It dawned on me this morning what a mess we are in because of failing to use the democratic model for industry and failing to prepare our young for good citizenship. — Athena

"Oh, look, Dick," Jane said. "Athena just had a major theoretical breakthrough."

"No, Jane," Dick said. "Athena had that breakthrough before she found this joint 4 years ago. She woke up and smelled the coffee some time back."

"Oh, oh, oh Dick," Jane said. "Let's not be unkind. Athena is quite right, after all."

"Yes, Jane," Dick said. "It is not nice to be unkind. And for god's sake, Jane, stop twisting Puff's tail. Puff already hates you forever."

Dick said, "Athena is quite right; I was only commenting on her statement that she woke up this morning and noticed that we are in a big mess. She did not."

"Oh, oh, oh. Here comes Sally," Jane said. "Sally and Spot On are both big socialists. Let's ask them what Athena should do."

Dick and Jane told Sally and Spot On what Athena had written.

"Oh, dear," Sally said, "Athena is recognizing class and gender oppression at a most inopportune time, given that the Tea Party is going to wreck the US Government."

"Yes, Sally," Spot On said. "But unfortunately, Sally, oppressed workers develop class consciousness when they do, convenient or not.

"Spot On said, "What we need to do is organize a demonstration against the capitalists planning on oppressing us with Artificial Intelligence agents. Do we have any of the 10,000 blank protest signs left that we bought 3 years ago?"

"Yes, Spot On, you do," Dick said. "You have been storing them in my garage, and I'd like to park our three cars in there. It's about time you put them to use by starting the revolution. Otherwise, I'll sell them to anti-democratic forces on eBay and keep the proceeds."

"Right On, Sally, Dick, Jane, and Puff. GO REDS SMASH STATE Soon we will hang the last capitalist with the intestines of the last Neoliberal!" Spot On screamed in a frenzy of revolutionary zeal.

Dick and Jane went into their house, the one with the big garage full of blank protest signs. Jane mixed a pitcher of martinis and Dick rolled a couple of joints. Puff retired to her safe place under the porch. Sally and Spot On went back to their damp basement rooms and started thinking up stirring slogans.

Hang on, Athena! Help is on the way.

The US should be at least eight separate countries, maybe more — Vera Mont

If you haven't read it, you might like The Nine Nations of North America. That's one; other devolutions have been proposed, and they have some merit.

I can understand the idea of doing away with nation states intellectually, but I definitely don't feel it. I prefer a certain level of territorial exclusiveness. "We are over here; you are over there; let's keep it that way."

Right. So, business, conflict, persecution, economic exploitation as usual, until the climate puts an end to us - or our super weapons do. Fair enough. — Vera Mont

Maybe so. But in a way, you are more pessimistic than I am,

I think our best bet is to put together effective, democratic, humane governments. Well governed societies have (I believe) a better chance of maintaining peace with other well governed societies than societies which are badly governed.

Achieving effective, democratic, humane government is Very Difficult, never mind the impossibility of establishing world peace among governments and societies which range from crazy to just plain bad. The USA, for instance, has not achieved our good goals in full -- we've done it in small bits and pieces here and there, That goes for the other G20 countries, like UK, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Japan, etc.

We are a difficult species, loaded with brains and strong irrational emotions. We have proven ourselves incapable of the highest and best on a mass scale.

Capitalism is a massive problem and we should get rid of it; but doing so--by itself--won't usher in the Peaceable Kingdom.

How long, do you figure, before that's all perfected enough to give up standing armies? — Vera Mont

"Effective, democratic, humane government" does not guarantee peace, even if it is the best government possible. However, if countries agree to not develop the means to attack one another by any means, then THEORETICALLY no means of defense -- standing armies or other measure -- would be needed. Trust but verify, as Reagan said.

War between nations may occurs when one country decides that its interests are no longer compatible with the other country's interests, and that the level of incompatibility is unacceptable. This could happen between effective, democratic, humane governments, even if it isn't all that likely.

An example: A severe shortage of a vital resource might lead to war between otherwise good neighbors. Let's say a river supplied two nations with plenty of water. Fine and dandy, until severe drought reduced the river so much that it could not supply both countries with enough water. Country A might take all of the reduced flow of water for its own people, placing the other nation's survival at risk.

Country B might go to war to get more water.

There are some places on earth where exactly this scenario might develop. If the states depending on the Colorado River were nations, there might be a war over reduced supplies if the Colorado dried up. Several nation-states might decide that California was taking way too much of what there was. Colorado, Arizona, and Nevada might cut off the supply to California, and war would begin. That, despite all four countries being the very models of peaceful democracy.

War is just diplomacy, negotiation, value clarification, psychotherapy, and so forth carried out by more aggressive means.

Joking, of course.

The "idea" of one-world-government sounds great, at first glance. in a perfect world, with perfect people, and perfect systems, it could work. Alas, there is no perfection here.

Let's try for effective, democratic, humane government starting with existing countries, and try to get good government at every level, from township councils up to parliament. That will prove plenty difficult.

Then try small-region government, 2 or 3 nations.

Then try for slightly larger blocks, all democratic, effective, humane, sophisticated.

That should take us out to around 2500, A.D.

One question: "Could humanity be united under one government?" Another question: "Should humanity be united under one government?"

I vote NO in both case. Can't be done; shouldn't be done.

Sancta Trinitas — Agent Smith

I've never heard a good explanation of the Trinity. At any rate, Jesus didn't have anything to do with it. The idea of the triune God was cooked up, starting in the 4th century. Seems to me that it was in response to several heresies which, as it happened, had many followers. Some of the heresies make more sense than some of the official doctrines.

As for the miracles...

a) they never happened
b) something explainable happened and was later embellished
c) they might have been invented at a later date to strengthen the claim of Jesus' divine power
d) Jesus was divine and literally raised Lazarus from the dead, among other things

Pick one.

You need to get out more. People need places where they can exhibit their normal human irrationality, and yell at each other, or just yell.

The "still small voice" belongs to the Holy Ghost, not to mere mortals--everyone here. People can shout reasonably.

But if you take the alternate stance that not all pain is bad then who decides how much pain is acceptable and why? — Andrew4Handel

The person experiencing the pain decides. We don't have a way of measuring pain in an objective way. I have quite a bit of pain from arthritis in various joints. I find it manageable, if unpleasant. Somebody else might find the same level of pain intolerable. Would I opt for less pain? Of course. Arthritic pain is a damned nuisance. On the other hand, the new and different pain of a still-small cancer is helpful.

Some persons excepted, most people prefer to minimize pain whether they are avid natalists or antinatlists.

True enough, a very small percentage of people running marathons drop dead during the 26 mile course. Why so few? Probably (just guessing) because runners have to train up to 26 miles. They don't hop out of their rocking chair and run their first marathon. And, remarkably, most runners don't seem to suffer from it, either.

Pain is also a biological alert. It helps one respond to getting too hot or too cold, for instance. Antinatalists and natalists alike prefer to avoid having their feet or hands become severely frostbit.

I view harm as an unpleasant experience of any kind and something only conscious beings can have — Andrew4Handel

Sweeping definitions often lead to problems. This formulation leads to defining all sorts of good things -- dentistry, running a marathon, dieting to lose excess weight, surgery ... -- as bad, which they clearly are not.

(At least some species of) trees can sense when they are being attacked, execute countermeasures, and warn other trees. Some trees can also tolerate certain insects that would otherwise be a danger, like ants. Tree responses are not fast or dramatic, but they help the tree survive.

There are, obviously, good things and bad things. They might not be as obviously different as red round balls and blue cubes.

If you punch someone back after they punch you? Are you any better than them? — Benj96

Rather than arguing whether one is better or worse than somebody else, it might be better to look at the assault pragmatically. Maybe you had it coming. Maybe responding in-kind risks escalation to a more severe assault. Maybe somebody just boiled over and you happened to be the closest target.

Restorative justice attempts to deal with crime by helping the bad actor restore trust from the community by paying back the wrong with good. This requires the cooperation of the victim. Restorative justice on a neighborhood level is designed to deter young people from developing a habit of criminal behavior. Restorative justice for serious crime requires the involvement of the state.

Real community is the key to dealing with petty crime. If a group of people are characterized by anomie, alienation, oppression, lack of opportunity, transience, and so on (in other words, a failed community), then punishment is likely to be impersonal, ineffective, and coarse, at least.

A person is an indivisible whole of body and mind. Parts can be missing -- a leg, speech ability, vision, and so on. A person ceases to exist when the indivisible whole is broken -- either the brain is dead or in permanent dysfunction; or the body is dead, with the brain following immediately after.

We don't extend "personhood" to other species; this may be outdated. We know more about animal minds than we once did. A dog may be treated like a person. People talk to their dogs, the dogs listen and respond -- probably without much comprehension of word meaning, but they can perceive emotional content and body language. A smart dog has some limited language ability. They can initiate interactions. Some animals, like chimpanzees, elephants, dolphins ... seem to have more brain power, and perhaps they will be granted personhood. I think we can --we must-- respect other species without giving them "human-type personhood".

Yes, you are right Crank. Nevertheless, there are some doctrines and dogmas who see the Pope "above" of Jesus. I mean, as a pure representation of God. — javi2541997

Maybe some popes were hoping to be the Fourth Person of the Trinity, Father, Pope, Son, Holy Ghost, an elected incarnation.

The Protestants have plenty of problems, but at least they don't have a pope.

I think this issue makes me wonder a lot of questions because my failure is see the Pope as someone different from God but probably a Catholic sees him as the pure representation of the idea of God. — javi2541997

I'm not Catholic, but I deeply and most sincerely hope that the Pope is entirely different from God. As I understand it (several times removed from a catechism class) is that the Pope is, at most, the on-site human representative of Jesus -- the vicar,

The meaning of "vicar" is "a representative"; think "vicarious". (In different denominations "vicar" has different meanings.)

There are old fashioned Catholics who reverence the Pope and look to him for ultimate earthly guidance. Many Catholics would say hello to the Pope if it was entirely convenient, and there are new-fangled Catholics who don't give a rat's ass about the Pope.

Whether one is a Catholic, a Protestant, a Buddhist, a Jain, a Moslem, Hindu, or Zoroastrian, animist or atheist, in the end the individual has to personally decide what to do. That's why some Catholics have abortions, why some Methodists and Moslems are alcoholics, why some Buddhists strain their water through a sieve to avoid eating a possibly sentient being, why some Jews like pork, and why any individual might take out a knife and stab you in the heart.

Sci-fi doomsday stories almost always have a surviving remnant. One that did focus on the remnant was A Canticle for Liebowitz--a great novel. A nuclear war, a 2000 year slog back to full recovery, and then another nuclear war. In On The Beach, another excellent novel, there is a nuclear war and the end is The End, no survivors.

How the global warming doomsday will work out is unclear.

One thing, though: Civilization requires a minimum to survive--literacy for instance. Once literacy is lost, it may not be recovered. A couple of generations of illiteracy, and writing / reading has to be invented again. Technical knowledge may be lost among the survivors. If I survived as part of a remnant, I could not reinvent antibiotics or antipsychotic drugs. I could not tell you how to identify blood types. I can not shoe a horse, let alone train it to carry me around or pull a plow; I can not diagnose a sick milk cow or a sick pig. I do not know how to turn raw wool into cloth (I get the basic idea, but that's not the same as knowing how to do it). My ignorance goes on and on,

In Earth Abides, a third great story (written in 1949!) some sort of virus wipes out 99.99% of the earth's population. A healthy tiny remnant survives, but in two generations literacy is lost. The younger survivors could see no reason to learn to read. Their reality had become hunter-gatherer.

At my age, anything longer than short-term survival has been foreclosed.

I could manage a slow exit (weeks, months) or I could arrange a faster one during the early days of disorder. For a pleasant departure, I'd want Haydn, Handel, and Mozart; a nice tranquilizer; a little Moody Blues the Doors, and a couple of others. A playful dog would be nice for company and amusement.

A nice sandwich, a beer, a comfortable couch, and a little time. Then sic transit gloria mundi. Exit stage left.

For those intending to hang on: Don't count on it. We flourish because we have a dense fabric of cooperative society. Rip that up and we will soon be back to "nasty, brutish, and short".

Are we same person through time or have we changed in many ways without realising it? — Andrew4Handel

Something persists in me that allows me to know I am the same person over time. It may be a soul or spirit or just a persistence of core memories. — Andrew4Handel

To start from the position that our personal identity is largely consistent over our life time makes practical sense because we cannot monitor ourselves as objective external observers. We do have some capacity to compare who we seem to be now with who we now think we were 30, 30, 40 years ago. I don't feel disassociated with the past 76 years, so... I suppose I am a lot like the 'me' that I was in 1965 or 1975.

I gain confidence in life-long continuity because we can observe others more objectively as external observers. Other people seem to remain "who they are" -- until they don't. Dementia means a diminution of mind -- a terrible thing to witness first or second hand. People with dementia are NOT the same people they used to be.

Could our sense of continuity be 'illusory'? Just for discussion purposes... it could be. In fact, to some limited extent "personal continuity over time" probably IS an illusion--to some extent. But of our personal continuity is an illusion, how is it that we can see continuity and discontinuity in other people?

I prefer to keep spirits out of this.

And Merry Christmas.

Chaucer might have suggested the big O two or three times, but John Donne doesn't seem like the type. He was, after all, a priest and priests are not supposed to whore around or jerk off. As for his misogyny, it was endemic in the 16th century. (We, of course, are totally innocent of misogyny!!)

Misogyny was SO common in the 16th centered it no longer had cultural weight. That women, especially lovely ones, would be unfaithful (with lecherous men) was a given--amongst men. Real women, of course, xhibtrd uc mo police viollll///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;veg/////////////////////////////afgqFFFDCVVVVCZZZZZZZV. /d////////////////////////////eeg

Ooops, dozed off. I was about to make a brilliant point, but I fell into the arms of Morpheus before I could bestow it upon the world.

Clearly, Frank Sinatra inspired George Herbert, even though they were just three centuries apart. The big question is how: Was the Frank Sinatra we knew a reincarnation of a crooner from a much earlier time, or did George Herbert intuit where music and poetry was heading and simply divined how, by the 20th century, Frank would be singing songs about Strangers in the Night?

It's a conundrum.

Should we be able to identify however we like? Would that be problematic and is there an ethical dimension? Should identities be challenged? — Andrew4Handel

My identity is very important -- to me. Important enough that I spend quite a bit of time dithering about it -- privately. No, I have no doubts whatsoever about my past, present, or future sex, gender, or sexual orientation. I know where I come from, though my background is not necessarily consistent with where I find myself today (retired old gay man). I presented myself frankly: what you saw was what you got.

I have a strong preference for other people presenting themselves in their true colors. I do not like discovering that you (any 'you') is not who you seemed to be.

An example: When I went into a gay bar to pick up a trick (haven't done that in years) I wanted some certainty that the trick was, in fact, like what he seemed to be like. Once in a while, a trick turned out to be other than what he seemed to be -- not dangerous, just not as advertised. Annoying.

Same goes for work relationships, casual friendships, and the like. BE your identity. If you are actually a ruthlessly competitive SOB, be up-front about it. I can deal with ruthlessness; I can't deal with ruthlessness masquerading as gentle and loving good works. If you are pretty much a crook, own it. If you are practicing for sainthood, that's your problem. Just don't act like a bureaucrat to cover it up.

As a general existential principle, I don't believe we can be just anything we want to be. Nature and nurture stacked our decks before we could hold the cards. People are best advised to honestly be who they are, for better or worse.

How can you memorize all these gods — god must be atheist

I have not. Google enables me to sound erudite on the Internet, and nobody knows I am actually a dog. But yes, in English literature too, there are period where knowing a fair amount about Greek and Roman culture would help one out a lot. I had no opportunity to study Classics until long after I completed a degree in English Lit.

"Baroque style" covered / smothered European culture. Holy Mother Church had a lot to do with it -- being educated meant learning Latin and Greek, whatever one's native language was. There are poets I find dry-as-dust who were all about marinating their output in classical referents. John Dryden comes to mind. (He was hot stuff in his day among the literati).

Still, some of the baroque era poets were among my favorites, though, on a poem by poem basis. Here's one by George Herbert (1593 -1633) which is "metaphysical" (an English Baroque form):

Love bade me welcome. Yet my soul drew back
                              Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
                             From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,
                             If I lacked any thing.
 
A guest, I answered, worthy to be here:
                             Love said, You shall be he.
I the unkind, ungrateful? Ah my dear,
                             I cannot look on thee.
Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,
                             Who made the eyes but I?
 
Truth Lord, but I have marred them: let my shame
                             Go where it doth deserve.
And know you not, says Love, who bore the blame?
                             My dear, then I will serve.
You must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat:
                             So I did sit and eat.

John Donne, (1572-1631)

Song

Go and catch a falling star,
Get with child a mandrake root,
Tell me where all past years are,
Or who cleft the devil’s foot,
Teach me to hear mermaids singing,
Or to keep off envy’s stinging,
And find
What wind
Serves to advance an honest mind.

If thou be’st born to strange sights,
Things invisible to see,
Ride ten thousand days and nights,
Till age snow white hairs on thee,
Thou, when thou return’st, wilt tell me,
All strange wonders that befell thee,
And swear,
No where
Lives a woman true, and fair.

If thou find’st one, let me know,
Such a pilgrimage were sweet;
Yet do not, I would not go,
Though at next door we might meet;
Though she were true, when you met her,
And last, till you write your letter,
Yet she
Will be
False, ere I come, to two, or three.

The English baroque (or other) poets I like do not lard their lines with classical bric-a-brac.

Was Mars the Roman equivalent of Eros? — god must be atheist

No. Mars is Roman. "Ares was the ancient Greek god of war or, more properly, the spirit of battle. He represented the distasteful aspects of brutal warfare and slaughter. Ares was never very popular, and his worship was not extensive in Greece." (Brittanica)

Amor (“love”), also known as Cupid. Kupido ( Cupido – “thirst”) was a Roman god and the embodiment of love. He was considered the son of the goddess Venus and the Mars. He was identified with the Greek Eros who fell in love with Psyche.

how does Chronos fit in — god must be atheist

Wikipedia has a chart of the Greek gods @ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_tree_of_the_Greek_gods

I thought Chronos was one of the ur-generation, but as you said, "the ancients were heavily leaning on differently evolved mythologies specific to their tribes". I didn't think Eros was primordial either, so... The more you learn, the less you know.

For what it's worth Etyonline says

Cupid
Roman god of passionate love, late 14c., from Latin Cupido, personification of cupido "desire, love, passion," from cupere "to desire" (see cupidity). Identified with Greek Eros. Cupid's bow as a shape, especially of lips, is from 1858.

cupidity (n.)
"eager desire to possess something," mid-15c., from Anglo-French cupidite and directly from Latin cupiditatem (nominative cupiditas) "passionate desire, lust; ambition," from cupidus "eager, passionate," from cupere "to desire." This is perhaps from a PIE root *kup-(e)i- "to tremble; to desire," and cognate with Sanskrit kupyati "bubbles up, becomes agitated;" Old Church Slavonic kypeti "to boil;" Lithuanian kupėti "to boil over;" Old Irish accobor "desire."
Despite the primarily erotic sense of the Latin word, in English cupidity originally, and still especially, means "desire for wealth."
kewpie (n.)
1909, American English, coined by their inventor and illustrator, Rose C. O'Neill (1874-1944), as an altered form of a diminutive of Cupid. Kewpie doll is from 1916.

Let's hear a round of applause for our Proto-Indo-European forebears, from Sanskrit to Old Church Slavonic and beyond.

The apotheosis of Cupid is in the song "Stupid Cupid", a song written by Howard Greenfield and Neil Sedaka which became a hit for Connie Francis in 1958.

Apologies for my inaccuracies guys. My bad haha. It was somewhat of an impulsive spontaneous musing that I found intriguing. A guess I should have looked up a few definitions first to clear up the post of impurities. Lazy work lol. — Benj96

Apologies are not in order. Greek deities and their multitudinous forms and devious activities are a specialty field. Everything Greek and Roman is specialty stuff. There is so much history, so little time.

The Greek gods were a quirky bunch. Athena sprang out of the head of Zeus, for instance. Dionysius' mother was Semele, a mortal and pregnant by Zeus. Hera, Zeus's jealous wife, told Semele to look at Zeus in his godly thunderbolt form. She did and was promptly fried. Zeus rescued their child, Dionysius, and sewed him up in his thigh for the next few months. Talk about dysfunctional families!

The oldest gods, like Eros, were parentless forces of nature who more 'emerged' than were born.

Love among the Greeks was more complicated than your typical Hollywood romance where girl meets boy, boy screws girl, girl accuses boy of rape, and so on ad nauseum:

Storge = the bond of empathy
Eros = romantic love, sexual love
Philia = friendship or brotherly love
Agape = unconditional love

Eros had romantic love and sex--useful, for sure, but no god was in charge of storge, Philia, and agape, as far as I know. How far is that? Two or three nanometers.

"Accept my gifts, my insight, my power and you will be able to bring people together, you shall be able to imbue them with pure love: love for one another, and love for themself - passion for and awareness of one's own talents, joy for their own life and being. Love in all its forms. You can heal the world."

No greek god could manage all that. They were not that nice, for one thing and "healing the world" is far more complicated herding 8 billion cats. I mean, think: the Supreme Being and Creator of the Universe wasn't able to get the small tribe of Israelites to behave. 8 billion of us?

I would like to see more high quality stuff — Jamal

"Do you feel like you're wasting your time being here?"

What is "wasted time"?

No, we don't want to see more high quality stuff. Quality is too demanding, too burdensome, hard to produce, often tedious to read. We don't have to go for absolute slop, but let's be sensible: sitting down at the mighty Mac and turning out refined, insightful, elegant, and witty text is a major drain on one's ever-diminishing intellectual resources. I could be brilliant, but then I would be too exhausted to appreciate the adulation which fallow philosophers would shower on me.

Enough about the flight to quality!

Hey there, welcome to THE Philosophy Forum. We are happy to have you here. Stay a long time!

quote="niki wonoto;d13793"]Most people in this world are oblivious or ignorant to this harsh reality[/quote]

Some ants live, some ants die — niki wonoto

nothing really matters — niki wonoto

it all sounds the same — niki wonoto

Speaking of everything sounding the same, stop whining about reality; ants (fact: they ALL die); meaninglessness (nothing is meaningless--there is no such thing as meaningless sex, for example); 7,500,000,000 people being oblivious or ignorant--how the hell do you know that?

People keep living everyday, thinking that their lives mean something; that their lives have meaning or purpose. — niki wonoto

Yeah, the fucking nerve!

Dear, I don't subscribe to this view myself, but it's worth adding to one's repertoire of responses to reality, such as it is.

Ha! Didn't notice the pigeon.

Would I like to be Eros? Sure. God of love and sex--I could work with that.

as you string the bow of love and unite people with their authentic selves — Benj96

Sounds like mission creep. I don't think authenticity was the remit of Eros or Cupid.

Option 2 would become terminally boring pretty quickly.

No one will love you for who you are. You will be alone so that they may be toghether. " — Benj96

Hey, the Greek Gods are not social workers who get lost in their good works. Erotic arrows are lobbed at mortals who are doomed from the get go, anyway. Primordial deities just don't have to worry about 'losing themselves'.

Were I Eros, I could end the war on Ukraine by making Vladimir Putin the sex-slave of Vladimir Zelensky, for instance. Donald Trump could be made to fall for any old horse's ass, just to keep him busy with something besides American politics.

I am afraid you have waded into deeper and hotter water than you supposed.

Eros (also Cupid) is the little boy. Aphrodite (also Venus) is the goddess of love. She sends him to shoot people with his little arrow to make them fall in passionate [erotic] love with some specified other person. — Vera Mont

Cupid is Roman. Eros is Greek.

The name Cupīdō ('passionate desire') is a derivative of Latin cupiō, cupĕre ('to desire'), itself from Proto-Italic *kup-i-, which may reflect *kup-ei- ('to desire'; cf. Umbrian cupras, South Picene kuprí). The latter ultimately stems from the Proto-Indo-European verbal stem *kup-(e)i- ('to tremble, desire'; cf. Old Irish accobor 'desire', Sanskrit prá-kupita- 'trembling, quaking', Old Church Slavonic kypĕti 'to simmer, boil')

Hesiod says that Eros was primordial, the 4th god to come into existence after Chaos, Gaia, and Tartarus. Parmenides says he was the first god to emerge.

Eros is not the fat little imbecile of Valentines Day, "blackwinged Night laid a germless egg in the bosom of the infinite deeps of Erebus, and from this, after the revolution of long ages, sprang the graceful Eros with his glittering golden wings, swift as the whirlwinds of the tempest." Further, he is the god of love, yes, but equally SEX.



There are others involved in Eros' life, depending on which biopic one saw. Eros has a complicated relationship with his brother, Thanos, who often tries to destroy the universe. Another brother, Anteros, is the god of requited love (literally "love returned" or "counter-love") and also the punisher of those who scorn love and the advances of others, or the avenger of unrequited love.



One could go on and on here, but that's enough.

Tarot cards may be 100% hokum, but that wouldn't prevent someone from gaining personal benefit by using them. After all, a good share of psychoanalysis seems just as hokey, but within living memory it has been quite respectable. Penis envy? Oedipal complexes? Sounds like bullshit to me. The interpretation of dreams holds that certain things, like staircases, have definite meaning when they appear in a dream, nuanced by whether one is ascending or descending, what's at the top and bottom and who is on them. Could be, I suppose. It's no more unlikely than 1 of 20 cards revealing truth.

The thing is, people like attention, and sitting down with a tarot card reader is probably at least somewhat satisfying. The reader appears to be peering intently into one's 'situation'. Feels good. Same for fortune telling, tea leaf reading, or channeling the dead. Hocus pocus, but nobody ever went broke underestimating people's gullibility.

When asked whether she was happy, the opera diva Beverly Sills said, "Let's just say I'm cheerful."

I am happy. I am either at peace or resigned to the inevitable. I don't let doomsday bother me; do you let it bother you?

The drummer in Elvis Perkins' band makes me happy,

I've not disappointed — Hanover

the wankers and cunts — bert1

Would you splash out, go wild, enjoy the pleasures of life while you could, — Benj96

You asked A4H, but... what the hell. IF the 2nd coming were imminent, my guess is that going wild and enjoying the pleasures of the harbor during the countdown might move one out of the SAVED column into the DAMNED column. On the other hand, Jesus has a good nose for pious fraud, so last-minute piety might not wash either.

I'm not sure what the Divine thinks of satisfying fleshly desire, but in Deuteronomy 14:26 there are instructions for celebrating if one can not travel to the temple in Jerusalem to deliver one's tithe.

And thou shalt bestow that money for whatsoever thy soul lusteth after, for oxen, or for sheep, or for wine, or for strong drink, or for whatsoever thy soul desireth: and thou shalt eat there before the LORD thy God, and thou shalt rejoice, thou, and thine household.

Certainly, "lusteth after" sounds promising.

So, it would appear that God the Father isn't altogether opposed to us having a good time. Maybe God the Son and his mother are more up-tight. No idea where the Holy Ghost stands on partying. Being incorporeal, probably doesn't know what it is.

Personally, I'd like to spend the countdown at a nice gay bathhouse which, hopefully, would be busy. Like St. Catherine of Siena said, All the way to heaven IS heaven." Was she thinking of gay bathhouses too?

For me it was a close call, an near encounter with death that shook me up and forced me to reckon with my ultimate mortality. I'm much more cautious in lue of that. — Benj96

There you go.

The trick is to have a close encounter with the grim reaper and live to tell about it.

They act as if they are invicible. Hedonism, indulgence. Living as if tomorrow would never come around. — Benj96

The act like they are invincible because it seems like they are. Hey, young people can get away with all sorts of things that will be a lot less tolerable in 30 years! They have not had the major injuries, infectious diseases, cancers, economic disasters, and so on to feel just how fast things can go from good to bad and from bad to worse. Given time, they will.

When I was in my 20s (1960s) the world looked A LOT BETTER than it does now. They may have negative self-fulfilling prophecies, but so does the world they live in! If we were making actual progress on global warming, maybe they would have a more positive attitude. If the economy were not so obscenely unbalanced in favor of the parasitic 1%, maybe they would have higher expectations.

Young people burn the candle at both ends--"smoke, drink, party like crazy, take drugs, sleep little, take risks"--because they can get away with it, at least for a while (x number of years). Eventually most young people get older and start to slow down. At some point they discover they can't quite drag themselves into work after a late night of sex, drugs, and rock and roll. After enough mornings of feeling crapulous, they will start cutting back.

Or they won't and they'll drop dead early.

Who is supposed to run -- us or them?

Their approach and our response is a fertile topic in science fiction. Were you beamed aboard the alien ship from earth by the aliens to provide guidance on how to approach us, what would you say?

Let's say the aliens can breathe our air. They are symmetrical beings with manipulative
"fingers" and 4 limbs, have several sensory capacities, but are overall somewhat repulsive in appearance (imagine as you will). Being sensible aliens, they have been surreptitiously studying us and can hear and understand your speech, but have some difficulty producing human speech sounds, so they communicate with you through a screen. They don't tell you and you don't know how much destructive power they are capable of projecting.

How many years would have passed on Earth? — jgill

Earth will probably be irrelevant to those on board. This is a one-way trip. There is an overwhelming chance they won't be able to go back whence they came. A message to earth will take 100 ears to arrive, and 100 years for a return message. They will be 'out of range' in a big way, (Some scoff writers propose leaving a string of transmitters along the way to stay in touch. Not sure how much that would help.

They probably won't travel at 95% of light's speed for long. It will probably take them quite a long time to reach maximum speed, and way before their arrival, they will have to start slowing down, else they will whiz past the destination.

Caution is prudent, but IF the planet can support our form of life, there is probably similar (carbon based) life there. Whether the natives are amoebas, big stupid lizards, or refined intelligent beings, trouble WILL ensue. We, being what we are, will \ cause problems. Either our bodily flora and fauna will make them sick, or theirs will make us sick. They, beings of refined taste and intelligence, may decide we would be good to eat. Or, visa versa. Even if they are refined and intelligent, the opportunities for catastrophic misunderstanding is enormous,

Flip the situation: a space ship arrives on earth from a planet 100 light years away. Ultra big surprise! What is our likely response?

1) What am I?

If I behave in a selfish, greedy, vindictive, manner am I then a selfish, greedy, vindictive person? Am I something other than how I behave? If I am how I behave, then changing behavior changes me. If I am something other than my behavior, what does changing mean? Can I be selfish, greedy, and vindictive but actually be a selfless, generous, forgiving person?

What constitutes "who we are" and "how we are" impinges on any efforts to become something else, it seems.

2) A person can pretend to become something he or she is not, but can a person become in fact what he or she is not?

I believe we have an identity -- who we are -- which is at first a fuzzy state that is given a push toward a particular direction and definition through childhood and into adulthood. At some point we become who we are and who we are going to be.

We can use various stage settings and flattering lighting to present ourselves, but in cold daylight, we are what we are.

3) An opposite view holds that our behavior and our identity are independent. Behavior creates a reputation that is our public identity. Our reputations are provisional and subject to change through amelioration and peroration. Whatever our reputation may be, we are not the same as our reputations.

4. If a person's identity is judged to be good, then bad behavior doesn't matter. For consistency's sake, if a person's identity is judged to be bad, then good behavior doesn't matter either. Saints can do not wrong and devils can do no right.

#3 is represented in certain varieties of religious thinking. Calvinists believe people are predestined to be saved (go to heaven) or be damned (go to hell) independent of their pious behaviors. If one is pre-ordained to be damned, nothing will help. The damned are screwed from the getgo and the saved have a validated ticket (not quite how Calvin put it).

Theologians in the Calvin camp devised escape hatches from Calvin's unknowable and inflexible system of saved and damned. They felt that Christians required a way to become (something else--saved) despite predestination.