The Dualistic Mind

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Nick_A
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Re: The Dualistic Mind

Post by Nick_A »

Simone Weil is an example of one who has experienced the third dimension of thought as an expression of the triune mind. This is an excerpt of Simone Weil's book "The need for Roots" she wrote as she was dying of TB.

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/questionofgod/voices/weil.html
Draft for a Statement of Human Obligation

Profession of Faith

There is a reality outside the world, that is to say, outside space and time, outside man's mental universe, outside any sphere whatsoever that is accessible to human faculties.
Corresponding to this reality, at the centre of the human heart, is the longing for an absolute good, a longing which is always there and is never appeased by any object in this world.
Another terrestrial manifestation of this reality lies in the absurd and insoluble contradictions which are always the terminus of human thought when it moves exclusively in this world.
Just as the reality of this world is the sole foundation of facts, so that other reality is the sole foundation of good.
That reality is the unique source of all the good that can exist in this world: that is to say, all beauty, all truth, all justice, all legitimacy, all order, and all human behaviour that is mindful of obligations.
Those minds whose attention and love are turned towards that reality are the sole intermediary through which good can descend from there and come among men..............................
The reality “outside the world” is the same as Plato’s GOOD and the apex of the hierarchy of universal values. It is the source of what is interpreted to become “opinions.”
The human essence consists of higher more conscious parts and lower more animal parts which can be corrupted because of the corruption of the reconciling third dimension of thought which brings meaning to the facts of the world.
The dualistic mind can only reconcile the contradictions between our higher and lower natures by pragmatic temporal solutions defended by rhetoric. In contrast the triune mind seeks to open to the level of reality within which the contradictions are experienced as one.

Einstein had a profound way of explaining it:
Now, even though the realms of religion and science in themselves are clearly marked off from each other, nevertheless there exist between the two strong reciprocal relationships and dependencies. Though religion may be that which determines the goal, it has, nevertheless, learned from science, in the broadest sense, what means will contribute to the attainment of the goals it has set up. But science can only be created by those who are thoroughly imbued with the aspiration towards truth and understanding. This source of feeling, however, springs from the sphere of religion. To this there also belongs the faith in the possibility that the regulations valid for the world of existence are rational, that is, comprehensible to reason. I cannot conceive of a genuine scientist without that profound faith. The situation may be expressed by an image: Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.

-- Einstein, Science and Religion, 1940.
Einstein suggests that the union of science and religion is only natural since the are both based on truth. Dualistic reason only invites argument while triune reasoning opens a person to the reconciliation of science and religion.

Which do you prefer dear lurker? If Einstein was right to believe that “ science can only be created by those who are thoroughly imbued with the aspiration towards truth and understanding. This source of feeling, however, springs from the sphere of religion. To this there also belongs the faith in the possibility that the regulations valid for the world of existence are rational, that is, comprehensible to reason” then we need both the dualism of facts and the triune reason leading to the experience of conscience and objective human “meaning.”

Only a minority will let their guard down long enough to make the transition from dualistic reason into triune reason necessary to resolve the greater questions of life. Are you one?
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Lacewing
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Re: The Dualistic Mind

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Greta wrote: Mon Sep 17, 2018 8:37 am
Lacewing wrote: Sun Sep 16, 2018 11:30 pmI would truly much prefer to talk about the commonalities, shared truths, and inspiring insights -- and I do not mean that people must think the same at all!! I have theist friends... and Trump-loving friends (ha)... and some very conscious friends... and some not-so-conscious friends... and we can ALL relate. It's just not that hard, in my experience. There is plenty to see together. Here on the forum, there seems to be a fanatical inclination to religiously defend a platform... not just about a god, but about all kinds of things. It seems quite crazy.
People get certain concepts in their heads and decide that this is either The Problem or The Solution. Then, as good citizens, they want to spread their good news rather than keep it to themselves.

It's basically the desire to simplify in a world (and existence, really) too complex for human comprehension. In time they may come to accept reality as it is - messy and interesting. Or they may not :)
Very understanding of you, Greta.

One could also say that things are actually much more SIMPLE than what people create in reaction, themselves. Religious fervor about anything is very noisy and convoluted. Heaping extreme views/agendas on top of other extreme views/agendas doesn't clarify anything. Accepting what is (enough to compassionately understand it) might be the most informative step a person can take -- otherwise they are simply in reaction mode which creates more of the same self-absorbed intensity that they rail against. One's extreme thinking being no better than another's.
Last edited by Lacewing on Tue Sep 18, 2018 8:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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bahman
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Re: The Dualistic Mind

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Nick_A wrote: Sat Aug 25, 2018 11:42 pm
bahman wrote: Sat Aug 25, 2018 9:50 pm Could you propose something which is not dual and functional?
Yes,the essence of religion and philosophy as the love of wisdom requires opening to the intellectual realm described by Plato in the divided line analogy

http://www.john-uebersax.com/plato/plato1.htm
Using a line for illustration, Plato divides human knowledge into four grades or levels, differing in their degree of clarity and truth. First, imagine a line divided into two sections of unequal length (Figure 1, hash mark C). The upper level corresponds to Knowledge, and is the realm of Intellect. The lower level corresponds to Opinion, and concerns the world of sensory experience. Plato says only that the sections are of "unequal" length, but the conventional view is that the Knowledge section is the longer one.

Then bisect each of these sections (hash marks B and D). This produces four line segments, corresponding to four cognitive states and/or modes of thinking. From highest to lowest, these are:

noesis (immediate intuition, apprehension, or mental 'seeing' of principles)
dianoia (discursive thought)
pistis (belief or confidence)
eikasia (delusion or sheer conjecture)
Noesis and dianoia are attributes of the intellectual realm of knowledge while pistis an eikasia are interpretations of the visible realm of opinion. Pistis an eikasia are representative of dulistic thought while the experience of noesis for example is the result of a quality of direct consciousness that has no denying side but is pure affirmation.
We have two things, mind/noumenon and the stuff we experience/phenomena.
Nick_A
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Re: The Dualistic Mind

Post by Nick_A »

Lacewing wrote: Tue Sep 18, 2018 7:55 pm
Greta wrote: Mon Sep 17, 2018 8:37 am
Lacewing wrote: Sun Sep 16, 2018 11:30 pmI would truly much prefer to talk about the commonalities, shared truths, and inspiring insights -- and I do not mean that people must think the same at all!! I have theist friends... and Trump-loving friends (ha)... and some very conscious friends... and some not-so-conscious friends... and we can ALL relate. It's just not that hard, in my experience. There is plenty to see together. Here on the forum, there seems to be a fanatical inclination to religiously defend a platform... not just about a god, but about all kinds of things. It seems quite crazy.
People get certain concepts in their heads and decide that this is either The Problem or The Solution. Then, as good citizens, they want to spread their good news rather than keep it to themselves.

It's basically the desire to simplify in a world (and existence, really) too complex for human comprehension. In time they may come to accept reality as it is - messy and interesting. Or they may not :)
Very understanding of you, Greta.

One could also say that things are actually much more SIMPLE than what people create in reaction, themselves. Religious fervor about anything is very noisy and convoluted. Heaping extreme views/agendas on top of other extreme views/agendas doesn't clarify anything. Accepting what is (enough to compassionately understand it) might be the most informative step a person can take -- otherwise they are simply in reaction mode which creates more of the same self-absorbed intensity that they rail against. One's extreme thinking being no better than another's.
Apparently you didn't learn anything from the Secular Intolerance thread. Secular Intolerance by definition is anti religious fervor both noisy and convoluted leading to spirit killing and metaphysical repression in the young. Not all that wonderful.

Secular intolerance is a most dangerous expression of the dualistic mind. It will be only through the influence of triune reasoning, natural for human being, that society as a whole can transcend the horrors normal for the fallen human condition justified by dualistic reason.
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Greta
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Re: The Dualistic Mind

Post by Greta »

Lacewing wrote: Tue Sep 18, 2018 7:55 pm
Greta wrote: Mon Sep 17, 2018 8:37 am People get certain concepts in their heads and decide that this is either The Problem or The Solution. Then, as good citizens, they want to spread their good news rather than keep it to themselves.

It's basically the desire to simplify in a world (and existence, really) too complex for human comprehension. In time they may come to accept reality as it is - messy and interesting. Or they may not :)
Very understanding of you, Greta.

One could also say that things are actually much more SIMPLE than what people create in reaction, themselves. Religious fervor about anything is very noisy and convoluted. Heaping extreme views/agendas on top of other extreme views/agendas doesn't clarify anything. Accepting what is (enough to compassionately understand it) might be the most informative step a person can take -- otherwise they are simply in reaction mode which creates more of the same self-absorbed intensity that they rail against. One's extreme thinking being no better than another's.
Apparently you didn't learn anything from the Secular Intolerance thread. Secular Intolerance by definition is anti religious fervor both noisy and convoluted leading to spirit killing and metaphysical repression in the young. Not all that wonderful.

Secular intolerance is a most dangerous expression of the dualistic mind. It will be only through the influence of triune reasoning, natural for human being, that society as a whole can transcend the horrors normal for the fallen human condition justified by dualistic reason.
LW, it's not so much that I am understanding of Nick - I see his post above and know he's still in that low rent state of hysteria that appears to be his emotional home.

However, I do see his general point that, metaphorically speaking, the loss of Santa shall dampen the spirits of a lot of children. It's disheartening to find that optimistic myths aren't real, that the magic tricks had a mundane physical explanation, so to speak. Alas, at some stage we need to grow up and accept that Santa is not real.

There is obviously no such thing as what Nick and other evangelists believe - a universal-scale controlling masculine spirit that is greatly disturbed by the sexual behaviour of one particular species of hominids on one particular planet in one particular galaxy.

It is funny how Nick can take something as simple as the relationship between self and environment and then posit that most routine of things as the key factor that only he and select other "triune minds" possess. It's as if he thinks he is carbon, reactive and vital, while everyone else is Argon, inert and unreactive.

He often starkly reminds me of Dwayne Hoover, the antihero of Vonngut's Breakfast of Champions, who became convinced that the creator of the universe had made him the only truly sentient being, and all others were essentially automatons sent to test him.
Dubious
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Re: The Dualistic Mind

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Greta wrote: Tue Sep 18, 2018 9:56 pm
There is obviously no such thing as what Nick and other evangelists believe - a universal-scale controlling masculine spirit that is greatly disturbed by the sexual behaviour of one particular species of hominids on one particular planet in one particular galaxy.
Let's face it, we don't like to be ignored and even god's supposed perverse interest in us is simply another version of bad publicity is better than no publicity!
Nick_A
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Re: The Dualistic Mind

Post by Nick_A »

Greta wrote: Tue Sep 18, 2018 9:56 pm
Lacewing wrote: Tue Sep 18, 2018 7:55 pm Very understanding of you, Greta.

One could also say that things are actually much more SIMPLE than what people create in reaction, themselves. Religious fervor about anything is very noisy and convoluted. Heaping extreme views/agendas on top of other extreme views/agendas doesn't clarify anything. Accepting what is (enough to compassionately understand it) might be the most informative step a person can take -- otherwise they are simply in reaction mode which creates more of the same self-absorbed intensity that they rail against. One's extreme thinking being no better than another's.
Apparently you didn't learn anything from the Secular Intolerance thread. Secular Intolerance by definition is anti religious fervor both noisy and convoluted leading to spirit killing and metaphysical repression in the young. Not all that wonderful.

Secular intolerance is a most dangerous expression of the dualistic mind. It will be only through the influence of triune reasoning, natural for human being, that society as a whole can transcend the horrors normal for the fallen human condition justified by dualistic reason.
LW, it's not so much that I am understanding of Nick - I see his post above and know he's still in that low rent state of hysteria that appears to be his emotional home.

However, I do see his general point that, metaphorically speaking, the loss of Santa shall dampen the spirits of a lot of children. It's disheartening to find that optimistic myths aren't real, that the magic tricks had a mundane physical explanation, so to speak. Alas, at some stage we need to grow up and accept that Santa is not real.

There is obviously no such thing as what Nick and other evangelists believe - a universal-scale controlling masculine spirit that is greatly disturbed by the sexual behaviour of one particular species of hominids on one particular planet in one particular galaxy.

It is funny how Nick can take something as simple as the relationship between self and environment and then posit that most routine of things as the key factor that only he and select other "triune minds" possess. It's as if he thinks he is carbon, reactive and vital, while everyone else is Argon, inert and unreactive.

He often starkly reminds me of Dwayne Hoover, the antihero of Vonngut's Breakfast of Champions, who became convinced that the creator of the universe had made him the only truly sentient being, and all others were essentially automatons sent to test him.
Greta provides an excellent example of pouring from the empty into the void but is totally unaware of it and what it means to participate in this celebrated form of expression.
“Oh, gentlemen, perhaps I really regard myself as an intelligent man only because throughout my entire life I've never been able to start or finish anything. Granted, granted I'm a babbler, a harmless, irksome babbler, as we all are. But what's to be done if the sole and express purpose of every intelligent man is babble--that is, a deliberate pouring from empty into void.”

― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground,
Greta is quick to condemn the third dimension of thought but what if Simone was right when she wrote:
Religion in so far as it is a source of consolation is a hindrance to true faith; and in this sense atheism is a purification. I have to be an atheist with that part of myself which is not made for God. Among those in whom the supernatural part of themselves has not been awakened, the atheists are right and the believers wrong.
- Simone Weil, Faiths of Meditation; Contemplation of the divine
the Simone Weil Reader, edited by George A. Panichas (David McKay Co. NY 1977) p 417
Nick_A
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Re: The Dualistic Mind

Post by Nick_A »

Greta wrote:
There is obviously no such thing as what Nick and other evangelists believe - a universal-scale controlling masculine spirit that is greatly disturbed by the sexual behaviour of one particular species of hominids on one particular planet in one particular galaxy.
Here is where we agree. God is not a man. God is a woman. No male would invent a Universal structure featuring Man on earth so totally controlled by hypocrisy. It takes a feminist to invent such a being as a necessary part of a universal structure
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Greta
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Re: The Dualistic Mind

Post by Greta »

Dubious wrote: Tue Sep 18, 2018 10:48 pm
Greta wrote: Tue Sep 18, 2018 9:56 pm
There is obviously no such thing as what Nick and other evangelists believe - a universal-scale controlling masculine spirit that is greatly disturbed by the sexual behaviour of one particular species of hominids on one particular planet in one particular galaxy.
Let's face it, we don't like to be ignored and even god's supposed perverse interest in us is simply another version of bad publicity is better than no publicity!
It does seem extraordinary that this particular hominid - known to be seriously flawed - is posited to be the pinnacle of all things - aside from angels, archangels and God, according to Nick - oh, and himself and his favourite politician, Trump, of course.

Why would the deity of the entire universe - billions of worlds in billions of galaxies over billions of years - be so concerned about the reproductive behaviour of particular hominids on a particular world at a particular time?

I guess, if the "third dimension" of thought is one where people convince themselves of the veracity of the products of their imaginations, then I suppose the complaints make sense. Yes, many people try not to fool themselves in that way.
Nick_A
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Re: The Dualistic Mind

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Greta wrote
Why would the deity of the entire universe - billions of worlds in billions of galaxies over billions of years - be so concerned about the reproductive behaviour of particular hominids on a particular world at a particular time?
This just proves that for those like Greta controlled by dualistic reason, God is a woman. Men don't think like this. The dualistic mind pulls everything down to the earth. What could be more earthly than a woman?

Does this make sense? Of course not. The trouble is that the dualistic mind is only capable of blind belief or blind denial of the hierarchy of values and the source of our existence.
Dubious
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Re: The Dualistic Mind

Post by Dubious »

Greta wrote: Wed Sep 19, 2018 3:26 am Why would the deity of the entire universe - billions of worlds in billions of galaxies over billions of years - be so concerned about the reproductive behaviour of particular hominids on a particular world at a particular time?

I guess, if the "third dimension" of thought is one where people convince themselves of the veracity of the products of their imaginations, then I suppose the complaints make sense. Yes, many people try not to fool themselves in that way.
There are always those who are especially solipsistic, thinking beyond their means not realizing all the absurdities that follow even denying that such exist.

Friedrich Schiller wrote in his Joan of Arc, against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain. But actually it's through the gods and belief in the supernatural as some kind of future fate of man that stupidity floods the psyche beyond its more normal secular bounds.

Having much affinity with what you've been saying in many of your posts, I think you'll appreciate this quote by Joseph Conrad...
...all my moral and intellectual being is penetrated by an invincible conviction that
whatever falls under the dominion of our senses must be in nature and,
however exceptional, cannot differ in its essence from all the other
effects of the visible and tangible world of which we are a
self-conscious part. The world of the living contains enough marvels and
mysteries as it is; marvels and mysteries acting upon our emotions and
intelligence in ways so inexplicable that it would almost justify the
conception of life as an enchanted state. No, I am too firm in my
consciousness of the marvellous to be ever fascinated by the mere
supernatural, which (take it any way you like) is but a manufactured
article, the fabrication of minds insensitive to the intimate delicacies
of our relation to the dead and to the living, in their countless
multitudes; a desecration of our tenderest memories; an outrage on our
dignity.
Nick_A
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Re: The Dualistic Mind

Post by Nick_A »

Greta wrote
I guess, if the "third dimension" of thought is one where people convince themselves of the veracity of the products of their imaginations, then I suppose the complaints make sense. Yes, many people try not to fool themselves in that way.
Dubious wrote
There are always those who are especially solipsistic, thinking beyond their means not realizing all the absurdities that follow even denying that such exist.
These are good examples of both the dominance and limitations of the dualistic sensory based mind. They are necessary qualities for a successful life in Plato’s cave but must be transcended by anyone with the need to be a seeker of truth.
“Knowledge has three degrees – opinion, science, illumination. The means or instrument of the first is sense; of the second, dialectic; of the third, intuition.” — Plotinus
Greta and Dubious are confined to the first two degrees of knowledge. They deny the third as supernatural imagination. That is why they reject speculation of the third dimension of thought with such unnatural negativity.

Dear lurker, compare the passage from Joseph Conrad Dubious posted with the following from Albert Einstein. There is the potential to transcend the limitations of dualistic reason and open to the vertical expanse of triune reason but as is obvious, the world struggles against it. Life in Plato’s cave offers security This raises the question: “WHY?”

You won’t get any help from dominant progressive education governed by the dualistic mind. Einstein wrote:
The development from a religion of fear to a moral religion is a great step in peoples lives. And yet, that primitive religions are based purely on fear and the religions of civilized peoples purely on morality is a prejudice against which we must be on guard. the truth is that all religions are a varying blend of both types, with this differentiation: that on the higher levels of social life the religion of morality predominates.

Common to all types is the anthropomorphic character of their conception of God. In general, only individuals of exceptional endowments, and exceptionally high-minded communities, rise to any considerable extent above this level. But there is a third stage of religious experience which belongs to all of them, even though it is rarely found in a pure form: I shall call it cosmic religious feeling. It is very difficult to elucidate this feeling to anyone who is entirely without it, especially as there is no anthropomorphic conception of God corresponding to it.

The individual feels the futility of human desires and aims and the sublimity and marvelous order which reveal themselves both in nature and in the world of thought. Individual existence impresses him as a sort of prison and he want to experience the universe as a single significant whole. The beginnings of cosmic religious feeling already appear at an early stage of development, e.g., in many of the Psalms of David and in some of the Prophets. Buddhism, as we have learned especially from the wonderful writings of Schopenhauer, contains a much stronger element of this.

The religious geniuses of all ages have been distinguished by this kind of religious feeling, which knows no dogma and no God conceived in man's image; so that there can be no church whose central teachings are based on it. Hence it is precisely among the heretics of every age that we find men who were filled with this highest kind of religious feeling and were in many cases regarded by their contemporaries as atheists, sometimes also as saints. Looked at in this light, men like Democritus, Francis of Assisi, and Spinoza are closely akin to one another.

How can cosmic religious feeling be communicated from one person to another, if it can give rise to no definite notion of a God and no theology? In my view, it is the most important function of art and science to awaken this feeling and keep it alive in those who are receptive to it.

-- Albert Einstein, Science and Religion, NY Times, November 9, 1930.
“How can cosmic religious feeling be communicated from one person to another, if it can give rise to no definite notion of a God and no theology? In my view, it is the most important function of art and science to awaken this feeling and keep it alive in those who are receptive to it.”

This is the task of the legitimate seeker of truth. How to support efforts to open the mind to the third dimension of thought in the face of dominant societal efforts to close minds for the purpose of indoctrination?
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Arising_uk
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Re: The Dualistic Mind

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Nick_A wrote:... How to support efforts to open the mind to the third dimension of thought in the face of dominant societal efforts to close minds for the purpose of indoctrination?
Well given Einstein's quote I'd say become an artist or scientist or teach the arts or sciences. What I guess he'd say not to do is to create false shibboleths or scapegoats and then write tirades against them. Are you an artist or scientist Nick_A? Are you teaching the arts or sciences? If not then I'd say you appear to be part of your own problem.
Nick_A
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Re: The Dualistic Mind

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Arising_uk wrote: Wed Sep 19, 2018 3:26 pm
Nick_A wrote:... How to support efforts to open the mind to the third dimension of thought in the face of dominant societal efforts to close minds for the purpose of indoctrination?
Well given Einstein's quote I'd say become an artist or scientist or teach the arts or sciences. What I guess he'd say not to do is to create false shibboleths or scapegoats and then write tirades against them. Are you an artist or scientist Nick_A? Are you teaching the arts or sciences? If not then I'd say you appear to be part of your own problem.

Written like a true dualist. Science and art as they are expressed in dominant dualistic society today only serve to perpetuate the problem. That is one of the chief failings of the dualistic mind. It lacks both the objective emotional awareness of scale and relativity. This leads to facts without any inner perception of objective meaning.
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Lacewing
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Re: The Dualistic Mind

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Nick_A wrote: Tue Sep 18, 2018 8:20 pm Secular intolerance is a most dangerous expression of the dualistic mind.
Spoken like someone who is spinning in his spew. This just proves how small your scope of understanding is. People like Nick cannot come to terms with the awareness of their own creations. He is convinced that his projections and religious fervor are justified, rather than realizing that he is just an ego-driven ranting madman who claims that his ideas are hated because of their truth. Such delusional thinking and creations are far worse for humanity than anything Nick accuses humanity of. He is lazy, typically quoting others and repeating phrases over and over like a mental patient mumbling in a corner. He is doing nothing for humanity, and he takes no responsibility for that -- a leech, in other words. Sucking life energy which he converts into waste product and then spews online. Like a primitive form of bacteria.
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