So, I'm a Buddhist now.

[Phantomgrift]

I personally find it interesting that this is your "new" thing.

You've pretty much done that in your entire time here, bounced from one political or religious aspect to another... You moved on to a form of non-political belief before moving to a non-religious aspect.
Now you've moved on to a new religious aspect that fits in more with the lazy "crunchy" persona you've adopted over the last few years.

And as with all of them, you come in here each time and preach, (if you will), for each one in the same manner newfound converts proselytize to everyone around them..

[Despanan]

[dexeron]

I think people's experiences are colored by years of door-to-door Buddhists knocking on their doors at ungodly hours of the morning, handing out Buddhism tracts and copies of "Buddhism Jump!" magazine and inviting themselves in for coffee and long discussions about their Sutras.

[Rip]

pull back a sec. literally, the only reason anyone is even playing our Butthurt cards right now is because of a very simple statement: you found a new religion and told us about it, that's great! but you also said "everyone would benefit from some type of spirituality". that's a blanket statement that indirectly offends those of us who believe we're doing just fine, and perhaps even better, without any sort of spiritual claptrap whatsoever.

this is why people don't like proselytizing of any type. equivalent: Phant comes back and says "mine is the only right way to live life". we hate him, as is due.

you're trying too hard to be persecuted while you're persecuting us, stop it

[Despanan]

Look, I'm not going to say someone can't benefit from spirituality, just because you can benefit from something doesn't mean you should. No doubt, I could benefit from going back to college and taking a bunch of math classes.

But I'm not going to do that because I have other priorities.

But the inverse, saying that someone could not benefit from this, would be saying that said person does not have a Buddha nature. It would be saying that the person is somehow inferior - which I'm not going to say, because I don't believe that. I believe that every single one of you fuckers are Buddhas. You can be offended by that if you want to be, but honestly from where I'm sitting it's a sign of the utmost respect and admiration.

You might see it as me assaulting your own worldview or trying to coerce you into following mine, but that's not what I'm doing. I am making a simple statement about reality from my personal perspective. You being a Buddha, even if you're not a Buddhist, does not minimize what you believe now. It doesn't say that the way you look at yourself and reality is not valid, rather it says that there are other ways of looking at reality and yourself and from this perspective the truth of things is so much better than what we regularly imagine about both.

Plus, there's actual scientific grounding for this view. The more we actually learn about reality - the more we learn that our own perceptions are inadequate. Like did anyone see this TED Talk:

https://www.ted.com/talks/donald_hoffma ... anguage=en

Guy talks at length about how evolution does not favor organisms who see reality as it is, rather our perceptions have evolved to function as a sort of "user interface" with reality - so the reality we see is more like a desktop on a computer - it's not actually the computer, it's an abstracted symbol of the computer created so we can more easily operate it.

Which again, is why faith is important sometimes - if our perceptions are not accurate, then we cannot depend on them alone and it may be that in order to become happy we have to reject certain aspects of our perceptions from time to time. Hence what The Buddha was trying to do from the beginning: conquer attachment to the wrong things, in order to promote a higher life-state with greater satisfaction than can be found chasing after our wants.

[dexeron]

Desp, off-topic for a moment, but I meant to ask:

Exactly how many FB pages do you actually run now? There are a bunch that you linked me to (and it was like "invites you to like HIS page") but I'm not sure how many you were just linking to, and how many you actually started.

[Despanan]

"Exactly how many FB pages do you actually run now? There are a bunch that you linked me to (and it was like "invites you to like HIS page") but I'm not sure how many you were just linking to, and how many you actually started."

I run all the ones dedicated to my plays, my radio show Insurrection, Autonomous Collective and most recently Anarcho-Saiyanism. I'm friends with the people who run "Still Laughing at Anarcho-Capitalism" and I'm one of the founders of "Guys Need Feminism".

[dexeron]

Cool. I thought you were also involved with Landlord Bear too.

EDIT: also, Anarcho-Saiyanism is the best thing ever.

[Despanan]

[Rip]

god why am i still doing this

'GUYS LOOK I FOUND A NEW THING

MY LIFE IS BETTER BECAUSE I FOUND A NEW THING'

'that's cool, we're very happy for you.'

'GUYS THIS NEW THING IS THE BEST THING EVER BECAUSE IT WORKS FOR ME, AND I THINK IT COULD DEFINITELY WORK FOR ALL OF YOU TOO.'

'Well, it's something we're not into.'

'OKAY THATS COOL YOU DONT HAVE TO LIKE THIS PARTICULAR THING BUT I INSIST THAT THINGS LIKE THIS WILL MAKE YOU BETTER THAN YOU ARE'

'hmmm...that seems pretty condescending, and implies that I'm not already content and can't be without some new thing you just discovered? Isn't that offensive and what evangelicals do?'

'NO BECAUSE I'M SAYING YOU DON'T HAVE TO DO ANYTHING, JUST THAT THE NEW WAY I SEE THINGS MAKES YOU A KUMQUAT NOW AND IF YOU WOULD REALIZE YOU ARE A KUMQUAT YOU COULD BE BETTER THAN YOU ARE, THAT ISN'T PREACHING OR ANYTHING, IM JUST SAYING THAT I REALIZED MORE ABOUT YOUR LIFE AND HOW YOU CAN BE HAPPY THAN YOU EVER HAVE'

"okay this is clearly condescending proselytization now"

'NO IT'S COOL I'M JUST GIVING YOU MY PERSONAL OPINION AND TELLING YOU IT'S ENTIRELY CORRECT FOR ALL HUMAN BRAINS EVERYWHERE'

"and the difference between you and evangelicals seems to be solely a slight twist of flavor, yes?"

I don't know how else to spell out the issue any plainer. Right now, anyway. I'm sure I can come back to this later and try again.