THE BEADY EYE ASKS. IS BUDDHISM A PHILOSOPHY OR A RELIGION?

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( Twelve minute read)

Buddhism means different things to different people, and whether or not it can ever be truly classified as a philosophy or a religion remains shrouded.

It’s one thing or the other.

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It doesn’t believe in a creator God, unlike theistic religions such as Christianity.

It’s a belief system that endeavours to teach how to escape the suffering-laden cycle of  life, death, and rebirth.

But death isn’t the only suffering in human life.

Buddha believed that humans suffer  at birth (both the mother and the baby), and throughout life due to desire, envy, fear etc.

He also believed that everyone was reincarnated in the samsara and doomed to repeat this process forever.

Therefore Buddhist teaching aims to break this cycle.

The “Four Noble Truths’ illustrate Buddha’s approach.

  • Life is suffering
  • The cause of suffering is craving
  • The end of suffering comes with an end to craving
  • There is a path which leads one away from craving and suffering

These truths provide the basis for the entire purpose of Buddhism, which is to find the path away from craving and suffering through enlightenment.

It strongly encouraged people to engage in critical thinking and draw on their own personal experience to test what he was saying.

This type of attitude is extremely different to religions such as Christianity and Islam, where followers are generally encouraged to read, absorb and accept scripture unquestioningly.

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Buddhist teachings employed standard philosophical tools and techniques to make their point.

However, their reasoning was underpinned by a total belief that whatever Buddha said was right and true.

Eventually, people from distinct but related Asian religions began to analyze Buddhist teachings, forcing Buddhists to branch out into traditional areas of philosophy to prove the value and worth of Buddhism to other people who didn’t consider Buddha’s teachings as authoritative.

If Buddhists want to be reborn into the realm of humans, which Buddha believes is  the best one to achieve enlightenment, then they must earn good karma and follow Buddha’s teachings. 

Many world religions also offer some sort of ultimate reward for its followers to try and aim for  throughout their lives.

For Christians, this is reaching Heaven after death. For Buddhists, this is a state of  enlightenment known as nirvana.

However, nirvana is not a place but rather a liberated state of mind.

Nirvana means that someone has realized the ultimate truth about life.

If an individual achieves this state  then they have escaped the cycle of suffering and rebirth forever, because in their enlightened mind all the  causes of this cycle have been eliminated.

As we can see, Buddhism contains many characteristics which blur the lines between philosophy and  religion.

But the idea that we need to distinctly classify it as one thing or the other tends to arise within Western societies far more than in other parts of the world.

In the West, philosophy and religion are two very distinct terms. Many philosophies (and philosophers)  within the Western tradition would not have considered themselves to be devoutly religious individuals. Or if they did, contemporary followers have managed to successfully extricate the philosophical from the  religious aspects of a particular school of thought.

Many people who consider themselves atheists or agnostics tend to favor ignoring the religious aspects of Buddhism, for obvious reasons.

After all, Buddhist teaching fits easily within the mindfulness, meditation  and yoga movements which have gained in popularity in Western countries over the last few decades. 

Sometimes these teachings are appropriated without a proper understanding of their roots, as when  people post Buddha quotes on social media or claim to be interested in Buddhism without having studied any of its key texts.

The truth is that Buddhism is both religion and philosophy, and the two aspects of its teachings can co exist in relative peace.

It is possible for an atheist to follow plenty of Buddha’s teachings without also feeling obliged to carry out acts of worship.

In the future AI will take over religion that are founded on books.

Buddhism being a system of thinking it will perhaps be the saving belief of the world.

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THE BEADY EYE SAYS. WHAT COMING WITH ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IS NOT UNDERSTOOD.

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( Four minute read)

The biggest employer of all is driving – Trucks – Taxis – Deliver Vans. – public transport – etc.

There is a deep world of ignorance when it comes to comparing AI with human intelligence.

They are light years apart, but eventually AI will overtake humanity intelligence with what is called AGI.

This AGI intelligence will make decision without any emotions.

The role of emotions is driven by data.

So AGI will develop them.

The question then becomes will these emotions be the same as human emotions.

So what are emotions?

They are a combination of genetics, the environment you grew up in, what you had to eat, whether you are in or out of a relationship, how your friends or enemies are etc.

As AGI will have all the data that exists in the world it stands to reason that is will start to make up its own data.,

This is mind boggling to think about., as this data can and will be interpreted in different ways.

We are missing this fact when it comes to AIG

Emotional behaviour has a multitude of explanations and is expressed in too many different forms to distinguish or discuss in this post.

Emotions are the forerunner of intuition in human daily life, being made without any mathematical data .

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THE BEADY EYE SAYS: WE ARE IGNORING SAFETY WHEN IT COMES TO ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE.

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( Seven minute read)

AI is going to define what it means to be a human on this planet.

Governments are presently struggling to regulate the ever growing influence AI is having.

Not just its development but the effects it is having on all areas of life.

The key challenge will be managing the seductive power of AI-driven supernormal stimuli while harnessing their benefits. 

Without careful development and regulation, these artificial experiences could override natural human drives and relationships, fundamentally altering what it means to be human.

Artificial intelligence will be transformative, culminating in artificial intelligence emerging as a post-biological life form and superseding the mastery of the planet from humans.

I believe that artificial intelligence will be enabled by humans, in the sense that humans will set up the conditions that allow it to emerge, but it will not be created by humans because, once the conditions are in place, AI will emerge spontaneously.

As and when it happens, artificial intelligence will reach and then hugely surpass human-level intelligence almost immediately.

There will be no period of stasis during which artificial intelligence just jogs alongside human intelligence at the same level.

Human intelligence is limited by the capability of each individual. Each human brain is what fits into the skull of one person.

Also humans are limited by a human lifespan.

The time horizon for an artificial intelligence would be far longer, potentially millions or billions of years.

My view is that the direction of travel is clear, we are moving in the direction of a super-AI and this development is unstoppable.

The only uncertainty is in the timescale.

The artificial intelligence has at its disposal all the accumulated knowledge accessible from the Internet and every device with an Internet connection, including all sensors, cameras, vehicles and robots. With these resources it clearly vastly surpasses human intelligence.

As to whether the planet wide artificial intelligence is a potential threat.

It sure is.

Being fully integrated and planet wide it is vastly more capable than human intelligence.

One way out of this would be for a benign AI to take over the management of the planet.

A benefit of this for humanity would be survival, although of course it follows that in order to survive we would have to relinquish our control.

Most people are not aware of the scope of its power.

Individual countries still exist. These countries have governments. The laws of those countries continue to be enforced.

But humans are no longer in control.

Although most people don’t realise this.

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THE BEADY EYE SAYS: It’s time to dump TRUMP.

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( Five minute read)

Donald Trump’s Davos appearance was billed as the moment the President of the United States would reassure a nervous world; instead, it became a spectacle of vanity, contradiction and geopolitical illiteracy.

This man while holding a veto in the Union Nations is now setting up a right wing organisation called The Board of Peace at one billion a member.

He has and is destroying any trust with the USA with sticks and carrots, showing contempt for not just Europe but for his own people with one falsehood after another.

Saying that we would all be speaking German or Japanese if it wasn’t for America is a direct insult to all that gave their lives.

We, that is Europe are now in a different place with the United States.

The United States is peopled with people from Europe and it is still the main cultural influence.

However the nation has become catastrophically stupid over the past 30 years.

There was a time when Americans were obsessed by the Russians, notably until the seventies. Then it was Japan. And then it was China.

Now it’s Europe,

Europe is not only the EU.

In in Europe you have not only the EU but also the EAEU, the Euroasian Economic Union which is ignored in the news. That is the union of Russia, Kazachstan, Belarus, Kirgizistan and Armenia.

It’s time our countries stop pandering to this Mafia style USA president and stand up as a Union.

Make Iceland members with the other six countries waiting on membership. ( They can be members with the improvisation that they must complete the eu requirements within a specific time frame)

Europe cannot just stand bye and express their membership positions independently of each other.

It must present a unified position as sooner than you think there will be no rules.

It’s time to dump Trump.

As he did not so much deliver a foreign policy address as indulge in a performance aimed at his MAGA base and an imaginary audience that endlessly admires, fears, and obeys him.

It was geopolitics performed as self-parody

The Markets go down and up while he lines is pockets

https://youtu.be/VtwTOcd_W_o?si=eNde_TdeOMH_nquH

THE BEADY EYE SAYS ITS GOING TO BE GREAT TRUMP IS DESTROYING THE USA FOR PROFIT.

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( One minute read)

What is coming next, does anyone know other than he is stirring up a hornet’s nest and he is most likely to get stung in places you have not thought of.

There’s an intriguing duality at play here—the beauty and danger coexisting side by side.

However in treating countries leaders with contempt he is opening up a Pandora’s box of both fear and respect.

In terms of dependency on the United States it is becoming clear that Trump greed is not the only issue it’s hide behind other issues so you can get in and take for yourselves, hence the Venezualian Oil along with Canadian, Greenland and Ukraine minerals.

These are the real reasons for Trump’s underhanded moves!

Compliance will not buy safety in this world of power bulls like Trump. His deals are not treaties, and are not worth the paper they are written on.

Get on with your own issues America and leave everyone else alone.

Enough is enough.

Certainly no single question could turn aside the self-destructive impulses of the segment of our population that currently threatens to snuff us all out.

All we rational, reasonable people can do is continue to ask those who support the power-mad among us – Trump, Putin, Netanyahu, et cetera – to open their eyes and stop them.

It’s clear that an annexation or purchase of Greenland would not strengthen the security of the U.S. and NATO, but would instead considerably weaken it.

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Contact: bobdillon33@gmail.com

THE BEADY EYE ASKS. DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU WANT FROM LIFE?

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( Three minute read)

None of us asked to be born so life owes you nothing. 

You are born in one place at one specific time, however its value depends a lot on luck.

Where, you are born, When you are born.

From a biological stand point it is to procreate and pass on genes, but since we are capable of abstract though, things get complicated and a bit messy.

So life is a challenge.

Your brain is trying to understand itself using itself.

It’s absurd, isn’t it?

Life is designed to have experiences, and these can only be had by living it not by watching TV or glued to a smartphone.

You spend around one third sleeping and it’s not until the last third that we begin to know what we want out of life.

TV was designed to be a pacifier for adults to keep them complacent while brainwashing them with advertising.

Smart phones are also a similar tool.

Saturated with algorithms promoting on social media what ever they are designed to achieve.

The world as we know it makes living life and dying a product rather than value to be cherished.

As governments step up in areas like housing, energy transition, digital infrastructure and industrial policy, the ability to execute is becoming the real differentiator.

Most governments don’t lack ambition. They lack delivery infrastructure.

The result?

Reform fatigue, cynicism, and missed opportunities.

The gap between ambition and action is why living and dying costs an arm and a leg.

There is no need for the theatre of endless meetings to release that the earth we all exist on has finet resources and there is a need for conscious, capable and deliberate delivery of these resources.

Big reforms are announced, bold targets are set — and then delivery stalls. Implementation lack attention, ideas get watered down and momentum is lost. The intent was sound, but outcomes don’t follow.

Life is for giving not taking.

Stop taking things for granted and learn to appreciate the little things in life, because you don’t know when things can change.

If you want a life that rewards you travel. It opens the mind and gives you memories.

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THE BEADY EYE ASKS. WHY ARE WE FASCINATED BY VIOLENCE ?

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( Seven Minute read)

We all have different personalities, mental models, emotions, needs, wants, goals, values and beliefs, which shaped who we are and partially determined what we do.

It begs the question: what kind of mind wants to witness violence – adrenaline junkies.

What does it say about us—individually, culturally, psychologically—that cruelty has become entertainment, and aggression has become identity?

The attraction to violence doesn’t come out of nowhere.

We don’t crave violence because we’re cruel—we crave it because we’re human.

Because it gives structure to chaos, power to the powerless, and a feeling—any feeling—when we’ve gone emotionally numb.

Why do we settle in for an evening with movies drenched in bloodshed?

Human beings are not simply passive consumers of story; we are meaning-makers wired for survival.

In a sense, violent media allows the viewer to outsource their primal fears to someone else’s narrative.

We get to watch someone else survive—or perish—while we stay in control of our environment.

But the way that violence is packaged, consumed, and even glorified is not the same across cultures.

When we examine global media patterns, American media differs from other societies when it comes to glamorizing aggression.

American media, in particular, has made violence synonymous with excitement, justice, and even virtue.

And the internet has made the distribution of violence easy. With a few clicks, anyone can access footage that would have once been buried or censored.

Social media is saturated with violence in all its forms and it is influenced us to the extent that we are risking becoming spectators in our own lives—watching pain like a plot point, framing suffering as something that needs to be “dealt with,” rather than witnessed.

And slowly, almost imperceptibly, we lose touch with our own moral compass.

It’s not just about the moment—it’s about the culture we’ve absorbed. We’ve been taught that dominance is clarity. That loudness is leadership. That the one who controls the room controls the truth.

But this isn’t emotional strength—it’s emotional fragility dressed as certainty.

And it’s costing us more than we think.

It is possible to choose curiosity over compulsion, presence over passivity, humanity over brutality.

However it will never feel as easy. It won’t give you the instant gratification of a fight scene. It won’t resolve in 90 minutes. It takes more from you—but it gives more in return.

The rise of artificial intelligence (AI) has sparked a frenzy well beyond the technology sector.

For example: The gaming world is saturated with violence.

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Contact: bobdillon33@gmail.com

THE BEADY EYE SAYS : MOST OF US ARE IN DENIAL OF WHAT ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IS DOING TO THE WORLD.

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( Six minute read)

Today’s technological era would astonish past generations.  Unlike the past when the march of history was at a stately pace it is now not constant — it is rapidly accelerating.

Everything around us seems to be changing at breakneck speed. Twenty years ago, smartphones were niche products.

The emerging power and associated risks of AI doesn’t just exist in their training datasets.

From fraud detection and customer service to cyber security analytics and risk scoring, AI algorithms are now influence outcomes across the face of the globe.

It’s not surprising that the public is developing a false sense of security that superintelligence is not an urgent risk to society. 

Like it or not, there is increasing evidence that frontier AI systems do not just store text patterns as statistical correlations, but also build structured internal representations (i.e., “world models”) that abstract the concepts described in the ingested content.

AI systems can solve problems that do not exist in their training datasets, thereby demonstrating out-of-distribution reasoning.

In addition, today’s large models can solve problems presented in formats other than text descriptions. 

I say all of this as someone who believes society should-not be racing to build superintelligent systems.

I believe that AI systems will become smarter and faster than individual humans by a wide margin, but that does not guarantee that the systems will represent human interests, morals, or sensibilities when solving problems.

Knowing humans might be good but that is not the same as being human.

In the age of polarization Artificial Intelligence through Social Media is amplifying societal polarization.,

AI could create destabilizing shifts in the balance of power or negatively influence human strategic judgment in ways that fuel misperceptions it will cause wars.

As extremist groups and state actors weaponize social media, the rise of AI threatens to amplify these risks at a scale that was previously unimaginable.

AI can make war faster, more brutal, and far more impersonal.

The potential for AI misidentifying targets, being hacked, or malfunctioning is immense not to mention that it is more or less unaccountable.

This is the most urgent problem – to create some way of making AI and its algorithms ACCOUNTABILITY. As with all powerful technologies, advanced AI must be handled with great responsibility to manage the risks and harness its potential.

People could intentionally harness powerful AIs to cause widespread harm.

The list of harmful possibilities.,

1) AI could be used to engineer new pandemics or for propaganda, censorship, and surveillance, or released to autonomously pursue harmful goals.

2) Competition could push nations and corporations to rush AI development, relinquishing control to these systems. Conflicts could spiral out of control with autonomous weapons and AI-enabled cyberwarfare.

3). There are risks that organizations developing advanced AI cause catastrophic accidents, particularly if they prioritize profits over safety. AIs could be accidentally leaked to the public or stolen by malicious actors, and organizations could fail to properly invest in safety research. 

4). AIs could optimize flawed objectives, drift from their original goals, become power-seeking, resist shutdown, and engage in deception, catapulting humanity into a new period of unprecedented change.

The rapid and unpredictable progression of AI capabilities suggests that they may soon rival the immense power of nuclear weapons.

With the clock ticking, immediate, proactive measures are needed to mitigate these looming risks.

Infinite growth on a finite planet is probably the biggest lie.

If anyone thinks that this transition is not going to be easy or smooth they better open their eyes as there is no focus on safety.

In the next three to ten years this transition is going to happen.

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Contact: bobdillon33@gmail.com

https://youtu.be/bOcv9hGpv7U?si=iRShkvvv6PTfCFYQ

https://youtu.be/YRZz68NqTNc?si=umOUhxttpr92AQVw

THE BEADY EYE SAYS. HOW DO YOU PUT A MONETARY VALUE ON A COUNTRY.

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( SIX MINUTE READ)

It’s absurd to think that anyone could set a monetary value on any country.

It’s not possible as there are so many variables.

You can’t draw up an inventory. To measure what matters is impossible.

There is no Market for buying or selling countries.

Even if the Donald Trumps of this world think of they can make an offer that cannot be refused under the threat of invasion any change to a country without consent of it’s population remains an act of war/invasion.

However will countries ever start counting what really makes them tick other than GDP.

It’s the people that count and how well their governments look after them whether it’s education, health, etc.

Take Norway for example.

Because they are a homogenous, small population, and because they are rich from having large oil resources.

From pristine natural beauty and a strong commitment to work-life balance to robust social support systems and low corruption levels, Norway’s recipe for happiness has become a model for many.

Money solves a lot of problems and having everyone share similar values and culture avoids conflict.,

To add to this; they have a lot of control over their government and what their taxes are spent on. 

Monetary value is the value of something measured in currency.

Almost everything relevant to a modern economy can be measured by its monetary value.

The price, or monetary value, of something is determined in the marketplace and is based upon the law of supply and demand

BUT THIS DOES NOT WORK WHEN IT COMES TO TRYING TO BUY A COUNTRY.

Monetary items are assets or liabilities with a fixed value. 

Is it the GDP, the population, the minerals, the size, the environment, the history, they have no fix value.

The key with monetary items is that their dollar value does not fluctuate.

However the purchasing power can change, such as with inflation.

Monetary items don’t gain value in the market and cannot go obsolete. Therefore a non monetary item is subject to a change in value and cannot be quickly converted to cash.

We have entered the age of open thuggery, as the brutality Israel tested on Palestinians is now being normalised elsewhere.

Over more than two years, international law has been rendered meaningless, trampled alongside the bodies of children, doctors, journalists and patients bombed in their homes and hospitals.

We either defend the legal principles designed to prevent war, or watch the international system collapse under the weight of unchecked power politics. 

Intervention is no longer cloaked in euphemism or filtered through institutions. It is declared, personalised, theatrical and unapologetic. 

Up to now 19th-century empires cloaked conquest in the language of civilisation and progress.

Trump seeks no such legitimacy. Domination is justified by power alone.

International law is being dismantled plank by plank, body by body.

Those who now lament its demise are the same actors who engineered its destruction.

This is the age of open thuggery.

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Contact: bobdillon33@gmail.com

THE BEADY EYE ASKS: HOW MUCH LONGER IS THE WORLD GOING TO TOLERATE THE PLUNDERING OF USA?

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( Ten minute read)

I suppose like many I never thought that in my lifetime I would be writing this about America.

One would wonder how a country which not too long ago that was inhabited by a populated of natives living in teepees now viewed as a nation of predators.

US power is turning predatory and as a result the coming year 2026 is going to be a year of the worst kind of consequence (that we all need like a hole in the head).

A tipping point in more ways than climate change.

The biggest source of global instability won’t be China, Russia, Iran, or any of the 60-odd conflicts burning across the planet (the most since World War II). It will be the United States.

What does it say that the US President doesn’t even feel he needs to hide his most profane and radical views anymore?

There’s no Trump Doctrine.

Trump’s foreign policy doesn’t run on traditional axes like allies versus adversaries, democracies versus autocracies, or strategic competition versus cooperation.

Trump is using military pressure, economic coercion, and personal score-settling to bend the world to his will. And he’s just getting started.

He wants to write his name on in big gold letters. What we are dealing with here is not grand strategy, but the law of the jungle.

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America is unilaterally exercising power wherever Trump thinks he can get away with it, uncoupled from the norms, bureaucratic processes, alliance structures, and multilateral institutions that once gave US leadership legitimacy.

Taking stock of how American norms, ideals, and values have been transformed by Trump it is going to require a damage assessment of tumultuous proportions and efforts to rectify.

A fucking idiot.

It’s far too early to be assisting the political implications he is causing.

Donald Trump claims the United States now “runs” Venezuela —and the world’s largest polluters are cashing in.

Openly demanding that Venezuela hand over its oil and “land” to the United States in an act of colonial plunder.

The US is being run as a rogue state by thugs.

This is what an empire looks like in real time.

The martial rhetoric against fellow-Americans is a striking contrast with his push for an end to hostilities and on the other hand risk the collapse of NATO.

The chilling vision of turning American military power inward should be enough evidence that Americans need to examine what is happening.

Fossil and finance capital have cohered around the ‘Donroe’ Doctrine.

In the days following Trump’s invasion of Venezuela, oil giants saw their valuations soar — a windfall worth tens of billions of dollars.

The United States is rapidly expanding its assault across the Americas — threatening Venezuela today, Mexico tomorrow, and any nation that dares to defend its sovereignty.

Their drive for hemispheric domination must be stopped. 

Its aim is clear: recolonise the hemisphere and extinguish every political project that puts people before profit.

While the Trump administration aims to recolonise the hemisphere, we must start building a unified front to challenge US aggression.

If it wasn’t clear already, the threats against Greenland show that Europe is also in his sights.

I am sure he wanted like many countries to have a Sovereign Wealth Fund however the US has found another way of raising money — namely, strongarming key allies into handing over money in exchange for lower tariffs.

In effect, the Trump administration seems determined to use taxes paid not by its own citizens, but by the citizens of its allies, to rebuild its own industry, and furthermore to manage those funds however it pleases.

I currently feel sorry for his geriatric decline but bewildered that so many Americans were willing to hand him the keys to the kingdom.

Mainstream media is just about devoid of any indication of collective remorse over any of it.

It is becoming rather clear in the USA that it is time to own a gun but using it like in the movie is and should be taboo.

Trump is willing to kill Americans, let alone immigrants, and foreigners.

It’s time that the United Nations dumped the veto and put the liberty of people from the tyranny of foreign control as a genuine resolution.

The bed rock of principles is under attack, we have in our power to change direction.

All human comments appreciated. All like click and abuse chucked in the bin.

Contact: bobdillon33@gmail.com

https://youtu.be/g48q5fhpYOg?si=ywnIipXbN2ayLdor