Something unites all those things that sets them apart from war;

1) they kill fewer people.
2) they make less profit.
3) the mainstream left have decided that (1) and (2) are suddenly irrelevant compared to war uniquely in the case of Ukraine. — Isaac

Anti-natalism fulfils the first two better than any other policy.

But I think perhaps one might better distinguish first violent from non-violent, and individual from national responses.

I don't see it that way. I think it just means that truth is a secondary principle. — T Clark

Bullshit on, dude. See what you want to see, no worries.

There may well be, but does anyone agree what they are. — RussellA

Any two, possibly, but truth is not democratic either. Things do not become more true the more people agree. Something can be true though no one knows it. I defend the meaning of the word against the destruction of its meaning with some vigor, because if the truth becomes a matter of choice, or convenience, then language itself loses its value, and we become as dumb beasts, because meaning depends on truth. Unless we can trust in the truth of language, we must dismiss its meaning entirely. Chaos will reign, but no one will listen to its proclamations.

Within language, facts in the world may be combined to give grammatically correct propositions, yet the fact that a proposition is grammatically correct does not guarantee its truth. — RussellA

I find that an odd way of talking, to be honest. 'Within language' one can say anything. but i would not say that there are any facts 'within language', because I tend to think of facts as being out in the world at large. Within language there are true statements of fact, and false statements of purported fact.

Are we saying the same thing?

Anyway, I am saying, against the op and the 7th principle of Huna, "Effectiveness is the measure of truth." that it might sometimes be effective to lie. And indeed if it was never effective to lie, there would be a lot less lying than there is. The fact that what is claimed to be the 7th principle of Huna is itself a made up principle completely denied by the locals to be any tradition of theirs, makes it an excellent example of effective falsehood.

But not very effective, if one thinks things through.

It seems as if there's an epidemic of imagination loss going around. Is open war the only alternative to non-resistance? — Isaac

No, there is passive resistance and underground resistance, and argument and demonstrative protest, and a thousand variations thereof, from labour strike to hunger strike and from assassination attempt to the whole repertoire of terrorism. Who's for a march on Moscow?

You think putting 5% of your income into funds is only possible for people with a “small fortune”? — I like sushi

You may have mis-read that comment.

So minimum wage $15,000 approx, 5% = $750/year invested over let's say 30 years is a total investment of $22,500. Now I would be personally surprised and pleased if that figure could be doubled after inflation by wise investment, but let's be wildly optimistic and say it could be multiplied by 10.
You'd be almost a quarter of the way to being a millionaire! only three more lifetimes to go.

You just have to set aside a little and put it into savings. That is how people become millionaires — I like sushi

:rofl: That's how to make a small fortune out of a large one.

The ‘enraged’ people are usually those that want more — I like sushi

:100: Like Trump, for example.

teach your kids how to manage money. — I like sushi

Sure. Listen up kids.

1.Get some money. *
2. Get an accountant and a lawyer.

* Money is accumulated by 'entrepreneurs' taking a cut from the trade of others, as the name suggests (Fr. - between-takers), and definitely not by working hard and playing fair.

It's like the police always say to mugging victims "just give them your handbag, it's not worth your life". — Isaac

But the police themselves confront. overwhelm and arrest muggers, and do risk their lives. Otherwise they would have no authority to give any advice. And even the police do not advise giving up your home, your children and your neighbours to the muggers. On the contrary, they ask people to come forward and help them.

I must say I find the consequentialist moral argument completely opaque. We cannot know the consequences of our acts in advance, nor the counterfactual consequences of alternative acts with hindsight. Gandhi suggested that Hitler could have been stopped by non-violent means but even he admitted it would have been difficult and costly.

But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. — Jesus

Matthew 5:39.

The policy of non-resistance has the highest authority:— but expect to get crucified.

If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. — Jesus

Matthew 16:24.

It may be seen that two people observing the same facts in the world may come to two completely different coherent understandings. The fact that an understanding of the world based on the same facts is coherent is no guarantee that the understanding is either true or correct. — RussellA

That may be seen certainly. However, though 'I am sane and you are mad' may be rearranged to 'I am mad and you are sane', these are arrangements of words, not facts. From the fact that one can arrange words as one likes one cannot correctly deduce that one can rearrange thereby the facts. That is a bullshit that one can use to manipulate the gullible. Like this:

— The central defining tenet of chaos magic is arguably the idea that belief is a tool for achieving effects.
Effectiveness is the measure of truth.
— 7th principle of Huna — HarryHarry

A fine principle that equates truth and falsehood - 'because you're worth (jack sh)it'.

First, the force itself (being the weight) , we are told by Galileo, does not affect the acceleration of a falling body. — Gampa Dee

The reason for this is that the mass of a falling object is negligible in relation to the mass of the Earth. the mass of the Earth cannot probably still be measured to the ton, and if it could, some of the mass would been the air above and exert a negative force.

In calculating the obit of the planets, it might become significant.I haven't checked your algebra though, to know if your calculations would be correct.

Have y'all been living under a stone not to have noticed the unreasonable effectiveness of bullshit?
— Unenlightened
What channel is that on? — HarryHarry

Truthsocial.com

I wish you would give us a bit more background. It might even be a good thread by itself. — T Clark

I just gave you the background you asked for.

Maybe read the Wiki.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huna_(New_Age)#:~:text=King%20wrote%20that%20the%20seven,is%20the%20moment%20of%20power.

Have y'all been living under a stone not to have noticed the unreasonable effectiveness of bullshit?

I expect a debunking by the end of the week. — Baden

I just watched the congress hearing above. Three independent witnesses all very sober and well qualified, being taken very seriously by government and opposition. I think your expectation of debunking has been debunked.

There are a few sceptical arguments raised here and elsewhere:

(I.) That 'it' would be impossible to keep secret over the long term. Well it isn't secret, it's taken to be and presented as a fantasy conspiracy theory.

(2,) That the alien pilots must be crap if they keep crashing. That would be a strong point if they did keep crashing, How many crashes have there been? Maybe only one, maybe none..

(3.) That there must have been an international conspiracy to keep the secret. Again, if there has been only one crash, there will be only one government with hard physical evidence beyond radar recordings and dismissible video, and eyewitness reports. All other governments would have nothing more to keep secret except their complete ignorance, which governments are always slow to admit.

I'm not so sceptical I used to be. — ssu

That's about where I am. still sceptical, but not totally fanatically sceptical.

Abstract generalisations of this sort can best be defined by considering their negative space - that which they exclude. What is unreal, can be virtual, imaginary, illusory or delusional. Thus an image can be a real thing- marks on a surface, while whatever is depicted - portrait or landscape, is unreal. But the depiction itself can be real or imaginary in its content, rather as a map can be a map of actual or fictional territory. one might notice that the word 'real' is a real word, but it is only a word and not the real thing to which it refers like the map or the portrait.

It becomes clear that the word needs to be understood in context, in order to define its particular contrast, or negative space on each occasion. So no definition will be entirely adequate. For example, if one distinguishes Reality from mere talk - word from thing - map from territory, then to define reality directly in terms of truth is to put it on the wrong side of that divide as referring to statements and depictions - the very opposite of what is mostly meant. Rather I would like to say that reality is that about which one can speak truth or falsehood.

Treating religious stories as literature, which may convey wisdom, as any good literature may, is not the same as arguing pointlessly over the existence of God or gods or the reality of ideas like karma or rebirth. — Janus

I agree about that. But again, who involves themselves in such arguments except committed believers and equally committed disbelievers? As if religion were nothing but an alternative physics.

Do we argue that Plato's cave does not exist, and therefore it is a waste of time talking about it? No one does that. I have a thread of my own about all that

But i would also like to point out that the idea that time can be, and ought not to be, wasted in pointless activity is very much a Protestant Christian attitude derived usually from the parable of the talents. It would make little sense in any African or Indian tradition for example. All things must pass, but nothing is wasted.

I think we do that subconsciously — I’ve been guilty of it too. It’s why I invoked ethnocentrism, which I think is a related phenomena. — Mikie

I see. Well perhaps we have a substantive disagreement after all. If one invokes Christian imagery, one is laying oneself open to the accusation of ethnocentrism, certainly; but avoiding the mention does nothing to avoid subconscious ethnocentrism, it merely prevents the challenge that might make one become conscious of it.

But you’re free to feel persecuted if you wish. — Mikie

Of course, how could you stop me from feeling persecuted if I felt persecuted. I don't feel persecuted at all, as it happens, at least, not by you. But perhaps your imputation of my feeling persecuted implies that I should feel persecuted?

But aside from that, if my post is a straw man, then I must have misunderstood you. But if you are not addressing believers, and you are not addressing non-believers like myself who have an interest in religions and use religious terms and stories, then who are you addressing, and what are you saying for them not to do?

The video didn't do it for me. but this is more clear as a non-starting point to start from.

... it is not so much that I have written this book, as that it has written me. Or rather, "we" have "intra-actively" written each other ("intra-actively" rather than the usual "interactively" since writ­ ing is not a unidirectional practice of creation that flows from author to page, but rather the practice ofwriting is an iterative and mutually constitu­ tive working out, and reworking, of "book" and "author"). Which is not to deny my own agency (as it were) but to call into question the nature of agency and its presumed localization within individuals (whether human or nonhuman). Furthermore, entanglements are not isolated binary co­ productions as the example ofan author-book pair might suggest. Friends, colleagues, students, and family members, multiple academic institutions, departments, and disciplines, the forests, streams, and beaches ofthe east­ ern and western coasts, the awesome peace and clarity of early morning hours, and much more were a part of what helped constitute both this "book" and its "author."

https://smartnightreadingroom.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/meeting-the-universe-halfway.pdf

The observer and the observed are entangled in the observation, and this observation displays the same entanglement as every observation. The separation of the observer from the observed is never more than a convenient approximation that is never completely true. That this separation has always been the fundamental dogma of science has become an embarrassment with the rise of quantum mechanics, with which it is in direct conflict. The rehabilitation of the observer into the observation and the author into the book, is a really good way to begin to resolve the contradiction that has plagued physics for a couple of generations.

As a beginning, this is a description of the creative process that is recognisable and satisfying to me; this is how I write, how I garden, how I learn. In the beginning was the tangle, and within the entanglement there became discernible the Book and the Author - the theory and the theoriser - the observer and the observed. And the evening and the morning were the beginning of time.

Thus the preface. I hope to be able to come back later with something about the meat of the book, if I can enter into a productive relation with it.

As the disclaimer notes, I’m not aiming this at believers. I’m aiming this at those who are interested in questioning; in philosophy. That can be anyone— Christian or non-Christian, Hindu or non-Hindu. Those who recognize whatever religion they happen to be brought up in as one of many stories.

Given this situation, I would argue it’s just as much a waste of time to give special attention to Shiva (because one happened to be raised in India) or God (because one happened to be raised in the West) as it is to Xhandizi. It’s all perhaps interesting in an anthropological sense— but we needn’t give it extra weight or seriousness based on cultural familiarity. I see it done often — especially by atheists, in fact. So my advice is based on personal feeling, of course — but I think it’s potentially useful. Just let it go. I speak from experience in fact. — Mikie

Have you realised yet that this thread is a waste of time? I sometimes refer to Aesop's fables. They are morally instructive, even for people who do not believe in talking foxes. I refer to stories I am familiar with and that are widely understood. I will continue to do so, and also to bible stories because they permeate the culture and still shape our thinking whether we are aware of it or not. I prefer to be aware of it. It is convenient and communicative to speak of the Good Samaritan as the epitome of kindness to strangers, and I would rather leave the site than be silent about the wisdom and beauty of such tales. And I think there is a deal of support here for my views. Likewise, the Book of Job is wonderful philosophical approach to the problem of evil, and particularly 'natural evil'.

Your advice is bad advice, to deprive oneself of much wisdom from the past because of some fantastic elements and the limitations of factual knowledge of the time. It is Philistinism, and antihistorical. Furthermore it functions to give those stories more potency in the mind that rejects them - your own mind. Your advice is irrational — stories are not harmful, but illuminating.

First, identify the poison. — Amity

One man's meat is another's poison. In this context one human identity is poisonous to another human identity, so one needs to identify self and poisonous other simultaneously.

When a boy in school doesn't act in traditionally masculine ways, and he is bullied by the boys in his class for being "too feminine" — What is toxic masculinity - verywellmind

Here, for example, the poisoned 'y' to which 'x' is poisonous is laid out very simply. There might be another school where a solitary 'x' is bullied for being "too masculine", but that is less likely because of power itself being associated with masculinity, at least hereabouts.

However. One might consider Margret Mead: https://www.simplypsychology.org/margaret-mead.html

To which rather overly even-handed summary, I should add the following debunking of her debunker: https://www.unl.edu/rhames/courses/current/readings/Shankman-Trashing%20of%20Margaret%20Mead.pdf

Clearly Freeman and Mead were mutual poisons to each other, and so I arrive again back at the conservative liberal divide, that overlays the nature nurture, that overlays the masculine feminine divide...

It always looks more like solid ground to me when the causes of war are identifiable as economic rather than ideological. So why would there be a big dispute about the ownership of "The breadbasket of the World"? Can it be that food is becoming a scarce resource? Who owns the breadbasket owns the world. Talk of democracy and freedom and nazification fades to the buzzing of flies round the feast, as possession is asserted by the destruction of the world's dinner by the dispute of those already bloated of stomach. The burning question is 'Who would you rather beg for your dinner, and slave for?' The prospect of the parties agreeing to share seems remote.

Google knows where we're heading: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.optivelox.radmeter&hl=en_US&pli=1

The shortly to be needed shopping and tableware ap You will need the geiger tube detector as well, as the comments point out. This is pure paranoia of course.

Yeah, that was a little ironic dig, as I am attempting myself to offer a social science/anthropological analysis, from which view it all appears as performance that is then referred back to "Natural kinds" that are posited to really exist and produce the performance which is not a performance but a real difference. A circle of trust, that gender benders of all kinds place themselves outside of. Capitalised Nature is the god of science and everything human is natural by definition. Except religion of course, but this is not religion, it is science! The circle is unbroken.

If the topic was placed in the religion section, much would be made of the fact that it is mandated to cover up the facts of sex in favour of the performance of gender, and this would be called out as deliberate mystification. And anything said thereafter would be dismissed as dogma, brainwashing, and superstition. To be trans is "heretical", as it used to be to be homosexual, and still is in most places.

When a heresy cannot be suppressed, it results in a schism, and becomes a sect, like, to take a non-random example, Protestantism. This then in turn splits into innumerable factions and one ends up with a sect for every conceivable permutation of the fundamental fiction. How many genders are we up to now? It must be almost as many as the angels dancing on the head of a pin.

Let's rejoice with loud Fal la--Fal la la!
That Nature always does contrive--Fal lal la!
That every boy and every gal
That's born into the world alive
Is either a little Liberal
Or else a little Conservative!
Fal lal la!
[Enter Fairies, with Celia, Leila, and Fleta. They trip round stage]

W.S. Gilbert. Iolanthe.

The peculiarity of gender and sexual identity in this culture is that what Nature contrives must first be hidden from public gaze, and then indicated by conventional signs of hairstyle, clothing, and behaviour. This invests sex and sexual identity with totemic power that makes this thread significant in a way that a discussion about, say, eye colour is not. Genitals are hidden like The Holy of Holies, and other such religious mysteries. Sex is the religion of modernity, and this thread should belong in the philosophy of religion section, except that no one here is questioning the foundations of practice and belief.

What is a blue-eye, and what makes them better than brown-eyes? And what should we do with those perverts who use coloured contact lenses behind their mandatory sunglasses and then wear the wrong coloured hat?
Fal lal la!
[Enter Fairies, with Celia, Leila, and Fleta. They trip round stage]

Zeus was prone to eating his children too. It's a god thing.

If you really believe your culture is special, exceptional, deserving of privileged treatment, etc — fine, go study it. — Mikie

I have done so, and have no such belief because I have also studied something of Indian, Chinese, and African cultures. And I have found much of value in all those stories that you seem to want me to dismiss. So what do you have that is better than stories?

No reason to give “god” special attention just because you happen to be raised in that faith. — Mikie

On the contrary, one cannot understand oneself and one's potential biases without some study of the history of the culture in which one was raised.

I didn’t say anything about Christian values. — Mikie

Like you, the Christian tradition makes much of the value of not wasting time, but working hard.

It’s a waste of time. — Mikie

I think it is at least interesting, and perhaps important, to recognise the source of such values.

Tell me more about what I should let go of, and how you know its value so well.

Some say that it was a Christian society that brought about the enlightenment and the birth of science, and the very commitment to truth, and to not wasting time that you seem to espouse yourself. Should we not let go of those very Christian values too?

Toxic masculinity is an identity of the masculine which identifies itself with power, and the feminine with love, and denies itself the feminine. If you feel love, the feminine, then that is a weakness which the powerful wouldn't need to succumb to, and insofar that you feel love you should act to purge it to become a real man. — Moliere

I like this because "should" finally entered the theory -- I really believe this is a topic in ethics more than ontology/epistemology! But it's hard to get there. — Moliere

That is excellent, because the way it enters is via the devilish wrong understanding, like wot da Bible say.

But I think there is also a simpler, and much more general explanation of the conflict which is that identification is necessarily divisive. No us without them. No male without female. Hence the famous story about the Buddhist visiting N.Ireland being asked insistently, "Yes, but are you a Catholic buddhist of a Protestant buddhist?" The very idea of being both or neither threatens everyone's own identity and the very laws of logic themselves.

As an old hippy, I well remember the horrified complaint about men with long hair – "but you can't tell whether it's a boy or a girl!" And as I have said at tedious length, sex is of fundamental importance to a patrilineal society, and not so much if at all to a matrilineal one, thereby allowing more focus on which end one opens one's boiled egg at breakfast (all right thinking folk, men and women alike, are obviously little-enders), and other such vital issues.

I do claim science is confused — Antony Nickles

It looks to me, reading this thread, that your disagreement with @Srap Tasmaner is curiously founded on a mutual reification of 'science' — an ironic mis-recognition of an object. Is it a method, is it an ethic, is it a philosophy, is it a practice, is it an ethnicity, a social institution, a tradition, a cult? No it's Superscience! Faster than a speeding bullet.

What is being defended and attacked is nothing more than a hand, waving in the general direction of vague habits of thought and attitudes of 'suck it and see', that have proven fruitful in the past in producing material conveniences. We tried the power of prayer, but found horsepower more reliable.

If it had happened to be the other way, scientists would be busy researching which prayers to which gods were the most efficacious, and we would be calling them priests.

Indeed, the way I heard it, a narrow gateway, you could only get a camel through unladen, or a rich man dispossessed of his burden of wealth.

There is nothing rich about a rich man apart from his riches. Which 'you can't take with you', as every grave robber will attest. But for my part, I have never intended, in this thread or on this site, to make any claim as to what if anything lies beyond this world or beyond the the grave. But I do attest that I have stopped smoking without the least regret or desire to restart. And this is not a boast, because it is not an achievement at all, but an honest report intended to be helpful to others in conflict about their habits.

There is nothing smokey about a smoker apart from his smoking habit, and the practice is the result of a habit of mind. What I have discovered is that the way one looks inwards at oneself needs to be different to the way one looks outwards. Outwardly, one needs to to distinguish the edible mushroom from the poisonous, and eat the one and avoid the other. But in looking at oneself in this way, in distinguishing beneficial habits from harmful habits, one creates a division and a conflict in oneself. In condemning the habit of smoking in myself, I am creating an imaginary non-smoker wagging his finger at the imaginary smoker. And then I can act out the conflict between them for many years a stop-start addiction, of self resentment and complaint. Whereas if I change my mind, I see without that conflict and without that division that tobacco is poisonous to me, then there is no difficulty.

I think this act of inward seeing without division might be what you mean by 'true self'. For fifty years I have been a smoker, or a smoker in remission, like a man trying to cross a ravine on a narrow bridge, but desperately holding onto the post at the beginning, knowing he has to let go in order to get across, but even in letting go, unable to take a step because the urge to grasp the pole again is so strong. And then I realise that the post I think I need is not helping me cross safely, but preventing me from crossing at all. I need the bridge, not the post. And with that realisation I set out, and the post is left behind.

Ron DeSantis recently commented that some American black people benefitted from slavery by learning trades such as blacksmithing. — frank

I think they paid for it already. If DeSanity will contract to be my slave along with a few generations of his descendants I'll teach him whole bunch of shit.

There is only this page, and only I am on it.

Nice obituary. A lifetimes' work, to add one informative idea to the human mindscape.

Tying this with the thread's main theme, were a literally egoless consciousness possible to actualize in principle, such would then be perfectly devoid of otherness - but there is no cogent reason to then affirm that it would also be devoid of its "auto"-awareness regarding its own, here unperturbed, state of being. I interpret this to then be in-line with the often told description of Moksha or Nirvana as being pure bliss. — javra

I have to report that there is as a matter of fact a state of absorption sometimes called 'flow', which I have experienced, mainly playing music, but even occasionally in writing, and sometimes walking in the countryside. In such a state, there is no separation for the moment between self and world; the music is playing the fingers and the rhythm is breathing the time, I mean timing the breath: even as an audience one can become lost in music.

In such a state, there is no difference between idealism and physicalism. It is called flow because the normal state of consciousness holds self static as the ruler that measures the movement of time, like the post of a sundial or the static face that the hands of the clock move across. Or perhaps it is more like like a log in the river, snagged on a rock that the river of time washes over and around until some wave or flood releases it to flow with the movement of the water for a while.

My poetic metaphorical language attempts to convey something that is probably familiar to most, so one does not need to rely on the authority of another. Bliss, because the habitual tension and anxiety of holding out against the world is gone for a while.

I have to admit that I have seen no reasonable evidence in this thread of any poster being terminally stupid, uncaring or insane. If I had, I would certainly have reported it to the moderators. And the same if I had seen evidence of racism and xenophobia. In fact I have a particular sensitivity on the latter issue that some here will be aware of, being part of a mixed race family.

And here is the inconsistency I see in your posting: you are very free with these negative labels, but there is no good reason ever to address them to your interlocutors on the boards, rather you should point them out to the mods so that they can be remove the people we don't want to waste time talking to and the sensible fair-minded decent people can discuss freely.

But instead, you use these sorts of epithets on a regular basis in an attempt to undermine people you do continue to engage with. And then bang on hypocritically about respect.

The argument here is not all people's opinions are equal. — Isaac

What argument?The rest of us call it ad hominem fallacy.

I've no interest in arguing with those. Likewise the terminally stupid, the uncaring, the insane... There are lots of categories of people who might have an opinion about how to resolve this conflict against whom I've no wish to argue, whose opinions I've no wish to hear. — Isaac

But you sure like calling them out, o fair-minded one!

Intelligent, well-informed people have a different view as to how best to resolve the conflict, but we can't just discuss the merits of each approach, those differing from the mainstream have to uniformed, biased, — Isaac

Or racist xenophobes.

Yeah I meant love that takes pains, not that gives pains. Old-fashioned Christian life-laying-down love. "He ain't heavy, he's my brother."