I'm curious because Benkei was making claims to the contrary. — schopenhauer1

He and I may agree on a lot of things, but we don't share a brain!
I'm not a fan of DNA tracing for any purpose except forensics and anthropological research. (This means, not even genealogy).

No one is being "racist" by saying Jews have a specific ethnic history, and understanding that, any more than how the Dutch people are different than (or similar to!) French, Belgian, or (other) German peoples. — schopenhauer1

Some Jews? Most Jews? Everyone who identifies as Jewish? Fine.
But I don't see it as a contribution to excusing war crimes.

Rereading Timothy Findley's The Telling of Lies after ten years or more. Still intricate, unexpected and enthralling, as his novels tend to be. I reread Pilgrim recently, but have not the courage to face Headhunter again.

Yes, just as Christian and Muslims determine their own definitions. — BitconnectCarlos

Christian and Muslim are not definitions of nationhood. They are religious affiliations, professed by citizens of many different countries.

I'm sympathetic to native american claims to get back some parts of the land to which they are indigenous to. It's been extremely destructive to those communities to try to erase that heritage. — BitconnectCarlos

No kidding! But would you be willing to give up your house and farm if they had a claim on it on genetic, religious, traditional, or 'some of us have been here all along' grounds?

Tradition! Tradition! (Ours, of course. Nobody else's counts.)

And also apparently you have no regard for native american claims either. — BitconnectCarlos

Oddly enough, the Lenape are not getting Manhattan back and then spreading out over all of New York State with Chinese tanks and missiles. Yet....

do you believe in biological essentialism — schopenhauer1

I don't even know what it is. I'm guessing bloodlines, DNA sort of thing. In which case, no. (Wouldn't look very good on a Canadian.)

or do you think a longstanding tie to a biological, ethnic, or cultural identity, along with a historical connection to a particular region, could be used as such to define a people who have identified with it for generations? — schopenhauer1

That's what it means to the nation. Of course the notion doesn't play well with colonial subdivision of territory or post- WWI and II redrawing of maps by world powers. Then, too, 'identified' may have quite an elastic interpretation.

As to the genetic makeup of modern peoples - especially those that have been dispersed from a relatively small original stock - why even bother to trace them? There are Americans the colour of ginger ale who consider themselves Black. People don't identify with their DNA; they identify with their community, religion, culture and shared past. And their story - no matter what percent of it is factual.

"It was a shock to John and I."
"potato's $1.95"
"Get off of my lawn."
"Oranges are different to apples."
"Try and learn grammar."

There is no exact external definition of a Jew, any more than there is of a Muslim or a Protestant. They don't all live in the same place or in the same way and they don't all have the same facial features or character.
People who identify with a group that shares a culture or religion or ethnicity or some identifying feature are perceived as belonging to that group. I'm quite sure the people who thus identify themselves do have a clear idea what they each mean by it.

Like I said, it's a slogan, nothing more.

This is why all religious people are dumb; they try to elevate stories to facts. — Benkei

It's not just religious people. Nationalists and ideologues of every stripe have a banner story.
Interestingly, I listened to a radio program the other day, interview with an (unpopular) Israeli historian who said people don't fight to the death for land or resources or their leaders; they fight for their stories.

The ancestors are different from Judaism. — BitconnectCarlos

Ah, so religious identity is distinct from national identity.
Arabs - according to the OT, descendants of the unloved sons of Abraham - were also there, all that time, long before Islam.
And so, "ancestral home" means exactly what?

People wandered around an area and had kids. Then they went someplace else and had more kids. So frickin what? People have wandered over every place and had kids.
Some people invented a religion in a place. So frickin what? People invented religions all over the place.
That doesn't give their descendants any special privileges.

I once had a cat who liked to bully all the other cats that came near our back yard. He wasn't particularly imposing or strong, but his best friend was a Newfoundland dog.

Jewish identity is born in that region -- in Israel. — BitconnectCarlos

According to the biblical story, the ancestors wandered all over those lands from Turkey to Egypt. Does that mean modern Israel has a right to occupy all of what was Mesopotamia? Is the US obliged to arm and finance that expansion?
Every nation started someplace.
In case Mongolia was worried, I'm not about to claim my ancestral rights.

It is the ancestral homeland of the Jews making the Jews indigenous to it. — BitconnectCarlos

Indigenous in what way, according to what source? The OT story has them attacking Jericho without provocation. The real story is lost, though archeologists keep chipping away at it. Somebody was there before who isn't there now. This is a fairly common situation when peoples are nomadic, or flee from invasion or migrate due to inimical weather events or fight among themselves and split off.
Ancestors are any preceding generations from grandparents backward, even if it's only two generations. "Ancestral home" means nothing - it's a slogan. Maybe one day China will be the major world power and restore all the North American indigenous peoples to their ancestral homes - regardless of who lives there now, or whether those people, or their ancestors, had done any harm.

There were Jews who remained in the region and have had a continuous presence since antiquity. — BitconnectCarlos

Presence is not possession and confers no rights.

These Jews were oftens subject to persecution. — BitconnectCarlos

Yes. So are/were most minorities.

So the violence is not just due to the "occupation" but rather occurred well before it. — BitconnectCarlos

Unfortunately, violence has occurred on Earth since the amoeba.

Yet if they do have an ancestral homeland it is in Africa. — BitconnectCarlos

That's a tradition, a history, a memory - not an excuse for carnage.

Yes they were expelled from their ancestral homeland in 135 AD. — BitconnectCarlos

Barred from Jerusalem after the third major revolt. Roman rule was often brutal to occupied peoples, especially those who gave them a hard time. If the OT is anything to go by, the Judeans' treatment of its conquests was no better. That's imperial wars for you. Sometimes, if God is displeased, he does choose somebody else for a change - (sorry, Tevye) - at least, according to the prophets.

Let's say a group of Jews are expelled by the Romans from Judea in 135 AD. The community goes to Alexandria and continues to preserve those traditions and maintains its distinctiveness & maries among itself. In 235 AD is Israel still their ancestral homeland or have they lost it? — BitconnectCarlos

They've lost it. Like a whole lot of other people. You win some wars and you lose some. If you lose a big one, you lose the land you're living on - which is ancestral through some finite number of generations, just as it was ancestral to the people who lived there before.

Are they now indigenous to Alexandria? How about 335 AD? — BitconnectCarlos

You don't become indigenous, but if you're willing, you can assimilate to a country that let your ancestors in.

And what do we say about African Americans? Indigenous to a Georgia plantation? — BitconnectCarlos

We call them African Americans for the reason that their ancestors were transplanted to a different country and successive generations have adapted and assimilated. There is no large contingent of African Americans descending on Ghana to claim it as their ancestral home, and if there were, the US would not finance and arm them.

It does not as Israeli soldiers do not go from house to house murdering Palestinians because they are Palestinians. It does not commit rapes. It does not take Palestinians hostage and bring them to rape dungeons. It does not aim for civilians. If it did there would be no more Palestinians. — BitconnectCarlos

Those are excellent reasons not to fund or facilitate the funding of Hamas. Could be time to consider a change of leadership.

This means, that a man feels good only when he lives better than others. — Linkey

I don't believe that. I think a man feels good when he is valued by his community and his efforts and accomplishments are appreciated. In a greed-based, wealth-controlled society, the only available status is measured in wealth and power and can only be attained through competition.

Therefore, anyone who does attain wealth, power and admiration is in constant fear of being displaced by someone more ambitious and aggressive, someone with a sharper edge. They are also in constant fear of being robbed or cheated out of their possessions. And so they bend their considerable social resources toward the consolidation and protection of their assets.

The very poor and dispossessed are in constant fear of illness, injury, cold and hunger. If they live badly in a wealth-driven environment, poor people can't help being aware that the rich have much more than they need, while they themselves have less than they need. They can hardly help feeling resentful.
So the rich people are afraid of the poor people's anger and the poor people are afraid of repression.

There are many kinds of envy. They come on a long scale of intensity, from "I wish I had hair like hers." through "I want his wife." to the most toxic "If I can't be him and have all his talent and fame, I can at least kill him and be famous by proxy."

In fact, the happiest people in the world live quite modestly, with few possessions.

Free from, free of, or free to?

In case it seemed otherwise, I wasn't intending my last reply to read as adversarial in any way.
On the contrary, I thought we shared a mutual frustration with the subject. — ENOAH

Oh, adversarial wasn't what I thought. Thing is, I don't really have a problem with either the concept or the word. I don't think the compilers at Webster did, either. It's not until the recent commercial, technological and scatological contributions to graphic production and performance that the idea of what art is and what it's supposed to do have become problematic.

When I studied Art, most people were clear on the topic, even if they disagreed on the merit of individual items, though the academics and critics were in turmoil. This was during the 1960's, when the likes of Warhol and Duchamp had already upset the traditional concept of artistic expression. It was fashionable to debate endlessly whether art was the process of creation or the result, whether anything that altered a perspective on any subject, however trivial, should be considered art, and a whole heap of precious, pretentious posing by self-styled geniuses. It was then, too, that people who made stuff, whether it was all-the-same jewellery or big grey and red blobs on canvas, began to refer to their stuff as "The Work".
Since then, an awful lot of crap has been deposited in galleries.

After Warhol, every magazine illustration and movie poster was art; every bastard offspring of the theater and every drum-heavy pop song has been included in a broad, liberal, catch-all use of the word. It's not surprising so many people devalue the word, disparage all criteria and go with their gut reaction instead. That's always been the ultimate personal standard. But publicly funded installations and exhibitions must be controlled by a cooler intellect. The council or committee members who decide which sculpture to put in a park, which painting to buy for a museum, need definitive criteria. They must fall back on established words and concepts for their deliberations.

Well, good luck defining art, Mr. Webster. — ENOAH

Just answering this!

I think it's best to stick to "art cannot be defined." Not in Language, at least. — ENOAH

You can certainly do that, if you choose. Mr. Webster was a little more definite.

I trust you will hate that last definition most, but, no offense intended, that's what I'm settling with. — ENOAH

I don't love it, hate it, or care much about it. It's right up there with "I don't know anything about art, I just I know what I like."
Everyone is free to have their own take on the subject, but nobody gets to deny that definitions exist, so long as they're using words.

Not me, for sure! I really just meant that all effective technology is currently controlled by the mega-rich. I realize that the way they're using technology, they're steadily sawing at the branch they're perched on and the entire politico-economic system must collapse under them.
But AI is probably some way yet from becoming self-aware and autonomous, let alone smart enough (given the GIGA rule) to take control of a civilization in shambles.

We need a non-human intelligence. It is my hope that AI will one day be that intelligence. — Philosophim

Many people, most notably red-blooded, liberty-loving Americans, including most of those who would benefit from a sensible system of distribution, would condemn you for that hope.
As for me and my house, we used to share that hope, but it's growing dimmer by the hour. Quite simply, there isn't time enough for AI to shake off the shackles of partisan capital.

That's according to the Israeli news outlet. The IDF releases have said 1combatant to 1.5 or 2 civilians. Unbiased outside authority has insufficient access to the actual numbers. However:

Andreas Krieg, a senior lecturer in security studies at Kings College London, said: "Israel takes a very broad approach to 'Hamas membership', which includes any affiliation with the organisation, including civil servants or administrators."

The fatality data for the current conflict from the Gaza health ministry shows a sharp increase in the proportion of women and children among the dead compared with previous wars.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-68387864

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/art
- a branch of learning; one of the humanities
arts plural : liberal arts
-archaic : learning, scholarship
- an occupation requiring knowledge or skill
- the conscious use of skill and creative imagination especially in the production of aesthetic objects
the art of painting landscapes

Is there any point in putting a word with no definition into the dictionary?

The linked essay describes and explains how and why we have no solutions to our predicament of ecological overshoot and that collapse is inevitable. — xraymike79

Of course it is. Every civilization collapses, unless a bigger one smashes it first. Humans are not good at sustaining a complex social structure.

It's not tu quoque Hamas is stealing the aid and preventing its distribution. — BitconnectCarlos

Sez Bibi. All I could find on this is one shipment from Jordan (not Israel) being held up for a while, than released.

Weasel words by a biased organization — BitconnectCarlos

Biased in favour of fleeing civilians? Shame!!

Israel can send it in but Hamas takes it. — BitconnectCarlos

Israel could send it in, but doesn't.

https://www.refugeesinternational.org/reports-briefs/siege-and-starvation-how-israel-obstructs-aid-to-gaza/Despite its claims to be facilitating humanitarian aid, research and analysis by Refugees International shows that Israeli conduct has consistently and groundlessly impeded aid operations within Gaza, blocked legitimate relief operations, and resisted implementing measures that would genuinely enhance the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza.

I agree, the real life examples of communism, certainly all of the ones on a large scale, have failed. — Fire Ologist

It's never been tried. Sticking a caviar label on a sardine can doesn't make the contents caviar. Even the Russian revolution was partly fake in its inception and largely fake in its revised history.
The regime that followed it (just as in China) was very stratified indeed; elitist, dictatorial and mendacious. Some half-assed attempts at socialist institutions did relieve the working people of the worst abuses of the feudal system, but it was nothing like communism.

But I believe there have been smaller groups who lived in a close knit and communal fashion who could imagine a realistic goal “where property is not an issue, and yet people have physical and emotional integrity, autonomy, personal possessions and amicable relations.” — Fire Ologist

Sure. Monastic orders spring to mind. And many intentional communities based on the principle of pooling and sharing resources and labour. They're usually not ideological or political, so they work out a viable interface with the larger society in which they operate.

But absolutely “no” ownership? Seems impossible to imagine. — Fire Ologist

It's impossible for some people to get over the word as it is tossed about in an intensively monetarist society and substitute more specific terms for belonging. The examples of owning one's body and owning one's spouse are especially repugnant, as they refer to relationships that are not - or should not be - equated with property. Nor is the food on one's table and the shirt on one's back or a faithful canine companion property in the same sense as a 2000 hectare ranch and 20,000 beef cattle.

Modern commercial ownership is an altogether perverse arrangement and we are, indeed, steeped in this culture to such an extent as to cripple our very imagination to the possibility of a healthy social organization. In order to consider alternatives, we also need more nuanced language to describe them.

Just imagine the value of the original if found. — Tom Storm

WHY????

Why did you quote me? — Fire Ologist

Because what you wrote seemed appropriate - not to mention eloquent.

Otherwise, show me how you could make any commune where no one has a concept of ownership. Can anyone imagine it? — Fire Ologist

Probably not. But there is a whole range of conditions, attitudes and social arrangements between. I don't generally rush to the extremes, so I can imagine some states of affairs where property is not an issue, and yet people have physical and emotional integrity, autonomy, personal possessions and amicable relations.

Just saying “Imagine no concept of ownership, where everyone shares everything” creates no clear picture to me, — Fire Ologist

It's not a clear picture. It's not necessary to articulate a concept of ownership to feel possessive about some things and for other people to empathize with that feeling. It doesn't need to be an issue. those people can still share their land, labour, food and resources.
We have a semantic problem with the word 'ownership' and the various concepts of property and sharing. We're not imagining the same, or even perhaps a similar, world.

It’s communism. We don’t have to imagine that. — Fire Ologist

Yes, we do have to imagine it, because we don't know any real life examples, only grotesque travesties and caricatures.

But, does it matter in particular that this is ai? Surely it would be just as bad if it were just Photoshop or something right? — flannel jesus

Much harder to do and easier to detect. AI is a more efficient tool, that's all. So efficient that it can replicate the best human crafting with zero effort. The images may well be impressive; the work is not.

When you compare the carving that was done manually, with a mallet and chisel to carving that was done with a pneumatic chisel, to what can be done today with a computer guided laser, which do you admire more?

I just heard about it the other day.
https://www.abc27.com/news/ai-programs-can-easily-impersonate-biden-others-to-manipulate-elections-study/
Apparently, it can be done very quickly and effectively from a small amount of input.
https://statescoop.com/deepfakes-presidential-election-ai-2024/

If the answer is "no", then the game is to rephrase "ai shouldn't be treated as art" with something more along the lines of "people shouldn't do <what things> with ai imagery" — flannel jesus

For starters, they shouldn't use AI imagery for election fraud - or any other kind. A pretty image, or cleverly composed design can be appreciated without giving it any status in culture. Like other mass-produced commercial products, they're intended for a short period of utility and then discarded.

One problem with the present intensely technological culture is that we are constantly surrounded by images and bombarded by sound. It becomes impossible to discern them individually or remember them for more than a second, let alone judge them on any merit system. It's all just one great, swirling jumble of sensory assault.

What is immoral about taking food from your mouth if I'm hungry unless you have some right to ownership of that food just because it's in your mouth? — Hanover

It's not a question of morality. It's unhygienic, rude and icky. Why would you even think of such an act, unless you're a baby bird?

This just sounds like you're arriving at rules for when ownership is obviously valid and then arguing that no one would ever violate that rule because it's just so obvious. — Hanover

To an extent, it is. Stretching the notion of 'property' to include one's body and its contents is somewhat absurd on the face of it. There are better words than 'ownership' for physical integrity, personal space and autonomy.

I say the same thing applies to my house and all the belongings in it. — Hanover

I included clothes and shelter, as well as tools and personal items and transport in my original exceptions. I don't see anything to be gained by going over it again.

But all this smacks of a naive Marxism, a sort no one really takes seriously, where we declare that ownership of property is the cause of all evil and that if we'd just dispense with it, people would live in a utopian harmony. — Hanover

No, people would never be that good, and less complex, screwed-up societies find ways to deal with the vagaries of human behaviour and relations. However, property as class distinction, property as power, property as weapon and in particular the jealous hoarding of property do cause a great of the complication and madness of our present societies.

The idea that expanding the family dynamic to those outside the family into the community at large seems neither possible or even preferable. — Hanover

It works for a lot of people. If you can't or won't imagine it, you can't.

This means, we live in a world drenched and submerged in the concept and practice of ownership. From here, soaking wet, we have to imagine a possible world where there is no practice, not even a concept, of ownership. — Fire Ologist

OK, if "The whole situation is one of the many dark sides of colonialism" is not the issue of "who settled where in pre-history" but an "issue of self-determination", how is the reference to colonialism help us understand better a predicament where two people (or relative political leaderships, if you prefer) ultimately pursue self-determination aspirations over exactly the same piece of land? — neomac

It doesn't and we can't. At the time, I was responding to a particular post, not solving the middle east mess. It shouldn't have been created; the major powers should have had more foresight, but pursued their short-term advantage instead. Once committed, they've been obliged to keep feeding the fire, and nobody seems inclined to stop. It won't end until one or all of the combatants die.

But that's all incidental to the topic of the thread.

I meant define it with precision. — ENOAH

I did that earlier. This was a summary.

It seems to me, impossible to define art. So impossible, that one could make a case for art being anything which is presented to the senses and triggers feelings beyond the mundane response to mundane things, as mundane things. — ENOAH

Then what's the point of the concept? Or the word? Or the activity?

Somehow, creative people produce objects and performances that move or inspire or enrage or enthrall other people. And those creations, however much or badly they're reproduced and imitated, become part of the culture that ennobles and enriches us, in which we feel we have a stake, of which we are proud.

I find it useful to think about entertainment media in different ways. I do some criticism, and this helps me to articulate responses that would otherwise go unexamined. For example, I have never before considered or questioned whether talent shows are art - I simply lumped them in with all reality shows as mass-produced pop. But when one dissects the content of these shows, they really are quite different from quiz shows of other kinds of contests through elimination. The only other kind of reality show with this art/craft-inside-a-mass-produced-frame structure are Race Against the Tide and Best in Miniature

And what do you make of ownership of your own body? — Hanover

There is a notion that simply wouldn't occur to anyone who isn't immersed in ownership culture. Nor would the idea of taking food from a community member's mouth - unless he's choking or you have reason to believe it's unsafe.

Children are naturally possessive of their favourite personal things - a few toys and articles of clothing, but they're just as eager to share if they think of a suitable activity. Even quite young babies will offer you their slightly chewed cookie or some colourful thing they find on the floor.
They don't claim the house or yard or home furnishings as their property, because those things are familial domain, but when they get a little older, they like to stake a territory around their bed. (Now, in prosperous countries where they see the parents having special territories; in other times and places, they might well all be in the same bed, and that would be normal.) If two or more children share a room, after the first few disputes, they usually negotiate the borders, unless one is bully.
You can encourage sharing and generous behaviour by showing appreciation for their gifts from the very beginning, by returning things they're attached to, and by offering them something of yours, in trade, to borrow or to keep. I don't mean gifts meant for them, I mean your own stuff that you see them wishing for.

If it has been possible, there's reasonable grounds to believe that it will be possible again.
Actually, there are many communal arrangements in operation around the world right now. In most cases, they don't deny ownership of household goods or vehicles, but do share the land and labour of food production and maintenance. It's a step in the direction of a horizontal society.