My knowledge of Kant is from snippets I've read elsewhere. His work IS, however, on my list of things I would have read had I been born in an alternate universe.

His anchorage in Königsberg is, perhaps surprising for a seminal intellectual of the time. Some people certainly traveled around at that time, thinking of composers like Haydn or Mozart. Napoleon covered a lot of territory. On the other hand, there is Blake's "To see a World in a Grain of Sand / And a Heaven in a Wild Flower / Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand / And Eternity in an hour". A quick look at his bio in Wikipedia showed that he published a paper showing how the gravity of the moon slowed the rotation of the earth and eventually became tidally locked. He also explained that the great Lisbon earthquake was caused by caverns of hot gases. Not the case, but at least it's a theory based in nature rather than theology. Plate tectonics weren't discovered until the 20th century.

I'm not a big fan of traveling, though I have been to Boston, New York City, Washington, D.C.,San Francisco, Denver, and the Grand Canyon; East Africa, England, the Netherlands, and--high point of anyone's travels--Winnipeg, Manitoba. What can compare to Winnipeg? Well, it's colder than Minneapolis, but otherwise not much different. Probably won't make it to Omaha, Cleveland, or Buffalo.

How about you? Traveled much?

We all lose a certain number of brain cells every day, about 1 cell every second. Tick, tick tick. Since yesterday at this time you have lost 86,400 brain cells. Between the ages of 18 and 91, we lose around 9% of our brains.

A 91 year old may not display many deficits resulting from that missing 9%. On the other hand, a 35 year old with severe brain injury may have lost so many brain cells that he or she no longer recognizes a spouse, children, their surroundings, or self.

Does the person who has lost his or her identity still have one? Does it matter if everyone else knows who this person's identity is, but the subject does not? If I don't know who I am, what good does it do me if there are a million people who know my identity? No good at all!

Our identity is as secure as the structure of our brain. Brain disease, traumatic brain injury, and stroke can wipe out our identity, never to return,

A neurosurgeon, poking around in your brain, could make a bad slice here or there and you would not be present in the recovery room after surgery. Your body would, your brain would, and but for those unfortunately severed connections you would be there too.

The upshot for me is that our identities are quite perishable.

Probably the worst sermon topic for any preacher, priest, or pastor is what they have to deal with on Trinity Sunday. Explaining the Trinity, and why/if/how it is important to following Jesus is damned hard, if not nigh unto impossible. It's worse than the Immaculate Conception the Virgin birth, miracles in the wine cellar, and so on.

Suppose you somehow became convinced that Christianity is false. Suppose you came to believe that Jesus was just a man. — Art48

Been there, done that.

Except that I don't consider Christianity "false". There are no "true" religions so there can't be any "false" ones. Religions begin; grow and flourish because they satisfy the needs of their members; increase in complexity; continue on for a long time; or begin to fail and may go extinct. As far as I know, nobody is making sacrifices to Jupiter or praying to Zeus. Competition is a factor, as is outright suppression. Christianity both competed and suppressed.

Jesus was a man. Unfortunately, his biography was a highly partisan project. There weren't any impartial inquiries into his activities and ideas. I believe Jesus was an itinerant preacher who attracted a following. He had some very good ideas which remain worthwhile.

It's a lot easier to put up with this (probably) very scruffy, (quite possibly difficult) man, than his latter day followers, and the 2000 year accretion of dogma.

4. None of the above. I would do something else. — Art48

I first did what a lot of Christians have done -- I absented myself from the church. Later on I developed more specific objections to Christian belief and practice (and the beliefs and practices of the other two received religions).

I may believe in God (some days yes, some days no) but in any case, I'm not an atheist. Atheists seem to feel their non-belief is some sort of great accomplishment. It's not.

One way to avoid Covid is to shun other people, who are nothing but hell, according to J. P. Sartre. Fuck Sartre.

Kant asked, "What can I know? What ought I to do? What can I hope?"

There are clear positive answers to the first two questions, which we can at least hope is the case.

Very interesting. I first heard about the EUB when I was a freshman at Winona State. The 'house parents' of the Wesley Foundation house were an EUB couple, one of them a local EUB pastor. I had never been alerted to the schismatic parentage of Wilbur and Orville Wright. Once again I must ask the staff, "Why was I not informed?"

Protestants do more splitting than an atom smasher, which, I think, keeps them strong and healthy, at least until they grievances all cool off. Everybody leaves the schism refreshed and energized. In time they merge with some similar group and after an appropriately long union, split again. The United Methodist Church is in the process of splitting over gay clergy, gay marriage, and all that.

No LSD in my bucket.

Per my favorite New York Jew, Woody Allen: "I'm not afraid of dying; I just don't want to be there when it happens."

I'm 78; I scheduled hip replacement surgery (3 months hence), and I hope to get at least five years of use out of it. My siblings are all in the 80s and are mostly doing well, except a brother who has metastatic prostate cancer and likely won't be with us much longer. I had a cancer removed from my throat almost 5 years ago and there is no sign of recurrence. My skin seems cancer prone. Sunbathing on gay nude beaches can lead to AIDS; that could have been me. It could still lead to melanoma. I take a statin, a BP med, an antidepressant, and drops for glaucoma.

There are a lot of problems I don't have, and I feel physically healthy, apart from joint pain.

I've been happy and content, more or less, since 2012, I have gotten better at avoiding sturm and drang. I can certainly get torqued out, but that doesn't happen so often now. I don't get around much any more, so run into few high drama situations with other people. A lot of crap has been flushed down the river that runs through it.

I have not done everything I want to do. I have not seen Paris, Berlin, or Rome. But then, I haven't seen Omaha, Cleveland, or Detroit either. On the other hand, I've seen London, Amsterdam, Nairobi, Kampala, Duluth, Des Moines, and Denver. There are many unknown topics I want to learn about, at least to some extent. I'll stumble onto those in due time. I wanted to be suave, sophisticated, and multilingual. That boat left the dock in so many ways so long ago.

I never ran a marathon, but I did do 2 century rides on my bike (100 miles per day). I never got over my fear of heights (no rock climbing, ferris wheel rides, or roller coaster nightmares, thank you). Spiders and centipedes bother me much less than they used to. I haven't seen a snake in a long time, so don't know how I feel about them.

I came out and dove into gay life at about the right time. That was a good thing. I probably drank too much and smoked too many cigarettes, but it was all worth while. I found a lot of great sex and long-lasting love. I had a long fling with socialism, which is over. The group I belonged to died a merciful death. I planted some successful gardens, and several that were failures. The raspberry patch has turned malevolent and threatens to engulf the back yard.

The genre of "gospel" music is quite large and a lot of it is very singable for otherwise unskilled congregations. "Power in the Blood" is a good example. The Methodist Church I grew up in didn't use much of this genre -- it stuck to mainline hymns like "Come Thou Font of Every Blessing".

"Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing" is a hymn written by the pastor and hymnodist Robert Robinson, who penned the words in the year 1758 at the age of 22. It was set to a number of tunes, including shape-note tunes which were generally sung at a fast clip, a cappella. Here is a Primitive Baptist congregation a cappella performance to its most familiar tune.

"Sacred Harp" was a popular late 18th/19th century style of singing for congregations without the wherewithal (or desire?) for instruments. It was sung a cappella in a manner that sounds harsh to our ears. Myself, I'm a church music snob and prefer high-church music to low-church Primitive Baptist styles. Here's an example:

On the other hand, this is more distinctive that the Mormon Tabernacle Cheese Press in Salt Lake City whose mass choir size and big organ crushes everything into a very similar but pleasant sound.

The title of the thread is actually a slogan from the Soviet Union. — Shawn

Proof of the difficulty of talking about the happiness of the masses.

Certainly the USSR had a properly functioning social fabric. They wouldn't have been able to survive Stalin's and Hitler's pathological programs if they hadn't had a tough social fabric. Social fabric, however, isn't the same as happiness.

I'm not suggesting that nobody in the USSR was happy, or that unhappiness was the daily lot of soviet citizens. It just seems like that the USSR presented significant barriers to individual happiness, and the collective joy and happiness of the people was more a Potemkin village than a reality.

I'm not suggesting that everybody in the USA is happy, or that unhappiness is a rarity here. Here (USA) barriers to individual happiness are erected by private agencies rather than public ones: employers, retail companies, advertising companies (looking at you, Edward Bernays), political parties, churches (you're going to hell IF...). real estate developers, banks, and so on.

In the US, the collective joy and happiness of the people is a Disneyland rather than a Potemkin village.

I don't think it is difficult for the basic human to feel contented and happy. It seems to be the case that people living in small, pre-industrial, at least somewhat isolated cultures achieve contentment and happiness with much less effort than we do in big, industrial, integrated, striving, rat race cultures.

Dropping out (as in "“Turn On, Tune In, and Drop Out,” encapsulated the spirit of a generation seeking enlightenment, freedom, and a break from societal norms. The phrase was first uttered by Leary during the Human Be-in on January 14, 1967, a pivotal moment at the peak of the Summer of Love) is one way of attempting happiness and contentment in this society.

I didn't turn on with LSD, but I did tune in and drop out intermittently, between jobs to maintain a viable if minimal budget. (Homeless encampments are nobody's idea of happiness.) This strategy worked pretty well because I was readily employable and had lots of interests to pursue when I wasn't wage slaving.

I could have done better (been happier more often) had I planned this out more carefully. I wasted a lot of time working out this strategy, and maintaining delusions of professional social service occupations.

Shawn: Are you happy and contented?

I don't know how to think about "The Happiness of All Mankind", all 8 billion individuals -- one by one or collectively.

Only individuals can experience happiness, and it's a subjective experience. Even commies can only pursue happiness one prole at a time. The way I read it, Jefferson's life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (whatever he was thinking of at the time) is a one-by-one project. MAYBE one can organize a society so that it is easier to have life, liberty, and happiness, but it will still be the individual's initiative that gets the job done.

Universal happiness, universal peace, universal fairness, etc. sound nice until one begins thinking about the absurd amount of social engineering it would take to achieve a fair, just peace that would satisfy every one of the 8 billion beneficiaries.

Too pessimistic? BC is short for Bitter Crank, after all. People who live in a society which has a certain amount of "fluidity" -- where people can fairly easily select circumstances that contribute to their happiness -- have a better chance of happiness than people can achieve in a rigid, dogmatic society like Taliban-plagued Afghanistan.

What are we to make of this? — Gregory

What I make of it is that eventually the dogma becomes crushingly heavy and squeezes the life out of whatever liberation a religious movement might have offered in its beginning. That's just me. Hundreds of millions of believers find dogma quite tolerable, or find ways of dealing with it.

Jesus without dogma was apparently an itinerate Jewish preacher who attracted a following. In the hands of the church he later became Christ; the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world; miracle worker; healer; the great judge.

For what it's worth, the Jesus Project discarded much of what is attributed to Jesus. I gather they saw in many of his sayings later dogma that was back dated into his mouth or just not convincing.

The program of the church (from the New Testament on down to summer camp) is compelling enough, especially if it was not rammed down ones throat. I found it pleasant enough, even compelling at times, for many years.

I have no idea what you mean by "The Linguistic Quantum World" but the phrase does trip a switch in my head, maybe in the medulla oblongata.

When we 'drill down' from large objects to the sub-atomic, we end up in the spooky quantum world, about which I know nothing. I have heard it's weird. Something sort of vaguely kind of similar happens when we drill down from "apparent reality", the level where 'what is IS and what is not IS NOT", where my individual self is clearly me, where reality is as solid as bedrock, to your linguistic quantum world. There perception, belief, self, reality, meaning, and so on become slippery, We learn from brain science that our "self" is a fantasy created by the brain. Perceptions are often misleading; Reality is a bit rubbery; beliefs play an outsized role, and so on.

At this "quantum level" belief can seem to be reality. We seem to make our own world. It's all kind of spooky, a boggy swamp.

Were one to get stuck in this mire, one might be admitted to a psych ward, at least for observation and maybe for a prolonged stay.

Fortunately for most of us, and I'm looking at you, Noble Dust, we awake with a startled jerk from these reveries and it's back to what we call "the real world". The ground is solid again, the self isn't some hoax perpetrated by a batch of gray matter in our skulls, and god is in his heaven and all is right with the world, so to speak.

BUT such reveries can leave a lingering doubt about just how substantial the real world is. God damn it, I just spilled coffee all over my keyboard!!! Son of a bitch, the bread in the toaster just caught fire. Fuck! I just missed the bus, I'll miss the concert for which I paid $150, and there are no refunds. And it's starting to rain and my fancy leather shoes are getting wet!

Reality intervenes. The soaked keyboard really won't work. The toaster really is shot. Missed buses have real consequences. Rain can really ruin fancy shoes. Finding a hundred dollars isn't a good reality intervention. Losing a hundred dollars is.

Belief is reality — Noble Dust

It's a good thing and a bad thing that "belief is reality" is false, to the extent that your reality conflicts with mine.

Beliefs certainly exist -- that is a piece of reality but not the same thing as reality.

How about "believing is seeing"? Some times we do not see reality because we do not believe that it is real; and visa versa, we see the non-existent because we believe it exists. Some see god's purposes in every bird song and car crash.

Sheol looks a lot like the oil deposits under the Middle East. They were ahead of their time.

they are all varieties of fanfiction of course — schopenhauer1

At this point, it's like we are just interpreting poor rules made up by a Dungeon and Dragons designer on a poorly thought new early edition... — schopenhauer1

It's the Great Apostolic Blunder Machine***, made of patches, work arounds, bridges to nowhere, arcana, fog machines, heresies even to the heretics, schisms and scandals, drama, mysterious goings on, holy holy holy, books piled upon books, rituals in the dark, all the way to bright shiny aluminum Christmas trees and chocolate bunnies. WTF

Why would anyone bother with it? The whole thing, though, has been powerfully inspirational to any number of very highly motivated preachers who were determined to convince us pagans that THIS IS THE TRUTH. Believe it, or else! Jews, Christians and Moslems, have gotten roughly 1/2 to 2/3 of the people to more or less believe it.

Because the world is an unsatisfactory place (referencing the title of this thread, "Is the real world fair and just?" -- clearly not) there is religion, and...

The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion.

Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

-Uncle Karl-

There is a reason why religion is the opium of the people, and--dragging in chemical dependency--why giving people opium for 2000 years is a bad policy.

What we must do is change the heartless, oppressive, world. There--just like that. Simple, right? Just fix the world and people won't need religion. Good luck on that, he says to himself.

***The title of an unpopular book by John Fry.

Whatever we are doing, thank heavens it works.

:naughty:

I've liked David Sedaris ever since I heard his story about being a Christmas elf at Macy's, which includes his rendition of "I'd love to be an Oscar Meyer Wiener" in the style of Billy Holliday. I used to like George Carlin, and some of his bits really are good -- his "just happens to be" piece is funny and on target. I tend to avoid him now (he being dead and all).

The idea of a god who is not all powerful, who sacrificed himself to become Jesus, who in turn was sacrificed as the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, belongs to a respectable theologian whose work I read and whose book title and name I can't remember.

I do like to write with some levity and in a jokey way. I'm not trying to make my "thought" more accessible -- I'm expressing an idea which includes the advisory that we should not take all this stuff too seriously.

I don't know whether I believe in god -- omnipotent, hairy thunderer, or cosmic muffin -- or not. Most years not, some days yes. The family and institutional programming we receive early on is generally hard to overwrite. So, I used to like to read theology (a limited sample, anyway, mostly very liberal stuff). I haven't read any for maybe 20 years. Is there a Theology Anonymous group? I could get a 20 year pin.

@Schopenhauer1 I was awakened in the middle of last night by a train of thought passing near my bed on a rarely used track.

My preferred claim for the nature of God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent.

There is another contrary claim about God that deletes the "omni" prefixes, leaving God with only some power, some knowledge, and some, limited, presence. This God is still a creator, but not the manager of the expanding universe. This God is profoundly loving, but doesn't have perpetual patience and isn't above getting very angry with us paragons of animals, us crowns of creation, and smiting us when He just can't stand us any longer. The ultimate expression of this very loving God is that He became man in Christ. God ceased being God.

This theogony hasn't been very popular, because among other things, if God isn't God anymore, Who is in charge and to Whom have we been praying to for the last 2000 years? What about the Holy Ghost? Is the Holy Ghost the ghost of God, hovers over the world?

So, God didn't create a perfect world. Apparently, it wasn't clear to God that all the things that could go haywire in creation definitely would, and they definitely have. We paragons of animals, we crowns of creation don't perform all that well, either. From the POV of God we probably come off as ungrateful hateful fbastards. Not only do we suffer, we are the authors of a lot of our own suffering. God probably didn't foresee the unbridled growth of cancer cells which causes suffering, and evidently didn't see any problem with running the urethra through the prostate which eventually swells up and causes all sorts of annoying problems. That's for men. For women he unwisely made the urethra so short they get UTIs easily causing more suffering.

At least God foresaw the futility of plants and animals that reproduce but don't die. The world would have long ago suffocated itself under the weight of it all. So death and rot was absolutely necessary. Good call on that one, God! Maybe death could have operated differently -- like after 50, 60, 70, or 80 years--whatever--we would just drop dead. Splat! Healthy up to end, then dead. God decided to let nature, such as it is, keep things under control over the long run. Nature has, and--paragons of animals take note--will keep things under control. If fossil fuel companies heat the planet up too much, then one of the species that will be weeded out will be ourselves, and many others too. Nature plays a very long game and our esteemed species becoming extinct is conveniently doable! God has almost certainly rethought the advisability of granting great intelligence to primates.

Eventually this train of thought moved on, out of sight and earshot.

How could we appreciate health without sickness or happiness without suffering ? Justice without injustice etc … — kindred

We experience the good things in life in parallel with the bad things, not in a sequence of contrasts. The good and bad things come and go in our lives, sometimes at the same moment. One day we are robbed, but we enjoy robust health. One day we win $1000 at the casino but a week later we feel very depressed. One day we we feel very happy but the killing in Gaza goes on. One day we are diagnosed with cancer, and two weeks later our body is sliced open, causing great pain. One month later we feel great, lose $1000 buy lottery tickets, our cancer is cured, the cat runs away, and we discover our daughter is turning tricks.

We don't need bad thing to experience good things, and conversely, we don't need the good things to experience bad things. Both of them "just are". There is gladness, good health, and joy. and there is depression, sickness, and misery.

When I am in great pain, how good I felt a week ago doesn't help. When I feel on top of the world, last month's sadness doesn't hurt me.

Humans and God share common traits — MoK

We can however have access to our past experiences, so-called flashbacks. — MoK

These statements suggests that your concept of God is too small. A being who is present in all times--past, present, and future; and in all places, knows all, and has unlimited power can't be contemplated using humanoid traits, like thrift or duty, or by comparing God's omniscience to our measly flashbacks.

An altogether unlimited God presents problems. We ask, "Well, why didn't God create a world without suffering? Or, why didn't God make people who were good from the start and stayed that way? And so on. We look at this unlimited being from our extraordinarily limited being's perspectives, and think we see God's mistakes. Highly presumptuous.

Look, I don't know any more about God than anybody else. It's just that if we want to CLAIM that god is unlimited, then we have to accept that we will never understand such a being, will never understand the Divine plan of Salvation, or anything else about God. We don't have to reject the existence of this unlimited God, but our severe limitations in understanding God put the ball back in our court.

In other words, our problems are our problems.

sub specie aeternitatis — boundless

I like to drop in a Latin phrase every now and then too, but it's helpful to provide a translation or English definition, especially when one's Latin gem is NOT common knowledge (like et cetera).

Thomas Nagel says "If sub specie aeternitatis [from eternity's point of view] there is no reason to believe that anything matters, then that does not matter either, and we can approach our absurd lives with irony instead of heroism or despair."

Is that what you meant? Were you being ironic? Just guessing, probably not.

I find some amusement in the length this thread has reached, given what seems so obvious to me, that life is definitely, obviously, overwhelmingly NOT fair and just. Maybe we who are here to comment are the lucky beneficiaries of life's unfairness and injustice?

To make sure that the outcome of life is proper. — MoK

What do you mean, "proper"?

I think God cannot create humans in one instant since God cannot cheat life. So we have to get through, evolve, and grow. — MoK

So, according to some theologians, God is omnipresent, and omni everything else--meaning that God is aware of and present in everything that happens in creation. So, when the first molecules formed the first cell, God is there and is present and is aware of the first cell and the death of the last cell, and everything in between. Time, as creation experiences it, is not a thing God experiences, God being eternal.

God, being eternal and all-powerful after all, gets to do that.

Seems like the most powerful and all knowing thing would have no need for plans or need to be “happy or satisfied” that they are carried out or not. It all seems conveniently anthropocentric :chin: — schopenhauer1

How could God NOT be anthropomorphic, anthropocentric, anthropic in all ways, since God is OUR creation? Even if we ditch the hairy thunderer in the sky and go for the elevated omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent all-loving God (which is some sort of wishful thinking on our part) God is still ours.

Even if a divinity actually exists. we evolved apes don't have anything remotely close to direct access to this divinity. We have to "make it up", which we have done several times over.

@schopenhauer1 ... the Shortcomings of Popular Secularist Philosophies, or secularism in general?

Harvey Cox, a distinguished and maybe even popular theologian (he's 95 years old) wrote The Secular City in 1964. This was at a time when the people in the pews had noticed the EXIT signs over the church doors and were leaving the church, mostly to not return, Secular institutions--government, media, entertainment, corporations, education, etc. were becoming more dominant in society, not just in the US, but around the world.

Cox proclaimed that God was as present in secular societies as in any religious one, because God is present at all times and in all places, whether we like it or not. The problem of believers, per Cox, is to discern God, and discern what it means to believe in God, and be Christian in the middle of societies organizing or reorganizing around secular principles.

There is nothing to be done about secularism. It has developed over time and been driven by various processes, like industrialism, technology, and so on. It is a fact of life; it's the world we live in; it isn't going away; it isn't the enemy.

The Secular City made a very big impression on my 17 year old brain in 1964, and it's had an enduring influence. I was brought up in a religious (Protestant) home, and Christianity, whether I like it or not, is the core of my 'operating system'. There were / are conflicts between core beliefs and current realities. When the choice was between physically affirming my gayness and faith, the Christian condemnation of homosexuality--and promiscuous, anonymous, hedonistic sex in general, gay or straight--had to be dumped over-board. Sexuality was the right choice and the church was wrong. (And, of course, more power to those who love monogamously till death do them part.)

Still, God is present in the gay bath house, the brothel, and walks with the street whores (aka sex workers). If God worries about sparrows, God also worries about the well-being of "degenerate" members of the community. The preaching of Jesus is relevant in all places, (brothel or corporate board room) something most of us find quite inconvenient.

Secularism may be accommodating to the least among us, but just as likely, it may be dismissive or punitive--like the neglect of the homeless living on the street. That certainly describes the church's overall approach--cue the pogrom, the stake and firewood, public humiliations, etc. Jesus still stands against all that, even if it is all done in His name.

God, Jesus, and salvation are motivations one won't find in secularism. There are other motivations, of course, and I'm not knocking them.

I've been far more secular than religious for decades. If I am standing up religion here, it is just to say that IF a secularized individual needs some rock solid moral directives, religion does offer them. Just don't get carried away and turn them into cruelty, bigotry and oppression (like stoning apostates to death or burning heretics at the stake).

Religionists argue that these restraints are necessary to prevent civilization from descending into decadence and excessive hedonism. — schopenhauer1

VS

life is hard and punctuated by suffering. — Tom Storm

I have spent years seeking blessed assurance among Christians (and resisting it). Later I sought blessed assurance in secularism. I have spent years reading and thinking about the problems of religion, politics, economy, technology, and so on -- ultimately to no grand resolution. Why not? Per Tom Storm, life is a bitch and then you die.

Well, sometimes life was a bitch and sometimes it was pretty nice; I haven't died yet, and I've been reasonably happy and content in my old age.

The thing is, in reality life is hard and it can get worse -- like, nasty, brutish, and short. That's ground level reality. Over this reality we have endeavored to overlay various schemes to make it seem more meaningful; to keep people in line and at work; to justify the rule of whichever elite happens to be running things; to insure that enough of the right people reproduce abundantly, and so on and so forth.

We expend a great deal of scholarly labor on studying these overlays which cover the bare naked reality, from the ancient ones to yesterday's pronouncements. There is clear evidence that many people are ceasing to find some of the overlays, like religion, as compelling as they once did. Peak religiosity in the United States occurred in 1960, give or take. The hemorrhaging of church membership ensued as millions of members left the churches and never returned.

I just find a lot of what the more intellectual nattering classes chatter on about to be kind of beside the point. Maybe some of them should "get a life" as the saying goes.

But not you, schopenhauer1: you have to keep doing what you are doing!

I read years ago that sexual products and services including production and distribution of pornography generate many times the revenue of, say, sports broadcasting. — Wayfarer

According to Statista, "Market size of the online pornographic and adult content industry in the United States in 2023" was $1.1B. Many 'lurid' claims are made about the porn industry, a lot of which just doesn't sound believable.

I'm familiar with gay porn, and it seems like there are fewer gay porn sites now than there were 10 or 15 years ago. Monthly subscription prices seem to be lower. Production values are better than they once were, and there are only so many possible acts and positions to portray (though I did see a remarkable innovation recently... but never mind). The market for straight porn should be much, much larger, but I don't have any experience with it.

It's still over my head, and thanks for the links. I'll check them out at greater length. Had I been born later, say in the 1970s instead of the 1940s, everything else being equal, I would be involved in organizations like EFF and maybe FSF. I definitely relate to the issues they are working on.

In the 1990s I learned how to program HyperCard on the (now primitive model) Macintosh and built two programs, one to tabulate details on an AIDS help line and the other to sort a text into Anglo Saxon origin words and non-AS words. Both programs worked quite well, though the text sorting application was pretty slow, even by 1990 standards, but it did the job. It was a great pleasure to make my own software. Unfortunately, Apple retired HyperCard.

Computing and the Internet are dominated by behemoths like Microsoft, Apple, et al, and AI will make it all worse in terms of user control of systems and devices. "Frontiers" tend to be chaotic, but that's where the most creative stuff gets done, along with destruction. Clearly, the behemoth organizations want to close the frontier.

Thanks for the information, but it is a bit out of my limited technological depth.

It didn't cause huge life-altering events, but I've had that experience--a book on architectural terracotta in a bin that I found fascinating. I had not given terracotta more than a couple of seconds thought prior to this book. Oh, so that's what that building, cornice, entrance way, etc. is covered with! The book sent me on a mission to discover architectural terracotta in downtown Minneapolis which I had a good time photographing. I recently read of a new building in Chicago that was going to make use of terracotta cladding.

Amazon has lots of the equivalent of left-overs, remainders, returns, etc. in digital form; the problem at Amazon is finding them among the 10 billion books in stock.. Using the right, key, search word is the critical piece in unearthing the obscure, interesting, cheap (usually digital) book. Sometimes the results include collections on topics -- urban problems, for example, or westward expansion in the 19th century.

Forgotten Books is a London company which sells really obscure old (no longer covered by copyright) books that have been digitized. Some of the titles are interesting, a lot of it is just obscure.

My own tentative answer is that books look backwards and are a part of life but not life itself. And further, to live a life, a person must at some point turn away from books — tim wood

Well sure. Books don't photosynthesize, metabolize, or metastasize--so not life itself. But like all symbolic things: an arrangement of stones, scratches on a rock, structures, figures drawn in clay, writing, drawing, painting, music, film, dance, metalworking, pottery, ceremonial acts, etc... they are a part of life for which we would be greatly impoverished to do without.

Books are written, made, stored, and read for a future audience, whether the audience is of one's own time or a future time, a century or a millennium hence. WE can look backwards (as we ought to do for purposes of navigating life successfully).

A lot of people do turn away from books. "I haven't read a book since high school, since college..." they say--and it generally shows as a bad choice.

Words on the Internet are just a part of the Internet, which is not a unity but a network of differences. For this reason, I think books have a referential and authoritarian quality that the Internet does not have. — kudos

A printed books is static and stable. The text won't change. The electronic versions of a book are dynamic: As long as one is in contact with the Internet (devices, cables, wifi, electricity, signals, etc.) the book and the distributor are connected and monitored. Your highlighting may be transmitted to Amazon, for instance, which can show how many people have highlighted a given passage. Any digital book on your device could be withdrawn by the distributor, if need arises (like a copyright dispute). If electricity should fail (collapse of technology) your library would disappear once the device's battery was exhausted (in a few hours of reading).

A thief can steal a thousand books on a tablet reader far more easily than stealing a thousand books.

On the other hand, an electronic text delivered by the internet can be easily enriched by looking up information was doesn't have front of mind (or in mind at all). When an author cites a famous bridge, one can (usually) find a photograph or drawing of the bridge by using search--in just a few seconds. Were one reading the paper book in a large library, it might take one 30 minutes to find the book that has the drawing of the bridge in question.

As for documents that exist entirely within the Internet -- they are put up on a web sites ranging from pure trash to solid gold. Let the reader be very wary and guarded!

Welcome to The Philosophy Forum!

You ask, "Is self-blame a good thing? Is it the same as accountability? Or is blame just a pointless concept."

Blame is not a pointless concept, but whether self-blame is good, bad, or indifferent seems highly situational.

In the real world, bad things happen -- sometimes by accident, sometimes by acts of commission, sometimes by acts of omission, sometimes just by being somewhere, anywhere, when something unfortunate happens. Identifying yourself as the culprit might be quite appropriate, if you are indeed the agent intending and causing something bad to happen. If you are not the agent, then stop blaming yourself.

If, for instance, you deliberately leave the gate on the pasture open and the cows wander off--you ought to blame yourself for bad consequences.

Often though, blame is difficult to locate. If you mailed your insurance premium 15 days before it was due, but the post office didn't deliver it on time and you lose your insurance, blaming the precise agent of your misfortune might be difficult. You could still blame yourself--you could begin reciting all sorts of things you could have, should have, or would have done, and why you are to blame for losing your insurance.

Blaming one's self can fall into some vague category of neurotic psycho-pathology, or maybe just be totally useless behavior.

If you find that you frequently engage in self-blaming, it's probably something you should stop doing.

IF you have acted to deliberately cause misfortune, then sure, you are blameworthy. Blame and guilt can direct us to examine just exactly what the hell we are doing, and why.

Sometimes people blame themselves a lot because they feel deeply inadequate or deficient. For such conditions, one should get some therapy.

The world was not designed for our continual happiness and comfort. Deliberate acts by conscious, malevolent agents and acts of indifferent nature may bring death, severe injury, or loss suddenly and arbitrarily. Then there are the shortcomings of human intelligence, wreaking havoc left and right. That life deals an unfair hand is an unwelcome problem to which we have to continually reconcile ourselves.

A novelist, playwright, librettist/composer, or poet may offer an enactment of the very bad event which enacts tragedy in a particularly complete and satisfying manner. A successful piece of art acknowledges the unfairness of life and places us in that context.

Why do we derive satisfaction from the tragic art work? Because we must reconcile ourselves to the unfairness of life, again and again -- whether we use art to help us or not.

The pleasure part derives from us having the problem of an unfair cosmos depicted once again, and having our selves positioned as spectators of tragedy, rather than the subjects of tragedy. We'll be the subject of our own tragedies soon enough; we might be helped by remembering that we are also spectators of tragedy.

I prefer to think of the universe as an indifferent cause of suffering, rather than being focused on making my life as miserable as possible, with customized misfortune abounding. One of our tragedies is that our brother/sister sentient beings take care of focussed, customized misfortune.

two points against Hedges' viewpoint:

A very large share of Germans cooperated with the Nazi regime because non-cooperation (let alone opposition) was a high-risk choice. Yes, Post-WWI Germany was hungry, bitter, and resentful and was ready to punish somebody for their loss in the war and their further humiliation in the peace agreement. And yes, after WWII, many Germans sang the I Was Not a Nazi Polka

Biden and the Democratic Party are responsible for this zeitgeist. They orchestrated the deindustrialization of the United States, ensuring that 30 million workers lost their jobs in mass layoffs.

Deindustrialization began long before Biden won his first local election. The leather, shoe, and woven textile and clothing industries in New England started outsourcing manufacturing before WWII, and continued after WWII. Other industries followed suit over time. Cheap, non-unionized labor was irresistible. Other factors also contributed to job losses, among them automation. It took fewer workers to run a new, more efficient steel mill. Automation increased the per-man-hour of productivity, so fewer workers were needed. Moving unskilled manufacturing to benefit from extremely cheap labor costs picked up speed in the 1970s.

I don't want to let the political and economic elites off the hook -- their policies devastated broad swathes of America. Did Biden behave any differently than other elite operatives? No. Will Trump behave any differently than other elite operatives? No. Ditto for Harris.

But I still think that incumbency is very powerful. — fishfry

Right. Incumbency IS very powerful, BUT as the calendar says, the November election is a little over 100 days away. No matter what the POTUS or VPOTUS does or doesn't do from July 23 onward, it's going to be a tough scramble.

No surprise here: our economy and politics are run by overlapping elites. That fact provides so much of the story behind the headlines. That, and the rocket-engine personal drive of people who want to be at the top, be they Democrats or Republicans. It takes a lot of drive to get to, and stay at, the top anywhere.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt is the prime example of holding on to his high office when he was in seriously failing health. Wilson planned on a third term, too, but had a stroke in October, 1919. Nixon held on till he faced impeachment and probably forced removal from office. Reagan served with diminished faculties. Trump has a now very familiar problem with the reality situation.

Dubai doesn't live of oil today already. — Tarskian

My mistake. Bananas still don't grow on Burj Khalifas.

What we call “democracy” nowadays is dressed-up oligarchy, modelled on the Roman republic. There is a ruling class, not a body of free and sovereign people. — NOS4A2

I disagree with you fairly often, but you are right on the money here.

The global poor want to move there because they can get handouts, i .e. free housing, free healthcare, free education, welfare benefits, and so on.

Who is supposed to pay for all of that? — Tarskian

If you really thought the poor could get "free housing, free healthcare, free education, welfare benefits, and so on" you would no doubt be in line to get those benefits yourself!

An only reasonably prosperous state can afford to assist its citizens who have fallen into poverty. How do they do that? Through taxes, of course.

Why do reasonably prosperous, and successful states have poor people? a) technological changes which render some skilled and unskilled labor obsolete; b) the business cycle (expansion and contraction); c) chronic disease and disability (not thinking of drug dependency here, but that's another factor); d) ordinary misfortune--like the Emir's limo runs over Mr. Tarskian, leaving him unable to work for the rest of his life--that kind of misfortune.

Reasonably prosperous and successful states don't have huge numbers of people on the welfare roles collecting general assistance and food stamps. Reasonably prosperous and successful states have most of their adult population of working age in jobs which the workers consider much superior to being either unemployed or on welfare (which in many industrialized states is fairly parsimonious). Reasonably prosperous and successful states are usually operate under some sort of democratic system. Workers and capitalists in reasonably prosperous and successful states are willing to be taxed to pay for the cost of being a civilized society which takes care of people experiencing tough times.

How can citizens in a merely reasonably prosperous and successful state afford to take care of unfortunate people? They can because they produce a surplus of wealth, some of which can be spent on welfare.

BTW, readily available education, housing, and medical care are not a frill -- they are essential components of a successful society--both socially and economically.

And where are they going to grow the food, if they keep expanding? — Tarskian

One might well ask the residents of Dubai where they will get their food when the age of oil is over --certainly not by their own efforts, being in the desert as it is. Bananas don't grow on Burj Khalifas.

A problem of comparing democracy to monarchy is that there are few ruling monarchies with which to compare democracy. There are many more non-monarchical states that are authoritarian or so politically dysfunctional they are failed states. Somalia comes to mind, as does Venezuela and Sudan.

Martin Luther said that people were better off being ruled by a smart Turk than a dumb Christian. A risk of highly concentrated power (despots, kings, presidents) is that there is a large risk that they will be of the "dumb" variety rather than the "smart" kind, like Donald Trump.

"Democratic countries" vary quite a bit in their actual democratic performance. The United States is a prime example of variable (sometimes dismal) democratic performance.

after that, he'd be just fine. :halo: — frank

I'm not quite that generous. Significant brain damage, but recoverable after at least 4 years of intensive therapy for people who have brain injuries. Additional therapy will be needed to rehabilitate his faulty morals and his poor comprehension of the reality situation. Since his misfortunes are self-induced, he would need to pay for this out of his own funds. Once he's impoverished by the medical industry, Medicaid will kick in to cover some (???) level of services.

herd of rabid jackals — fishfry

An apt comparison, but even rabid jackals, never mind healthy ones, form 'packs' or 'tribes'. As in 'a pack of wild dogs'. Jackals are canids.

If Joe Biden is too cognitively impaired to run for President; then isn't he too cognitively impaired to BE President? — fishfry

The question should be, "Is he too cognitively impaired to BOTH run for president and be president?" There's a big difference between managing the job for the 5 months and managing the job for 53 more months, should he have been reelected.

I was in favor of him NOT running for another term before the famous debate. Both Biden and Trump are too old, and Trump has even more cognitive problems, particularly with the reality situation, than Biden.

Kamela has more than enough on her plate successfully campaigning, never mind trying to become an experienced incumbent in just a few months.