If so, why is unpredictability still to be avoided? — kudos

Because the stuff in the previous paragraph is nonsense.

We presently give money to YouTube entertainers for their unpredictability.

I don't. And a 10-minute performance for the camera, however surprised the audience may be, doesn't prevent the performer going to their job, feeding their kids, crossing on green lights or paying their taxes.

Unwilling parents have been known to rise to the occasion and a child add much to their lives, so the overall effect could turn out to be good in many cases, in which case your cause-and-effect moral theory doesn't pan-out so well. — praxis

Unwilling is not the same as unable.
Yes, some able but unwilling parents have 'risen to the occasion' in some ways. Usually by giving up what they wanted to do with their own lives for what they needed to to do for the child. However, many more able but unwilling parents either attempted to rise to the occasion and failed, having to give child up, willingly or more often by force, and some end up hurting or killing the child while some raise the child so badly that he or she becomes another liability to society. Overall, not a happy outcome for the people involved or for society.

the more general question of whether there is something about recreational drug-use behaviour and cultural effects on the moral-citizen role - not only what citizens vs. authorities think about it - that tends to oppose the popular will as it is actuated in culture. — kudos

Of the natural psychotropic drugs, only alcohol started out as recreational. Cannabis and opium were used medicinally and psilocybin or magic mushrooms had, I believe, primarily spiritual uses. Even tobacco was a substance of ritual significance in American native cultures.
Why modern society tries to control or ban these substances is that they alter the individual's mindscape. They promote non-standard, idiosyncratic perception, response and behaviour. IOW: people taking drugs are unpredictable.
A society of unpredictable people becomes difficult to control, to police, to hold to a production or payment schedule, to recruit for national service and international conflict, to maintain communication with, to collect taxes from, to enforce any kind of law over. A stoned society would be unstable and incoherent.

I never expected anything so exhaustive! And impressive. I'll have to mull over a few particulars, but I certainly get the main points and have no arguments at this time. I may need to revisit moral obligation and punishment.

For now, I especially liked this:

I would tend to think of the rights as the general principles that help promote freedom. — Count Timothy von Icarus

That should be elaborated in terms of social organization and relationships. Not necessarily by you - unless you're so inclined - I'm pretty sure everyone has a perspective on this.

A wide net cast... — Amity

... tends to land in the Lounge and disgorge sundry marlin, kelp and old boots.

[Is it possible for anyone to have total freedom?] Yes, but excluding illegal acts in a liberal society. — simplyG

Doesn't the exclusion of a category negate 'total'? Isn't every law a limitation of individual freedom? Why does 'a liberal society'? All societies have laws, and usually conservative ones have more laws, more restrictions on individual action.

[Are there natural, insurmountable limits to individual freedom?]
Yes but only in terms of immoral or illegal acts such as murder, theft and other types of criminal acts that impact someone else. — simplyG

Those are hardly insurmountable limits, since some people transgress every one of them every day. The law that forbids those acts is an artificially imposed limit. By natural I mean something like a physical or psychological obstacle.

[Can and should all people have the same amount of personal freedom?]
Absolutely, given that we’re all born of equal capacity. — simplyG

I question that given. Society rejects it altogether, setting more legal limits on the freedom of some categories of person than of others, and depriving some people of any freedom of action.

[How do we distinguish a freedom from a right?]
Through legal frameworks. — simplyG

Do you not have your own idea of the difference? I think the difference is between the signatories to a social contract: the state and the citizen. Freedoms are what state allows the citizen to do unhampered (in return for which the citizen does not abuse his own freedom or violate that of his fellow citizens); rights are what the state guarantees the citizen (in return for which the citizen undertakes civic duties, such as paying tax and providing necessary service) .

A short story on the 2 concepts of freedom or liberty: — Amity

Well, that put a quick end to my desire for definitions! This* covers the subject admirably. Of course, having read it, I can't comment here, since much of what I might have said was expressed better than I could have done. So I recommend to anyone else who is interested that they read it only after they have added their own thoughts.

*Thanks, I've bookmarked it.

Perverse perhaps, but I find staff meetings and insufferable conferences a good place to zone out and start some creative thinking. — Tom Storm

Not so unusual. Math class had a similar effect on me, which is why to this day I struggle so with my tax return. At various kinds of work, too, there are tasks that promote intracranial activity: mixing earth in the garden; kneading bread dough or clay; polishing silver; mucking out a stable, stacking bricks - anything that's simple, physical and doesn't require concentration.

We would make even more progress if we understood a few things differently. — Athena

Yes, I agree.

Sometimes I wonder who (or what) the top leader is. Who’s giving the orders? — 0 thru 9

It's not one person, like an emperor. It's a loose association that shares a single interest: to own and consume the world. There's a book I haven't read yet...

Presidents, ministers, corporations? Banks? — 0 thru 9

Yes, and throw in the odd monarch and pope. In the olden days, it was simple: the emperor and his immediate advisors really did rule. In the even older days, the warlords of northern tribes actually led their warriors in fights for territory and resources, which would then be shared among the tribe. African, American and Oceanic cultures were usually organized on somewhat different lines, but the chieftains still had to lead and to make decisions that would benefit their people. While they led well, they were followed; when they could not, they were replaced.

Enlarged empires complicated these roles and arrangements. Peoples who were not blood-kin had to live under the same ruler; there was confusion, internal strife and unrest. More people, more ways to share, more co-ordination, more laws and layers, administrators and enforcers. And greater costs to reckon before and after each decisive event.

Now, the complication is global, as are the confusion, strife and unrest. The heads of nations are figurative and the real empires are not drawn on maps.

People who rule financial empires that need to grow are behind it all. Some deliberately pull the strings of politicians; some directly influence the mind of the masses; mostly they just invest - in media, in political campaigns, in arms manufactury, in retail and shipping, even in philanthropy. What they really control is capital - an insatiable caterpillar. Like every other life-form, the imperative of capital is to grow and reproduce. Capital itself is as mindless as a protozoan, but as it eats up the world and its human and other populations, its byproducts are luxury yachts and planes, exclusive spas, jewels and paintings and $100,000 bottles of wine, chateaux and glittery skyscrapers and silk-lined bunkers against the collapse of the civilization that their ver own activities are pushing toward collapse.

These people don't desire war, or mass shootings or terrorism or genocide; those are just some of the means to get things done. They just want to own more stuff, so they promote and support men who get things done . And because we humans are tribal, we always follow men who get things done. Except, of course, they don't: we do. The 'leaders' are absolutely sure of what is wrong, who is to blame and how it must be fixed. They are very good at communicating their certainty - and we are so thirsty for certainty, we'll follow them anywhere for just another drop. In pursuit of certainty, we are eager to take direction from them, take instruction, take orders, take up arms and leave our individual selves behind, just to have a meaning in their cause.

Of course, when it comes time to charge, the modern leader is usually in a tent or bunker or dining room far behind the lines. And his invisible, anonymous backers are farther back still, ready to abandon any 'leader' who falters, loses his grip on the peons or is defeated by some other leader. Those 'leaders' are practically interchangeable: every generation throws up a few dozen sociopaths who thrive on attention, adulation, subservience and awe. One gets stabbed in the back, the next one is already in line for the throne, with his own loyal army to secure it. The backers simply choose the next 'leader' and back away while he's installed. The changeover is always a messy business; they don't want any blood splashed on their own hummingbirdskin loafers.

A giant quantum computer overseen by workers in dark robes? — 0 thru 9

White lab coats. That computer is our best hope of redemption, because the aliens are not coming.

I'm not 'meta' enough about TPF itself as a specimen of online social media. — 180 Proof

You're too damn cryptic to be any use at all. They'll have to edit you out.

I can see a future of online psychotherapy. You don't tell the bot about yourself and your problem; you just post links to your various forum exchanges and the bot diagnoses.
(I like Beryl.)

On a related topic, one of the books I edited was a collaborative effort at fiction. It started with an opening paragraph and the challenge to write the next section. We had a blast and it turned out a not bad story. There were four or five main contributors and of course we asked each of them for permission before tampering with the narrative and got their approval of the finished text. We continued to correspond with one of those people in the real world for several years after the site went down.

Sure each moment becomes more significant in the relative sense but isn't all meaning created in the mind? — TiredThinker

Of course. Only a mind can conceive of a thing having a symbolic significance other than simply being itself. There is no compelling reason for an individual to ascribe meaning to life in general or to assign a meaning to their own life; it's a choice usually made sometime in a human's late adolescence or early adulthood.

Of course, what kinds of meaning they can choose from depends on their circumstances and capabilities.

If an individual decided to dedicate their mortal life to some finite achievable task - raising offspring, finishing a symphony, inventing a more efficient hot-air balloon, restoring a dethroned king to power - then their life would be devoid of meaning as soon as the task was completed and for the remainder of it, the individual would either have to conceive a new meaning or do without.

If the individual had an indefinite lifespan (since 'forever' is not defined in any comprehensible terms), only normal human abilities and they insisted on it having a meaning, they would have to take up one cause after another, pursue each to a conclusion, then set another challenge. If the immortal had superhuman abilities, they could dedicate infinite life to an infinite task: counting all the stars or the eradication of suffering, or keeping a torch alight in every dark cave - in short an undertaking that cannot be completed because it renews itself continuously.

Maybe an immortal would end up doing something like that. When they become bored and lonely enough, I suppose even attempting suicide once a day can be a meaningful activity. (But I hope they have some meaningless cosmic fun before that happens.)

If all humans are immortal and omnipotent, of course the universe would be consumed before the species finally died out and there would be no context in which anyone or anything could have meaning.

It depends on whether one is walking alone, and where.
For me, any idle solitude is good for thinking about a specific subject. For solving practical problems, lying down with a beer and staring at the ceiling works pretty well. For working through a plot snag, I find a dark bedroom more conducive
When I lived in the city, I used to go for evening walks alone, composing songs, poems or letters. Love letters for preference. When I stayed at a hostel, I would walk around the strange neighbourhood, looking at houses and gardens, and imagine potential paintings. in the country, I just look at stuff, or sometimes look for forage, listen to birds and frogs and just let my mind wonder.

If you believe that can you explain how they do it? And who are they? — praxis

Who: They are the modern aristocracy.

How: mass communications: media social networking platforms; news sources

Through their communication networks, they have been able to convey subliminal messages for nearl a century now. The themes, the slant, the language used, the very tenor of advertisements all affect how the public hears and speaks and thinks. Thus, through waves of fear-mongery (the red menace, the evil weed, terrorists under the bed) alternating with reassurance, (our valiant troops triumph; our spies are smarter then their spies, the incorruptible police thwart crime) embedded in an endless banquet of palatable entertainments and distracting graphic images, words are perverted, perceptions are altered, ideas are planted and consolidated.

So, no, epidemics / pandemics are not getting 'bigger' compared to historical data. — universeness

This last one covered the entire globe in less than a year. It's the sixth major epidemic in the first 20 years of this century. 2003 SARS; 2009 swine flu; 2012 West Nile; 2013–2016 Ebola virus; 2015 Zika More people died before modern medicine; now more survive, but many of them with ongoing symptoms and debilitating after-effects. And these diseases are draining modern health care systems the world over, so that there will be no reserves of material, medicine and personnel for the next one and the next and the next. Meanwhile drug-resistant cholera, TB and measles are coming back.

5 COVID-19 pandemic 6.9–28.3 million 0.1–0.4%, so far. — universeness

The operative words there are "so far". This the fourth or so iteration of coronavirus and it hasn't gone away, though people like to pretend otherwise. The past is not the future.

In this Review, we consider the extent to which these recent global changes have increased the risk of infectious disease outbreaks, even as improved sanitation and access to health care have resulted in considerable progress worldwide.

More than 1 billion people are at risk because of a , Ryan McNeill, a deputy editor of data journalism at Reuters, told CBS News. He is one of the authors of a recent series exploring hot spots around the world. In West Africa, 1 in 5 people lives in a high-risk "jump zone," which Reuters describes as areas with the greatest likelihood of viruses jumping from bats to humans. Parts of Southeast Asia are also areas of concern. In South America, deforestation has created more high-risk areas than anywhere else in the world, McNeill said.

In historical data, wars are not getting bigger, either. All we've had - constantly - since WWII is little wars scattered all over the place. Meanwhile, arsenals have been accumulating that can destroy every living thing on the planet, 20 times over. Natural disasters have not grown bigger since the last ice age - just more frequent and widespread. The potential of future war, like the potential of future pandemic, like the potential of future climate are not represented by their modest little predecessors.

The point is to control thought, not to degrade language. — praxis

It still is. They just became a little more subtle and tech-savvy since 1948.

What is the thinking and belief system that fosters warfare? — 0 thru 9

Follow-the-leader.

That metaphor has suffered enough. I can watch no longer.

Even with a stable civilization behind it, space travel requires an enormous amount of everything, as you suggest. — 0 thru 9

Paramount requirement: stop making wars, preparing for wars, cleaning up after wars. Firstly, they keep disuniting both peoples and purpose and secondly, they're monstrously costly. If I were running a world government, that would be my first order of business: put every country on Earth out of the business war.
That's the only way we could possibly put a stable civilization behind such a monumental shared effort. Even so, it would have to be a robust civilization, not one that's in continual crisis from weather events and related displacements.... which we won't have any time soon, whatever else happens, and can't have at all, unless the present economic system collapses very soon.

See what I mean! — universeness

Yes, I do. And thanks for the comparison to Baum; it should help keep me humble.

The wizard of Oz and the munchkins are also fiction. — universeness

Yes. That's where you seem to feel most at home.

We have ever been in flux. It's just such a pity that that flux had to be so bloody at times and so more based on the competitive and savage rules of our jungle based Darwinian origins, than on the different stages of our enlightenment. — universeness

Exactly. Dysentery is quite a messy condition. The different stages of enlightenment achieved not only the the vast present population, but also the numbers killed in each succeeding major conflagration. We haven't had a world war since the 1939-45 one... the next war is already begun and shaping up to be a doozy. Epidemics keep getting bigger, too. Wonder the scale of destruction is proportionate to the scale of destroyable targets.

A better 'and wiser augmented 'us,' is what will be the something else that takes our place, imo. — universeness

I hope you're right, but we have to make way for them, and that's never a tidy process. That's the part all optimists prefer to gloss over.

I think the nefarious prefer you to me. — universeness

It doesn't matter. They're defeating themselves. They have to, because you and I and all the other powerless widgets, in spite of all our efforts, have failed to slow down their headlong rush to global annihilation.
You imagine a 'nefarious' few wielding Wizard-of-Oz style magic tricks that, once they're revealed, the Munchkins will no longer revere. You're putting an inordinate and unwarranted faith in the Munchkins.

You can reach for all the movies you like: they are fiction. This is fact :

This is an alphabetically ordered list of ancient civilizations.
Abbevillian industry, Acheulean industry, Aegean civilizations, Amratian culture, Ancestral Pueblo culture, ancient Egypt, ancient Greek civilization, ancient Iran, ancient Italic people
ancient Middle East, ancient Rome, Andean cultures, Archaic culture, Assyria, Aterian industry, Aurignacian culture, Australian Aboriginal peoples, Azilian industry, Badarian culture, Banpo culture, Big-Game Hunting Tradition, Boian culture, Capsian industry, Carthage, Chavín, Chellean industry, Choukoutienian industry, Clactonian industry, Dawenkou culture, Desert cultures, Dong Son culture, Dorset culture, El Argar, Erlitou culture, Ertebølle industry, Fauresmith industry, Gerzean culture, Ghassulian culture, Hohokam culture, Hongshan culture, Ibero-Maurusian industry, Indus civilization, Inugsuk culture, Ipiutak culture, Jōmon culture, Kachemak culture, Kurgan culture, Lapita culture, LBK culture, Longshan culture, Lupemban industry, Magdalenian culture, Maglemosian industry, Magosian industry, Mesopotamia, Minoan civilization, Mississippian culture, Moche, Mogollon culture, Mousterian industry, Mycenaean civilization, Nachikufan industry, Natufian culture, Nazca, Nok culture, Old Cordilleran culture, Oldowan industry, Osteodontokeratic tool industry, Paracas, Perigordian industry, Phoenicia, pre-Columbian civilizations, Qijia culture, Recuay, Sangoan industry, Solutrean industry, Stillbay industry, Tasian culture, Tayacian industry, Teotihuacán civilization, Thule culture, Trypillya culture, Urnfield culture, Villanovan culture, Woodland cultures, Yangshao culture, Yayoi culture

Civilizations, cultures and traditions that once throve, in which the people expected to continue doing what they did, living as they did, improving and innovating where they could. I didn't destroy any of them, yet they no longer exist. Everything has a lifespan - even in despite of mighty technology, life can only be prolonged for a finite duration. When it ends, something else takes its place. Whoever pronounces an imminent demise is a villain. SBI.

Your targeting system currently describes a person who thinks that humankind would greatly benefit from an attempt to unite all nations in a common cause, of space exploration and development as the equivalent of a jewel thief and an alcoholic. — universeness

That is not the person I described. The person I described has so far done everything in his considerable power to thwart all attempts at uniting people at all levels, from ethnically mixed and gender unmixed marriage, through trade unions, co-operatives and party coalitions to the United Nations. The one who spends $100, 000, 000 on an airplane that does exactly nothing but waste vast quantities of fuel, until it's ordered to destroy some other airplane. That's the guy who will be in charge of the next big project and the next - with total disregard to what you or I advocate.

Do you think you are currently doing all you can to help 'shift the equation?' — universeness

Yes. I believe - on the basis of evidence gathered over some decades - that no significant shift in power can take place in the present configuration of humanity. I believe that our only hope for a happy and stable future is the collapse of this civilization, as so many civilizations have collapsed before and made way for something new. That collapse will leave its survivors better equipped to start again than their predecessors had been, and with the benefit of some lessons learned the hardest possible way. May then...

The Lounge - 'Hang out, blether, talk about kittens'?! I don't think so! — Amity

Hey! What you got against kittens? I have some pick-your-own on the back porch. Free, but wear work gloves.
I have sometimes wondered where a thread went when it was moved to the Lounge, but now, I automatically look in every day. For one thing, there is more likely to be humour.

Same applies to human beings, but we want more or specifics to which the computer replies: 42 — simplyG

Right. So, we ask: "What does it mean?" and somebody - anybody at all - replies "Love" or "King and country" or "42" or "MAGA", and we put that on a flag and march together. 'Cose we're so much smarter than the average lemming.

we’re pretty much an extraordinary achievement to exist at all. — simplyG

AFAIK, we haven't met any extraterrestrial alligators or mosquitoes. Either they didn't get here yet, or we're all pretty damn special. So, to whom is the meaning of mosquitoes significant?

You must have an easy life then, still it doesn’t make sense to state there is no meaning to life. — simplyG

It makes perfect sense.

Maybe the meaning of life is love or to give yourself meaning such as be successful and enjoy it ? — simplyG

Why can't you simply live, love, succeed and enjoy, with no hidden messages?

Or maybe just be happy that you’re alive — simplyG

Now you've got it!

That has an Orwellian Newspeak feel of replacing better English — Paine

So do very many other fashionable words and phrases. You'd almost suspect a conspiracy... when really, it's just an epidemic of imitation.

More in Northern Exposure. — Patterner

I have never seen an NE reference on a forum. Thought I was the only fan.

The use of "impact" as a verb. — Paine

I'm okay with that, as long it refers to meteorite or cannonball. When it's used to replace 'affect' or 'influence', it drives me me buggy.

Indeed, the primitive emotion of fear (useful only for survival) should have little to no value in a highly advanced society. — chiknsld

Only? Survival is important to most of us.
When do urban muggings and home invasions typically take place?

Very scary I suppose, especially before discovering fire — chiknsld

Even after. Have you tried crossing trough terrain with a torch? Or even a flashlight?

I just realized that if all of humanity were blind, then darkness could never be used in the same colloquial sense to confer random, evil forces. — chiknsld

Indeed, they seem to operate under the same priniciples of fear such as a "cockroach" with human capabilities, — chiknsld

No, they just need cover so as not to be caught. It's perfectly straightforward: light-adapted species function best and are in less danger in daylight than in darkness.
The artificial lighting in modern cities and buildings does a great deal of harm.

No, but it's not that big an advantage.

Most blind people with no perception of light, however, experience continual circadian desynchrony through a failure of light information to reach the hypothalamic circadian clock, resulting in cyclical episodes of poor sleep and daytime dysfunction.https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3202494/

But it's true that if we had evolved and remained deep underground, we would not have formed eyes and might well be different in many other ways.

If it's an anthology instead of a novel, then "the adventures" (or "episodes") need not follow a linear plotline in sequential order. — 180 Proof

That makes me squirm a bit. I like to be able to follow a story without benefit of electrode implants. I don't mind the odd flashback or memory or dream, but when a story goes flashing back and forth and sideways, just as with multiply split screens, I get psychological epileptic fits and leave the room. It all depends on how it's done I guess.

As an 'acolyte' of Carl, I follow his determined stance, against the way some have ravaged the Earths resources. — universeness

What makes you think you would be in charge?
Let me put it this way: If Picard were to visit Earth today, do you sincerely believe he would recommend us for Federation membership?

your targeting system is malfunctioning. — universeness

My targeting system is fine. I see who calls the plays, who pays the price and who gets left lying in the dust. Until that equation shifts significantly, we have no bright future anywhere.

How much more could be achieved if the resources humans can access were employed in ways that would best preserve the planets ecology, meet the needs of the people on it, without destroying all other fauna sharing it — universeness

Exactly! Conservation, cleanup, flood protection, urban agriculture, underground shelters, clean water, housing, refugee placement, fire prevention...
Compared to any feasible climate mitigating measures or emergency relief, the resources that required by the spacefaring few are hugely disproportionate.

I am not afraid to recommend that the human race become extraterrestial due to concerns that we will bring all of our bad habits with us and be doomed to repeat all of the horrors some have perpetrated on Earth, everywhere we go, outside of Earth. — universeness

Yet, that is precisely what will inevitably happen, unless we figure out how to stop behaving this way before we go anywhere else. We are not mature enough for extraterrestrial exploration without extraterrestrial despoilation.

The universe is vast and the base resources it contains are abundant, we just need the tech to access them. We will not find new knowledge if we don't go seek it out, — universeness

You're already putting resource exploitation before knowledge collecting. And you're a Sagan acolyte, not one of the potential interplanetary conquistadors.

The stars "beckon" mankind the same way a diamond beckons a jewel thief or a bottle calls to a drunk. They don't want you; you want them.

If we are viewing these things from an objective standpoint, then you are correct. But meaning is subjective. — JWW

I can only view the "meaning" or existence of an entity other than myself as an object.
If meaning is subjective, why are so many humans of different cultures able to use the same alphabet, or the same warning labels on toxins, or the same traffic signs? If a you have a private personal meaning for a word, nobody else can understand your use of it.
The very function of words, the reason they were invented, was to have objective meaning and thus facilitate communication.

A rock is not a symbol (objectively), but it could be a symbol (subjectively), if we apply a meaning to it. — JWW

Subjectively, from the rock's POV, it simply exists. If some other entity - e.g. a human - uses it as a symbol, it has meaning for that human, but the rock itself simply continues to exist.

The color blue can be a symbol, in various contexts. — JWW

Sure, to somebody other than blue itself.

Furthermore, human beings can become symbols. — JWW

Does this mean they had no meaning in themselves? Until other people raised them to symbolic significance, they simply lived their lives. This is all I've been trying to get across.

Life happens - not for any particular reason or purpose; it doesn't serve any predetermined function; it is not a means to some end. Life happens. Those of us lucky enough to live it in bodies that perform within acceptable parameters have a biological imperative to supply its needs. Beyond that, we have psychological needs, and the more complex among us living things also have social needs.
But we are not mere food or tools or footsoldiers. We are not messages in bottles or words in a Big Book of Destiny: we are individual entities with various degrees of choice and various levels of craving for self-definition.

I was only trying to exemplify the kind of exciting human future, I am attempting to present to you. — universeness

I understand that.

I was not suggest that all 8 billion people currently living on this planet can start becoming spacefaring, any time soon. — universeness

How many man-hours of their effort, how much of the natural resources on which they rely for subsistence, do ordinary people currently contribute to sending one rich buffoon into orbit for a couple of days? (Or under the ocean - but at least that buffoon won't do it again.) How much planetary degradation, how much pollution, how much climate warming does each exciting human adventure contribute to an already fatally damaged ecosystem?

Logistics, forsooth!

But such thinking could encourage many more folks to support and yearn for us becoming a globally united species who have new and better cause, meaning and purpose, in their lives. — universeness

More of that frickin subservience under the banner of cause, meaning and purpose! All that will happen is another damn race to grab most of it faster.

I think you should clean your own room before you go renovating the town.

meaninglessness goes hand-in-hand with apathy and desensitivity, which leads to all kinds of depravity. — Ø implies everything

To assert that one does not need to justify one's existence in terms of submission is not meaninglessness as defined by the 'meanings' vaguely outlined in this thread. I don't become despondent and depraved by rejecting a label imposed on me by someone I consider no higher an order of being than myself.

If we simply left the need for proper social servitude as some need and desire that makes us happier, we would be underplaying the importance and profundity of fulfilling this need. — Ø implies everything

Which is exactly what we need to do, if we are ever to stop slaughtering one another on the orders of our 'superiors'. As long as there is willing submission, there is enthusiastic domination.

If social servitude only makes you happy, it is replaceable by other sources of happiness. — Ø implies everything

Is it? Does servitude really make you happier than cooperation? Can you compare the mood of a barn-raising to that of a chain-gang? I think a big-brained species needs several diverse sources of satisfaction. Group effort is only one of these. Intimacy is another. Overcoming self-chosen challenge. Physical pleasure. The companionship of friends. Contact with nature. The appreciation of culture and creative endeavour. Acknowledgment and respect.

Anyway, why conflate psychological needs with the purpose of existence? Surely, existence came first; meaning and purpose were imposed only later.

That bides well.... given some previous framework and scene-setting. I do like the language and the insight. Even to the shades of Ayn Rand.