Well some stuff has happened; John Harris has been banned. Lots of comments, and most of them caring and careful. I can't respond to everything, except to say that I'm interested in what you and I can do better, more than what we have done wrong. It looks like we are losing one of the very few women, who could tolerate this forum, and I hope that is a cause for far more consternation and regret than attended my resignation. I take it as a serious defeat, and shame on this community.

My experience is also that good morale isn't something you can engineer. If the stars are right, it's there. On the other hand, good morale is fairly easy to destroy.
— Mongrel

This is very true. I've worked in a few places with great morale. Sometimes one can name some factors: new urgent cause to work on, new place to work, all sorts of psychic income, etc. But then, one can also see why morale drops: psychic income falls; the new urgent cause goes stale; the new place to work starts resembling every other work place. The race for a cure is replaced by a treadmill of same old same old. — Bitter Crank

Morale is a fragile and curious affair, and nothing is more damaging to morale than an attempt to manipulate it. I hope I am not doing that, but on the contrary attempting to contribute to morale by trying to face our difficulties and find a way of communicating about them. I do not experience this forum, or the old forum as a treadmill, but rather as a learning centre, where I have learned, not only a great deal of philosophy and new understandings of what I already knew, but also about myself and how I can survive, and thrive and contribute to a community of the willing.

Excuse me, I'll have to come back to this later.

I'm done with this forum. — Mongrel

I'm so sorry. For you, for the ignoramuses of the forum, including myself. I'm crying.

Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone?

Someone was asking for evidence.

I have no objection. — Baden

To anything? That's problematic. :D

My thought is that Kevin ought be banned. Whether others ought be offered an opportunity to publicly lambast him seems a pretty silly question in light of the fact that we have a murderer in our midst who needs removal. — Hanover

By hypothesis, that is everyone's thought. The question is though, are you allowed to say so in public, remembering that Kevin is reading this thread, as you can see by the response below yours. (All that hyperbole wasted. :( )

But to address your point, what is it? That we should have a public "Trouble threads/posts/posters" discussion? — Michael

God, no. I am alas pointing to a problem, not to a solution. I'm hoping that if we look at the problem carefully, from the pov of members and admin alike, and without leaping to a policy conclusion on page one, then that may lead to an improved understanding all round of how to deal with things. For instance, it should be noted at once that there is not a lot of point in an ordinary member remonstrating with Kevin, but there is possibly some point in remonstrating with moderators about Kevin. "Dear moderator, you seem not to have noticed, but several of us are quietly bleeding to death." There might be some way to make this a bit easier than it is. The ideal would be to have a thread that we peasants could post to but not read in which we could have a long and detailed rant about all the many Kevin's that are infesting the site and ruining our insightful discussions. That way it would be clear - assuming it was used by many, occasionally, and not just me, all the time - who was a Kevin in the fevered imagination of another Kevin, and who was a real bloody Kevin.

There is also a direct question there as to what the rules of the feedback forum are. My inclination would be that it is a place to moan about moderators, but not about ordinary members. That's fair isn't it, considering they have a place to moan about us? Mind you, the standard complaint is likely to be that you deleted my harmless and amusing comment while ignoring Kevin's mass slaughter of the members, so there would have to be some flexibility. But this does not anyway solve the problem of Kevin.

That which is existentially contingent upon language, and that which is not.

Isn't that a central consideration? — creativesoul

I think it's important, but... R D Laing come to mind, with his talk about rules that include a rule that the rules cannot be talked about. No one actually tells you what you have to do if you have these chromosomes/genitals, and it is somewhat improper to do so outside the consulting room or the academy. Talk is only half of communication - there is show as well as tell.

Your moral injunction is my command, master.

Have we all but eliminated the determining factor(s), which used to be 'X' and 'Y' chromosomes? — creativesoul

I am so old that I can remember when the facts of chromosomes were not known. In those days the determining facts were genital not genetic. And they determined which public convenience you could use, and what kind of hairstyle you could sport. These days, and consult the guidelines for confirmation, it is not homosexuals and blacks that are rejected from society, but homophobes and racists. The determining facts are political.

Manliness and womanliness are package deals (so to speak) that include being embodied in a certain kind of body, having certain chromosomal arrangements and genetic characteristics, having certain organs, having inclinations that fall within a general range, and so on. — Bitter Crank

That is a very clear way of expressing things. There is a package called normal whereby if you have a penis then you have short hair, wear trousers, have a beard, like to fuck women are competitive, aggressive, unemotional, analytical read maps, go hunting, get drunk, watch football, avoid romantic comedies except when trying to pull, and so on and on, with variations according to culture and class.

Failure to conform is deviance, and deviance is punished.

Of course now we are all liberal, we don't mind all sorts of deviance, and if you want to watch romantic comedies - knock yourself out, and we'll all support you - as long as you don't become a drama queen or call my identity into question by trying to kiss me or something, or expect the state to support your deviant identity.

Grayson says that now he is expected to show up in drag, which he indicates kinda takes the edge off being in drag. Obtaining his notoriety has robbed him of his mystery. — Cavacava

What he has been robbed of is the transgressive thrill; talented artists are admitted to the upper classes (almost) and therefore allowed to be 'eccentric'.

Way back in prehistory, when I was a lad, one of the complaints about us hippies growing our hair was that "you can't tell if they are men or women". And this was important to real men, because you might accidentally try and get off with another man and that would make you a deviant, and at that time, a criminal. It's still a notorious danger of the ladyboys; real men have to be careful in Thailand.

All of which is a long-winded way of pointing out that identities inter-relate, and your deviance is a threat to my normality. Of course we have reached the point where normality has absorbed liberality, and intolerance is the new deviance, which is a thrill for some philosophers ... being a homophobe is regarded with exactly the same intolerant horror and instant punishment that used to directed at homosexuals. And that is why the world is a much happier and more moral place than it used to be. ;)

"Butch" and "fem" may or may not transfer very well to private sexual behavior. Sometimes the public presentation carries over to the private presentation, and sometimes it is reversed. (And there are all sorts of gradations).

Some guys who are divas at the bar turn out to be pile drivers in bed, and some guys who are toughs on the street turn out to be pussies in bed. (But not always: sometimes the diva and the tough don't switch to opposites.) — Bitter Crank

Yes, that's interesting. As if the private and public personas may be the same or opposed. I suppose I was wondering to what extent it is a self-conscious performance of heterosexual norms, and to what extent it is 'involuntary' in he way that straights come to feel that they absolutely 'are' the roles they have been assigned. My very limited experience of the public persona is that it tends to be somewhat of an impoverished exaggerated cartoon of 'real' gender roles, but that may bey own confusion and failure to see a really different spectrum that does not entirely relate to straight gender roles in the first place? Or is it that the whole performance aspect is a hangover from the days when everything had to be hidden, and covertly signalled.

And then I'm trying to relate this in my own mind to Eldridge Cleaver's discussion of the intersection of race and gender in Soul on Ice, about the hyper-masculine black man and the ultra-feminine white woman. But that is probably too complicated and controversial for this thread.

Let's move on from sexuality to the topic of gender. Perhaps the easiest way to get a handle on this is to consider gender roles.

Socially constructed gender roles are considered to be hierarchical, and are characterized as a male-advantaged gender hierarchy by social constructionists.[24] The term patriarchy, according to researcher Andrew Cherlin, defines "a social order based on the domination of women by men, especially in agricultural societies".

wiki

It's a long article, and worth a look, but just from this almost definitional fragment, one can see the beginnings of an oppositional morality, such that because men are dominant, women ought to be submissive. Thus the male virtues are vices in females, and vice versa. This can only be a broad generalisation, and societies are not homogeneous. Still for a woman to be called manly or a man to be called effeminate tend to be seen as insults.

Here'a another fragment:

In another study of gender stereotypes it was found that parents' stereotypes interact with the sex of their child to directly influence the parents' beliefs about the child's abilities. In turn, parents' beliefs about their child directly influence their child's self-perceptions, and both the parents' stereotypes and the child's self-perceptions influence the child's performance.[111]
Stereotype threat is being at risk of confirming, as self-characteristic, a negative stereotype about one's group.[112] In the case of gender it is the implicit belief in gender stereotype that women perform worse than men in mathematics, which is proposed to lead to lower performance by women.[113]
A recent review article of stereotype threat research related to the relationship between gender and mathematical abilities concluded 'that although stereotype threat may affect some women, the existing state of knowledge does not support the current level of enthusiasm for this [as a] mechanism underlying the gender gap in mathematics'.[114]
In another study, Deaux and her colleagues found that most people think women are more nurturant, but less self-assertive than men. and that this belief is indicated universally, but that this awareness is related to women's role. To put it another way, women do not have an inherently nurturant personality, rather that a nurturing personality is acquired by whoever happens to be doing the housework. — wiki

It would be interesting to see how this nurturing persona plays out in shepherds and the like, as well as straightforward domesticity.

The generic term for masculine virtue is 'virility'. "Virility (from the Latin virilitas, manhood or virility, derived from Latin vir, man) refers to any of a wide range of masculine characteristics viewed positively. Virile means "marked by strength or force". (wiki again)

The feminine equivalent is 'fertility' which virtue she shares with a good piece of real-estate.

@Bitter Crank Can you say something from your experience about the roles of 'butch and 'fem', which I understand are sort of mirror gender roles in the homosexual community? Or am I hopelessly out of date?

Yes, indeed. Hopefully we do not need to argue about the notion of fact here. But a reasonable example that one could use is that of sex and gender. Where babies come from is something we do not need to speculate about, and cannot legislate. But Apart from such interesting and important matters, what is a man, and what is a woman are very debatable and largely subject to the construction we put upon them. And as Streetlight referenced elsewhere, the behaviour mandated by such constructions in turn affects the physiology in terms of hormone levels at least.

No, I've said many times since I've made it clear that sexuality is both psychological and physiological. — John Harris

Gender isn't a psychological "state.

But what you haven't said at all, despite many polite requests, is what you mean by 'psychological'.

But this is on the understanding that changes of brain state at a certain level of subtlety below gross trauma are called 'psychological'.

This isn't true at all. Where exactly did you learn this? — John Harris

I learned it while at university studying psychology. Where did you learn the opposite?

You obviously don't know since you keep showing you can't say what you mean or why being Gay or Straight is psychological. — John Harris

I would say that preferences are generally psychological rather than physiological, which is to say that they are states of mind. Sexual orientation is rather similar to preferences for chocolate - which you did not respond to earlier. For example, some lovers of milk-chocolate would never touch plain, whereas others will 'make do' with plain if milk is unavailable. Similarly, some heterosexuals will make do with homosexual relationships in sexually segregated prison, whereas others will not. In both cases, a change of circumstances changes orientation, where a change of physiology is unlikely to be happening. But this is on the understanding that changes of brain state at a certain level of subtlety below gross trauma are called 'psychological'.

But it is you who cannot (or will not) say what your question or your answer mean.

So you have no idea what you mean when you say being Gay or Straight is psychological. At least you're getting somewhere. — John Harris

No, I know what I mean quite well; what I want to find out is what you mean when you say being Gay or straight is not psychological. You claim to disagree with the distinction I made and which side of it the phenomena fall, and that is rather confusing.

Well you put the question, and I gave it the best meaning I could. Since I have erroneously mistaken your meaning of the term 'psychological' to be opposed to 'physiological', I'd be grateful if you could educate me as to what it does mean, and the sort of thing it could apply to.

Well perhaps you can elucidate what it means for something to psychological as distinct from physiological, where physiological is a body and/or brain state. An example would be useful. Is a preference for milk chocolate over plain physiological?

Of course it's a physiological state; it's deeply tied to one's body and physical brain. — John Harris

Once you add body to brain, every state is physiological, and the distinction between physiological and psychological collapses. Which makes both your question and your answer meaningless.

Do you think being Gay or Straight is a psychological state? — John Harris

Well it isn't a physiological state, so I suppose it must be a psychological state.

But there seems to be a conflation in the thread of sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender. Which is par for the course, particularly when an all male discussion is happening. And that is because the male identity is so closely bound up with a strong concern about what one does and wishes to do with one's sexual organs. So much so, that it is still somewhat controversial to claim that gay men are real men. And the controversy illuminates the difference between sex and gender, which is roughly that one is physiological condition, and the other is a role, associated with that condition.

The human custom of swimming for recreation is a pattern of human behaviour; — Srap Tasmaner

I'm not sure what your point is. There's nothing I want to disagree with in what you say, but since you don't mention social constructs...

Ok, I'll play with it a little. Say there is a little tribe living by a river. And perhaps they have an area designated for washing and swimming that everyone uses, and then another area where they do fishing. or grow watercress or something. And perhaps there is a sacred place where no one goes except to make offerings to the Crocodile God on Crocodile Day. One might at this point say that the river has been socially constructed into functional divisions - the river itself being undivided.

So Dr Tasmaner rolls up one day, and after looking around, goes to the elders and says, " Look, you need to change things around so that where you grow your watercress is upstream from where you bathe, because you are polluting the water, and then you get liver fluke in the watercress, and that is why you are all ill." You might persuade them, or you might not.

So a place is given a (social) meaning and a function - the bathing place. This matches the meaning and function of money, or the meaning and function of skin colour. How the meaning and function can be changed is for sure a matter either of physical necessity no more water or no more access, or of social change by persuasion that Jesus condemned bathing except of feet, or whatever.

So what's the conceptual problem?

I think we have to take our history as a whole. — Bitter Crank

Then it would be a good idea to supplement the celebratory statues of heroic arseholes with a plaque detailing the shit they produced.

May I disagree? If you have no contacts to other human beings (or whatever we want to define society to consist of) you aren't a part of any society. — BlueBanana

No you may not. Every little philosopher has a Mummy and a Daddy.

When the buffalo are stampeding northwards, the one at the front cannot turn west without being trampled.
— unenlightened

But it can turn west. What does being trampled stand for in your analogy? — BlueBanana

Don't contradict my fantasies, peasant! Being trampled stands for what happens to you when you deny a social construct, which is that society rides roughshod over you.

Here I think the primary point of difference is:

If you want to stop a stampede that you are part of, the first thing to do is to stop trying to get to the front.
— unenlightened

Where I would say there is no outside to the stampede, when it comes to social movement. Or, perhaps, the stampede is just one movement within a grander dance of movement, so there is an escape from the *stampede*, but not from the social world (hence why it really and truly is a world). — Moliere

Well there is no outside to society for humans, just as there is no air outside the atmosphere. But there is air outside a hurricane, and there is an outside to a stampede - there must be for it to be heading somewhere. It's an analogy, so there's no point in pressing too hard, but I think it is a fairly apposite image of the condition of society at the moment and not necessarily throughout history, that it is heading somewhere (a cliff?) at full tilt with everyone trying to be at the front.

I think perhaps the more pertinent question - and I think - I hope! - you agree - is what on earth would make anyone think these two characteristics are in any way incompatible. As if we and our creations do not in the first instance belong to the environment!
— StreetlightX

That is a good question....

I think it's something to do with how we tend to think about things. I certainly think about the world as something "outside", at times, even while believing that it isn't! :D The play between outside/inside, outside of my power and within my power, world and self starts to look fuzzy when it comes to our social world. — Moliere

Perhaps it is fuzzy, and we are seeing it aright. I always start every thread with a chant of 'all-is-one' for half an hour. And then I get out the machete, for the purposes of filling the internet with complications. Since all is one, I am only hacking at myself.

Meanwhile, in another part of the forest, although I am stuff and the environment is stuff and other people are stuff, and society is my environment and I am society and so on, still it is good to talk about woozles and where they aren't. Distinctions cannot be maintained, but they have to be made nonetheless, on an improvised basis. Here is a story about how the individual is moulded by the social constructs that make up the environment. And yet some herd-defying maverick manages to write the critique of the society that made him.

It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. — J. Krishnamurti

It's not all about you. — unenlightened

But I'd say this picture misses on the real parts of social entities -- that they aren't something where we just do stuff and have happen. Those in charge, those purportedly in power, are often caught up within social entities just as those without power are. They don't have the power to change the entities they live within -- they act within the institutions that already exist. — Moliere

Of course. Indeed the politician is more caught up in the construct of power and governance than the peasant. When the buffalo are stampeding northwards, the one at the front cannot turn west without being trampled. The one at the back is the one with some freedom to stop or turn

When you say "of society", what are the parts? — Moliere

We know what a hurricane is, that it is real. We know that the 'parts' are air molecules. But that doesn't help us much. It is more useful to consider that a hurricane is made of movements than to say it is made of air. A stampede is likewise made of movements rather than of buffalo, and social constructs are mass movements rather than static arrangements.

If you want to stop a stampede that you are part of, the first thing to do is to stop trying to get to the front. And that's all you can do, except whatever occurs to you when you are well and truly left behind.

Too many 'isms for my tiny brain; time for a break. But when your bridge/river collapses, who you going to call - a social engineer, or a structural engineer?

Which is not to deny that an architect is an amateur of both disciplines.

If it weren't for the acts of people there wouldn't be a river there. So, some rivers are socially constructed, but not all. I don't think the Nile, for instance, is the product of human activity. — Moliere

Right. In my view this is a misunderstanding of the normal meaning of 'social construct', which does not mean 'stuff we made together'. I'm happy to call it a constructed river to distinguish it from a Nile type river, though that too is constructed in places. What makes something a social construct is that it is made of society, not by society. The artificial river enables a certain structure of human relations, and that structure of relations is a social construct, not the river itself.

So the pyramids are constructions that were provoked by a social construct of religion and government that has passed away, and they now partake of a completely different social construct called 'tourism'.

Perhaps odd, but I wouldn't say nothing in common -- and what they have in common is relevant. Or at least it seems so to me. In particular, in the origins of each. Both are the product of our activities. — Moliere

I don't understand. In what way is a river the product of our activities?

Hovering over this thread, especially as it relates to language, is the standard indirect realist view that everything is a construction, if not social, that "river", for instance, as a concept or as a word we use, is a procrustean bed we force some inchoate bits of reality into. — Srap Tasmaner

It's all talk on this thread. Nevertheless, what my talk of 'rivers' is intended to point to is just those inchoate bits of reality that on the contrary force the traveller to look for a bridge or a ferry, or a ford. Which is to say, let's try and keep indirect realism hovering, by understanding that the construct of language can - for the sake of argument and by arbitrary construction if you will - be bracketed off.

Some rivers could be social constructions... — Moliere

That seems an odd thing to say. A beaver constructs a dam and thereby constructs a lake and diverts the river. The Olympic Committee constructs an artificial river for the canoeing event. Such things are constructions as distinct from 'natural' lakes and rivers, and that seems like a handy distinction to make. But these are nothing like anything generally called a 'social construct'.

There is this thing called money, consisting of coins and notes which are constructed in factories called 'mints'. We have a new plastic £5 note here, and the old paper note is no longer 'legal tender'. It is still a note constructed in the mint, but its social status has been changed. Shops won't accept it and you have to take it to a bank. Compare this with the social status of skin colour.

In prisons, cigarettes and drugs become currency. You don't have to have a habit to trade.

For sure, language is a social construct. This river is called the Nile, because that's what we call it, and if we called it the Umbongo, it would be the Umbongo, but we don't. But that doesn't make the Nile/Umbongo a social construct, only "the Nile/Umbongo".

I'm interested in the absence of sex/gender in your musings about this topic. It doesn't require a psychoanalyst to wonder whether there isn't something about *mothers*, rather than people in general, that you're implicitly addressing. The abstractions you talk in seem to be the ways an academic could-be-father would think about such a topic. What of the could-be-mother's body and what the body's moods and tempers and temperaments tell a woman? — mcdoodle

The story told from a woman's point of view makes no sense at all. Procreation is something a man does, and a woman becomes. 'Why do it?' makes sense, whereas 'why be it?' does not. It is the toxicity of individualism that leads down this path, that a lifeless universe is to be preferred - by no-one.

The notion of cause requires time, because cause has to precede effect. It follows (as effect follows cause, or as conclusion follows argument?) that if there is a beginning of time, there can be no cause of that beginning in sense in which 'cause' is understood in every other case. And if there is no beginning of time, there are the problems mentioned above.

It is, in short, unthinkable that there either is or is not a beginning to time. This is because thought is time. Fortunately, it is not necessary to encompass the world with thought.

Is the unconscious a myth? — Mongrel

Like the myth of Oedipus? Or Narcissus?

I think the unconscious is an unknown known, and one neurologist's woo is as flakey as his brother's. Religion is rather better at psychology than science is, so regarding the unconscious as myth is probably a good idea, if only to keep the worst of the meddlers out our heads.

There is the myth of the cup that is in the cupboard, or is not there, when one does not look, and the unconscious is like that; it's behind you. It's the bits of lego left over from the grand construction of the narrative self, the out of character fellow that takes over when competence is not enough.

A rational man's unconscious is irrational, an emotional man's unconscious is calculating. And of course they are both women! ;)

You don't see a problem? — TheMadFool

Only that I was wrong.

Oops, you're quite right, there can be non-living things that want to suffer and do.

Seems unlikely though! :D

C. No suffering thing wants to suffer.

I can't be bothered to draw the diagram, but label your circles 'living things', 'things that suffer', 'things that want to suffer', and shade out what the premises tell you are empty regions.

Not the most exciting conclusion I've ever seen.

You're missing the point (I think deliberately). Bats can't study us but we can study them. Have you seen a book on humans written by bats? The human mind is unique in that respect. — TheMadFool

You're missing the point. We're unique, bats, and stars, and fish are unique. What is advanced and what is retarded depends on where one is going; and wherever one is going is the 'meaning' of going that way. You assume that reflecting, being aware, writing books, whatever we do is the meaning and then conclude that this is the meaning. That we are the Crown of Creation is not a new idea, but neither is the idea that we are a terrible mistake. Perhaps it's all about learning to cooperate, and the ants are more advanced than we. I'm not saying you're wrong, just that you haven't given any justification.

Value is, at least in part, attached to uniqueness and we are unique, being the only rational animal. Imagine a room full of blind people. Each person has his/her own talents but ALL are blind. Now, you walk in and presuming you're sighted, you're then given the responsibility of seeing for the blind people. It's something like that. — TheMadFool

Oh, you mean like bats have this unique echo-location sense that we monkeys don't, so the universe must be all about them.

Through us the universe has achieved self-awareness. — TheMadFool

But through stars, it has achieved hotness, and through fish it has achieved swimming. To convince a fish, you need an argument that self-awareness is more valuable than swimming.

I'll watch 'What about Bob?' if you watch Tarkovsky's 'Solaris' — Question

I watched it. I already read the story, heard a radio adaptation, and saw at least one other film version. A real classic, and that was a suitably atmospheric version, though the alien planet was strangely absent visually in this version.

The relation of humanity to the alien is one of total incomprehension and horror, and this is the mirror of the individual's relation to himself, and particularly for Kelvin, to his love. I can see why you like it. The inescapable self - beloved horror.

So going to the OP, semiotics would take it as obvious that our relations with the world are constructed. That is the definition of life and mind - to be a modelling relation where information forms a self in fruitful control of a physical world. — apokrisis

This is much more congenial to my own view, though the abstract language I'm not so familiar with. Let me see If I'm getting it right ...

My relation to a pile of wind-blown leaves is an uncaring or exploitative one (ignore or compost) until I notice that a hedgehog has taken up residence. Now my relation to hedgehogs is friendly because they eat my enemies the slugs, so even in entirely self-centred mode, my relation to the pile of leaves has changed, because it has become a source of allies, and now has value for me. But it also has value for the hedgehog, and therefore negative value to the slugs, though they will be unaware of it. My relation with the pile of leaves has become one of negotiating these values, and the difference between a pile of leaves and a hedgehog house is only that the hedgehog is using it, but that is highly significant for all of us.

Do you mind if I ask a personal question? Are you depressed yourself or has that emotion ever 'infected' you — Question

No, never. I get dispirited, despairing, discouraged, mightily pissed off, sometimes uncaring for self or other, hatred of self and/or other, as well as more pleasant acceptable feelings. But not depressed, as I understand it from others, no fog - the shit is full hd colour and smellovision.