive to get going. Wheres the drug trade is fuelled by drug use being a natural human activity and so easy to find both users, traffickers and dealers who "believe in it" essentially and also like the money, the same is not true for kidnapping and raping children. You have to pay people a lot more money to go against their nature to traffic in child abuse, so it requires the foundation of an existing criminal organization and high startup costs, for a long list of reasons.

As importantly as needing the criminal capital base to start trafficking child rape slaves on a large scale, law enforcement systems must also already be compromised (thanks to decades of investment in law enforcement careers). There's a strong natural instinct for most humans to protect children, so to organize child abuse on a large scale in a not-corrupt system you're going to be caught. It is essential for law enforcement to be working for the child rapists for such an industry to exist for any length of time. Child rape is not a criminal network that is hard to dismantle by non-corrupt law-enforcement. Whereas for drugs it is a very natural activity and therefore if you arrest 10 drug dealers you'll just have 10 new ones the next day, not so for child rape slave pimping; there is not a near infinite supply of child rape slave pimping and people willing to work at each step in the child-rape supply chain.

Whereas the average sober person turns a blind eye to drug dealing and doesn't narc on the party, the average person does not protect child rapists from accountability.

It's very adverse criminal circumstances that requires a lot of capital to get going and deep penetration of law enforcement and political offices to protect. The core problem of running child rape slaves as an industry (compared to "closed child rape systems" such as in the religious organizations you rightly condemn) is you need clients, therefore it's incredibly easy to compromise these networks with undercover agents. Whereas the demand and essentially moral support for drugs is high enough that police cannot win such a war of attrition against the mafia and cartels, the police would win such a war of attrition against child rape slave pimp networks. Under non-corrupt circumstances it's simply not an easy feat to regularly kidnap children and pimp them out for rape, torture and murder. For such an activity to endure, the protection of police chiefs, police in charge of money laundering, organized crime and specifically the child kidnappings, in addition to the special prosecutors oversee these investigations and judges who oversee them, and finally the politicians that could order special investigations when this corruption comes to light, all must be essentially working directly for organized crime.

Which sounds like "a lot" but could represent literally 20 people in a whole country that need to be compromised for organized crime to run essentially unchecked, so after decades and decades of the corrosive influence of just the "normal" drug money, it is not surprising that the entire organized crime investigation chain can be completely compromised by organized crime.

So above is global circumstance of organized crime which creates the capital and pressure to compromise as many law enforcement systems as possible in which to operate freely.

The conditions particular to Finland are:

First, that low levels of petty and mid-tier corruption attract large scale corruption because wealth is safe also for criminals. Crime bosses don't want to launder their money into unstable countries for the same reason no one else wants to store their wealth there.

Second, if you do launder your money successfully into a developed country with a good international reputation, such as Finland or other nordics, that money will be far less scrutinized when moved on elsewhere internationally (as presumably you don't want to live in Finland but on the Azure coast).

Therefore, stable countries known for low-corruption are extremely attractive for large scale money laundering precisely for those reasons. Successfully laundered money is safe from being stolen by corrupt officials or then endless demands for bribes as well as just safer for basic economic stability reasons (that if you launder your money into a Finnish corporation denominated by Euros, it will more likely retain its value compared to laundering your money into Chile denominated by the Chilean Peso).

These factors are not sufficient in themselves to cause large scale corruption, just explains the "demand" for laundering money through Finland and similar countries, just as a casino having a lot of cash explains why bands of witty and handsome thieves would want to steal said cash.

Just as a casino can have systems preventing all its cash being stolen, so too can countries have systems preventing large scale money laundering.

All of the above explaining essentially the demand by criminal networks to corrupt a country like Finland and for what purpose, mainly the cleaning of money. When money is washed through the Finnish corporate and banking system, it is white as snow. Anyone you might suspect of laundering money in Finland is going to be equally white and in our global system white people are largely immune from investigations started due to reasonable suspicion (their whiteness cancels out most if not all evidence). Some far more tanned banker in Italy is not going to just willy-nilly accuse a white person in a nordic country of suspicious banking activity simply due to evidence. World just doesn't work like that.

So, for the same racism that creates the drug trade in the first place, money is far cleaner when washed through white countries.

The last factors to explain the situation is why Finland is particularly vulnerable to corruption.

The main problem is that Finland has essentially no democratic oversight of law enforcement and the judiciary.

The whole point of democracy is to solve the problem of corruption and incompetence that emerges when people in power have no accountability. So that's basically the system in Finland and would explain why Finland has more large scale corruption compared to its peers, to the extent now of "un-developing" and sinking in all the development rankings.

Unfortunately, Finnish culture is also ideal for large scale corruption as there is a near universal and unlimited acquiescence to authority in Finland. Basically imagine if Nazis (which most Finns were extremely sympathetic to the Nazi ideology of their ally in WWII) found themselves in a democracy. For most Finns questioning authority is taboo, doesn't matter the evidence. The more evidence the more taboo in fact.

And the reason for comes down again to racism. Finns are incredibly racist, don't hesitate to call black people "niggers" in Finnish, and police beat down on immigrants and therefore most Finns simply tolerate, mostly deeply love, the system of corruption and second-class citizenry that enable the police to harass immigrants. Even if the average Finn wanted to put an end to police corruption, there's no direct way to do it as there's essentially no democratic oversight of police, prosecutors or judges in Finland. So a combination of most Finns wanting corruption, as long as it doesn't target them and instead harasses immigrants, and there being no mechanism of democratic oversight anyways, makes the country vulnerable to being essentially entirely captured by organized crime. So it's a "careful what you wish for" kind of situation in that decades of cheering on police corruption against immigrants has now led to large scale systemic corruption and the eroding of the mechanisms of government and institutions that provided the white population a good quality of life to begin with and the whole reason immigrants are not welcome here.

And this is not an exaggeration; every once in a while police go too far in their white supremacy and get caught being involved in literal neo-Nazi organizations, which is not because the justice system isn't a white supremacists organization as a whole dedicated to Himmler's vision of society, but because police are supposed to be a bit smarter than literally dressing up as Nazis. However, with few exceptions all Finnish police would dress up like Nazis if they could.

And when you have a police force nearly entirely dedicated to racism and organized crime, they easily dispatch with the career of anyone (politician, journalists, etc.) that would frustrate their organized crime and racist activities, and they can also easily compromise fully their allies (mostly by supplying child rape slaves to key elites).

Which to tie everything together, this new phase of corruption is worse than what we had before due to the development of the child rape slave industry. For, with drugs, you could easily compromise (and then boost the careers of) key politicians, prosecutors, judges, police, journalists, with drugs, but there's a sort of natural limit to the corruption a normal person would engage proportional to the nature of the extortion. So, a sort of "average" person, for lack of a better word, who knows organized crime has images of him or her snorting cocaine, is going to go along with a lot of corruption due to that extortion (and also donations to their campaign funds) but there will be a limit. Contracts to one business rather than another, sure, why not, but the line maybe drawn with covering up murder or then abducting and raping children. Normal people will have some limit to the corruption they'll enable simply to hide drug use, afterwhich they may simply quit or worse start exposing the corruption as an insider, as you can recover from drug use by "going to rebab" and realizing some things (even in the decades when it was far more stigmatized than today).

However, no one recovers career wise from raping children, there's no "child rape rehab" after which you can go on talk shows and hit rock bottom and then had to turn your life around to fawning attention (due to being male and white of course, and obviously going to jail was never a possibility), therefore it is the ideal corrupting activity.

The whole reason a few (of hundreds out there) of these elite child rape networks have been exposed is because it's not pervasive part of Western governance and there is going to be a few cases that happen to get exposed (then the system learns how to avoid that happening again) due to random chance as well as due to infighting between these corrupt networks (at some point the extortion gets used in such a corrupt system).

Why things seem now at another level of corruption tracks entirely with the growth of the child-rape industry, as people compromised by child rape have no natural limit. "Quitting and going to rehab" is not an option; they can be extorted to stay exactly where they are and also keep taking promotions; and likewise there is no limit to the corruption such as person will engage in, including obviously child rape itself.

Analysts have noticed, and questioned without being able to see the obvious answer, that everything has become really stupid, that there's not even an attempt to try to make obvious corruption make any sense, and there's also zero accountability: journalists, police, prosecutors, judges, politicians, literally zero mechanisms of accountability left in the system.

One final note, it's not that the average person can easily be compromised with drugs or raping a child, but it's a combination of sufficient people can and then the obstacles in their way can be removed. Once you corrupt police and prosecutors you can just make up fake cases against the people that represent some accountability in the system (wherever they are), destroy their careers.

These "big" corrupt moves are in the context of a system that is also corrupting overtime that makes all the decisions in the system vulnerable to influence. For example, a lot of large corrupt outcomes are due to a series of seemingly insignificant corrupt decisions due simply to pressure; in particular the career advancement of people who are 100% compromised is going to depend on a long series of smaller decisions. Those decisions can be directly influenced by various forms of pressure which the target may not even realize is corrupt (such as just spreading rumours and then going and confiding that the alternatives have been accused of this or that, you know "you've heard things"), in addition to things entirely outside the system such as letting corrupt police you're invested in make the odd drug bust or solve some robbery, then they appear like geniuses.

Once corrupt people advance to the top, without top-down accountability and without even trying to hire competent people of integrity, these systems quickly thoroughly corrupt anyways and idiots start doing all sorts of corrupt things all by themselves (plant evidence to catch "who they know are guilty", or taking a little bit of entirely deserved repayment for fabricated expenses, and just doing favours for friends and so on), and this pervasive corruption then makes small forms of corruption even easier as spreading a rumour has limited affect on non-corrupt critical thinkers (may still bias them, but is of limited corrupting influence) but implying knowledge and evidence of some corruption people chose to do all by themselves has a very large corrupting influence.

So, it's not a case where you need literally the whole government to rape children on camera, you just need maybe a dozen key people to do so (whether "tricked" into thing the child was older or just into raping children) and then move those people into bottleneck positions. For any corruption case to go forward in a country may require 1 of as few as 6 people, so as long as those 6 people have raped children or been involved in covering it up, then you essentially control the entire country (the only other weaknesses being the legacy media, but they can be corrupted too and even more easily as you can just buy these institutions with laundered money and aligned "legitimate" business allies, and put your people in charge).

That's so disturbing and horrific.

↪boethius That's so disturbing and horrific. — Truth Seeker

It is extremely disturbing, and unfortunately people don't want to see the evidence for it.

One additional note that I forgot to mention is that our Western political systems were intentionally designed to ensure the corrupting influence of the wealthy elite.

The wealthy elites who designed liberal democracies didn't want the monarchies and feudal system of aristocratic rights (that they no longer saw a reason for and just stood in the way of business) and to overthrow feudalism they needed the support of the people and revolution in the name of the people ... but they didn't exactly want the common people to have any actual power.

Liberal democracies therefore were designed by wealthy elites to serve the interests of wealthy elites, but they of course viewed themselves as honourable and rational and that they would "do good" with power over governance (same exact thing kings and aristocrats believed before), but of course a system in which wealth has the most power is naturally vulnerable to the power of illicit wealth.

Illicit wealth also naturally corrupts the entire business community without really needing "to do" much actual corruption other than invest illicit money that's been cleaned and have your people sit on corporate boards as part of the investment package. Most business people are naturally easily corrupted by simply offering them what they want.

So there's lots of vectors of corruption, both big and small, and the best way to visualize it as all summing to a sort of corrupt pressure that reaches a tipping point and the whole system switches over into a corrupt mode in which even the corruption that is uncovered there is no accountability, after which it's a point of essentially no return until the system collapses.

Just to add a couple of key points.

The system of corruption is not planned in any coherent sense, but it's mostly reactive. There's this large illicit capital base that invests in actions (including careers of key people) to both avoid accountability and keeping the money flowing. The people who control this capital are not necessary allies but their interests are aligned in making sure money is easy to launder and there's never any real investigation into how billions of dollars are moved through the financial and corporate system without almost any being found.

So, when there's a threat the corrupt network of people either purposefully benefitting (think attorney who's business is washing money) or then people who are compromised, one way or another, and realize any actual impartial investigation would reveal their part in the corruption as well.

With time either organized crime would be mostly "dealt with" and go away or then all threats to illicit capital will be removed. Once you get rid of one nuisance prosecutor or judge it's even easier to ensure they aren't replaced with anyone more of a nuisance; indeed, most people are cowards anyways and won't "make waves" so just the process of getting rid of the nuisances will result in a compliant system anyways.

The system is not stable with large illicit funds.

It's also immensely profitable to corrupt the government ... it's not even really a tax on illicit capital, as once the government is compromised to ensure the safety of illicit cash flows, the same system of corruption can be used to embezzle government funds.

Even better, a corrupt government can be manipulated into war, which is the most profitable conditions for organized crime: allowing vulnerable children without fathers to be even more easily kidnapped and sold into the child-rape industry as well as endless cash and weapon systems to "go missing" in the fog of war.I

It's simply commonly accepted fact that half the money sent to Ukraine is stolen and laundered as well as a large proportion of the arms sent to Ukraine. When the Western media deals with this issue it's simply shrugged off as a cost of doing business if we want our war.

The Ukraine war is both one of the most profitable events in the history of organized crime as well as supercharging corruption and organized crime in Europe.

From the outset European governments know Ukraine is going to lose (that the West is not going to risk escalation with Russia, so the only available policy is prop up Ukraine until is loses), knows propping up Ukraine and encouraging their no-diplomacy position will result in hundreds of thousands dead, know sending money and arms to the most corrupt country in Europe and number 1 in the world in illegal arms trafficking even before the war is just pouring tax payer wealth directly into the most ruthless organized crime networks on the planet, know there will child abductions and organ harvesting on a large scale, knows literal organized crime Nazi groups need to be armed and financed in order to prop up Zelensky, and that all this is at the immense harm to European economies.

So what's a better explanation? That policies ideal for organized crime and that don't accomplish anything else except politicians weakening their own countries and harming their own population, are due to politicians just suddenly having the statecraft acumen of toddlers and "Putin meanie" is the absolute extent of their diplomatic skill now, or that these politicians work in the interest of organized crime, and none of the money sent to Ukraine and then laundered is found because law enforcement also works for organized crime?

Point being, the evidence for regulatory capture by organized crime is extremely obvious and abundant and offers the best explanatory theory of the policies we see as well as what we don't see (it's simply admitted as a "necessary evil" that a lot, if not most, of the money sent to Ukraine will be stolen by Ukrainian elites because they are obviously super corrupt ... so why not any policies to try to mitigate that? Or then mitigate the weapon being stolen and sold on the black market? Or the to mitigate the child-rape industry? Etc.).

One pretty good heuristic for systemic corruption in an organization (private or government) is increase in debt levels.

Corrupt people do not think about the future and simply takin on debt is the easiest way to satisfy all corrupt stakeholders and avoid inter-corrupt competition.

Consider Finland's national debt growth (Directly from the Finnish government debt page):



Compared to Finland's most direct peer that is Sweden (also direct from their government page on national debt):



Notably, Sweden is a lot less racist than Finland, so this difference in debt outcomes is compatible with racism being a core driver of law-enforcement and political corruption.

Of course increases in debt is not only caused by corruption, so there would be a lot to discuss, but it is one feature shared by all countries with corruption problems that debt increases. Corrupt people generally don't moonlight as brilliant financial planners.

I despair.