Session 10 February 2018

[Renaissance]

Migrants in Europe and the US are being used to manipulate people of conscience and common sense to accept the same radical 'leftist' ideology that gave rise to the Nazis and Stalin. You have to keep your wits about you. The people who today call others 'Nazis' are themselves the Nazis.

I thank for the explanation, but did not the Nazis want one clean race, and exterminate all the others "sub-humans"? For this purpose, they formed concentration camps, killed Jews, gypsies, etc. So, it seams that right-wingers would easily wear Nazi uniforms. Not to mention neo-Nazis in that movement.

Things that are happening area bit more covert than what happened in Nazi Germany. Instead of racial pride and nationalism, the big fanatics of our day use humanitarianism and compassion as a mask for their agenda. The US has been doing this for decades, and most notably since the 40's. But there are parallels too, and one of the big ones is victimhood. Many Germans likely felt a lot of anger after the reparations of WWI, and that was usurped and manipulated by the Nazi Party. Today's left in the US is driven by victimhood status, and many aren't any more of a victim than anyone else in the human race.

 

[John G]

The idea might be that those particular genes result in a person who have more of the 'moral taste buds', which would, broadly, translate to those who can see through the radical 'left' BS and resist the domination of that ideology. They'll be the ones persecuted and sent to 'camps' of some sort, which would seem to include most people on this forum.

I can hardly incorporate this view from the present point where people under the influence of the right movement show hatred towards others. For example, when one journalist wrote positive about a migrant, as he started his own business, she received death threats. When media are writing positive about migrants, people in commentary react to it as Soros's propaganda. When the media speaks of an attack on migrants, people under the influence of the right movement show no empathy. But if a migrant attack a domicile resident, everyone jumps as if they are just waiting for it and it is an eruption of negative energy. People create negative energy in each case.
I'm not well-versed in that right-left, but what I see is not good. In the beginning, I was more supportive of this, until I saw that evil grew. So if there is "moral taste buds", I see something different. War crimes are supported, violence against innocent people, etc.

Well as Laura mentioned in the Righteous Mind topic, we humans in third density obviously don't always get things right no matter what our moral taste buds are. We in this forum, including me, certainly have things to work on. The left is good when there's a right-wing group hive mentality that is acting unjustly towards other groups. However in the present, the main problem is the left wiping out traditional values and replacing it with postmodern moral relativism. It's kind of making hospitality optional which wasn't good for Rome or Sodom & Gomorrah.

 

[Skyalmian]

(Regarding proper childhood development, there may be, for some, these edge-cases to consider:

_https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0757315879 ("Silently Seduced: When Parents Make Their Children Partners")
_https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0743291387 ("When He's Married to Mom: How to Help Mother-Enmeshed Men Open Their Hearts to True Love and Commitment") )

 

[SeekinTruth]

Thanks for another packed session. So much to ponder.

I agree about the "true Semites" being more about the possession of conscience and not about any particular ethnicity, etc. being the most probable - with so much genetic mixing over long periods of time, the particular traits trying to be eliminated should be pretty widely spread out all over the world populations. Or so I think.

 

[rymw]

Amazing session and I do believe you guys have done great with the Cs as always! Thanks Laura and team.

 

[Anthony]

Thanks for the session, the discussion about beliefs is fascinating!

 

[zulhelmi]

Thank you for sharing. Another wonderful session.

 

[lunar7]

I am curious if anyone has more information about the InfraBed. It was the first time I'd heard of it.

It will be great to continue the discussion about receivership as well. There seems to be a formula for enabling receivership and once there are many channels open, it will be very interesting times indeed.

There are many with receivership out there who stay fairly quiet about it already.

 

[istina]

Great session! Thank you

A: Indeed. All in your group should read these books in order to jump start the necessary processes for achieving receivership capability. Those who have been blocked up to the present will find unblocking therein if they are able to receive.

Thank you very much Laura for these books and for informations about neurofeedback.

Thanks for the session, the discussion about beliefs is fascinating!

Indeed, this has clarified a lot to me about how to not to anticipate, how to "become like little children". And, as others have already pointed out, this is a great guideline for me:

Q: (L) Well, they said the power for changing reality lies in the belief center of the mind. But then they also said something about emotions. Emotions that are limiting, and then emotions that help to progress... So, maybe the belief that one needs to cultivate - if any - is the belief in unlimited possibilities AND also in the benevolence of the universe and the process. Maybe that's what it is?

As far as computers are concerned, I have long ago noticed that whenever I am very upset, nervous, angry or so, my computer becomes weird, slow or blocked.The same thing happens with the lamps. When I'm in a high tension, the bulbs go down, so I've already learned to carefully turn on the light if I'm aware of my tension.

(L) I think computers are very sensitive to psychic and mental energy.
(Pierre) It's electricity.

Sometimes I was trying to get answers via "yes or no tarot" (or similar options on the internet) and I noticed that when I get to it just for a fun, the answers are correct in a minute, e.g. I'm trying to get someone on the phone and that person does not answer, and I ask for the exact time when to call, I will get correct answer only if I do not mind about the answer.

 

[mariowil7]

Many thanks for the session Laura, The C´s, The Chateu Crew et al...

Lots of things to ponder...

About Jonathan Haidt “moral tastebuds.” - Moral Foundations Theory

Source: _http://highexistence.com/how-jonathan-haidts-6-moral-tastebuds-can-heal-a-divided-world/

In his acclaimed book, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion, Jonathan Haidt summarizes his 25 years of research in moral psychology, evolutionary psychology, social psychology, and anthropology, and outlines an incredible theory that he helped to develop: Moral Foundations Theory.

Based on exhaustive research, Moral Foundations Theory holds that human morality is fundamentally based on six different moral foundations within the human mind.

Wait, what the hell are moral foundations?

I’m glad you asked. Moral foundations are basically innate psychological mechanisms for evaluating particular problems or situations. In The Righteous Mind, Haidt refers metaphorically to these mechanisms as “moral tastebuds.” Much like a tongue with six taste receptors, our brains have six major sensors which detect different “flavors” of moral data. If this doesn’t make sense just yet, keep reading; it will become clear.

Everyone has these six receptors, but through a combination of biological and cultural influences, different people end up with entirely different moral algorithms. That is, whereas one person might use all six receptors equally when forming moral judgments, another person might heavily favor two of the receptors and barely use the others. The vast majority of people don’t consciously choose which receptors to use—true choice in this regard may be impossible. These moral calculations happen rapidly, intuitively, near-unconsciously, and automatically.

As you might imagine, these differences in moral algorithms result in a human population with an incredible diversity of moral opinion. Once one understands these innate differences in how different people’s “moral tastebuds” function, one realizes that it makes perfect sense that people will be divided by questions of morality. Different people are using entirely different “moral tastebuds” to assess the same questions.

And that, my friends, is the essence of why people are so divided by politics, religion, and questions of morality. You might be thinking:

“Okay, so my [Republican or Democrat] Uncle Bill is using different ‘moral tastebuds’ to assess the same political questions, and that’s why he and I get along about as well as a mongoose and a king cobra. But what does that actually mean? What moral tastebuds is that man using? Surely they must be the dumb kind of moral tastebuds.”

Now, now, let’s not be too quick to judge. Everyone’s moral foundations exist within the same evolved operating system: the human mind. Given that natural selection groomed us to possess these particular moral foundations, we can reasonably assume that all of them were in some way integral to humanity’s success as a species.

The key is to stop assuming that the Uncle Bills within your world are “wrong” or “dumb” and to start asking, “What’s it like to be Uncle Bill? In what ways do his mind and my mind work differently?”

To help you understand the answers to these important questions and to see the significance of Moral Foundations Theory, I’m now going to explain the origin and purpose of each of the six “moral tastebuds.” I’ll also explain how each moral tastebud factors into the worldviews of political liberals (in the American sense of “liberal”) and political conservatives, so you can see plainly how different moral algorithms result in totally different ways of seeing the world. Everything up to this point has been pretty abstract, but hopefully these explanations will be more concrete and will clarify any questions you may have at this point.

[The six "moral tastebuds" in a nutshell...]

The Care/Harm Foundation

The Care/Harm Foundation refers to the psychological machinery within human beings which prompts us to care about our fellow humans and try to help them avoid harm. This foundation evolved as a result of the vital importance of caring for vulnerable children. If a crying little girl tells you she lost her mom at Target, you’re naturally going to feel inclined to help her. This foundation makes us sensitive to signs of need and suffering, and it makes us despise cruelty.

Because of this foundation, we are triggered by things such as animal abuse, human rights violations, genocide, and poverty. Politically liberal people tend to heavily favor this moral foundation above all others. This tends to result in liberals having a more global perspective, expressing care and concern for all people and animals, regardless of national boundaries. Political conservatives also make serious use of this moral foundation, but they don’t favor it above all others. Thus, their Care/Harm Foundation tends to manifest as preferential care for their particular nation or group, with special care being afforded to those who have sacrificed for the group, such as wounded vets.

The Fairness/Cheating Foundation

The Fairness/Cheating Foundation refers to the psychological mechanisms which allow us to categorize actions as either “fair” or “unfair.” This foundation evolved as a result of humans forming reciprocal partnerships and benefitting greatly from well-functioning social contracts. We often act altruistically toward non-kin because we expect to receive “tit for tat” benefits. We want to form romantic and business partnerships with honorable people, and we want nothing to do with cheaters. This foundation is the bedrock of the popular understanding of or desire for karma. People want a society that punishes cheaters and rewards good citizens.

As with the Care/Harm Foundation, the Fairness/Cheating Foundation is integral in the worldviews of both political liberals (this is the other major foundation for liberals) and conservatives, though it manifests very differently, particularly in the domain of economics. Liberals are primarily concerned with the mega-wealthy “1%” cheating the system through loopholes and privilege, whereas conservatives are primarily concerned with people taking unfair advantage of the social safety net to live off of government benefits and the hard work of others.

The Loyalty/Betrayal Foundation

The Loyalty/Betrayal Foundation is our capacity to be loyal to certain people or groups and to feel distaste for traitors. For most of human history, tight-knit tribal groups were essential for our survival and prosperity, and so this foundation evolved to facilitate the formation of long-term, tightly bonded groups. Nowadays, we still form tribes, though they’re based on a much wider range of things, such as nationality, religion, sports teams, dietary choices, and much more.

The tribal instinct was and still often is a powerful force for human flourishing. This instinct allows a group of human individuals to become more than the sum of its parts. A group’s power and longevity rely heavily on its cohesiveness. Loyalty is what kept us together as tribes, and it continues to keep us together on a much larger scale as citizens. However, when taken to the extreme, tribal loyalty can have disastrous consequences, resulting in warring factions willing to use violence to assert dominance over other tribes. Tribalism, in fact, is one of the main phenomena underlying much of the division over politics and religion that we see in the world today.

Our propensity for loyalty is balanced by a deep disdain for treachery, since a single traitor could undermine an entire system. Dante’s Inferno puts traitors in the innermost circle of hell, a far more agonizing locale than that of lust, gluttony, violence, and even heresy.

The Loyalty/Betrayal Foundation is one of the primary points of division between political liberals and conservatives. For conservatives, the Loyalty/Betrayal Foundation is typically given about as much weight as each of the other five moral foundations. As such, conservatives have historically been willing to accept war and a more aggressive foreign policy if it protects the United States. Liberals tend to favor the Care/Harm Foundation much more than the Loyalty/Betrayal Foundation, and thus tend to be in favor of a pacifistic, global-minded foreign policy.

The Authority/Subversion Foundation

The Authority/Subversion Foundation refers to our capacity to appoint members of our groups to positions of power for the benefit of all, as well as our tendency to feel threatened by those who disrupt the status quo distribution of power. For most of human history, authority was not power for power’s sake; rather, it was responsibility—power bestowed for the purpose of performing socially beneficial functions. Ultimately, having honorable, responsible people in positions of power benefits everyone, so we evolved a tendency to revere authority.

This is why we are responsive to signs of rank or status—to uphold the hierarchical structure that (ideally) inevitably benefits us. Think about a mailman slapping the President of the United States. Liberal or conservative, you’re likely to wince internally upon considering such a scenario. This wincing is your Authority/Subversion Foundation being activated.

Again, this foundation manifests quite differently nowadays for conservatives and liberals. Conservatives tend to have more trust in traditional hierarchies and authority figures. Liberals tend not to prioritize the Authority/Subversion Foundation as highly as the Care/Harm Foundation and Fairness/Cheating Foundation, so they’re generally less concerned about matters of authority and are also more likely to be subversives. Liberals also often respect moral authority figures whose power derives not from holding an elected office or high-status societal position but from intrinsic force of character (think Gandhi or MLK Jr.).

The Sanctity/Degradation Foundation

The Sanctity/Degradation Foundation refers to our capacity to understand things as being “sacred” or “pure” and to feel a deep aversion to those things being “disrespected” or “desecrated.”

The evolutionary roots of this foundation arose from the necessity of keeping oneself and one’s family free of pathogens and parasites. Our early ancestors were faced with the omnivore’s dilemma of needing to seek out new potential foods without knowing exactly what was poisonous and what was harmless. This dilemma is believed to have resulted in the human population dividing into two groups—those characterized by “neophilia,” an attraction to novelty, and “neophobia,” an aversion to novelty. It was evolutionarily beneficial to have some of the population open to trying new things, while having others who were closed off to novelty. Those open to novelty could discover new foods, while those closed off would ensure the safety of the overall population by not taking dangerous risks.

This divide between those who are open to new experiences and those who are closed off to them persists to this day. Fascinatingly, Jonathan Haidt’s research has shown that it’s possible to predict whether someone is liberal or conservative based on whether they have a high or low degree of openness to experience (liberals = high; conservatives = low), one of the Big Five personality traits. Research has also suggested that openness to experience has a genetic component (as the evolutionary model would suggest), meaning that a person’s level of openness may be largely determined before they are born. If you’ve jumped ahead in the line of reasoning, you’ve already realized the startling conclusion:

[Note: Maybe the Six "moral tastebuds" can be correlated with the HEXACO model of personality structure, instead of The Big Five because that (model of personality) does not have a 1:1 relation with the "moral tasteBud" as the HEXACO seems to have] _https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HEXACO_model_of_personality_structure

"The HEXACO model of personality

The HEXACO model of personality conceptualizes human personality in terms of six dimensions.

The HEXACO model was developed from several previous independent lexical studies. Language based taxonomies for personality traits have been widely used as a method for developing personality models. This method, based on the logic of the lexical hypothesis, uses adjectives found in language that describe behaviours and tendencies among individuals. The identified adjectives are distilled down through factor analysis to yield a manageable number of groups of related personality traits.

Research studies based on the lexical hypothesis described above were first undertaken in the English language. Subsequent research was conducted in other languages, including Croatian, Dutch, Filipino, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Korean, Polish, Russian, and Turkish. Comparisons of the results revealed as many as six emergent factors, in similar form across different languages including English. The six factors are generally named Honesty-Humility (H), Emotionality (E), Extraversion (X), Agreeableness (A), Conscientiousness (C), and Openness to Experience (O). The personality-descriptive adjectives that typically belong to these six groups are as follows:

Honesty-Humility (H): sincere, honest, faithful, loyal, modest/unassuming versus sly, deceitful, greedy, pretentious, hypocritical, boastful, pompous
Emotionality (E): emotional, oversensitive, sentimental, fearful, anxious, vulnerable versus brave, tough, independent, self-assured, stable
Extraversion (X): outgoing, lively, extraverted, sociable, talkative, cheerful, active versus shy, passive, withdrawn, introverted, quiet, reserved
Agreeableness (A): patient, tolerant, peaceful, mild, agreeable, lenient, gentle versus ill-tempered, quarrelsome, stubborn, choleric
Conscientiousness (C): organized, disciplined, diligent, careful, thorough, precise versus sloppy, negligent, reckless, lazy, irresponsible, absent-minded
Openness to Experience (O): intellectual, creative, unconventional, innovative, ironic versus shallow, unimaginative, conventional

Personality is often assessed using a self-report inventory or observer report inventory. The six factors are measured through a series of questions designed to rate an individual on levels of each factor. Ashton and Lee have developed self- and observer report forms of the HEXACO Personality Inventory-Revised (HEXACO-PI-R). The HEXACO-PI-R assesses the six broad HEXACO personality factors, each of which contains four "facets", or narrower personality characteristics. (An additional 25th narrow facet, called Altruism, is also included and represents a blend of the Honesty-Humility, Emotionality, and Agreeableness factors.) The four facets within each factor are as follows:

Honesty-Humility (H): Sincerity, Fairness, Greed Avoidance, Modesty
Emotionality (E): Fearfulness, Anxiety, Dependence, Sentimentality
Extraversion (X): Social Self-Esteem, Social Boldness, Sociability, Liveliness
Agreeableness (A): Forgivingness, Gentleness, Flexibility, Patience
Conscientiousness (C): Organization, Diligence, Perfectionism, Prudence
Openness to Experience (O): Aesthetic Appreciation, Inquisitiveness, Creativity, Unconventionality

Relations with the "Big Five" personality factors

Currently, the most widely used model of personality structure is also based on analyses of personality-descriptive adjectives. This model consists of the five personality factors collectively known as the "Big Five". Three of the Big Five factors are similar to the Extraversion, Conscientiousness, and Openness to Experience factors of the HEXACO model. The two remaining Big Five factors, called Agreeableness and Neuroticism (with the opposite pole of the latter factor being Emotional Stability), are similar to the Agreeableness and Emotionality factors of the HEXACO model – but with some differences in the content of the factors. Agreeableness and Emotionality from the HEXACO model represent rotated variants of their Big Five counterparts, for example, characteristics related to a quick temper are associated with Neuroticism or low Emotional Stability in the Big Five framework, but with low Agreeableness in the HEXACO framework. Therefore, the Big Five's Agreeableness and HEXACO's Agreeableness are not identical. The Big Five factors do not include an Honesty-Humility factor, but some of the characteristics belonging to Honesty-Humility are incorporated into the Big Five's Agreeableness factor. Although earlier investigations found only the Big Five factors, more recent studies conducted in various languages (including English) with larger sets of adjectives recovered six factors, as summarized above. The names of four of the HEXACO factors (all except Honesty-Humility and Emotionality) were adopted from existing labels for the Big Five factors. Factor names were selected on the basis of the common meaning of the characteristics within each factor.

Research relating to the HEXACO model

Theoretical basis of Agreeableness, Honesty-Humility and Emotionality

The HEXACO model is often used in research studies when behaviours or traits found on the Agreeableness, Honesty-Humility and Emotionality dimensions are of specific interest. The factors of Agreeableness, Honesty-Humility and Emotionality are distinctly different from their counterparts on the Five Factor Model (FFM). Honesty-Humility, Emotionality and Agreeableness are proposed to be measures of Altruistic versus Antagonistic behaviour. Honesty-Humility and Agreeableness both measure two different aspects of Reciprocal altruism, high levels of which indicate a propensity for helping behaviour and cooperation as opposed to the exploitation of others. The Honesty-Humility factor represents a person's tendency for pro-social altruistic behaviours, while Agreeableness indicates an individual's tendency to forgive and to show tolerance. Emotionality is a measure of kin altruism, that is, the tendency to show empathy and attachment to one’s kin.

Honesty-Humility and the Dark Triad

The Honest-Humility factor has been used in a variety of studies as a measure of ethical or pro-social behaviour (See Ashton and Lee (2008) for further details). Low levels of the Honesty-Humility factor are associated with greater levels of materialism, unethical business practices and even deviant sexual behaviour. The Honesty-Humility factor has been found to predict endorsement of unethical business practices and even the degree to which a person will take health and safety risks (even towards fellow employees). An individual who scores low on the Honesty-Humility factor may have a proclivity for anti-social acts. Which anti-social acts an individual is likely to commit may be related to their personality profile along the other factors of the HEXACO model. For example, someone who scores low on Honesty-Humility and low on Conscientiousness and Agreeableness are more likely to engage in delinquency in the workplace.

The dark triad of personality consists of psychopathy, Machiavellianism and narcissism. However, these constructs are said to be not fully represented in common five-factor models of personality. The Dark Triad can be conceptualized as being on the opposite pole of Honesty-Humility (Sincere, Faithful, Loyal etc.), which would mean that low levels of Honesty-Humility corresponds to higher levels of psychopathy, Machiavellianism and/or narcissism. The Dark Triad personality constructs tend to only correlate with disagreeableness on the Big Five Inventory, otherwise they are represented inconsistently on measures of the Big Five traits. For that reason, several researchers have used the HEXACO model to gain a more detailed understanding of the personality characteristics of individuals who exhibit traits/behaviours that would be considered along the Dark Triad dimension."

It will be interesting if here in this forum we can manage to make a good relation between the six "Moral tastebuds" and the HEXACO model. any takers?...

People’s political orientation may be largely predetermined before they’re born.

Haidt’s research on openness to experience isn’t the only research that has suggested this. A number of other studies have suggested a link between biology and political orientation.
[NOTE: The Spiritual angle then became evident on this, with Soul or without Soul.] _https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biology_and_political_orientation

But anyway, I’ve digressed a bit. As I was saying, the Sanctity/Degradation Foundation arose from an evolutionary division between those who were open to new experiences and those who were not. Initially, this openness/closed-off-ness functioned only in the domain of sensory experience, but over time, it morphed into collective cultural tendencies to be open in certain areas and closed off in other areas—to view some cultural institutions/traditions as mutable and others as untouchable, pure, sacred. This is why some cultures are welcoming to immigrants and outside influences, while others are highly xenophobic and closed off.

The Sanctity/Degradation Foundation allows cultures to mark certain things as untouchably sacred. Think of crosses, flags, Mecca, grave sites, and even principles like equality, liberty, and democracy. Most Americans would cringe at the sight of our flag being burned, yet wouldn’t think twice of a different cloth pattern being publicly torched. Once the Sanctity/Degradation Foundation morphs and transfers into the domains of ideology and religion, things get pretty intense. Radical jihadist groups such as ISIS are, in part, radicalized and ready to commit atrocities because they feel the West has disrespected and disregarded many of the ideas and principles they hold to be Absolute and Sacred.

As you can imagine, this foundation manifests very differently for liberals and conservatives in the modern world. Conservatives value things like the “sanctity of marriage” or the “sanctity of life” not because they want to control individuals, but because they believe they’re protecting the bedrock of their moral community. Liberals, of course, tend to view these traditional conservative virtues with disdain, to see them as sexist and old-fashioned. But liberals are not immune to the effects of this foundation either. For liberals, the environment is sacred and must be protected from pollution and other degradation; additionally, the body is sacred and must be purified through vegan, organic, or other (sometimes irrational) dietary choices. The Sanctity/Degradation Foundation is fascinating: an impulse to avoid disease, born out of the behavioral immune system, has evolved into a psychological mechanism which causes people to adopt extreme and sometimes irrational values to protect themselves and keep their groups together.

The Liberty/Oppression Foundation

The Liberty/Oppression Foundation is the human tendency to desire freedom and to be averse to oppression. Haidt suggests that this tendency traces its roots back to the rise of agriculture about 10,000 years ago, when humans became more sedentary. Private property came into existence, because humans were now able to own more than they could carry with them wherever they went. This soon resulted in some individuals seeking to gain more than others through whatever means possible, many of which were dishonest, malicious, or deprived certain helpless people of equal opportunities, limiting their freedoms. Since that time, most human societies have witnessed an ongoing struggle between those who fight for equal opportunity for all people and those who try to establish an uneven playing field for their own gain.

Anthropologist Christopher Boehm has likened oppressors to alpha male chimpanzees that took advantage of their authority and became bullies who took what they wanted, rather than responsible overseers performing socially beneficial functions. Occasionally, subordinate chimpanzees would join forces to take down the alpha males, sometimes killing them in the process; in the same way, oppressed humans will occasionally rise up to overthrow and/or murder their oppressors.

With the invention of weapons some 64,000 years ago, the balance of power within human groups shifted and defied what had been the primate norm for millions of years. Suddenly, a weak human with a spear could take down a tyrannical alpha. Throw in the advent of language, which allowed humans to communicate and gossip about violations of the social order, and suddenly you had communities in which those at the bottom of the social hierarchy were more empowered than ever to prevent abuses of power. This gave rise to “reverse dominant hierarchies,” in which the mass of people at the bottom prevent those at the top from becoming abusively dominant. For this reason, most human groups prior to the advent of agriculture are believed to have been largely egalitarian.

With the advent of agriculture, though, complex societies and civilizations began to arise, in which there were more elaborate mechanisms in place to facilitate societal functioning and therefore more potential entrance points for a malicious actor to leverage the system dishonestly for their own gain. Furthermore, the division of labor that came shortly after the advent of agriculture gave rise to systems of class, which were quite conducive to the idea that some members of a society were simply meant to be less important and valuable than others. Thus, since the advent of agriculture, inequality of opportunity has been the norm in human societies, with equality of opportunity (or at least something close to it) only arising as the exception (e.g. in some Western countries in the last ~50-100 years).

Despite the fact that real equality of opportunity is the exception, humans still tend to refuse to allow themselves to be overtly and violently subjugated. Dominators and tyrants trigger the Liberty/Oppression Foundation, and humans tend to unite to overcome or destroy the oppressor. According to Haidt, there’s an ideal middle ground between the extremes of the Authority/Liberty Foundation in which we trust authority (as this is necessary to some extent for the functioning of complex societies), but are very vigilant for traces of tyranny or corruption.

The ways in which this foundation manifests in the modern political landscape are quite fascinating. Libertarians tend to esteem this foundation above all others, placing absolute value on maximizing individual liberty. Conservatives tend to view high taxes, strict business regulations, and sovereignty-reducing globalist policies as oppressive because they reduce individual liberty. This is why many libertarians tend to vote Republican—they see eye to eye on this point.

For liberals, the Liberty/Oppression Foundation manifests as an overpowering desire to protect and liberate any special interest groups who may be somehow disadvantaged by the current social order. Unlike conservatives, liberals are much more willing to limit the freedoms of other people in a society in order to increase services and benefits for the less fortunate.

Conclusion: Overcoming Tribalism

Tribalism—”a way of thinking or behaving in which people are (excessively) loyal to their own tribe or social group”—is deep-rooted in human communities. In our long history, most lone wolves barely had the capacity to survive, let alone take care of offspring. We are largely the offspring of ancestors that successfully formed tribes that were able to leverage the strength of the community to survive. Statistically, the more cohesive a tribe was the more likely it was to make use of scarce resources and fend off threats.

We owe our existence today to the human capacity for tribalism, but at extreme levels tribalism gets nasty. People start to place an absolute faith in their tribe that puts them at odds with any other tribes. If their trust in their tribe is absolute, people become willing to commit atrocities to uphold or enforce its values. Political polarization happens when people start to pledge loyalty to their parties even in the face of new, contradicting information. People at the political right and left extremes also tend to be extremely vocal, and these tribe leaders make it seem that the vastly larger middle only has two options.

Much of the conflict and issues faced by humanity arise from our inability to let go of tribalism and to see the common ground in our morality. By understanding the roots of opposing views in politics, religion, and other domains, we can start to have constructive conversations about subjects that are considered taboo. We can realize that it’s entirely possible for good people to see the world in entirely different ways. We can break out of the emotional and tribal gridlock that makes it so difficult for us to find workable solutions to social, economic, and global issues.

2,000+ years ago, Jesus Christ said, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” Although we’ve progressed quite far in many ways, humanity itself yet seems to be a house divided, and eventually, we will no longer be able to stand, if we cannot heal our divisions. Moral Foundations Theory and Haidt’s work offer us a way out—a way of understanding the deep biological and cultural reasons why we are divided in order to transcend shallow, reactive tribalism. I humbly submit that every human in the world would do well to read The Righteous Mind and take its ideas to heart. Our future may depend on our collective ability to understand the lessons it contains.

The tribalism concept made me remember the C´s concept of Tribal Unit. It seems that the concept has to be more malleable indeed...

Just my two cents!!!...

 

[nature]

Thank you very much for this very interesting session. I'll had to read it again.

The search for the real Semites seems to be a never-ending story.

With origins of both Ashkenazis and "Oriental Semites" going back to Central Asia there is actually a good chance that both of them are of Semite extraction.
[...]

Are the Ashke-nazis will destroy themselves when they'll wan't to destroy their oriental brothers with biogenetic weapons? Caïn and Abel.

 

[loreta]

Thank you Laura and all the people and animals that participated in the session and gave it to us. Good energy!

 

[IronFloyd]

Great! the first session of the year, thank you very much Laura and the whole team ;)

 

[hlat]

Thank you for sharing the session.

I was reading an article exploring whether reality is a simulation like a multiplayer video game. In one example, if no human player was at a particular section of the video game environment, then the speculation was that the environment would not be rendered by the computer running the video game. It would be like a blank, until someone went there.

I wonder if the retro PK example is like that. The environment exists but with no human interaction, nothing is forced to happen or be in certain way in the environment. Even though time has passed, the events are not fixed until the observer fixes them.

Consciousness as the fourth dimension variable. The 3 dimensions can be expressed as a function of consciousness. I remember graphing 3 dimensional functions that changed shape with time. With 3 dimensional functions that changed shape with consciousness, that would seem to describe PK as space being changed or warped with thought. I think of the picture of the gravity space funnel that looks like it was made with graph paper, and consciousness moving the location of the funnel shape so that objects fall towards a different location.

 

[Deleted member 11729]

I was thinking about the replacing of Time Space relation with Consciousness Space relation when this morning I watched this TED TALK about the "nature" of our conscious reality ... so I was thinking that actually by doing self remembering or mediation, what we actually do is that we actually detaching consciousness from the conscious of our body, to be able to see the consciousness that is at the same time within and outside of the body, and to treat it "needs" as an independent "character" within, who is hidden behind all other hallucinated and subjective aspects of conscious, that are helping our body (machine that gives life to our brain to be able to be perceptive consciousness) to stay alive, while we are "living our mechanical life", that our "upper" consciousness chose to experience in a format of a organic earth body construct, in correlation with other extensions of it.

_https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1019&v=lyu7v7nWzfo

Your brain hallucinates your conscious reality | Anil Seth

"Right now, billions of neurons in your brain are working together to generate a conscious experience -- and not just any conscious experience, your experience of the world around you and of yourself within it. How does this happen? According to neuroscientist Anil Seth, we're all hallucinating all the time; when we agree about our hallucinations, we call it "reality." Join Seth for a delightfully disorienting talk that may leave you questioning the very nature of your existence."