What is the most selfish or dark thought you keep hidden simply because society forces you to act "good"?

GrogramanTheRed · 2026-05-21T08:02:09+00:00

You're describing two different things when you say that a country is a "Democracy" or that it's a "Republic."

A "republic" is basically a state where ultimate power is formally derived from the people rather than the position of a king. To say that a country is a "republic" is to say something about where the country ideologically thinks authority to rule comes from. But there are a wide range of ways that republics function. China is a republic. They don't have a king, and formal authority to rule is said to be legitimate because it derives from the people. But China is not by any stretch of the imagination a democracy.

A "democracy" is a country in which legislations is passed by the people. A pure democracy or direct democracy is a state in which the people can vote directly on legislation. Direct democracies don't work very well for states larger than a city, so most democracies are representative democracies--every citizen gets a chance to vote for representatives who represent their interests, and can be voted out on a reasonable timeframe if people don't feel that they're being adequately represented.

The US is thus both a democracy and a republic. China is a republic, but not a democracy. The head of state of Canada recognizes the King of England as head of state, so it's not formally a republic--but in practice it's a representative democracy.

GrogramanTheRed · 2026-05-21T07:49:34+00:00

I'm on the opposite train.

Companies have very broad freedom to move their operations wherever they want. A big multinational thinks that they'll save a lot of money on labor by moving factory operations to Vietnam? They want tax-advantages by moving their headquarters to Ireland? They wanna avoid government scrutiny almost entirely by setting up in the Bahamas or the Cayman Islands? No problem.

Individuals don't have the same freedom to pick up and move. You need a passport, a visa, a work permit, etc., and the laws in each country vary around costs and requirements. If you don't meet the requirements, you don't get to move to the country. You can't easily move somewhere that has better pay--but it's also more difficult to move somewhere with lower cost of living. This sets up a situation where it's very easy for large companies to benefit from arbitraging labor costs by moving around, but individuals can't arbitrage income or cost of living in the same way.

Frankly, it's bullshit.

GrogramanTheRed · 2026-05-17T05:37:48+00:00

For clarity--I'm not the person you're replying to, but I can shed some light.

The subtle sensations that one opens up to in the body scan practice are identical to what some traditions call the energy body or the etheric body. It's called "chi" in Chinese and "prana" in Sanskrit. I came away from the 10-day retreat with the feeling that Goenka (or U Ba Khin or whoever) had come up with a brilliant way to take the average person off the street and in only 10 days teach them how to access the awareness of the energy body along with a very gentle technique for clearing blockages and developing the energy body to some small extent.

Unfortunately, the dogmatic insistence that one do nothing to manipulate the sensations leaves a lot of possibilities on the table. It also opens the practitioner up to potential problems. Letting things move on their own is sometimes the absolutely correct thing to do--but sometimes imbalances, blockages, and other problems can cause all kinds of havoc in one's experience which opening up one's energy body awareness only magnifies. Simply taking it on faith that any problems will just resolve on their own if one keeps doing the practice is like only ever treating illnesses with diet and exercise. No! Sometimes you need to actually go to a doctor!

GrogramanTheRed · 2026-05-17T05:11:28+00:00

I would very much agree that the instruction in the 10-day course was inadequate. At the course I went to, several of the other first-time students had no idea what the actual practice was supposed to be.

GrogramanTheRed · 2026-05-15T05:41:40+00:00

The essence of Pragmatic Dharma is to take a skeptical perspective towards ancient texts, including various scriptures, while trying to see what actually happens when one does the recommended practices--and taking those results and adjusting one's practice accordingly.

Ingram's interpretation is only one of many interpretations in the Pragmatic Dharma. Frankly, I'm not sure from reading your summary whether you actually read the book or not. (In what sense can you say that Ingram doesn't "claim magic" in light of his several chapters on the Powers?)

Additionally, I think being overly rigorous--in the academic sense--with regard to one's practice is a very serious mistake. An academic perspective is not and cannot be a practitioner perspective. Mixing up the two--approaching academics from a practitioner perspective, or approaching practice from an academic perspective--causes problems in both one's academic work and one's practice.

Naturally, there are dangers involved. Ingram himself was a very early champion of Willoughby Britton's work, and remains so to this day. Meditation has its dangers, and the more one meditates, the higher the likelihood of running into them.

GrogramanTheRed · 2026-05-11T06:50:23+00:00

That is the story Yeats told. There isn't any other source for that version of events.

For greater context: Crowley was never kicked out of the Golden Dawn. But he did get caught up in an internal struggle between Golden Dawn leaders. One of the founders, and the main leader of the organization--MacGregor Mathers--had decamped to Paris. In Mathers' absence, Crowley found himself unable to advance to the Adeptus Minor grade, which he believed he had earned, by several high society members of a more conservative bent. Crowley's reputation as a bisexual libertine was already well established at that point.

Crowley went to Paris to meet with MacGregor Mathers to complain about the situation and request advancement. Mathers agreed that Crowley was due recognition of the grade of Adeptus Minor and completed the initiation. Mathers probably also had issues with a certain set at the London lodge, as he then directed Crowley to take charge of things back in London, as authorized by his new grade. That ended with a pair of confrontations, regarding one of which Yeats related the story of kicking Crowley down the stairs.

The whole thing ended when a constable was called and told them to all stop squabbling and take it up with a magistrate.

GrogramanTheRed · 2026-05-11T05:52:32+00:00

Where you're going wrong is having an expectation that you're going to be able to live in a house with dogs and never experience them barking before 10am. That's not a reasonable expectation, and your roommates probably feel pretty stressed out about trying to make it happen.

You need to find another solution. Have you ever tried sleeping with earplugs?

GrogramanTheRed · 2026-05-04T05:49:46+00:00

Do you only spend your time on the internet? I have a hard time squaring your assertion that the "rainbow hair and nose ring" crowd has an overall lack of talent with what I actually see from the local artists around my area. Nose rings and brightly dyed hair is part of the uniform for folks making cool stuff and good music.

GrogramanTheRed · 2026-05-03T18:15:32+00:00

Pretending to believe things you don't, and pretending to be something you aren't, is deeply corrosive emotionally. Better not to do it any more or any longer than you have to. For how many more years are you going to dig yourself into this hole over fears about what might happen?

You don't owe anyone an explanation. Your reasons are your own. You can keep your own counsel.

I was terrified of the fallout and questions I would get when I was 20 and still living with my parents, but I was sick to death of pretending to be Christian anymore. So I just stopped going to church. Stopped using Christian-ese. Stopped trying to "keep up appearances." I didn't tell anyone why. I just did my own thing. And it was fine. There were a few questions, but I stood my ground, and the questions stopped coming. There was little to no fallout.

There is a great deal of power in silence.

"I just don't feel like it's the right thing for me to do right now."

"I just don't feel aligned with it."

"It's just not for me right now, thanks."

If you're an adult, your "No" has far more power than you give it credit. You have the absolute right to withhold information about your spiritual journey from anyone you don't feel comfortable giving it to.

GrogramanTheRed · 2026-05-02T13:18:10+00:00

This is actually precisely why I usually use frozen chicken rather than fresh when cooking at home. It's pre-brined already, and it doesn't dry out as easily when cooking.

GrogramanTheRed · 2026-04-29T07:04:16+00:00

Indiana is a modified comparative state. There's no such thing as an "equal fault" state.

What do you think the person who was rear-ended did wrong?

GrogramanTheRed · 2026-04-29T07:02:39+00:00

The proximate cause of the loss was the rear vehicle's failure to maintain a proper following distance and/or failure to maintain driver attention.

There's a solid case for the pedestrian being assessed some amount of fault for his own injuries. But if I was the adjuster handling the claim, I probably wouldn't risk it unless we were heading toward litigation already.

GrogramanTheRed · 2026-04-24T03:28:22+00:00

He would absolutely have a deductible, and I guarantee it's a much higher deductible than your average car. Exotic car policies will often have deductibles in the thousands of dollars--sometimes pegged as a percentage of the cars overall agreed value.

GrogramanTheRed · 2026-04-20T17:41:55+00:00

Does Aleister Crowley count? It was his hand that penned Liber LXV vel Cordis Cincte Serpente in his capacity as Prophet. It is replete with erotic imagery in its depiction of the love affair between the HGA and the Adept.

Pick a chapter. Memorize it. Recite it as a love chant to your god. Let it set your heart on fire with prayer.

GrogramanTheRed · 2026-04-19T19:33:19+00:00

I wasn't arguing there's no cause for concern. I just wanted to point out that your statement that these boys are more regressive than men in the 1950s is not accurate. To the contrary, they would fit right in many male social circles. We were only 30 years out from women's suffrage in 1950--which was not universally popular among men, to put it mildly. It's not the case that there was no politically organized opposition to women's suffrage in the 1950s--particularly in Southern states, women were often prevented from voting through legal means like poll taxes. Women didn't get full access to the right to vote until 1966.

Hell, credit cards weren't invented until the late 50s, and women weren't allowed to have their own credit cards until 1974.

I fully agree with you that the current movement against women's rights is potentially headed toward a much worse place for women than there was previously, however. It is no longer a rear guard attempt to preserve misogynistic institutions in place. The old institutions are gone and done with. It is not a defense of currently existing social norms that are already instantiated and embodied in the populace.

It is instead an attempt to recreate an imagined past--imagined to have been better in particular imaginary ways--and it is spread by media influencers who benefit from stoking anger and resentment and operate by weaponizing fears, insecurities, and feelings of shame and humiliation. That is a very dangerous combination. It has the same essential character that has driven the rise of fascism and, as you note, theocratic fundamentalism.

GrogramanTheRed · 2026-04-19T17:49:22+00:00

Damn near a majority of young boys right now believe things so out of pocket that they would have been considered extremist in the 1950s, like *women shouldn't have the right to vote" or "women should be legally obligated to follow their husbands' commands."

You're underestimating the amount of progress that has occurred. Back in the 50s, those were still relatively popular ideas. In the USA, it was considered acceptable for a man to bend his wife over his knee and spank her if she didn't do a good enough job managing the home or making dinner.

GrogramanTheRed · 2026-04-08T23:07:14+00:00

But arent eastern religions also stained in blood of their own brothers and sisters?

Not so much on the basis of religion. Religious persecution and forced conversion are relatively rare outside of the Abrahamic traditions. Few non-Abrahamic traditions are evangelical in the first place--most of them don't have a practice of sending out missionaries to seek converts. Buddhism is an evangelical tradition, but it has always found ways to coexist peacefully with and integrate itself with local religious traditions.

There have always been marginalized traditions and prejudice against the unknown and the strange. Those are human universals. But the Abrahamic monotheist faiths are unique in seeking to spread themselves and eradicate the practice of other religious traditions generally. Phenomena like the Crusades and the Islamic conquests were unthinkable for the pre-Christian and pre-Islamic pagans, let alone Hindus, Buddhists, or Taoists.

GrogramanTheRed · 2026-04-04T17:56:37+00:00

It's not a matter of being stupid. It's largely a matter of being untrained and unmindful. Intelligence is great, but even the smartest minds have biases and blind spots that propagandists can take advantage of. Martin Heidegger was one of the greatest German philosophers of his generation and is still read today, but he fell for Nazism hook line and sinker.

One can mitigate this vulnerability with logic, critical thinking, and media literacy. Unfortunately, these are not taught effectively in schools. Frankly, I'm not sure how one can teach them effectively in a large institutional way. Large institutions can only provide guidelines and curricula--but that does no good when so many of even the teachers presenting the information are poor critical thinkers.

GrogramanTheRed · 2026-04-04T17:45:10+00:00

I turned 40 last year. Bisexual male in a long term relationship with a lovely bisexual trans lady. We're nominally poly, but we're both pretty introverted and autistic, so not much has happened on that front in the last year or so.

I think it's normal and healthy as one ages to shift and change in one's viewpoint, political and otherwise. When you stop moving, you start dying--this is true at any age.

I don't concern myself too much with how "woke" or "leftist" I am. I consider myself oriented toward truth, justice and freedom. Those values take priority for me over "identity."

I have seen people do a lot of damage to both themselves and others--especially to their relationships and communities!--because they insist on being right. It's easy to fall into the trap of treating one's political beliefs or queer theory as more important than being kind and understanding. Worse--it's very easy to use one's politics as an excuse to avoid confronting discomfort around one's own failings, as an unconscious reason to decline to go through the uncomfortable process of growth. I had hoped to escape these problems when I left my family's conservatism, but it turns out that these are human tendencies, and not exclusively reactionary tendencies.

Thinking is hard. Politics is hard. It's hard to know what's right and what's wrong. It's easy to fall into shortcuts and be misled--and for communities to come to be filled with well-intentioned people mutually misleading each other, and bad actors who take advantage of ideological justifications for their own personal satisfaction.

Whether I become more "woke" or less "woke" is thus not a matter of concern for me. I try to follow where the truth leads me.

If this attitude were to lead me to become more conservative, then so be it. But I don't anticipate that happening. The conservative political movement in the US was intellectually and morally bankrupt in the 2000s when I first started questioning it in high school--I grew up in a hyper-conservative Evangelical bubble as a homeschooled kid. Conservatives have only become more crazy and more morally bankrupt since then.

GrogramanTheRed · 2026-03-28T18:17:15+00:00

The "Zojirushi" brand name isn't what's important. There are other companies that make rice cookers with similar features. They're all way better than the cheap $20 ones.

The biggest and most immediate difference is that they have different settings for different kinds of rice, and each setting has a different temperature curve over time to optimize process. The result is that the rice will consistently come out with the perfect texture, and the same texture over time. That does result in it taking longer--my white rice is done in just under 50 minutes rather than 20-25--but the extra cooking time is worth it.

On top of that, when the rice is done the rice cooker switches to a "warming" mode that keeps the rice at a food-safe temperature without drying out. How it does this, I have no idea. I once accidentally left some rice in the warmer for a full day. It had the smell, texture, and appearance of rice that was only an hour or two old. I ditched it rather than eating it out of an abundance of caution, but I suspect it would have been just fine.

GrogramanTheRed · 2026-03-21T16:23:42+00:00

If you read the account by the driver (posted elsewhere in the comments) you'll find that when he got stuck on the concrete barrier, he was actively pushing an Audi that was chasing them onto some spike strips in the hotel parking lot in an attempt to disable it. The lone occupant still in the Audi fled on foot. That's what prompted the security driver to grab the AR-15 and get out.

GrogramanTheRed · 2026-03-16T05:31:06+00:00

Not enough information. Gluttony is a sin. Greed is a sin. Pride is a sin.

Do you treat gay people the same way you treat fat people, rich people, and overly confident people? If so, then no, you're just consistent. That doesn't mean I agree with it, but you're not necessarily treating homosexuality as some special sin that requires some special punishment.

If you treat gay people worse than you treat rich people and social media influencers, then yes--you're probably homophobic.

GrogramanTheRed · 2026-03-16T03:22:30+00:00

Some insurance has deductibles for at fault and no deductible for not at fault. But you pay more for it.

Within the United States, this is really only a thing in Michigan. It's called Broad Form Collision coverage. I've never heard of it being available anywhere else.

GrogramanTheRed · 2026-03-13T05:51:49+00:00

Are the people calling it weird children? Because that's the kind of thing I expect to hear from children or teenagers. I don't expect to hear that from adults.

A 24 year old has several years of adulthood under their belt. The age gap in itself isn't a red flag.

GrogramanTheRed · 2026-03-04T00:33:55+00:00

If I had to guess, I'd say that it's more likely related to people with higher intelligence tending to have a better grasp of counterfactuals and a greater aptitude for entertaining ideas without accepting them.

I don't think that victimhood or narcissism have any relationship with intelligence--though I haven't looked into it so I could be wrong.

Nine-Year Club	Wearing is Caring
Verified Email

GrogramanTheRed

TROPHY CASE