Goncharenko centre Lviv, 2025-11-20: What is real? + interesting experiences + possibly more

Post event notes (such as clarifications, additions): These are in blue, mixed with the prepared text.

Translation: auto translation of this page into Ukrainian

Prepared overview for the 5th meeting

Continuing with:
- Interesting experiences I had while travelling by bicycle in Ukraine.
- tea break with fresh bread from a big Silpo. You can take slices of bread with honey or jam. I will take some of my favourite tea with me for you to try out.
- What is reality, is what you see on videos reality? How much crime is there? How much of cities has been destroyed in the war? Some russian propagandists claimed that Ukraine has been destroyed, complete nonsense, it is only some small towns where war has been active a long time. I will go into this and more.
- If there is enough time I will go into something related: manipulation of your worldview, in propaganda, manipulation of what you think happens in 'magic tricks' and manipulation of your thoughts in 'psychological tricks' (such as by Derren Brown).

Preparation was impaired from my phone not charging any more. My other phone had issues too so a few days I spent first troubleshooting then finding a shop and getting my main phone fixed. I thought and was confirmed in a laptop/mobile phone repair shop that the USB connector would have to be replaced. Then in the meeting there was no power, so no tea (disaster! :) ), and thus also no projector to show part of a video from Derren Brown's Trick or treat s01e05 (2007) to explain how a trick works. That is then possibly to come another time.

I told of my experience in 2024 in Korosten, attending a concert, from one of my long bicycle tours in Ukraine in 2024 (this one was: Kiev, Irpin, Korosten, Zvyagel (Novograd-volynsky), Braniv (just staying the night), Rivne, Ostrog, Zvyagel, Zhytomyr, Kiev, Pereyaslav, Zolotonosha, Kremenchuk, a total of about 1300 km).
Story to be added.

I mentioned the issue with determining reality, and what is important, such as distortions from circumstances. I told as an example about the CITO test that I did in primary school (age 10 or 11) that supposedly determines aptitude. This test is partly like an IQ test and partly general knowledge, such as: how many litres of water go into a typical bucket? [ I asked whether attendees knew how many litres a bucket contains. Some attendees said 10 litres, others 6 or 12 litres. ] Several years ago my sister said to me that it is 10 litres and I said I didn't know it at the time of the test, and I did not know it when she told me... General knowledge is usually better if you are more intelligent but I explicitly don't pay attention to what I consider to be useless information, so I may have heard it some time but then it would gave gone straight into the virtual garbage bin. What also didn't help was that I attended at that time a Jena plan school, where some lessons are taught by teachers but you had to do a lot yourself in the other hours. That did not work for me. I did what I liked in those hours... [ I picked up all required missing knowledge in the next year in my last primary school very quickly. I attended, I think it was 5 primary schools, due to my parents moving often to different cities... ] The test gave a low result and the teacher at the time wrote in a note or report card (I should still have it, when I get back to NL I may check) that in the back of her mind she thought level 2/3 (HAVO/VWO). In fact the highest level of VWO was easy for me, as was studying physics and mathematics at university. This shows how personality and circumstances can give a completely wrong impression with that CITO test. What is reality? The teacher should have known from how I talked and did things that I could easily do the highest level. But that teacher was not smart. I remember an example of her behaviour towards me that shows that. The head teacher in the next school, last year of primary school, recommended VWO...

In the meeting I did a test, which didn't work very well due to having to explain too much, to show that psychological trickery is partly based on statistics and knowing what upbringing instills in people, with this question: "Think of a tool, what is it?". When this is done by a performer he shows that he wrote down 'hammer' and people generally have 'hammer' in mind so they may be surprised that the performer "knows what they think" but in reality people generally have this tool in mind because it is the most basic tool, and it is used in children's games, so it is completely logical. At the start some attendees asked what type of tools I meant, well, any, and another attendee gave as an example 'hammer' [ the answer I expected, at least for men ] which I didn't want to happen because that could influence others... (and I am sure it did influence, as did the talk/discussions between them, it made them think about other tools). One attendee said that she had seen multiple performances showing this. Also about thinking about a colour that it is red. So she already knew. I had only seen such a performance once and I then deduced how it works.

I mentioned that there are various tricks that psychological conjurors use, one of them is putting words in your mind. This can be done with emphasis in talking or mentioning a word several times for example. I noticed after making some videos that it happens to myself by myself in this way: I made a video for youtube reviewing my bicycle, and I think it was after going over the fenders that I then talked about the rear tyre, I was pointing at the tyre but I said 'fender'. The word and concept of the fender was (still) so strong in my mind that I used the word fender instead of tyre...

Then to idealists. They tend to distort reality... You find them in politics but also in groups doing meditation (e.g. Osho/Baghwan/Rajneesh, Hare krishna, 'Shunyamurti'/Robert Shubow) and they are almost always destructive because they want to change the world and care about ideals, they do not care about people.

I mentioned that the first day in Lviv I saw Hare krishnas chanting "Hare krishna", and they do not understand life, because they look for an ideal. This is the same with many dictators, like putin, he cares nothing about russians, he has killed hundreds of thousands by starting this war, supposedly to save some people in the Donbass. Idealists care about ideals, not people... Hare krishnas have children raised/educated separately from the parents so that the parents do not get attached to the children and vice versa (to make them get beyond earthly thinking), which is moronic, and 1 attendee said when I asked what the problem with that is, the right thing: stability to grow up, support. I say it like this: children need an emotional connection to the parents to become stable in life (and after that, when they are adults, they can better decide what they want to do with their life). I watched a documentary about the abuse that happened in the Hare Krishna group in the USA and a guy who was interviewed was raised in that group and was abused, and it was clear that he was extremely emotion poor.

[ being abused adds to being emotion poor but it started with no connection to the parents, because a person who raises a group cannot replace parents because of not having that connection that parents will (or should) have, and because of attention being shared too much. ]

I mentioned the problems with being emotion poor: similar to autists, they cannot understand other people well enough and that impairs also reasoning.

I found in my talks with Jehova's witnesses in the Netherlands that they understand life quite well, but I disagree with some of their rules such as not celebrating birthdays. The reason they give for that does not make sense. These are harmless customs and it is good to be part of society, not apart of it.

As part of the topic of what is reality and distorted views I mentioned that there are many channels on youtube criticising women in dating and many commenters and the people narrating on those channels themselves stating that women don't reason logically, whereas men do. I asked what attendees thought: They thought it was not true. A few women thought it was a stereotype. Maybe but generally stereotypes are real, they come from observations of reality. The different behaviour and interests of women vs. men are not just stereotypes, they are real. This doesn't mean that for example all men like cars and no women are interested in cars but in general that is accurate (so it is true for most men, respectively for most women). What causes this view of men=logical and women=not logical is the different way of thinking and talking. That is all. I discussed a lot on various topics and men are almost always not logical thinkers, even in say computer programming. It only looks that way on the surface. In reality both men and women reason towards what they like, rather than towards what makes most sense. With women I have had much more interesting conversations even with those who didn't like what I said, with men I can get almost annoyed (and I did get annoyed until I let annoyance go and just let everything, well almost everything, slide past; I do feel indignation sometimes, a sort of distant form of annoyance at the behaviour and talk of some people, men and women, from how they behave towards other people)...

Another "what is real" is the question of morals. Some people state morals are in a sense arbitrary, which is false. So their belief is not about reality. You can deduce that morals have a purpose given a society. Example: stealing is bad. Reason: a society is not a bunch non connected individuals who only care about themselves, and so you want a society to be of benefit, and for that you do not want that others hurt you or steal from you, and from the logical principle that rules of behaviour should be there for everyone, you come to: Do not steal. With modesty, clothes it is similar. We could all walk around naked but we don't for the reason that in current society we try to do something that is above animalistic behaviour (and that is both more interesting and better to achieve goals). So decent clothes are again about what society is about and what generally is of benefit to everyone (so try to not let urges influence life too much, which it still does of course). You can do this about almost all morals. Some prescriptions for behaviour are not about morals but customs, and in such cases these are just about arbitrary. Examples: going to church every Sunday or praying every day.