religious or solemn... — Hanover

Registering a birth is fairly solemn, conferring nationality and name; I think it would be a serious mistake to imagine that ritual is something we moderns have grown out of because we are not religious. clearly we do things that serve the same functions to do with birth marriage and death and many other things, that were the province of religious organisation and are now governmental. Baptism is a naming ritual and changing one's name by deed poll is not? That is arbitrary to the point of special pleading. Likewise a civil union has the same transformative effect on the social status of a relationship as a religious ceremony, the declarations of both parties freely made and un-coerced are required - there is a tendency to regard ritual as other people's mumbo jumbo, while our arrangements to do the same thing are entirely sensible and rational.

I think instincts are rather limited in humans to things like fear of heights, startle reactions, smiling, suckling, babbling, and a few more. They would act as a foundational repertoire of behaviours subject to modification and extension by learning.

Habits cover a huge range of stuff, bound up with what we might call 'knowledge' - reading and writing are learned and habitual, to the point of becoming unconscious and automatic - and of course they are socially imparted and given their meaning. But I suspect interpreting these marks on the screen the we way do, is not something either of us would really think of as a habit? Let alone a ritual?

But I'm not altogether clear why not. Perhaps it is that I think of ritual as a sort of language of its own, that one learns the meaning of by being embedded in a social world. One is taught to say 'please' and 'thank you' in the appropriate situations, and that is a verbal ritual and a habit, just like saying grace at mealtimes.

There seems to be a layering here, where the habitual becomes the medium of the creative at a new level, but I'm interested to hear your thoughts, because your questions are making me wonder whether there is really as much consistency in this as I thought ...

There are no winners in war. The survivors get to count their dead.

One obtains a birth certificate for a baby by means of a ritual of 'registration', which ritual confers the status of citizenship on the infant. Rituals are typically social enactments that change status and relationships.

The comparison I would make is not with ordinary habits as such, but with obsessions. Such private enactments never quite attain the status of ritual, but obsessions come closest to being enactments that are intended to change, or at least maintain some relation to the world.

One might reasonably claim that rituals are social obsessions. How many times does one have to declare ones nationality, marital status, age, and so on? The social obsession that amounts to a religion is with money. Every interaction, almost, is associated with a money ritual, that gives it extra significance and legitimacy. Without the money ritual, shopping is theft.

There's one principle I follow which may be considered harsh and it focuses on personal boundaries. I am unlikely to put my own life, my health or my housing at risk. If I lose my stability, I am of no use in any other way and recovery may be impossible. — Tom Storm

This is a fine principle for maintaining the status quo. But it cannot lead to reformation or revolution. It will not work for a soldier, who must be prepared at times to put his own health and life at risk, and it will not work for a campaigner for social change. It will not end homelessness, nor will it defeat fascism.

Perhaps the whispering guidance we hear and the moral pillars we have are connected, if not two sides of the same coin. The little things in life are important, as you suggest. We search for a light to help us see clearly to take even small steps. — 0 thru 9

There is something of a movement in psychiatry to regard hearing voices as a natural phenomenon. It is much more common than is generally supposed, because it is hidden by being stigmatised. but people experience something that the scientist will have to characterise as "their thoughts" as coming from elsewhere. But I have argued above that this is a dogma. If there can be one person in a head, why is it impossible for there to be two? Before the scientific dogma became so totalising and dominant as to declare such deviations insane, it was well understood that one would hear voices that might be devilish or angelic, and indeed the voice of conscience was understood by Catholic Christians at least, to be the ultimate arbiter of right and wrong.

Today we distinguish between a judicial conscience that looks back and a legislative conscience that guides future courses of action; there are a few instances of the latter in the Hebrew Bible. There conscience is not the heart but a voice, a voice that accompanies us. This notion of a voice being with us captures the con of conscience, a word that means “knowing with.” In Is 30:21, we read: “And your ears shall hear a word behind you: ‘This is the way; walk in it,’ when you would turn to the right or the left.” This voice directs our lives. Still, heart also occasionally becomes the guiding conscience that needs to be formed, as in 2 Mc 2:3: “And with other similar words he exhorted them that the law should not depart from their hearts."
https://www.americamagazine.org/issue/examining-conscience (the Jesuit Review.)

Everyman,
I will go with thee,
and be thy guide,
In thy most need
to go by thy side. — Knowledge

From: Everyman.

What was a guiding voice, knowledge, seems in modern man to have entirely possessed everyman, and insists on pain of incarceration and worse, that possession is a fantasy, and knowledge is all there is to life.

If virtue was rewarded and vice punished, it would be mere common sense to be virtuous and mere folly to be otherwise. Sometimes the price of virtue is very high, and you risk your life for the sake of another. I think you are exactly right to liken this situation to the Nazis; this man has no value to bureaucracy and nor do you. The social rules are lethally callous to you both, and resistance carries a very great cost. To take that risk would be heroic, and to abandon the poor man, totally understandable. I can add nothing to your moral understanding, and only wish you and him well, whatever you decide to do.

how do I confirm the diagnosis, what's the best course of treatment, how do I monitor the Earth, as it ages, does Earth become prone to specific kinds of illnesses? — Agent Smith

We do love our analogies don't we? Well doctor, when the patient has his hands round your neck and his foot on your testicles, the treatment I would recommend is a fast improvement in bedside manners.

In a bit of cybernetic serendipity, this appeared on my facebook feed today.

Kusters’ goal is not merely to relate the biographical fact that a careful study of Husserl led to an involuntary hospitalization (as in, “I was studying Husserl one day, and then things got a bit out of hand, and then the ambulance arrived”). Rather, it is to demonstrate to the reader precisely how the study of Husserl’s writings on time can precipitate a psychotic episode.

The problem has to do with Husserl’s reckless use of water metaphors, the most pertinent being the stream. Time consciousness, Husserl tells us, is like a flowing stream, with its facets of retention and protention smuggled into the present moment. But now that Husserl has opened the door to the casual use of water metaphors, what stops us from having a bit of fun, and deploying other metaphors? If we were careful and thorough in this procedure, we would likely alter the temporal structure of experience. Instead of a lazy stream, why not experience time as a raging river, which accelerates and decelerates unpredictably? Or a gentle pond which allows you to move effortlessly in any direction? Or for that matter, a whirlpool, where past and future merge and where one is violently wrenched out of a shared reality? How can anybody read Husserl thoughtfully and carefully and stay sane?

https://ndpr.nd.edu/reviews/a-philosophy-of-madness-the-experience-of-psychotic-thinking/?fbclid=IwAR0TVFzVE16sEycawhBK6FDUdv9FL30fGK50_SC1CmRFKTWU8cozB4EOqEg

We can add to the metaphor, the converging of streams into rivers and the diverging into deltas, and the eventual discharge into the sea. We can add evaporation, and freezing, underground rivers, ocean flows ... 'there's someone in my head, and it's not me.'

What I mean is that madness itself has a history, as Foucault surmised: it is like a species, or an organism. Its history is internal to it. Madness changes in its inmost character from generation to generation. Any attempt to describe madness is, as a consequence, necessarily partial and incomplete, for it chases after a moving target. And this is as it should be, for this historically mutable character underwrites its oft-remarked elusive nature.

ibid.

Which makes sanity equally indescribable and a moving target.

I would pull out a story about a guy going to to the top of the mountain to seek the meaning of life and being told to stop blocking his neighbour's driveway with his car. — Cuthbert

That was my quip edited into the op, so I'll respond. Indeed one is in the world, if for anything at all, to experience the mundane. But the mundane is defined in distinction from what is not mundane but 'otherworldly', and we must as philosophers occasionally take cognisance of that too, particularly given the flow between them.

I want to say some stuff that is a bit peripheral perhaps, with half an eye on the more sceptical brethren among us, by way of trying to make a space in the universe of dialogue for the consideration of mind without some of the preconceptions that would stifle what might prove an interesting exploration..

The Cartesian tradition -- you know the guy, 'I think therefore I am' and coordinate geometry - the foundation of knowledge and science man -- that tradition takes human identity as the certain foundation, the objective atom that is the observer. According to the tradition, it is impossible and unthinkable that my thoughts are not my own, that my mind might be haunted or even possessed by other beings. People who experience themselves as permeable to otherness in these ways are declared to be deluded - because it is impossible.

We know there are such people, and we deny the validity of their experience. This is the scientific psychological tradition and to even question it is to make one's own sanity questionable.

Still, one can see some curious phenomena playing out in history on various scales that are difficult to explain. There are waves of mass movement of people where what was unthinkable becomes not only thinkable, but doable and completely natural. The enlightenment itself was one such mass movement of mind; the transformation of Germany in the 1930's is another; The hippy movement in the late 60's another. The facts are these; that multitudes change their minds quite radically quite quickly, and yet we want to claim that their thoughts are entirely their own, even the crazies who do not think so.

We have recourse to mechanical explanations - memes, conditioning, and so on, but mechanical explanations themselves call into question the existence of the unitary observer that constitutes the scientist's viewpoint.

The old fashioned fudge of the psychoanalysts is the divided self, unconscious of its division, but the effect on the observer is the same in the end - the observer cannot be trusted. And so we arrive at postmodernism, often characterised by its detractors as 'anti-science ant anti-truth. And woke.

What has woke dudes, and what is asleep? Is you is, or is you ain't?

Very nicely put. Much appreciated! — 0 thru 9

Well thanks. If we are somewhat talking about the same thing, it is not a topic I would normally discuss here in public, because it is necessarily personal and particular and not susceptible to analysis or repeatable experiment. But I can support something Jung said, to the effect that if you start noticing coincidences -'synchronicities', he calls them, it is an indication that you are heading in the right direction. Of course saying something like this is an invitation to go looking for them, which is not going in the right direction, but chasing one's own tail.

But Jung wrote far too much about everything for anyone with a life to read more than exerts - There's a nice little story by Mervyn Peake, Mr Pye, you might like...

It's as if, behind a veil, a whisper suggests, there is some particular business you have in this time and place. Play nice ethics are fine for the mundane business of rubbing along, but perhaps you have a job to do for yourself or for another; creative or healing, for a moment or a lifetime.

It is a dangerous thought if one indulges it. But danger is nothing special either. Is one ever guided to give guidance? By whom? A friend.

If it is so, it will happen whether you chase it or flee from it, because it it comes from within.

Sorry, no reference at all It just seemed obvious that if there is a largest number, decimal iterations must end at it - one cannot have the largest-number-plus-one-th decimal place. Thus no irrational numbers, Or to put it another way, the number of points on the number line between 0 and 1 will be finite.

But indeed so much would have to change that I cannot see how the numbers game would survive - most numbers would have no square for example, and calculations would keep ending in ERROR like on early calculators.

How to Do Things With Words by J.L. Austin.
According to this philopher: A statement is performative when nothing is stated or described but an act is performed. — javi2541997

All ye lovers and worshippers of Sophia, take notice that there are other gods. As you look down from your temples, you see Psyche, Ego, Mars, and Venus, your muses and your fates, and imagine them your servants not your gods. You think Poseidon is tamed; you think yourselves, indeed, above Sophia herself. To stand above the gods is a precarious place to dream oneself. Beware!

Isn’t it sad how far one has to go as a climate denier? — Xtrix

In sadness, one is reduced to psychology.

It's a matter of identification. Just as folk will die for 'their country', so they will die for their way of life, their car, their tv dinner. In claiming that my way of life is going to destroy us all, you are attacking and insulting me and 'The American Way'. Therefore you must be part of a communist conspiracy.

So you're an instrumentalist, a pragmatist, a non-realist?

I hate to be picky, but there is no demonstration of anything there
— unenlightened

And you are a skeptic? — spirit-salamander

You can call me whatever you like, I am not hot on -ismic identification, I am describing why I think some things are science and others are not. 'Pragmatist' would maybe be a good label for the position I am describing. But I am not a scientist, so I am not talking about myself. If we were talking about values or human society, or psychology, or God, I would be saying very different kinds of things, but if you wonder about the world heating up, you cannot beat a good thermometer.

Would you say then that something cannot be valid concerning the ontological interpretations of Newton's formulas? Because the principle of the sufficient ground must still be accepted? — spirit-salamander

I would say that validity pertains to argument, not to demonstration. If you want to send a rocket to the moon, or fire a shell at your enemy, or construct a pendulum for your clock, Newton's formula will help you to hit the target. That is a claim you can test or not, it is not an argument.

Maybe it's not magic: — spirit-salamander

I hate to be picky, but there is no demonstration of anything there, only a vague theory, that does not have any particular implications that could be tested and demonstrated. If it was so tested and could be so demonstrated, then it would be science. Until then, it's waffle. Scientists can and do have all sorts of strange ideas, but only those they can demonstrate are accepted by their fellows, however clever their arguments.

the arguments against the very ancient tradition of astrology were exceedingly weak. — spirit-salamander

Science does not proceed by argument, but by demonstration. The very idea of a universal force of attraction that acts at a distance is quite ridiculous; but Newton demonstrated that his gravitational calculations worked. Science is convincing because the magic works. Astrology is unconvincing because the magic does not work.

Thanks for that. I was wondering what he had to say about fascism, as the negation of democracy; this seems to be the book for that.

During the rise of fascism in the early twentieth century, American philosopher and educational reformer John Dewey argued that the greatest threat to democracy was not a political regime or even an aggressive foreign power but rather a set of dispositions or attitudes. Though not fascist in and of themselves, these habits of thought—rugged individualism and ideological nationalism—lay the foundation for fascism.

https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Dewey_for_a_New_Age_of_Fascism.html?id=_HlUzQEACAAJ&redir_esc=y

Review:https://www.researchgate.net/publication/341736937_Review_of_Nathan_Crick%27s_Dewey_for_a_New_Age_of_Fascism_Teaching_Democratic_Habits

And then I saw this 1948 article: https://www.nytimes.com/1948/10/26/archives/president-likens-dewey-to-hitler-as-fascists-tool-says-when-bigots.html

Looks like the same nonsense runs like a tapeworm through history.

there is no habitable place outside of every culture, and so Dewey, as you say, starts in the house we have, but his fight is not between progress and stasis, but between the cultural and the personal. — Antony Nickles

It remains the claim that democracy is the duty to put yourself in the others' shoes and investigate the desires and needs involved in the dispute at hand. — Antony Nickles

Put this in brackets, and call it the Dewey, Nickles, unenlightened position. So we can put ourselves in the shoes of some other that calls this 'Commie indoctrination'. They are not letting us in the house to discuss.To them, we are undermining the foundations. They are claiming the virtue word 'democracy' for themselves and excluding us from it. Now you can say oh that's politics and this is democracy, and I can agree, but what are we to do about the Republican Party?

Yes, this supports the point. Imagination is within reality. — Hallucinogen

This is the result of loose talking. The faculty of imagination is real, the contents of imagination are imaginary. The problem you have is not so much fallacy, but equivocation between what is real and what is imaginary.

An architect imagines a building and draws it in minute detail. The plans are real plans, but the building may never be built, because finance, permission, whatever. Yet the imaginary building can be realised.

As if a man had had his legs bitten off by a shark, and we all earnestly inquire what is the most important problem; that he is drowning, that he is bleeding to death, that he is losing consciousness, that his cries are not heard, or that the shark is coming back for more?

And yes education for Dewey is a term for something special, so something merely additional to the necessary and inevitable indoctrination with the ways of our lives (their criteria and judgments Wittgenstein will call it) — Antony Nickles

Unfortunately, there is no escape from the politics. Progressives can accept the need for institutions, for a stability in society, the way a home improvement fan can accept the need for a home to improve. But to accuse Dewey of indoctrination is weaponised irony, as I tried to point out. The inheritors of Dewey are people like John Holt and Ivan Illich, those who see at least a part of education as a mutual exercise in learning from each other, as you have described above.

I make much of the use of the word 'indoctrination' because it is used as a term of abuse projected by those who would abuse onto those who want to prevent that abuse. This practice, which has infected the US and the world, destroys the language and society with it. But I'll leave it at that and perhaps we can ignore the propaganda now, and get on with the more interesting discussion of Dewey and education, which I am keen to learn more about.

We were told in school that the US is a classless society, — Fooloso4

That's indoctrination!

As if by magic, conservative and progressive align with wealth and poverty, because the poor want to get rich and the rich want to stay rich.

Indoctrination with unchanging truth is not what education is supposed to be according to Dewey. — Fooloso4

But it is what conservatives accuse him of, and what they favour themselves, but presumably call by another name.

Put differently, what is it we wish to conserve? — Fooloso4

Ooh, sir! I know, sir! We wish to conserve what is good and change what is not so good for the better.

I think I'm going to let you see if you can work that out for yourself.

But imagination can change reality. Tolkien imagines a world, and books are published, films are made, songs are sung, merchandise is created, and the world is thoroughly polluted.

The unchanging truth is not their doctrine?

Someone should let them know that indoctrination with the unchanging truth is what education is supposed to be; its the transmission of culture, and so the conservation of conservatism. Do they think that to be conservative just means hanging on to one's stash?

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2022/sep/04/super-rich-prepper-bunkers-apocalypse-survival-richest-rushkoff?fbclid=IwAR1nav4uJ3G-bVk3Ci4w5yl8d-ITIivUCOCFGbjzLfsPBX0JY5jkR1HQ1M0

The smart money seems to be on nuclear, and biological catastrophe as well as climate apocalypse. Personally I predict that as soon as the smart people descend into their bunkers, the rest of us will be able to sort things out together.

Conservatives call this indoctrination. — Fooloso4

Of course education is indoctrination. But how else is conservatism to be conserved from one generation to another?

People are so afeared of communism that they wouldn't touch these ideologies with a barge pole. It's kinda a slippery slope fallacy but they want to play it safe, the risks are just too high to take the gamble. Apparently suffering outside a gulag is better than suffering inside one. My two cents. — Agent Smith

You need some more small change there, buddy. The US leads the world in incarceration rates. Land of the Free, except...
https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=incarceration+rates+by+country+per+capita&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

I see. Never mind then. Obviously can't be god - that's Bartricks.

Seems a tad hasty. Non-native speaker, and not well versed in the subject, but 4 posts in the last 2 years is not exactly flooding us with low quality...

Speaking as a member of the underclass and a layabout by trade, I can assure you that my revolutionary fervour is fed by starvation. This is not a new theory I am promoting - bread and circuses has long been known as the basis for a peaceful society.

Are you for or against the idea of a UBI (universal basic income) for all as being trialed in a few projects now. — universeness

For. I can even make an economic argument for it , though with the caveat that when one changes society in one way it can have all sorts unforeseen consequences. It goes something like this:

The human need is for security in relation to basics - food, shelter, and protection against marauders. These days, we spend such an inordinate amount of our economic activity on security against others, that it would be more cost effective to deprive the world of desperate people, instead of stockpiling weaponry, and building ever higher walls and stronger locks. If everyone had enough to eat, somewhere to live, and access to entertainment and perhaps cheap travel, along with already available education and health services, the attractions of robbery, piracy, and so on would be vastly reduced.

We can well afford layabouts, much easier than we can afford vandals and robbers. But one effect is that workers would be harder to exploit, if they had an alternative.

My local scheme: https://gov.wales/wales-pilots-basic-income-scheme

Money is an illusion. — Yozhura

This is obviously true. I like money because the the nice people at Walmart give me stuff in exchange for it, and they like it because other people give them stuff for it and so on. We call things like this "a social construct" rather than an illusion, because our valuing gives it real value, and one cannot manage without it these days. Economists call it "confidence", and when confidence is lacking, value is lost and inflation occurs.

On today's standards we're forced to work to sustain ourselves, even though our society could provide for you if they deem you beneficial enough for them to provide such assistance. — Yozhura

This is not quite true, and there is a big difference between the wage-slave and the historic slave. Here are a couple for you to consider: wage-slaves are not beaten or tortured, and if they escape, they are not chased and recaptured and brought back by force: if they choose to starve themselves, they are not force-fed.

However, depending on where you live in the world, things can still be dire. It is the measure of a civilised society that we do provide for and look after those who cannot work for whatever reason. If this does not happen where you live, then your first job should be to make it happen.

However, there is no reason why society should deliver food to folks who simply cannot be bothered to lend a hand. Our cooperation multiplies our efforts to an abundance unthinkable for an individual. We are both using the internet and the labour of unknown workers that produce our devices, and thus we incur a debt (a real debt of gratitude) to others.

Why is it ok for our species to expect that every individual should works as a slave to those who are in power, just to sustain themselves. — Yozhura

It isn't. Divest yourself immediately of everything made by these slaves, and go forth moneyless and jobless to live a free life. (Perhaps hang on to a pair of pants until you have time to fashion a flint so as to kill an animal and make your own leather trousers.)

Are you talking to me? — Amity

To anyone who cares to listen, but more I'm withdrawing somewhat from talking to you, with that dangerous enticing "we". Time for me to be quiet and watch the exegesis of others.

So, what we are looking for is to relate better both to TSZ and Nietzsche...yes?
Between or among ourselves. — Amity

The traveller needs to read the map, to get where they are going if they are lost, and when they get there, they have no more use for the map. What I am saying, (and all I am saying, because I'm unenlightened not Zarathustra) is that there is nothing here to understand in the sense of there being a resting place even as a distant goal. I cannot and should not help anyone to understand what has been deliberately obscured. Stop thinking that anyone enlightened, unenlightened, Zarathustra, Nietzsche, Jesus, Hitler, L Ron Hubbard, or David Attenborough is the overman with the answers. Dance, die, return.

(nor even this Nobel laureate):

I can't feel you anymore
I can't even touch the books you've read
Every time I crawl past your door
I been wishin' I was somebody else instead
Down the highway, down the tracks
Down the road to ecstasy
I followed you beneath the stars
Hounded by your memory
And all your ragin' glory
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
Idiot wind
Blowing through the buttons of our coats
Blowing through the letters that we wrote
Idiot wind
Blowing through the dust upon our shelves
We're idiots, babe
It's a wonder we can even feed ourselves

You can manage without god, if you are willing to take all the responsibility yourself.