Ive a friend who joined a gang of thieves when he was really young, 10 or 11 and he was given the job of hiding their loot after jobs. He had to swim across of a pitchblack body of water everyday at 1 or 2 in the night and hide the stuff in the woods on the other side.

Thats how it started and now hes grown up and all his life has been crazy with these kinds of stuff. It really shows in the kind of person he is. He's absolutely fearless, theres isnt even an ounce of fear, but it isnt like the kind of fearlessness where you are stupid, hes really really shrewd.

Right now, hes in an other town, singlehandedly in a war with the biggest cocaine dealer there whos been doing it for decades and has a whole slew of his own men. Many of his friends who were staying in that town had been threatened and have left the place.

His fearlessness shows in all parts of his life, like whenever he's doing something, there are never second thoughts of 'what if I fuck up' and that gives a certain intensity to the stuff he does.

Ive felt that, if you look closely, you can see you get a small high from being nice. When you are nice, more like kind, to someone, it makes you feel good.

Ive been thinking that love and kindness and compassion is kinda the same thing. Like romantic love is the comes from the same place as compassion but with some added attraction. And the idea that we should be loving and kind to our partners, even when they are mean, that idea is present so deep inside us, that it keeps us kind even when we would be a jerk in other situations.

Maybe we lack the idea that we should be kind and nice to everyone, if we were raised believing in that idea, maybe we would all be a lot averse to acting like a jerk. It maybe due to the climate of fear in which we raise children, they are thought to think of strangers as evil and not kind and no wonder we dont hold the concept that we should be kind to others no matter what. But we easily hold that concept about our loved ones.

I'll be strongly against it if it was not anonymized. Ive always believed measuring things is the starting point of making them better but Im afraid of the idea though. The marketeers already make an almost too efficient use of all the scientific development in economics and psychology. I wonder how they'll abuse all this open data while the other side, the consumers or the majority of them atleast seems too disorganized and uncaring to take any effective action using the same data.

I was a very atheistic person, tryting to be absolutely logical and rational. I used to read lots of books on it though, like J Krishnamurthy and Osho and so on. Then once I did mushrooms and had an ego death but didnt really understand what happened.

Then after some time, Im not sure how but I was watching a movie and it really clicked for me, esp because of the character in the movie, about how life is more than about being cold and rational and along with that, in a few weeks, lots of huge changes happened in my life all at the same time, like relationship problems and leaving college and such which really sealed it for me and I was walking around like I was enlightened for a long time. I did mushrooms again and had the ego death again and understood what was going on a lot.

I turn off the spiritual feeling alot, when I have to be get work done and such. It helps to feel ambitious and cold then. And routines really affect it sometimes and being around people that make you miserable sometimes makes you forget it, that you can be happy all the time and your happines is all in your own hands. But yes, I can turn it on too, its like something I can access when ever I need it. And I find that helping others make me feel it stronger. Its when I feel jealousy and envy that I really need it though. It helps me pass over those feelings without getting caught in it. Its like spirituality is a tool I can use and access whenever I need. The biggest change is the feeling of love and compassion. Im not sure if its becaue Im used to being really cold or something but I find romantic love and compassion coming to the same thing and compassion is something I enjoy more now. And all the religions make sense, compassion isnt something thats considered good because it helps everyone as a whole or takes us to heaven but because its good of us. It makes us stronger spiritually. Even when Im feeling my worst and disconnected, I just have to do something to help others or try to be compassionate to get back to where I was, happy and blissful. So in a sense, Im being selfish when being compassionate but Im not doing it for some imaginary man in the sky.

Every now and then something still clicks for me though. Its easier understanding stuff now because I just need to focus on what makes me feel the spiritual energy stronger to know what works and what doesnt. Im finding out that religions or superstitions or god or a little belief in magic of somekind is actually good for us. It doesnt have to be god, but it has to be sacred. Im not sure yet but I think its the sacredness that really gets to us.

For the first time, I saw why some people said suffering is good for you and can make you grow. I was in a lot of pain and had a lot insights about myself that wouldnt occur to my normal self.

Like how bad I actually am compared to what I think about myself. And Im seriously doubting if I should ever be in relationships. Like Einstein said, why complicate things when simple things are possible, why be in them when people can be close to other people and be happy without such relationship things.

Hah, thank you :)

Do try arch. I was once a mint user and tried arch and couldnt stop using it afterwards. People say is hard to install, not really though. Read along on the wiki and you should be fine. You'll love how you can always find the answers in the wiki and how you never have to compile something ever again because of aur.

I never really get to use all the themes I want. The software is always the latest version and most of themes look bad, like on gnome 3.12 I cant find themes I like and the ones for the older versions have bugs.

I dont think it matters so much.

I remember looking over at a girl sitting at a distance from me and thinking 'she's so ugly, who would ever marry her?' ( I was pretty stupid and immature back then) and then after an year or two, she didnt change much, I dont think she changed at all, but I wouldnt know, and I got started talking to her through a mutual friend and I remember talking to her over lunch one day and she was saying something and looked really cute and I was thinking 'I'd ask her out this moment if she showed as much as a sign that shes interested in me that way'

That day I understood it, deep inside, not the superficial thought, that theres more to beauty than looks.

Beauty is like first impressions maybe, it can only help you so much and it doesnt really matter if you have the other stuff that really matters.

I remember a talk about privacy and surveillance where the speaker was saying something like this about mobile phones.

He asked the audience how many would willingly carry around a tracking device on their person and nobody raised their hand, then he asked them how many of them has a mobile phone and all of them raised their hand. He then said that whats really happening is, the system is making our choices have a wider impact such that, the choice of having a mobile phone or not is turned into a more complex choice of effectively participating in society or not. He mentioned many other examples like google analytics and how our choices were framed in such ways that it makes it harder to opt out.

Compassion and kindness for one, I used to think kindness was overrated and all the people who praised it were just trying to market some image of theirs. My attitude towards social change, I used to think revolutions were good and the people against them should be killed off

I loved the video. I really liked the visuals and how they went with the audio. They added a touch of humour and amusement. It also got me thinking about lots of ankles I hadnt thought of before. Great job!!!

The first two points, how surveillance is never egalitarian and digital information is never ephemeral was some stuff I hadnt thought much about.

Something I'd like to see added: I remember reading about how privacy should be considered a fundamental right. Privacy is fundamental to the fabric of our society and I think our society wouldnt function the way it does now if we didnt have our privacy. I wish more people thought of it that way. When our privacy is taken away and that is questioned, we shouldnt be the ones who have to explain why we need our privacy, but the other party should explain how or why they can take away our privacy. 'Why are you against it if you have nothing to hide' shouldnt even be an acceptable argument.

When I was talking about the imaginary man in the sky, I was mentioning that I do the things only for me and not because god is watching my deeds. Im not against god in any way though. I wouldnt say being atheistic is bad but I feel that having god can help and give strength to my spirituality. It doesnt have to be god either, I can be non religious stuff too or even places or rituals. I would say having something that is sacred to you is what matters and not god. Im not sure if sacred is the right word but thats what I use. Like ButterflyEffect mentions that cemeteries make him feel spiritual and I think its because of the weight he gives to those places, the sacredness of it, that helps. It can be rituals that you have been following for a lifetime and those can be sacred to you. Ive read about martial artists that have these kinds of rituals who say it helps them tap into their spiritual feelings. It can be places too. That is something that clicked about religions for me. Consider a church, it uses all of these ideas, of a god, sacred important rituals and a sacred place all together at the same time. Thats how I guess it works with people's spirituality and in this way I see things in religions that takes me back to it now even though I was atheistic for sometime. But god isnt the biggest factor there but other stuff like this.

I am generally guided by the feeling of wholeness in spirituality but sometimes Ive to turn it off and work against the general ideas of my spirituality. For example, when I have to get some studying done, tuning in to my ego which I usually subdue and being an ambitious bastard really helps. Its like using a painkiller when we are in pain which isnt very natural but is ok as long as we dont end up addicted to it. I said I was turning off my spirituality because subduing the ego is a big part but here Im not doing that. My expression wasnt very accurate and Its more like Im using the ego within the framework of my spirituality. Part of it is having the concept of wholeness guide me but its turned off then, Im not caring about that in those points of time.

It may seem vague when Im trying to say these stuff and I understand what happens with religions. Something I think is, if we understand life really close, being alive has everything in itself to make us blissful but we also need rationality and ego to keep ourself alive which we get caught up in and gets in the way. Its like babies are born with that kind of bliss and they learn to use the ego and the rational mind and get caught up in it and then we slowly learn to get closer to life but while keeping our ego. That reminds me so much of the story of adam who was born into the garden of eden or state of eternal bliss and then lost it when he discovered the ego and has to find his way back to it and is supposed to do it by following his spirituality.

And hence the idea of rationality as against spirituality. I wouldnt say against because we require it and its very much a part of my spiritual ideas but it can be detrimental if we arent careful. It was my rationality that helped me find the spirituality within me and it definitely isnt against it. The end point requires that I be devoid of logic and also my ego. I have to be rational when moving towards that.To condemn logic and the ego and to bring about the bliss is something I can do but that would be premature and isnt wholesome.