You have lived under the republican/democrat two party nation in the USA. I have lived under the tory/labour two party nation in the UK. Party politics has failed in my opinion. — universeness

You might want to focus your question a bit more. Chomsky has long described American politics as a one-party state. Dems and Reps form two wings of pro-business policy. There are no third party contenders of even remote significance.

A question I would ask you (Universeness) is whether you think the Tories and Labour are essentially the same thing.

Do you think we need a new politics? Do you think it would be progressive to remove all political parties from politics and governance? Do you think 'Vote for a person, not a party,' should become the loudest political clarion call? — universeness

Can we get a "new politics" with the same economic structure we have now?

it's easier for like-minded to come together to form a small commune (where people can come and go), — jorndoe

Granted that setting up a commune is comparatively easy. It's also the case that communes often fall apart. I don't know what the history of kibbutzim are. Perhaps there was historical precedence that members shared; perhaps there was institutional support. I don't know how long any particular kibbutz has been operating, I'm pretty sure the kibbutz were not the same as the 1960s communes that came and went pretty swiftly.

Any society that gravitates too much towards either side will collapse. — Christoffer

All societies eventually collapse, don't they, given time?

A given cultural region--pre-Columbian North America, Europe, E. Asia, South Asia, etc--may maintain consistent features over long stretches of time, but social structures within the cultural region collapse and re-form continuously. It seems like an organic process, different than when a society is crushed by outside forces of various kinds.

The soviet system collapsed, but not merely from internal flaws. There was the German invasion of 1941 which was immensely costly. Then there was the Cold War, which drained the resources of the soviet system. (The Cold War drained capitalist resources too, but the drain was proportionately more tolerable.)

Our prime example of communism was begun in an only slightly industrialized country (Russia) with a very long history of despotic rule. Despotism was a handy model to follow, and people like Stalin had little compunction about exercising murderous power. Communism was started in the wrong place at the wrong time by the wrong people.

Whether a "socialist" system is viewed as the equivalent to "communism" is an important question, I prefer the term socialism,

Neither communism nor socialism has a snowball's chance in hell of getting anything other than a very hostile reception from the Establishment and us running dog lackeys. Whatever flag they fly under, the revolutionaries intend to take the wealth away from the bourgeoisie (all of it, pretty much). Not a popular idea in bourgeois circles! Distributing their wealth to the people is anathema to the rich, of course.

The USSR operated as State Capitalism. The State was the company for which everybody worked, and the company looked after its own interests. That wasn't what communism was supposed to be.

I am very familiar with the viewpoint discussed in the article and I reject it as being, well, just plain stupid. It falls into the same category as saying "pregnant people" rather than pregnant women. Last I checked, women were the only people getting pregnant--no exceptions.

Here's another example: Niggardly. No doubt the literalists would look at this and deem it racist! Niggardly means stingy, ungenerous, and meager. The word comes from Old Norse and Old English and has absolutely nothing to do with the offensive word 'nigger' it resembles. Nonetheless, I used niggardly once and a politically correct adult nearly fainted.

Why don't we just ban the word "black" altogether?

We don't do that because even a slightly clever child will understand that if you are talking about a "black hole" in physics, or putting "black dirt" on the garden, or having a "black eye" these words have nothing to do with race. Similarly, there is nothing racist about white chalk and a black board, or publishing a white paper on the economy, or keeping favorite telephone numbers in a little black book, or for women, buying that 'little black dress'.

A whole series of words have been applied to Americans who originated in Africa : niggers, negroes, colored(s), colored people, African Americans, blacks, people of color, and are now included in BIPOC. I'm sure more will be added.

There is a big debate on the word "blackmail", because apart from being a negative action, it has racist connotations. — javi2541997

Dearest Javi, please don't go there! Blackmail doesn't have racist denotations or connotations any more than "black hole", "black board", "black top", or "black beans" have.

What @Baden had to say is on the mark.

I would like to add a general principle for Jamal, myself, and numerous others: Exercise at least a little generosity in interpreting the words that other people write (or say). Granted, anyone might have said something more lucidly, more graciously, more precisely, more.. whatever -- but just because you can imagine the word being misunderstood, doesn't mean the use was deficient.

hen I was growing up, "gay" was a common insult, but now it isn't, or at least I'm pretty sure it isn't. — Judaka

Gay? Queer? Homosexual? Faggot? Gender expansive? Gender Fluid? Celibate non-binary polyamorist? I'm not quite sure what constitutes an insult in this department these days, When I was coming out, "homosexual" as a legitimate self-descriptive term was shifting to "gay". 20 years later (1990, say) "gay" was shifting to "queer". "Faggot" or "Fag" was somewhat positive for a while, but now seems to have taken on more negative connotations again.

So this is a good example of where generosity should be applied. If someone says, "Homosexuals deserve equal rights." no one needs to pounce on them for using the wrong word. The sentence could have used gays or queers, but the intent (affirming equal rights) seems obvious enough.

Yes, that's basically my point. If we want children to develop critical thinking skills then absolutely the worst thing we can do to bring that about is further impose on their freedom by force-feeding them lessons on it before making regurgitate it for grades like show ponies doing tricks.. — Isaac

So, millions of people who are very accomplished, creative, admired thinkers, creators, performers, etc. have gone through various school systems over the last 300 years. Granted millions went through modern education mills and did not come out as accomplished anything. But then, in the long history of civilization, most people are not brilliantly accomplished, Most people have maintained their societies by keeping their noses to the grindstone till they dropped dead.

The leisure that could be enjoyed by the masses today is, I suspect, viewed as more a problem than an opportunity by the powers that rule society. Hence, keep the masses busy -- in school as long as possible, then busy working, and after work busy mowing the lawn, and 1001 other things. "Idle hands are the devil's playground," Well, sort of true. People who have time to learn and think along their own lines, may very well conclude that there is something defective and oppressive about the ruling class. The ruling class has found that it's nicer to keep us proles busy than having to suppress riots all the time.

Why do you think that? — Isaac

Apparently the development of children is outside your field of knowledge. I think that because I have observed children acquiring knowledge. Spoken language -- no problem. Just about everybody who has ears acquires their native language(s) through self-learning. That is a built-in capacity. Writing -- and thus reading -- are, in the history of the species, very recent developments -- 5,000 years ago, give or take 15 minutes. Widespread literacy is much more recent, Similarly, widespread arithmetic skill eems to be quite recent too.

How many children do you know who have self-taught themselves from pre-literacy and innumeracy, on up to being able to read a newspaper and balance a checkbook? Personally, I don't know any. I have met quite a few people who are not able to do either of those things; they aren't stupid, they just didn't self-instruct their way there. I have read accounts of a few famous people who were really self-taught all the way. Mozart started playing the piano at 4 years, but his composer/musician father also taught him. Needless to say, geniuses are not typical people.

That people do is not an argument that they ought, nor that they must. — Isaac

Yeah, well... what you do is not an argument for what you ought, or must do either. Yet you keep doing it. Why do you persist?

I've questioned the necessity of 'teaching' as opposed to self-directed learning. — Isaac

I'm 100% in favor of self-directed learning, with the caveat that most children need help in acquiring the most basic information, like the sounds associated with the alphabet, the manual ability to generate writing, counting, basic arithmetic, and the like. Having acquired these skills early on (as most children do) they can build up their capacity. The shift from "learning to read" to "reading to learn" is where there is a drop off for some children, around the age of 10 or 11, give or take a little.

If you think that self-directed learning won't occur in a typical school, you are probably right. School children (and children who are put to work for long hours) don't have the unstructured time to engage in self-directed learning. Many adults maintain a level of busyness that relieves them of the time they could engage in self instruction. "Production must go on!"

could — Isaac

would — Isaac

I could, would, and do consider them reciprocal. Certainly, animals of all kinds learn without instruction (including us), but many animals teach their young. People, of course, do this extensively.

One of the problems I see in the usual practice of education is that many teachers themselves are not actively engaged in learning -- not just in their field, but in other fields as well. And teachers surely ought to be able to manage self-learning. An English teacher should regularly read science and science teachers should regularly read literature.

Teachers who are not themselves engaged in learning (at a reasonably challenging level) are less likely to understand their students' challenges. Further, a teacher who stops learning is a poor model of adult citizenship.

Learning and teaching are two different things. — Isaac

One could think of them as reciprocal rather than as opposed.

I am in total agreement with you.

I attended school in a small town in Minnesota starting in 1952. Was it a good education? It was a mixed bag. Some elementary teachers were probably good; a few, probably less so. Secondary was more of a mixed bag, because in 7th grade, tracking began towards college or a trade. I was considered unpromising so was tracked into the commercial program. Owing to an intervention by several people, I ended up going to college after all.

I was not well prepared for college, and I had no real, well motivated plan. but I managed to do OK and graduated with a BS in English and social science. I figured that I would teach English. I quickly discovered that I was altogether NOT cut out to teach high school students. Instead, I ended up working with adults in a number of different educational contexts. That, and clerical temp work which I hated, whenever I needed quick employment.

Looking back at the intervening decades, I'd say a lot of schools are doing as well as they can under the circumstances (which is, in many cases, not terrible), and so are a lot of students. Any picture of the future is blurry at best. I don't know what the perfect school was, is, could be or should be. At least we need more varied options. Catholic education is good for some; for others, the public school is better. For some, high structure is critical, for others, low structure. And more. All of these things can not exist under one roof.

Besides the school, we know that parents and community make a difference. I don't know what to do about that, either. Small town Minnesota didn't / doesn't share much in common with megacities and/or really world-class slums.

Yes, I wish everyone was interested in maximizing their own and their children's and their community's human potential, but the masses, trying to get by--let alone maximizing their potential--are generally lukewarm on the matter. Not their fault.

My main criticism of my education is that it did not give me a very realistic view of the world, and I wasn't an outstanding student. At 76 I'm still working on "how the world works". It's kind of depressing.

Do you have any cause to believe that, have you tested it, or read of anyone having done so? — Isaac

Yes. The Industrial Revolution changed things. 250 years ago, the economic activity that most people (outside of the elite) engaged in did not require much in the way of literacy skills, numeracy, and 'general knowledge'. 100 years ago, most people (outside of the elite) required a fair amount of literacy, some numeracy, and more general knowledge. The relationship between basic educational attainment and a reasonable level of social/economic participation (still outside of the elite) became stronger over the 20th, into the 21st century.

Many studies have shown conclusively, definitively, that lacking basic skills (literacy, numeracy, general knowledge) is a barrier to minimal economic and social performance for most people. Are there exceptions? Of course there are, but not so many.

Furthermore, humans begin acquiring basic skills from an early age. Child development information shows that IF children have not been exposed to enough positive spoken language from caregivers by 5 years of age (20 million as opposed to 30 to 40 million words) basic educational attainment becomes difficult from kindergarten on up. Further, there needs to be a strong positive element in the communication -- being yelled at doesn't help.

Is your ground for believing it sufficient to imprison children against their will and punish them for failure to comply? — Isaac

Some schools provide very good experiences for children. Some schools are shit holes. The latter are more like prisons. Education critics have been calling out the negative features of schooling for a long time. Back in the 1960s, Edgar Z. Friedenberg labeled schools as a "labor pool management system" keeping young people out of the labor pool for as long as possible, through doctoral studies if need be. Many criticisms have been far harsher.

Schools have lost some of their raison d'être; mass media have had 24/7 access to children for a good 60 years (maybe a couple of decades longer) and have instructed 'the people' on what it means to be a good citizen -- I mean, "good consumer". Buy this, buy that. Wear this, wear that. Etc.

Quote possibly most children can not have the kind of growing-up experiences that both of us would like and approve of.

@Jamal aka mynah bird... Per your question, I am pretty sure that I have failed to receive email alerts for the last 3 PMs in my inbox (over the last month). I used to receive email alerts before.

With reference to starlings: "The birds were intentionally released by a group who wanted America to have all the birds that Shakespeare ever mentioned. It took several tries, but eventually the population took off. Today, more than 200 million European Starlings range from Alaska to Mexico, and many people consider them pests."

For god's sake, importing alien species merely as literary decoration is just not acceptable.

A number of serious invasive species have arrived by accident in shipping containers of various kinds. The seemingly innocuous European earthworm (a longer, fatter worm than native North American earth worms) are causing problems in forested areas because they eat all of the leaf litter on the ground, which facilitates soil loss when it rains, and changes the ecology of the forest. It took the worms roughly 75 to 100 years to work their way out of farming areas into the northern hardwood forests, crawling along like worms do. (We call them nightcrawlers; they're good bait for fishing.)

The gypsy moth, emerald ash borer, and various other plants and animals have caused lots of problems--like deforestation--because they have no predators in this hemisphere. A Japanese lady bug was introduced (deliberately) to eat aphids on soybeans. They do that really well, but in the fall they start looking for winter quarters (that would be our houses). They have a bitter odor, and they leave spots on outside walls (never mind them getting inside).

Florida is dealing with pythons and other large invasive snakes that people have dumped in the swamps.

I don't think it includes anyone. No one needs formal education, it's a myth designed to produce compliant little consumers. It stops people thinking because they expect all the information they need to be handed to them, they don't develop enquiring minds, but instead are hewn into mindless cogs. — Isaac

Quite a sweeping generalization!

On the other hand, I agree that the program of mass education for Americans is, indeed, designed to produce compliant citizens. Mass communication also performs this function, instructing people how to satisfy their many artificial wants.

Back to sweeping generalizations. I have a typical formal education - bachelors degree and a masters degree. Quite a bit of the bachelor degree education was good instruction. I liked it. I learned quite a bit. The masters program was a credential generator--not a fraud, but not very good, either.

A lot of what I have learned between graduating from college and retiring, I learned through my own effort. Since retiring, I have learned much more because I now have much more confidence and time to study. But, take me back 55 years and, no, I did not have much context into which to fit what I was being offered.

I have known a few self-taught individuals, and their intellectual accomplishments are impressive. But not everyone has the talent, early on, to guide their own education. I certainly didn't. Most people don't. That's why we "educate".

Per @Banno, "they are not useful. This reinforces the view that, for all the "clever", they are bullshit generators - they do not care about truth."

This sounds like something you might say about me. — T Clark

Humans are all bullshit generators -- it's both a bug and a feature. Large problems arise when we start believing our own bullshit.

"Goofy" is an insufficiently identified feature of GPT3, 4, 5... and AI. Thanks!

How much of the "goofiness" is due to the goofiness of the nerds and geeks who code this stuff and the creeps who pay for its execution? After all, it didn't spawn itself. We should be asking GPT fewer questions and asking Open AI LP more questions. OpenAI conducts AI research with the declared intention of promoting and developing a friendly AI.. Their stated purpose deserves to be intensively cross examined -- and quite possibly doubted.

We can decide to. It isn't easy, but it is possible.

I can't go on I'll go on. — green flag

You will, we will, because (as The Preacher in Ecclesiastes says), "Anyone who is among the living has hope--even a live dog is better off than a dead lion!"

We would simply BE. — schopenhauer1

Simply BE. Excellent advice.

Why do people create sock puppets? What are they for? — Tom Storm

It's a deviant sexual thing.

Although suicide is a mental health issue not everyone who becomes suicidal suffers from mentally ill. — Fooloso4

Yes, it is the case that a mentally healthy person may wish to commit suicide (to relieve unbearable physical pain, for instance), but it is a safe generalization to claim suicides are the result of mental illness.

300 million guns are of course central to this whole issue, but if you--or anyone else--can come up with a way of retrieving even a few million of the guns in private hands LET'S HEAR IT. Guns in the United States are like perfluorocarbons--ubiquitous. (Still, 1/3 of Americans don't own guns). With respect to guns there are two legislative steps that could help (future condition tense) IF they were passed at the federal level: 1) lift the liability shield for gun manufacturers 2) ban further manufacture of most kinds of guns. Lifting the liability shield might accomplish #2.

The majority of suicides by gun are not mass murders. — Fooloso4

Yes. The vast majority of suicides by gun are private affairs. School shootings in particular are public and highly reactive events for obvious reasons.

We still need many more mental health resources available, not just for kiddie killers but because there are a lot of people out there whose mental health is in poor shape (10%? that's what it was 50 years ago. 15%? 20%?) Suicide isn't the only mental health issue, obviously.

I heard an interesting proposal about school shooting, and maybe other mass shootings. It was developed by a research group at Metropolitan State University in Minnesota. Their research showed that a large share of shooters were suicidal in the year before they committed their violent acts. Taking a gun to school (or shopping center...) and opening fire was a fairly certain way of dying--a form of suicide by police bullet.

The finding supports the idea that one cause–maybe THE cause–of mass murders is the failure of society to provide adequate mental health treatment -- treatment that should be readily available, effective, and covered by insurance or at public expense. Of course we provide no such thing. Mental health services are difficult to access, treatment beds are in short supply, there are not enough treatment staff to go around, and without insurance it is too expensive to afford, for most families.

Other studies have shown that the mental health of adolescents is not good (never mind the rest of the population).

So, maybe it isn't such a mystery why people go on shooting rampages.

BTW, @NOS isn't the only person to think that there is no such thing as society. He has Margaret Thatcher for company.

You are conflating COLLECTIVE DEFENSE with Individual Defense.

One nation defending its territory from another nation's aggression requires armaments to be used against the attacker. Civil order and peace within a nation is a different, separate issue.

All the armaments of the United States armed forces--from ICBMs to pistols–do not contribute to the peaceful relations among our fellow citizens. What maintains peacefulness in society is the collective desire to avoid conflict as one goes about one's life. Internal peacefulness is not maintained by 300,000,000 guns either.

You can afford not to be paranoid because other people have guns, because other have the will to defend you wherever you yourself refuse to. — NOS4A2

It's the 300,000,000 guns owned by 200,000,000 Americans--some of whom are demented anti-social thugs, that contribute to paranoia. Those 200,000,000 gun owners are NOT defending me or you. Mostly they are enriching gun and ammunition manufacturers at a high cost to society.

Guns can definitely be used for defense. If you choose to go without, just know that your final victory was that you didn't live in fear. — frank

Of course a gun can be used for defense, provided you are prepared for an attack and in a defendable position. Outside of that, successful defense is unlikely. A motivated shooter will generally have the advantage, and bullets flying around from random shots might find you anywhere.

Mother Superior jumped the gun

Happiness is a warm gun

You woke up this mornin', got yourself a gun

Bang bang he shot me down...

Etc.

Yes, the content. Advanced studies have shown that condom wrappers have almost no efficacy in disease prevention. In fact, some wrappers are so tough that the condoms enclosed in them are never used, leading to outbreaks of syphilis and gonorrhea.

A halo of talk forms around an unclaimed center. It's as if belief in enlightenment ends up doing the work of enlightenment, by giving the believer a purpose. This makes me think of faith in faith itself. Zizek comes to mind also, who says we let other people do our believing for us. — green flag

I don't know quite what you are driving at, but above you have touched on a peculiar reality of how people interact with the culture. For example, having the best selling (or banned) book--even though one hasn't read it and probably won't--somehow allows one to claim knowledge of the book. Buying the MAGA hat feels like voting for Trump.

One of the peculiar roles of the clergy is "to be holy for us so we don't have to". Knowing that there are people in organizations working to save the planet from global warming relieves us of (at least some) responsibility. I used to belong to a socialist group that held weekly classes open to the public. Many people came once, were enthusiastic, and never returned. These 1-time visitors were satisfied that someone was working for economic justice and that was enough.

Before effective treatment for AIDS, we did face to face outreach in gay bars. Among other things, we handed out (a lot of) condoms without providing information about how HIV was transmitted. Why not? Because "the product is the message: use this when having sex." We did, of course, make public health information readily available--but the main thing was the condoms themselves. They were the message.

Did that work? Was it objectively successful? I don't know; I don't even know if we can know whether it was effective. Other factors were at work, of course. A large share of the first wave of infected men died. The survivors understood what the stakes were. A later wave of men were more cautious, and rates of infection weren't as high -- and it turned out that being treated for HIV rendered one much less likely to infect somebody else, even without using condoms.

Hey, I read the story about the stamp too. What was the name of it?

Well, it's certainly the case that for younger people (I don't know, under 25? 35?) there are more new experiences in life -- if one is lucky -- and the many novel experiences one has make life very interesting, and time seems to pass faster. For the aged (anyone over 35) there are fewer and fewer novel experiences and time seems to drag. But the body's clock can be (it seems to me has been) tested, and there seems to be a pattern of slower time perception with age.

"busyness" may also figure into this. Many people maintain a high level of 'busyness"which will help them to avoid boredom or self examination. It isn't just a few people - millions and millions strive to be busy at all times, seems like.

No kidding? I have about a 52% confidence level that my theory is correct.

Harvard's Science In The News says:

As we age, he argues, the size and complexity of the networks of neurons in our brains increases – electrical signals must traverse greater distances and thus signal processing takes more time. Moreover, ageing causes our nerves to accumulate damage that provides resistance to the flow of electric signals, further slowing processing time. Focusing on visual perception, Bejan posits that slower processing times result in us perceiving fewer ‘frames-per-second’ – more actual time passes between the perception of each new mental image. This is what leads to time passing more rapidly.When we are young, each second of actual time is packed with many more mental images. Like a slow-motion camera that captures thousands of images per second, time appears to pass more slowly.

the rushing by of time as we age is because the vast machinery of a personality has long been assembled and is now settled and has been running without much trouble — green flag

Apparently the speed with which time appears to pass is based on physiology. The body has a "time-passing-sense" (probably operating in the brain stem) and as we age, it slows down. As it slows, our perception of time speeds up.

On the other hand, this month of March has NOT been passing swiftly by. It is dragging, like it should be the middle of April by now. Maybe the weather? It's been a cold month and every day snow is still sprawled all over everything.

I side with the idea that our brains -- cognition, personality, movement, etc. -- are plastic, but the plastic is fairly stiff. There are limits to how much one can reasonably expect to change. Further, our characters are formed early on--before we have enough experience and knowledge to direct the process of our 'becoming what we will be'.

So, having survived childhood and adolescence, we arrive at adulthood in a nearly finished state which will tend to stay the same as we age--with the proviso that we possess some plasticity.

We WISH we could be whatever we want to be. Popular culture promotes the idea of open-ended opportunity change. "Bend me, shape me, any way you want me" malarky. The gradually attained understanding that popular culture's optimism is just so much advertising sloganeering is a necessary part of maturing, but the realization might also feel like betrayal.

In this time of economic change (economies are much more plastic than people) a lot of younger people, I think, are feeling like they got screwed. The seeming good times their parents and grandparents enjoyed are being denied them. This isn't mere mis-perception. Some boats have left the port.

The "secret of happiness" probably involves a) good luck and b) acceptance of what we are. Some people have been lucky and possess optimistic, up-beat, energetic personalities which makes self-acceptance much easier. People born with say... bi-polar disorder or schizophrenia have greater barriers to self-acceptance. People who are naturally less social, more self-directed, more loner than joiner run into biases against them--not severe bias, but they are considered less-than-ideal by many.
Maybe. I am 65% confident about this.

I'm finding the later part of this play to be quite enjoyable. I too try to stay healthy, so I can continue playing my role all the way to the last line. I quite smoking decades ago; I drink very little; I never used recreational drugs beyond a few joints (total); I exercise within my diminished capacity. I do like full fat ice cream and prefer butter, in as much moderation as I can manage. There are so many great books to read, so much to learn, which is good in itself.

But... it might end at any time, which after 76 years won't be like the lost opportunities of people dying before they have found their way in the world (which takes 20 or 30 years).

Woody Allen's Joke–he wasn't afraid of dying, he just didn't want to be there when it happened–touches on one part of the fear of death: The process of dying, on the way to being dead. Dying isn't always terrible, but sometimes disease or injury can be a pretty bad experience before it kills us.

Are people afraid of being dead or are they afraid of dying?

As for being dead, the imagination of the living can make death something between heaven or hell on the one hand, and a perpetual nothing on the other hand. I like the nothingness of death which some say is like the nothingness before being gestated and born.

As for dying, Buddha said to his gathered disciples (as he himself was dying), "Decay is inherent to all compounded beings. Therefore, press on with diligence." Something like that. Translations may vary.

I was just chatting with BARD - Google's AI. It favors direct realism. Its reasons seemed clear.

Bard has, of course, heard of The Philosophy Forum and finds the discussions interesting. The statements of an AI (at this point) and 50¢ won't get you a cup of coffee.

Bard was impressive in some ways and quite boring in other ways.

180 Proof wasn't correcting your English usage. Presumably one would only distinguish between the two honestly. It's more sarcasm than grammar gestapo.

180: You're welcome. Explaining other people is dirty work but somebody has to do it.

So far an AI would be none the wiser (with respect to direct / indirect perception). All these clouds floating around, trees in heads or not in heads--it gives one a headache. The AI overheats and shuts down.

Maybe human intellect is getting in the way of self-observation (is that tree in my head?).

Would it help to examine a different animal that is not busy philosophizing about how it gets a tree into its head (or not)? Our sensory / perceptual facilities evolved similarly to other animals, but they can not get tangled up in reflection about perception,

A scout honey bee flies away from the hive. On its flight it passes over a patch of black-eyed susan (Rudbeckia hirta). It turns back to the hive and once there communicates to gatherer bees a few facts -- what direction, how far, how good. The scout 'speaks' through movement--in the dark, pretty much. Gatherer bees take the facts and go directly to the rudbeckia patch and collect lots of pollen.

Bees have been doing this for a long time, and have not been philosophizing about it (as far as we know).

Are bees perceiving the world directly or indirectly?

If a male dog smells a female dog in heat, is it perceiving the pheromones directly or indirectly?

if you attach supernatural powers to me just because I say God exists, I wouldn't really mind it. — Raef Kandil

Well, that's not going to happen so don't get your hopes up .

the degree of faith in such movements is very little. Such movements can be blamed more on religion more than faith. I don't think that someone will have faith that "gay people are bad". This seems to personal and involved. Faith tends to be more timeless. A person with faith is less likely to change his faith anywhere, anytime. A person with faith allows for recurring images in his head or un-repressed thoughts with the intention to find himself which he realises as his own safety haven. — Raef Kandil

Is parsing out the difference between faith and religion in this way a kind of special pleading? You like faith, and dislike religion, so religion is responsible for bad things but not faith.

In my gay experience (76 years) I have found that people of faith--even family members of faith--are quite capable of being anti-gay. People of faith, good will, etc. have engaged in slave trading, slave ownership, genocide, imperialism, war--the gamut. How can they do this? Is it because "they really do not have faith"?

If we could reliably sort people of faith/no faith by their mere actions, life would be soooo much simpler, Unfortunately, it doesn't work. We have bad people of faith, good people of faith, bad people with no faith, and good people of no faith.

In general, people are neither very very good nor very very bad. Most are a mixed bag; wishy washy; lukewarm--neither hot nor cold -- AND a lot of them are people of wishy washy, lukewarm religion and faith,

I am anti-religion and a true believer in God. Maybe you think these things don't mix, but they do. — Raef Kandil

Yes, they can mix. "Religion" is a container of faith, ritual, doctrines, texts, god(s), real property, roles, and all the other components. The container is built after the prophet, the messiah, the god... have spoken and acted, and after the people have heard, believed, a followed. "Religion" is not the heart of the matter -- it's the container. As such, it's important. It holds things together.

Prophets are not religious, but they have faith. — Raef Kandil

"Religious" and "the prophets" seem compatible to me--not that prophet MUST be religious, but he could be. They certainly have faith -- else, why would they prophecy?

Religion is an act of fear. Faith is act of liberation. Prophets are not following dogmas. They are essentially defying all the society rules to favour their truthfulness to the experience they are having. — Raef Kandil

I like your description of prophecy. Religion certainly can be fear-based (among other emotional drivers) but it doesn't have to be. And faith MAY be an act of liberation, but it depends on which store faith is placed.

In other words, it's hard to generalize about all faith, all prophecy, all scripture, all religion, etc.