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.

We don't decide to give value to food and shelter, so in this case value is rooted in basic needs and desires which we don't control. — frank

I agree that fiat currency, in itself, has value because it can be exchange for objects that meet whims, desires, and dire necessities, like water.

But we do decide to give value (in fiat currency denominations) to even dire necessities. If you don't pay your water bill, the city will eventually cut off your supply. One could die if the happened. Tough, says the city, Tell your children to pay their bills. Ditto for heat. No money? Sorry, no food for you! Homeless? No money? The great outdoors awaits you. (Or, more likely the great urban sidewalk awaits you,)

You have a PhD in chemistry; you're 35, very well employed at Total Toxicity Chemical Corporation. One day you get run over by a bus. Your heirs sue. The court decides that your worth in future earnings is $2,000,000. The homeless wretch who had no money for housing was run over by the same killer bus (at the same time you were). The court decides his future earnings were not quite enough to cover the costs of a pauper's burial. His heirs get a bill.

It is interesting to examine the "'art' market". Jack puts paint on canvas in an organized way and takes it to a gallery. The gallery owner gives it a "value"; let's say $3,000 dollars. The factors the art dealer considers extend beyond the 'art' itself; there is the matter of income for the gallery, the future value of Jack's art work (since he is "an up and coming artist"), the 'art' market (where buyers seem to be interested in paintings of car wrecks, like Jack's), and so on.

something has value or meaning when it objectively does not — Darkneos

Like money? Fiat currency (which is in your wallet right now) only has value because we say it has value. If we stopped subscribing to the value of fiat currency, we would suddenly be in very deep economic doo doo, which is objectively really, really bad.

CTvI: You have an excellent grasp of thes issues.

I assumed that the predictions of major world population growth would come to pass -- 14 - 16 billion? Recently I began reading discussions of how individual decisions across very large populations were going to lead to a shrinking population in places like China. It's already happened in Japan, much of Europe, and in some demographic segments of the North American population. Good news in many ways, but highly problematic at the same time. A shrinking population means that China (at some not too distant point) will not be the workshop of the world. That's good for the countries that will take up the slack, bad for China which will see their output shrink with far fewer prime-age workers.

I wonder how global warming will moot labor supply / population issues. I've read some long term economic fore-guesses that don't seem to be taking a much hotter world into account. If critical food growing areas become too hot to cultivate in the required way, that too will speed up population decline.

less wealthy younger people have to dedicate resources to support their parents while others inherit this huge share of wealth — Count Timothy von Icarus

The intergenerational wealth transfer will impoverish many to a greater extent than they already are, and enrich a fortunate minority more than they already have been. The distribution of wealth and poverty will get increasingly disproportionate.

I have benefitted a little from intergeneration wealth transfers -- small potatoes, but it helped. I anticipate my (hopefully) natural and speedy death within the next 10 years, and if all goes well, somebody will benefit by the inheritance of my small bin of potatoes. (It won't make anyone event remotely independently wealthy.) Or sadly, it might end up enriching a longterm care facility.

I can tell you that the concerns you express had no part in our decision to have them — T Clark

You married and started a family in the post WWII era of wide-spread prosperity and very good long-range economic prospects. A lot of people in China and other large demographics are not having more than 1 or 2 children because the cost of housing, medical care, and retirement is too high to make a commitment to 2, 3, or 4 children.

Also, at this point in time, upwardly mobile women understand that having a large family means interrupting or halting their careers, and upwardly mobile families want their children to be upwardly mobile too -- which amounts to a fairly expensive project. A family now needs two fairly well professionally employed parents to pull it off without too much economic sturm and drang.

Obviously, billions of people did not and are not figuring retirement into family size. My parents had 7 children during the depression and WWII; I was the last in '46. I don't think they had time to calculate their future prospects. As it happened, and once the last of us left home, their retirement was peaceful and pleasant, thanks to a generous postal retirement program and Medicare.

Well lets not forget that the energy the earth receives every second, minute, hour, day, week etc from the sun makes our fossil fuel derived energy look like a speck of dust on the blackboard. — Benj96

Very true. The solar constant is approximately 1370 watts per square meter -- at the top of the atmosphere. At ground level it is less, depending on time of day, location on earth, season, cloud cover, etc.

The in-coming and out-going radiation is in equilibrium, unless something happens to alter the outgoing radiation--like burning that tiny speck of chalk dust in the form of fossil solar energy, And I am sure you know all that.

With respect to future "progress" (whatever one thinks that is) we have run into another set of obstacles. Producing the solution to fossil fuel use (solar panels, wind turbines, electric vehicles, etc.) requires a lot of fossil fuels for manufacturing, as do getting all the metals and other elements to make all this work.

The First and Second Industrial Revolutions are both based on the plentiful use of fossil fuels. The problem, in a nut shell, is that while we could run a world economy without fossil fuels, we can't make the transition to that nuclear, geothermal, solar, wind, hydrogen economy without fossil fuels. We're stuck, in other words.

Take the problem of electric vehicles: there are over 1 billion internal combustion vehicles on the world's roads now. How do we manufacture 1 billion electric vehicles to replace the 1 billion internal combustion vehicles on the world's roads WITHOUT using a lot more fossil fuel?

Too Much Magic: Wishful Thinking, Technology, and the Fate of the Nation by James Kunstler is a good read on the topic.

The reality of reducing CO2, CH4, and Chlorofluorocarbon emissions is that we--red blooded, meat eating, over-weight, car-riding humans--will have to turn in our cars and walk or bicycle, and eat more tofu.

IF we can manage to do that (I doubt it) there is still plenty of opportunity to "progress" in all sorts of ways.

To become sustainable there is a great irony - in that we must return to what was already before - a 100% renewable and recyclable energy status of living systems.

There is no limit to thr energy we can harness as long as that energy harnessing isn't directly dangerous to our existence (the air we breath, the water we drink m, the food we eat etc). — Benj96

This is a very positive outlook -- and one we very much need.

So, I am asking how do you think about making sense in the maze of philosophical pluralism? — Jack Cummins

Since I am definitely not a professional philosopher, and might not even be an half-assed amateur at it, I stay out of tedious postmodern mazes. I am not especially interested in diversity and pluralism, and at this stage in my life, it doesn't matter. Hey, I'm almost over, and I'm OK with that. (Well, sort of. Not much choice, come to think of it.).

Everything is text is post-modernism's stance. However, starvation is a bitch. — schopenhauer1

A nice pairing. It shoots down the literary balloon and then nails it with a jagged icicle.

So much of the serious talk of the times dissolves into the hot air of intellectual dithering when confronted by the indifference of nature--birth, eat, starve, death, rinse and repeat ad infinitum. [Work! Strive! Persevere! You are all victims of a monstrous hoax!)

The decentralization of knowledge is a paradigmatic moment history will remember — NOS4A2

Is knowledge actually "decentralized", or is it merely being distributed far more widely than 100 years ago? I don't think the generation of significant knowledge has been decentralized, and I'm not sure it should be. A large group of institutions harbor a lot of the knowledge creators, and they further nurture them. Good thing, because significant knowledge creation is hard work. One needs labs, libraries, and colleagues.

True enough, a volunteer archeologist can hike out into the field and find something quite important. A number of significant finds in England have happened this way. Someday a janitor might find the lost Ark of the Covenant in the attic of a remotely located Vatican warehouse. Serendipity happens in a very decentralized way.

We have innovated, invented and advanced technology, health and social systems consistently for millenia in order to combat these problems.

So it seems we should have less problems now than ever before. When do we reach utopia as if problems are decreasing in number and severity, then surely utopia is just around the corner? — Benj96

The more I read history, the more often I am shocked to discover that something I thought happened in the last 50 to 75 years, actually happened in the last 100, 200, 300 years and more.

One way of defining "progress" is by increased energy consumption. While it took a lot of energy to build the great pyramids--hauling all those big chunks of rock around for starters, it took even more energy -- and complexity -- to run the Roman Empire. The centuries following Rome show that progress waxes and wanes.

By the time of the early Renaissance, energy requirements were rising again, and haven't stopped since then. Innovation is a precondition of getting and using more energy, and complexity is the result.

As we are discovering, there are limits to how much energy the planetary system can manage. Trillions of tons of energetic coal and oil have turned into an existential threat. Innovation, in the form of using less energy, may enable us to thrive IF we can avoid (or survive) a global warming apocalypse first.

Simplifying our lives, and using much less energy may be more difficult than achieving an ever-more complex style of living.

As someone who has had a beard, sometimes quite bushy, for the last 53 years, let me suggest that beards have too little mass to significantly cushion a determined punch. Worse, they provide a handle an opponent can grab onto and pull -- which is quite excruciating. Beards are very helpful in cold weather, provided they are more than just a 5:00 shadow.

Beards are said to give their wearers an aura of sagacity and power. but I'm not sure to what extent. They seem to communicate 'something' beyond mere hairiness.

Canada chose the more compassionate route. Unfortunately, it is at the expense of low-income earning native Canadians, indigenous or not. — Bug Biro

Being poor -- anywhere -- is an all-around bad deal. The poorer you are, the worse it gets. No, this is NOT a Canada-only problem.

You must all have jobs and associate with only the working class. — Bug Biro

Many of us have jobs, or are retired, mercifully, from the job market. You said you are a communist, which means your POV won't be shared by a lot of people here, but keep your left hand high, just the same.

The welfare programs can at worst, if not run well, become rackets for some investors and officials to make money. — ssu

Minnesota shoveled a lot of federal pandemic money out the door to programs without (apparently) sufficiently vetting or auditing the recipients. One agency, Feeding Our Future, was a central player in defrauding the state/federal government of $250,000,000!!!!!. A perfect NEGATIVE example of not letting a crisis go to waste.

Back to @Bug Biro. As a communist, none of this should come as a surprise. The State, even the Canadian State, has a limited interest in its poor people. Really, what can the poor people of Canada do for Justin Trudeau and the ruling class? Not too much.

Per @ssu's comment on prosperity and a growing population: A number of countries -- China, among them, will have difficulty maintaining prosperity in the years ahead as the prime producing age-group shrinks. 45 year olds will be 65 in 20 years, and won't be very productive. If breeding pairs have only 1 child (which is still the case because of living costs in China), the very large working class China has now will shrink -- age out of existence.

North America isn't, at this point, heading for a demographic crisis like China largely because of immigration and higher birth rates among immigrant groups. That may not help your personal situation of course. U.S. prosperity doesn't help our poor people all that much either, but it does produce the tax revenue needed to do anything for anybody.

Maintaining a large working-age cohort doesn't automatically mean taking care of poor people. It's in the interests of the state to have as many working people as possible. That a good share of the working people are also poor is just frosting on the cake -- poor people are cheaper pairs of hands.

Now, the poor don't consume as much as better off people do, but everyone seems to be consuming enough to keep the wheels of business turning. Hey -- we all live in a bourgeois states -- the state runs on the turning wheels of business! I don't like that, but that seems to be the way it is.

If we have no head of government, somebody will invade — frank

Yes, because The Prez stands at the Gates of America very much like Gandalf stood before the Gates of Minas Tirith, and by his power turned away the servant of Sauron. EVEN Donald Trump was able to thwart invasions from the Bahamas and bird-like aliens from a distant star system, just by standing resolutely in front of the the urinal in the oval room powder room.

Iceland is waiting for a lapse in our powerful presidency, as is Lichtenstein, Morocco, and Sri Lanka.

Can the POTUS by force of his high office turn back ICBMs? Apparently -- otherwise the Soviet Union would have long since buried us, as Nikita Khrushchev foretold. Unfortunately, coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) was able to slip past the Great Guardian and Guarantor of Freedom.

I agree that Biden is too old to run again. Granted, there are very lucid 95 year olds, but they aren't under the pressures of POTUS.

Elections have consequences, at least to some extent. As it happens, Twiddledee and Twiddledum will have slightly different policies, and there might even be differences that "make a difference". On the other hand, T'dee and T'dum generally have the same large policy objectives -- maintaining the capitalist order, maintaining the two-party system (Demican / Repocrat), maintaining the highly uneven distribution of wealth, maintaining military strength, and so on.

The election is roughly 17 months away; Nikky Haley and others ??? may be irrelevant way before then.

I find it difficult to get aroused about 2024. I expect the process and result to leave me underwhelmed, very disappointed, deeply chagrined, highly annoyed, and more!

It isn't just that the existing political process will fail to solve our significant -- even existential -- problems. It IS the case that the existing political process CAN NOT solve our problems.

Obama just happened to be black. — Agent Smith

See George Carlin on "He happened to be."

"Overthinking" is probably a misnomer. It's more likely endless dithering that is happening. If I remember correctly from a Tests and Measurements course in college, your first choice of the answer to a question is more likely to be correct than stopping and dithering over it, maybe changing your answer 2 or 3 times.

It's a matter of intuition vs. dithering over too little information. Of course, your best bet is to study thoroughly for the test. Burn some midnight oil.

When it comes to interpersonal affairs, dithering doesn't help. If your ethics are firmly in place and you know the facts of the case, your intuition about what should be done is probably not too far off the mark.

Should intuition be trusted? It's much better to know what you are doing and not have to depend on seat-of-your-pants guesses. A lot of the time, we do not have enough information and we do not really know what the hell we are doing. This isn't a function of stupidity. We might be thrust into the position of having to make an important decision for somebody else -- without knowing all the facts of the case. Maybe we guessed wrong with the best intentions, and caused more problems down the line,

That's a risk we might have to accept.

Civilization.



Not Civilization?



Civilization? Not Civilization? Can't tell.

different — Vera Mont

Exactly.

The vast scale of industrial exploitation by capitalists certainly hasn't gone unnoticed.

The Soviet State is a better example of government exploiting the people than the American State. The Soviet government was essentially "state capitalism" -- the government owned the means of production pretty much lock stock, and barrel, and the people were by and large its employees.

I like civilization, but ask yourself, how much longer did the pre-civilization cultures like the Australian and North American indigenous population last? The Egyptians had a very long record of civilization; some came and were gone in a few hundred years. Many indigenous cultures were longer lived.

The Aztecs, Incas, and Mayas were civilized--cities, big stone monuments, and all. Did the Western Civilization reps in the persons of the Spanish view them as fellow civilized people? Did the Pilgrims and Puritans from Merry Old England recognize the Nauset tribe of the Wampanoag Nation as a culture, a civilization, or primitive barbarians (even though the natives helped the Pilgrims survive)?

Do anthropologists have an edifice complex? A bias for the material? The North American tribes were mobile and they memorialized events through their oral heritage. The Irish did this too, as have other groups.

I'm not especially interested in aboriginal cultures, but they seem to have built monuments in words. I much prefer reading about the civilizations of the Middle East, Egypt, Greece, and Rome than about the ancient people of the western hemisphere, Africa, Eurasia, and so on. That doesn't mean that these other cultures are inferior to my preferred civilization-topics. Or does it?

Marx said that "the government is a committee to organize the affairs of the bourgeoisie." The gov is a servant. While the government sets the ground rules (sort of) by which business plays, Business is bigger than government. The bulk of GDP is produced by business. The government may have a monopoly on heavy duty violence, (outside of the 300 million guns in private hands) but its primary duty is to insure that the worldwide interests of its capitalists are protected.

Most of the depositors in the Silicon Bank were very wealthy individuals and funds. Not many payrolls were at stake.

I object to a lot of government activity (and to a lot of corporate activity too), but the government is also a service provider and its services are paid for with taxes. Mostly it seems like a good deal (especially at the state and local level).

They - science, innovation, laws, mores, beliefs and rituals are part of culture, but many cultures predate civilization. — Vera Mont

So, when I speak of "civilization" I use the same scheme that National Geographic uses. So ancient Egypt was a civilization, the Lakota people were not. Ancient Rome was a civilization, the typical African population were not.

Even though I use "civilization" in that way, such usage is certainly not above criticism. Whether one lived in Athens, on the plains of North America, or in the tropical forests of Africa, South America, and so on, the problems of survival and regulation were very similar. Cultural continuity required transmission of heritage through oral or written language. Both have been successfully used.

Does the fact that Athens built temples with fluted pillars make them superior to the Lakota who prioritized portability--so superior that Athens is a civilization and the Lakota are not?

I probably won't change my actual practice, but in a fight it might be hard to defend it.

not the polishing of church pews. — Vera Mont

I've cleaned the pews at Christ Lutheran a few times, and the main epiphany was that somebody else ought to do it.

Stone-chipping and hide-tanning; canoe construction and making fire; wheels and pottery were all invented before civilization. — Vera Mont

Or they ARE civilization. Even Neanderthals had a set of technologies. They could, for instance, extract a strong black pitch (glue) from birch bark. Not sure what they did with it, just off hand. Maybe repaired their bone china? They turned animal hides into leather (one of their processes involved chewing on the hide; we can tell by looking at their teeth.)

6000 years ago, aboriginal people were mining copper on Isle Royale in Lake Superior.

First, all that does not serve power; then, all that contradicts doctrine, then whatever does not generate monetary, political or military advantage. — Vera Mont

I don't know. Say more about that.

Personally, I wouldn't put Putin in charge of a forest -- too much chance of him burning it down. Maybe he'd be suitable as a toilet cleaner at a large, very busy airport?

Yep. People are stupid. — Banno

How does the person making this generalization exempt himself? Are you immune to bullshit?

Our famous rulers, from William the Conqueror on down to Joe Biden, Rishi Sunak, Anthony Albanese, et al didn't have to consult the masses to begin their ascent. The relevant gate keepers are relatively few in number. Only after Tweedledee and Tweedledum have been admitted as acceptable possibilities, do The People get to vote.

Minutiae!

Here's a good example. A friend of mine who is interested in a lot of different topics, was a volunteer at a museum. One of his tasks was sorting "debitage" from an aboriginal site in Minnesota excavated some years earlier. Debitage is the rocks, bits of wood, bone, charcoal, and stone flakes and such that aboriginal people deposited on the sites they used. Each little piece is examined, identified, sorted, and characterized. It might sound mindless (and it is mind-numbing work) but it yields a lot of real data about diet, tools, trade, and so on. For instance, many of the stone pieces used in making arrow heads were from a distance of -- sometimes -- 150 to 300 miles away.

It's all about minutiae.

I did a project of my own minutiae back in 1990. I put together a long list (thousands of entries) of words derived from Anglo-Saxon. This was before the Internet became useful. I went through a collegiate dictionary and found the words, one by one. Very tedious, but I found it interesting. Then I wrote a program (more minutiae) to determine what percent of words in given text were derived from Anglo Saxon, and from that determine reading difficulty.

Hundreds of hours went into this project. There was a real, practical reason for doing this project, and we don't have to go into detail. It was "successful". (No animals were harmed by this research, but nobody's life was saved either, as far as I can tell.)

Life can so easily get bogged down in the foggy murky bog of minutiae.

I mean learning the secrets of stars and clouds and oceans; learning the language of whales and cicadas; rediscovering the magic of knowledge that civilization had shut down for so long. — Vera Mont

Learning the secrets of stars, whales and cicadas involves a tremendous amount of tedious work -- work considered tedious by the people who love doing it. The exciting moments are thinly scattered.

Now wait a minute... one of the benefits of civilization has been the rich discoveries of science, boring details and brilliant discoveries alike. What "magic of knowledge" did civilization shut down for so long???

"Everything begins in mysticism and ends in politics." The most famous quote of a Frenchman who who died in the first Battle of the Marne.

The term is used in anthropology, ethnology, sociology, psychology, and philosophy. No doubt it’s used loosely sometimes in those disciplines. I guess you’ve been unlucky and have somehow, in all of your reading, managed to miss the more rigorous use of the term. — Jamal

Quite possibly. I haven't read much in anthropology, and have not found a lot of magic in sociology, psychology, and philosophy--literally and figuratively.

BTW, one example of "magic" might be the placebo effect. The fake pill can not have a beneficial effect, yet the patient improves. Conversely, the "nocebo" effect also works, where delivering a very bad prognosis seems to speed up the progress of the disease. Low expectations tend to produce low performance. This "magic" is possible because the knowing brain (that thought it was taking a real pill) is also in charge of the details of the body's operation. Ditto for the "nocebo".

Look. I understand that magic is "really real" for many people. A lot of people believe in witch doctors and their magic, for instance. Atheists may think that nothing fails like prayer, but a lot of believers would vehemently disagree. At the beginning of the AIDS epidemic, some gay men resorted to magical cures (crystals, for instance) because there was, literally, nothing else. Part of the "magic" was the real camaraderie of the afflicted, but one doesn't need magic to understand that. When effective medication came along, the crystals were dumped. Many cultures have employed magic to control nature. While granting that magical acts may be truly comforting, when it comes to control of nature, magic has no efficacy. Dancing does not make it rain, but it is a meaningful activity.

I'd add something like a mode of behaviour to "a way of thinking". It's real, as real as religion, although like religion, it might not always work, or work in the way people think.

I admit I’ve used the concept loosely. — Jamal

Yes, but "magic" is a loosey goosey term, once it's taken out o the theater and pressed into service at the Academy. A lot of what we say about religion is also loosey goosey—not because we are sloppy thinkers. (I mean, we might be sloppy thinkers, but there is an awful lot of slop in the topic to start with,).

As somebody said, "Religion is magic you believe in; magic is religion you don't believe in."

I would now reveal all to you, but it's time for my Tuesday lunch date; if I remember, I'll disabuse you of your enchantment later.

I guess I don't find "magic" and "enchantment" very helpful concepts. Some people do, of course.

an interesting aside: Ursula LeGuin's phantasy worlds remain 'magical' all the way to the last page. The practitioners of powerful magic spells remain. Tolkien, on the other hand brought magic to an end in Middle Earth. The practitioners of magic were either destroyed (Sauron) or their powers were exhausted–Gandalf, Elrond, Galadriel, et al). Men without magic would rule the 4th Age.

It's been a long time since I read Harvey Cox's Secular City which is about Christianity in a secularizing/secularized world. I've wrestled with thais issue since the late 1960s. Perhaps that's why I'm leery about magic and enchantment.

In one way we do have magic a plenty -- it is the performed prestidigitation of advertising and public relations--much (most?) of it is trickery and falsity. The magician's skill isn't in harnessing occult power, of course; it is in misdirecting our gaze and attention so that we miss the critical step. In retail mall architecture, the "Gruen Transfer" is intentional disorientation of the mall customer. (Might be a dated concept; are people still dazzled when they walk into a retail mall? I kind of doubt it. But still, successful retail is highly distracting -- the better for you to buy something you didn't really want or need.

Advertising is predicated on deficiencies -- ours -- that products offer to emend. You can have the sexier smile, the sex-getting sexy figure, the status-giving car, the love-inducing diamond, etc. If it doesn't work, well... there are other products to sell you. Advertising is not magic -- it's just ordinary lying and deceit, most of the time.

A rich topic!

"incommensurable value-fragmentation into a plurality of alternative metanarratives" — Jamal

That phrase alone is going to require a fair amount of unpacking.

are people today enchanted by magic spells? — Jamal

From a secular POV (which everyone, of course, doesn't share) we never were enchanted by magic spells so we can't be disenchanted now. There never was any such thing as 'magic' if by 'magic' we mean 'effective control over the material world'.

* Conspiracy theories
* Demagoguery, nationalism, the alt-right
* Science (as scientism)
* New Age spirituality: "I'm spiritual but not religious"
* Progress/Decline/Catastrophe
* Consumerism

Your list is infused with incommensurable value-fragmentation and plurality of alternative metanarratives, so to speak.

Conspiracy theory–a shared narrative which unites an 'out group' around a supposed falsehood–is entirely separate from science. I'm not sure what anyone means by 'scientism'. Demagoguery*** is in disfavor, and isn't equivalent to nationalism and populism, which are currently in ill repute in some circles. New Age spirituality is one of my pet peeves, so no quarrel there. "Progress / Decline / Catastrophe" Consumerism ..... All four terms have meaning, of course, but what did you mean?

such generic bores as our captains of industry — Nietzsche, The Gay Science

Great phrase, like Mark Zuckerberg for instance.

Max Weber described modernity as a world ‘robbed of gods’. ‘The fate of our times’, he wrote, ‘is characterized by rationalization and intellectualization and, above all, by the “disenchantment of the world” ’. This, he suggested, ‘means that one can, in principle, master all things by calculation … One need no longer have recourse to magical means in order to master or implore the spirits, as did the savage, for whom such mysterious powers existed. Technical means and calculations perform that service.’

However...

if a process of disenchantment was under way during the twentieth century, it was hugely uneven. As Wolfgang Behringer has recently observed, it is probable that a majority of the world's population today believes in witchcraft, which would mean, in absolute terms, that there are vastly more believers than there were in 1600. Oxford Academic

***demagoguery "political activity or practices that seek support by appealing to the desires and prejudices of ordinary people rather than by using rational argument." How disfavored I suppose depends on the desires and prejudices of 'ordinary people'.