There's not one system of government that hasn't failed — TheMadFool

Yep. But they do pretty well prior to failure, don't they?

Leaving aside the self-flagellating irony of your Palestinan friend's comment for the moment, does the dicator have to be bloodthirsty? Are bloodless coups and "benign" dictatorships ruled out? I'm thinking here of the example of Thailand where the establishment of a military junta halted a conflict that was spiraling out of control and in the process almost certainly saved lives. — Baden

I don't think he's self flagellating. He's not Syrian.

You're right, though. It's really ruthlessness I was asking about.. not so much dictatorship. I think most of the dictatorships I know of were pretty ruthless.

Human beings learn conceptual schemas as they grow up, — Marchesk

There's a problem of induction. There's apriori knowledge. Whatever's being learned as one grows up, it's not space and time. It's not how to apply logic to new situations. Ounces vs grams? Sure. We learn that as we grow up.

This may be true. I don't know.

The laws of nature require that joke. I'm not responsible for it.

More intelligence among the population wouldn't make rationality more potent. In the face of war, famine, earthquakes, or just simple cholera, faith makes people strong.

The point where he starts talking to Lloyd used to be the point where I had to stop watching the movie. My greatest fear was insanity.

They usually explain why X is necessary and identify X as God.

That guy died in a maze.

Used to be free will and the nature of morality. Whatever it is, you're just trying to understand yourself.

Some things have to remain undisclosed. That's an aesthetic imperative in opposition to the will to know.

Nature is not an act of human beings, enacting laws is. I didn't think it was necessary to make that distinction. Nature has no capacity to respect moral principles so we do not judge natural acts as moral or immoral. It may be appropriate to call acts of nature amoral. But since the passing of laws is an act of human beings, which has an affect on other human beings, it wouldn't be appropriate to call these laws amoral. — Metaphysician Undercover

Interesting viewpoint.

There's no such thing as an amoral law. If the law is designed to "create" some sort of environment, with disregard for morality, it is immoral. Having disregard for moral principles is not a case of being amoral, it is a case of bring immoral. — Metaphysician Undercover

Nature has no regard for moral principles. Is it immoral?

Mongrel sometimes wonders if the Crankster, seated at the right hand of God, might spare a cup of water for her parched tongue. Meanwhile she's reading Nietzsche and making diabolical plans for her reincarnation. Definitely something Chinese.

BC can speak for himself, but I took him to be saying that corporate law was amoral, in that it deals with certain transactional issues which don't really touch upon morality (unlike, say, criminal law). — Arkady

I agree that corporate law is basically amoral. It's aim is to create a stable environment for business, right?

The law that says a corporation is an individual is absurd, and may (will probably) have moral consequences. — Bitter Crank

I'm not a lawyer. I just know some historians say the root of the concept is exactly that: a corporation is a group that is treated as an individual under the law.

Exploiting us munchkins is in the best interests of corporations. Making a profit (generally by exploiting workers) is their raison d'être. — Bitter Crank

For the fun of it, let's consider what we know about a totally free market. I think we'd agree that's a fair description of the global economy.

Mongrel and Bittercrank are two companies in direct competition providing the global market with windmill parts.

About 15% of Mongrel's parts are made by pink-faced hippies in Oregon and everybody knows about that because Mongrel advertises the hell out of it. The rest of her parts are manufactured in countries that have no child labor laws and she does work those little munchkins to the bone.

Bittercrank has plunged his flag deep into the higher moral ground by refusing to employ any children and holding to (pre-Trump) OSHA and EPA standards even in countries where he doesn't have to. He's a really moral corporation. He even cares about his CO2 footprint. Unfortunately Mongrel wiped the pavement with him in the market and he went out of business (even though his parts were higher in quality.)

Mongrel smiles her little wicked witch smile to observe that countries around the world are jumping at the chance to have her come in and provide a little food and shelter for their munchkins. If she accidently kills a few thousand of them.. oops.

It's just survival of the fittest. Could the environment change to favor a more moral corporation (like poor Bittercrank)? Of course. Look at the mechanics of the advent of child labor laws in the US and you see what's required. Centralized authority; a global government.

What are the chances of that? With the binding power of a new global religion, I could see it. Maybe if aliens invaded. Otherwise.. I doubt it. What do you think?

Are you saying that corporate law is immoral?

I mentioned earlier that the concept was a significant factor in the emergence of European nation states. If you do mean to say that the concept of the corporation is immoral, you're indicting the whole global shebang.

I would counter that it's not corporations. They just act in their own interests. It's the lack of global law that allows them to exploit us munchkins.

If India Inc. doesn't know how to take care of itself, it should hire a lawyer. Of course that kind of conflict can drive potential employers elsewhere, so India might have a hard choice to make. Whining isn't a productive choice.

Cic was just saying that people misunderstand if they think the law is about morality. The concept of a corporation is legal technology... that was my point.

Interesting. Has it been exercised? Do you know of a case of it?

A corporation is a group which is treated as an individual in the eyes of the law. A corporation can be sued. Whether morality is involved is debatable. Ciceronianus says no.

Sure. It's actually a pretty fascinating story. Northern Europe began to recede into itself, losing the skills to build cities much less run them. If the trend had continued we could picture Northern Europeans crossing over to a tribal nomadic society. It was specifically a revitalization of trade that turned things around. The concept of the corporation was a critical component of the emergence of European states.

The concept of a corporation was a feature of Roman law. With the revival of cities in medieval Europe, the concept was rediscovered and put to use to establish taxation.

See The Medieval World View, William R Cook

Firstly, even if divinity is not a matter for the natural sciences, it doesn't follow that they idea can't be at all critiqued by empirical investigation, e.g. historically. — Arkady

Yes. If you ask a religion scholar what the word means, he or she will probably first want to identify what culture and what time period you're interested in.

Secondly, in following Un's reasoning to its conclusion, science cannot study anything, as science can apparently study only what it can define, and, as it is concerned solely with mechanisms, it cannot define anything. — Arkady

Science is a community endeavor. Terminology has to be pinned down for obvious reasons.

Why do you say science can't define anything?

Kin to Un's point is that there is no scientific definition of divinity. Therefore divinity is not a scientific issue.

Opposites attract.

Trump met Putin in college. After a year of making fun of his name, Trump began to fall for that melancholia disguised as Christian mysticism so typical of Slavs.

Kids are born with ambiguous genitalia from time to time. Nobody says "Nature made it that way. We must respect that."

Surgery is available.

Yea... I edited it. If a person can feel aggression, compassion, sensitiveness, coldness, etc., I imagine it's just a matter of putting those notes into a song one calls masculinity. Feel that song.

In some places a woman might think it's dangerous to feel that. Joan of Arc was actually sentenced to death for the crime of wearing mens' clothing.

But now women have a lot more freedom than men do. Men are still boxed in... to some extent.

How could a bishop be trapped in a knight's body? He's not trapped. He just wants to move diagonally and he knows knights who do that are scorned.

Sensible people avoid offering solutions to psychic problems they've never faced.

Cool!

It was stuff I saw while walking my dog. I like the juxtaposition of a manmade thing against a wild background.

Tonal range. I wonder how that relates to emotional tone. Flatter range, flatter emotion?

More endings.

The ending of things

Northern? I could have sworn it was S America and the Congo.

Right, it's rhythmic. CO2 drops during southern hemisphere summer, if I recall correctly, and goes up in the winter. All the CO2 humans are putting out will eventually be absorbed by the oceans. Pop quiz: what is the time frame for that absorption?

More picsart

Fraudulent elections, corruption and cronyism, corporate power protected, controlled media, rampant sexism, etc. are not good by any stretch, but they aren't fascism, either. — Bitter Crank

I think fascism (loosely put) is a reaction to a sense of impending decline or doom. Bouts of it occur during economic downturns. The onset of the Jim Crow era had a lot of symptoms of fascism. People already felt uneasy and fearful because of economic conditions. White supremacists rose to explain that fear: it's non-whites. We need to separate ourselves from them because their very presence is damaging us. We're sick and we need to get back to our glorious historic presentation. Violence was directed at non-whites, but more importantly against whites who didn't tow the line.

And BC, don't correct my narrative. It's factual. :P

I think he meant fusion.

Right. Change is coming. We don't usually change intelligently. We barrel into catastrophe and then change.

The US is sitting on a couple centuries worth of coal. I'm just saying... I think the BDO is baloney. It may happen, but not because of oil depletion.

Construction does run on oil. Why not coal?

The man on the street probably hasn't thought about it in depth, if at all really. — Sapientia

Right. So you're sort headed in the same direction TGW and BC were: our thoughts, speech, and actions aren't informed much by metaphysics. It's the other way around.

But that still leaves the question: what is it in an idealist's experience that gives rise to idealistic metaphysics?

Or could it be something different? Could a metaphysical view be adopted because of medicinal value? A person becomes a physicalist because of childhood fears of ghosts. The fear is eased by assurance that the ghosts aren't real?

The idealist has a childhood fear of oblivion, and so must populate the world with immortal souls?