Monthly Musings
Food for thought - February
Would you like some food for thought? The menu is the same, so choose what you would like to enjoy first.
Small snacks – light, easy, not too filling
The main course – highly nutritious, but sometimes harder to digest
Dark, rich, and decadence-free desserts – pure pleasure
Small snacks
To think critically, you must be able to do this: separate what is true from what you want to be true.
You are entitled to your opinion. You are not entitled to your opinion being treated as fact when it's not.
Whatever happens, if you can be authentic, you win. If you can be honest and openly share how you feel, you win. If you can face yourself and reality head-on, you win.
You lose if you wrap yourself up in lies. You lose if you hold back, pretend, hide who you are and what you feel. You lose if you don't make an effort to communicate.
How open and honest you are with yourself determines how much of yourself you can share with others. Growth and deep connection are only built on honesty.
“Truth is like surgery. It hurts, but it cures. A lie is like a pain killer. It gives instant relief but has side effects forever.” – Unknown
“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” - J. Krishnamurti
I love this quote. I often think about it.
The biggest barriers to our growth are often truths that are too painful for us to pay attention to. - Spencer Greenberg
The main course
“Many women, I think, resist feminism because it is an agony to be fully conscious of the brutal misogyny which permeates culture, society, and all personal relationships.” - Andrea Dworkin
“Any animal whatever, endowed with well-marked social instincts…would inevitably acquire a moral sense or conscience, as soon as its intellectual powers had become as well developed, or nearly as well developed, as in man.” – Charles Darwin
Try to make your thought process as simple, clear, and accurate as possible.
Many topics are complex, there are multiple factors, mechanisms, perspectives to explore. Bu try to collapse all the context and nuance into a much simpler message and see if it stands. Try not to get so tangled up in many ideas that you cannot find the main thread anymore.
Seek clarity and accuracy. Then add context and nuance. Then see if you can extract all this into a simpler message without much loss.
I posted this on Threads. I often share insights I’m thinking about there, so follow me there if you want to see more.
When two people disagree about a topic that matters, it's usually not just a difference of opinion. The disagreement is often a clash between fundamentally different worldviews, values, and life philosophies.
For the two people to reach agreement, at least one would have to fundamentally alter the way they view themselves and the world. But that is a big challenge and few people are willing and able to do this. It's why most disagreements are only a chance for each to reaffirm their beliefs.
Doesn’t it seem like we have already created Brave New world but with a twist that only made it worse?
The main elements of Brave New World were consumerism, the avoidance of solitude, hyper-sexualization and objectification of people, the absence of romantic relationships, the controlled creation and education of children. Except for the last one, many have been realized to a high degree and they're all accelerating.
But they also had soma - a drug meant to keep them sedated and happy.
In our world, we have the opposite which is the sad twist. Instead of giving people a constant influx of happiness-inducing pills, we mostly have the opposite: people are given frequent doses of things that induce negative states: sadness, fear, shame, anger, outrage, aggression.
How is this "administered"? One way is this - social media with their algorithms perfectly calibrated so they (accidentally) increase all negative emotions. But also TV, news, porn, alcohol...
“Call it what it is. This isn't 'consumer culture'—we'd have to actually digest what we take in for that to be true.
This is disposal culture.
We discard experiences before they can change us.
We dispose of art before it can move us.
We swipe past people before they can transform us.
We throw away jobs, communities, and relationships at the first sign of difficulty.
And then we wonder why everything, including ourselves, feels so goddamn disposable.”
This was posted by one of my favorite accounts on Threads. Follow him here.
Is the content you see on OnlyFans consensual? Here's the truth: there is no way to know. No way.
You may say: "Well, she doesn't seem forced in those porn videos" So what??? That doesn't mean she was not forced, coerced, or desperate to make money to survive.
Andrew Tate kept women hostage, forced them to do porn, he posted them on OnlyFans, he handled the money and kept most of it (like 90%). All this was invisible to anyone who signed up. In prostitution and pornography, consent is an illusion you can never verify.
Nothing happens in complete isolation if you do not live in complete isolation - zero contact with anyone in person or online. What you do alone, in private, can impact what you in public. Individual choices shape our culture.
You want freedom? Understand the burden you must carry.
Fighting against evil always forces evil to show its ugly face. Fighting for good also forces evil to show its ugly face. And we must look at it, so we know what kind of people walk among us.
How do you feel about rats? Do they scare you? Disgust you?
Here's a piece of information that changed the way I think about them. Do you know that rats are used in research? Scientists conduct experiments to learn about how their minds and bodies work - and this includes the study of depression, addiction, and empathy.
If the study of rats is valuable enough to provide some insight into how our minds work, we need to realize that they are similar to us - much more than we might assume.
A dear friend shared this quote with me and it really made me think:
"Can he hate the world enough to change it, and yet love it enough to think it worth changing?" - G.K. Chesterton
I do, I feel both so intensely that sometimes it crushes me. If you ever see my hatred for ignorance, irrationality, and immorality in any form know that all of it is borne out of my unyielding love for this world, out of a stubborn hope that maybe, if we all try hard enough, we can make the world into something that resembles a utopia.
The way you treat a person has the potential to impact them for a long time, maybe forever. It also has the potential to impact every future relationship they have with other people, so you are also affecting many others.
How differently would we behave if we could keep this perspective in mind every single day? How much more careful would we be? How much would we try to avoid hurting each other? Wouldn't we try to heal and nurture those we love?
A wonderful person shared this on threads and it made me wonder what I love deeply.
I fall hopelessly/hopefully in love with:
People who speak the truth so clearly they cut through all ignorance, confusion and delusion
A truth that cuts me open over a lie that makes me numb
Paintings
Songs that I resonate with so deeply it feels like they permeate my brain and soul
People who do small gestures of kindness and radiate love
Innocent creatures that need to be protected and nurtured
People who vulnerably share their pain and fear - I'd wrap my whole heart around them like a shield
Dark, rich, and decadence-free desserts
My bestie posted this and I found it hilarious. But please don’t ghost people you care or cared about. It’s cruel.
This one is cute, make sure you scroll through it
I genuinely love this account. They share cute illustrations and great reminders. The creator said that one reason why he chose a skeleton is that, deep down, we’re all the same.
I love many songs from King Princess, but somehow I have never listened to this one until today. It was love at first listen.
A new song that I enjoyed
Have you all watched Kendrick Lamar’s Superbowl performance? If you haven’t, you should. It was such a great show! I was mostly unaware of his beef with Drake, but this still felt like Lamar has won. I loved this entire performance!
Keshi is one of my favorite artists. Here’s one song I’ve been listening to lately
This was a beautiful song that reminded me to keep dreaming.
"Oh, we all are living in a dream
But life ain't what it seems
Oh, everything's a mess
And all these sorrows I have seen
They lead me to believe
That everything's a mess
But I wanna dream
I wanna dream
Leave me to dream"
I hope there was something in this menu that inspired you to reflect or that delighted you. Do you have any requests for next month’s feast?
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I like this style of post, keep it up!