I’m going to recommend, in addition to meditation, that you look into IFS Therapy. You can see an actual therapist about it, but you can also just read a book on the subject and do it yourself unless you have really deep trauma or addictions to deal with. The guy who invented it has several books, but I recommend Self Therapy by Jay Earley as it is based around working on your own and is basically like meditation with the purpose of resolving your inner issues. My ADHD brain has improved a ton since I started doing it. Feel free to message me if you have any questions. This is my current Hyperfocus, so I’m already way down the rabbit hole on research. 😁

And a very happy Void-Scream to you as well!

You had a moment of clarity where your true Self was able to be present and witness the good in the world. This is huge and you should know that a random internet stranger is proud of you for noticing. It is the first step to starting to heal your own inner parts who are still carrying that trauma from decades ago. The next step is to try to bring that enlightenment and understanding inside yourself. Congratulations on your new wisdom!

This is true, but on a personal level I have no idea how to do the calculus for, “My work is killing people, but it would have been worse if it hadn’t.” I think the show “The Good Place” got it right and it is just too interconnected and complicated to actually derive an answer as to whether an action is net negative or positive. That said, if I had to place money on a given action being negative, working for an arms manufacturer would be one I’d be fairly comfortable betting on.

I think this question boils down to this: Do your actions have a net positive or a net negative affect on the world? Does working at this company in some way offset the harm that the company is doing downstream? In this case I have a hard time coming up with a reasonable way in which this might be the case. Paying you and your family to have stuff doesn’t offset causing actual death and physical harm.

Astrill is the only consistent one and I have to server hop at times.

For commercial offerings this is probably true for at least some of them, but creating your own VPN isn’t terribly difficult if you are serious about your privacy. I typically just use them when I travel to countries like China where I can’t get to a bunch of necessary services, so I don’t mind if they route my YouTube traffic through CIA headquarters, but if I was doing anything more than that I would just set up my own.

Allegorical humor is the best humor!

-Plato, probably.

Subtle! I like it!

Weirdly, the only parts of the Internet that I’m really liking these days are Hacker News, Lemmy and the one part that I do pay for, which is Kagi Ultimate. It is very refreshing not to be the product and I do occasionally need to use a search engine for something.

Total Waffle!