the climate in Southern Spain and California is identical, and the idea that wooded areas need to be cleaned to protect fires is not even an opinion, is something factual and recognized. A neglected forest in these latitudes and weather, is a massive bonfire waiting to be lit. The real question is how these forests need to be cleaned, some people say "cut the trees!", and others advocate human activities that are beneficial, such as transhumance or seasonal movement of flocks of goat and other animals who like mountains. Also, you need to protect areas around wooded parks where urban development is prohibited, and only agriculture is allowed. A hill with residential houses is a real danger of fire.

Trump and (true) enviromentalists agree on this point. Forests need care, to prevent big fires. In my country Spain we have a very sad recent history of fires in forested areas, mainly PROVOKED fires for different reasons. And the correlation between poorly managed forests and the magnitude of these fires is well known. Ecologists in Spain traditionally call for more prevention of fires via managing parks and wooded areas a lot better. This can be done with people and their machines, that is very disturbing for the animals and plants and very clumsy, or by hiring goats and other herbivores, that do the job for free better than machines (as these animals have learnt to select what plant and part of plant needs to be eaten and what must be left, and they also fertilize the ground). People who think forests must be entirely left alone are not ecologists, their knowledge of ecology is poor.

you kan´t agree with him perhaps becouse you don´t feel the same urge he and other people like me experience to find some ground for the defense of life and freedom. My argument in favour of universals, is that some preferences in relation to human behaviour lead to preservation and memory (diversity and complexity) and other preferences lead to extinction and oblivion. Some preferences are highly entropic, and others try to keep lower entropy levels and homeostasis. My idea is that patterns that work for survival are better than those that are a dead-end. They are not exactly better, they just stay longer. Everything that exists, not just living creatures, come from the right choices leading to continued existence; and human behaviour is no different. We have preferences so that we can choose the best way to survive and evolve. So ethical universals are unavoidable, as the alternative is not to exist. However, these universals can only refer to values, not concrete actions in which values are incarnated that are context-dependent. Don´t you agree?

the post was about women getting more interested in philosophy...Never mind. What I think and believe is irrelevant for other members; you only need to care about my arguments, and how they help you arrange your mind better and furnish it with new objective info. Actually, each member is just thinking to himself, and people in the forum only prompt and promote that inner conversation.

I know I use a very affirmative style; like I really knew what I´m talking about. But I´m not that ignorant of my ignorance, and it´s just my direct style of saying things, assuming we are all in the know that these are just opinions and we can save energy in explaining continuously that we are only speaking our mind and not revealing truths to the world. It´s a lot more time-saving to only warn of real objective data and principles.

When we talk about the world, is only the phenomenal, sensual, represented in our mind world we discuss; by definition the noumenos is what lies beyond that, beyond the veil of Isis that we can never lift up. But a reflection on a mirror is also real.

You want to stress the importance of recognising anomalies, so that people with unusual or pathological sexualities can feel more at ease with themselves. I too want everybody who pays taxes and respect the others, to feel good with themselves in society. For that very reason, is that I have make the case for two distinct sexes we can all understand. Those people "in between" or "at the margins" are even in more want of this clear notion than normal citizens: the same way that a blind man on the street is more in want than the sighted of an ordered town, with clear signs and predictable arrangements.

Not all animals are divided into male and female; however, all living creatures manifest the functions sex derives from. We need to understand what sex is beyond the example of human sexuality, to really understand human sexuality.

what would I call people with abnormal sexual identities? I´d like to call them people with abnormal sexual identities. We all have abnormal traits in us, and men more than women, and open societies more than Islamized or Communist societies. There´s nothing good or bad in the mere fact of having abnormal sexualities, is just an statistical fact. These sexualities, like normal ones, are good or healthy when they are functional and promote psychological, biological and social integration.

Thanks for the correction on "because"! To me sexual anomalies like the ones you are referring are chimaeras of some sort, but I´d rather leave those definitions to doctors in Medicine who know better. Madame Blavatsky does not count as a philosopher, because she did not play by the rules (Reason, Logic, Honesty). Not everything you do with a foot ball is football.

Yes, all categories are man-made, as the Uni-verse is one and strictly speaking, there is no separation. However, they are not arbitrary. Categories in our minds have a better or worse communication with patterns in the physical world (the manifested world, we know nothing about the noumenon). Sex is a very good category: it helps us many times to act in the world and recognize patterns that are relevant. There are only two sexes, male and female, the same way there´s only light and the absence of light, even if light can be constructed into different percepcions arranged around the most interesting wavelengths for our species. You can not make a new different sex by combining the two existing sexes. That´s not a useful categorization because it only responds to subjective and political realities with a very restricted contextual use, unlike the categorization of two sexes, that is seemingly very well aligned with the natural and psychological reality we share with other animals and has the power to describe human sexuality in all times and places.

yes, but that human aspects, well undestood (contextualized) is also positive. I think Kant just wanted to avoid the mess we are in the XXI century. I think he has a point that universals must exist, he just could not understand how they should be established. I blame Newton, and his strange idea of the cosmos. If Kant had been born twenty years ago, I´m sure he´d bring his concerns to a better port, with the advantage of philosophical tools appearing after him and also science. But if he had been born now and not in the XVIII century, philosophers after him would not have arrived at the same places, following or distancing themselves from Kant...

I never do that, when women ask me about dresses and hairstyles I´m brutally honest. They themselves prefer it that way, when they realize they can count on your sincerity.

the example of the Holy water, that in my mind scenario is contaminated by a zombie virus, it´s just to show that there are no universal actions that can be good or bad. There´s always a context to take into account, becouse values do not exist in themselves, as they are mere abstractions. They gain real, or physical status when they become "flesh" in a real situation, and that will always imply their actuality can not be defined separated from that context. Lying is about respecting others and being fair. So it is the amount of fair play that we need to recognize in a given situation, and not the nominal actions. Moreover, there are always different values being played out or manifested, so the ethical level of "fairness" need to be reconciled with the level of other values that we need to consider. That is, honesty is good, but absolute honesty is not good at all becouse there is also life, freedom, justice, loyalty...that need to be protected.

drinking water when thirsty is NOT always good. Consider going to Church and having a glass of Holy water during the Mass; it´d be inappropriate even in the hottest day of July I think.

lying is good, lying is what tells apart intelligent species from not so intelligent species that give us milk. But the act of lying in itself is morally neutral without a context, and ultimately necessary for social functioning. You can´t just speak your mind all the time. The example you provide is a good instance in which telling the truth would be unethical. Your German philosopher´s error was to suppose that deeds can be moral or immoral in themselves, separated from a real context; he was a Christian and that was what he was taught. However, consider how, if that was really the case, there would be no need for Ethics; for Ethics is just reason trying to understand how a given action in a given situation contributes to the promotion of your values, or works against them. Plus, Kant did not have a wife or even a girlfriend, so he never learnt that lying can be a good thing.

bear in mind that Elon Musk and the people like him are a product of too much sci-fi reading, too much ego inflation, and possibly the influence of masonic understanding of the world, that is: that the natural universe is garbage and something to use and get rid of, and the chosen ones must do whatever it takes to upload their "soul" to a non-physical plane (gnosticism, it´s been plaguing us some XXV centuries). That is, the way Elon Musk, or psychopaths like Jeff Bezos or George Soros see the world is heavily filtered by an ideology that is all about ego-survival and demonization of nature. I wonder if, having as main competitor an empathy-free ego like Jobs is what made Bill Gates to develop his philantropic ways. I´m looking forward to shit on his last product!

turquoise is not really a colour. As you know, real colours are: blue, green, and red. Unfortunately, mammals lost colour discrimination to different degrees over the course of evolution, in favour of smelling. We are lucky that we can tell red from green, becouse at some point we had to find ripe fruit on the trees. How I envy birds or reptiles!

Colours are made by perception, dividing the light spectrum that is really continuous. So they are subjective. However, sex is not subjective:there are only two sexes, and there can only be two sexes. This is becouse sex is not a perceptual division, but a basic, natural, especialization in animals and plants of cosmic or physical principles (that is, Flow and Restriction). Isaac Asimov imagined a universe with different laws, that allowed physically for three sexes, in "The gods themselves".

"The use of the gun must only be tolerated when the use of the pen is useless". Nuncamissa, do you realize that this statement is in line with "the end justifies the means" and is the basis of totalitarian revolutions? All criminal and revolutionary organizations, if they think they can achieve their goals without bloodsheed, they will try this road first. Becouse it is less costly as you say. For example, narco cárteles in Colombia´s business is not killing and torturing, but to make money through selling drugs and to support narco-regimes such as Venezuela. Their purpose is not to slaughter; they just do not exclude violent means from their strategy.

However, this approach simply means that some people have freedom, and other don´t if they stand in the way. Not even the freedom of staying safe.

yes, your arguments are sound, and perhaps I´m being too cynical or pessimistic. I agree that corruption is by definition, not the best way to deal with public affairs, as it is in itself a distortion of proper functioning. However, what I say about "good" politicians is also true. We can not assume that "good" politicians understand the world well enough to choose wisely. A good politician tries to do what s/he think is best. This is horrible. Consider for example how feminist politicians think that the best thing for a country is to open borders and allow in all young men in raping age; becouse protecting the borders or any hesitation in "helping" those "poor refugees" from North Africa or the Middle East (without any filter whatsoever) would be "patriarchal" and "what men would do". That´s how cities at night in the North of Europe have become a hell for young women; and the more feminist the government, the more danger European girls have to face. All in good intention, and with a satisfied smile.

Adolf Hitler wanted to do what he (and Henry Ford) thought was the best for Humanity. Ché Guevara, when he shot people kneeling in a row, actually thought he was making a better world. He died for that cause, after he had killed so many. Robespierre, Marx, Mohammed, Mussolini, Mao, Phil Collins, all thought they were doing "the right thing" and helping the world...

When the government or a company, say Google, want to do all the good they can, is a blessing that not everybody is so saintly and some are actually corrupt. The leader of the opposition in Venezuela is safe in Madrid and not dead or being tortured by Maduro, becouse he was lucky enough to find corrupt guards in his escape through the border that could be bought with filthy money. Oskar Schindler was a really corrupt businessman, God bless him. All Italian mafia capos behind bars were betrayed by other gangsters that did not play by the rules and thought only of their own asses.

yes, blessings and curses come together, and everything we do has good and bad consequences. That is why I trust a corrupt person in power more than I trust a saint; the corrupt person calculates and schemes and tries to foresee consequences (to see they are beneficial to them), what in practice limits his or her scope. A saint or sanctimonious leader, however, wants to do ALL the good they can, and care not for further consequences becouse it´s intention and what makes you feel inside that counts. So a good-willed politician is way more scary than a wicked, corrupt one.

"Jesus died for our sins" it´s just a way of dealing with vengeful primates. It means: "you can forgive yourself, you can forgive others, and no physically or mentally or morally handicapped person needs to be pushed off the cliff (Greek pharmakos) or burnt at the Gehenna" (the valley in Judah where human and animal sacrifices were offered). Primates have a very strong pattern call "scapegoating", that is so basic and internalized that we use it with ourselves, we punish ourselves to gain "forgiveness" in the psychological level. And we punish others at the social level. The story of the Passion of Christ is a symbolic scapegoating event, that happens in our imagination and tricks our mind into thinking that no further scapegoating or revenge is required.

Another example is "an eye for an eye", which means that a punishment or repayment can not be greater than the offence. This was a Mesopotamian judicial principle that Jews had to include in their books, to prevent lynching and honour crimes ending in family slaughters, as those still committed throghout the Middle East, from Turkey to Pakistan, in islamized communities.

I´m a believer, but only in love and beauty. However, I can answer your simple question_

The question of the Original Sin has been popularized, or vulgarized, into a sort of debt we are born with. Agustine believed that this sin was passed on via male sperm. However, the concept itself has a more interesting and useful side.
People in the first millennium BC thought a lot about what makes life so miserable; why can´t we just have the easy and happy lives that we imagine or remember from childhood and why is everyone such a jerk. The myth of the Fall, that is quite universal, developed around the idea that something in human nature prevents a happier life and force on us this miserable state of affairs.
If you think of "sin" as "separation" things start to make sense; becouse "sinful acts" are really deeds that separate or alienate ourselves from Nature, Society, and Ourselves. These are movements that go against the impulse of integration, both internal and external. We all have it, and are born with it, becouse BOTH our biological and cultural selves are inherited, passed on from previous generations. Humans beings are domesticated primates, with a strong cultural and social nature, that brings together two poles in each person: individual VS social, and animal VS spiritual. This hybrid condition is not really adjusted and harmonized, so with the good things about our self-domestication and socialization, comes the bad things of this separation, strangement, poor integration that we suffer both in our soul and in our relationship with reality. Christianity proposes that the malady can be healed via a book cult, but that is deceitful, all cults and drugs are but distractions and substitutes for the real cure. Which is not in my knowledge either.

with real science and philosophy, I really meant philosophy and science based on reason, with real arguments instead of phallacies, logic, references to scientific research. As opposed to "feminist science", "gender science", "christian science" and so on. I made this qualification becouse I have also been to a "philosophy forum", managed by philosophy students of the Spanish online public university, where people too much into reason and science got bullied and expelled, and marxist and feminist views were unquestionable. I protested becouse some of us, male and female, just wanted to discuss topics in a rational and critical way, but as the student association did not depend on the University, the Defender of the students said nothing can be done.

Let´s make clear that we are only debating things to chill out and learn from others, there is no political agenda here. That is what a forum (should) be about. The forum I referred to is called "enfemenino.com", it has some 245 M members throughout the world, and they chat in Spanish about female issues, topics that (according to the magazine) are of interests for women especially. Of course there are men in the forum, but are a minority. Topics are: coupling, sex, love, sex, maternity, fashion, recipes, sex, decoration and house hacks, and the like. There is a "social issues" subforum for people who are also into politics and "outdoors" matters, but it´s not the most popular.

for the purpose of the poll Michael. You are rather demanding, your dinings out must be entertaining. I consider those people, from a medical point of view, anomalies; exceptions that confirm the general rule or pattern we need to understand. If you are included, please refrain from taking part in the poll if this causes you a hard time. Consider how a poll about what colour is more relaxing, green or blue, would also leave out turquoise, which is a nice shade especially in the sea, but does not contribute to the question at all, only adds noise.

I don´t really understand what you mean by change. Reality is all about change, if it stopped just for a second, the universe would cease to exist. The same goes for human processes, historical changes are unstoppable so long as Humanity is not extinct. I try to guess that you imply a sense of evolution, or positive adjustment, in your idea of change. Middle East protests were already forwarded in articles published even before the Arab springs took place, becouse the youth bulge provoked by demographic inflation, digital media and the cultural "pathways" existing in Islamic cultures allowed the experts to know that these revolutions would take place. It´s not so easy to know what will happen next, becouse very different scenarios are possible, better and worse than the previous situation. A positive outcome of a social revolution involves a lot of integration work, in other words: social improvement directly derived from the effort to establish negative feed-back loops to trap as much energy as possible. I don´t know if I´m explaining myself clearly

It is good that some women are interested in Philosophy.

I used to frequent a forum where 90% of members are female, and I found it very interesting, until my views critical with feminism and gender ideology led the administrators to ban me. However, the men there were very interested in "female issues" such as couples, romantic love, motherhood or fashion, becouse males do not talk much about these things. I was surprised to find that topics totally unrelated to sex and relationships were very unpopular among most women, and I thought that women overall should try to learn more about (real) science and philosophy and men more about sex, love and children.

those members in the forum falling under those categories are not called to vote in this poll, as there is not an option for them. There are no options for people who cut off their genitals either, or men with two penises. Every poll has its limitations!

It´s very complicated and I struggle to understand it myself. Consider your example of the suffragettes: The suffragette movement did NOT create the chaos, but merely channelled part of it in a particular direction. Social chaos can be seen as free energy, energy that is not engaged and damages the system when it can not be absorbed or put to good use, like an overflooding river or an excess of electrict current. Free energy was due to the Industrial Revolution process, that brought about all kind of changes and also affected how power and participation was distributed in society and the family. That is why I´m bothered with the idea that changes in women´s roles were created by feminists; no, feminists just deviated the stream to their land (socialist models). The point is that revolutions are not the cause of change. as revolutionaries of any ideology would like us to believe, but a necessary consequence of the accumulation of changes and the liberation of energy. When the wave comes, different groups try to surf it in their own interest.

your answer seems to be presuppose an ideal world where all choices are available and are equally costly. Can you re-think your idea to include a real scenario?

An individual contributes an amount of chaos to society. When chaos is small, society thrives; when it grows too big, society falls apart. Population bomb, which is now stronger in Africa, the Middle East and to a lesser degree in regions such as South America, brings many more individuals to the world and that means more chaos. This chaos is multiplied exponentially with access to digital technologies and modern transport.
A society can do one of these three things to deal with this excess of chaos:

1. To control population (via educating people so that they become responsible citizens) and to restrict the influx of immigration. This way, you have much less individuals and chaos is in the right proportion.

2. To externalize population: to encourage people (through religious or political propaganda) to move to other regions of the world, especially young, fertile people. That way, chaos is externalised to other nations and order is preserved.

3. To reduce the level of chaos each individual can contribute to society. This is done by creating homogeneous populations, with less creativity, less personal differences, and less personal agendas.

All countries use the three strategies, but with different intensity. A nation that wants individuals with the maximum creativity and self-expression (freedom) needs to rely especially on 1. Collectivistic, totalitarian regimes that place the social system over individuals, usually rely on 2 and 3, producing large populations where individuality is diluted within simplified discourses and identities and difference, or diversity, is crashed or externalised. This produces very dynamical systems, with an ever increasing need for externalization and expansion. 1- type produces slower economies, but with much faster development and very innovative. Israel is a great example of 1, becouse individuality is very important in Jewish religion and culture. 2 is a preferred strategy of islamized countries, and they call it hegira, migration to infidel regions to force islam on the whole planet. 3 is China, where the whole big country is now a Sims 3 game Red edition.

there are different kinds of freedom. People usually refer to freedom of expression and political freedom, but there´s also the freedom of staying alive, freedom to have a family, or to walk at night safely. When these basics freedoms are endangered, a society might decide to limit political and communicative acts of freedom, to preserve order. This is not against the general value of freedom in society, but a necessary choice. Roman republicans, from which our modern law and citizenship is derived from, understood that in times of unrest or war or natural disaster a dictator needed to be appointed and special measures needed to be taken. However, this dictatorship was a transitory regime to save the Republic, similar to the medically prescribed "limited freedom" we have when we are ill to allow the system to get well. The whole purpose was to save basic freedoms and the state while society recovers and overcomes the crisis. This is different to the use of dictatorship in Totalitarianism (islamism, fascism, socialism) where dictatorship is called revolution and its aims are not to create the conditions for the restoration of full-fledged democracy, but to create the conditions for democracy never to return again.

I´m a determinist, but I don´t like to have absolute certainties about things. So I´d really love to hear solid arguments in favour of non determinist universes. I appreciate the attempt of En Passant to provide one, even if it isn´t quite there yet.

Mathematics are made by Man, but not out of the blue, but as a response to stimuli from "outside". Phenomena happen, we react, and mathematics is a tool we use when we react to phenomena. But to that tool to be useful, a real connection to real physical patterns must be present. We invented the Pithagoras´theorem, but we did not invented the proportions among the sides and angles of a triangle. Crows use Archimedes´ theorem; the formula is not verbalized in their brains, but it is codified nonetheless or they wouldn´t get the walnut in experiments. Becouse volume added to a container with liquid makes the level rise proportionally, and that´s a real mathematical law, that exists alongside our understanding of the pattern.

My English is faulty and I appreciate your corrections! With a current, I really meant a branch or movement or school. In Spain we say corriente, as in stream. I consider a man a person with XY cromosome and male genitalia, and a woman a person with XX cromosome and female genitalia. What happens in a person´s mind is not my business, I´m just being practical here. I know about Hildegard, Hipatia, Ayn Rand... but all these female philosophers, had they never been born, would not take with them any original space in philosophy, just some furniture in existing rooms. I wonder why this is, given that women are prone to think a lot about life, way more than men or so I thought. I want to know if it is something so universal that will affect the ratio in this forum, and ask the female members what they think.

you talk about Trump, or any other politician being corrupt as if it were a bad thing. Corruption, to some extend, is good in any party right or left, becouse the man or woman can be bought, seduced, blackmailed, and is not truly free to pursue a political agenda. Corruption is Chaos: too much chaos brings the system down, but some chaos is necessary for any living or social system to work and progress. Beware of "pure" politicians that only owe to their ideology, and have not a price.

In Europe we have a higher average IQ and education, however Americans get to have a more reasonable, useful government. Angry Americans should try and live in Europe, then they could appreciate more their advantages. For example, consider how both chambers and the presidency are totally in control of two parties, and national parties too, not fascist separatist formations with a clear, explicit agenda of demolishing the country in return for political support. With only two parties, you can gather an impossible level of consensus in my continent, and take great measures very quickly. This system is not perfect, but it should make the nation unstoppable, always ahead. That´s why is so important than foreign powers use their money to buy politicians and companies, otherwise they´d have no chance whatsoever of bringing you down. For example, now you talk about the south borders a lot, but at the end of the day both parties want a solid defense and both parties built the wall. In Spain, the equivalent of your south border together with Greece and Italy, inmigrants and narcos took control of the border long ago and they come and go every day as they please.

I worked as a teacher in Primary school for some 12 years. The values I ended up with were two: responsibility and autonomy. Also, I had a value for myself, that was the attitude of respecting my pupils and the parents. I considered them my clients, people who hired me for the job of keeping an atmosphere of personal security, structure and guidance so that they could develop the capacities stated in the school curriculum. I did not intend to make a better world or a new generation of activists or whatever, just to do my job and create the conditions for the kids to do theirs. This was the zenit of my learning and more than a decade of teaching groups aged from 3 to 13, the place where I felt the most professional and honest.

all parties who really want to reach power have to resource to populism and cheap propaganda, becouse the appeal to masses, not to a council of wise men and women, like in a real democracy. But tribalism is optional don´t you think? You can elaborate your story-telling around the idea of a common goal and identity, and not different factions competing for resources and imposing their own victimistic story to society.

there´s a big difference between representing U.S. interests in the Gulf, like any other president has done before, and actually having your presidential campaign by dozens of donors from Qatar and Saudi Arabia like Clinton.

I wish Spain had such a "tyrannical" government. You don´t value what you have becouse you take it for granted...but imagine Trump saying that people who are in jail waiting for a verdict for organising a rebellion and coup d´etat will be released if the Court condemn them. Imagine Trump being proved to have paid for his university degree and PhD, and refuse to resign. Imagine Trump to have three people in the cabinet proved to have collaborated in extorsion, blackmail and fraud and keep them in their cabinet. Imagine if Trump had the support of separatists and terrorist groups (ETA), and the opposition of most of Spanish people, and still refuse to call elections so that citizens can actually vote. I could go on and on...That´s what we have in Spain now. Trump is way better and more respectful of his citizens than most of the presidents we have had in the last 40 years, conservative or progressive.

have you read her books? What exactly did she propose to re-define our view of Nature? How did she explain what makes humans and other species different?

Identity politics. I think you misread the word, or I wrote the wrong term. Identity politics, or tribal thinking is something Dems have promoted particularly and eventually backfired. Tribal politics only work to destroy a society, not to bring it together. Tribes only work as one when they have a super-enemy that is perceived as more hateful than the other tribes, but that tension can not be keep forever. In between elections, the tribes will turn on each other. That´s how civilized, or urban empires manage to defeat barbaric nations. That´s how hundreds of Spaniards conquered the Aztecs and Incas that dominated a continent.

Populist politics on the contrary is a must for both parties, for any leader in the world really, becouse that´s how you get a majority of voters; most voters are not clever enough to understand politics or anything too abstract, so populist measures are required to draw them to the ballot box. It doesn´t mean populism has to be your real guide for governance, becouse you need to have a more real agenda with what is really necessary for society in your view.

Hillary had the support of the Arabs, that are not better friends than Putin on his worst day. I think politicians do have a strong drive for their self-preservation, but their parties as suprapersonal entities have that will to remain as well. Both Reps and Dems as organisations need to understand that they need the U.S. to recover stability and cohesion. Don´t be like Europe in this or you are all damned, politicians included. Voters and grassroot activists on both sides need to enact a dialogue around some basics ideas that must be beyond politics, such as defending your borders or changing the energy model, or making health services available to everyone, or ending the gang culture.