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Few options that don’t necessarily even require a whole lot of capital (and I’m already doing one of these):

• Work in finance (and stay educated to be good at it), donate as much as possible to well researched charities.

• Work in healthcare, volunteer your services where they’d be otherwise unavailable.

• Build a community with certain values and offer life-enhancing (basically odd jobs) services freely to people outside the community. Or just offer community, just be transparent about the rules and expectations (don’t be a cult).

If you want to be friends with people interested in certain stuff, it’s a good idea to know about that stuff.

Pop culture is easy and common, meaning you’ll increase the amount of people available to make friends with.

I know a little about a lot of things to the point that I can easily make pleasant, inconsequential conversation with most people as I somehow learned small talking growing up but being an introvert, I’m not particularly interested in making friends with anyone who isn’t into the stuff I really care about.

Certainly we must rely on experience to learn anything about matter so from an epistemological point of view it is the foundation of knowledge but I do think we can discover a deeper foundation for reality through science.

There’s the crux of it. Problem is that science is the product of the human mind. Experience isn’t just the foundation of knowledge, it has to be the foundation of everything because to say anything about anything, nonsense or science, you need experience first. This includes any idea about what matter is or isn’t. We must first have an experience, and then we conceptualize it in some way - and then we try to desperately conceptualize it in a way that makes sense in the context of our previous conceptualizations. Because ironically, while some people insist on matter being prior, without realizing it they often make the human mind equally prior (“thoughts ARE the thing itself”). Bring them the map-territory problem and they get it, but it’s often hard to get them to apply the same idea onto their own mind.

To be sure, science is a great and reliable way to make predictions. However, ultimate reality will always be grander than anything the mind can capture, and as such, science will never be able to distill it either. That said, one hopes, eventually science will meet this realization (and indeed some scientists have). To put it very shortly, as long as one insists on a logical continuum, one can keep asking “and what’s beyond that” as logic necessarily requires a continuum of values to function. Foundation on which logic operates though, must be beyond what can be captured with logic.

You know, I feel like I see a surprising amount of people on Lemmy who have stepped out of the basic materialistic view. It’s encouraging but also a bit bizarre. There seems to be a weird subsection of people who are able enough computer nerds to not be scared by the interface here, but have actually looked into some pretty deep philosophical stuff (though some definitely have just done enough psychedelics). I include myself in the weird subsection of course but I really didn’t expect to see as many others here as I have.

Assuming people are actually able and willing to recognize when they start hiding in circular reasoning (or other logical fallacies but by experience, begging the question is most common):

Argument about matter being the foundation of reality. It’s not. And I’d start by questioning your understanding of the word “matter”.

Look into Waking Up app. Listen to the talks on psychedelics.

Wow. You really actually believe that? You actually equate non-dual ideology which necessarily posits a non-hierarchial ultimate reality without absolute good and evil with the bullshit of theistic religions?

Damn I have seen the memes about Marxists thinking they’re way smarter than they are but I thought they were exaggerating.

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For someone harping about science, you certainly fall for logical fallacies a lot. You keep pointing at the extracted brain, textbook appeal to the stone.

You are pointing to contents of consciousness to try to prove matter comes prior.

Maybe take the hint that you don’t understand the argument (and aren’t willing to try) and thus aren’t really equipped for this conversation.

Op made a question I answered. I however did not ask anyone’s opinion.

Because all your proof hinges on matter being real and prior.

regardless of who is percieving it.

And since we require perception to say anything about matter, what does that say about which comes first, matter or consciousness?

Consciousness is a material, measurable process

Again, prove it. It is YOUR system of thought which requires that every claim must be backed with objective proof. Where is the objective proof of matter? All the rest you’re saying hingest upon that being a fact. But if you can’t prove it as a fact, all you have is an unverified belief that you insist everyone else should have. Which, again, makes you exactly the same as any other oppressor. In your own system of thought. And before you parade some scientists in front of me, ask yourself if you can know that they know what they are talking about, or do you just believe them because they share the same core belief system as you?

Oh you were SO CLOSE to getting it.

Why can’t materialists prove it though? By all their own rules, they should.

The ideas of people like Kastrup and Hoffman rely on consciousness being distinct from matter, and not a product of matter.

Yes. Good. You got it. Now definitively prove that consciousness arises from matter and not the other way around. No, brainwave scans exist in consciousness. Everything you say exists in consciousness. Prove to yourself that ANYTHING exists outside your consciousness, prior to thought (as thought is only a reflection of what is, like an image in a mirror but it’s not the thing itself).

Else, you are just insisting that your beliefs are the correct ones without proof. All I need to prove consciousness is be. You’re the one insisting on extra steps. You’re just taking materialism as a fact because that’s what you’re used to doing. You put the block of materialism at the bottom and use the blocks you put on it to try to prove it. This is called circular reasoning.

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Can’t do it huh? For all your talk of science, you sure are ready to take the belief in materialism for granted. Just another belief you demand others have, demand others have the same thoughts as you. The road towards fascism is short indeed.

Unless you can provide scientific proof, I have no reason to subscribe your belief system and neither does anyone else. Go read https://www.bernardokastrup.com/ or https://bradleyhook.com/donald-hoffmans-concepts-simplified-understanding-reality-and-perception/, debunk them and you probably have grounds for your ideology. Else, it’s just another house of cards built on a foundation of fiction.

Nice strawman equating nonduality with flat earth and other materialistic religions. Top critical thinking, very science and logic.

If you are so sure of your stance, prove to me that matter exists outside consciousness. And good goddess, at least try to do better than pointing at an extracted brain will you? Nonduality has been around for thousands of years and it’s yet to be debunked despite there being a very clear criteria for it.

Tell me you don’t know shit about spirituality without telling me you don’t know shit about spirituality.

I said Zen Buddhism is a start. Not the end.

Aw, did your brain just go “nooo I need others to think how I think”. Congratulations, you just unlocked tyranny.

Get into non-dual spirituality. Zen Buddhism is a good start. Stop thinking you can win the cycle of suffering by spinning the wheel a little differently.

Marxist nonsense will succumb to the exact same human frailties as capitalism. Greed, tribalism. It’s the same thing, they just demonize a different group of people and thought. They’re still creating a division and separation. No system of thought that’s not grounded in what can be said to be inarguably TRUE is free from tyranny - the only way out is to release your attachment to anything that could be used to control you, to force you to act unlike you truly feel called to act.

Materialism is the ultimate means of oppression. And it’s something you’ve been conditioned to believe in since birth. Socialists, communists etc. still rely on materialism to drive their ideology and somehow think they’re better because they make nice noises about equality. Childish. At least capitalism is logically consistent with it.

Unless you are willing to take a really fucking hard look at your core beliefs about the nature of reality, you will not change anything. You’re just giving the leash of materialism around your neck to a different master.