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By acknowledge the fundamental loneliness of the life and death process, each relationship is valued. Instead of shouting to you in the mist and fog, I throw you a rope and for a temporary period of time, we float together.

If a boundary is not established(e.g. a protocol of connection/communication.) then I am not talking to you. I am talking to my mental model of you. By establishing a "rope boundary" I can get a clearer (but still fuzzy) image of you.

From my lonely raft of consciousness I can never see the "real" you. The best I can do is constantly update my mental model of you and not let is become too stale. The fidelity of the rope's communication and the power of my mental models are the limit.

When you don't build a rope connection, it's because you already feel like you understand the other person. It's similar to racism. You feel like you don't need more information b/c the external visual is enough. It disregards the individual.

I suspect no human actually cares that much about their chosen ideologies. Each person just wants to be happy. A society is an emergent phenomenon when a large enough mass of connections floats roughly in the same direction like a swarm of fish.

You could say "Northeast is Christianity" or "East is communism." or "Southwest is Capitalism" Within each swarm of fish, the specific communities move at different speeds in slightly different directions.

Unlike a plane with 2 degrees of freedom, our lives have far far more. At the individual level we are truly alone just like the crazy hermit eating bugs. But if we squint, we can feel less alone as members of the same country/race/social-level/economic-level/sports-team/.

This act of "squinting" is pretending to not have our strange tastes. The very things that make us individuals. It is a self cauterization for the purposes of increased conformity due to fear of loneliness.

The refusal to squint by peacocking your individuality can be a very brave act. The LGBT "Pride" movement is an example. It lowers the courage requirement by creating a "group" you can be a part of.

Like all groups though it has the trap of arresting development via the allure of the safety of a group. E.g. LGBT focuses on sexual diversity, but if the group is also say.. pro-lizard, anti-snake. Then the snake owning LGBT individual has to pretend to like lizards.

This self-cauterizing ironically is the very act of scarring the soul that many groups set out to reduce. The problem is ideology growth via resonance. An X diversity group expanding its definition of diversity to X * Y. Then X, Y, Z, etc...

E.g. if a group that encourages sexual diversity also tries to lecture other groups on politics and philosophy, then it oversteps its bounds in a way. You have to agree on 3 axis in order to truly feel like you belong.

Those 3 values were chosen because within a group, people become more similar(mimesis). Within the group, it can feel like these 3 golden Truths are the answer to all the world's problems (instead of just the group's) This proselytizing can easily become a crusade.

To use a rope as boundary means to say "I want a connection with you." but also "Your naked Truth will look like Evil to me." while also knowing that "Everyone's Truth is Unique to the Self".

The 2 extremes of connecting are (1) refusing to use any rope, a perpetual loner. (2) jumping onto another raft or tying yours onto a "super=raft". The former leads to very dark places. The latter gives up your individuality.

The courage to deal with loneliness is the same as the courage to deal with the unknown is the same as the courage to deal with death.

True Individuality can be considered "Not needing rope" but only very very few human beings would not use any. That's like refusing to love b/c you know love dies. It's like refusing to watch any and all movies b/c you realized movies are fake.

This "Dark Path of Enlightenment" burns a cold shadow flame. It absorbs light instead of giving it off because it claims the wisdom without realizing the integration. Any Shortcut is in essence, Dark Magic.

It would also explain the fetish for doing things "The Old Fashioned Way". The image of a Zen Monk creating something via a 2 thousand year old tradition gives off a kind of warmth light in comparison to the neon glow of technological progress.

The reason unknown/death/loneliness is the same is because courage is the distance one can leave the mass of humanity. The farther you can go from the shore, the more skilled you are. You are a Great Explorer of the Unknown.

A Great Explorer who doesn't come back however is not a Great Explorer. It is Someone Who Died Doing Something Stupid. It is someone who went Insane.

The point of going into the void is to bring some light and warmth back, not to be swallowed by it, or to come back a screaming meteor lighting the town on fire.

Setting a boundary is like: "Hail there good sir, I see you too are headed towards the Void of Death" "Aye, that I am. Good to meet you. I am a grower of Apples." "Apples, you say, how wonderful. I am a grower of oranges."

To acknowledge an individual means to accept that every One will have a terrific life (terror filled) no matter what happens.

Initiation rituals like spartan children surviving in the wilderness have this at their core. It is a brutal test, but the results create individuals fast and hard.

We have more subtle and non life-threatening methods nowadays. Of course... they fail when teachers are just stamping A's on tests.

Instead of being eaten by wolves you drown in debt and the terror of homelessness. The "punishment" for not learning about personal responsibility and compound interest.

The gatekeepers are right. Such egregious stupidity and immaturity will lower the bar for all of society. The teachers are to blame. Punish them. Lower their pay. Maybe that'll solve the problem.