The common view is that if I walk in the forest and see a tree, the tree was pre-existent; it existed before I saw it. — Art48

It's not merely 'the common view'; it is a necessity. If the tree were not there when you arrived, you would not be able to see it. It takes rather a long time for a tree to be built up from its constituent molecules, whether you happen to walk by or not; and in fact, there had to exist quite a lot of vegetation before a mammal with eyes was even possible.
We know this as fact --- unless we throw out all knowledge of science, all experience of physical reality, and start from a non-rational mind-set to construct a theoretical reality.

A view contrary to the common view is that just as the tree is a pre-existent part of the landscape, Macbeth is a pre-existent part of the mindscape. — Art48

Just as the tree is a part of that forest, it grew over many years from the soil and water and sunshine of that specific landscape. It pre-exists your sight of it, not the germination of its acorn. So, too, the play Macbeth became a part of Shakespeare's mindscape on the night he finished writing it - after however long it to took to grow there from its constituent words from his fertile imagination, watered by his creative use of language. It pre-exists your witnessing of it; not Shakespeare's concept of it.

And theoretically, we could wait a few centuries until humanity had lost all memory of the play. — Art48

Yes, it would. A great many creative works have been destroyed in human history; you and I cannot know what they were like. There will come a time when nobody knows the play Macbeth. And there comes a time when the tree is cut down and burned, or falls down and decomposes. They both return their constituent elements to the environment; one to the culture, the other to the ecosystem.

If a thought can be destroyed — Art48

A play is far more than a single thought; it is the culmination of many hours of thinking, after many years of experience and interaction with other people and learning. Thoughts are ephemeral. A thought doesn't need to be destroyed in order to cease existing: a thought is almost instantly subsumed by an idea, a conjecture, a stream of consciousness; it's swept away by impressions, sensations, other thoughts; it's dispelled by distraction and conversation and sleep. A thought is eradicated almost the second of its inception.

I think this [the Eden story] is a metaphor, an allegory for innocence, curiosity and revelation. — Benj96

Of course. It is the earliest myth, in that region (probably Sumerian, though the other gods have been almost* expunged from the Judaic telling of it), of the shift in human organization from hunting-gathering tribes through herding-trading nomads to settled civilization.
At the very heart of it, however, is not personal responsibility, but subjugation. The curse.

Gen 3:17 And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life;

Obedience and punishment onto all his generations. Not justice.
*

#:22 And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever:

A little boo-boo in editing. And later transcribers and translators didn't dare to fix it, any more than they dared to remove the alternate creation story from the first chapter - because by the time it was fixed as scripture, the text had become too holy to alter.

To "no logic" I will add "no usefulness". — Alkis Piskas

I wouldn't. He's been a wonderfully effective lever to move masses of gullible people into calamitous wars, as well as craven obedience.

Ideally protestors would not even come into conflict with said pseudo-military police departments. — ToothyMaw

I wasn't referring to protesters. I was referring to the institutions and constitutional rights that the right actually protects. They only seem to support thos institutions that carry guns. Not the public school system, not the right to protest, not fair and free elections, Air Force, yes; APHIS, no; BOP yes, BLA, no; CIA, yes; CDC no; DHS, yes, HHS; EC yes, EPA, no. ...
And I really don't want to get into the details of who initiates conflict between police and protesters in a non-ideal world.

Killer Mike summed it up when he said that the people need to make a difference with their votes; it is paramount to first build up your house and make it strong to effect lasting change - even if you, understandably, want to see shit burn. — ToothyMaw

Sounds nice. I'm sure it sounds especially nostalgic to the many thousands of people disenfranchised by Republican state voting legislation and systematic voter intimidation. I wouldn't be astonished if some people were irate about being prevented from voting and then told: It's all your fault for not voting.

My point was that the right is quick to act on perceived threats to the current order - far more so than the left. — ToothyMaw

That's correct! All entrenched power is quick to defend itself from reform. The more lopsided the disparity between haves and have-nots, the more violently the haves respond to any challenge to their entrenched power.

I have been accused of being racist, or a useful idiot for racists, for mentioning black-on-black violence, — ToothyMaw

By whom? The entire left as a political entity with the power to destroy your life, or by some anonymous poster on an internet forum? It's quite a long way down the scale of harms from being eaten.

And I maintain that the right, at least in the US, has a greater desire to preserve the institutions we have in place. — ToothyMaw

Some of the institutions. The ones that serve their agenda. Like heavily militarized police forces to keep the mob from protesting economic and political disparity and the privatization of everything from drinking water to highways. And some institutionalized falsehoods, like celebrating the Civil War. They're not real big on preserving institutions like the universal franchise or the separation of powers or a free and independent press.

So many republicans had no desire to see Trump become president, yet the Republican party has supported him through all of his idiocies, falling into step with a clear megalomaniac as easily as you might join a friend for coffee. You might view this as rule breaking, and it is to a certain degree, — ToothyMaw

Yes, I would call the support of armed insurrection 'rule breaking to a degree'. But I was referring to your specific examples of abortion racial equality, on the right-wing rhetoric is so egregiously mismatched with the actual behaviour of its leadership.

Take for example the fact that many on the right pushed back against what they thought was the literal defunding of police departments, because of their (correct) intuition that anarchism doesn't really work. — ToothyMaw

That is less an example of defending institutions than of deliberately misrepresenting the position of the other party. A tactic not unusual to the right. Was anarchism advocated or even mentioned by the left? Whence did that term enter the discussion of police funding? Why is anarchism never an issue when de-funding public services that don't carry guns?

No, but try to adopt a nuanced view on race, attempt to discuss it with candor, and see how quickly you get declared a bigot or a white privilege denier. — ToothyMaw

Some people have certainly expressed rigid views on forums. But I am unaware of any Democrat having been ostracized by the party, or left unsopported in mid-campaign for expressed a nuanced view on anything.

but it [supporting the disastrous Trump] also demonstrates that the right tends to come together despite small, or large, differences in views. — ToothyMaw

It does now. They drummed out dissenters large and small, starting back in the Nixon years, with further purges under Reagan and Bush II.

The paranormal one. While knowledge of intelligent extraterrestrial life would be exciting, especially for those who have always known they were 'out there', we have no way to meet them or have any kind of reciprocal relationship with them. I.e. They're no immediate threat or use to us. If our response to climate change is any indication, we wouldn'tdo anything about extraterrestrials until ten minutes before they landed, and then we'd try impotently shooting at them.
Paranormal activity, otoh, would be seen as exploitable. Certainly by the churches with waning power over; by entrepreneurs and manufacturers of ghost-detecting equipment and ghost-repellent and tinfoil headgear in 5 designer colours, entertainment industry moguls, intelliegence agencies.... all sorts would get very busy figuring out ways to make hay out of it.

I find that the right believes more is at stake and will make allies with even the rottenest knaves if their goals align enough, whereas the left will merely excommunicate you and ruin your life for disagreeing a little. — ToothyMaw

I do not believe that is an accurate representation of either side. The right says - proclaims, shouts, pounds, screams, buys expensive advertising and mobilizes ruthless propaganda campaigns to convince its supporters - that these are the issues at stake, while the leadership not only knows that to be false, but blatantly breaks every one of the rules and damages every one of the institutions they're campaigning to 'protect.' As for excommunicating those who disagree with the core leadership -- How do you think they became as locked in step as they have in the last 20 years? What happened to the moderate conservatives? And Liz Cheney?
Is not making alliances, or giving concessions of principle to the "rottenest knaves" really a weakness in a political party? Doesn't having goals that are aligned enough with the rottenest knaves - let alone supporting the rottenest knave's lies and false claims - make one a fellow traveler?
Which Democrat's lives have been ruined for a small difference of opinion? life Is deleting a thread really equivalent to rape- and death-threats?

We create a God ourselves, and then we realize that He is not just and then compalin about that. — Alkis Piskas

I was thinking along this line as I read - skimmed, tbh, on the last page or so - through this thread.
Where does this composite image of the god or God come from? The God of Genesis wasn't omniscient or particularly fair, and didn't pretend to be. He told his freshly minted humuns "Go, cavort in the garden and amuse me, but don't touch my special fruit... because, if you do, I'll kill you." No further reason or explanation given. Indeed, it would have a been wasted effort to talk to them about fairness, since they had no knowledge of good and evil.
If we went by that characterization, the deity would be comprehensible. Even later on, when He, in cold blood, drowns everybody and all the animals, and when He lets stand Noah's curse on all the progeny of his son Ham (who accidentally saw him naked)... after having described Noah as a just man, and when He chooses the Jews out of all the people of the Earth and commands them to kill entire tribes for their land... If you ask that God about justice, he could give you a comprehensible - if not a satisfactory - answer. Because that's the morality on which we built our own evolving codes of justice.

That God created just one little world, which he had to share with many other gods who all had their own peoples, with their own codes of conduct. To the hugely inflated Creator of the whole now-known universe, with all his later add-on superpowers, no logic can apply; for such a god, no accounting can be given, of him, no sense can be made.
Only speculation and supplication.