It really doesn’t seem that far fetched. Though, we would have to collectively get more involved in city council/planning meetings

To a certain extent you are correct and that is the point. For those leaders not so engrossed in the dogma abstracting away the idea of god acts as a bridge. Someone showing up to AA must believe in something outside of themselves as being more important than themselves otherwise why would you improve yourself? For religious leaders who operate in institutions, the ways of the institutions must be upheld, but it is also obvious that the institutional ways are bullshit and change is slow, so compromise is made to enable those who see through the bullshit to participate without drawing the ire of the “true believers”

edit: this compromise has been going on for a while and acts as the basis of the Unitarian-Universalist denomination

This comment is entirely clueless to the nature of the American Catholics. The US would be in a much more neutral political position if the American Catholics actually followed the pope’s lead.

It crosses into willful ignorance once they reject an empathetic articulation of the information and they become malicious at roughly the same time. Though this is less “becomes” so much as “is revealed to be” i think

We might be early, from how i understand the age of the universe. If we don’t great filter ourselves out of existence soon we may become the elder species. The universe is remarkably young

Huh, neat tip, i’ve noticed everything orbiting this but never has this occurred to me. Thank you internet stranger

What, you expect us to take all the money we stole from everybody else and dump it in a big pile and light it on fire? What else are we supposed to do with such massive mountains of wealth but wreak havoc and destruction on those who don’t live like us? Have you even read the Bible? We’re the hand of God here to bring about the 1000 year reign of Jesus; now how are supposed to do that if we wasted all our money, neigh a single penny, loving our neighbors?

I’m pretty sure this is a problem inherent with patriarchal structures, which at the moment just about all major religions resemble in some way. This is not inherent to the organizing/formalizing of community spiritual practices; patriarchy is, however, so well established that it may as well be inherent to our time and place, and in western philosophy we can trace back the roots to the current abrahamic religious meta.

We exist in an era hyper-dominates by variants of of a very small number of religious practices, all of the alternative religions were wiped out and now we can readily conflate modern globe spanning patriarchies with the underlying concept of organized spiritual practices.

The next era, if we don’t wipe ourselves out, will see new religious practices metastasize that are less or entirely not cosmological and highly secular. We need to solve these problems, when you abandon the esoteric mythology it becomes natural to culturally organize around the state which can be just as dangerous as organizing around a divine sky daddy

I think assuming they operate their economy like the US does has a high probability of leading to committing grave errors

They put one in on 21st street a couple years ago much to the chagrin of the old ladies in the neighborhood. Ohio will not stand for these red aggressors, if you need gas you go to Marathon, BP or Speedway and suffer as God intended

Taxing churches just for being churches would be counter-productive. What needs to happen is the current set of rules regulating what counts as a church and what doesn’t needs to be tightened and enforced. There are tons of shit people running churches as their own personal profit machines and those need shut down. The Methodist churches built in every town in America, for example, are only barely hanging on by a thread and bring more good to their neighborhood than they do harm; their loss would be tragic.

If exercise doesn’t work for you then you can now deduce with more confidence that your depression is not mild.

Exercise works for me, my depression is mild. I require a lot of running, no amount of power walking pulls me out of a funk, i need 3 or 4 days of doing 20-40 minute runs to get to the good place. If it’s not helping or you can’t then you definitely need medical and social support to get out of the hole. This article, and thus the discussion was not intended to belittle anyone who finds exercise does not help them.

I, personally, found the article encouraging because it reminds me that i need to be better about my exercise routines to stay in better mental health. This article is trying to talk to my circumstance, hence the words “mild depression”

I’m not sure that “too depressed to exercise” is a medically recognized state short of being bedridden and comatose, so unless one is unable to get out of the bed to go to the bathroom saying “i’m too depressed to exercise” is just words being used to justify not going for a walk

What you are describing is absolutely not “mild depression”. I have seasonal and mild depression and exercising is absolutely a cure-all for me, when winter is running a bit too long i start getting back into running to get out of having to otherwise be on antidepressants seasonally.

My wife, on the other hand, has depression like you describe, and she requires a lot of support to keep her afloat. This article is definitely not talking to target your situation. I am so sorry you have to experience life the way you do, i hope for the treatments and support you find to bring the right balance for you to experience the full breadth of the joys of life

So based

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They can sure define the word “enlightenment” to be whatever they want. However, the spiritual concept traditionally referred to as “enlightenment” has been pretty consistent for millennia. Traditionally enlightened people would carry the traits of being at peace, able to experience joy through suffering, and having heightened sense of empathy and connectedness to those around them. All the billionaires i read about are selfish, miserable people with poor emotional intelligence and an insistence to project blame away from them; these are not traits of the enlightened

Sir, this is the internet, not everybody lives in the derp south, you gotta contextualize things for the rest of us

For when referring to a male cat. A female cat would be “La Chatte”

No, we do not. That much is clear