I agree that the term mysticism has been thrown around very loosely, so it's probably important for us to settle on what is its essence.

A mystic, in my view, is someone who experiences something that they find impossible to put into words (the experience is 'unintelligible'), while simultaneously recognizing the experience as something so profound that they feel compelled to investigate, often ranking it above the rational world of sense experience in terms of its significance.

The so-called 'mystical experience' and the investigation of its meaning is therefore the root of mysticism.

The search and the act of priming oneself for such an experience I would probably not call mysticism. Though it is obviously related, it is a particularly prickly subject since there seems to be no reliable method of triggering a genuine mystical experience.

Plato and various Neo-Platonist works do a very good job at putting in rational terms a relationship with what is fundamentally unintelligible.

In terms of modern scholars, I found the lectures by Pierre Grimes on Plato and various related subjects a treasure trove of insight. (Freely available on his YouTube channel)

No one is interested in hearing a hundred-year-old tu quoque to distract from America's many misdeeds in the present.

If you need me to give you examples, you're proving my point. Listing America's misdeeds is pedantry at this point, and I'm not going to waste my time in doing so. Especially since you already seem so eager to start shifting the blame.

Because of the "orders of magnitude" part of my argument.

Now that would be rich - the suzerain trying to evade responsibility by pointing at the involvement of her client states.

You need me to give you an example of America's misdeeds in the modern age? Please.

If you're going to play this game, you should probably find something that does not pre-date the concept of a European state.

How is Trump worse than several other presidents in recent times, who started illegal wars and supported genocides and revolutions with literally millions of victims? (I'm thinking Vietnam, East-Timor, the Middle-East, etc.)

Appearances don't count for much anyway, and a politician's words should be disregarded off-hand.

If Trump's previous presidency is anything to go by, it's really not that bad. He can't hold a candle to some of the absolute demons that preceded him.

I don't disagree with much of what you wrote, but trust in US government and media is at very low levels, whereas trust in the EU is at high levels. That's really all I need to know about a stupid citizenry. — NOS4A2

I wouldn't say trust in the EU is at high levels. That's why right-wing populism is currently sweeping the EU. But I wouldn't say the EU citizenry is much better than the US, though Europeans are definitely less ignorant.

The difference is that the US government gets up to shit that's several orders of magnitude worse.

Their primary purpose is overseas expeditions. Not crucial for continental Europe which has airbases all over the place.

Furthermore, I think aircraft carriers will turn out to be massive sitting ducks when the next major conflict that involves them comes along. They'll be like the battleships in WWII.

During Trump's office, the British Parliament understood quite clearly that if Trump really walks out of NATO, they have to take more role in Continental Europa. — ssu

Why would continental Europe agree to that?

Island nations have a tendency to become opportunists and 'puppetmasters' due to their relative safety and limited ability for expansion. They should be kept at a safe distance.

Sure, UK wants to be the closest ally of the US, but Trump will shit on every ally it has, [...] — ssu

I think the 'Five-Eyes' alliance, or Anglosphere, plays a fundamentally different role in American geopolitics, with the American commitment to this being a lot less fickle. These nations all share the same strategic challenges. They share intelligence, which is basically the most intimate level at which states can cooperate.

So in my view, Britain searching influence in Europe is mostly political opportunism, and not a matter of security for them.

My friend Tzeentch, we have discussed much in the Ukraine, and if this thread comes too popular or the heated, likely it will whisked away to the Lounge as the Ukraine conflict -thread.

But to others, the actual story both Sweden and Finland did everything to keep the relations normal with the cranky neighbor in the East. And we really did, the whole term of Finlandization was invented for the Finnish situation. But there's a point until you try to be neutral and cordial and keeping up friendly relations to your cranky threatening neighbor. That point was crossed over in February 24th 2022. That it was it. Finland and Sweden abandoned both their neutrality, as Russia is obviously a threat to them.

I'm writing this just a few kilometers from the Russian border. There is NO traffic over the border, for years I haven't seen a single Russian truck and if you want to go to Russia, you have to go through Turkey. The Finnish Armed Forces have put the training cycle to a totally different gear to prop up the deterrence. Russia is spreading bullshit propaganda to it's people over the border that Finland is planning to invade Russian Karelia. Russian Foreign minister Sergei Lavrov yearns for the days of Finlandization and talks about it's opposite "Estonization" which for the Lavrov means Russophobia. (See here)

Well, you reap what you sow. — ssu

Be that as it may, surely you do not want the Americans and Brits to push for war between Europe and Russia?

I get the distrust towards the Russians. What I don't get is the trust towards various other warmongering nations which are just as guilty to this conflict, like the US and UK.

Israel approves legislation of five West Bank outposts, says Bezalel Smotrich

It appears this bit of news was surpressed by search algorithms, because it received little attention outside of Arab news outlets and was difficult to find through Google searches.

Perhaps it is not unimportant to know that amidst the chaos and carnage, Israel blatantly continues its illegal settlement policies, which it uses as a method of slow ethnic cleansing of territory it illegally occupies.

If anyone wonders where the animosity towards Israel comes from, this is it. Israel continues to be hell-bent on annexing territory that doesn't belong to it. When it encounters international resistance, its answer is to fall back on the barbarism it so readily condemns. Ethnic cleansing is a crime against humanity.

The only thing here for the EU is to check really it's defense policy and in this field make more cooperation with the UK. As the UK never did leave NATO, defense cooperation would be a natural start for the EU to warm ties with the UK — ssu

I agree roughly with what you wrote, but aren't you going a little light on the UK?

It was their errand boy that went to Ukraine to boycot peace, acting diametrically against Ukrainian and European interests to score brownie points with the Americans.

Especially from a Finn I would expect a certain critical stance towards those pushing for war, since your nation will be on the frontline paying the heaviest price if the worst comes to pass.

In my view, Europeans should not focus on which clown is driving the clown car, nor on anything the clowns are saying.

The only thing that matters is Washington's actions, and what we can reasonably glean to be Washington's interests in order to predict their future actions.

These are some things that in my view should drive European foreign policy:

1. The US must pivot to Asia sooner or later.

2. Due to waves of right-wing populism, the pivot to Asia will constitute a loss of control over Europe, at which point Europe becomes a potential rival to the US.

3. The reason the US hasn't pivoted yet, is because it is busy shaping the political landscape in Europe in a way that will benefit the US when it departs.

4. Both Europe and Russia will have a big role to play in keeping the Chinese economy going when conflict breaks out in the Pacific.

5. Additionally, both Europe and Russia stand to benefit as 'the laughing thirds' from large-scale conflict on the other side of the globe when the two superpowers beat each other to a bloody pulp.

6. Adding 2 + 2 together, the US will do everything it can to A. prevent Europe from becoming a laughing third as the result of a US-China war, and B. prevent Europe from keeping China's economy afloat during a US-China war.


In other words, the US is a major threat to Europe no matter which clown runs the White House, because US strategic interests no longer align with European strategic interests.

For Russia, virtually all the same things are true - it too stands to be the laughing third as the result of a US-China war and play an important role as a market for China.


So, what should Europe do?

First of all, it needs to understand that its strategic interests align more with Russia than they do with the US. Europe and Russia, if they act rationally, should both seek to avoid conflict between themselves and put themselves in position to benefit from a US-China war.

On the other hand, there is nothing that would suit the US agenda more than long-term conflict between Europe and Russia.

European leaders should:

1. Encourage the US (and Britain - but that's another topic) to leave NATO as soon as possible, preferably while keeping NATO itself intact as a European security structure.

2. Steer towards a return to the pre-2014 status quo between Europe and Russia. Open diplomatic talks vis-á-vis Ukraine, normalize relations, trade etc.

3. Dust off their militaries in a non-antagonistic way.

4. Completely reform the EU so that it's an actual functional basis for an independent European state instead of a dysfunctional, compliant US vassal.


In other words, should Trump become president and start threatening to leave NATO, don't stop them. At the same time realize that this is going to mark a fundamental and inevitable change in US-European relations that we are woefully underprepared for and ignorant of. In fact, we should really be acting as though this has already happened, because the US has been preparing for this since at least 2008.

I'm pretty sure the whole story that Trump was a Russian asset has been more or less proven to be utter bullshit - a literal fabrication.

... playing into the hands of hungry foreign powers? — jorndoe

The US is the quintessential hungry foreign power.

Also, wasn't the whole Russia-gate thing proven to be bullshit, just like 99.9% of everything that's written in the media?

Time to wisen up folks.

Suitable examples of the US government pulling this trick on its citizenry run all the way into the present. You really believe something changed for the better between then and now?

In terms of proof, obviously I don't have anything that qualifies as actual proof. Though, it seems self-evident to me that US domestic politics is just an inflammatory clownshow to keep people distracted and occupied with things that don't matter.

The malice is self-evident when we view the genocidal levels of mayhem the US wreaks on various parts of the world with the tacit approval of its citizenry.

Lastly, the fact that the US government has been successfully pulling this trick for decades shows that they're not stupid; their citizenry is stupid.

Alright, so what do you make of something like this?



Are the things being described the product of non-conspiratorial dummies?

Oh, don't get me started.

But doesn't that imply ruthless cunning and a double agenda, though?

I don’t think there is a conspiracy of any sort because most are too dumb to pull it off. — NOS4A2

Dumb and no conspiracy, yet they keep managing to send people's children off to wars no one asked for.

The 70 year old anti-vax conspiracy theorist — Mr Bee

You should probably listen to what the guy has to say first, instead of parroting slogans peddled by political rivals.

This is exactly why you don't get better candidates, you see?

In fact, this whole thread seems to be a microcosm for why that is. Many here seem to deem themselves above all the bullshit, yet are playing the exact same game as the masses.

Intelligent people shouldn't be taking the US elections at face value, but try to make sense of it through the acknowledgement that in the West too we are living in corrupt oligarchies.

To make this thread more interesting, here are some questions/statements that should stir up some debate.

- Polarizing figures like Biden and Trump are instrumental to keeping the US public divided (thus weak), bickering over subjects that don't matter to the US elites, so said elites can push their own agendas in the background.

- Maintaining a roughly 50/50 split makes it easy for the elites to manipulate the outcome of the election.

- Maintaining a roughly 50/50 split significantly increases the influence of lobbies and voting blocs. (In case anyone is wondering where for example Israel's lobbying power comes from)

- That Biden was going to lose the debate was obvious. Therefore, whoever put him up to it must have had this as their goal.

Let's hear what you have to say.

Moral philsophy isn't just a means of social control, it is also a means of resisting social control.

When society attempts to impose upon us "You must do X, because X is good.", we may require some reply as to why we disagree. In these cases, we cannot refer to the Tao, because it is too esoteric for that. One requires earthly, conclusive arguments.

The two seem to serve different purposes, and personally that's how I've always treated them. Moral philosophy is perhaps more of a tool or a brain exercise. For wisdom I would rather defer to the likes of Lao Tzu or Plato.

Hm. I would disagree.

The uninvolved bystander isn't responsible for the well-being of other people, and that includes children.

Of course, why on earth somebody who is interested in behaving morally would let a child drown is a fair question, but also irrelevant to the question of whether or not they are responsible.

Man, that's crazy.

I didn't watch the debate. Is it worth watching for comedic value?

Jingoism is nationalism in the form of aggressive and proactive foreign policy, such as a country's advocacy for the use of threats or actual force, as opposed to peaceful relations, in efforts to safeguard what it perceives as its national interests. Colloquially, jingoism is excessive bias in judging one's own country as superior to others – an extreme type of nationalism (cf. chauvinism and ultranationalism).

Ultranationalism or extreme nationalism is an extreme form of nationalism in which a country asserts or maintains detrimental hegemony, supremacy, or other forms of control over other nations (usually through violent coercion) to pursue its specific interests. Ultranationalist entities have been associated with the engagement of political violence even during peacetime. The belief system has also been cited as the inspiration for acts of organized mass murder in the context of international conflicts, with the Cambodian genocide being cited as an example.

In ideological terms, scholars such as the British political theorist Roger Griffin have found that ultranationalism arises from seeing modern nation-states as living organisms which are directly akin to physical people because they can decay, grow, and die, and additionally, they can experience rebirth. In stark mythological ways, political campaigners have divided societies into those societies which are perceived as being degenerately inferior and those societies which are perceived as having great cultural destinies. Ultranationalism has been an aspect of fascism, with historic governments such as the regimes of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany building on ultranationalist foundations by using specific plans for supposed widespread national renewal.

What I find particularly interesting is the notion that not getting involved is equated to commiting the act.

I understand the allure of such a view - on the surface it seems to make sense in certain situations - but the implications are absurd.

Lets say person A murders person B, is person C now responsible?

I think the word "innocent" is used more in the sense of "uninvolved".

As I've pointed out earlier, if someone were to push a person on the train tracks, even if their intentions were good, they would be going to jail for murder. There's not a country in the world where this would be seen as the correct thing to do.

I'd agree that legality is a very limited scope of viewing moral problems, but when the world unanimously agrees on something one would have to concede that arguing for pulling the lever is fighting an uphill battle, to put it mildly.

In my view, we can't just go around instrumentalizing the lives of uninvolved ("innocent") bystanders whenever we deem the outcome to be good.

Besides, in the face of morally ambiguous problems we have a perfectly morally acceptable option open to us: do not get involved.

P2: We are not responsible for situations where people require help. — Ourora Aureis

I disagree with premise 2, it must be justified. — Ourora Aureis

?

So you believe you have a responsibility to help others, and not doing so requires a justification, and what you just posted is your justification? :chin:

How do you justify not being a saint?

So are you some kind of saint that spends their entire life helping others?

The idea of killing vs letting die is a silly distinction, the value of our actions can only derive from their consequences. — Ourora Aureis

I think it's a crucial distinction, and also a more accurate representation of cause and effect.

If one refuses to involve themselves in the dilemma, the deaths are not a consequence of one's actions. They're a consequence of the actions of whoever put the people on the track.

At any given moment we are choosing inaction towards countless situations which are in dire need of a hero. Equating action and inaction would make one morally responsible for neglecting every single one of them.

It's the inaccurate representation of cause and effect which leads to absurd conclusions.

Israeli authorities, Palestinian armed groups are responsible for war crimes, other grave violations of international law, UN Inquiry finds

In relation to Israeli military operations and attacks in Gaza, the Commission found that Israeli authorities are responsible for the war crimes of starvation as a method of warfare, murder or wilful killing, intentionally directing attacks against civilians and civilian objects, forcible transfer, sexual violence, torture and inhuman or cruel treatment, arbitrary detention and outrages upon personal dignity.

The Commission found that the crimes against humanity of extermination, gender persecution targeting Palestinian men and boys, murder, forcible transfer, and torture and inhuman and cruel treatment were also committed.

Memories of Srebrenica...

That is very interesting.

To be honest, I understand very little about the mathematical underpinnings, but I think I understand your point. Time and distance behave differently so cannot be substituted - something that intuitively appears agreeable.

Do you know why they behave differently?

When writing down the example I realized that we cannot move back and forth in time as one could with distance, but there might be more to it?

The distinction between true and false has not simply been blurred, it has been destroyed. — Fooloso4

That certainly is older than Trump. The US has been plunging regions of the world into chaos over fabrications like it is the national pastime.

The game simulates being able to perceive a 4th dimension as a 3-dimensional observer, essentially perceiving a 4th dimension, one 3-dimensional plane at a time.

A 4-dimensional observer would perceive everything contained within the 4 dimensions simultaneously.


Though, I'm not sure whether simulating 4-dimensional space is the most intuitive way to understand the problem, since space in our universe seems fundamentally 3-dimensional? Maybe theories concerning the existence of dark matter changes things, but it's certainly counter-intuitive.


Perhaps a more intuitive way to imagine four dimensions is as follows:
1. Imagine observing a town. (Normal 3-dimensionality)

2. Imagine observeing the town throughout time. (Observing 4-dimensionality as a 3-dimensional observer, like the game). Note that people already do this.

3. Imagine being able to observe the town throughout time in its totality, instead of one 3-dimensional snapshot at a time.

Note also that the breadth of the time window one would be able to perceive simultaneously would be limited by whatever sense organ one would use to perceive it.

Finally, note that it's impossible to "bump into" time (as per your question), because its nature is different from space.

3 weeks before Oct. 7, IDF Gaza Division warned of Hamas plan to attack, take 250 hostages (Times of Israel, 2024)

Previously I had not taken the idea that Israel had prior knowledge of the October 7th attacks too seriously. At most I figured there may have been vague warnings that could not conceivably cover the scale of the eventual attack.

It turns out I was wrong.

Apparently the IDF knew almost exactly what was coming, predicting the number of hostages with a scary degree of accuracy.

Did Israeli leadership knowingly let the October 7th attack happen in order to justify an ethnic cleansing of Gaza before the balance of power in the Middle-East decisively shifted against it?

And, of note, the US has not blockaded or otherwise physically interfered with Russia's ability to trade, so that they'd be willing to cross that line with China seems far fetched to me. — boethius

Truly?

I'm convinced the second conflict breaks out, all of China's sea trade will be cut off and that this is their main strategic challenge. This threat is what prompted them to launch the Belt & Road Initiative - to create overland alternatives to US-dominated sea lanes.

The threat is strategic in nature. That is to say, during peace-time all is well, but during war all of these trump cards would be played. And if you're China or Russia, and you see the US quietly collecting trump cards against you, they perceive that as a threat. It's essentially a knife aimed at their throat.

When the conflict finally happens it will be framed in such a way that China is the bad guy, and 'the West' will unquestioningly accept the American narrative as truth, as we saw in the Ukraine crisis.

I just don't see how the US could maintain such a blockade of any extended period of time. — boethius

Note that cutting off sea trade is different from a total blockade. The US and its Pacific allies don't need a total blockade, because they control several rings of islands and straits that would make it extremely easy to monitor and target Chinese sea traffic.

Crippling Chinese trade would be a walk in the park for the US. The Chinese know this, and it's also the reason why the Chinese are very careful to avoid armed conflict.

Personally, I think the US is gearing up to create a situation like this before the Chinese fully surpass the US. The problem for the US is that its pivot to Asia is taking time, due to unfinished business in Europe and the Middle-East. However, this is also looking a lot like "shaping the battlefield" - ensuring all pieces are in place before the grand finale starts.

Note that if there is chaos in Eastern Europe and Iran, China would be effectively cut off from Europe, the Middle-East and Africa over land.

These things aren't coincidental.

Many powerful people in the US, really, really, really wanted to go to war with Iran, but it's simply not practical to do. — boethius

There are many speculations about Raisi's death having been an assassination. If that's the case, it follows a familiar pattern of the US sowing chaos in the Middle-East.

Iran just so happens to be a crucial link in Chinese overland access to the rest of the world.