well thank you :) and it definitely is always a constant self improvement, I'm certainly no sage, I get caught up in things too. I just always try to come back and remind myself "nothing matters," and that it's a liberating thing - because then things can begin to matter again for the right reasons.

I'm about to soapbox for a second if you'll humor me, but its the biggest issues I see in society today, its very relevant to these topics here, and I catch hints of everyone here starting to catch on I think: One big reason its so easy to forget what's important I'd argue is that the entire society we live in is completely focused on dragging us back into me, me, me, what I want, why I'm special, why I'm unique, and the big joke of it all is that they advertise that same message to everyone so they all run out and go buy the same clothes (consume consume consume). It's emotionally unhealthy and honestly a relatively new phenomenon (historically speaking). To make matters worse Social Media is a poor replacement for human interaction, because the algorithms are there to upset you, but then relieve you before you get too fed up and leave the site. They'll suggest you to be friends with your ex-boyfriend's new girlfriend just because they know you'll get neurotic and keep swiping wondering what they are up to, or show you that controversial lefty cousin or altright uncle post that you are just going to HAVE to "correct," knowing you'll sit on the page waiting for a reply, all just to show you more ads, they could care less about what that does to your mental health, your relationships. And if your first thought was, well my leftist-altright brother-in-law was going to post that anyway and they deserved it, stop and think, why did you just post some possibly controversial statement? Was it because you somehow perhaps became threatened by some meme, post, news article, etc that was shown to you and just need to let everyone know where you stand? hmmm "When a product is free you aren't the customer, you are the product" - has never been more true. I highly suggest watching "A century of the self" BBC documentary (Adam Curtis) (easy find on youtube as either a single video of all the episodes together or as individual episodes of the series) that goes through the history of propaganda(marketing) in the united states and how closely tied together the two (propaganda/marketing) really are (Its amazing how old and spooky accurate it is).

I used to be a huge tech/science guy (background in cyber security), always wanting the new gadget, always looking for the next tech, to the point I took a career in it (if you want to know my dream job from my last post was that I was a CTO of a tech company, not a huge company, but it was my dream). But at some point in the last 20 years or so I would argue we've started to "out science" ourselves, combining the science of human behavior and advanced predictive analytics based on huge pools of data to slowly but surely group everyone into what everyone calls echo chambers, but really all that means is that you've been grouped with like minded individuals you're comfortable with having the sole purpose of predicting, and nudging your behavior, as a group more easily. The only thing that was stopping this before was computing power and the ability to use all the datapoints together. There is SO MUCH readily available science on this too, theres a reason why you can't turn on the news today without seeing 500 reasons why you should be scared (it keeps you watching), and why your phone is eerily good at predicting that thing you were just talking about and giving you an ad for it, the truth is creepier than what most people think, most think our phones are eavesdropping with the microphone, but actually (or should I say more often) the algorithms are just that good (super creepy). It honestly blows my mind that we are so busy trying to slap each other in the face over what politician "slammed" who on twitter (slammed is a word known to make you click a link more often - theres a science on what gets clicks too), when what we should really be doing is taking a good hard look at what we've done to ourselves/allowed to be done to us (and vote out both sides tbh, they're all the same suit with a different color tie). The worst thing is I think is that I can't even really start to dive into this stuff without starting to sound crazy because thats how pervasive and generally accepted this is in our society.

My rant is basically over, but the more I study and read about this (decent primer: https://crackedlabs.org/en/networksofcontrol - this is actually a well done research paper on corporate surveillance, feel free to investigate the site for reliability etc, https://crackedlabs.org/en - happy to link more papers from different sources as well) the more I think that we are allowing ourselves to become manipulated into believing that we all can't actually get along, yet, in my day to day, wherever I've found myself, I've not found it difficult to make meaningful connections and find common ground with people who believe very different than me.

hope you all have a wonderful day.