This is where we find ourselves. — schopenhauer1

Yep, that about sums it up.

We have more complicated decisions to make than a rabbit. Do we want a house or a mansion? But have you ever heard of a rabbit digging its burrow into a swamp? Do they have innate knowledge of where to build their house, or do they reason that it would be safer uphill from the wet ground?

Either way it puts human into a bit of a pickle. Is our reasoning ability based on innate knowledge or do we learn to reason?

Humans socially construct almost all cultural elements- which we use to survive. — schopenhauer1

A lot of them yes, but not all help us to live better.
Having a job is a social construct, designed to help us survive. But, as you say, lots of people hate what they do. Getting married is a social construct, designed to manage the properties and belongings of the people and to a certain degree stop bad genetic problems. But how many people hate being married?

Lots of these social constructs make your life suck. Taxes, social security, pension plans, mortgages, child support, alimony, credit cards, were all designed to make life, survival easier. But a lot of them don't do that, even if they are as some say "necessary evils"

Political parties(not politicians), armies, professional groups, social groups suck up peoples money and time and most people do not benefit in the least from them except as a pay check recipient or a most liked idiot on the site.

And not fitting in to, not agreeing with, not living up to the expectations, or not getting what you expected from these social constructs is what makes people hate things.

Why would anyone want to waste time and energy hating something, just because we can. Is it because we can reason?

That's assuming animals can have "reasons" in ways that humans do. — schopenhauer1

I doubt that anyone would say that they reason like humans do, because they are not humans. But the question is do they reason in some other way?
As I said, they do not have the reasons not hate the social constructs of their society like humans do. They accept that their life is for living as best they can and get on with it.
Lots of animals live social lives that have rules, restrictions and hierarchy as well as benefits. In a pride of lions, the old alpha male rules. But the younger males watch and wait for a chance to take over. Is the knowledge of when to attack innate, instinctual. Are they born with the signs of debility programmed into their brains? If that is so, then just how much of what we do and know is innate as well?

This goes beyond the job itself to the needs behind needing the job. Remember group-think. — schopenhauer1

The needs behind needing the job? And how does that work with group think?

Are you going to put out defenses, like a squid its ink, that reinforce not resenting the situation because of X reason (Don't be a whiny bitch.. etc.)? — schopenhauer1

Defense mechanisms help us to survive as well. And lots of people use them to stay same while they are doing the job they hate for the boss they hate even more. They go home and take out their frustration and resentment of the wife and kids because they cannot risk losing their socially constructed survival method. Why would a lion wait around for a chance to kill the king, could it be because of resentment and frustration at not being able to get laid? Or does instinct make them hang around?

Why? What's the alternative? — dussias

Not having to fight to stay alive. How can having a choice of how you die be beautiful?

It might be attractive to fight to live, but "going out fighting" is just dumb.

Kind of circular then: there is no proof of the existence of an unbeliever's g/G - well, of course, but vacuous. I think ↪TheMadFool
was saying something more (yet unspecified) than this. — 180 Proof

Pointing out that there is no proof that any god does not exist is the same as saying that there is no proof that any god does exist. Who really cares. I you believe fine, if not fine as well.
But my explanation was just to show how I viewed the idea of god. The same way I view the spaghetti monster, and I do not capitalize any of them.

You charged the original poster with, "If you get upset by them I think it says more about you and your agenda than theirs." — JerseyFlight

Do you know the difference between charging a person with something and making a comment on that persons attitude? It appears not, and I have no wish to help you figure it out.

To test the accuracy of this statement I asked you several questions, none of which you answered. — JerseyFlight

No, you asked me one questions a couple of times. And I did answer you. If you don't understand even after I explained it again that is your problem.

What you fail to see is that your bias (and that's what it is) is bent uncritically in favor of religion. — JerseyFlight

Don't you read the posts between the ones you make? Saying that I am in favor of any religion is like saying that someone's grandmother had balls.

If this was not the case then why not say this position is equally true of Nazis? It's because your cultural stance on Nazis is entirely negative, while you live too far apart from (cannot comprehend) the historical atrocities of religion. — JerseyFlight

Stop spouting garbage, you are not doing your cause any good with this kind of thing. Telling me this is exactly the same as what you are accusing me of doing to the guy that started this thread.

My cultural stance on nazis is beyond your conception because you have no idea who I am or anything about me that would allow you to logically make such a claim.
And please do not try to lecture me about history. Presuming that you know more than me would have to be proven before I would pay any attention to you.

Maybe we can drive the point home more. Suppose some fanatics from Isis wanted to come on here and start talking about Allah, would you still claim, "If you get upset by them I think it says more about you and your agenda than theirs." ? — JerseyFlight

Did I not say it loud enough, let me repeat it again for you.

I WOULD GET PISSED OF IF ANY FREAKING FANATIC THAT WAS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE KILLING OF PEOPLE INNOCENT PEOPLE CAME HERE OR TO MY HOUSE AND STARTED TALKING SHIT ABOUT HOW GREAT THEIR GOD IS.

But the people that come here to try and convince us to join them are not killers. Maybe their stupid religion is responsible for the deaths of people, but not these people.

Is not not possible for you to see that fanatics like that would not waste their time coming here, what could they possibly gain? and if you are scared of them your self, you can always hide behind an alias.

I don't think so. Why? Because you live in a time when you can see the dogmatic violence of Isis, understanding the dangers of religion requires more than your immediate impression. Suppose someone from Isis came on here long before they starting pillaging and mass murdering, what an ignorant fool you would look like right now. — JerseyFlight

And you live in a time when you are lucky enough to only see the pictures of these atrocities on the internet instead of of being there to see the damage. I was born just after WW2, and I still remember asking what had happened to the houses that used to be down the street when they removed the rubble.

I am more worried about people like you and others that want to silence the ideas of other people just because the don't like them.

Read a bit of history
https://abcnews.go.com/US/skokie-legacy-nazi-march-town-holocaust-survivors/story?id=56026742
When you understand why the lawyer did what he had to do, come back and talk to me about it.

I'm as anti-religious as they come and I think threads like this one are just as low-quality and (for lack of a better word) disruptive as the shallow little-reasoning religious threads are.

I generally think the best solution to that kind of problem is to ignore it (on the users' part; the mods have recourse to deleting on account of low quality or evangelism).

In which case I shouldn't even be making this post, but I am anyway. — Pfhorrest

Now that is strange, when I told the guy to just ignore them some jumped all over me about it. But you are right, I would not be here if it were to for someone else trying to pick holes in what I said.

Not according to any believers, theologians or religious traditions I'm aware of. — 180 Proof

No they aren't. In fact very few conceptions of god are the same. — MSC

I am not a believer, so I just use a generic, everyday definition of the word god

god=Any supernatural being worshipped as controlling some part of the world or some aspect of life or who is the personification of a force.

And I really don't care too much how they define their personal one.
Bullshit is still bullshit even if it is wrapped up as a fact.

Inquisitions — JerseyFlight

Holy fucking hell, run for your lives everyone. The inquisitors have come to TPF.

Did you not read what I said?

Let me explain again. I get upset with people that go out and kill other people because they don't like their color, gang, religion, sexual preference, the books you read, or any other stupid reason you can think of. I think anyone would as well.

But what does that have to with the people that come here to talk about how great their god is? Do you seriously think that they will be able to convert anyone here? Jeez, that is sad.

Which g/G is that? :roll: — 180 Proof

Any one of them will do, they are all the same.

That doesn't answer my question. — JerseyFlight

Of course it did not answer your question, it was not supposed to.

Seriously, is there any way to compare a bunch of hyped up bible blathers to the nazis?
Anyone with a half way working brain would have a right to get upset with the nazis, but a bunch of psalms readers!!!

If he is so scared of them then he must be very insecure about his own will to resist them. Maybe he is a closet christian and is projecting his disgust with himself at them, who knows.

But to deliberately try to have freedom of speech banned because he is scared that everyone on this forum will convert to christians and all of our children will also succumb to the dire consequences of it is just pathetic.

And why do you capitalize the letter N in nazi if you do not have respect for them.

Are you not going to tell me that I mis-understood the question?

Is this equally true of Nazis? — JerseyFlight

I have no idea about his political views, but he does seem to be a bit of a fanatic about the topic.

They have an agenda, I presume, which is to christianize the world. They go head-butt about it, and they don't listen to reason. — god must be atheist

Only mosquitoes and idiots don't go away when you ignore them. When any bible puncher is ignored they eventually figure out that they are wasting their time and go away. If you get upset by them I think it says more about you and your agenda than theirs.

Peace and love bro, sit down and drink a beer. :victory:

And I believe that having the opportunity to choose whether we die fighting or just die is beautiful.

What do you think? — dussias

I think that it is the sick kind of bullshit that society is guilty of constructing.

Yes, you can have depressed animals, but not ones that wish they were never born. Not ones that know they don't live in a utopian world. Not ones that can at any moment, hate what they have to do to get by. — schopenhauer1

So let's address these ideas.
First of all, "not wanting to have been born" is stupid. Is it the same as not wanting to continue living? No, one is an act of a desperate or sick person, the other is a whining, childish, poor little me, type of selfishness.

Why do humans wish that they had never been born? Usually because for some reason their life is miserable or beyond that. These reasons are often similar to the ones that make people want to kill themselves.
Why are they miserable? Usually because their lives do not live up to the expectations of what their life should be.
Why does their life not live up to their expectations? There could be many reasons, you found out you were adopted, hubby or wife beats the shit out of them everyday, they don't have the nice house or money that they think they should have, people bully them for wearing different clothes/ black/ yellow/ being short/ fat/ too tall/ red haired/ bald/ gay/ crippled/ liberal/ poor/ etc., they don't get enough likes on farcebook or twatter. You name it, it can be a reason for being miserable, even some of these stupid people that rise to fame and fortune and have everything they could possibly want can be miserable because money, fame, and likes are not everything in life.

Now, why would these people get miserable about these things? Not all but a lot of them are just plain social constructs, nothing at all to do with real life.

Do you think that many of the animals have these problems in their lives? Surely if they don't have the same reasons for not wanting to have been born, or for wanting to kill themselves then they would not think about it.

Why do humans think that they do not live in a utopian type of world? Usually for the same reasons they are miserable. Humans can also think that they live in a less than perfect world because it is no longer the way it was because of our behaviour. We have certainly managed to screw up the world in the last couple of hundred years, but how many people actually think about it?

Do animals have the same problems to think about? They are born, they grow up and learn from their parents, then they go out and live their own lives. Humans look for a nice house to live in and have a family, they build a nest, dig a hole, find a gave and start a family. for them it is utopia.

I doubt that any animal could hate what it has to do to get by, because everything that it does is for that reason. You on the other hand hate what you do because you picked the wrong job, the wrong wife, had too many kids, have a habit that is expensive and cannot afford to pay someone to cut the grass.

When I was a young man I worked for a small local council in the garbage collect department. I spent 3 years working there. The job sucked, there were none of the fancy wheelie bins and special collections like today. But I made a lot of money working there, and we were well respected for doing a very good job. I hated doing it, really hated it, but it served its purpose, paid for a part of my education and I had a lot of great clothes.
May be that is what is missing from the people that hate what they do, they cannot see the benefit of doing it. If there is no benefit, why are they doing it?

Again, this debate of animal communication is not really the debate I am having. Can a chimp discuss the details of Kant's view of metaphysics, or whether today's political climate is crazy? No. Resenting doing the very activities that keep us alive, make us more comfortable, and entertain us, in other words, existential matters, seems to be in the realm of humans. No I have not talked with a penguin to see if this is the case, nor have I dialoged with a koala to see their take on the matter. — schopenhauer1

If you can tell me why a chimp would even be interested in Kant's views on metaphysics or even his ideas on morality then I might be able to explain why I would not discuss these things with him.
But there again. I could not get my neighbors to discuss him either so they must be chimps in disguise. As I mentioned earlier, negros were not considered humans for exactly the same reasons. And look how wrong the intellectuals were about that.

This is just all forms of anthropomorphizing. — schopenhauer1

Maybe yes, maybe no. But I still say that lack of understanding something is not proof that it does not happen.

As a final request I would like you to answer one question. Would a dog think of you as a lesser being because you do not stick your nose up its backside and bark along with him?

Be my guest, I have a few other terms I use sometimes.

kartrashian
instacrap
yourtube
crapchat

Lots of focus on the crappyness of the people that abuse the internet

And a few other about pains in the butt in general.

Also, I think your indignation is inappropriate here.

If we were to step back, can we admit that humans have certain capacities/mental functions that other animals almost certainly do not? If we cannot admit that, then we can't go much further. It's like asking, "Can we admit that humans don't have the functional capacity to fly without technology?" and you said.. that's being a bigot against humans. — schopenhauer1

First of all there is no indignation in what I said, unless you think asking questions implies such emotions.

Animals obviously cannot do advanced calculus, but I have never stated that they can. The topic was about the ability of animals to reason, which I certainly do believe a lot of animals can do rather well.

. We have, seemingly endless generation of ideas (conceptual thinking), some of which can be evaluative as to what we must do to survive, keep comfortable, and entertain ourselves. — schopenhauer1

I did not point this out earlier because I focused on the part about the moods "resentment" being specific to humans. But this statement of yours is clearly not true. Most people never have an original idea in their lives. Most people follow what others have been doing, sometimes for many generations.
Please tell me, how many people do you know that have actually made a contribution to the advancement of human kind? I cannot name one, including myself.

Why would a wolf want to invent a house? They already know how to make burrows to live in. Are we to ascertain from the fact that no wolf has ever built what we consider to be a proper house proof that they cannot reason.

Would you consider the fact that birds build their nests in power distribution towers to be a reasoned action, an instinctual action or a simple possibly stupid mistake?

If you want to take your own advice, you may wanna start here. — Zn0n

:lol: :rofl:

Did you read the article you sent me too?
First of all it is not specific to the topic I was talking about. I talked about the negros and other that were counted as non humans and enslaved because of that. The wikipedia article is about white slavery! But it does mention that the muslims had white slaves, is that because they were also considered less than human by the owners?

Then I said that the reason most people had slaves was because of economical reasons not because of hate and cruelty as you said. And the article says basically the same thing, most slavery was about having work done without having to pay for it.

Free pleasure is worthless pleasure, just like farcebook and twatter bring you. It does nothing for your life. If there is no reason for the pleasure then it is senseless to have it.

The kind of thought that says, "I hate having to eat my kibble..I hate having to play fetch with this guy.. I hate having to go for a walk all the time..." seems not in the repertoire of dog psychology (or other animals for that matter). — schopenhauer1

Do you have pets? If you do you have noticed that some days they want to play around and are lovable with you, other days they are not in the mood to play. Why does that happen? Could that type of action be instinctual?

That is more-or-less what I'm getting at. Humans, on the other hand, can resent what they are doing at any moment. We have, seemingly endless generation of ideas (conceptual thinking), some of which can be evaluative as to what we must do to survive, keep comfortable, and entertain ourselves. — schopenhauer1

My dogs loved climbing over the fence and running around the neighborhood. For almost a week after I put barbed wire on top of the place they were climbing out 3 of them refused to be petted and would not even come near me. They, like most kids, got over the sulks and we are friends again. Is that more instinctual behaviour?

I think that the problem is not whether they can reason or not but are we smart enough to recognize reasoning when we see it.

Ignoring what a ridiculous statement that is in context to the comment you replied to, are you saying white (male) humans enslave? Because that's blatantly racist (and sexist).
Ironically it's infact racism and sexism that is one of the excuses that was and is used to enslave others. — Zn0n

Maybe you should crack open a history book or two. Slavery was justified by lots of people simple by explaining that negros and other enslaved peoples were not human because the do not have human reasoning abilities. Even segregationists in the southern united states claimed that the constitution did not apply to black people because the were not human. All men are equal did not apply because the negros were lesser beings.

The whole idea came from the fact that white humans had no idea how to understand the black mind because they had not lived in the black societies. Animal have societies and culture but because we do not understand it some claim it does not exist.

The tendency to enslave others has nothing to do with skin color but level of psychopathy/sociopathy and/or how much they obey a cruel system. — Zn0n

What did I just say? They justified slaver as the use of a lower animal that cannot think like they do for financial gain. The fact that some slave owners were cruel had nothing to do with the reason the good owners kept slaves. To most of the owners, slaves were as big an investment as a modern farmer buying a tractor.

Try doing some reading about slavery, it might enlighten your mind.

Humans are the only animal that can really hate any and every moment. Other animals may feel pain in their own way, but they don't seem to despair of their situation, or not to the full understanding we do, with our linguistic, self-reflective brain. Yes, you can have depressed animals, but not ones that wish they were never born. Not ones that know they don't live in a utopian world. Not ones that can at any moment, hate what they have to do to get by. — schopenhauer1

Humans are also the only ones that think they know everything. Could you please explain how you know all of this. It is kind of funny to think that this is almost the same reasoning that people used to justify slavery. But it turned out that it was the white man that was ignorant.

We certainly are driven by survival, comfort, and entertainment, but we know our own disutility in all these areas. — schopenhauer1

I am inclined to disagree, most animals know their abilities and inabilities. Even a hungry dog will not try to pull a floating carcass from a swollen river, they do know it could kill them.

We know it sucks to be very hungry, that we need to make various goals in a complex world to gain items to consume for our survival, comfort, and entertainment. — schopenhauer1

Are animals not aware of the need to acquire food and shelter? Or is it just an instinct that makes them do it.

They cannot be working that well mate, it's been a couple of days and you have still to explain what you want to discuss. :wink:

Times are changing. Ninety minute lectures may fade away. I hope so. — jgill

I am glad that I do not have to hold my breath waiting for that to happen. I seriously doubt that it would be possible to fit any university lecture into anything less that 1 hour unless it was an absolutely useless topic that the students could learn all by themselves.

Not going to comment on it though. Just watch the first episode and decide for yourself.

Just finished watching "La casa de papel" "Money heist"

The Secret Life of Words: English Words and Their Origins

Professor Anne Curzan

The Great Courses

If you cannot find it let me know in a PM and I will try to get you the files. It is good to read or listen to if you have the audio.

The situation I described is not exactly an issue of how interesting the content of the message is. Even a very dull 50 second long message becomes tolerable if fragmented into smaller, shorter, chunks. — TheMadFool

So option B, people need to acquire listening skills. As others have pointed out as well, attention span seems to be shrinking for a lot of younger people in today's instant communication world.

I wonder how the kids of today are going to do when the have to sit through a 90 minute university lecture.

Read Clade by James Bradly. :wink:

It is a relativity problem.

If you have to listen to your wife nagging at you for 10 seconds, it is way too long.
If you want to listen to all of the wonderful things your new girl is trying to say, 10 seconds is way too little.

As jgill says, it might be what you are saying.

Or maybe you need to change your friends for people with a higher attention span.

Everything is relative.

With all of these problems what should I do? — Sai

Seriously, you really should talk to a school councilor or your doctor to get help.
What you are suffering from is probably somewhat worse than what most kids go through but everyone goes through these phases at about the same time during their life.

There is no one here that can really give you advice about what to do. We can discuss things with you if you want, you seem to be a smart kid. But you should be smart enough to know that this is not the place to get adequate advice from people you do not know and are not professionals in the field of advice you need.

:up:

https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=Better

This is the place to go to when you want to know about a word and where it came from.

English is the bastard language of the world. It has adopted words from almost everywhere from Germanic to origins to the roman and Saxon conquests and on through the enlightenment right up until today. Many words came into English through the French and Italian that got their language from the Etruscan as well the Greeks as Europe awoke during the renaissance and started reading the ancient works again.

Where is the snarky emoticon? I think we need one around here.

Just saying mind you, not really referring to anything in particular. :wink:

:lol:

It was one of his books I started reading many years ago and failed to get beyond page 6. It was 1 of 3 books that I have never finished in my life. Now I remember why.

It is a shame that I am not able to go to my office until maybe January so that I could send a picture of something. I have a small mural that some of my students made for me a few years ago. It is made up of about 12 of the things I said over the 5 years I gave them classes. They are aligned in order of what they considered to be of importance.

Number 1 is "I do not know if you CAN go to the bathroom"
Number 2 is "Life is a bitch, then you die. Get an education and learn to suck it up"

I asked why they decided that the first was more important than the others, they explained that it was because they it had taught them to use the correct words all of the time.
And the second, because I was the first person to make them see that it was really necessary to get an education. They had been told before, but apparently I was the only one to succeed in making them believe it. One of them graduated from Harvard last month, and a few others from good universities around the world including Japan.

There is no other purpose to life except to live it and make it the best possible life you can.
If you really think that your life sucks, I invite you to come visit the third world for a while, sort of get an attitude adjustment by seeing those whose lives really do suck.

Does inherited punishment have a place in society? — Lav87

In the catholic church they are still paying for the original sin, and god only knows how many generations have been doing it. Or maybe she doesn't know either. :smirk:

Would love to read a novel written by 180 Proof in ordinary language. — Nils Loc

Why would he want to do something like that? :wink:

someone really serious — Gus Lamarch

Does not write in that style.