I can hold my pride tight, or I can give and receive love. I can't do both. They're mutually exclusive.
— Patterner

Hours later your words mixed with another thought I am holding and together those thoughts could potentially be life changing. I take pride in being pretty egoless, but I became aware of what my ego has to do with some conflict resolution failures. Interesting. I look to seeing if a changed behavior pattern gets better results. I thought that you might like to know your words were so effective. — Athena

That is about the most profound little exchange I have seen on this site. Thank you both for your insight and honesty. I, too have to think for myself about this in my own life.

↪Outlander This comes from Tolstoy's observation about it in War & Peace? — Benkei

If it does, it somewhat betrays Tolstoy's meaning, which is that there is no drama in a happy family; this relays the same observation that is made about "the News" - that good news is always boring, as also illustrated in every fairytale ending - "... and they all lived happily ever after." Contentment is the background normal life that drama interrupts, but not because it is one dimensional or 'the same', it simply requires no response, and sets no challenge. And that is what makes it appear one dimensional from the outside.

Does one not also get compassion fatigue when disaster becomes the normal condition? Another bombed hospital, glad I'm not there.

Let's pretend ...

All I want is all the life in me to be free. — Deus

Freedom is the prerequisite for morality and immorality. All a bit Hegelian, but potentially explanatory.

Answer philosophers' questions.

If I was God, I wouldn't do what I would do if I was God.

You use the words how you want, but we are discussing Sartre's usage as translated. The way he talks - "Existence precedes essence" - So my existence as physical human flesh precedes my essence as irritating old fart. And likewise the existence of the steel precedes the essence of knifliness into which it is then formed.

The essence of knifliness is sharpness and cutting not steel, because a knife can be bronze or ceramic or flint.

I think that the essence of a knife would be the steel used to make it and that the purpose and utility is given it by man. — Sir2u

I think you have that the wrong way round. the existence of the steel is what precedes the essence (being) of the knife as a sharp edged form thereof.

the existentialism of B&N is not as soft or warm and inviting -- i.e. humanistic -- as the existentialism of EiH. — Moliere

Being and Nothingness comes out of the occupation of France by the Nazis. There is nothing soft or warm in the kind of freedom that survives under a totalitarian regime.

Resistance is the secret of joy — Alice Walker

Alas, not even that excuse!

My humble apologies to the heroic pea! My finest linguistic achievement was to be mistaken for a Belgian in Southern France one time. Like being mistaken for a drunken Irishman in Scotland.

The French do a mean chanson.

Here, if you don't know it is one of the best:

I'm not sure that he ever wrote about it. But my surmise is that the freedom that he was concerned with is peculiarly human in that it involves the complexities of language and the concept of self. That is to say that the essence of a human is something that develops out of language interaction such that one declares to oneself what one is and shall be. And that declaration gives rise to the possibility of living in good or bad faith with that declaration.

But I could be wrong.

Imagine the people who believe such things and who are not ashamed to ignore, totally, all the patient findings of thinking minds through all the centuries since the Bible was written. — Art48

Stop imagining that there are these two kinds of people; the patient thinkers like you, and the others, infected by religion. That is itself the root of fanaticism. The godless are also capable of horrors and especially in the name of rationality. It is the certainty of righteousness that always justifies human horrors, and everyone is capable of them.

God is well known in matters of power to favour the big battalions, and particularly those with big guns. So whenever you see a pro-life stance allied to a pro gun stance, you might want to draw some psychological inferences about what is important to such.

I'm trying to prompt "pro-lifers" to think about all this, so it seems best to talk of parents meaning, the individuals who have primary responsibility for the situation. — Ludwig V

That can only work if folks are honest with themselves about their motivation. Are pro-lifers actually full of love for infants and children, and in particular other people's infants and children? Do they surround themselves with them, support measures to improve child-care, education, etc? If they do, then arguments about the merits of this or that rule can be persuasive.

But my experience has been that most pro-lifers are not great lovers of other people's children, but misogynists and seekers of power over others. If the aim is to support patriarchal power relations, and the right to life and sanctity of life arguments are mere cover, then they will not be convinced by any counter-argument, that points out - for example the horror of a pregnant woman bleeding out and losing her baby in the hospital car park because doctors are too afraid of prosecution to treat her.

Ear-twisting chord sequences. Yum.

there will be a vast majority that is pro-life for their own reasons. — Samlw

Possibly. But I would turn it around, and ask what could possibly make a woman become unnaturally anti the new life within her? Whatever that is would certainly be a good target for legislation! Social stigma, isolation, lack of support, grinding poverty, responsibility for another without the means to fulfil the responsibility, homelessness, loss of the child, shaming, guilt, etc. Let's make laws against them during pregnancy and child-care, and then there will be little demand for abortions, except for tragic medical circumstances that cannot be avoided by legal fiat.

Around 60% of the world’s population has the right to an abortion. — Samlw

If you want to baffle the world with statistics, you need to do better homework. About 49% of the world's population is male, and of the rest, there are many prepubescent, many post-menopausal, and some infertile for various reasons. Thus more than 50% are ineligible for any right to abortion. Perhaps you mean that around 60% of the world' population live in countries where abortion is legal and accessible for women who might want or need it?

I must say I find it odd that folk who get very exercised about the sacred value of a foetus, seem to have little to say about the children killed day after day in wars and famines and from poor sanitation and lack of clean water and of easily preventable diseases. It almost looks like the real agenda is the control of women's bodies and sexual expression, not saving precious innocent human lives. But of course I am an old cynic as well as a pedant.

I point out that real estate is treated very differently to creative rights.

One can certainly assign copyrights and patents on a voluntary basis to another, but these rights have an expiry date. Fortunately, you do not have to pay my ancestors for their invention of the wheel.

I suggest that real estate should have a similar expiry date of say, the purchaser's life plus 50 years, or thereabouts. It does not seem right to me that the Duke of Westminster owns half of London just because his male ancestor 1,000 years back was William the Conqueror's bestie.

My family is going through a rough patch and the core of the problem is a poor understanding of love. — Athena

I'm sorry to hear that. I will venture some small insights that haven't been mentioned. It is a grave sin to test love. Because the test can only be to destruction. "Will you still love me if ... ?" The answer never satisfies until it becomes 'no'. We are all finite, and we all have a breaking point.

And do not measure or compare; do not count or keep an account.

And half remembered from Ursula LeGuin, I think — "Love is like bread, you cannot preserve it; it has to be made fresh every day."

Now, can you give an example of one those the truths? — Banno

Not on this message board, obviously. But there is a rumour that the mystical can be made manifest. That is what Zen is about, is it not? And the Dao, and the holy.

Talk is cheap and very limited, so one is obliged to wave a hand in the general direction of the uniqueness that is everywhere, all the time.

God preserve us from interesting philosophers!

So I wanted to ask if you guys had any advice for me. How do you engage with philosophy, whether when you're reading or discussing/debating with others? When do you feel like you learn the most? Thanks a bunch! — Jafar

Hi there, welcome home!

You ask good questions already, and you have some good answers. There is a good old Catholic and defence lawyer method advocatus diaboli whereby one tries to make the argument for a position one does not hold or that is unpopular. The benefit of this is that one does not mind losing too much, and more importantly, it gets one used to the sensation of changing one's mind, something that needs doing daily at least.

(And don't go taking no advice from no parrots.)

If I wasn't so spastic, my guitar might gently weep a bit like this...

When you explain the joke, it isn't funny.

You had to be there.

What can’t language express? Diddle-de-dum!

The state of mind that expects or offers a serious linguistic answer to this question.

Dance.

Language always only ever points beyond itself ...

The word is not the thing.

Can you translate Marcuse into English for me?

You're one of 'them' aren't you! — unenlightened

No, — Paine

It must be me, then. Yikes!

I been double-crossed now for the very last time and now I'm finally free,
I kissed goodbye the howling beast
On the borderline which separated you from me.
You'll never know the hurt I suffered nor the pain I rise above,
And I'll never know the same about you, your holiness or your kind of love,
And it makes me feel so sorry.

Bob Dylan, Idiot Wind.

Unless, of course, the speaker is one of the vanguards pointing this situation out. — Paine

You're one of 'them' aren't you!

The deep state is the atheist's substitute for God. What would be unbearable would be to accept that no one is in control at all. There are just a bunch of crazies all trying to be tin pot gods and get above each other, and fucking each other and us over as much as they can.

The concept of ownership seems very ill-defined to me. — Dorrian

It is defined by law. Human laws are various and varied through time and space, I am not the person to explicate the precise laws applicable to your particular interest, but then you are not looking for legal advice I guess.

But perhaps you do not want so much a universal definition as a rationale. In which case Marx is your man, more so than Rousseau or Hobbs. I have done a bit of lumberjacking in a small way, and I have never felt or imagined that I owned a tree that I chopped down. It would always belong to the landowner, standing or felled until she sold it or gave it away, or it rotted to nothing. I guess there might be a logging concession sold to a lumberjack such that they did own what they felled and then transported it and sold it on. These things are decided by contract and agreement, and perhaps that is why they seem ill-defined to you?

Anyway back to Marx. If you think about the beginnings of agriculture, that is when one begins to have something to defend, because one has to put a deal of work into a patch of land, clearing it of stones and trees and weeds, improving the soil with whatever is available, planting some seed one has saved and tending it, watering and so on. So one wants to defend it from wandering nomads, rabbits, birds, slugs, elephants, and humans. One invests all this labour, and one wants to reap the benefit. That is the rationale for property ownership.

He wrote 2 books; Zen and the art of Motorcycle Maintenance, and Lila. Read them in that order, or just the first. The first is about the metaphysics of quality (MOQ) and the second relates quality to morals. They are easy reads, written as novels.
He distinguishes static and dynamic quality and makes them -as it were - the fundamental substance of the world.
I don't want to say much more than this about the contents, they're not on anyone's curriculum because they were bestsellers. But I think they would resonate with your thoughts.

If you haven't, read Pirsig.

Also rather interesting and Modal. The harmonies remind me of the Uilleann pipes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WkrTyrR-WQ

I was reminded of these the other day. Neither jazz nor classical, but the dreaded folk.

So sue me, poseurs. Watch on youtube.

But we don’t need the notion of experi­ence as a mediating tribunal. We can be content with an account of the world as exerting control on our inquiries in a merely causal way, rather than as exerting what McDowell calls “rational control”. — Rorty?

I'm not sure if I understand this, but if I do, then it goes something like this:— the cliff doesn't mind if you have a theory of gravity or a theory of under-cliff trolls that will suck you down and eat your soul, as long as the effect is that you don't fall off the cliff. But when it comes to Psyche, and more so when it comes to Sophia, then either rational, or irrational control is what it is all about and the causal effect cannot be predicted at all either way, other than by a rational or irrational calculation that is itself in the purview of those same goddesses.

or does all science operate on the basis of historically changing social constructions? — Joshs

The stretch from psychology to all science misses a rather important difference that is peculiar to the 'human' sciences. When one studies electrons, or planets, or plate tectonics, one can reasonably assume that right or wrong, one's hypothesis about phenomena will not materially affect the behaviour one is studying. But human behaviour is radically transformed by human understanding, so that as soon as a psychological theory has some measure of success, it alters human nature and the phenomena one is studying change. This explains why psychology appears more like the fashion industry than a science.

Ironically, young people now are having less sex than ever. — Tzeentch

That's not irony - that's policy!

The book, along with many others banned by the Nazis when they came to power, was publicly burnt in the Nazi book burnings. Reich realized he was in considerable danger and hurriedly left Germany; first going to Austria (to see his ex-wife and children) and then to 'exile' in Denmark, Sweden and subsequently Norway. Reich was also subsequently expelled from the International Psychoanalytical Association in 1934 for his political militancy and his views on sexuality.[a] This book – and all of Reich's published books – were later ordered to be burned on the request of the Food and Drug Administration by a judge in Maine, United States in 1954.[11]

So which book was banned and burned by both Nazi Germany and the US? "They" do not want "you" to read this!

the best resolutions are not found in medication, but in meaning. Hence the emphasis on the psychosocial. — Tom Storm

Yes, but always psychological reform, never social reform, because ... actually, the medical model still informs the social structure that is psychiatry - one goes to the doctor, not the politician/lawyer.

My take on psychiatry, in sum, is that while most doctors are akin to mechanics in the sense of dealing with the more-or-less, and mostly more, known, psychiatrists by comparison are more in the way of witch doctors. — tim wood

We agree thus far at least, so I might be able to convince you to consider that the medical model may be somewhat at fault. Witch doctors have a rather similar model, in which 'evil spirits' play the role of 'chemicals in the brain'. One of the difficulties of the medical model is the way pathologies change over time. Anorexia and self-harm, for instance are modern epidemics, and in the complete absence of any physical explanation for such novelties, social change should surely be considered as a possible explanation? At which point one can ask "how does your society fuck you up, and what are your coping strategies/self-medication?" to psychiatrists and their clients even handedly,