Life awareness

  • There seems to be a few ways to view life in the modern age:
    • A unique fleeting presence that's going to come to an end one way or another (btw, this would remain true even if you were cloned with all your thoughts and ideas and they were the same age up until that point. Each life would still be a unique series of events and therefor two of the same person can never exist even in the perfect, non-plausible, scenario)
    • A meaningless series of events caused by someone getting laid.
    • Trial by fire in a weird hope to have meaning and influence outlast your lifetime
    • Try to live and see what happens, what will be will be.
  • To me, these aren't such competing ideas, as all can be true.

Personal Growth

  • People don't seem to grow well (such as a tree growing tall, but fragile) when they don't have several key factors in their lives (from my experience)
    • Meaning/goals/purpose
      • You can find personal meaning and purpose from setting goals and achieving them. They must be a challenge to complete, and must grow with you.
      • Don't underestimate the power of an accomplishment.
      • Purpose can't be given to you by someone else, taught, or trained on. The most training you can receive, is the knowledge that it's necessary.
        • Since I was a child, I've believed this is something important for depression as well. A Counselor (mr russel) once asked me what I felt about depression. I said I feel like it's only possible because people feel unable to achieve the things they want. He said okay, well what about hypothetically someone rich enough and could afford anything they wanted at any time. Which i considered at the time, well... he would lack the feeling of needing to work for the things he accomplished. There would be no further meaning or purpose to do anything, so he'd feel an internal need for strife.
        • But in my current age, I realized, nah usually by that point they just find drugs and prostitution, or find niche things that they can only accomplish with social status and wealth. Rich stay rich, because the purpose shifts from having money to keeping money, because social stigma of having money looks down on those without it. So they're still setting goals, still making their own purpose, even if that purpose is at the cost of others, or lack of foundations.
    • Boundaries
      • This concept always sounded dumb to me because people would say boundaries is some meaningless context with absolutely no reference or intent for this.
      • Personal boundaries (things you consider for yourself)
        • You won't allow these things in your life by yourself or others
        • You won't do this anymore/everyday/today/tomorrow
        • How you want to be treated, fits both personal and social boundaries, imo. But since it's for yourself, i'm putting it here. If you don't feel like you're happy in what you're doing, change it.
        • Self control, basically
      • Social boundaries ( things considered for others )
        • If you don't want scuzzy people to be your best friends, you should probably not let them be. It doesn't matter how good or bad they are, set those boundaries, don't keep people who cross them in your life.
        • If you feel like people in massive social events tend to hurt others oblivious to what they do, don't go to such events.
        • If you don't want to do things that other encourage you to do things violating your personal or spiritual boundaries, don't let them.
      • Spiritual/Belief boundaries ( Belief structures influence this)
        • Not killing because damnation
        • Following rules because bible says so
        • Challenging unjust rules because the same bible says so
    • Strife/Challenges/Failures
      • Without setbacks, we really don't have any growth. If you try to draw a hand. You may think it doesn't look realistic, or realistic enough. So you try again changing your premise under which you previously tried. This is the way to move forward.
        • This goes for everything. Learning maths, learning science, programming, building homes or furniture, doing general contactor work, picking up trash on a trash truck route, cooking, growing plants, literally everything in life is like this.

Training Humans

  • Just some thoughts on how to train humans, any age, but including children. Without all the weirdness that comes from claims of religion or authority. Don't have to have some spiritual likeness for this. Anyway, we should all know these things, so please train your children and yourselves.
    • Survival
      • Learning to swim, fish, capture water, filter water, and control the flow of water.
      • Learning to build fires, control active fires, use fires (for cooking, smelting, whatever), and safely put out fires.
      • Cooking, preserving, and disposing of food. (disposal such as deconstructing and mixing into a compost should be basic knowledge)
      • Hunting and tracking skills tie together many other skills, read on.
    • Strategy
      • If you can't understand basic strategies, others will swindle you
      • understanding deceptive tactics in games like chess or go are pretty good for this
    • Weapons
      • Kinda just stealing from ninja training stuff here, but lets be real this is something we could all use to understand. Not how to pull a trigger, but how various things can be used as weapons.
        • small knives
        • large knives
        • throwing blades
        • swords
        • bows & crossbows
        • staffs
        • spears
        • chains and chain weapons
        • explosives/fire/guns
        • other improvised weapons (most important part imo)
    • Fighting & sparring
      • hand to hand
      • weapon to weapon
    • How to fall
      • Kids these days have seen people do parkour at least once or twice, the idea behind the ability to fall and keep moving, everyone, from a young age, I feel like instinctively learns just by moving and doing things.
    • How to fail
      • Just like with a physical fall, being able to not let a failure hurt you, is a training all it's own.
    • Geography and meteorology
      • Knowing different terrain, locations, and where you are relevant to others, the sun, the sky, and the clouds, is essential and it's stupid people don't really learn this in school.
      • Tracking storms to know when to bunker down and when to use the rain for you own advantage is also good. Learn that.
    • Caring for animals
      • Being able to take care of animals leads to an understanding about both yourself and them, but it also showcases the real requirements for life everything has. Knowing these, makes you better at hunting or tracking animals, as well as knowing likely hangouts of specific animals and animal types.
      • Go be a human and care for some damned animals already!
    • Lying, sneaking, and deception
      • If you can't understand how people lie, you will be deceived by their lying.
      • Lying takes the intelligence of around a 4 year old, so maybe thats an age restriction I guess
      • Along with understanding strategies, understanding physical and mental limitations on these factors I feel like is essential to learn how. You can chose not to on your own, but learning how is a useful skill to save your life.
      • If you can't walk quietly, why not make it a goal to try?