she's a woman, it should be "matronisingly", only to discover that's not considered a word. Really? Well, now it is. — Benkei


https://www.etymonline.com/word/matronize — Amity

Well, there goes Benkei's $0.5 per annum royalties!

In the end, freedom is just hard to achieve. Freeing your mind can be so much harder than freeing your body. — Hailey

For damn sure! I happened to luck out, living in a period of expanding social consciousness, in a liberal country with a pretty decent education system. I know that's far from the norm around the world: I had previously lived in a country where both media and school curriculum were dominated by propaganda. I was further fortunate in that my young adult social circle consisted of university and college students and people new to the work force, on their own for the first time, all wide open, questioning and enthusiastic. Conversations would often turn into debates or arguments lasting half the night, ebbing and swelling in volume according to how hard a neighbour thumped the wall.

Having friends who argue without personal animus are hugely helpful in sorting out what you believe and why you believe it.

I'll use it with the utmost delicacy and discretion - plus a *footnote credit.

There is no such an existent as perfect pre-planning that has been exhaustively tested and every possible barrier to completion has been identified and all needed contingency plans established. — universeness

That's why you put a panel of experts in charge; so that they can make whatever decisions need to be made form day to day. Practical and technical decisions, not political ones.

Perhaps we could get a small innocent looking child, to do the same to all world leaders (male and female), who are about to deliver a political manifesto to the population they represent. — universeness

Haw! I just flashed on an image of Parliament, with 500 tiny winged putti hovering over the big, serious representatives. I sure hope they're potty-trained!
Did the whispering slave trick work? Of-bloody-course not! And I'm not prepared to put little innocent children to such unrewarding work. It's simpler just not to celebrate anybody for doing their job or even doing something popular. Recognize, sure: when one lot has served their three years, give them a nice going away party and a commemorative coffee tray or something.
You remember Donald Trump? The whole disaster of his presidency and its aftermath could have been prevented by the simple expedient of denying him media coverage. He's an attention-junkie; it's his main reason for disputing the election and wanting to be king: he can't bear the thought of losing the spotlight. He should have been ignored to death long before all those other died.

Now I'll have to! Watch it being sold out everywhere because of your endorsement.

I'm like "hell no, it's not patronisingly but, since she's a woman, it should be "matronisingly", only to discover that's not considered a word. Really? Well, now it is. — Benkei

God on you! Can we borrow it sometime?

When you say 'costs' here, I assume you are referring to the material resources required to complete a large project — universeness

That, plus, effort, disruption of other services, people tied up in planning and overseeing - the material and social costs. Economy doesn't just mean money; it means the balance of what is available against what is used up; what is lost against what is gained.

Yes, if a large project was started then it should be finished — universeness

That's the safeguard I was asking for. Once it's decided, set up a committee for the duration and declare it hands-off to the sitting government until its completion. The same with a communications network or a hospital: no tinkering by amateurs or fickle voters.

I would be concerned if the admired person was being damaged, due to developing an addiction to the praise of others. — universeness

That's been known since prehistory. I can't recall which tribe it was that considered seeking praise a major source of corruption - I'd have to go back to the book https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374157357/thedawnofeverything - but even Christianity considers pride a deadly sin.

See, lots of good people have lots of idea's for trying to improving things for the better. — universeness

Yea, we've always been here, mostly ignored.

These issues [infrastructure] will no longer be present in a moneyless, resource based economy which employs automation as its backbone. Future roads will be built and maintained by automated systems. We just need to develop the necessary tech capability. — universeness

We have the technical capability now. But money doesn't build roads and bridges; it only buys the materials, energy and labour. For a big, project, resources have to be allocated and dedicated over some considerable period of time. Once begun, it can't be left up to popularity whether to continue working on a costly project or abandon and allocate the material, energy, equipment and human supervision to some idea that sounds sexier during election week.

A career which can allow an individual to make a real positive impact of the lives of so many and help direct our entire species in new and better ways to be and exist. — universeness

I'm not a fan of career politicians. They become campaign-savvy, manipulative. Anyway, a career without pay or kickbacks has only the rewards of social status and admiration, and one can get as drunk on that as on any kind of power. The other danger of long service is the formation of influence-networks, from which cabal is not a step too far. You're teetering on the edge of what happened last time: a good leader was made chief; in the next conflict he became the war-lord; victorious, he was crowned king... next thing you know, his eldest son automatically inherits the throne, collects tribute from vassals, carves his legal code on an obelisk, stamps his ugly mug on a gold coin...

I would like to see a firmly established civil service of professionals, administered by a council - parliament, congress, what have you - drawn form the general population. Maybe by lot or rota system, like jury duty, serving short overlapping terms of two or three years. That way, the governing body really would be of the people. There would always be enough members - half, two thirds? - with experience for continuity and enough fresh minds for perspective, and civic service wouldn't remove people from their own regular life long enough to deform them. No medals, no accolades, no parades, no bloody statues or name carved into schools and libraries - just another job that gets done because it needs doing for the common weal.

Those who represent the people in a parliament are the people, they are of the people and they are elected by the people and they are tasked with acting for the people — universeness

This becomes true about ten minutes after you remove the influence of money from the political system. If there is no social or financial gain to be made in governance, it's just a civic duty.
Only, make sure that essential services and institutions are protected from government interference, because people elected for a short term in office may not be able sustain long-term projects.
(Eg. Look at the roads. Nobody can build a proper road, probably not since the Romans, because it's too expensive: allocation for any single project is determined by the lowest bid and annual budgeting means the infrastructure can only be patched, a little at a time, when absolutely necessary. All the patching and repair over the lifetime of a road ends up draining ten times the resources and worker-hours it would have to build well in the first place. Obviously, all this is even more costly when done by private contractors, who also make a hefty profit, both on the initial construction and on the annual maintenance.)

Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them
- Francine Prose — Amity

Wonderful name! I'm probably too old to benefit; doubt I'll embark on another big project. Anyway, my old Kindle won't hold a charge anymore, so I have to borrow his later model. I just downloaded two Bradbury novels, sequels to my favourite Death Is a Lonely Business. The few available paper copies were too expensive. I should probably replace the Kindle, but I so much prefer physical books, I hardly ever use it.

Because it's [famine] a good marker when the country is really, really poor. — ssu

So what? That says nothing about what caused the poverty and fragility in the first place. If there is no famine for a few years or decades, that's not an indication that the country has become rich and stable; only that a transitory situation has passed - for a time. There are famines enough yet to come in countries that are not poor right now.

The answer is that the agrarian communities are made up of subsistence farmers, those who grow the food they eat, which doesn't create actually more wealth. — ssu

Can there be a famine in Switzerland? Say, a global economic collapse halts food imports and a new strain of rinderpest wipes out the cattle? All the worthless money in all the vaults won't feed dthe people. They'd have to pick up a hoe and become subsistence farmers within six months - assuming the private food supplies are nationalized and rationed, along with the government reserves. They can't grow much grain, but they might do all right with vegetables and fruit, if they convert the shopping malls into hydroponic gardens asap.

What do you think 'created' original wealth?
What makes you think wealth is a good thing, that ought to be created and accumulated?
What prevents famine, short of a major climate calamity, is local independent, diverse agriculture. But who needs that, when the food importers can make a fortune by burning down some other country's forest, take away the subsistence of the farmers there, turn them into low-wage slaves and then mark up the produce in an industrial country?

I won't bore you with statistics, but every industrialized country has seen the transformation of people generally living in the countryside to people living in the cities with now there being just a small fraction from earlier times of people working in agriculture. — ssu

Yes, I know. And I'm familiar with the process whereby it was accomplished. I wonder whether you would have liked to be on the less privileged side of those transitions.
O, happy, happy factory workers!

Anyway, I may get many things wrong, — Eros1982

As do we all!

1. Get rid of money and build a resource based, global economic system, using automation as its backbone. — universeness

For sure. But there is still the ticklish problem of all that blood and sweat tied up in luxury vehicles, mansions, animal skins and the bling in the vaults. None of the stuff, recycled, would be worth a fraction of its present market price. The mansions will make fine seasonal worker accommodation for the orchards and I guess you could use the airplanes as temporary shelter for scientific missions, and the boats would come in handy for fishing all that plastic out of the oceans. But the artwork, jewellery and impractical garments can never be sent back to compensate the people who suffered for their making.

The rigid birth control was introduced in the late 1970's, so that was later. Yes, central planning and the "Great Leap" are culprits, but then again you had central planning introduced to East European satellite states and there was no famine there. The China that the Communist got wasn't prosperous. China had famines in 1876-1879, 1901, 1906-1907, 1920-1921, 1928-1930 and then came the famines cause by the Sino-Japanese war / WW2 / Chinese Civil War. — ssu

Why do you keep harping on famines? Famines are caused by various factors, including climate, war and politics. Like Stalin's making of the famine in Ukraine and the Irish potato famine. But there are plenty of homeless, displaced and dispossessed people when there is no actual famine, and plenty of people who can't afford decent food, housing or medical care, even when they're working full time and making more then $2.15 a day.
You can mix together as many disparate facts as you like. It won't make any difference to fact that the accumulation of more wealth in fewer vaults is detrimental to the welfare of the world's population.

That comment sums up neatly the ignorance (and arrogance) of what some people, especially Americans, but typically Westerners, have to the agency of other people than themselves, to the views of these other people and their role in their own history. — ssu

It's arrogant? OK. But I judge people by their actions, rather than the flags they wave. Most of the RC popes did not behave like Christians; most of the East Bloc leaders did not, and do not behave like Marxists. It's not the self-delusion that counts; it's the effect.

Just pawns or victims of the rich Westerners. — ssu

So, have the wars of European conquest, partitioning of continent, colonial rule, the plantation system, the copper, gold, diamond and coal mines all been swept under the revisionist version of "banana republics have only themselves to blame" doctrine?

Did it happen in your own country like that? Who ordered your parents / grandparents or you to work in a mine or factory after burning your home? — ssu

The Russians, actually - or rather, the Kremlin-controlled puppet government of not-so-dedicated Marxists, who got rich, invested abroad, mismanaged the economy, then sold out to American business. But that was later - a couple of centuries after the colonization of Africa, South America and Far East - you know, those very poorest poor people who are your first concern. Except, of course, South Korea, which did fine, entirely on its own.... sort of...

Washington financed most of the ROK operating budget, paying the entire cost of its large military. From 1946 to 1976, the United States provided $12.6 billion in economic assistance; only Israel and South Việt Nam received more on a per capita basis.

You think it happened like that in the countries that made the transition to industrialized countries in the 19th or 20th Centuries? — ssu

In the 19th, mostly under British colonial rule, yes. In the 20th, increasingly either through investment by the US or their authoritarian government's big guns.
Which ignores an important question: How does a transition from agrarian to industrial economy benefit the general population?

Today, you have these writers who try to educate you though they lack the credentials to do so. I am sure that 90% of writers I have personally met will fail in a Logic Exam, but that does not stop them from being "smart asses". — Eros1982

That doesn't stop anyone from doing anything, because hardly anyone takes Logic Exams - or even cares what Logic Exams are for. However, many people who do know quite a lot about some particular subject are also competent writers, and some quite successfully combine entertaining narrative with informative content. From light reading, such as mystery novels, I have gained some superficial knowledge on a great many topics I would not otherwise investigate.

I appreciate that some literature is art, but have no problem acknowledging its other roles as self-discovery, entertainment, insight into other cultures and mind-sets, and just plain recording of experience and history.

Besides, aren't all philosophers and would-be philosophers also smart-asses?

Really, is it a pathetic improvement that there hasn't been a famine in China in the last 50 years, but before that there indeed were? — ssu

Coulda swore that was down to communist central planning and rigid birth control.

Well, those leaders in China still think of themselves as devoted Marxists. — ssu

Pfth!

Why there a persistent large class of poor people is a complex issue. — ssu

Nothing complex about. Somebody with a big gun comes along, burns their homes, orders them off their land and into the mines, or factories, or cane or cotton or coffee plantations - whatever makes the rich even richer.

And you seem to look at the West, which in fact doesn't have the poorest people. — ssu

I never claimed that the west had the poorest people; I said that making the rich even more rich keeps making the not-rich even less rich. As for the poorest people in China, South America and Africa, they, too are made poorer through the enrichment of the rich. In many, though not all, cases it is the western capitalist investment that co-opts their governments and institutions, and robs entire nations of their resources, their heritage, their autonomy and their health.

And what is so wrong to start with the most poorest people in the World? — ssu

The fact that you want to "start" at the finish line; the fact that there are still millions of "most poorest" people, after all the decades you claim for improvement; the fact that you arrogate to yourself the power of treating millions of people like a project, instead of giving them back their lands and freedom to live as they choose.
The initial cause of their poverty: Imperialism. It hasn't gone away; it's just wearing $US instead of sovereigns and doubloons - it's still looting, with local cat's paws rather than directly; arming the little local oppressors in their great big imperialist pockets.

Governments that do keep tight control on information are routinely disbelieved by the populace. However, even when everyone knows the government organs are lying, a certain amount of the propaganda seeps in subconsciously, through sheer repetition and no opposing voice. Worse still, since even the most totalitarian government's news agency include factual content alongside the propaganda, absolute disbelief is as misleading as absolute belief. Thus, they keep the people confused and afraid to express an opinion of any kind.

When you widen the viewpoint to let's say 50 years (1970's to 2020's) or more, the changes have been dramatic. — ssu

Yes, the post WWII to the Reagan/Thatcher Axis, were a period of liberalism, tolerance, and broadening of vision. In the new Conservative dark age, it's closing in again.
Your notion of poverty is different from mine.

Thanks! I was familiar with abe as a vendor; until recently, we had some 6000 listings on there and it was my first look-up for availability and prices. It's also owned by amazon now (for all I know, so is my house) but I didn't know there were curated, non-commercial lists. Well organized, too.
That's very helpful.

when we're looking at news or whatever is going on around us, how do we know what to believe in — Hailey

You don't come into the world as an adult shopper walks into a department and choose beliefs. You enter light and noise as a blob of sentient humanity with no ideas or autonomy or judgment. For the first three or four years, you instinctively believe in your physical sensations, the experience of your senses, the results of your experimentation in movement, touch and taste. Intellectually, you pretty much believe whatever your caretakers tell you - which is a huge amount of information on which to base a world-view and attitudes, since this is the most active period of neural network formation. Connections will be made and reconfigured all through life, but it will never as pervasive again.

By the time you start school, you have a whole catalogue of beliefs of which you have never been critical or even particularly aware. Many of these unquestioned beliefs - most of them, if you're not relocated between language acquisition and entering school - are also held by your cohort, which reinforces your confidence in them. In most cultures, the school curriculum and the teachers' attitude aligns closely with those of the community: further reinforcement, and no reason to disbelieve.

By the age when you begin to notice discrepancies between what you are told and what you see or experience, your basic value system is established, and you tend to judge every new datum according to that standard. It is at this stage - say age 9-12 - that children should be encouraged to read widely, from and about other cultures, other time periods, other ways of life and of thought. It is therefore, exactly at this stage that closed, jealous, insecure cultures most fiercely protect their young from outside influences. In those environments, it becomes much more difficult to educate yourself and exercise judgment. In open, liberal, optimistic environments, collecting information from diverse sources and perspectives is not just easier, but encouraged and assisted.

And that is what you must do as an adult. Wherever you are, whatever your background and circumstances, you need to get your information from as many different sources as possible. Some are more trustworthy than others: you can assess the plausibility of a statement through your own experience and reason; you can scan them for internal consistency and accuracy; compare their reputations by their longevity, by their information gathering method, by fact-checking against scientific or other neutral repositories of knowledge, and, of course, observation. And then you have to make up your own mind.

It has happened. — ssu

Too little, too late; running out of water.

Sorry, but the poorest haven't gotten poorer. — ssu

No, they live on a princely $2.15 a day, instead of $1.90. Terrific!

Although hard to track, the number of homeless people increases each year, with few countries being an exception to that. The United Nations has documented that there are around 1.6 billion people residing in poor housing worldwide, with around 15 million being forcibly evicted each year.

And for this you refer to the opening a new bank vault for the rich three years ago? — ssu

Yes, in the context of possible redistribution. The stuff in there isn't paying anyone's rent or medical bills, ever. The more wealth - which has been made out of natural resources by human labour - goes in there, and into other such vaults

Safe-deposit boxes hidden in subterranean bank vaults are no longer just for European spy movies. Their demand is steadily increasing among the super-rich, according to Bloomberg. Billionaires and millionaires fear recession and climate change and just want some security for their cash, art, and jewels –– security that can cost as much as a mansion.

, as well as safe hidy-holes for their owners

Though the concept of a luxury underground bunker designed to help you survive a global disaster in style may seem utterly dystopian, the Swiss company Oppidum is quickly turning fantasy into reality.

is out of circulation; not paying wages, not paying tax with which governments might alleviate the burden of the working poor and the sinking middle class, reduce poverty and crime, repair infrastructure; and for damn sure not helping to avert or mitigate any of the natural disasters that continue to render more poor (even not, by definition, in extreme poverty) people homeless and destitute, every year.

If you want to pretend that capitalism makes everything peachier and keener for everybody all the time, no amount of ground-level reality will convince you otherwise, until you are personally affected. That's a popular stance. And that is the reason we're in this mess.

It's pathologically protracted case of the sulks; a spanked child plotting revenge for his humiliation. 20 years later, he comes home with an M16. We're not that far off....

Government can't possibly work anymore, because there is no consensus as to its functions, limitations or even the principles on which it operates. 23 of the states are already on board for altering the Constitution https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/sep/19/conservative-supreme-court-amend-constitution.
Any form of government - I mean any form; oligarchy, monarchy, theocracy, communal, democratic, feudal, syndicalist - works, as long as the majority of citizens and the majority of rulers abide my the same set of known rules.
When half the country, or the most powerful leaders, reject those rules, it usually breaks down in civil war.
When the rulership and lawmaking are determined by money, it breaks down in corruption.
In this case, both.

You're way too kind! I'm just groping for some human connection in these bleak and lonely years.
(Oh, shit, that sounds pathetic! And false. I have a perfectly comfortable life, in a nice country, with a nice old spouse and lots of uncouth cats. Just miss social gatherings is all.)

In this post, I will present an argument in support of the idea that divine hiddenness serves a valuable purpose by allowing humans to exercise their free will and engage in meaningful moral growth. — gevgala

It all hinges on a flimsy string of 'if's.
You did not establish
- the purpose or benefit of moral growth; why humans need it or should want it
- why humans are morally smaller before they made good and bad decisions than after; or, indeed, how the moral growth is accomplished through good and bad decisions.
- how moral size is measured, how the measurement is carried out, and whether it has a quantifiable goal - how big is moral enough
- where is the moral code in which they are judged
- whether God watches from a divine duck-blind or is actually absent
- how hiddenness is maintained in the presence of aggressively organized religions that insist on God's omnipresence and omniscience

That last question is the crucial one. If God is anything like the ones depicted in the Judeo-Christo-Islamic doctrines, and if your proposition is correct, free will becomes impossible, as does moral growth.

Personally, I'm picturing a parent of small children who teaches them correct behaviour by watching through a one-way mirror as they kill one another.

About volatility. I'm not gonna tell you what I threw against a wall. It was meant for hubby. I was young. We divorced. — Amity

So, like, he failed the frog-to-prince test?

From what you say, sometimes it's good to give one particular project a rest. — Amity

It wasn't quite like that. I put it aside when I got my heart broken, and then again when I contracted to a reciprocal renovation project with the present Mr. Mont. That involved a mother, two children, two full-time jobs and five incompatible pets. Then we built a house (If you think hasty marriage engenders object-hurling occasions, wait till you live on a construction site for two years!), then we imported a family, then we went to LA for six months. I tried to pick up that novel at least half a dozen times, but something always came along to halt progress. When life finally settled down, I started a new one - which didn't turn out well, and immediately another, that I think did. Then we had other projects. Life gets complicated sometimes.

And I've never had an overwhelming compulsion. More artisan than artist, me. Yes, I do consider the shape and pace of a short story, but they're more spontaneous. There isn't so much to remember over so long a stretch of time. I do look at the construction of poems, too. I appreciate Yeats and Eliot, but also admire the classical forms. You know, Lawrence, Frost, Dickinson and the even older guys. Worse, I'm kind of a stickler for cadence, aptness of language, consistency in an extended metaphor and that sort of thing. I don't write many poems anymore; it doesn't gush as it did in adolescence when I was given to passions and blank verse; it rarely even drips (amply compensated-for by other orifices). I suppose if I submitted a sonnet or ballad, I'd be booed off the thread.

My most abiding Bradbury book is Death Is a Lonely Business; I reared it every couple of years.

Talking about work when not working is fun. I guess that's why I watch Grand Designs.

The other is a fantasy book where the different schools of magic roughly map to philosophical positions. — Count Timothy von Icarus

That sounds really intriguing! I would love to read it when it's done.

But that is not everyone's goal and it's not always possible for those would-be writers who have other priorities. Only the most determined and they already have that value or motivation to persevere in them. Success at all costs. — Amity

Perseverance is not about success for me. It's a life-vest: I have to get something written every day, good, bad or lackluster - and it may well end up deleted on the next good day - simply in order to keep doing it. Just so I won't throw the malformed, stillborn monster against a wall* (You can't do that on a computer. I quite miss the dark satisfaction of a sheaf of despised paper splatting against the wall and flying all over the room.) One novel took over 35 years to write, I gave up on it so many times, for years on end. My SO nagged me into reviving it after retirement, and I think it turned out better than it would have the first time.

The other thing is, the last two novels were complicated SF; three very different settings and a huge cast of characters with different time-keeping and seasons; different cultures, funny names, so they absolutely required planning. I'm a plodder - that's what works for me. My SO is a seat-of-the-pantser. He doesn't outline anything: he has an idea, makes up a protagonist to carry it. From the initial situation, he just keeps asking, "What needs to happen next?" and writes it down. He doesn't have patience for polishing, either, for taking out redundancy, varying sentence structure, adding descriptive touches. I spend a lot of time on that - maybe waste a lot of time; I don't know whether it accomplishes much, but it's another opportunity to introduce mistakes.

I wouldn't recommend either method to other people, because everyone has to find out what works for them. But I can give one tiny piece of general advice: It you want to improve your description, read Bradbury. When I was 19, my first chief tech gave me an old paperback copy of Dandelion Wine. It was a revelation worthy of a fanfare by the celestial brass. I still consider him the grand master of evocative description.

PS - * I'm not really that volatile, as a rule. I've actually only ever thrown a very few things against walls, none of them animate.

Thanks, I didn't know about this. So many good people still fighting the good fight!

I think that proposition is way overcomplicated.
Doubt is simply a lack of conviction. Maybe it's so, maybe it ain't; all the evidence isn't in yet.
Speculation can exist cheek by jowl with doubt. It's merely an imaginative filling-in of blanks. In the absence of sufficient evidence; one may contemplate various possible scenarios: it may have happened this way; this fits the evidence we have so far; therefore, let us focus the investigation. If it happened this way, what was the most probable reason, the most probable method; the most probable traces left behind. Look for those. If you find them, you've filled in more blanks. If not, speculate again on an alternate possible scenario.

However, a direct perceptual observation such as what someone says, can be doubted. — introbert

No. The direct observation is that they said something. The content and meaning of that speech may be doubted, exactly because it was not directly observed by the hearer.

The answer will not be sufficient proof, and in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, persistence in negating the assertion would be demonic possession. — introbert

No, it would be paranoid jealousy. And the woman would be justified in leaving you, not only for disbelieving her, but for asking the question at all.

I think struggle generally reflects poorly in the quality of output. — hypericin

Oh, Calliope, I hope not!

And then, you are implying you start from chapter 1, page 1, and end on the last sentence? — hypericin

By a somewhat tortuous route.
I have to proceed logically and chronologically, or I get confused. Even so, it's hard to keep track of consistency in names, places, sequence of events. The first draft is far from complete. Even on the second or third edit, I keep an 'outtakes' file, where I put questionable paragraphs on probation. Some may go into a different chapter, some will be put back modified, some scrapped altogether. I lost a quite good observation that way: I repeated it in a later chapter, so I took out both, not sure where it should go and forgot about it on final edit.

"John sat down at the table and had a glass of tea" could be expanded into an entire chapter — Outlander

That sentence immediately intrigued me. Why a glass of tea? Is it iced? Is it hot outside? Has he been doing something strenuous? Or is he having tea the Turkish way? Maybe he's spent time there, an experience that is significant in his life? Where is the table? In his own home; which room? Is he alone or entertaining/being a guest?
That could be spun in a sinister way: he's be cautious, in case the tea is poisoned. Or a on a comic line: he's at his girlfriend's house, hoping to make a good impression on her parents but unfamiliar with their old-country customs. Pathos: he looks across the table at the person who isn't there anymore. Etc.

A story can be made out of anything. Witness a pair of teenagers meeting at the mall; a woman boarding the bus with bulky carry-bags; people standing in line at the bank or post office, impatiently waiting out a lengthy transaction... Hemingway hit that one on the nail: Write one true sentence.

But that's easy. — Benkei

Not for these arthritic old wrists! The wrung-out ones can go hang.

What I'm procrastination about now - Hark, is that the kettle? Does Idiot Cat want in again? I'll just check on the tomatoes in case they need watering. Right after I finish this game of Mah Jong solitaire. - is a blog entry. I started out okay last year with a few little essays of random thoughts on our own website, but nobody read them, so I quit. Now I'm supposed to resume on Goodreads, and I've got nothing.

My writing process is based on perseverance. — javi2541997

Yes, I think that's vital. Sometimes it doesn't flow - or even trickle; sometimes you have to wring out every word as from a heavy wet towel. On those bad days, the result is usually poor work, and most of it has to be replaced on the first edit. The important thing is to keep going, because when a novel is going badly, there is an almost overwhelming urge to give up; scrap it and waste those first 100 pages. For me, this low point is usually around the middle, when I need a decisive event to move the plot, and I've neglected to lead up to such an event.

I've shelved maybe half a dozen novels in the last 50 years, and I always wonder, later on, whether I should go back to them. In the doldrums after finishing one recently, with the looming alternative of washing all those windows before the fall, I've been desperately scrabbling through the pile of rejects for something to revive. Some short story ideas might be worth pulling out of the pile...

Conventionally, more or less. I have a germ of a story idea and I ask myself :"What is this really about?" What's the underlying theme? Having identified it, I place it in the appropriate setting. Then I start wondering: What kind of people live there? How do they survive? How do they think? How is their society organized? What level of technology and prosperity? What are their interpersonal relations like?

By the time I've answered those questions, I've also pretty much picked out a POV - the kind of person whose experience best conveys the theme. Then I need to make up a biography and fill in the details of that person's daily life. When I know my protagonist, I have an idea what kind of major event they need to live through and how they'll react.

After that, there is enough story to write a plot outline. I prefer to organize it chronologically, without too much complication. The last one was a bugger, since it's actually three different stories, told in the first person (which I don't usually), by three protagonists, each with their own voice, but it turned out - I had no choice! - that one of the stories is half flash-backs (which I also don't, usually).

Then I just sit down here every morning, idle away as much time as I dare, looking into a couple of forums, doing the jigsaw puzzle, checking email, arguing with the cat who lives on my laptop ... but sooner or later, I have to start doing research, inventing geography (love Google Earth!!), language, culture, names, homes, transportation, food. I have an old spiral diary that was used only sparsely by my SO, and make lots and lots of little notes in pen.

I do have Scrivener at SO's insistence, but I dislike using it. Too damn complicated.

Eventually, when I can't put it off any longer, I start writing the actual story. On Page 1 of Chapter 1. When it's done, I take a few days off to get some perspective, and then start editing the hell out of it.

Publications and documents are good (Well, I can hardly say otherwise, can I?) but living is even better. Your group can popularize the projects already in effect. And encourage people to start more.
Hurray!
https://ecovillage.org/region/gen-europe/ecovillage-projects/
https://afairersociety.com/co-op-housing-5-uk-examples/
https://www.thenews.coop/156844/sector/housing/housing-and-climate-change-the-co-ops-pioneering-green-solutions/

Constructionist thought painfully reminds us that we have no transcendent rationale upon which to rest such accusations, and that our sense of moral indignation is itself a product of historically and culturally situated traditions.

Nevertheless, we have those values, hold those convictions and make those judgments. Society cannot function in an ethical void.

And the constructionist intones, is it not possible that those we excoriate are but living also within traditions that are, for them, suffused with a sense of ethical primacy?

If he has to 'intone' a credo, he probably has no confidence in it. Hypocrites quite regularly intone the 'correct' credo most popularly espoused by their society, while surreptitiously fracturing all of its tenets. By their actions shalt thou know them, not by their insincere words. By their actions can you also discern whether they are carrying out the dictates of true conviction or doing something quite else.

As we find, then, social constructionism is a two edged sword in the political arena, potentially as damaging to the wielding hand as to the opposition.

Let them hack one another and themselves to pieces, if that is their hearts' desire. I'll settle for a one-pointed pen.

It's not only Jesus who is subject to individual interpretations; the OT is full of horrible stuff that believers explain away as metaphor, allegory or whatever. And, of course, entire books that they prefer to ignore altogether. Religion is a subjective matter: the mean and vengeful reach for the punitive passages that forbid whatever they disapprove of; the mild and merciful point to forgiveness and turning the other cheek; the generous cite storing up not riches in this world; the powerful refer to the relation of masters to servants; the greedy will cite Matthew 25, in which he gives God's seal of approval to usury and polygamy.
There are eight million stories in the Holy Bible; pick whichever ones work for you.

And a great deal of harm. Hoomons at work and play as usual.