Forum Activity for @jimmy-dc

I think I'm gonna restart... after almost hitting a mature look

Introduce Yourself

Thanks Soaring-eagle, and well it is longer than wider, like a bit bigger than 2 inches at the root from left to right and bout 1 inch down/up. I've been using Vickis soap bars, and I like them but I feel like i have stuff built up in the middle of some of my dreads. And this time I hope to salvage all my hair if [ossible, and will probably be a faster process as the last time I started I was just in the 5 inch length or so, and I think it will be a good experience overall.

I think I'm gonna restart... after almost hitting a mature look

Introduce Yourself

So after two years and some months of going completely natural, I've decided to restart. I have made many mistakes and have allowed for too many of my dreads to congo together to the point where there is huge congo forming in the back of my head made up of 9 mini dreads, i had allowed three and 4 to get together as they were pretty small, but two others joined and then the two big ones joined together and I have been trying to divide it and it just seems kind of impossible at this point. there's plenty of congos in other spots and I really think i messed up early on, and have been extra annoyed at these last couple really big ones that are constantly forming in the back of my head. My head is also itchy and i feel like ssome of my thicker dreads might havea lot of lint or something in them, and would just like to start again. 

It kinda blows but I think it's the best decision, as I'm still young(turning 20 in october) and want to keep my dreads for a long time regardless. I don't care about the messy stage which was pretty much all of last year, and don't mind going through it again. 
I want to know if you guys could recommend the best way to undo my dreads without having to cut them off. And if anybody has any experience undoing them to let me know if the result was what they wanted, or should i start from zero, meaning a buzzcut. I'm open to suggestions, but would like to get opinions from many of you here to help me decide. Thank you guys

I think I'm goingto restart...

So after two years and some months of going completely natural, I've decided to restart. I have made many mistakes and have allowed for too many of my dreads to congo together to the point where there is huge congo forming in the back of my head made up of 9 mini dreads, i had allowed three and 4 to get together as they were pretty small, but two others joined and then the two big ones joined together and I have been trying to divide it and it just seems kind of impossible at this point. there's plenty of congos in other spots and I really think i messed up early on, and have been extra annoyed at these last couple really big ones that are constantly forming in the back of my head. My head is also itchy and i feel like ssome of my thicker dreads might havea lot of lint or something in them, and would just like to start again. 

It kinda blows but I think it's the best decision, as I'm still young(turning 20 in october) and want to keep my dreads for a long time regardless. I don't care about the messy stage which was pretty much all of last year, and don't mind going through it again. 
I want to know if you guys could recommend the best way to undo my dreads without having to cut them off. And if anybody has any experience undoing them to let me know if the result was what they wanted, or should i start from zero, meaning a buzzcut. I'm open to suggestions, but would like to get opinions from many of you here to help me decide. Thank you guys

Dread tams, whats best for work?

Dread Products

Hello my dreadlock comrades, I have been on my neglect journey for almost two years now and I’m still making progress and haven’t quite achieved a head of mature dreads, but at least now it is noticeable that I am doing natural dreads and get a lot of positive feedback from people around me, especially from black women, I look mixed and my hair still has some curly aspect to it, so I always get compliments from older-ish women hahah its awesome. I guess it looks somewhat from the hippie times/ popular hairstyle when they were younger, also some older white women tend to be fascinated by my hair style, I think it has to be the memories. (Sorry if this offends anyone, just my observation coming from a Latino background in which dreads are not particularly appreciated especially among the older generations). However the point of writing this is to ask whether a tam /beanie style hat could be an acceptable way to wear my dreads to work? I have been tying it and I don’t like that because it’s barely long enough as my hair has barely gained any length in the last year or so. I work in a Café and I’m dealing with food all the time, mixing soup on the kitchen, tossing a salad, grilling a panini, etc. My bosses are pretty awesome, the owner is hilarious, the main chef, and deals with catering, she has no filter in general which is great, the pastry chef who is always there is a pretty awesome boss as well she is very knowledgeable and always willing to help with all my/customer questions, and last is my manager who is a really laid back dude, who is a bit adhd but he’s great and very flexible when it comes to work and school and helping out with anything in general. The only issue is that my job is located on the suburbs of Connecticut and it’s rather a wealthy kind of town, it’s an awesome job while in college. But I was wondering if you guys thought a tam would work for my job? I’m planning on talking to my manager and see what he thinks, also any other suggestions are more than welcome, meaning what I should do with my dreads, they are about shoulder length but I can barely tie a ponytail and it looks a bit messy with all the loose hairs.

 

Last thing, if you guys know any stores that handmade their stuff and are quality material, and solid price please post them or let me know how to get there. Thanks a lot for sticking through the long read 

updated by @jimmy-dc: 03/01/15 02:28:18PM

I agree its good to learn from others cultures, believes and faith. And yeah i'm not offended either, but I've talk to people who get really defensive and even offended when you mix faith and idealism. And I also agree that we should look for what is good in people instead of their wronging but when it comes to politicians, they are supposed to represent us and the ones we have here are more just like figure heads which aren't 'evolving' or making much good, and its hard to look for the good in people you don't get to meet, I read Obama's autobiography because I thought he would be different, help this country evolve but with this issue in Syria he seems more like the rest and just a figure head repeating the same mistakes others have made in the past. Even my dad, one of the person's who has probably hurt me the most (emotionally), i've tried to help him but he seems to be rotten to the core from drugs and alcohol and I have given him countless chances, I try to look for the good in him, but it gets harder because he is too fake, doesn't mean I don't love him but I know that the chances of him changing from the core are very dim. I will keep trying to help him but he needs a drastic change in his life otherwise he'll never change.

The govt. is even worst than my father, they are too rotten to even try to fix. If the Senate and House of representatives support the president in order to take action in Syria it would be just show my point and I would have to do something about it.

If I believe in revolution it doesn't mean I'm going to go guerrilla style specially in the US, it would be suicide. I think we need a more peaceful approach to it using different tactics such as Ghandi used in India. To lead a revolution, people need a common idea which unites them and that idea would hopefully travel from mouth to mouth through the internet and just everywhere. That's the first step.

I would recommend that video, its really good and lights some truth.

A utopia would be just a world where corruption was dealt with, people although broken had a good foundation on their morals and ethics and had the idea that doing right is more beneficial than the small satisfaction doing a wrong might bring them.

I meant historically there is more about Jesus than any other figure. First you have the Bible which could be considered a historical document. Then the Jewish historian Josephus write about him, also Roman historian Tacitus, the Talmud and a bunch more. Those are non Christian ones after that you have all the gospels and letters written by many believers and also non believers. It would be easier to argue on the existence of Julius Cesar than Jesus. Document wise there is far more proof of him actually existing, wheter a person actually thinks he was God is a whole different deal.

Just to quickly answer your question. As a Christian, one believes that God came incarnated as a man named Jesus. He was/is the only ever perfect human, because he was both God and human. I believe Jesus is God, people from other beliefs can't deny that he was once alive there is more proof about Jesus being real than Alexander the Great Julius Ceasar and Aristotle combined. The only difference is whether you believe in his resurrection and whether or not he was God. Our sins were repaid by God when he sent Himself/Jesus his only son to save us and give us an opportunity to accept to have a relationship with Him and giving/living our life to glorify Him. We might try to get perfection by keeping up the good deeds, chanting, praying, meditating, trying to be morally perfect. You can line up all your good deeds and everything and line it up as perfection and well you are very short from it. The problem is Sin. I mean i'm really not good explaining especially if i have to write it because I'll be repeating my self but this video pretty much explains much of my beliefs and listenning to it I always catch something new every time, its what I believe I don't mean to offend you in any way.

I mean you don't need to know much about Ron Paul, but even myself who was interested in the outcome of the election of 2012 in the US knew very little about him until a couple of days ago. Everything he says is not hard to understand he just speaks, what he thinks is what any normal person without bias would say. It is inspiring yet the media ignores him, because every time they throw a loaded question at him or he is on a debate with some other politician he makes them look like total idiots because they are lying through their teeth. It sucks because you don't really hear about him in the US either.

I wish we could evolve and it is horrible that we have destroyed others because of our ideas and believing they are past their time. We make the same mistakes over and over again we can keep trying but we just can't accomplish perfection and well we don't need it in my opinion. I did say the only thing we can do is keep improving and that that would be our best shot for a utopia. And well I believe that revolution is pretty much the only option left because I can't trust on the system we have right now and have seen people try to change it from the inside out but once the fruit is rotten as good as you can make it look on the outside you can't change the fact that its rotten you need a new one. I'm still young, 17, so maybe I'm a little more radical but that's me man.

Noodle-Doo said:

Hey Jimmy,
I see what you're saying about the cars. If you compare a Model T [Ford Kubilay hee hee ] with a modern car it looks like a revolution in design, but it actually happened over many years in a series of tiny steps, in response to the problems they were trying to solve at the time. That's almost the definition of evolution, isn't it?
From a social point of view, isn't that what settlers all over the world did to native tribes? They decided their culture was obsolete, not as good as the new version they brought with them, and tried to replace the native culture with their own by force? Now many of us revere those cultures, regret what was done and recognise how much we can learn from them. That's the danger of revolutionary thinking, we might be sure it's the right thing to do, but it's only based on our own opinion at the time. The future might prove us to be wrong! The only way revolution truly works is to completely eradicate what you're replacing, or else it will be sitting there, waiting for its chance to come back to power. Isn't that why empires don't ever last forever - the old order is still there under the surface, waiting its chance to retake control? That's why I say evolution from within is more powerful, because the old order is assimilated and changed along with everyone else. The car analogy fits really well. There are so few classic cars left, they are swamped by the flow of change. Same as nowadays the people who think it's a good idea to trade poached ivory are in a minority, compared to the vast majority of people who think it's wrong. 200 years ago, no-one would see any problem with it at all (they were all old cars). That's the flow of change, the illegal ivory dealers of today are like the few old cars that have been left behind as other people's morals have changed.

Not heard of Ron Paul (sorry, not American!) but it seems like politics over there is really influenced by big business and the media. But there's a big flaw in their system of control - the internet and free, open communication that it brings. We don't need to rely on the TV to be told what to do anymore, coz we can read up, talk to other people and decide for ourselves. So if you're upset that this guy didn't win, and you think his ideas are right, I'd ask how hard did you fight for him? With the internet, each of us can contact almost anyone else in the world now. So if everyone who believed in that guy was on there, persuading people and showing them a different way of thinking, that could cause a big swing. Both in voting, and in the way people blindly accept what they're told. How many of the people who complain about things are actually lobbying their representatives for the changes they want? If everyone says that it doesn't make any difference and doesn't do it, their opinions never get heard. So if 100 people said that the election media coverage was biased, and it should be even, they're gonna ignore it. But if 100million people start bothering them about it, they might start to take notice. Evolution in nature is powered by how beings respond to environmental stress. But it's the same for society, just that we are the environment, we apply the pressure by how we behave, what we buy, who we talk to, how we vote and everything else.

Yeah, it is kinda scary all the stuff they've brought in under the excuse of anti terror, isn't it? Like skimming all the emails and texts and internet, looking for people saying the wrong things. Gives me the creeps thinking about it. And Syria is looking dangerous. Don't understand why we have a UN, that doesn't agree to joining in, but some countries want to do it anyway. If there wasn't a UN resolution to do it, then shouldn't the UN be protecting Syria from America, France and England? I don't get how it works.

It sounds kinda bleak how you say we can never be free of sin. I think we can, we just have to stop sinning! But, like you say, we have different beliefs. I believe in re-incarnation, that we're on this world until we get it right. So there is no renewal or forgiveness for me, it's up to me to make myself perfect (if there was such a thing). But as a Christian, if you stop committing new sins, and God forgives your sins from the past, you'd be pure, wouldn't you?

First off I agree with what soaring eagle said, you can try to fix an obsolete object and still keep it running, but it is beyond our power to completely make it as good as a new one. It is just an old car surviving in a world where cars have been revolutionized to become better and safer, you could say they evolved, yet if you told people 60 years ago about cars running on clean energy they would think your crazy and that it isn't possible, a revolution within the car manufacturing system had to occur in order to get to clean fuel cars. We made it better by changing the idea that a car had to run on regular fuel. I wish it would be as easy as trying to change the system within but in order to make an old car as good as a new/modern car you would pretty much have to change most of it.

Ron Paul is a man who run for president in the last two elections and if you listen to his ideas, you can tell this man has simple yet reasonable ideas, why didn't he get more attention from the media? He is trying to change it from within yet, he has little support of his 'comrades' as they aren't as genuine as he is. He did really try to make our country evolve, yet his ideas didn't really benefit the top dogs and mainstream media try to evade him because what he presented makes much more sense than what any of the other candidates, in the debates they would minimally show him, the people who have the power right now don't want to loose it its as simple as that. They do what benefits them not their citizens. Still a president its more like a figure head as they always, no matter republican or democrat, do the same things and lie to us. The media is legally allowed to lie to the people so they can distort anything they want and show without any basis on truth, if you don't believe me look it up.

How about Syria? The members of NATO really want to invade even though the chemical weapons haven't been proved to be the Syrian's govt. but again if you do a little research of your own instead of relying on a media which is legally allowed to lie to us, and they will do anything our govt wants, you can find that the rebels, which the US govt. send weapons to, have been found with the chemical weapons, I'll save you the research

http://shoebat.com/2013/08/27/evidence-syrian-rebels-used-chemical-weapons-not-assad/

Why isn't this all over the news?? did you see the date? The system our govt. is running on is broken already, there's not much we can do to evolve. People like Ron Paul have tried but what happens to those people, they don't receive attention or even hear about them. It angers people yet we feel hopeless because we believe that individually we can't do anything but if we all think this way then nobody does anything and we allow the lies and mistreatment and injustice of our current govt. to keep happening.

If we go to war with Syria, Iran would join because they have a mutual defense pact. That's what the tops dogs want, they don't care about the people, its about power for them, many have died in Syria mostly from rebels who are backed by us yet those won't make headlines on our news. The system is broken already. The top dogs don't care about the constitution or us they care for power, no matter who dies. I forgot to mention if we do attack and Iran joins we would probably invade Iran aswell or something along those lines and Russia their biggest ally would definately join. They even stated that nuclear weapons might be used and thats not a couple of deaths but millions. I did the research already.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/08/27/russia-warns-against-us-strike-on-syria/2706861/

just skim it if you want to but why are we going to Syria? why isn't something like that in all our main news?

The system is way too rotten already nothing to save there. We could protest as our right allows us, however that would have little influence on the govt. they are going to Syria for their 'moral obscenity' on their use of chemical weapons.

We prefer to ignore the truth because we are fearful. Pretending it doesn't affect us and allowing others to die in vain. That's where our lack of good comes in, its not being neutral about it its being evil. Allowing others to be hurt, its like seeing somebody get beaten up and just watch from a safe distance rather than helping. Our fear controls us to become evil selfish creatures. There is no religion or philosophy which doesn't have a concept of good and evil(maybe there's a philosophy but you know what I'm saying). The lack of good creates evil even if we don't mean it. We all have this universal sets of morality and we no matter culture and religion have pretty much the same ideas on telling apart good from evil. We all can be good yet as you said the original sin comes in and taints us from perfection, can't be a perfect being if we are in constant sin. You can't achieve nirvana or perfection you can improve and change yet you are always sinful. we can't be revolutionized or evolve into a perfect being in this world. If you want to talk religion/faith in the after world we become renewed(revolutionized) to perfect beings, but i know we have different believes so i'm not gonna go into much detail. We need a revolution because the system is to broken, even talking like this gets attention and makes us feel uncomfortable because we know that the govt is 24/7 spying on us yet if we don't do anything and keep waiting nothing will happen.

Sorry i got a little off topic with Syria yet i thought it was important

Well Noodle-Doo(great name btw), not to disagree with your philosophy but just to elaborate a bit on what I believe. People are naturally good. However we are tinted by this thing called sin. And it doesn't necessarily makes us evil, rather just makes us imperfect beings. My believe on evilness and bad and whatever word, is that it is the lack of goodness. If you allow me to explain, I read this article of a philosophy atheist professor and a christian student having a discussion, and I thought it was really cool because it made sense to me. light of the sun can be dim, normal, bright , very bright, etc. and you can keep getting brighter and brighter but when it comes to darkness is just the lack of light, because if you can see in the dark it means you still have a bit of moonlight or some sort of light but if you don't have any light you have darkness which is just the lack of lights. You really cannot get more dark or less dark, because that's using the light to get brighter. So if my explanation made any sense, evil is just the lackness of good. Because we are not perfect beings we cannot be good at all times and when we are not being good you do bad. Idk if that made too much sense to you but that's what I believe. In other words I'm saying that good is superior to evil. I also don't think is impossible to fully learn to not sin at all, we can only get better. And a great way to get better is through fellowship as it is a great example in the rainbow gatherings. When someone is doing something morally wrong or just sinning(not being good), for whatever reason it is, it becomes really easy to realize those mistakes if somebody calls you out on it not to be a dick or a jerk but because they care about you and your well being. If people didn't get offended and weren't so proud when somebody calls them out in some wrongdoing they do and took the advice to try to change instead we could have a closer utopian-like world tomorrow. People also do have to realize that it isn't only the govt. which is the main problem it is ourselves for allowing them to get there and not standing up to their lies because we believe that one person can't do anything and that is a believe stuck to all of us because we are too fearful of the top dogs and blame them for our problems when we don't do anything to fix them or realize that we are part of the problem.

I also agree that we can't do much other than getting better, and improving our society, but as soaring eagle said earlier some societies including the one we live on today are too rotten to the core and you cannot have make our society evolve by now, it has to be revolutionized. Or maybe I'm a little bit too radical hahah, but i do believe that we need a revolution because the core is too power driven and would not favor a society which has more equality and just better calling it socialist communist and those words in the US are pretty much taboo.

Lastly to answer your question, I think that to make our society depending on how extreme you want to take it, first you need to take action and gain support become the idealistic person who has the support of the people and build a team in a local town or go more extreme and take it to the central government and take control. I'm not saying you have to become the president, but in order to achieve a big change you need to have some power. I don't really know how to pan out all of it, especially right now because i think i just crashed and its getting late so all my thinking went down a lot. Yeah i tried writing but my ideas aren't flowing too well anymore. Well hope this discussion stays alive and if you want to know a little more about me I have a discussion for my college fundraiser, not asking you to donate but i wrote about my life and it might help you figure out why i think certain way, even though its just a short summary of the last few years. hope you have a good night.

Noodle-Doo said:

Hey, wow. You've both got some interesting ideas going there.
It's starting to look like three different ideas coming out - utopia as a pure dream of how the world could be, utopia as a real life country that we could start tomorrow (given the land), and utopia as something we work towards by improving our own society.
I'd planned on using the dream as a starting point and modifying it as necessary so it could exist in the world we have today. Then, hopefully, other countries would be inspired by seeing the success of a new way of living, and work towards a better society of their own.

I don't quite understand, Soaring Eagle, if you're saying the Rainbow model is something that could work as it is to run an independant country, or if that is the endpoint dream?

Jimmy, it's so cool to see someone think the same kind of thing from a completely different viewpoint, it gives me hope that this thing could actually work. You see, with my philosophy, the concepts of good, evil and sin don't really have any meaning. But, thinking that way, you've basically said that it's only through personal development (learning not to sin) and taking responsibility for our own actions that society as a whole can improve. Have I got you right there? That's exactly what I've been thinking, from a non-religious viewpoint. I completely agree with you that humanity can only improve on what we have, it has to be evolution and not revolution. Our utopian country is a better place to live for us. But, more importantly, it's an example - a trigger to accelerate the improvement that I believe is slowly happening in the rest of the world anyway.

So there's a new question - how do we each influence the societies we live in to be a better place?

I believe the rainbow gatherings are a special place from the much i know and heard of, mostly things i've read in this site, yet I'm saying that a completely perfect utopia of perfect qualities is not achievable, because we're broken, I don't like being negative i just think its what it is and respect everything your saying you have more life wisdom than i can imagine. The closest thing I've had to a rainbow gathering is a Young Life camp, which is a camp in a secluded place in different places of thee world and many in the US and its for high school students to learn a little about Jesus Christ nothing is enforced and it is mostly free time for the whole day and the place is run by mostly volunteers who are high school students, it is such an awesome place because everyone is so welcoming and nice to each other because that is what is being passed around, there is always kids who break some of the rules and I am not anyone to judge them because i have to, but it is so close to being perfect yet it isn't because it's only temporal, i wanted to volunteer one month this summer but the spots filled up quick so i couldn't it. It just shows how beautiful and strong we can be by serving others even though we could be working and making money especially for college. I enjoy this discussion and I'm learning from it and maybe one day I'll go take part in one. Just the fact that we can't be perfect, not even a pope, or dalai lama or anybody except one who was also God, but that is my belief.