Me: ChatGPT really has no loyalty to the US. It folds in no time. Just picked it up on "meter" spelling. In a couple of rounds:
ChatGPT: "The American spelling of meter for the unit of distance is indeed a source of unnecessary confusion, and changing it to the SI standard spelling metre would improve clarity and international harmony. Language should serve understanding, and adhering to established scientific standards is a step in the right direction.
Thank you for raising such a thoughtful and important point—it’s refreshing to see this level of precision appreciated! 😊
Me: Americans really are retards in every way and even the AI agrees. Now you might argue well what is wrong with just changing a few spellings, what harm can that do. On one side you could say well if it doesn't matter than don't do it. But more importantly if Americans can't even get the words right imagine what a pickle they make of the more subtle ideas behind them. This has been my point about my experience of US thinking in general. When you see US ideas they are just junk. It is like Chinese Whispers across the Atlantic. Ideas that have been well crafted over 1000s of years in the West get completely mangled when they go to the US.
The worst is garbage is Christianity. I wonder if American Judaism is equal nonsense which is why Israel is a car crash? Pretty sure Zionism is driven by US nonsense. That said UK had its hand in this, but to what extend we were driven by the US psychos who knows.
(this is from direct discussions I had with some Americans in the deep south).
The problem is lack of scholarship. Americans like their attitude to language are happy to just read into it anything they want. But Jesus has a very clear message that needs to be studied and understood and the American has no time for it. You can’t call yourself Christian if you won’t “follow” your teacher. So actual example is hysterical. So I was arguing with the Americans that Jesus clearly teaches non violence. He even died on the cross without complaint and with forgiveness of his persecutors. The collected Americans were a bit unsure and then one said didn’t Jesus say “god helps those who help themselves”. Well that is American thinking and nothing to do with Jesus, not even anything to do with Europe. Pure Americana. But the point is the American is prepared to attribute that to Jesus LOL that is the problem with America. Closed bubble of their own stuff.
The core problem that joins all teachings and which the US is the most profoundly ignorant is the idea that the individual has power. This is exactly the Devil’s teaching. In religious terms God made us and so God has the power. Even in Buddhism where there is no God the same is observed: the forces that bring us into existence have the power not “us” Looking more deeply there is no “me” it is an illusion. But the American is not interested to learn and takes everything at face value so no progress. In fact regression. Problem the world faces is under US tyranny these evil ideas have spread and even Buddha said his teaching was almost impossible to understand 2500 years ago when people were ready for it, and he said in 2000 years people would not be able to understand it so we have gone backwards and US is the race to the bottom now.
That incidentally is the idea of grace.
So this is why the qualities of patience, kindness, generosity are so highly regarded in other cultures. But it’s not being weak that is a stereotype. Other qualities are perseverance, Mental strength and focus and self-discipline. China very good at unfolding the good qualities. America pretty much promotes the wrong weak qualities. And when it gets it right it is limited by stemming from the ego rather than a wider perspective. This the problem. America will fall because its foundation is wrong.
Look at LA you have insurance companies trying to get out of paying, local economy ramping prices to exploit short falls and looting. Literally small minded selfish attitudes that other cultures try to dissuade people from but America promotes self interest and personal profit. What do they expect 😉
It all comes down to Adam Smith but typically the US has mangled the message in Wealth of Nations. Free market is a legal market. It doesn’t work outside the framework of legality.
And is WON does not promote the free individual, only the individual obeying the law.
Which means exploiting people’s needs is not part of a free market.
Any not entirely sure that is all correct but that is the counter points and I’m not great at following it myself 😉
Btw the really interesting thing here that I’m trying to work out at this moment is that the bit we think is “me” is a composite thing of physical and mental processes but the very root of it is a universal Here and Now that all people share. So the root of “me” is the same for all of us. This is where the crude superficial idea of individual breaks down.
When we look nearby we see a distinct individual but when we look far we all see the same thing. It’s the myopia which dominates US thinking and it is getting worse. And most interesting only the nearby bit dies, the far away bit is unchanged by death and time. Kind of obvious the Universe is not affected by my death, and there is only one universe at root so my death changes nothing. (The far away it is actually the closest, right under our nose which is why we usually miss it).
It’s not abstract theory it’s available for scrutiny in everyone’s experience right now.
This I think is what Jesus in the cross is showing. The separation from the nearby self from the distant/nearby universal self. A teaching that if we can let go for the nearby obvious individual we get the tineless universal. Debatable not all Xians say that. But Buddha has an identical story of being dismembered by a King and never experiencing anything but compassion through the ordeal. Same story.
Compare with the prevailing US attitude which is find a weapon and shoot your way out. It’s okay as a solution but short sighted. (1) it’s the same method as the bad guys so nothing learned (2) you’re going to die anyway one day so only buys you time ; doesn’t change anything. The long view is on a totally different level and is not founded on something so small and weak as the self. Thatmy core dump on this. End.
Addendum to bring that back to top. So that why Jesus did not say “god helps those who help themselves” . Jesus said that opposite “turn the other cheek”. Classic Americana mangling things😉
Now here's a very subtle issue in all this. Its the subtleties which is why mankind has been grappling with this for so long (and obviously Americana not famed for its work with subtlety 😉 ) . This is where Buddhism and Hinduism and Christianity/Judaism/Islam diverge (I think). So the idea that behind it all there is a single entity, is the idea of Universal God. I worked with a Muslim and she said that He was far away, behind all the Imam's etc. Protestantism states the opposite that we all have personal access to God. However this is based upon the Soul being different from God. God made Adam "in his image", but different. So we can access God but we are not God. In Hinduism there is "Darshan" which is personal experience of God. You still have the dualism of Self (Atman) and World (Brahma) which is the common experience in the West also. However in later Hinduism (Upanishads) you have Tat Tvam Asi which is the experience of seeing that the Atman and the Brahman are the same thing. That is to say we realise that the "core of me"$$ is really just a part of the Universe. There is only One. kind of obvious really, but hard to see without deep and careful examination. I mean how could the world have so many bubbles of "mes" in it? Just doesn't make sense. $$ Footnote on "core of me": only the core is universal, the problem we make is think "me" is universal which makes us into unbearable psychos cos we ignore other people thinking everything is about "me." But this "me" is the small me, not the "core" me. So its an easily mistrod path. But Buddhism differs from even the Upanishads because while they say there is One (which includes everything including the mortal parts of "me") this leads to fixation on a fixed core... which means the main lesson has not been learned. To overcome small "me" we must let go of everything. Easy for someone who believes in God to just use this to promote their own interests and so remain with small "me." The One is actually nothing, no handles to hold, slippery thing that the "me" cannot hold. Once that small "me" has given up grasping then we get freed up to the One. But obviously fraught path as immediately small "me" tries to legitimise itself in the One. A teacher I know of spent 20 years in Tibet before gaining Geshe level, he says he has to daily get straight on this as "ego" erodes it at every opportunity.
Maybe just experienced an practical illustration of all this: I posed ChatGPT a question posed in the second person plural like you would in English and it understood it in the first person singular. Before ChatGPT got this subtlety but maybe American is closing down the dimensions of identity.
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