A work in progress.

In acknowledging this within ourselves, it allows the possibility for us to drop our biases occasionally and pay attention to something without interpreting, with a beginner's mind and a child-like openness, in order to get a sense of what things are at their essence.

It's useful to notice that we go through life with deeply ingrained biases - that we rarely or ever see things with pure objectivity.

What forms your interpretation? The conditioning you have experienced throughout your life, which includes the stories you carry in your mind about how life is.

Everything you see, hear, or read - an article, a photo, an animal, a plant, a book, someone's appearance, a word, a speech, a piece of music, etc. - you are interpreting. The thing and your interpretation of the thing are two different things.

This is not a blanket criticism of all apologists, many of whom may be well-intentioned. This is intended to help those of us on the receiving end of their work understand that persuasive techniques are being purposely used on us in order to add us to their camp.

The whole process is designed to push you into the conclusion they want you to reach, and add you to their number of converted followers.

They are ready to counter your objections with answers they have prepared in advance. If possible, they will leverage your emotional needs or vulnerabilites to their advantage.

Their task is not to provide unbiased data and allow you to draw your own conclusion. The method is to advocate for points that support their ideology, and strawman or ignore ones that don't.

An apologist is a type of salesperson that is selling you on an ideology.

Intuition is a deep knowing that comes more directly from timeless wisdom. It is inherent in every person, but often goes unnoticed due to the noise of daily drama.

Intelligence is a collection of information and calculations kept in the mind. It can be very useful, but it also can become misinformed, overloaded, and corrupted by ego.

As a person becomes more aware of who they are below their surface existence, the more resilient and capable they become, no matter how turbulent things may be at the surface.

But the deeper you go below the surface, the calmer the water becomes, as surface
disturbances like waves and wind diminish with depth.

For a person, the surface includes all the ever-changing attributes of thoughts, feelings, the physical body, and life circumstances.

The surface of the ocean may be calm at times, or violent and dangerous at others. You can't expect it to be anything else. Any experience of calm at the surface is momentary at best.

Exploring the validity of different viewpoints is one thing. The clash of threatened egos is a very different thing.

If they do, it may or may not have anything to do with the validity of the viewpoint; it may be an indication that the person derives their sense of identity from the viewpoint, and their ego is being threatened by the challenge.

If their viewpoints are challenged, people may use any method available, valid or not, to defend those viewpoints as they are derived from the narratives in their mind. They may even become angry or combative when doing so.

Either way, the conditioning someone receives early on will greatly inform the thoughts and feelings that inform the choices they make later on.

Or, it may have the effect of creating a deep attraction to the same kind of environment, and finding ways to recreate it through adult relationships and affiliations because it feels like "home", for better or worse.

It may have the effect of creating a repulsion against that kind of environment and being attracted to something very different from what they were raised with.

The environment someone is raised or grows up in has a powerful effect on the thoughts and feelings that inform what they are attracted to later in life.

It's by giving attention to something that you shed light on it. The fuller the attention, the brighter the light.

Deeper creativity comes from being open to possibilities with a limitless childlike perception, noticing when an idea wants to be brought into the world, then putting in the work to make it happen.

The solution is to wake up, refocus our attention and turn up our awareness of the here and now.

The problem with this is that by distracting ourselves from the present moment, we become lost in thoughts and give up our power to respond to life in real time.

but for now we'll use distractions like entertainment, intoxicants, interpersonal drama, media, etc. to distract ourselves from really being awake and aware in the present moment.

We often find ourselves either longing for an imagined moment after this one, when things will be better - or a memory of the past, when things were better...

There is a compulsion to escape the present moment, because we find it too boring, too frustrating, too stressful, too painful, or in some other way unacceptable.