I don't see why it would be acceptable in one instance, but not in the other. It seems like a double standard to me. — Tzeentch

Because a society is not the same as a family. I grew up in a family where confrontations were rare. We seven children behaved ourselves without violence. Threats of violence? As my father would say, "If you don't stop complaining [crying, whining, etc], I'll give you something to complain about." Or, "If you don't stop squabbling [in the back seat], you can get out and walk home."

When were these threats turned into violence? They were not. Our parents' anger was novel enough for us to take it seriously all by itself. Were we ever spanked? Yes. Was that violence? No; it didn't rise to the level of violence. There are families where parents exercise violence freely; fists, kicks, hard slaps, belts, etc. I have seen this in action in families (and worse, actually) and I definitely do not approve of it.

There is no parent in society. There are citizens, and there is a government. there are written and unwritten rules governing interaction between citizens, and between the government and citizens. A lot of these rules have the force of law. There are penalties laid out for violating the law. Unwritten rules have penalties which result, too. Like, leave angry drunks alone. Threaten an angry drunk and you will likely get socked.

Societies have an implied social contracts which bind citizens to treating each other more or less civilly (and most of the time, the contract is honored). There are mutual obligations which are understood. The law, however, is not an IMPLIED social contract -- it is explicit. We understand that if we violate the law, there may well be quite unpleasant consequences. Prison is one of the possible consequences.

If you think being in prison is the same as being tortured, then that is what you think. I don't agree; I would vastly prefer not to be in prison, but it isn't ipso facto the same as torture. (That said, a prison certainly can be operated in such a way that it is torture).

I will agree that the threat of violence (of some material sort) lies behind governmental authority and power. Law and the social contract assigns to the state the privilege of exercising violence to compel compliance in designated situations. I'm OK with that. If we don't want to be the recipient of privileged violence, then we don't flagrantly violate the law. We are careful about when, where, how, and why we tempt the state into pouncing on us.

The smart rat doesn't tempt the cat to pounce, unless he's very near his bolt hole.

What would you call a household where everybody does what the head figure wants out of fear of getting beaten?

And what would your reaction be if the head figure excused themselves by saying the beatings are only a last resort for when the fear of being beaten isn't sufficient to force obedience? — Tzeentch

I'd also call that abusive parenting; societies are not families, though.

Despotic regimes employ violence on similar terms: IF you do not obey the Maximum Leader, the result will be imprisonment, beatings, torture, and possibly death. Such despotic regimes exist, but they stand out against the majority of societies whose response to unlawful behavior goes no further than imprisonment. Imprisonment is coercive, certainly, but coercion is not the same as violence (beatings, torture, execution etc.).

Violence or nothing is a false binary. Societies use coercion (fines, for instance) to enforce rules. Leave your car on the street after a snow storm, and it might get towed away--a coercive measure people find quite aversive. Coercion yes, but the streets cannot be cleared of snow if people don't move their cars out of the way.

Force and coercive measures are not inherently violent. There are also passive measures which society uses -- literal and figurative 'speed bumps'. Regulatory review of land use proposals are a speed bump; ruling against the developer ("No, you can't build a slaughterhouse in the middle of a residential area!"). The refusal of a permit is likely to feel coercive. If the developer persists, force (in the form of intrusive court proceedings) may be used. We're not talking about beatings or killing anybody here. Force and coercion are none-the-less employed.

Governments have violence as the last resort, but have several options before the beating and shooting begin.

Briefly speaking, anarchy means "without rulers". Anarchists argue that the institution we refer to as "government" is illegitimate, because no one has the right to rule over another. Ruling over others is akin to owning them, which is essentially the model of having masters and slaves. — AntonioP

Do people, individual and collective, NOT have the right to employ government?

No, ruling over others is not in itself akin to owning them. In a feudal society the peasants may have had very few rights, but they weren't slaves. (We ought to know what real master/slave relationships look like.) Modern despotic governments maximize their control through pervasive surveillance and the threat of violence, and some countries are like that; most are not.

Our best bet is a democratic society with a sufficiently limited government that it is possible to conduct one's life as one likes more or less, while at the same time living within rules that make community possible. This will involve a fair amount of social friction. Some people will make too much noise; some will use alcohol and drugs which impair their behavior (however subjectively pleasant they may be); some people won't mow their lawn; some people will have sex in public places; some people will engage in.petty crime and get away with it.

Some people will behave in a way that is unacceptable for any society to accept: shooting people at random; stabbing somebody on the bus; reckless driving; selling spoiled food, stealing large amounts of money; burning buildings down, etc. A livable community requires ways to effectively suppress these kinds of criminal behavior.

As topics go, whether or not we have "free will" might be unanswerable.

A lot of our mental activity goes on outside of the portion that we are consciously aware of. What the brain delivers to our consciousness if pretty much fait accompli. We don't decide what we like, what we want, or what we think. Do you like strawberries? If so, did you decide to like strawberries, or did you just find them delicious?

For instance, I may have consciously decided that your topic title was interesting, but I'm not sure about that. Perhaps an unconscious predisposition compelled me to respond to you. I did not "decide" how to compose this response. It just arrived in my fingers on the keyboard. I have, however, edited what occurred to me. Was the editing an act of free will or was it the product of a fussy compulsion? Don't know.

It doesn't matter, really. Whether we have free will or not, we have evolved to operate more or less successfully. We are, fortunately, not left to our devices. We require years of careful rearing before we are able to live independently. A lot of who and what we are is supplied by genes and experience before we have a choice in the matter.

Do you accept that? or do you really think every politician is nefarious? — universeness

I accept that. No, I do not think most politicians are nefarious. Many politicians are well-motivated, with the intention to perform good public service.

That said, economic interests modify what "good public service" means. The United States is a big country with 300,000,000+ people. It is easier to judge politicians on a state and local level than the national level. That's probably true in the UK, too.

As for bitter crankery, it is just a handle, not a summation. It could be ishkabibble just as easily. Or universeness.

I don't find it ironic — universeness

I suppose I can spell it out for you. Once upon a time, decades ago, I had a disagreement with someone about philosophy, politics, or religion (can't remember) and they called me a bitter crank. The irony is that I was not / am not bitter, and in my opinion, not a crank either. I thought it a novel and amusing brickbat to turn into a bouquet.

If you still don't get it, or don't like it, then... too bad.

Well, I dont know the name of the current body of such political facilitators in the USA, but in the UK the body you describe is called the civil service. — universeness

The Civil Service in the US administers the laws passed by the 2 political bodies. By law, the Civil Service is protected from politics:

Hatch Act Overview (U.S. Office of Special Counsel)
​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

The Hatch Act, a federal law passed in 1939, limits certain political activities of federal employees, as well as some state, D.C., and local government employees who work in connection with federally funded programs. ​

The law’s purposes are to ensure that federal programs are administered in a nonpartisan fashion, to protect federal employees from political coercion in the workplace, and to ensure that federal employees are advanced based on merit and not based on political affiliation.​​​​ ​​

So in the US system, the intent is to separate the administration of the law from the politics involved in the creation of the law.

I do not like the conduct of politics, but it is absurd to suppose that it can be done away with. Given the reality of politics, the best policy is to stay alert to what is going on above and below the table. That's what a free press is supposed to help us do. An eviscerated press can't perform it's vital functions.

Politics exists because people have an appetite for power and preferences for particular policies.

The way to make politics really dangerous is to deny it exists. Some people apparently suppose that people conduct election campaigns, get elected, and then sit in legislatures or congress and engage in pristine impartial procedures to produce laws for the equitable good of all. Horse shit, of course. It's also dangerous to under rate the intensity of partisan motivation. There really are very ambitious people who covet power most greedily.

One can imagine many schemes that could/would/might thwart partisan politics. We could, for instance, select people at random to fill seats in Congress or Parliament. Why don't we try it?

We don't try such schemes for three reasons. First, groups of people have real interests and they are often at odds with other groups. Hence, politics. Second, whenever a convention is held to conceive reform, politics is present at the moment of conception. A political disinterested constitutional convention is an oxymoron. Third, even IF some scheme were devised that would eliminate the emergence of political parties, it would require some sort of heavy handed administrative body to enforce it. The anti-political administration would end up being worse than the political parties.

Smaller reforms in the way politics operates are a better bet. Maintaining open access to the polls, for instance, is one such approach. Conservatives (in the US) have tended to erect barriers to voter access. Or, recently, they have tried to eliminate voting by mail. Public financing of campaigns is another smaller idea.

It's a mistake to think that conservatives are all better now, having gotten Trump out of their system.

Conservative interests and politics have been a negative and enduring drag on American life for a long time. Whether they are called "republican" or "democrat" doesn't matter that much. Conservatives resisted legislation to establish Social Security, Unemployment Insurance, social welfare programs, Medicare, Medicaid, and more. Southern Democrats (DBA conservatives) imposed race-based limitations on progressive programs such as UI and and federal housing programs.

Democrats are not eligible for political sainthood either, but they have tended to be more progressive than their conservative counterparts.

Immanuel Kant: What can I know? What should I do? What may I hope?

Just thought I'd throw that in; I don't know if Kant came up with a satisfactory answer.

I am no expert on animal behaviour but it seems to me humans can never exist (spontaneously?)like an animal in the wild without language communities and complex learning. — Andrew4Handel

Actually, humans do live in the wild -- a wild country of languages, complex meaning, communities, cultures, elaborate knowledge, etc. We exist in it spontaneously because this wild land of "civilization" is our natural world. It is everything from wonderful to god-awful.

Every decision we make we don't know if we are doing the right thing and what the consequences are going to be. — Andrew4Handel

Maybe the first time you encounter strong drink (alcohol) you will not know what the consequences are of guzzling the whole bottle of wine, You will soon find out, and you won't forget the lesson. Eat a pound of chocolate in one go and you will be aware that too much of a good thing is not all that wonderful.

existential crisis — Andrew4Handel

Given our large brains with our capacity to dig ourselves in pretty deeply, the occasional existential crisis is a given. Almost all the time, we dig ourselves out of the hole and move on.

here the Chad Mitchel Trio satirizes the John Birch Society, a far right political group from the 1960s:



Here's a ridiculously long film about the John Birch society. Sample it at 40:00 minutes.

There is no comfort or justification in it, but the fact is that the United States has had some outstanding episodes of violence and threats of violence directed at political persons and institutions (as opposed to violence directed against banks, convenience stores, competing gang members, and collateral victims). To start with, there was the Revolution of 1776. There was a war of property acquisition (the Mexican- American war); the south succeeded from the union and was forced back over a lot of dead bodies. The wars against the American Indians. A century of crude oppression of blacks after the civil war.

In 1856, in the United States Senate chamber, saw Representative Preston Brooks, a pro-slavery Democrat from South Carolina, used a heavy walking cane to attack Senator Charles Sumner, an abolitionist Republican from Massachusetts. Senator Sumner suffered brain injuries.

Labor organizations have been subject to periodic physical attacks -- not just propaganda -- for 150 years. The violence of the 'Red Scare' of 1919-1921 was directed at labor and blacks.

Four Presidents have been assassinated, within less than 100 years, beginning with Abraham Lincoln in 1865. Attempts were also made on the lives of two other Presidents, one President-elect, and one ex-President.

A politically driven gun-fetish has resulted in 1/3 of the population owning guns, everything from small pistols to military weapons.

So... we should not be surprised that anti-democratic violence continues. I don't like it, but the current batch has been bubbling up for 2 or 3 decades.

I find that your post is not yielding much light.

If God wants us to know what he is like, then he can do that. And he has — Bartricks

Really.

Note, I am not interested in a psychological or sociological or historical explanation of why it is that Christians typically believe God created the world. — Bartricks

You might find more enlightenment about the matter if you don't insist on only "philosophical" reason.

Well, why do you not believe that God created the world? What justification do you have for this belief?

IF God is omnipotent, who else could have created the world? Some other omnipotency?

The belief that God created the world goes back to the development of creeds (over a fairly long period of time). "I believe in God the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth".

A lot of what Christians believe is based on their early roots in Judaism. The Jews, per Genesis 1:1, believed that God created the heavens and the earth.

A God-Creator 'works' because we seem to require a beginning to everything, somehow. Big Bang or Fiat Lux.

The more we talk about the nature of God; what God did or did not do; what God is or is not like, etc. the deeper into the indefensible we get. Our claims about God are indefensible because we can't know God. In my opinion (talk about hubris!) God (the Father) is above and beyond our knowing. God (the Son) is the knowable person of God.

Christians chatter and natter on about God (the Father) as if he was as familiar to them as the manager of the local Safeway supermarket. Christians make as many unsupportable statements about Jesus (and the Holy Ghost). Why do they do this?

I tend to think that we are better off NOT thinking that God is all-loving. God might oversee without intervention. Omniscience is a major stumbling block for our alleged free will. If God is all knowing, I'm content thinking that we have zero freedom of action. For that matter, I'm not sure God is omnipotent either. (A limited God presents other problems.)

The problem isn't software. Software and machinery have no agency. They are tools. Whether the tools are deployed for collective benefit, or very individual benefit makes the difference. In the present world, collective benefit seems to be more accidental than intended. Mostly enterprise is directed toward corporate profit.

An axiom of Marxism is "labor creates all wealth". If substituting software and machinery for labor also creates wealth, we could -- if we so wished -- distribute the wealth created by machines among the laborers who lost their jobs.

Labor is an essential part of us; in a myriad ways, the work we do defines us -- positively as well as negatively. I have performed tedious detail work that I would have given to a machine in a flash, had one been nearby. On the other hand, creative work I have performed (not "art") was immensely fulfilling.

In a phrase: People over profit.

evangelists — Jamal

The problem here is more monomania or monotony than evangelism.

I am not an antinatalist despite the grim prospects for generations following in a hot world. However, Shopenhauer1 has done a good job of elaborating the principle that is behind the decision of people to NOT bear children. But hot weather is just the latest pain. Before global warming there were equally bad prospects for suffering.

Maybe the erudite moderators could have come up with something a little more elegant than "life sucks". "Suck" is worn out; as an expression of dissatisfaction, it sucks.

SO, OVER THERE LEADERS WILL RESIGN JUST FOR DOING A BAD JOB? SOUNDS NICE.

Well done, Johnathan Pie.

Isn't there a rule somewhere that says "when you're done, you're done"? Boris is way done. We are sick and tired of Bojo. We're even more sick and tired of Donald. "Sick and tired of..." is sufficient reason for these public trough hogs to retire to a any pigsty they can find. Go away, stinking ghosts of elections past!

Now for balance, we don't want Bernie or Barach back, either. Or any number of fine folks who did their bit and are now done.

Voters' attention spans are the same as everybody else's.

Unless an election is called soon, which seems unlikely if the Tories are in power -- they admit they'd be wiped out -- the next one is 3 years away. In just a few weeks, our election will be over; people appropriately voted based on conditions in 2022, not 2019.

Rapidly rising inflation is frightening to everyone whose income is marginal. They are not in danger of losing access to luxury goods, they are in danger of losing access to necessities -- milk, gasoline ($6+ a gallon in California), diapers, heating, decent food (fruits, vegetables, etc.) and so on.

Voting for conservative will not change the economy for the marginal income groups (which are composed of quite a few million people). Voting for the Democrats will not change the economy for the marginal income groups either. Our political system (like some others) repeatedly offers empty choices to the electorate.

Whoever is elected will be reliably committed to the articles of faith of the dominant capitalist paradigm. The economy is not democratic -- it's plutocratic. The millions of extremely rich, very rich, and merely rich income groups will be well taken care of. Fuck the food stamp crowd; fuck the must-drive-old-car-crowd; fuck the must-work-3-jobs crowd; fuck the priced-out-of-housing crowd; fuck 'em all!

Before then though, I expect the GOP in the US to ride into power through inflation-concerned voters and try to pull off the exact same thing, perhaps more successfully. — Mr Bee

Shhhh, don't say such things--it might encourage them.

The DEM vs GOP polls are already sending me into the slough of despond.

Here's a nice, concise update from the Financial Times on how Brexit is panning out, especially under the Truss.

Here's a clear, concise report from the Financial Times on how the 'promise' of Brexit is being fulfilled under PM Truss.

As to your counter point here that young composers are indeed carrying on without resorting to form fetishism — Noble Dust

No, no -- I meant their compositions are fresh and young -- as opposed to old and stale.

I could not make sense of Soundgarden vs. Breaking Benjamin.

This may be equally incomprehensible: Below is a large serving of Vivaldi musical matter--almost 4 hours worth, and that just concerti for cello. Just bounce around and sample bits here and there... It's all very similar. Stravinsky said that Vivaldi wrote the same concerto 400 times. I'll take the worst of Vivaldi over the best of Soundgarden.



There are contemporary composers whose works are fresh and young which have not deteriorated into mere form : Gorecki, Pärt, Adams, etc. The first cut on this YouTube album is Spiegel in Spiegel -- Mirror in Mirror by Arvo Pärt.



New ideas eventually run out of steam, whether we are talking about painting, music, restaurants, car design, hog breeding, reading instruction methods, and everything else.

Ah. Got it.

The reason God isn't real is not because He doesn't exist! — Agent Smith

come again?

You don't need a list from me. I think you are a competent reality tester.

Sherlock Holmes and the old fashioned Celtic 'fairies' are not real because (per Clark #2) they have no existence independent of mind. Zeus, Brahma, Allah, God, Beowulf, Hogwarts, et al are hatchlings of the imagination. They are not real -- they have no existence apart from mind.

The reason why I bring up these "non-existent beings" is that they may be very important to us (Jesus, for example). Their place in our imaginations can be very central -- and may be as real as actual persons--maybe more so.

That we value what are imaginary beings is... real. It a paradox.

Of course Sherlock Holmes exists (is real) as a character created by A. C. Doyle. Just don't count on him solving your mystery. Contra Clark, the imaginary is "real" (as imagined reality. Middle Earth, like any well-done imaginary world, feels "real" (despite it being 100% fantasy) because it is consistent within it's imaginary territory."

4. Fairies are not real — Agent Smith

So, what am I, chopped liver?

Having objective independent existence — T Clark

Your #1 definition is closest to what "real" sound like to me. The expansive physical properties of the world which make up the 'solid ground of our being' are real. Our "reality" is tested on those properties. "Testing" has, over time, reduced the scope of the "imaginary world" of spirits. True enough, many people count spirits as real, but fewer now count on their alleged power--physical, chemical, and surgical cures beat out magical cures.

proximity, relation, care, and capacity — schopenhauer1

clarifies the matter.

Do you think that we have an obligation to save wild animals in a natural disaster? — schopenhauer1

There are some considerations to be made.

a) is it possible to save x wild animals?
b) if saved, will there be habitat for them
c) humans come first; if the choice is between saving an eagle or antelope vs. saving a human, save the human first. Then if it's possible, address the animals' survival.

If one saves a bear by giving it water during a severe drought, then what? Are we going to care for the bear indefinitely? If one feeds animals during their hard times, they will generally stick around. They may not practice higher reasoning, but they will figure out where the best deal is -- starve in the woods or survive by eating what we give them. Bears and people in close proximity usually doesn't end well.

]Some people feed deer in Minnesota; even if they are not starving, People like to watch the deer and they like our food. The are particularly fond of flowers like impatiens and begonias (definitely NOT native plants) and everything in the garden. Ordinary field corn just isn't that interesting in comparison, it seems. And some people feed deer during starvations times--cattle feed, basically.

There are groups who take care of raptors that are injured, and then release them back into their habitat. What if the habitat is gone? Eagles are not vegetarians; will there be enough live game for them to eat and raise chicks? They need animals larger than mice -- like rabbits, large fish, etc.

Ok — schopenhauer1

So that's settled. Fill your bird feeder with big earthworms so the northern forest survives.

But I am saying humans have obligations to them, because their survival is largely in our hands.

Because were are not kings with dominion over the earth with all animals as our subjects for protection. That's an odd and antiquated way of looking at it. — schopenhauer1

In a perverse way we do have kingly dominion over the earth. Heard about global warming? Heard about chemical contamination? Heard about soil exhaustion? Heard about 8 billion humans? Heard about Silent Spring?

Because we had the capacity to change global climate and everything that depends on a stable climate AND because we used that capacity, we have become responsible.

Because there is a distinction with the "natural world" and the human world. The natural world is that which does its thing without human (beings who are self-aware and can reason) — schopenhauer1

I wish we could reason better, and act on the results.

I used to think that the human and natural worlds were discreet, separate; it does its thing, we do our thing, and the two do not communicate. Take the trillions of bacteria in your gut: They are not you and they are part o the "natural world". It turns out that the relationship between these many species and us is far more interrelated and intimate than we would like to think.

As a species, we are part of the natural world, sharing DNA with everything from bacteria on up. Why are fungal infections difficult to treat? Because fungi and animals have a bit too much biology in common. Drugs that kill fungi negatively affect animals too.

Without the rest of nature, we'd be dead--starved, suffocated, sickened by all sorts of attackers.

Bears in the northwest help forests grow. How? The catch a lot of salmon, take it into the woods, and eat it/digest it. The bears bring specific nutrients to the forest floor through their kind of messy eating habits. Wolves help forests grow too. They eat animals that chew on trees, like deer and moose (elk). Too few wolves, too many munchers. The forest starts shrinking. Adding wolves results in fewer trees killed; hence, a thicker forest. [This has been extensively demonstrated on Lake Superior's Isle Royale, a 200+ square mile island 18 miles off the shoreline of Minnesota.]

We introduced 'exotic' earthworms into various states around a century ago. They have been working their way northward. These are the big nightcrawlers that people use for fishing bait.). They are now chewing up the leaf-litter under northern hardwood forests. They digest the leaves, of course, and leave worm castings behind. That's fine. But without the leaf litter, the thin soil in northern forests erodes too fast, impoverishing the soils.

Everything we do, and everything that happens in the natural world, including the affairs of gazelles, eventually affects everything else.

I suspect that what the "Western world thought about energy and energy transfer" was confined to a fairly small number of people. It isn't that the 99% who weren't thinking about energy were simpletons. Rather, modern uses of energy (radio, electric light, etc.) didn't require any thinking at all. They were presented as boxes with knobs that you could turn on, a switch on the wall you could flip. Voila! Sound and light! Amazing.

I may be an idiot because I was astonished to learn (recently) that "electrical energy does not travel though the wire as sound travels through air but instead always travels in the space outside of the wires. This is because electric energy is composed of electric and magnetic fields which are created by the moving electrons, but which exist in the space surrounding the wires." This is excruciatingly non-intuitive. "Of course electricity travels right down the wire!" one would think.

During the 20th century, the particles and energies that compose the atom were discovered. I don't know whether the nature of atoms is intuitive or not -- it's pretty much over my head. The electron and energy I sort of get, ut the subatomic Higgs Boson giving mass to objects--nope, totally incomprehensible.

That's all OK: Most people (most of the time) can go through life innocent of that kind of knowledge. Not saying they should, but they can.

Most of us are dealing with the product-form of the theory. There may be quantum actions going on in my phone's processing chip, but I do not need to know about it. Like as not it would take me forever to understand those quantum goings on. We quickly adapt and soon take for granted world-wide networks (the Internet).

Once war was declared between the Allies and Central Powers in 1914, English ships immediately severed critical cables between Europe and England to make sure that Germany and the AH Empire would be would be incommunicado with the rest of the world. So, 105 years ago, [at least some] world-wide networks wee already routine.

intra-wordly affairs — schopenhauer1

was that supposed to be '-wordly' or '-worldly'?

Words, words, words! Yes, from 'wordly' affairs we may, might, should, would resign. How many times have I told a tedious pontificator on National Public Radio or the BBC to SHUT UP! and turned the radio off?

As for the world and its affairs, I am not quite done.

discuss how to combat it in a way by which the corporate and political elite suffer the least, and the common man is made to bear the cost — Tzeentch

This is the way our world works. It's not a conspiracy; it's in the DNA of ruling class behavior.

Perhaps separation is the problem with the American Ayn Rand. She is a reasonably successful writer -- by which I mean her books are at least quite good, and people continue to read them decades later. I don't especially like her approach to life, her philosophy, or the philosophy and approach to life that people who adore her politics profess. But her books are separate from her followers, or from herself (when she was still alive).

Some artists are drunks, drug addicts (William Burroughs comes to mind), hateful bastards, dishonest, fakes, and so on. We like them because of the art they produce, in spite of their sometimes dissolute personal lives. (The artists are the ones who suffer; we should be compassionate.).

This issue tends to be more common than we thought.

I still think we should separate the works and the authors. Probably, the personality of the author is not good but his books are brilliant. — javi2541997

Yes. In principle, I think we should separate the work and the author. Or, the politician/producer/coach...and his sex life. Why shouldn't we let someone's personal life define their public life?

We buy the book to derive pleasure (or instruction). We are not buying the book as an endorsement of the author's private life (which is private after all. Most people want to be in public without some aspect of their private past being used to discredit an unrelated achievement.

Politicians, producers, professors, etc. are voted for (or not), funded, or hired on the basis of their ability to produce results. If the politician has a string of affairs, but is an effective politician delivering the results voters wanted, what is it to the voters that he was lecherous? John F. Kennedy was much more active sexually than the public was aware of. This is as it should be.

The NYT claims that 201 powerful men were bright down by #ME TOO. Powerful men, or powerful women, are powerful usually because they are productive and influential in their field, not because of their sex lives. James Levine was fired in 2018 after 40 years of conducting the NY Metropolitan Opera Orchestra (and the Boston Symphony and Munich Philharmonic) because of allegations of his having had sex with young (male) musicians. Some of the 'incidents' go back 50 years!

I can disapprove of the sexual relationships other people have without it determining how I rate their professional performance.

No question (philosophical or otherwise), just your (mis)reading of speculative essays by a novelist-dramatist. So why start a new thread? — 180 Proof

He claims to have only a casual interest in philosophy. Sort of like me.

Once upon a time, long ago, I read Camus and Sartre. I haven't had any desire to return to their books.

everyone was faced with the question of 'suicide' whether they liked to admit it or not — introbert

Oh to be young and angsty again! No, I don't think everyone is faced with the question of suicide. One could just as easily say that everyone is faced with the question of living, whether they like it or not.

God is dead. Or what?

"God is dead" (German: Gott ist tot; also known as the death of God) is a widely quoted statement made by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche used the phrase to express his idea that the Enlightenment had eliminated the possibility of the existence of God.

wiki

I don't know if God ever existed, let alone died, but I'm pretty sure that if he does exist, he was able to survive the Enlightenment and Fred Nietzsche.

I'm talking about venereal diseased Don Juans to hospitals, disorganized anomics to psychiatry, drug addled to rehab, the deviant to corrections, the list goes on. — introbert

What are you going on about here?

It seems like the death of God in the minds of the people will feed the expanded mystical body of Christ in all its extremities, ironically giving God new life. — introbert

Are we, perhaps, possibly, out of our depth here? I know I am.

has become more and more susceptible to degrees of corruption that has become so widespread in current society as to be normalised, go uncriticised... — Deus

Humans have been corruptible from the beginning (write in your preferred date here ______________ I doubt that corruption has been "normalized" or gone "uncriticized". Unchecked? It's never been checked very well.

These are essentially new problems that society is facing but the old ones also have made their way unchanged from 200 years ago or more — Deus

200 years? That's just yesterday. We do have a few new problems (global warming, for instance) but most of our problems have equivalents in any time period we might look at.

The inability of man to think for himself — Deus

People are as able (or not) to think for themselves as they have ever been

I am not especially sanguine about our collective future, but I am reasonably confident that people are operating now with pretty much the same capacities they have always operated with, which means that we will tend to be a day late and a dollar short most of the time. We developed the ability to create problems that we do not seem to have the ability to solve. Perhaps big brains and abstract thinking aren't all that advantageous after all.

We aren't evil; we are smart and wise (once in a while) -- just not quite smart and wise enough.