If you put it that way, that is the way it's put. (But it's still just living.)

A distinction that while the "lower" levels might be described as transactional, this top layer is not. — tim wood

I'm open to adding as many layers as Maslow, or even subdividing them into more layers. But your meaning of 'transactional' eludes me. It seems to me the base layer - once an organism is no longer dependent on its parents - consists largely of transactions with the environment, while the upper ones require transactions with other conscious organisms.

Not all these transaction are necessarily direct one-to-one bargains. Your anonymous charitable giving may not bring you face to face with its beneficiary. It makes you feel good (improving your life) and helps someone else also feel good (improving the community's life). But first, you had to acquire something to give, presumably by working for a third party, and you had to do the giving through a charity (unless you threw it through the recipient's window at night, like St Nicholas), thereby interacting with a fourth party, who then interacted with the recipient, who then used the money - if it was money you donated - to interact with some fifth party.
Lots of transactions going on!

I think we need to make a distinction between ‘just living’ and perpetuating a particular way of living. — Joshs

I attempted to. That's why I didn't say 'just live'; I said 'keep living'. In order to choose any goals or aims, one must be vital enough to choose. One must perform the basic actions entailed in survival; these are the minimum requirement.

Organisms don’t just live, they continually enact a specific normative pattern of interaction with an environment. It is this normative pattern that survives or perishes, not simply being alive as an abstract concept. — Joshs

I thought it was the organism that survives that survives and inevitably perishes. Obviously, both of those events take place in a an environment. Nothing abstract about that.

To keep living as a body doesn’t capture what is relevant to the specific aims of a living system. It is these aims which are synonymous with what it means for it to continue to be what it is over time. — Joshs

That sounds to me like a hyperbolic description of a simple matter: be born, live, eat, eliminate, rest, want things, procreate (or not) die. There is no meaning to being what it is over time: it already is and has no choice about what it is.

We live for the sake of our norms , not for the sake of an abstract notion of life. — Joshs

We tend to cling tenaciously to the very concrete fact of being alive. But beyond that, or overlayed on that, are all the short-terms goals of making our lives good, each according to his or her notion of good.

In the first, one is driven, but in the second is one also the driver? — tim wood

The underlying necessity is the same: to keep living. The layer on top of that is: to live well. The first one is much the same for every being; the second diverges. The particular requirements for a good life differ from species to species; the desires we hope will improve our life* varies by individual.
So, there are root, long term, permanent aims that require small daily action to keep going, each one of which is proposed, planned and executed with purpose.

*For some, that means accumulating goods or reputation points or power. For some, it means being loved and valued and needed. For some, it means doing good to others of his kind, or other species, or the world. For some, it means fighting for a cause. For some, it means being part of something greater than themselves. Each of those central goals requires a different series of small, purposeful actions to achieve. We may not think of these desires, intentions and acts as a coherent whole, but that's what every life adds up to.

Ergo, proving that the Christian God "couldn't exist" is really just pointing out the universal historic fact that concepts are constantly being updated to keep pace with cultural evolution. — Pantagruel

Doesn't need proving or disproving. You either buy a particular insurance package or you don't. I don't buy any of them.

I am really surprised to see a self-described communist want to burden the working class with the student debt of people who will vastly out-earn them. I wonder if you could address this point. — fishfry

'Vastly' is a big word. By quick look-up, the average welder's pay is $22.55/hr, while the average primary school teacher's is $23.44/hr. The teacher starts working life with a $58,000 student loan; the welder gets certification for $475.

You keep saying it's the working class who will be 'burdened' by educating its children, so that they can still work when all the working-class jobs except home renovation and domestic service are automated out of existence. Why do you think poor people's kids shouldn't have a choice of careers?

President Biden will announce plans that, if finalized as proposed, would cancel up to $20,000 of the amount a borrower’s balance has grown due to unpaid interest on their loans after entering repayment, regardless of their income. Low and middle-income borrowers enrolled in the SAVE plan or any other income-driven repayment (IDR) plan would be eligible for the entire amount their balance has grown since entering repayment to be canceled under the Administration’s plans. This group of borrowers includes single borrowers who earn $120,000 or less and married borrowers who earn $240,000 or less.

As for transferring the tax burden from the elite to the working class - - - ? I guess it depends what newspaper you're reading.

President Biden’s tax cuts cut child poverty in half in 2021 and are saving millions of people an average of about $800 per year in health insurance premiums today. Going forward, in addition to honoring his pledge not to raise taxes on anyone earning less than $400,000 annually, President Biden’s tax plan would cut taxes for middle- and low-income Americans

You keep defending that one deluded man, and don't care how his co-workers struggle to give their children a chance in a fucked-up capitalist society.
I saw a pretty funny sign last night:
"Did anyone think to unplug America and plug it in again?"
The system's been cracking for a long time; all anyone can do, short of smashing it and starting over, is apply patches here and there.

So you take the position of God then - leave us to figure out what to do for ourselves. — Fire Ologist

I think no god was ever there at all. And 8 billion ain't exactly solitude.

I said that Congress should pass a law funding college costs if that's what they want. — fishfry

I think you said quite a lot more than that.

I'm surprised to see you cheering on the transfer of billions of dollars in debt from the elite to the working class. — fishfry

I'm not aware that the elite had been paying for student loans. Citation?
Did we discuss restructuring taxation at all? I have some views on capital gains, shell corporations, off-shore accounts and price-gauging that wouldn't affect most union members.

Trashing the welder. — fishfry

Just that one. He probably beats his wife and votes for T***p, too.

I couldn't actually parse that except that I must have done something bad. — fishfry

I don't think you've done anything at all.

I'm very cheerful. I don't have to pretend a cracker is human flesh, or that a magic prince will eventually come back and take a second shot at rescuing us.

I don't believe I've said anything to lead you to believe I'm against education. — fishfry

Only for people who can't afford it.

You said the welders militarized the police. — fishfry

No i didn't. I said

That welder who'd rather see his taxes go toward militarizing the police is doing his family no favours. — Vera Mont

Don't tell me there isn't one single yahoo in the welder's union who wouldn't rather beef up the police than give some pansy a degree in social work. There is. And he's an idiot.

You're quite anti-worker for a communist. — fishfry

No, I'm anti representing all working class people as thinking like you.

I was speaking more to the illogic of someone claiming that necessarily God cannot exist. — Fire Ologist

To whom do you refer when you capitalize God? It's perfectly logical to say that Zeus, Quetzalcoatl, Osiris, Jehovah and Allah cannot possibly exist. Some nebulous supernatural entity somewhere might exist, but we wouldn't have been introduced to it.

I don’t think we could have thought of Jesus as the Messiah prophesized in Judaism. — Fire Ologist

You can't? I wonder why. The late revisionists were able to scrape a couple of coherent verses out of Isaiah's rants to back up their claim - 60-300 years post-crucifixion - that a messiah had been promised to the Jews - who didn't buy it.

Why throw in the sacrament of gathering to eat his flesh and drink his blood to have eternal life? — Fire Ologist

There was nothing new in human sacrifice, or eating demigods.

Or why was it God himself becoming a man, living poor and being killed, so that he could rise again? Why is the incarnation leading to poverty and bloody death needed? — Fire Ologist

So he could forgive the imperfect man he created for falling for his tainted fruit con.

Already the religious institution committee would have said “nope - preposterous - it will never stick! Let’s go back to Zeus or Baal, or Odin and work around them.” — Fire Ologist

No, the Pharisees largely considered him just another crackpot, though a few thought he was a prophet (of which Israel had a long tradition - even if they were mostly crackpots). I very much doubt they would have heard of Odin; Zeus would be out of bounds under Roman rule, while Jupiter had never really made a splash in Mesopotamia, and Baal was very much not the Jews' cup of poison. A long while later, Constantine got some serious mileage out of it. Then the Europeans converts ran with it - at considerable cost to common folk the world over.

And the message of action - love, sacrifice for others, forgiveness, the value of life, that God cared so much, held each one of us in such esteem, that he would rather die on a cross to lead us to him than leave us with nowhere to go, but preserving our freedom to live by our own choices, like creatures in the image of God. — Fire Ologist

Yeah, all that. In action. When?

The trades are "real work." Tradesmen built the college buildings, they operate the plumbing and the electricity and haul the trash. — fishfry

Sure. But a society needs a variety of skills. And it needs to recognize the need for education, and the need for recognition of talent, in whatever class, whether they can play basketball or not, whether they can afford a huge debt-load or not.

A metaphor for the attitude of the elite towards the working class today. — fishfry

You're lecturing a communist about the working-class and elitism?

The US is $35T in debt and still spending like a drunken sailor. — fishfry

On many of the wrong things, because they're bound by old obligations, treaties, contracts, attitudes and fears. Investing in youth is one of the right things it should be spending on.

When this whole thing crashes everyone's going to go, "Oh how did we let it get this bad?" — fishfry

Don't they always? Then, for about 20 years, the ultra-rich keep their greed in check and their profile low. Then they start buying up politicians and smaller businesses and countries again.

It's not the welders who have militarized the police. — fishfry

Of course it isn't. But that's where their taxes go anyway, because the people who have lots of property want it protected at public expense.

If there are Q's in the continuum who haven't bothered me, I promise not to bother them.

It just means that, as a thinking being, there is no reason to conclude the Non-existence of anything. — Fire Ologist

Except things that quite obviously made up. Even if it's not proved 100% beyond doubt, the preponderance of evidence precludes paying homage or tithes to, making sacrifices for or obeying the rules of an improbability.

An atheist doesn't necessarily claim (though some may) that no kind of supernatural entity could possibly exist, or that no entity which might seem like a deity to humans could possibly exist. Most of us simply reject the god-forms that have so far been held up to worship by human agencies of one kind or another. It's perfectly rational to trace both the provenance of a deity-figure and its mythology to a human culture, human attitudes and concerns, human ideas and human interests. Interesting, but not faith-inspiring.

But I doubt you would say that it's just a quid pro quo of doing and in return getting. — tim wood

In a way, that's what a social contract always is. But it's not that simple or two-dimensional.

I "hear" duty, and not as a consequence of accepting responsibility, but as ground for that acceptance. — tim wood

I don't know what that sentence means. We have duties and obligations, responsibilities and debts - all different, each resulting from a set of circumstances that are partly given (of the environment and a condition of survival) and partly undertaken by the subject for his or her own reasons.

duty for duty's sake — tim wood

No such thing. Duty has no 'sake'; it's always in service to something much larger. There is duty for the sake of patriotism, or an oath, or as a condition of citizenship, or as part of a binding contract.

being both a good example of what I call boot-strapping — tim wood

I really wish you wouldn't. It grates very hard on my grammatical nerves.

If it's God, then I hold that to be a matter of faith, — tim wood

Which I don't have, and therefore should not discuss how it works on the faithful.

which I hold to be personal, from the self and not from God but from an idea. — tim wood

Usually not an idea that originates with the faithful. While each believer does a little customizing of the canon, the bulk and overwhelming content of it comes from other minds. A very, very few interpreters of the god's requirements tell all the faithful how best to gain the god's favour. They may think they place themselves in the god's hands; in fact, they place themselves in the ruling prelate's hands.
In the secular realm, the same role is played by heads of state and, in turbulent times, the leaders of ideological factions: the loyal subjects, patriots and freedom fighters receive their purpose from their figurehead.
To me, that seems a lot like abrogation of responsibility - but it does provide a clear, straightforward meaning for their life. And death.

That leaves the question as to why assume responsibilities. — tim wood

We are social animals. We crave community, family, closeness, affection, recognition, a sense of belonging and contributing and being valued. To that end, we take a series of small and large decisions that result in what we know as ordinary life. That includes adults taking responsibility for the young, paying their dues, keeping the peace, lending a hand, making the world around them liveable for others as well as themselves. That requires no supernatural intervention.

Profession correlates strongly with IQ. — Lionino

Profession corresponds strongly to background, expectation, opportunity and the economy. Even the dumbest offspring of CEO's and department store magnates are aimed at university from their gold-plated cradle, through top-flight nursery school through tutors at prep school, and if that doesn't work, their parents can buy a test-stand-in or a department chair. Even the brightest offspring of dock-workers have a hard time getting through high school.

in an unskewed sample of pipe-fitters, — Lionino

In a capitalist system, there are no unskewed samples of anything.

Why? Do pipes mess up adults' DNA?

The working class should fund the education of the cognitive elite who will vastly out-earn them in their respective lifetimes? Did I understand you correctly? — fishfry

No, you obviously don't. A pipe-fitter can have intelligent children.

Pretty good deal for the Eloi, — fishfry

Hardly; they're food source, life insurance and pension plan for your dear Morlocks.

The entire population (wherein the rich are taxed heavily, the working class lightly and the poor not at all) should fund the education of the society's young, so there is no predetermined high-earner class in the next generation.
I suspect a nation of welders would starve to death pretty fast. And a debt-driven society will inevitably collapse under the burden. Student loans - agreed to by unemployable youth who hope for a future, come at 5-15% interest. They won't earn enough to live on, let alone pay off $50, -100, 000 for years after they graduate, so the interest just keeps on accumulating. So the most ambitious and clever of them will vie for the lucrative corporate and money-shuffling jobs that do nothing for the population - because they can't afford to work in low-paid public service or helping professions.
That welder who'd rather see his taxes go toward militarizing the police is doing his family no favours.

I do not here mean any sort of instrumental purpose, either as a cause or any kind of interim goal. — tim wood

Folk appear to have missed this constraint you placed on the topic. — Banno

You're right, I did miss it. I should not have responded. If all the meanings of 'purpose' are eliminated from discussion, there's nothing left to discuss but God.

The proper human purpose is a relation to God, — Leontiskos

Only for those who believe in a god.

If you get married and have kids you will tend to find purpose, — Leontiskos

From day to day and year to year until the kids are grown. Had I considered procreation my purpose in life - as some (mostly female) people do (and fall to pieces if they fail to achieve it), I would have tried to procreate, instead of taking care to prevent it. Though they gave me cause to make plans and set goals that centered solely on them, the children I did raise were not the purpose of life, any more than taking care of stray cats is. These are responsibilities I assume freely, of choice, and that choice then entails purposeful actions directed toward its fulfillment.

Well, yes, but you had already more or less said or implied the possibility that if the universe had a mind it was more likely to be "cold, mean and indifferent" — Janus

That wasn't my intention. It's simply a matter of scale. If the universe is sentient, whether we would judge it from our perspective benevolent, hostile or indifferent, it's so much bigger than us that our perspective could not possibly take in the scope of its intelligence or intent. From its perspective on that scale, even supposing it was aware of our existence, I surmise that it would be unlikely to differentiate between humans and bats or any other sentient species in any of the trillion or so galaxies it surveys.

I just assumed it was a species of Earth termite that I had not heard of before — Janus

Probably because I misspelled it the first time.

And the atheists think the theists are being unreasonable, — Metaphysician Undercover

And some theists think their faith makes them clairvoyant.

Linguistically 'purpose' does not imply something that is human-intention-derived. The purpose of a knife is to cut because humans made knives, and they made them to cut. It doesn't follow that the purpose of a human life "has worth only in terms of [human] intentions and actions." — Leontiskos

If it's not human intentions, then a supernatural will is required to give humans purpose. A god has to make them his tools.
I reject the idea of being someone's tool, no matter how powerful they are. I'd rather be a wild thing with no ultimate significance. If the gods hunt me down and eat me, so be it, but I will not have accepted "food-source" as my purpose in life.

If purpose could be made then it would make sense to ask for the recipe. — Leontiskos

Then you're still asking someone else to determine your purpose. You're asking to be the means to an end: a tool - or a meal.

If the universe has a mind of its own, might that mind not be vaster, more capacious, more compassionate than our own. — Janus

Or cold, mean and indifferent. It doesn't matter which, unless and until the universe reveals its preference and purpose in action - and we probably wouldn't recognize its intent even then.

As to us valuing or caring about termites, it would seem that it is not outside the realm of human possibility. — Janus

We might care about the Earth ones. I did say Centaurian termites: we don't know whether there is any such thing.

I think we're at cross purposes due to having different ideas of "purpose." — tim wood

Oxford's idea is: 1. "the reason for which something is done or created or for which something exists."
2. "have as one's intention or objective."
3. a person's sense of resolve or determination.
I usually just go by the dictionary meaning; otherwise, it's a guessing-game.

If not yourself, likely you can imagine someone wondering what the meaning and purpose of his or her life is, or life in general. — tim wood

Lots of people do that. I suppose they're hoping to be significant, important, and they want an outside authority (God, Fate, Destiny, The Great River...) to imbue them with that significance. It's a whole lot easier than finding your own.

To the degree they ask, they're asking for something, and when they stop asking, a reasonable conjecture is that they stopped because they no longer had a need to ask. — tim wood

That's a reasonable conjecture, assuming you know that they've stopped asking. It's possible that they found their purpose. Another reasonably conjecture is that, having received no answer, they gave up. Or became convinced that there isn't one. Or invented a purpose for themselves. Or somebody with a stronger will imposed one on them.
Very few questions of psychology have only two possible answers.

As to the existence of trees, I claim there is no such thing as a tree, — tim wood

Nevertheless, I suggest you don't stand under the figment of one during the figment of a thunderstorm.
It's a collective term by which we refer to not specifically named members of a category of things. Language is fun to bend and twist for poetry, not so much for intelligible communication.

Are you suggesting that perhaps the Universe absent any and all percipients might not be blind and might be intelligent? In that case would that not qualify it as being somehow mindful? — Janus

Probably. I don't claim that the universe has a mind of its own; I just don't know that it doesn't.
If it does, it's as unlikely to care - crave or miss - our poetry and cruelty, as we are unlikely to crave or miss the cultural touchstones of Centurian termites.

Well, it exists, not as a thing but as an idea. Consider your experience/understanding/use/description of a tree. And what is that to the universe? All this is being just the point/problem of Kant's thing-in-itself-as-it-is-in-itself. — tim wood

Huh? My understanding of a tree has no influence on the universe or the existence of trees. Does thing-in-itself-as-it-is-in-itself mean anything?

Does it? It may require will to act on it, to actualize it. Unless purpose and action are indistinguishable - but that seems untenable. — tim wood

You need a body to actualize the purpose of the will.

Let's suppose you have neighbors that offend you. Why don't you shoot them? — tim wood

How does that come into it? If I have neighbours who offend me, there is a huge range of possible reactions that don't involve shooting. How doe this relate to a purpose?

But how would that answer reconcile with "purpose?" — tim wood

Whatever my feeling was about the neighbours, I would then have to formulate an appropriate response. I'd have to decide what I want (will), then devise a plan of action to achieve what I want (purpose).

If purpose implies choice, — tim wood

It doesn't imply. It is simply the aim or goal to get or accomplish something desired. Purpose, aim, goal, intent, plan all precede action. A purpose may also be conferred upon implements made or co-opted to achieve a goal, aim, plan or intent.

Purpose then, the imperative to do the right thing, as best I can figure and do. — tim wood

Whatever the "right thing" is in any situation is a reasonable purpose to have. I'm also reasonably sure it is not a universal imperative.

That is one way to think about it. The other is that absent minds the Universe is 'blind'—there is nothing that can experience anything—there is no beauty, no poetry, no compassion, no love and also no ugliness, no doggerel, no cruelty, no hatred. In a way the mindless universe would be as good, or bad, as non-existence. — Janus

Well, yes. No mind is insignificant to itself, bot neither is any mind in a position to affect the universe much. The universe is whatever it is. I don't know that it's blind and stupid, but I know that we alone care about the things we care about. If our minds didn't exist, who would miss the poetry etc?

Also, we humans, who think so very highly of the mind don't seem particularly concerned with preserving or supporting even the minds of our own species, let alone all the other kinds.

Should I understand from your reply that you hold that there is no "ultimate underlying meaning and significance"? — tim wood

Correct. Purpose requires will - either that of the living entity with internal goals, or an external entity that has power to exert its will over that of the subject. Inanimate objects have no desires, no will or aims, but they can be purposed to the aims of life-form that can exert its will upon them.
A pebble has no purpose of its own, but a crow can use it as a tool. Life-forms can also be used by an external will with the power to override their own. The purpose of a pig is to keep living and produce offspring. Man re-purposes pigs for his food.

I happen to think there is, but only as a product of mind, — tim wood

If there were gods, they could find uses both for animate and inanimate objects; if the gods were powerful, they could override the will of intelligent life-forms. If they were powerful enough and wished to, they could find uses for the universe.

By "reverse" I do not know if you mean: "If world then maybe mind," which would be trivial, or, "If world then mind," which would not be trivial, but that I might ask you to support, somehow. — tim wood

Simply: No world, no mind(s).
But then, I'm no longer sure that you refer to "the world" not as the universe, but as some image or model that doesn't exist.
I mean that minds are minuscule ephemeral sparks in a vast cosmos of billions of suns. Minds are dependent on the bodies that contain them and those bodies are dependent on their ecosystems which are dependent on their planet, which are dependent on their sun. Minds are trivial.

The questions here are, then, what is purpose (in itself), where does it come from, what is its ground? Or, what exactly gives it all meaning, makes it all worthwhile? — tim wood

Purpose is a property of life and becomes a concept when intelligent minds recognize it.
Every snail crawling up a wall has a purpose: to find algea that may be clinging there, to find shelter from the drying sun, or dampness a hiding place from birds. The underlying purpose of all these short-term goals is to prolong and improve its life.
However complicated the mind and the life-form to which it belongs, it has short term goals to serve an underlying purpose: to prolong and improve its life.
But only humans have the audacity to project the need for a purpose on the world, even the universe.
Ultimate underlying meaning and significance is something only humans demand of anything.
They seek it in vain, so they make something up.

No mind no world. — tim wood

Exactly the reverse.

Just stop getting in their way. — NOS4A2

Who are they, how am I in their way, and what have they got to do with how you relate to your community?

That's great. Then nothing needs to be implemented but the freedom to do it. — NOS4A2

Nobody can 'implement' freedom. In societies where the law does not prevent association among people, freedom to change a community need only be exercised. How a community functions is up to the people who live in it.

Why don’t we just organize, find some like minded people, and implement our philosophy by living it and doing it? — NOS4A2

A lot of people are. You just need vision, courage and the ability to communicate.
Of course, whether you find like-minded people to co-operate depends partly on your goal.

Is a fact about the universe now, still a fact if we are not part of the universe and have no interaction with it from somewhere external to it? — Barkon

Yes. But the only way you can confirm that is by going outside the universe and then establishing communications with someone inside.

Can there be facts without observation? — Barkon

Yes.

And thus, do facts exist in the mental realm, — Barkon

Facts are the verbal description of things and relationships that exist in reality. What you put in your mental realm are memories of factual descriptions.

moreover the physical realm as per se one's collection of facts(in mind) as opposed to the states of things in a locale? — Barkon

This does not scan.

What I'm saying is that technology is the root of the food-supply problem, not meat-eating. — Gnomon

And technology can provide a reasonable answer (not shipping people off-planet) in the form of cultured meat. Like any new technology, it needs a time to develop improved product and to become affordable. ATM, it's less than ideal: though not as energy-wasteful and polluting as industrial sized live meat production. The biggest obstacle, as usual, is the consumers' entrenched prejudice, fuelled by the present meat industry, which has a lot to lose.
One huge advantage, when cultured meat becomes commonplace, is that a meat factory can be set up in every town, and several in each city, saving all the transportation costs and fallout. Vegetable and food growing can also be local and urban, liberating vast tracts of land to grow oxygenating, carbon-capturing vegetation and wildlife habitat.

I ask again. Why should a pipefitter pay off someone else's student loans? — fishfry

Because two of the students are his own children, but he doesn't earn enough to pay for their higher education all alone. And because, even if he doesn't have children, he's helping to train up the well taxed caregivers and inventors of helpful products for his old age. And because he's making the world safer and better to live in for himself and his family. And because the industry that employs him depends on other industries and technologies that all need competent people to run them; he may find himself redundant, in need of training in a new skill; a public education fund can bail him out. And those underwater baskets may one day save his life by fishing out the plastic he'll otherwise choke on.

Buy fewer missiles and smoke granades, give the mega-rich fewer tax breaks and allocate the saved resources to family planning, local clinics, wholesome school lunches, good daycare centers and community gardens*.
*Essential to healthy child-rearing: they develop a taste for fresh vegetables, learn where food comes from and how to produce it, and the communal atmosphere is a socializing influence.

If an evil person is someone who acts immorally and wickedly, they need to act immorally and wickedly, and thinking just doesn’t rise to that level as an activity or behavior. — NOS4A2

Thought is the necessary precursor of deliberate activity and behaviour. The thoughts are evil before the person decides to do evil and thereby becomes evil.
As for their "need to", I very much doubt it. I think, rather, they want something, which can be acquired or achieved by mean of evil deeds.

If you were to observe someone having evil thoughts versus someone having good thoughts, it would be impossible to determine which — NOS4A2

Correct. Before action is taken, only the thinker knows. If those intentions were visible, most crimes could not take place.

What combination of words and letters could force you to push the button? — NOS4A2

The ones that spell out your oath to serve. (And the subtext of punishments for refusing a direct order.) Some people have strong enough convictions to refuse anyway, and some are incapable of carrying out certain actions, regardless of the consequences. But since there is evil in every human mind, the words only need to release the repressed evil waiting for expression in those who are willing to act.

Words are wholly innocent — NOS4A2

Individual words are innocent. Some combinations express thoughts, ideas and desires that are evil. Words are mere symbols; have no character or moral value. They can be, and are used to convey all kinds of messages.

The blame lies solely on those who act on them. — NOS4A2

The blame is shared by all participants in a conspiracy to commit evil.

Ideas can be written in words, musical notation or numbers; if visual, they can be represented by a sketch or diagram. The only kind of thought that might resist language is fleeting impression or flash of psychological insight - but I'm not sure they can be classified as ideas.

The idea of infinity can't be properly expressed using language, but then again, infinity is a word. — Scarecow

The word exists because the concept was not only imagined but communicated.

I say this because thinking is one of the least consequential and impactful activities human can engage in. — NOS4A2

We have three kinds of action: automatic (motions of body that do not require us to be conscious or aware) instinctive (emotional response to stimuli, over which we don't always have control, or have imperfect control) and deliberate ones that proceed from conscious thought. Most evil thoughts are not translated into action, but no evil act is performed without forethought.

If they were to store the kinetic energy produced by any of amount brain activity and release it on the world I wager it wouldn't move a feather, let alone produce any evil. — NOS4A2

Once it's trapped in a battery, no evil produced. While operating human bodies, all the evil in the world.

Even when thoughts are reified into a phrase or book, one could observe the words for 10 lifetimes and see nothing come of it. — NOS4A2

Or precipitate a world war in one lifetime. Or nuke 180,000 people in an hour.

They are completely innocent. — NOS4A2

Words are not even innocent when read by impressionable youth; they're guilty as sin when written as commands and read by obedient drones.