I don't think think structures and forms contain information. Entropy yes. A wavefunctions is just a collection of hidden variables with a specific form which is continuously changing shape. Collapsing, taking shape in potentials, It's shape influences the particle directly. There is no information contained in the sense that it refers to something else than the particle, like the information in a computer refers to things we define, giving it meaning. — Hillary

That is compelling. I once heard "news" defined as "something worth knowing that you didn't already know."

The question then revolves around what is "something."

Sartre, following on his studies with or on Heidegger, would maybe interject that a "thing" is anything that is not nothing. Nothing being the blank page essentially or undifferentiated existence.

I do wonder if this essentially philosophical framework muddies our perspective in a very real sense in relation to physics. If we are inherently incapable of discerning the similarity between nothing and something and this results in the Bohmian tendency to attribute hidden variables to the quantum behavior of particles.

It is an interesting conjecture that the fundamental flaw in mathematics is that it must be intelligible to human beings, but it is not practical, is it? The idea that the ultimate answers to physical questions must either be infinity or nothing doesn't convey a satisfactory understanding to our minds, does it?

Information is anything that stands out from a background of infinity or nothing, but the ultimate paradox is that infinity is nothing.

If you are an Aboriginal person in Australia, the apocalypse began 200 years ago. — Tom Storm

And, yet, there are still aborigines in Australia. And Sioux in America.

Somehow, people just persist against all odds or even reason.

A legitimate issue. What happens if the US decides to step away from its leadership role in NATO, not now, but after a couple of years? Will the militarized member nations stay united or will their leaders reignite historical nationalistic conflicts against their neighbors? — magritte

This is the essential challenge. Autocratic regimes tend to last while democratic regimes can change over short periods. Finland may think that it looks like a great idea to join NATO now, but what about in a couple of years when we have a protectionist and isolationist American administration that is perfectly willing to leave Finland on the front line of a Cold War no one wanted?

Now, I am personally biased against war and the military-industrial complex in America and I suspect - but I'm willing to be proven wrong - that the current conflict in Ukraine owes as much to US influence as it does to Russian aggression, so I'm not a perfectly neutral commenter here - for full disclosure if it is worth anything.

However, I would not be adverse to a neutral position for all nations between Russia and the EU in the interest of avoiding a second Cold War.

Side note - is this just too absurd that we have a World War 1 followed by World War 2 and then a Cold War 1 followed by Cold War 2? Is that too much a proof of the old saying "history repeats itself. First as tragedy and then as farce"?

My main problem with US support of the Ukrainian Conflict is that the United States is the largest and most committed arms dealer in the world and NATO, as far as we view it, is an international protection racket - war is a racket, full stop - so it feels like we'll end up with a divided Ukraine anyway, but one that required the devastation of the nation and a mountain of Ukrainian and Russian casualties.

I mean, it seems like from a humanitarian perspective, it would have been better if Russian won after a couple of days. Am I wrong?

There is nothing socialist about states taking on private risk. The risk being taken on is that of corporations, without any concomitant control; ownership remains in private hands, and states taking on such risk simply means that corporate failure is ultimately underwritten by workers. It is capitalism taken to the nth degree. — Streetlight

Agreed. The "bail out" comes at the cost of the taxpayer which is heavily weighted toward the working class -- and fiat money production which ends up as an implied tax via inflation laying more heavily on working class positions.

Hmm. Are we arriving at the reason they banned you? — frank

I don't understand. Do you have anything more interesting to add or is this the extent of your contribution? So far, it seems fairly traditional with nothing unique in the historical perspective.

I appreciate that this brings up the idea that Nazi Germany used segregationist and eugenicist United States as the model for its anti-Semitic ideal of an Aryan Germany.

I do think that there is a detrimental puritanical ideal of human society and behavior that permeates American society. I couldn't say if Germany suffers the same "super-ego" oppressive tendency.

However, I am reminded of an interesting element of American society provided by some writer I can't remember that observed the behavior of temperance rallies back in the early 20th century in my homeland of Appalachia. People would spend days railing against the evils of demon liquor and then afterwards would pick up moonshine from the local stil'.

So, the Puritanical streak in America was always something that made transgression more enjoyable.

I do think that the implicit fascist urge goes back to puritanism or the idea of purity. That there is some preordained pure position attainable by human beings. However, I also think that Americans at least - if not Germans - also tend to rebel against that. Which is why the shadow of fascism always hovers over America but never descends.

You can also read what he said in his many speeches and letters in his life but I guess since they weren't carved in stone, they don't matter. He was a human being, not a statue.

The vision of the free society is about social roles. No one is locked into a particular role. — frank

I agree, but what role is separate from the labor associated with it? In aristocracy or rentier economies, ther are roles without labor, but what do you think Lincoln was talking about?

All of this is wrong. — Streetlight

Oh - I thought you wanted an actual answer. Apparently, I was mistaken.

Capitalism provides simply a progression of comfort for those that engage in it in real terms. Other than that, it is conceptual.

That's incorrect. It meant social mobility. — frank

Mobility by what process other than the fruits of one's labor?

I don't know what you are talking about. — Streetlight

Back at you. It feels like the old idea of someone asking what something means but providing no real context.

If you ask what is "capitalism" -well, that is only a concept and concepts only exist in relation to their context. So, conceptually, capitalism is simply the application of capital. Capital is the legitimization of any action by social agreement. Social agreement means investment by a communities shareholders. Finally, the success of one's actions is judged by the creation of greater capital and failure by the diminishment of all shareholder's capital.

It's a simple process determined by both markets and currency value as measures but not inherent elements of the process - essentially the game and the scoreboard.

This is what gave him the advantage in his pursuit of the presidency.
— ASmallTalentForWar

No, the Southern Democrats walked out of the 1859 Democratic National Convention and subsequently ran their own candidate, splitting pro-slavery vote. That's how Lincoln won.

The abolition of slavery was essentially an economic necessity
— ASmallTalentForWar

No, the Dred Scott decision promised to nationalize slavery, and the wisdom of the time was that once this happened slavery would never be uprooted from the USA.

Lincoln was a moderate in this sense and his principles aligned with theirs
— ASmallTalentForWar

Lincoln made his principles known. He believed that slavery was a threat to the vision of the free society. Once people get used to someone else doing their work for them, they lose sight of the meaning of freedom. — frank

None of that contradicts my assertions.

How did Lincoln get into the position so that the split vote gave him the advantage? The defining characteristic of his campaign was the free soil movement.

The Dred Scott decision threatened the economic interests of his supporters who wanted the frontier to be primarily free labor.

A free society to Lincoln essentially meant free labor.

I'm not concerned with 'capitalism in the ideal sense'. A red herring, ignorable forever. — Streetlight

However, that is the only "real" version of capitalism available. It's like baseball. I can tell you all the rules involved in the game, but knowing every last detail of the rules of the game will not tell you anything about how an actual game will turn out.

So, do you want to play a game of baseball (or watch one) or know how the game is played? That is essentially the problem of defining capitalism. What happens on the field is not going to match perfectly to the rule book.

Says who? I mean, sure, capitalists retroactively justify their class position with all sorts of fairy tales, but the fairy tales do not preceed those class positions. — Streetlight

But that is not capitalism in the ideal sense. Class positions break down to aristocratic without the ideal of social mobility - and infinite development. The constraints of the real world will tend toward accumulation of wealth that ends in an aristocratic and royal system, but capitalism is based on an infinite frontier that can provide opportunities for all free men. For capitalism to flourish, there always needs to be a "new world" or "digital frontier" but we always seem to regress or settle back into the normal hierarchies of king and commoner.

Additionally, even in the oligarchical system - or robber baron - which is the aristocratic version of capitalism, the oligarch will not be able to pass on his wealth to a genetic heir - or more to the point, whatever heirs he may have will not be able to hold onto it, so a new frontier opens up as soon as the oligarchs pass away and it opens a new surge of capital for the opportunity of the next class of capitalists.

What we had in the American south was a pseudo-Aristocratic society producing the essential material for the industrial revolution (cotton) based on capitalist and liberal principles. Even in the south, we had people that were not planters (slave owners) suffering under the political dominance of the plantations as they controlled not only their own votes but the limited voting accountability of their slaves (2/3's of a white man). The northern mill-owners wanted to break the economic dominance of these southerners and the moralistic abolitionists were not going to be able to do that.

Lincoln was a moderate in this sense and his principles aligned with theirs. This is what gave him the advantage in his pursuit of the presidency. The abolition of slavery was essentially an economic necessity and he even for a time proposed sending all the slaves back to Africa so America's workforce would be entirely white and free.

But this is quite wrong. Capitalism can only take root where it's conditions of reproduction can be secured. And those conditions are material, and not ideational. Liberalism's ascendency was a reflection of the growing and real power of the bourgeoisie in society who did indeed feel constarined by the fetters of feudalism. The articulation of liberalism was an effort to express that in ideational form. — Streetlight

However, even where capitalism can take root, it does not do so without the liberal ideology to support it. Mercantilism or feudalism can also express itself in exactly the same conditions. So, the explanation why capitalism expresses itself arises in the liberal ideology rather than the conditions.

And where does he condemn slavery specifically because free laborers have to compete with slaves? — frank

He didn't. His arguments had two objectives. First, he did not oppose slavery in the south, he opposed slavery in any new territories. Second, the slave owners made the argument that "wage slavery" in the North or free states was even worse than slavery on plantations(it wasn't really) so he had to argue that even though wage labor could be very oppressive, the worker still had the opportunity to escape it while slaves never had such an ability.

Lincoln did not condemn slavery in the sense that the abolitionists did before he was elected, and his actions against slavery were never on philosophical grounds but to, in the end, weaken his opposition. Nevertheless, the free soil and free labor movement are what put him in power and eventually what won the civil war.

Do you have an example of Lincoln expressing this perspective? Specifically the free labor angle. — frank

The prudent, penniless beginner in the world, labors for wages awhile, saves a surplus with which to buy tools or land, for himself; then labors on his own account another while, and at length hires another new beginner to help him. This, say its advocates, is free labor – the just and generous, and prosperous system, which opens the way for all – gives hope to all, and energy, and progress, and improvement of condition to all. If any continue through life in the condition of the hired laborer, it is not the fault of the system, but because of either a dependent nature which prefers it, or improvidence, folly, or singular misfortune. — Abraham Lincoln

Intentions are really quite irrelevant in the face of reality. But really, I do agree with most of what you're saying. I guess I'm not sure how it is meant to function as a response to what I wrote? — Streetlight

I think essentially it is similar to trying to define any concept. It only has meaning in relation to the context in which it functions. Capitalism obviously asserts capital, but what is capital? Capital is at heart the ability to take some sort of action. The ability is the legitimate right to take that action. So, it is a question of what conveys that right. In mercantilism, it was the aristocratic or royal power inherited by familial descendance. In capitalism, it was the free choice of men by their own personal wealth (owners) or the application of their own labor (workers). Even though that wealth may have originally been generated by the aristocracy, the transformation was that it moved freely separate from the strictures of aristocratic social structure.

So, capitalism was inherently associated with early ideas of liberalism where individuals could make choices that were not constrained by the aristocratic society. It is an expression of social philosophy, and not primarily economic.

is the statement "Justice means nothing but what is just, indeed more in the negative sense than the positive, insofar as justice is that which is not unjust" circular reasoning, a tautology, or neither? — KantDane21

Neither. It is primarily nonsense in that the context ("unjust") depends on the primary assertion ("justice"). It's like saying "you'll know it when you see it."

However, that does not mean it is not valuable. The essence of language is its ability to communicate implications toward an experience. If language was only able to state what has been experienced, it would be of limited use as communication would be predicated on pre-existing experience when the value of language is its ability to communicate an experience that has not yet occurred.

Good is, by and large, pro-life (pro-choicers might wanna rethink their position because now they look bad) i.e. ethics seems to be be a faithful servant of (the god of) evolution which, as we all know, seems to be in the business of creating/perpetuating life (for as long as possible). A survival game or endless mode. — Agent Smith

This may be an accident of perspective. Things that are able to perpetuate remain while things that do not perpetuate do not continue to exist. So the attribution of "good" to those things that stick around is arbitrary. Almost anything we might consider evil today is just as likely to sustain itself. Slavery and serfdom lasted for centuries. Far longer than the societies today that "abolished" them.

So, if we reinstate slavery and serfdom (and who is to say we haven't), by the standards of longevity and perpetuation, they can certainly be considered good.

They found freedom from servitude in profit-making. Their markets became cities. They tore down Christianity and built back a version that accepted them as being just as human as the nobility.

It wasn't about efficiency. It was about becoming human. — frank

You're getting into deeper philosophy here which touches on Hume, Hobbes and Locke and Emerson. It is hard or even impossible to separate both utilitarianism and transcendentalism from capitalism as it became expressed in the ages after the dominance of aristocracy and royalty.

Essentially, people that found themselves with the means to compete with aristocracy wanted to express and manifest their own desires but without the constraints of a heraldic order. It is important to remember that the nobles and royalty were as constrained by social standards - even moreso than the commoners were.

The early "capitalists" or "bourgeoise" may have been preaching fraternity and liberty for all men, but they really just meant all men like themselves. "All men (like myself) are endowed by certain inalienable rights" but not my slaves or women or the laborers from overseas.

An interesting point in this is the "free labor" movement that brought Abraham Lincoln to power.

Of course, there were abolitionists that simply argues slavery was immoral. However, Lincoln was not one of these. Instead, he had been born in Kentucky, a slave state, where his laborer father could not make a living competing with slave labor. His family moved to Indiana and finally to Illinois where his father could make a minimal living wage since he did not have to compete with slaves.

The argument against slavery that Lincoln typified was not essentially moral but based in capitalism. Labor was a commodity that workers should be able to market unencumbered by other men. Even Marx would write pro-Lincoln articles in this regard. Therefore, slavery - though it was the engine of capital especially in the form of the most valuable commodity of the age, Cotton - was inherently anti-capitalist in the view of Lincoln and most Republicans of the time.

So, it is a paradox that slavery provided the basis of our modern capital but at the same time was abolished by capitalist principles.

From the "feminine" perspective, the essential elements of masculinity are those that lead to reproduction. Or activities associated with reproduction ("sex.")

So, the feminine contribution to expressions of masculinity are mostly those that the women choose to emphasize in their selection of mates.

Ironically, in societies where women do not depend on their male mates for survival, this may lead to them choosing more "toxic" masculine traits as these are not life threatening as they would have been.

The alpha male ideal came out of a misreading of biological behavior, and the actual "alpha males" in chimpanzee society are often older chimps that are able to achieve cohesion between individuals in a group. The "chad" chimp that is physically more powerful and aggressive is often an outsider as the "alpha" will have several allies who together can overpower that individual. Even after the alpha passes on his dominance to another younger chimp, he is still cared for by the group as his actions in the past proved beneficial to them so he retains his status as a good leader.

In this context, I think the comparative feminine stereotype to the toxic male or alpha male would be the overtly sexually attractive female that pursues this sort of male - the "starf**ker" - that exemplifies toxic male behavior or status, or women that capitalize on the stereotypical traits intended to attract this sort of person.

Ironically, the stereotypical "trophy wife" that pursues an actual alpha male - a successful man that is able to lead and create consensus but does not typify the aggressive, self-interested and physically superiority-focused stereotype of an "alpha male" (the Chad), is actually more socially positive in this sense. Not implicitly toxic to relationships even though she is often criticized and degraded for being a "gold digger."

True again. But this is Eurocentric, isn't it? Or should we think of capitalism as an entirely European invention? — frank

Well, yes, but only because it is specifically something that originated in Europe. Ironically, I'd say that Asian capitalism began with Imperial colonization, but really took off with communism. It is hard to think of any more rapaciously capitalist societies than Oligarchic Russia or today's China (more an innovation of autocratic capitalism) which both emerged from decades of communist rule.

However, is that simply the continuation of the cultural expectations going back to the Tsar and Emperor respectively?

The question remains if we have actually ever seen anything truly capitalist or if our societies are simply innovations on social power structures that we've always gravitated toward. Are we in fact still in an essentially feudal or Medieval society. Note, I do believe that the Middle Ages are much more similar to our present day experience than something like Imperial or Republican Rome or Athens or Pharaonic Egypt.

At heart, I think the ideal of capitalism is what Steve Keen learned was the "best and second best economy."

The best economy was a class of small employers competing for a class of independent employees. This would ensure the optimal wages for workers, optimal prices for goods and optimal profits for employers. The second best economy would be large conglomerated employers contracting with organized workforces. Basically, corporations and unions would ensure a volatile but sustainable level of wages, prices and profits. Not great, but better than what we have now.

Unfortunately, neither is truly realistic as every economic system assumes that the natural world will support it. As we're discovering with the current supply chain failures, the demands of a world based on physical principles does not easily support any economic system that assumes infinite abundance or scalability.

To understand capitalism, the first principle must be that it is not realistic. You can't look to the real world as the principle is inherently imaginary. However, that is true of any economic system. Capitalism only works because eventually everyone dies, so it doesn't have to work to provide for everyone - though theoretically it purports to. Politics follows this same principle. Eventually, the people who have serious problems will die, and those that survive didn't really have that problem, and the politicians declare that they solved that problem.

But your idea that using a process of elimination is valuable in understanding the concept. The original concept was that power and wealth are the rights of inheritance. The king leaves his kingdom to his son. The noble leaves his land to his heir. Whatever is valuable in a society - like land - is the sole right of a certain family claim.

So, to obtain power and wealth, one has to steal it often by murder from those that own it and then form a completely new dynasty. Obviously, this is very inefficient and ineffective. First, there is no guarantee that heirs will have the same capacity to generate such wealth, and it requires all sorts of wars and bloodshed for any innovation to enter the system.

Therefore, to add efficiency to the progress of economic prosperity, create a system where anyone with a good idea can obtain the capital (in practical terms funding, but in conceptual terms, the legitimate ability to take action) to manifest that idea and then let the freedom of his fellow individuals (in the market in practical terms) either take advantage of the idea to their benefit - thus, success and profit - or determine that it is not in their benefit - thus failure, but without bloodshed.

In this way, every one may prosper from the efforts of every other one. In its basic form, that is the declaration of capitalism. It goes hand in hand with the idea of democracy as opposed to aristocracy, but in reality, it often falls short and retreats back into basic chieftain mentality.

I don't think or hope to survive an apocalypse (well, maybe I'll hang on as long as possible just to see how bad it gets), but I do think that there are so many people and that human beings are able to survive so many terrible conditions that there will be pretty much no way to eradicate every one or prevent them from perpetuating the species.

We're like cosmic cockroaches.

Capitalism is not specific. It is relative. Marx and Marxism supposedly are about communism and socialism, but in fact, Marx wrote almost exclusively about Capitalism. So communism in essence is one version of capitalism.

However, the problem is that none of us were alive in the 1700's to experience what the socio-economic system of the time was that was replaced. Essentially, capitalism is the attempt to separate economic power from aristocratic power. Prior to things like the French and Russian revolutions, ownership of land - the economic engines of the time - was reserved to or controlled by inherited noble and royal family lines. Also, the rights to produce certain goods was by an aristocratic or royal decree. In addition, mercantilism or protectionism restricted people from importing goods and kept the economy closed.

At heart, the revolutionaries wanted to free the economic system from the dominance of hereditary family control limited to national (or kingdom or realm) interests. Anyone that could raise the capital to produce a business should be free to pursue that - from building a factory to owning productive land free from royal tribute to importing goods more cheaply made in foreign lands - the basis of the entire shipping industry that grew up in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Then Marx pointed out that the original owners of the new capitalist endeavors or projects would become a new and even more pernicious form of aristocracy - oligarchs - than the one that the revolutions decapitated. Merchants and mill-owners would be the new nobles and kings but not restricted by any social compact between king and commoner.

You can't really define or understand capitalism unless you look at what its original proponents intended it to replace.

Again, this is another thing that is straightforwardly wrong and ahistorical. Money is yet another thing that has been around long before capitalism. — Streetlight

I think you misunderstand. I didn't say that money is capitalism. Specifically, I said that "profit is tied to the accumulation of currency." The concept of profit is central to capitalism, but it is not directly connected to the accumulation of money but to the production of an economic surplus that allows economic activity to expand and grow in real economic transactions from labor to production to consumption.

At heart, the implication is that money is the proper measurement of economic activity, but that is only true is the currency of transaction is limited by the real activity of an economy.

However, the vast majority of money produced in our economy is the result of a financial sector that does not need to be held to actual economic reality anymore because they can produce as much money as they want in the form of debt and that debt does not ever need to be repaid.

Philosophies like Hinduism and Buddhism take a more internal approach to examine the idea of suffering. In other words, from God's point of view there is no suffering. Events occur as they should based on the rules of reality that whatever prime mover put into place, and suffering is just the opinion of whomever may be caught up in that temporary arrangement of events.

A person may suffer disease, poverty, injury, despair or any number of subjectively negative experiences, but what makes all that "suffering?" The answer may be that suffering is the response chosen by the sufferer. Through great pain or grief, the person could accept at any moment that this is perfectly natural and right and stop punishing themselves for it as it won't last forever. It will change at some point, so why bother spending your time suffering?

The headache with capitalism is the concept of profit tied to the accumulation of currency. If the currency is connected to some real economic base then that makes sense in that its accumulation will be restrained by real world transactional value. However, when it becomes solely imaginary numbers, then the association with currency and profit is not truly capitalist.

Dollars, at heart, are just a measurement system like inches. However, I can design a building with limitations inherent to the actual construction materials. I can design a million mile high skyscraper for example, but no one could ever build it. So when you hear of "trillions" of dollars in national debt, you can immediately discern that the financial system that allows that is completely disconnected from real economic possibilities. It's no longer any kind of capitalism or even free market system, it's fairy dust.

I've heard of Job's tragic story. I didn't know Job's tribulations were visited upon him & his family (?) on a dare by Lucifer. — Agent Smith

Not Lucifer. Satan. It's important to note that Satan was simply another of god's "children" or "angels" and not a direct opponent to God. He was acting more in the role of a prosecuting attorney against Job with God in the role of the Judge (and defender in a sense). Lucifer was not really a being - and is still not really a being - in Judaism, the way he seems to be in Christianity. Actually, Christ was referred to as Lucifer in some Latin translations of the Bible (it means "light bearer") and much of the Lucifer myth grew out of later gentile Christian thought combined with some apocryphal stories of the Nephilim and Gregori (fallen angels) in Jewish folklore (like the apocryphal Book of Enoch or the Book of Giants in the Dead Sea Scrolls).

Also, I believe the influence of Manicheanism and Zoroastrianism as well as the duality of Babylonian and Persian religions where many Jewish communities settled had a great influence on the idea of some kind of personalized embodiment of evil separate from the monotheistic God of the Hebrews. It's much easier to think that your God is solely good and there is some malevolent separate force responsible for the evil in the world.

However, that is obviously illogical if God is not only omniscient but omnipotent as well. An all-powerful and all-knowing God naturally is responsible for everything that happens in its creation, so there is no excuse to be found in a devil that it created and allows to run free. If there is a God, then he is responsible for the misfortune that you are praying to him to relieve.

How would you define that immunity? — ithinkthereforeidontgiveaf

Primarily, the inability to be distracted or immunity to the desire to seek distraction. Distraction is such a basic experience or activity for people's experience, it might be more accurate to say that life is distraction and a person is the distractions that they seek.

Boredom is a particularly domestic human trait in that boredom for wild animals might be the pinnacle of achievement. If an animal is not bored, then it is probably fighting for its life.

However, it is also likely boredom is an evolutionary advantage as it forces animals that are in no danger to maintain a certain readiness of action. So we see animals playing and seeking distraction especially as they grow more intelligent.

Almost any activity will become tedious at some point - especially in the pursuit of some worthwhile goal to the pursuer - so an immunity to being or seeking distraction from a pursuit will lead to its accomplishment.

I also think that boredom has at its core a fear of the base meaninglessness, loneliness and despair of existence, especially the contemplation of the likely unhappy, uncomfortable and humiliating end of that existence that awaits us all. The "eventual and inevitable solution to all my problems" as I like to call it.

So, can't really blame anyone for desiring distraction from that. Philosophical depression or existential despair which is separate from clinical depression probably (though both psychoanalysis and psychopharmacology are able to treat it) is related to philosophical pessimism. On the other hand, though, I find the pessimistic and cynical point of view to be very encouraging paradoxically. Events rarely turn out as bad as I expect them to be. In fact, possibly because there are so few real pessimists in the world, people tend to cooperate to ensure that even though outcomes are never optimal, they are at least not downright awful.

It goes back to that great line in ANNIE HALL:

“I feel that life is divided into the horrible and the miserable. That's the two categories. The horrible are like, I don't know, terminal cases, you know, and blind people, crippled. I don't know how they get through life. It's amazing to me. And the miserable is everyone else. So you should be thankful that you're miserable, because that's very lucky, to be miserable.” — Woody Allen

“It is the key to modern life. If you are immune to boredom, there is literally nothing you cannot accomplish.” - David Foster Wallace

Argument:
1. The consumption of meat will never be perfectly ethical, but the consumption of well cared, pasture-fed animals, is much more ethical than factory-farmed animals and is beneficial to human health.
2. A vegan diet is directly morally ethical, as it does not involve direct animal suffering, however, it may have indirect ethical issues given the environmental and health impacts.
[For the sake of the argument, please assume the scientific side of premises 1 & 2 is true]
3. It is more ethical to consume humanely raised animal products for the sake of human health and the prevention of climate change. — Louis

There are some challenges to this in that there is a question whether one's devotion to non-humans can be placed above one's obligations to other human beings. In short, consider if this position will assert your own selfish interests to the detriment of a larger interest in social ties.

The primary advantage human beings have over other animals is found in the cooperation with other people. So, if factory farming produces the greatest advantages for the human race on the whole compared to farming methods less stressful for the animals, it would seem to be more ethical to support the former over the latter.

So, if the well-cared, pasture-fed animals approach employs fewer people and feeds fewer people and leads to higher food costs, then it seems to betray a more basic principle than the self-interested desire to avoid animal suffering.

However, it still leaves open the idea that a convincing argument could be made that the preferred approach could lead to better working conditions and wages or profits for farmers and a more sustainable agricultural approach for the industry as well.

Also, the dichotomy between the approaches is not exact or defined. There are industrial agricultural approaches moving toward the more humane and sustainable so it may be more effective to reform factory farming in ways that do not hinder productivity than advocate for the complete replacement of it by styles of farming that may not be scalable over the entire market.

Wittgenstein did portray most philosophy as a kind of mental illness related to the misuse of language and logic applied to concepts in a way that stripped them of context and therefore meaning. In a sense, Heidegger recognized this fundamental problem when it came to understanding basic existence, and likewise, he eventually failed to overcome it even with all his invented existential terms though I think he discovered some very clear insights into the nature of human experience.

For philosophers like Wittgenstein or Nietzsche or Stirner, the problem starts with things like Socrates asking "what is 'justice.'" It implies that justice has a solid reality like any real world object, but for Wittgenstein, it was just a word to describe a whole class of things that were similar but did not share one single definable element. It is like going up to a game of chess and asking what is a "knight." A sensible answer for that only exists in the context of the game. In a game of chess, a knight "means" something, but if you take the knight off of the board and then ask what it is devoid of the context of the game, any answer will be meaningless nonsense.

Same for all these "ideal" concepts that Plato said existed in some separate metaphysical realm. They only have meaning applied to some actual situation or context in the real world, but philosophy spent the next few thousand years in metaphysics until philosophers like Adam Smith, Karl Marx, Nietzsche, Heidegger and Wittgenstein started asserting the actual world in which we exist over the ideal metaphysical spaces of Plato, DesCartes, Leibniz and Husserl.

However, around the same time a kind of new metaphysics arose in studies of the unconscious like Freud, Jung and Lacan that treated psychological spaces as a kind of real space. We'll always have a pull between imagination and reality as basic human nature often tends to treat what is actually imaginary as being more real than reality.

Job directly addresses this as well in something of a trial. Superficially, it is a trial of Job but essentially it is God who has more to lose. The basic question put forth by Satan - one of God's angels in the story - is whether God's favorite or ideal worshipper will continue to venerate the deity if he is beset by misfortune or if he will turn away from God if he doesn't receive any benefit.

All the answers provided by Job's neighbors are incorrect and in the end it does seem like Job is on the verge of cursing God, but then God comes down and berates him with a somewhat irrational argument and Job asserts continued devotion. After which, God pays him off by bringing good fortune again.

Now, this trial's outcome wouldn't stand up to any normal ethical scrutiny, but it essentially makes the case that the Jews are stuck with God even if it does them no good. Even when God is the cause of the suffering. Maybe because in the long run, God knows what's best better than the people do. So, when God does it, it's not evil even though it may appear to be evil to the people suffering it.

So I ask you, what might a society look like with a rebellious stance towards production? Answer wisely, and not flippantly as you seem to usually do. I'll just ignore any predictable flippant answer. — schopenhauer1

For real world examples, look at the labor movement in the United States under Hoffa, say. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, there was a socialist and even communist approach related to worker's collectivism and revolutionary attitudes toward labor relations.

However, when people like Hoffa got involved in unionizing, they didn't take a socialist approach. They essentially treated labor as a commodity that they could control and that every industrialist needed. They used capitalist principles and gained more for workers than any other labor movement since.

In a real sense, that was a "rebellious stance" towards production that changed its society.

Nevertheless, I think you mean something like how would society look like if work wasn't necessary to possess or rely on a comfortable life. Additionally, address some views on the ethics of our work and production philosophy against the supposition of a "free" society.

Toward the first part, it seems unlikely that there is only one way society could go or present itself if the imposition or requirement to "produce, grow or die" Work was technically "optional" in the communist USSR, East Germany and Red China but the necessities of life still required a major workforce to maintain production (in Eurasia) or agriculture (in China). However, there are democratic, capitalist societies throughout the West that instituted social programs in response to the communist ideals being spread at the time. Some social programs were created in response to the threat of communism and others led by leftists influenced by socialism. This emerged in welfare programs and policies that allowed more people to choose not to work in capitalist societies even more effectively than in nominal communist ones.

On top of that, the real revolutions in work were better conditions and easier jobs that paid more... at least until the "neo-liberal" revolution of people like Reagan and Thatcher. Just as the "New Deal" under FDR had made every president (and congress) from Truman to Nixon a "New Deal" president, Reagan dismantled it and no President since has ever considered undoing the Reagan ideal of America.

This is a bit of a ramble, but it's Saturday night.

Nevertheless, even though it seems like worker rights have eroded, we also have some of the most prosperous living and working conditions in part due to the gradual invisible revolution of these labor policies. However, ironically or paradoxically, much of that is the result of the fact that the United States is not a producing nation in the way that we were before Reagan or even Nixon. Other than extremely destructive and increasingly complicated military equipment and agricultural products, America doesn't produce much in a global industrial sense even though we still have the minds for it.

So, we may be a nation of people living paycheck to paycheck, we are not really workers. We're all consumers. Production is hard work, but people need to work to consume - the essential behavior of the society - so there are any number of unnecessary jobs out there to put money in people's pockets.

Which comes down to my basic controversial thesis - work is a compulsion by the worker in the same way that alcohol or drugs or the television and movies and internet encourage compulsive behavior. Work for an increasing number of people is a distraction they need to avoid severe emotional distress. People work so they feel good about buying crap they don't need.

Jerry Seinfeld does a hilarious acceptance speech for the Clio advertiser's award, but at its kernal is the idea that wanting something provides much greater pleasure than having that thing. The distraction of shopping is the purpose of production. The product provides the fetish or ideal objective for the consumer to want and that is the end - the sublimated objective - not the actual satisfaction of that desire. Desire projects the wanting person into an imagined future state of happiness that is dashed by the actual arrival of the product that leads inevitably to either disappointment or disinterest. Desire is the essence of all distraction.

It is possibly this potentially revolutionary principle that guides the expression of work and production in a modern society far more than rational theories or mathematical and logical concepts emerging from economics.

So, a radical production philosophy that could overturn that would first need to assert those things that cannot be bought - that must be earned and experience - should be available to everyone and not something that can be monetized. However, in our society, what exactly has not been monetized or quantified or used to sell something to fire our desire?

So, back to the discussion: women choose sex, then they choose abortion when they don't choose to have the child, and the reason the abortion is morally neutral yet unfortunate is because the fetus was not a person, but the emotional pain from the mistake is real. — Hanover

I'm not certain about the emotional pain. I believe most abortions are for women that already have children and maintain a healthy life, but accidents happen. If a couple is having sex regularly, then sometimes a condom can break or birth control pills don't work this one time - apparently most of the time considering.

So, there is nothing in the actions that indicate this would be an emotionally scarring situation or needs to be anyway. A mother is already taking care of two kids shouldn't be forced to have a third. It's essentially puritanical trying to force all sex to only be reproductive in nature even for married women and their husbands. Or single mothers dating.

Also, the "shame" of abortions is entirely social at most. It is an awkward situation mostly if you have pro-birth family members, but most women are in hopefully more supportive social situations or they should find new friends. Abortions are a serious procedure though, but I think a patient would be more concerned about the safety of a procedure than the child they are not going to have. I mean, obviously, she doesn't want the baby, so she's not imagining some potential child that she is going to lose somehow. I hope not, anyway - but the idea that there is some emotional blowback from abortions seems more the result of some kind of romantic point of view that you'd see in movies and televisions more than real life.

In some cultures in the past, killing one's own child wasn't murder, but killing another person's child was. — baker

I have read that it was common in Roman families to leave unwanted infants in the streets, and that early Christians would collect these children and raise them.

It is a paradox in early Christianity (and even today) that this world is considered profane and corrupt, but it is still a moral duty to live in it. Some Christians were all to ready to leave it as soon as possible - possibly leading to the determination that suicide is a mortal sin to stop people from offing themselves in the throws of religious ecstacy. Life is a gift from God, that is full of suffering, sickness, sadness and loneliness for most people, but you can't give it back of your own accord - though He will take it back eventually.

The best thing that could happen to a person is not to be born, obviously. There is no amount of happiness that will make up for the grief and suffering even the most fortunate people will suffer - and most of us are not in that esteemed category. So, we should all have a helluva lot of sympathy for the rest of us caught in this slaughterhouse, but we seem to be more inclined to take it all out on each other.

This is somewhat reflected in the common pro-birth position where the ultimate aim is to force people that do want to bring someone into the world to do it above even their own lives, but then once a person is born, they're on their own.

That is an interesting point of view. From a pagan, pre-Christian perspective, I doubt that anyone would have ever expected or asked if God was good.

What's interesting is that in THE ILIAD, the Gods are essentially audience members to the spectacle of the Trojan War that sometimes get involved in the action but are never really invested. The heroes in the war are more like their favorite sports stars or characters in the play - in fact, the attention of the gods mirrors the attention of the audience - either the reader of the epic or the listener.

That is another interesting answer to the "problem of evil" in a world that has a divine presence. There is evil in the world so that God (or the gods) won't get bored with the human race.

Why did Jews NOT lose their faith in a (benevolent) God? — Agent Smith

Did Jews ever believe in a benevolent God? Throughout their own religious stories and texts, God was always something to be feared and usually the source of their greatest misfortunes. From an early perspective, like in Job, God was understood to be the lord of good and evil. Evil generally synonymous with misfortune rather than malevolent intent. Of course, this was the pagan perspective as well as few people would attribute their fortune to any inherent or individual excellence on their own part, but to the favor of some deity and their misfortune to some anger or infraction they committed against some divine or demonic influence.

The idea that something as powerful as a God would care about any individual person's happiness does not really jibe with any stories about the gods or about the Hebrew God. However, we just know about the gods from stories and like Euripides pointed out a few thousand years ago:

"I think not of the gods, as having committed adultery, which is not right, nor as oppressed with chains: I have never thought this worthy, nor ever will believe that one lords it over the others. The god, who is indeed a god, needs nothing: These are the wretched stories of the bards."

With that in mind though, I'd have to say that a great number of Jewish people in the modern era were actually atheist and had been for generations and probably many of those that died in the Holocaust did not believe in God in any case before they went into the camps.