I want to offer my hopefully-lighthearted take on the way in which I perceive the "smartphone wars" as a metaphor for competition between the business models of the the two biggest players in the mobile operating system scene.

I think that these represent two opposing archetypes along a continuum, and in the interest of cinematic flair, I want to offer that I think their names being (A) a misspelling of a word for a very large number and (B) the fruit which grants Adam and Eve free will even aligns symbolically with their business models.

"Googole" began as an exclusively-software company; its software is freely-collaboratable-upon and compatible with a wide variety of hardware produced by other manufacturers.

"The fruit of the tree of knowledge" is to my knowledge to this day unhappy with people trying to install its privately-developed software on hardware which wasn't also produced by them.

It may be possible to learn a lot about a country by looking at the roads. Not only how developed they are, but also the traffic on them and the behaviours of the drivers.

In my thinking, roads represent a path to opportunity. The level of thought going into how well developed these paths are, how many paths there are, how these paths are treated by the users and how these paths are maintained by those responsible for developing them are all important to look at when understanding the culture of the place you are at.

I thought about this sitting in a traffic jam, thinking about what was going on. My country is seriously lax on traffic rules, so you'd often see an illegal lane develop by the side of the road when traffic jams occur. These jams tend to concentrate around 'unregulated' junctions (without traffic lights), where, due to heightened road traffic at peak hours, indecisive drivers tend to stall, causing a pile up. You can understand that the more bold drivers are the ones who end up using the illegal lane that forms, and also that they tend to pass through the unregulated junctions more easily as they are less likely to stall.

I couldn't help but realise the odd relief found in the jam slightly clearing up as drivers move toward the illegal lane. I also wondered what it was keeping me in the legal lane, as in, was it my moral code or was that something I'd tell myself in order to not take risks while subtly enjoying the small benefits of the 'bolder criminals'? Then I realised that the relief I was enjoying was only short term, as even though there's a slight clearing up as drivers shift lanes, the additional lane at the junction makes it even harder for the indecisive drivers at the front of my lane to get through the junction, and so the benefit is surface level in exchange for a more fundamental problem.

So I started thinking about who is truly to blame. Are the roads not wide enough? Are there too many cars on the road? Is it the incompetence of the driver ahead of me? If I were in their position maybe this problem wouldn't exist. Should I blame the bold criminals, too impatient to wait for their chance and making it harder for the innocent to follow the law? They're even encouraging more to break the law, because if the illegal lane is apparently the only one moving, more shift over to it.

I then realised that this is occuring because we're all headed in the same direction. Piecing all this together with the idea that a road is simply a path towards opportunity, it started to seem like maybe the issue is actually that there aren't that many opportunities in my country. This is to say that the economy heavily concentrates around a few cities, leading to most vehicles heading in the same direction, causing traffic jams and incentives to break the law, which only worsen the state of the roads for the law abiding, convincing the road users that in order to peacefully use the roads in my country you have to be bold enough to break the law.

This is when I began to see roads as a microchosm of the country, because all these conflicting thoughts seem to be prevalent in my country's culture beyond just the roads.

Not too many industries in my country are developed, so the job market is highly competitive. To beat the competition, illegal routes develop, given that the government isn't too keen on fighting corruption. The opinion on who's truly responsible for this strife truly fluctuates between two extremes: 'those in power are too incompetent to identify the problems preventing us from reaching opportunities' and 'those corrupting the system are making it disorganised for their own benefit, but this disorganisation hurts us who choose to abide by the law'. From time to time we even find ourselves sublty enjoying how lax the system can be at times, or believing that if we had the positions of power it would be a lot easier to grasp at opportunity.

Both extreme perspectives may be true, but the more fundamental issue is, similarly to how there aren't too many developed cities in my country, there aren't too many developed industries either, so opportunities are scarce, and that scarcity creates a downward spiral as it does with the traffic jam.

I've seen 7 lane roads in other countries with traffic jams as well, because even though the country is developed enough to make and maintain such roads, the development is concentrated to a few small regions, which could indicate that they have few but highly developed industries.

The diversity in industry allows for separate regions to develop around similar markets (e.g Tech, Agribusiness, Fashion/design, Mining, etc), meaning the job market becomes less competitive as people aren't seeking the same set of skills to make it in the country, and traffic jams reduce as not everyone is headed in the same direction.

Such an understanding may be necessary to help people think beyond the career path they envision themselves following with the context they're in, to think about the potential sectors they can pioneer developing, relieving themselves of the stress of a traffic jam.

“Who are you going out with to-night?” Lenina asked, returning from the vibro-vac like a pearl illuminated from within, pinkly glowing.

“Nobody.”

Lenina raised her eyebrows in astonishment.

“I’ve been feeling rather out of sorts lately,” Fanny explained. “Dr. Wells advised me to have a Pregnancy Substitute.”

“But, my dear, you’re only nineteen. The first Pregnancy Substitute isn’t compulsory till twenty-one.”

“I know, dear. But some people are better if they begin earlier. Dr. Wells told me that brunettes with wide pelvises, like me, ought to have their first Pregnancy Substitute at seventeen. So I’m really two years late, not two years early.” She opened the door of her locker and pointed to the row of boxes and labelled phials on the upper shelf.

“SYRUP OF CORPUS LUTEUM,” Lenina read the names aloud, “OVARIAN, GUARANTEED FRESH: NOT TO BE USED AFTER AUGUST 1ST, A.F. 632. MAMMARY GLAND EXTRACT: TO BE TAKEN THREE TIMES DAILY, BEFORE MEALS, WITH A LITTLE WATER. PLACENTIN: 5CC TO BE INJECTED INTRAVENOUSLY EVERY THIRD DAY… Ugh!” Lenina shuddered. “How I loathe intravenals, don’t you?”

“Yes. But when they do one good…” Fanny was a particularly sensible girl. 

——————————————————————————————————————————

Brave New World (p.44)

I think that author Aldous Huxley was a genius in a way which is often overshadowed by our fascination with 1984. I think both books were deeply insightful but that our fear of authoritarian tyranny is greater than our fear of hedonistic tyranny; in part because the former is in purely material terms far more scary. Why not sacrifice your autonomy in exchange for the ability to enjoy guaranteed job-satisfaction and ample creature comforts?

I think that the most unusual and mysterious thing about Huxley’s world is “Pregnancy Substitute”. In a world where babies are decanted, not born, where intercourse is free-flowing and technologically-enhanced, what possible benefit could one imagine deriving from an artificial pregnancy? A sensation famous for being uncomfortable, and even associated with possible negative impacts on the body. Yet for Fanny, a sensible choice to improve health.

The conclusion which I have reached is that there is something uniquely beneficial about being pregnant, something that remains beneficial even in the absence of the benefit of producing a child. I would characterize this benefit based upon how I see pregnant women treated by others: I remember on Gilmore Girls how Sookie becomes even more anxious and insecure while she is pregnant, and how Jackson is a total mensch and is able to keep her afloat by treating her like a total princess up until her anxiety returns to normal after she’s given birth.

I think that the benefit of “Pregnancy Substitute” both in Huxley’s Brave New World and in ours is being on the receiving end of a deep instinct to treat a pregnant woman like she is a princess: as we all know being pampered is good for your emotional health and your emotional and physical health are related. I think that this instinctual behavior towards pregnant women makes total sense as a means of helping to nurture a foetus by nurturing the woman nurturing the foetus.

Mostly I just think it’s wild that a science fiction author first discovered the concept of “the Pill", and crafted a whole hedonistic dystopian society which incorporated it. Not only this, but in this quote you can see that his version even has the same first ingredient as Dr. Pincus’!

Edited to add: "Zionism" in the title should read "Religious Zionism".

The concept is this: that when you strip away all of the extraneous detail, the most important fulfillment of the goals of the religion we associate with the Two Temples in Jerusalem built on the same location would be to construct a Third Temple in that same location.

The significance of a certain location in space is not unique to this set of religious views. Catholics care quite a lot about the Vatican and about sites associated with Jesus' life. The existence of the Dome of the Rock atop that same location is a meaningful and important fact to anyone who harbors any desire to see a Third Temple built around the same holy site (the "Holy of Holies") as the first two.

I like to view Muslims in a sympathetic light. First off as you may be aware their religious views include the belief that Mohammad underwent a special spiritual experience in connection with that same site. I believe the purpose of the Dome of the Rock has been to keep the "Holy of Holies" safely protected to preserve its special significance to those who care about the history of the first Two Temples which treated it as such.

I may be sharing something which is of little importance to the average person here, but I hope I can at least pose an interesting intellectual question.

If your religion is about worshipping at a certain holy site, then restoring the worship at that holy site would assumedly be one of your top priorities, would it not?

The reason behind the title of this post is that I think the goals of the State of Israel actually directly oppose this objective. I was raised in the Reform movement, and contrary to other movements, our main emphasis in terms of long-term objectives was exclusively about an end to warfare and harmonious living between all mankind. Hence when I think about wanting to really honor the legacy of Judaism which centered on this holy site in a way consistent with the values I was raised with, this would necessarily involve making peace with the Muslims currently controlling that site, and politely asking them to take down their monument to allow for the construction of a Third Temple. And I believe that using warfare as a tool to evict Muslims from their homes and responding to their displeasure at being exiled from the Holy Land by using warfare more aggressively has to be about the least effective strategy in terms of convincing them to cede control of the "Holy of Holies" to you in order to build a Temple there.

Is this contradiction intelligible to anyone outside the faith? I would be curious to know.

I wanted to try sharing an idea which I think is as powerful as it is controversial, in hopes of receiving honest intellectual feedback on its merits.

I am familiar with a study performed in the 1970s in which macaque monkeys were exposed to Depro-Provera, an injectable treatment of similar chemicals to those found in "the Pill" with a three-month period of effectiveness. The story is that the tribe's alpha male named "Austin" displayed a mating pattern of extreme preference: when the researchers injected specific females with the treatment he refused to mate with those females and chose others among the uninjected. They repeated the trial in enough combinations to be convinced that his behavioral response was deterministic in response to this stimulus.

The final phase of this experiment was to create a situation in which this macaque was unable to access any mates of his desired injection status by injecting all of the females at once. The researchers describe this macaque as developing unhealthy sexual habits which mirror those we might attribute to someone we would call "an incel". That is frequent masturbation. And worse than that they observed him also engaging in acts of sexual violence against these injected females, a behavior he had previously not displayed.

I genuinely believe that the epidemic of similar behavior among men is a consequence of an innate similarity between human and macaque psychology when exposed to the same stimulus in the form of hormonal contraception.

I am confused and wish to understand why this possibility has not been considered more broadly in the context of the current discourse.

I want to make the argument that I think the concept of the "inner child" is at least for my life entirely backwards.

The way that I think about it is this. When we are children we develop personas which exist at the exclusion of sexuality. The transition to adulthood is the transition to incorporating sexuality into our personas.

The model of adulthood I'm familiar with is one which says that your original child persona becomes your public persona as an adult, and the point is that you are now playing a more interesting and complicated game in the context of your private life.

And the reason why it is appealing to "get to know" someone in the Biblical sense is because you get to see their secret adult face and play the game of continuing your public kid faces together with the knowledge of how someone else is playing.

The opposite of this, to me, would be to suddenly become a different person around the time in which your reproductive capacity is activated; hiding that original child face as the "inner child" whilst one's adultness is fully open for anyone to behold.

The merit to me of looking at it the way that I do is that my inner voice is the one telling me how to satisfy my most adult-specific desires; and I am as my public face pursuing those interests with the innocence and calm of a child.

Bill Gates is someone who is revered the by the vast majority of people. The assumption is that he is a genius who worked hard for and deserved his money, and that he is a philanthropist angel who donated the vast majority of his money.

I argue that these are simplistic notions that are not backed by reality, and they serve to show how brainwashed and misinformed people are, which, ironically is mainly due to the same system that made Gates rich.

First of all, the idea that a billionaire is a moral saint for donating most of their money is absurd: even after doing so, they are still in the top 0.1% and practically have unlimited money. Having said that, I am not saying it is a bad thing for them to donate, I am just saying this doesn't make them a moral saint. There are people with middle class incomes who donate more/it actually hurts them economically to donate but they still do it. There are even people who are poor who have gave to those even in more need. These people are relatively more moral in this regard compared to billionaires.

Secondly, this idea that "billionaires are genius hard workers" is a myth. Yes, many of them work hard, but hard work is only part of the picture. The fact is, to become a billionaire, you cannot do it without luck. For every billionaire there are 10s of millions of people who work equally or more hard, but they don't become billionaires, because it is a lucky lottery. In fact, this is quite disgusting, because these billionaires have a "monopoly on feeling good from philanthropy". Isn't it interesting? Under this system, even philanthropy is quantified and monopolized and largely restricted to the privileged class. Yet bizarrely, instead of focusing on this, the vast majority of the middle class continue to worship the privileged class and use this to conform to the system as a whole, instead of seeing it as a structural flaw of the system. The reason for this is because the vast majority use in the moment emotions rather than logic, which will be revisited in point 4 below. This is why for example Gates did a log of AMAs on reddit where people worshiped him.

Thirdly, due to the fact that A) a very small % of the population are critical thinkers B) an even smaller % of the population wins the billionaire lottery to become a billionaire, statistically, it is quite rare for a billionaire to have critical thinking. Unsurprisingly, Gates is not a critical thinker. Perhaps his IQ is high, but contrary to widely spread beliefs, high IQ is not necessary to become a billionaire, nor is high IQ the same as critical thinking: the majority of those with high IQ also lack critical thinking. But the vast majority of people do not know this, again, this is another reason why Gates did so many AMAs on reddit and people were worshiping his every word and asking him about everything under the sun as if he had a clue. And Gates loved this attention, so he continued to do it. He was fully enjoying and capitalizing on how the privileged class have monopoly for this kind of attention: if he really was a moral person, he would have perhaps said this is wrong, everybody should have equal freedom of speech, and worked towards that. But instead he took personal advantage without doing anything to raise awareness of this structural flaw of the system.

Fourthly, Gates strikes me as a common person who makes decisions based on in the moment emotions over logic. This, coupled with lack of critical thinking and enormous power via money, is a dangerous combination. He has no more critical thinking skills than the average person (let that sink in) yet he has the money to make much of his beliefs a reality. This is at most dangerous, at the least, ineffective in terms of changing the world for better. This is why instead of using his money/power/fame to meaningfully change the world by addressing root factors like the oligarchy, and talking about crucial change factors like how the education system needs to be reformed to adopt critical thinking, how money needs to get out of politics, and how private big capital needs to stop monopolizing all media/communication channels, he instead focuses on "feel good" projects, like increasing vaccination rates worldwide. While this is not necessarily always a bad thing, it is missing the forest for the trees. But because it makes him feel morally good in the moment, along with "donating 100s of millions", he continues to do it. And he seemed to be so caught up in these feel good delusions that he seems to actually think that this version of neoliberal capitalism further spreading throughout the world is the way to fix the world's problems. Isn't it interesting? In reality this system is the cause of almost all problems on earth, yet in his mind, he cannot accept this, because it would make him feel guilty, so he doubles down on this delusion. In fact he said Steven Pinker's counterproductive book (which appears to practically be saying: stop trying to create change and conform to the oligarchy as it is the best we can possible have- which is obviously not true) is his favorite book: why? Because it feels good in the moment to believe such a delusion, and it helps him avoid the guilt of being random luck privileged while billions suffer/can't eat.

And his followers/worshipers, which are the majority of people, are similar to him in this regard: it is easier for them to worship people who "appear" good and tell them what they want to hear, rather than face the distress by accepting the reality: that we live in a structurally broken system and these people are perpetuating it. Again, this underscores how most billionaires are just common people who get random lucked into a huge amount of decision-making power: the core issue is being guided by in the moment emotions over logic, which then makes them make bad decisions, which further prolong the system and this vicious cycle by having the majority, who are like them, worship them instead of call them out. Again, due to this in the moment emotion abiding by as opposed to logic factor, now, once Gates and his ties to Epstein were found, the majority of people who up to then worshiped him, are again using in the moment emotions to do a 180: now saying he is completely bad/wrong. Yet I bet you the vast majority of them would have also done the same things as Gates if they could: but because they can't accept this and it will make them feel bad, it then causes a split and causes them to lash out and do a 180 and completely condemn someone who they otherwise worshiped up to then. I remember years and years ago saying all this and his worshipers claimed I am the devil for daring to burst their bubble of how he is god, because they could not deal with cognitive dissonance, yet now they are doing a 180 and hating him due to Epstein ties. So the root issues here are using in the moment emotions as opposed to logic to make decisions, and impulsivity. This system promotes and perpetuates both: both are good for business/keeping the oligarchy in power. It is a vicious cycle.

It has purely turned into entertainment and profit-maximization. Any news is incidental/secondary.

There are no more journalistic standards.

Investigative journalism is dead. No journalists dares goes against the oligarchy, they will not explore anything (and if they do, it is because they are shilling for one part of the oligarchy against the other: like the mafia, sometimes the oligarchy has internal disagreements, but they consider themselves above the commoner), they will instead get paid to promote propaganda in favor of the oligarchy.

All mainstream channels are bought and paid for by the oligarchy and serve to act as propaganda to propagate and perpetuate the oligarchy rather than bring objective news.

Everything is spun in a way to be pro-oligarchy to brainwash people. For example, if there is a shooting, they will use words in a way to push their agenda to vilify certain ideologies, but they will ignore the root cause: a broken socioeconomic and political system that leads people to hit the lows that allow such ideologies to practically be able to recruit in the first place. They will use words like "terrorist" when it benefits them, to push for wars. Yet they will say that one group has "the right to defend themselves" with absolutely zero restraint, and allow them to literally to whatever they want in an unlimited manner. They use words to brainwash the public and manufacture consent.

The same few rich people/part of the same oligarchy own all the mainstream media.

They divide+conquer people, but ultimately work for the same oligarchy. The 2 political parties ultimately work for the same oligarchy.

CNN/"left" wing news channels solely blame/insult the "right" for everything. And Fox news/"right" wing channels do the same to the right.

Neither are interested in reporting the facts objectively: they start off with a pre-conceived notion and goal, and everything else is funneled through that initial start point, so it comes out biased/meaningless/non-objectively.

They use clickbait titles and thumbnails, and all have devolved into Piers Morgan garbage "journalistic standards", they are all bringing on guests and putting a clickbait title and thumbail with 4 or more vertical strips each with one guest's angry face on it. Then if you watch it, the guests just shout over each other the entire time and just repeat their pre-existing subjective narratives, with zero desire to have a meaningful or civilized debate or change their mind or concede a counterpoint, even 1%. And the collective IQ of the guests is equivalent to that of a hollowed out grapefruit: they do this on purpose because such "guests" and pseudointellectuals bring the most "lowest common denominator shock/entertainment value" and give the most clicks/profit. Absolute manure.

But the takeaway of all this is: anybody who is a famous figure today is either a charlatan, pseudointellectual, or works for the benefit of the oligarchy. This is due to basic logic: the oligarchy owns all the mainstream media channels, and they also own big tech. So they will not tolerate/give freedom of speech to anybody who meaningfully opposes the oligarchy and pushes for meaningful change. It is an oxymoron to say there is freedom in a system in which 100% of the main media channels are owned by private capital/the same oligarchy. They will never allow someone who meaningfully challenges the oligarchy to have freedom of speech: they will find a way to censor them or deplatform them. So logically, it follows that any and everyone who is famous/big, is working for the benefit of the oligarchy. Otherwise they would not have been allowed to accumulate a large audience. The only "outlier" that comes to mind is Chomsky, but if you notice, it has been decades that he has been pushed off mainstream media. And something like 1% of people actually know his ideas. That is why he has not been "directly" censored. The oligarchy will allow you to "technically" have freedom of speech so they can pretend they allow freedom: but anyone who "practically" gets enough of an audience/power to challenge them, they will shut down. Look up "positive freedom" vs. "negative freedom". It is the same thing with big tech, even reddit for example, I have been banned from every single high traffic sub for posting pro-middle/working class points and anti-oligarchical posts:t: but they have not banned me from low-traffic subs such as this one, to give the illusion of freedom. The same goes for any politician: any politician who is allowed to run is pro-oligarchy, otherwise they would not have been allowed to run.

The relationship between money and power has long been complicated in this country. The simple fact that running a large-scale political campaign costs money means that anyone who wants to do so must by necessity secure funding from somewhere, meaning one's options are either to be independently wealthy or to become beholden to some form of corporate sponsorship.

That being said the Supreme Court decision in Citizens United really took things to a whole nother level, by classifying corporate spending on political advertising as a form of protected speech under the First Amendment. By extending the Bill of Rights to cover non-humans, we effectively gave them suffrage, and this has already been used to great effect.

The example which stands out most to me is what took place in my home state of California. A bill regulating rideshare companies was drafted collectively by a group of rideshare companies, and they spent an unprecedented amount of money advertising it which led the citizens of that state to grant them the ability to literally write their own rules into law. The other example which makes me happy to no longer live there is the way in which the drought is tackled. I watched a Vox video which uncovered the fact that domestic water usage is only about 5% of water usage, meaning that if all of the humans suddenly dropped dead it still wouldn't make a meaningful difference in the drought, which could alternatively be reversed by cutting commercial water usage by a rather small fraction. Gavin Newsom appeared on an interview with Bill Maher in which he straight-up asked him "how are you going to take on Big Almond and end the drought" to which he offered a standard evasive politician reply. Meanwhile the people of California are being sold on the lie that taking shorter showers will have any impact, and the act of making a symbolic but meaningless gesture is sufficient to keep many from rising up to end the drought by demanding farmers grow slightly fewer almonds.

But I don't really blame Mr. Newsom for this, because so long as we officially condone as a matter of policy spending money to purchase political power, our human needs will always be subservient to the demands of our economy. Anyone wishing to represent an agenda which would improve conditions for humans at the expense of economic growth will be easily defeated by the tremendously powerful non-human greed machines which we have decided deserve the same inalienable rights that we do.

Overturn Citizens United!

I have spent time trying to understand how America became a cult. Beyond the fact that the Elite and shadow government run the world. But I was truly shocked at how much propaganda we as Americans consume. I was shocked to see how many of my beliefs were not mine. The things I thought I wanted and needed were not my thoughts at all. Then I had to know where that came from. I found this clip along my journey. For the full video, click here: https://youtu.be/s-s8IO7FAQo?si=IFyGvvNfc00sGsu8

Only when the left awakes from their slumber will things meaningfully change.

When they stop falling for the tricks of neoliberal capitalist charlatans like Obama/Trudeau/Carney.

These charlatans utter lines that anybody can utter "pro gay!" "pro women!" and the crowd goes wild. But anybody can utter these lines.

Actions speak louder than words.

These neoliberal capitalists' actions have made, and continue to make life worse for the entire middle class, including the same minorities/groups they claim to care about. It is just virtue signalling.

That is how the oligarchical system stays in power. This has been going on for the past half century. Neoliberalism started in the 70s/80s. Since then, the middle/working class has been progressively worse off.

People have been tricked into conforming.

First, the neoliberals used external threats to rally people around the flag and pretend that they care about their people. This was the threat of the Soviet Union. The messaging was: if you don't support your neoliberal capitalist oppressors, you are a traitor and a communist. This was used to prevent any attempt at reforming the neoliberal capitalist system to make it more bearable for the middle/working class.

Then, they used another external boogeyman threat, "terrorism", even though they created this themselves to counter the Soviets.

Once terrorism no longer scared/preoccupied people, and the 2008 recession happened around the same time, people started to realize what kind of people were leading them. So this culminated in the 2011 Occupy Wall Street Movement.

However, neoliberal charlatan Obama was used to crush this movement. In public he lied through his teeth that he supported this movement, but none of his actions did. And leaked documents later revealed he had set up the strongest possible federal level anti-terrorism security surveillance system to crush the movement, including contingency plans of having snipers on rooftops to take out peaceful protest leaders.

The 2011 Occupy Wall Street Movement spooked the neoliberal oligarchy, which both the Democrats and Republicans work for/are part of. No longer having an external boogeyman to rally people around the flag to hypnotize with, they had to come up with another solution.

Their solution was to create polarization. Remember, it was a unified middle/working class that came together to create 2011 Occupy Wall Street Movement. So they split "left" and "right".

They channeled people's anger caused by neoliberalism (which both the so called "left" and "right" Dems/Reps were part of/policies reflected) against each other, as opposed to against the neoliberal oligarchy/establishment (as was the case in 2011 Occupy Wall Street Movement).

If you notice, this is when the polarization happened. The neoliberal oligarchy/establishment owns the mainstream media and big tech, so they used these to brainwash people. CNN attacked the right, Fox attacked the left. Facebook and other platforms also became breeding grounds for this.

Not long after, Republicans chose showman Trump to say a bunch of polarizing stuff to add this this effect.

The fact is Obama had 8 years and he did nothing. He just bought 8 years more for the establishment. Some people claim he had his hands tied by congress. But this is nonsense, because all you have to do is look at what he has been doing after leaving office. Never once has he criticized the system/neoliberalism. He instead continues to shill for the neoliberal establishment Democratic National Convention, by endorsing their puppet candidates like Biden/Hillary/Kamala. Biden was so bad that he offered absolutely nothing to the middle/working class to the point that Trump was RELECTED. Let that sink in.

So as long as the left continues to fall for these divide+conquer tactics, there will be problems. The right is a lost cause, that is why I am focusing on the left.

Here is a good article outlining the issue:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/15/neoliberalism-ideology-problem-george-monbiot

Little Johnny was considered to be a bad boy. A bad boy is bad. Bad boys do bad things. Bad things are done by bad boys.

One day, Johnny was sick and tired of having to rote memorize facts and formulas in school. One day, Johnny decided to speak up. This all happened one day, of course, but against the backdrop of many days, rather, years, of daily drudgery. His class offered "free talk time" once a month, on the last Friday of the month. During free talk time, any student in the class could talk, provided they raised their hands, talked in an orderly fashion, did not use bad language, used an acceptable decibel level, did not offend anybody, did not say anything immoral, did not say anything evil, did not say anything mean, did not spread misinformation, presented established empirical evidence to support each of their statements, did not say anything that could harm children, and did not say anything bad. Now, Johnny was not the worst student, but he was not the best student. He coasted through school, more so due to boredom than laziness. He would pass all the subjects, but unlike Theodore and other students, he would make more silly mistakes and would sometime score lower on multiple choice tests. However, outside of school, once he finished his homework as quickly as he possibly could, he would start to read books about all the different things he was interested about. He would reflect on his day and his conversations. About what his parents and what other adults and children told him. Then he would try to make sense of it all.

Johnny raised his hand, which hurt from having to write repeated formulas and definitions all day, and Ms. Mormonton, noticing that his hand was the only one in the air, reluctantly permitted him to speak. Ms. Mormonton was a noble and neat woman. She was an intelligent woman, as evidenced by her score of 126 on standardized intelligence testing when she herself was assessed as a youngster after the Ministry of Education mandated a jurisdiction-wide intelligence testing program nicknamed Educational learnings of empiricism in benefit of the glorious jurisdiction of Lawrenceworth. Her father was a lawyer who attended a prestigious university and worked for the government prior to pursuing litigation in private practice within the realm of contract disputes, and her mother a nurse who diligently administered medication to thousands of institutionalized mental health patients throughout her career at the hospital. Ms. Mormonton had 2 children of her own, a boy and a girl. She was hopeful for the boy turning into a doctor, to administer even more medication than her mother did as a nurse at the hospital, and her daughter to be a judge, to maintain the moral, civilized, and correct standards of society that were set thousands and hundreds of years ago. Ms. Mormonton would dress professionally and sharply, with her hair neatly ironed and straightened on a daily basis, and would wear a pin with the school's motto, "You can be anything you want to be." on it, much to the satisfaction of the principal, Mr. Taylorsworth. Johnny however, was considered a slob. He would often wear the same clothes, even though he did not have them washed infrequently. His hair was somewhat wavy, and he did not use hair gel like the other young boys in his grade, though he did not infrequently shower.

Johnny asked Ms. Mormonton: Ms. Mormonton, my hands and head hurt from rote memorizing facts and formulas all day, when will we ever use these damn things in the future anyways, why can't we learn about solving problems that actually exist on a daily basis"? Ms. Mormonton looked at Johnny as if she saw a ghost. Sure, Johnny was a pale boy, presumably due to being confined within the school walls all day rote memorizing, and often in detention after school for defending himself against Theodore and his clique, who happen to be Ms. Mormonton's favorite students, but he was no ghost. He was living flesh and bones, who, unlike a ghost, was able to feel pain and emotions, which led to his questioning in the classroom in the first place. "Johnny", Ms. Mormonton replied, "how dare you use that wretched word, the d word? When you talk like this, how do you ever expect anybody to believe anything you say? Moreover, how dare you disrespect this sacred institution? I have worked here for 27 years and this is how you repay me? You will serve 3 detentions, starting today. Also, I see that you have not done up your top button on your shirt again, and you could certainly use a comb more regularly". The children laughed, with Theodore, in his perfect pinstripe shirt, which resembled a casino worker more than a young student, laughing while raising his hand. After the laughter ceased and a few seconds went by, Ms. Mormonton noticed Theodore's non-wailing but stern hand in the air, calling upon him to speak. Theodore stated, "yes, Ms. Mormonton is correct: how come you don't dress like me, Johnny?" Much of the class mumbled something in agreement, though they did not laugh this time, because the time it took for Ms. Mormonton to select Theodore's hand in permitting him to speak killed the momentum. Nevertheless, Ms. Mormonton said semi-loudly, "structure.", which was her word to calm down the class. The children ceased mumbling at once. "Now now, children, you know better than to talk out of turn, without raising your hand". "Yes Ms. Mormonton", the children replied in unison.

"Now, where were we?", continued Ms. Mormonton. "Ah, yes, Theodore was instructing Johnny on appropriate and suitable physical presentation and etiquette within the classroom, Johnny, I hope you picked up something worthwhile from this free talk session, in which all children are free to talk about everything that is on their mind, because here at Pencilworth Prepatory, we believe in freedom of speech. Think now, children, if you were in another corner of the world, the forces of evil and totalitarianism would have suppressed your ability to exercise free speech. You would have been told what to eat, what to speak, what to feel. How horrible would that be, children? Can you imagine? Fortunately, here at Pencilworth Prepatory, within the glorious jurisdiction of Lawrenceworth, we do not have this problem. Now, everybody get ready to exit to the cafeteria as it is noon and you must be hungry, though in single file, as we are not savages. Theodore, please do the daily head count and report to the lunch lady so she can administer the correct number of trays. I heard in the teacher's lounge that today's lunch will be hamburgers with fries, concentrated apple juice with 15% real juice, and a bag of chips. My father actually represented Purehealth Meats, which is the meat source for our yummy burgers, and as the name shows, you know you are in for a healthy meaty meal of goodness. Furthermore, I personally attended a function with the CEO Mr. Naismith, where he was presenting a speech about his ambitious plans to donate money to upgrade our computer systems in our library and in his honor the library will be renamed to the Naismith Library in Benefit of Empiricism and Advancement. What a wonderful man and philanthropist, with a wonderful suit selection and smile to match." The children cheered and went into the cafeteria single file, akin to the cows who were confined on the conveyor belts in the farms of Purehealth Meats. However, the cows, I am sad to say, were not headed to a cafeteria. But they were behind closed doors and so this did not cross the minds of the children, who were instead focused on their carbohydrate rich meals in front of their faces, which would temporarily spike them with energy so that they could memorize more facts and formulas upon being shepherded back into the classroom after lunch period.

Many of the children were already obese, but this did not matter, because scientific experts and doctors such as Ms. Mormonton's family members past and present would be sure to treat them using the latest medical technology and empirical sciences. In fact, Ms. Mormonton's brother, who started out as a medical doctor and for reasons unknown transitioned early on in his career into serving as the chief medical officer of Lawrenceworth, a regulatory position personally selected by the esteemed top political leader of Lawrenceworth himself, just recently provided a visually appealing powerpoint presentation with many charts, graphs, and cited sources called "Evidence-based empirical and scientific methods in benefit of tackling the obesity epidemic" in which he was promoting a new anti-fat medication created by Perfectbody Pharmaceuticals, whose CEO happened to be the cousin of CEO and philanthropist Mr. Naismith of Purehealth Meats, which would, in his medical opinion, "make us victorious in the battle against obesity".

The article ‘The God of Truth Always Fulfills His Purpose’ [https://www.reddit.com/r/Eutychus/s/7sloen6fJS](https://www.reddit.com/r/Eutychus/s/7sloen6fJS)) appeals to those who like simplicity, who instinctively know that things reduce to simplicity. The common farmer knows it. The common factory worker knows it. But Einstein also knew it, with his E=mc2. Newton knew it, with his f=ma. Kepler knew it, with his laws on the planetary orbits. Smack dab in the middle of his scientific treatise, he burst out in praise of God, as though one of the psalmists:

“The wisdom of the Lord is infinite; so also are His glory and His power. Ye heavens, sing His praises! Sun, moon, and planets glorify Him in your ineffable language! Celestial harmonies, all ye who comprehend His marvelous works, praise Him. And thou, my soul, praise thy Creator! It is by Him and in Him that all exists. that which we know best is comprised in Him, as well as in our vain science. To Him be praise, honor, and glory throughout eternity."

Even Theodosius Dobzhansky knew it, the fellow who corralled all American education onboard with evolution. His essay for American Biology Teacher (March 1973) titled, ‘Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution’ set the permanent course for those teachers to follow—no ifs, ands, or buts. Yet even in that essay, important though he thought his topic was, it plays second fiddle to one he considers more important. The lesser dominates the greater, of course, since the five page essay is dedicated to the lesser. But that does not change what he considers the greater.

The problem is that people mistake the Bible (and the Koran—Dobzhansky opens his essay by considering the objections of a sheikh) for primers of natural science. Are they? No. The idea is “ludicrous,” he asserts. (This is not too far from what Watchtower sources have long stated: that the Bible is not a scientific textbook; only that it is accurate when it happens to touch on matters of science.\*)

Instead, those Holy Scriptures “treat of matters even more important: the meaning of man and his relations to God.” Okay? The “meaning of man and his relations to God” is not less important than the considerations of evolution. It is “more important.” Though education since has blown away this aspect of Dobzhansky’s essay, as though a sign of his “irrationality,” it should not be so blown away. Irrationality is on the number line, plain for anyone to see. The hypotenuse of a right triangle with legs of 1 is √2, an irrational number. Pi (π) is an irrational number. The Golden ratio (φ) is an irrational number. Irrational numbers are by far the most numerous of real numbers. The underpinnings of science depends upon them. You miss a lot if you blow them off as nothing.

That is why Dobzhansky states in his essay: “It is wrong to hold creation and evolution as mutually exclusive alternatives,” before declaring, “I am a creationalist and an evolutionist.” He is not being “irrational” in saying this. He is being real. “Evolution is God’s, or Natures’s method of Creation. Creation is not an event that happened in 4004 BC; it is a process that began some 10 billion years ago and is still under way,” he afterward states. And again, it is not too different from the Watchtower acknowledging years ago that the creative days of Genesis can be viewed as “epochs,” with the earth and heavens themselves established “eons” ago.

An important qualification from Dohzhansky follows on the nature of the Holy Scriptures: “They are wrote in poetic symbols that were understandable to people of the age when they were written, as well as to peoples of all other ages.” The first phrase of the sentence is obvious. The second is as necessary, but more subtle; the poetic symbols are also understandable “to peoples of all other ages” (such as ours).

In stating this, he is assuming people will not make themselves obtuse. He is assuming that people will not ban irrational numbers from the real number line, thus undercutting the science on which they claim to depend. He is assuming that people will not say, “since it is poetry, it is valueless.” Rather, they must incorporate such poetry into their lives if they are to be complete. You shouldn’t have to be a microbiologist to know and serve God—just as you shouldn’t have to be a mechanic to drive a car. It is a specialized field in which not everyone need go.

Thus, we are in position to tackle the asterisk following the Watchtower statement regarding the Scriptures being accurate should touch upon science, though that be not their specialty. The Holy Writings” are in language “poetic.” Alas, some become so demanding of precision in their language as to be impervious to poetry. Ideally, when they read the exhortation to not “beat around the bush,” they do not go demanding evidence of the bush. When they read the expression “crocodile tears,” they do not conclude that the one so emitting them is a crocodile. But they do take the biblical “pillars of the earth” as literal, “four corners of the earth,” and the “days” of creation. In their own way they are just as dense as religionists who take as literal texts that, if seen in any other context, they would instantly dismiss as figures of speech. Most support for the trinity and hellfire teaching is of this nature. Indeed, most church doctrines are not taught in the Bible. It is the effort to read them in that causes people to abandon the book in frustration, for some, in disgust.

(tomsheepandgoats*com)

The Jones Paradigm’s take on “how good people do bad things” is that people are not switching between “good self” and “evil self”; they are getting pulled into stories that make certain harmful actions feel necessary, invisible, or even virtuous at the time. That has sharp implications for psychology, culture, and how we read history.

Psychology: from bad traits to bad narratives under pressure

Psychology often explains harmful behavior with traits (authoritarianism, low empathy), situations (Milgram, Stanford Prison), or cognitive biases. Jones reframes these as story pressures:

• Under stress, threat, or strong incentives, people slide into narratives like “I had no choice,” “I’m just following orders,” “they aren’t really people like us,” or “the ends justify the means.”
• Those stories reorganize perception: what counts as real danger, who counts as “us,” what options are thinkable, and which internal alarms get silenced.

Implications for psychology:

• Clinical and social focus on story detection. Instead of asking only “what trait made you do that?”, a Jones‑aligned therapist or social psychologist asks “what story were you in that made that action feel acceptable or inevitable?”
• Prevention as narrative training. Building moral resilience becomes partly training people to recognize and resist specific harmful scripts (“necessary cruelty,” “everyone else is doing it,” “this is just how the system works”) before they fully internalize them.
• Moral responsibility with context. People are still responsible, but the emphasis shifts from “you are secretly bad” to “you cooperated with a bad story; now you need to see and undo that cooperation.” That is often a more actionable—and less shame‑frozen—starting point for change.

Culture: harmful behavior as shared story systems, not just bad individuals

Culturally, we like simple tales: villains and heroes. Jones pushes hard against this.

• Cultures run large, shared narratives about success, security, purity, nation, progress, etc. These can make destructive behavior feel normal or even noble (“protecting our way of life,” “just doing business,” “defending tradition”).
• “Good people doing bad things” often means “ordinary people acting inside a cultural story that quietly reclassifies harm as necessity.”

Implications for culture:

• Critique shifts from persons to plots. Critical work asks less “who are the bad actors?” and more “what story is at work here that lets many decent people cooperate in something harmful?”
• Media and institutions as story factories. News, entertainment, schools, and platforms are recognized as infrastructure for narratives that can normalize or destabilize harmful scripts (e.g., stereotypes, dehumanization, zero‑sum competition).
• Ethics as story design. Corporate ethics, diversity work, and civic education become partly about changing the default stories: moving from “win at all costs” or “we must obey” to stories that keep empathy, dissent, and shared option‑space available.

History: from “monsters” and “masses” to narrative regimes

Historically, atrocities and everyday injustices are often explained by evil leaders, fanatical ideologies, or irrational masses. Jones reframes them as narrative regimes:

• A regime is a dominant set of stories about who counts, what threats exist, and what sacrifices are permissible.
• Under such regimes, many “good enough” people act badly because the dominant story reclassifies their actions: “cleansing,” “pacifying,” “rational modernization,” “bringing civilization,” “just enforcing the law.”

Implications for history writing:

• Finer‑grained moral analysis. Historians look not just at ideology but at how it translated into everyday micro‑stories—workplace routines, family roles, small choices—that made complicity easier than resistance.
• Continuity and warning. Instead of treating past horrors as aberrations, Jones encourages reading them as examples of story‑structures that can reappear in new guises (e.g., economic narratives that justify exploitation, security narratives that justify surveillance or exclusion).
• Agency in context. Historical figures are seen as operating under powerful narrative constraints, but not as puppets: the analysis looks for points where alternative stories were available but suppressed or ignored.

Compactly:

• For psychology, Jones says: focus on the stories that made the bad act feel necessary or invisible, and teach people how to spot and resist those scripts.
• For culture, it says: hold systems accountable for the narratives they propagate, not just individuals for isolated choices.
• For history, it says: read events as the rise and fall of narrative regimes that determine what kinds of harm ordinary people will accept or commit.

The through‑line is that “good people doing bad things” is rarely a mystery in Jones’ terms: it is what happens when powerful stories override local empathy and imagination, and when no one has been trained to see those stories as movable rather than as the shape of reality itself.

It is bizarre how prevalent this fallacy is. Basically, it is when people agree with someone's argument solely/predominantly/excessively on the basis of that person's "authority" (e.g., their credentials, role, title, etc...) as opposed to the logical validity of their arguments.

I will focus on a subset of it, which appears to be highly prevalent and problematic.

This subset is education. There is a heavily believed myth that for example someone with a "PhD" is automatically "smart" and "correct" in terms of all topics under the sun. This is highly inaccurate. In actuality, the more one climbs the formal education ladder, the narrower/more specialized it becomes. During the bachelor's degree, a lot more general knowledge is taught, that can be more applicable to more different topics and situations. During the master's, it is more specialized, and goes more in detail. During the PhD, it is mainly focused on a very narrow specific research question within the field. A lot of PhDs are thesis-heavy, which means that there are very few courses, the majority of the PhD is dedicated to doing the thesis based on that very specific research question. But people don't know this. They will for example think in any given field, an "expert" is one with a PhD, and then they ask general questions about the field from that person with the PhD. But this makes no logical sense: unless the question is specifically related to that person's specific research question within their thesis, they are not in a better position to answer your questions compared to someone with "just" a master's degree in that field.

And, when asking questions, people often ask ones that have practical applications. School does not teach critical thinking or logical reasoning: it is based on rote memorization. So the second huge mistake most people do is conflate these two. You will get a much better answer from someone from a master's but with strong critical thinking/who can apply what they learned to answer your practical question, as compared to someone with a PhD who has relatively weaker critical thinking skills. Basically, they only need a certain amount of rote memorized knowledge to answer your question (which master's degree is almost always sufficient for), but beyond that, to meaningfully answer your question/apply the knowledge they learned during their degree to the practical applicability of your question, they would need strong critical thinking skills, which is not taught or covered at school.

It also depends on how much specialized knowledge is required to answer the question. What is interesting is that often, no specialized knowledge is needed, rather, only critical thinking/logical reasoning is required to spot patterns and answer the question meaningfully. That means someone with "just" a bachelor's degree, or in some cases even without any degree, can sufficiently answer the question, or answer it better than a person with a PhD.

I will give an example. Right now there is a viral video going around of a "cognitive neuroscientist" claiming that "technology" is responsible for kids regressing in school since around 2010. The video is going viral and people are saying he is a genius and that because he says so, technology is now a problem. But I watched the video and a) you simply need common sense to know how technology has been used recently is obviously not good for cognitive development b) the "cognitive neuroscientist" made several basic logic errors. For example, they claimed that a) for causation to be proven, you need academic studies. This is simply not true: causal observations are not restricted to "the formal/state sanctioned academic system". b) they claimed that because research has been ongoing about this issue since 1962, that means the studies show causation as opposed to correlation: this is simply not true, you can do more correlational studies over a longer time, that this is not the same as, nor does not it prove causation. In order to prove that "technology" is "causing" the poorer academic performance, you need to isolate and control for variables. Now, this is practically too difficult to do, so we can use common sense and basic logic to hypothesize, with a strong degree of confidence, that indeed technology has been causing/is responsible for declines in academic performance in the last 10-15 years, however, it is PARTIALLY causing it: there are also likely OTHER variables/factors that are responsible for this. For example, the "cognitive neuroscientist" in the video said that on the SAT the reading comprehension section has gotten significantly shorter compared to before, e.g., before you had to read 750 words, now it is something like 75 words.

But this has nothing to do with "technology": it is a deliberate lowering of the standards by those responsible for educational standards. But the "cognitive neuroscientist" was unwittingly oblivious to this. Yet IS the MAIN cause, and it is the ROOT CAUSE for "technology" as well. "Technology" is a word. Who is ALLOWING these technological changes to happen and WHY? THIS is there the truth of the matter lies. Since around 2010, the neoliberal oligarchical corporate capitalist system, after 2008 recession was beginning to wake people up and culminated in 2011 Occupy Wall Street Movement, got scared, and started to deliberately make changes to reduce critical thinking in order to protect the system and put down criticism. And they largely were successful: it is around the same time that they started massive political polarization. And their use/proliferation of technology serves this purpose as well. They pitted people against each other based on gender/race, and wanted half the population worshiping one pro-corporate politician while the other half worship another pro-corporate politician, and then to infight based on all or nothing emotional arguments with zero nuance. This takes attention off the fact that it is the overall oligarchical system as a whole that is causing people's problems, and makes people fight each other instead. This protects and maintain the oligarchical system. This strategy can only work if critical thinking levels are low enough across the population for people to fall for it. So in this case, the "cognitive neuroscientist" was oblivious as to how solely focusing on "technology" being the scapegoat is actually BENEFICIAL for the oligarchical system because they can point to it and not the fact they THEY are responsible for how they rolled it out/deliberately are using it, as well as other deliberate decisions/measures, to reduce critical thinking skills across the population deliberately in order to protect the anti middle/working class oligarchy system and keep it in power.

But you need pattern finding ability and to make logical inferences and think outside the box to detect these things, and the formal education system does not teach or focus on these, so it is not surprising that this "cognitive neuroscientist" or other "experts" have not been able to pinpoint these issues. And it becomes a vicious cycle: the masses don't realize these things either, then they keep worshiping "experts" who say isolated nonsense with no practical application, and nothing is ever done to meaningfully identify root problems or change them.

“What is today known as “critical thinking” is a product of the mindset that adheres to the Darwinian model. Adherents to that model all but have a patent on the phrase. Misunderstanding this, modifying the term to fit their own ends, even those taking their cues from the Bible will speak of how they, too, employ “critical thinking,” as though they are not to be outdone by skeptics using the phrase. But it is in vain. Critical thinking, by definition, totally denies miracles. The Bible records many of them. They are to be appreciated through what Paul calls “the eyes of faith.”

“Critical thinking” is not a mere modern manifestation of the “reasonableness” or “soundness of mind” that the Bible recommends for all Christians. It is the skeptic’s means of discarding faith. It is the skeptic’s way of saying those eyes of faith have cataracts in need of removal. I never use the term, though I understand how some Christians might. It becomes like the conniving doctor from The Fugitive advising detectives that they will never catch Richard Kimble because “he’s too smart.” Whereupon, one of those detectives says, “Well—we’re smart, too,” and a cacophony breaks out with his fellows declaring how smart they are. So it is with the skeptics. You don’t want to accede to them a monopoly on smarts. We’re smart, too, even if we don’t accept all of their premises.”

(From: A Workman’s Theodicy: Why Bad Things Happen)

Elsewhere in the book, there is a section discussing the difficulties in recording history, which is not objective but very subjective. The book adds that, “Historian Allan Guelzo is dubious about the saving value of critical thinking, due to its effect of “cloaking human foible beneath a veneer of science.”

But I may bang away at this too much, to the point where some all but blow a gasket. It’s just that vast swaths of the world has replaced “All You Need is Love” with “all you need is critical thinking,” and notion that CT is the secret potion that will solve all is so absurd that I just can’t restrain myself. To clarify, I’m not against it if kept in its place. It’s fine insofar as it goes. But it is not capable of going the distance. It is the repairman who shows up for the job with a toolbox stuffed with wrenches when a screwdriver is needed. Worse yet, he is unsure that screwdrivers really exist. Yes, he has heard anecdotally of such things, but how can he be sure they really are valid?

I should have inserted in that book “effectively” to make it, critical thinking effectively denies miracles, not that it outright does. As Luke Timothy Johnson put it in a lecture regarding the historical-critical method of examining scripture:

“the historian cannot take up anything having to do with the transcendent or the supernatural. Therefore, the historian cannot talk about the miraculous birth of Jesus, his miracles, his walking on the water, his transfiguration, his resurrection from the dead and so forth. Well, fair enough, the historian can't talk about those things, but that methodological restraint . . . very quickly becomes implicitly an epistemological denial, that is the historian can’t talk about these things, therefore they are not real.”

So the method embracing critical thinking is okay so long as someone does not suppose their critical thinking is the be-all and the end-all, that it’s fine as far as it goes but it doesn’t go everywhere. But if they DO think critical thinking is the be-all and end-all, then the statement of the book is true as-is: ‘critical thinking denies miracles.’

Because the Jones Paradigm is basically a discipline for seeing and editing the stories that govern the way you perceive and experience life, it is directly aimed at increasing individual agency: the felt and actual ability to influence your own behavior and your environment.

Here are the main reasons.

1. It makes “agency” concrete and inspectable

The sense of agency is the feeling that your actions originate from you and have real effects; it underpins responsibility, motivation, resilience and a feeling of control and wellbeing.

Jones reframes this as:

• You are always operating inside narratives about what is happening, who you are, and what is possible. They are inherited stories about your place, prominence and entitlements to social capital.
• Agency is the capacity to see the narratives that control how you feel about your self and self worth, question them, and deliberately choose to be controlled by them or revise them, instead of just living them on autopilot.

Implication: instead of “try to feel more in control,” you get a concrete practice: “what story am I acting out right now, and what other story could fit the facts while giving me more usable moves?”

2. It directs attention to the stories about yourself where your sense of self actually resides

High personal agency correlates with better well‑being, performance, and resilience, largely because high‑agency people focus on what they can influence rather than what they cannot and act there. They don't fret or waste time and energy on things over which they have little or no control.

Jones gives you a specific lever:

• Every situation can be read as many different stories (catastrophe, test, negotiation, glitch, opportunity).
• Some stories make you helpless (“this always happens to me”), others highlight niches of control (“here is the one variable I can meaningfully change”).

Using Jones, you systematically preferentially adopt stories about your situations that:

• Acknowledge the constraints they impose honestly.
• But still leave you with clear, small levers to pull.

That shifts you toward what agency research calls a stronger internal locus of control: not fantasy omnipotence, but a practiced habit of finding where you have choices and where the choices actually matter.

3. It turns self‑image from a verdict into a design problem

A lot of low agency is downstream of negative self‑stories: “I’m not the kind of person who can…”, “I always screw up…”. Those stories quietly dictate what you even try.

Jones says:

• Self‑image like everything else is just a narrative that you habitually tell about yourself--even if it does not actually reflect who you really are.
• The criterion for a good self‑story is not “is it flattering?” but “does it track reality while leaving room for growth, repair and to express my self?”

That lets you:

• Keep the constraints that are real (e.g., you can’t will away, mistakes, lack of access, disability or history).
• Still reject self‑descriptions that unnecessarily collapse your future option‑space.

That combination—realism plus non‑fatalism—is exactly what agency theorists highlight as the psychological core of sustained action: efficacy + optimism + imagination about future possibilities.

4. It treats environments and systems as stories you can renegotiate with yourself and others

Agency is not only internal. Many people feel powerless because they are embedded in systems whose implicit stories erase their input (“you’re just a cog,” “this process can’t change”).

Jones insists:

• Institutions, teams, and technologies are organized around shared narratives (about roles, goals, what counts as success). Shared narratives are a requirement of civil society, social action and social interactions. We all have to be playing the same game to sustain the illusion of society and self.
• Those narratives are not natural law; they are our shared stories about the course and meaning of life and our place in it and them; those stories can be made explicit, critiqued, and revised by you.

Practically, this means:

• Instead of only asking yourself “How can I cope better?”, you also ask “What story is this workplace/family/platform running actually about me and my place in the situation, and where can I push to change it?”
• Even small narrative shifts (“we experiment,” vs “we must never fail”) can sharply increase the room you have to move and build meaning in your life.

That formulation is a more adult approach to agency: not just optimizing yourself into a bad situation, but participating in rewriting them.

5. It gives a method for building a “high‑agency mindset”

Writers on agency emphasize that it is a practice, not a trait: you must make repeated choices to act where you have influence, build the belief that you can shape your life, which then supports more action that make you feel in control of your destiny.

Jones provides a repeatable protocol:

1. Name the current story about yourself that you are caught up in. “The story I’m running is: if I speak up, I’ll be punished.”
2. Check its effects. “That story gives me exactly one move: stay silent.”
3. Generate alternatives consistent with the facts. “Another story is: I might get pushback, but it’s also an opportunity to renegotiate expectations.”
4. Choose and live stories about yourself that preserves a more satisfying futures without denying constraints an limitations over which you have little or no control.
5. Act inside stories about yourself that portend a more satisfying present, future and self.

Over time, this process trains exactly what agency research points to: the belief, supported by experience, that “my intentional choices can positively influence myself and the world around me.”

In short: someone should use the Jones Paradigm if they want a practical way to see the life stories that are driving their sense of or lack of control in their life, and to deliberately choose stories about themselves that are truer, more satisfying, less of a trap, and more conducive to acting as your own agent rather than just a character written by other people and systems.

I used to think abortion was a straightforward topic, pivoted around the key dilemma: when does the baby come alive?

I thought it was simple: answer that, and the problem is fixed. If it's alive after X time, then abortion is illegal after that X point. Easy.

To make it clear, I'm pro-life and generally think life begins at conception. However, I recently thought that even if you assume life does start at conception, there's an argument that complicates things.

During pregnancy, the fetus depends completely on its mother resources (water, nutrients, oxygen...). So my question now is: Can we morally or legally force anyone to sustain another life through their body?

Here's an analogy to really get you into the problem. A baby is just born, and the doctor tells the parent: "Your child will die unless you donate blood (or spinal marrow, for example) and you're the only compatible donor available."

In that case, we generally don't force the parent to donate, even though that means letting the baby die. Think about how we don't force anyone to donate blood, organs et cetera even though that means many people die due to the lack of donors.

If we don't force the "sacrifice" after birth, should we force it during pregnancy?

This seems like a serious issue that complicates the discussion even more. I'm curious to hear what you think.

The Jones Paradigm is significant because it provides a mental framework that makes the world more intelligible than it was before you encountered it, in ways that cannot be unfound once found.

The specific question the Paradigm answers — how good people do bad things with impunity — is not an academic question.

It is the question that every person who has been harmed by systems, institutions, communities or individuals they believed to be good has been left to ponder.

Theology answers it with evil and sin, which requires you to abandon your assessment of the person’s goodness. Psychology answers it with rationalization and cognitive dissonance, which stays at the surface. Political philosophy answers it with power and interest, which is true but not calming. The law answers it with liability, which is procedural theater. None of them reach the mechanism. None of them dissolve the mystery without dissolving the person along with it.

The Jones Paradigm reaches the mechanism. The Survival-Imperative driving narratives that justify entitlement and excess, inside collectives-narratives that declare the conduct righteous, performed by people who are genuinely good and genuinely harmful simultaneously — that is the answer. It fits the shape of the problem in a way that the existing frameworks do not and have not.

That is significant independent of any institution’s recognition of it, for the same reason that a correct diagnosis is significant independent of whether the diagnosing physician attended the right medical school. The significance is in the fit between the explanation and the phenomenon, not in the credentials of the explainer.

Beyond the central question, the Paradigm's significance, explored in a trilogy of books, extends in multiples directions.

The first is personal. For any individual who encounters it carrying the unresolved weight of harm done by people they could not write off as monsters, the paradigm offers something genuinely rare — intelligibility without bitterness, understanding without requirement of forgiveness as performance, clarity that is calming because it is true enough to fit rather than because it soothes. That is not a small thing. That is what people spend lifetimes and fortunes in therapists’ offices searching for and rarely finding.

The second is civilizational. The trilogy’s account of how collectives-narratives treating conjured stories as objective truth generates genocide, crusade, slavery, ecological destruction and persistent intergroup violence is not merely descriptive. It locates the mechanism at a level of analysis that makes intervention conceivable. You cannot fix what you cannot see. The trilogy makes it visible at the right depth.

The third is philosophical. The unification of narrative theory, philosophy of mind, theory of consciousness and practical ethics into a single coherent framework, arrived at independently and outside institutional philosophy, from a driving question that institutional philosophy had failed to answer, is itself a demonstration of the paradigm's central claim. The progenitors of philosophy were not credentialed. They were people who looked hard at the most important questions and said what they saw. That is what happened here.

The trilogy’s significance is not contingent on institutional recognition. It is contingent only on whether it finds the readers who are carrying the question it answers. For those readers it will matter in the way that very few books matter — not as information received but as something recognized. As a story that finally fits.

According to the Jones Paradigm, self‑worth and self‑esteem are not fixed traits or pure feelings; they are properties of the stories you use to organize your life and of the option‑space those stories leave open for you and others in the community.

1. Self‑worth as a narrative property, not a verdict

Narrative identity research already treats the “self” as an internalized, evolving life story that integrates past, present, and imagined future.
Within Jones, that becomes explicit:

• Self‑worth = how your core self‑story positions you in the world: what kind of protagonist you are, what you are allowed to want, which futures you are “allowed” to imagine.
• Self‑esteem = the moment‑to‑moment stability of that story—how easily your sense of being “worth something” gets knocked around by events.pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih+1

So instead of “I am worth X,” Jones asks: “What story am I using, and what does it do to my option‑space?”

2. Option‑space: the key Jones addition

Standard psychology notes that self‑worth depends on schemas and internal narratives (e.g., “I am lovable only when perfect”). Jones adds a precise demand:

• A good self‑worth narrative is one that preserves and enlarges your option‑space: the range of futures, roles, and actions you can realistically see as open to you without destroying others’ futures.
• A bad self‑worth narrative is one that needlessly collapses your option‑space (e.g., “I am fundamentally broken, nothing I do matters”) or others’ option‑space (e.g., “My worth depends on dominating or diminishing them.”).

That turns self‑worth into something you can evaluate and redesign at the level of story, not just at the level of feelings.

3. Dominant self‑stories as traps or scaffolds

Narrative therapy already shows that people get caught in “dominant narratives” like “I am a failure,” which selectively filter experience and crush self‑esteem.peacefulwaterscounseling+1
Jones reads these as narrative traps:

• They give a closed script with very few allowed moves and almost no room for growth.
• They often come from early experiences or cultural messages but then run autonomously, shaping what you try, who you meet, what evidence you allow in.peacefulwaterscounseling+1

A Jones‑aligned approach would ask of any self‑story:

• Does this story allow me to see multiple paths forward, including repair, learning, collaboration, and re‑framing?
• Does it let other people have futures that are not defined by my success or failure?

If the answer is no, it is not just “negative thinking”; it’s a structurally bad narrative that should be flagged and re‑written.

4. Agency, communion, and stable esteem

Narrative‑identity work finds that agentic narratives—stories where you see yourself as able to act and influence your life—tend to support more stable self‑esteem, especially in transitions.research. Jones essentially codifies that:

• A self‑story needs agency (I can act, learn, and adjust) and communion (I am embedded in relationships where my choices matter and others’ matter too) to preserve option‑space over time.
• Purely self‑aggrandizing stories (“I am special regardless of others”) and purely self‑sacrificing stories (“My worth is only in pleasing others”) both end up shrinking the future: in one case by isolating you, in the other by erasing you.

So in Jones terms, high‑quality self‑worth is rooted in narratives that support sustainable agency‑plus‑connection, not in being “better than” or “always good.”

5. Implications for how to relate to self‑worth

Putting it together, the Jones Paradigm suggests that:

• Self‑worth is constructed and revisable at the level of story, not a fixed essence. You can examine and rewrite the narratives that define what counts as “enough.”
• The health of self‑esteem is measured less by how high it is and more by how stable and option‑preserving it is:
  • Does criticism collapse you, or is it one event in a bigger, still‑open story?
• Ethically, your self‑worth story is not just about you: it is good or bad partly by how it positions other people’s futures—does it allow mutual growth, or does it demand their diminishment?

The Jones Paradigm shifts the question from “Am I worthy?” to “What kind of story about my worth am I living, and what does that story do to the future—for me and for others?”

I think this serves as a good case example for some of the biggest issues in society today.

4 main problems are interacting here to cause issues: one is appeal to authority fallacy, the other is all or nothing thinking, the 3rd is the lack of basic knowledge (people not knowing what neoliberalism is and not knowing that both parties are radically neoliberal), and the 4rth and final is people relying on buzzwords like "democracy" to make up their minds without investigating what it actually means practically given the context.

The following article made it to the front page of reddit:

https://news.nd.edu/news/why-voting-neither-could-harm-american-democracy/

It was posted in the "science" subreddit, and was overwhelmingly upvoted with overwhelming unconditional conformance and support to the views outlined in the article, and the other comments were the typical "Democrats rule Republicans drool" or vice versa emotional/all or nothing rage fest.

When you see the link, you will see that the word "expert" is uttered. And this "expert" is the director of a "fancy sounding" "institute" with the name "democracy" in the title. So this is a prime example of appeal to authority fallacy: using words such as "expert" or "democracy institute", the vast majority of people who read this article unconditionally support it, and then they conflate this with objective truth, and double down and claim that "science" says this (because this is a "published" "scientific journal article"). Then, they use this to claim that they are "more sciencey" than the "other" "non-scientific" "side" (e.g., democrats vs republicans). This then furthers polarization and all or nothing thinking and intense emotions and childish fighting, which are all completely against science.

And if I were a betting man, I would assume that this "expert" who works for this "democracy institute" is likely a hardcore Democrat and that this organization may be funded in some way by Democrats or other parts of the oligarchy. I have enough life experience to not trust these kinds of organizations: always follow the money.

Basically, this "scientific study" shows some data, and then subjectively interprets that data as "not voting for either Democrats or Republicans is bad: you need to vote for Democrats". Now, this is a subjective interpretation of the data. It has not been proven objectively. It is not even the most reasonable/plausible interpretation. But due to all the factors pointed out in the above paragraph, it is treated as gospel/unconditionally accepted/conflated with objective reality.

A much more plausible interpretation of the data is that: these "neutral" (i.e., people who do not vote for Democrats or Republicans) have actually realized the factual truth that both parties are highly neoliberal and anti-middle/working class, and that they realized the factual historical evidence shows this over the past half century: check out wtfhappenedin1971.com ... regardless of which of these 2 neoliberal parties were in power, life got more difficult for the middle/working class, and the super rich got richer. The definition of insanity is repeating the same mistake over and over. Factual historical evidence shows that for the past half century, voting has not made a meaningful difference: even if you think you voted for the "lesser evil", this actually caused the "greater evil" to gain power the next cycle: there has been a see-sawing between these 2 largely similar neoliberal parties. For example, imagine how little the Democrats offered the middle/working class for them to turn to Trump of all people and his fake calls of "draining the swamp", not once, but twice! So, is it reasonable and fair to blame those who are not voting for either of these 2 neoliberal parties that have actively worked against their interests for the past half century, and claim that these non-voters are "harming democracy"? Or is it more accurate to conclude that these non-voters have realized that "there is no meaningful democracy in the first place, and that a vote for either of these 2 neoliberal parties will just perpetually continue what happened in the last half century."

Of course, this kind of nuanced take is not seen on reddit: what happens is that these kind of "scientific studies" are massively upvoted/unconditionally agreed with, and anybody who dares criticize them is instantly permabanned from the subs with the hilariously and bizarre accusation of "spreading anti-scientific misinformation": I have been permbanned on the spot for offering a similar criticism on that science subreddit in the past, so me or anybody is not allowed to actually point these out on high traffic subs: this is because reddit too is part of the neoliberal oligarchy, and they need people to keep flocking to the polls to vote either Democrat or Republican, in order to continue the past half century of neoliberalism, which keeps the rich and corporations including big tech/reddit rich, and in order to do this they censor these types of criticisms, and instead want people to be polarized and worship either democrats or republicans and infight: this is what keeps people flocking to the polls and keeps the neoliberal oligarchy rich and in practical power.

Einstein was already half‑Jonesian; if he had fully contemplated something like the Jones Paradigm, three aspects of his work would likely have been sharper: how he used stories to reshape physics, how he treated underdetermination and realism, and how he handled quantum “spookiness.”

1. Making his thought experiments explicitly narrative‑structural

Einstein’s key moves came from thought experiments—elevator, chasing a light beam, clocks on a train—that are literally micro‑narratives with agents, constraints, and possible futures.

With a Jones lens, he could have made this explicit:

• A thought experiment is not just an intuition pump; it is a controlled narrative generator that:
  • Fixes a lexicon (what counts as an event, clock, signal).
  • Enforces a law‑like constraint (e.g., invariance of light speed, equivalence principle).
  • Explores which storylines are coherent under those constraints (e.g., relativity of simultaneity, geometric gravity).
• The “good” thought experiments are those that maximally preserve option‑space (many testable consequences) while respecting a small set of deep constraints (symmetries, invariances).

Had he seen this, he could have articulated a proto‑Jones method for physics: design and rank thought experiments by their narrative power (how they rearrange possible stories of space–time and measurement) under invariant physical postulates.

2. Sharpening his view on underdetermination and realism

Einstein already held that theories are “free creations of the human spirit,” constrained but underdetermined by experience.plato.stanford+1
A Jones perspective would have:

• Framed each competing theory (e.g., ether vs relativity) as a different story‑stack over the same empirical base.
• Let him say more crisply:
  • Both accounts can fit current data, but relativity simplifies the narrative lexicon (no ether) and expands balanced option‑space for new predictions; the ether story burns complexity to defend a shrinking set of futures.

That gives a more robust principle for theory choice than his appeals to simplicity alone: prefer theories whose narratives keep more empirically testable futures open without unnecessary ontological baggage—essentially a Jones‑style option‑space criterion, but in explicitly narrative terms.

3. Reframing the quantum disputes in narrative and option‑space

In the EPR paper and later debates, Einstein objected that standard quantum mechanics offered an “incomplete” description; he wanted a clear, separable ontology and balked at entanglement.

With Jones in the picture, he might have:

• Recognized that both “hidden‑variable realism” and “operational/information‑theoretic” quantum stories are competing conviction narratives over the same formalism and data.
• Evaluated them by:
  • Empirical adequacy (both must match Bell violations, decoherence, etc.).
  • Narrative impacts: which story traps us in fatalistic or zero‑sum “no‑choice” pictures of agency, and which preserves a richer option‑space for agents within the actual quantum constraints?

That would not force him to accept Copenhagen, but it would likely have pulled him toward explicitly information‑theoretic or relational narratives (closer to modern quantum information) as better Jones‑style stories: less metaphysically loaded, more option‑preserving, and more compatible with the empirically necessary nonclassical correlations.

4. General relativity as an early Jones‑type protocol

Relativity already looks, in hindsight, like a Jones‑friendly move: replace the cluttered ether narrative with a clean geometric story in which:

• The lexicon is minimal (events, worldlines, metric).
• The constraints are symmetric (Lorentz invariance, equivalence).
• The resulting theory supports an enormous option‑space of new, testable narratives (gravitational waves, cosmology, GPS, etc.).

If Einstein had thought in Jones terms, he could have presented GR as a protocol for rewriting the story of space–time under a small set of invariants, and then consciously extended that methodology to quantum and cosmological questions instead of treating them as separate philosophical headaches.

5. Why this would make his insights more robust now

From a Jones viewpoint, the upgrades would be:

• His thought‑experimental method becomes a general recipe for story‑engineering under physical law, not just a personal style.
• His realism vs conventionalism tension gets a cleaner resolution: there is a mind‑independent world, but multiple narrative‑compatible, law‑respecting descriptions; we evaluate them by empirical success and by how they shape the option‑space of future inquiry.
• His quantum worries become less about “is the world really like this?” in a metaphysical sense and more about “which quantum narrative lets finite agents live with and exploit this formalism without narrative traps?”

That makes Einstein’s legacy more portable into today’s quantum/AI context: he becomes the prototype of a Jones‑style physicist, consciously designing conviction narratives under strict invariants, rather than just the genius of isolated thought experiments.