Selfish, ignorant, violent... — Cidat

These sorts of traits are not sufficiently bad to merit the "evil" label.

How about... pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, and sloth?

If humans were inherently evil, then living under optimal conditions wouldn't help. We might have perfect parents, a perfect community, and still end up in prison doing life without possibility of parole.

If humans are not inherently evil, then living under optimal conditions would yield excellent results all or most of the time.

What humans seem to be (more than inherently evil or inherently good) is "prone to error" -- that is, occasionally engaged in bad behavior (lust, gluttony, sloth, etc). Not invariably, but often enough. Does occasional bad behavior make us evil?

but it's not looking good for the culprits either. — James Riley

Very good point.

Hunter / gatherer methods worked for what... 200,000 years?

Agricultural-based societies did OK for what... 10,000 years?

industrial-based societies are only what... 300 years old, and we are facing the very real possibility of global catastrophe--for us and for many other creatures.

There are some obvious reasons— mostly money. The fossil fuel industry is massive, and they lobby, bribe, and propagandize very well. — Xtrix

Absolutely.

But the task of converting a world economy to a low-greenhouse gas regime is massive to the nth degree, even if the fossil fuel industry went out of business. We don't want to crash the world economy in the process. On the other hand, the world economy is a major part of the problem, especially the big part that is highly developed.

None-the-less, were we capable of doing it, we should bite the bullet and get on with the transition--whatever the difficulties.

Are we capable of it converting the world economy? All the public statements notwithstanding, the efforts have been phlegmatic, even as the dangers of global warming has become more apparent.

Take transportation as a piece of the problem. There are roughly 1 billion fossil-fueled cars on the world's roads. The stupid solution is to build another billion cars running on electricity, and continue to maintain and build roads. People like private autos, sure. But there is also the tremendously large industry involved in autos, quite apart from fossil fuels.

Etc. Etc. Etc.

In some (many?) cases ideology came first. An example:

There is this elderly woman I have known for a long time who refuses to get vaccinated for Covid-19. She is not an anti-vaxxer. Actually, she's proactive about her health, and offers usually sound advice to others. So, why does this woman who gets an annual flu shot and got the new Shingrex vaccine for shingles not getting the Covid-19 shot?

She's very conservative; she's a Democrat-hating right-winger. She bought the original Trump spin on Covid 19, and has not been able to take it seriously because of her ideological investment. Along with her politics are very conservative Baptist beliefs about authority, the proper role of women (obedient wife, mother) and so on.

She doesn't express articulate arguments when challenged -- she gets angry. She feels like people who disagree with her are attacking her.

Of course, she had help from the types of charlatans listed. She has recently started reading the Epoch Times, which Wikipedia describes as "The Epoch Times is a far-right international multi-language newspaper and media company affiliated with the Falun Gong new religious movement"

Whoever that theorist is — I like sushi

It's not a theory I accept or find of much use.

The process of getting from wild plants that bore edible seeds (like the various grasses)--corn, wheat, rye, oats, rice, sorghum, millet, etc.; all the new-world foods--tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, and tobacco (all nightshade family plants); kidney and lima beans; cacao; peanuts, and all the plants developed in Europe, Asia, and Africa, ALL required a lot of long, careful, insightful attention. Some foods grew on trees ready to eat (nuts), but most had to be bred up from what must have been rather unpromising plants. Hunter-gatherers, requiring skilled observation to survive, likely knew about these plants before they started to domesticate them.

Settling down required some level of agriculture, and some level of agriculture required stability. No body switched from a breakfast of venison with wild nuts and berries to oatmeal, yoghurt, and toast overnight. More like centuries or millennia were required to learn how to grow plentiful grain, mill it, and make bread and beer. How they accomplished all this is just not known. And what all they did while they were developing domesticated crops isn't known either.

The first iteration of Jericho was built around 11,000 years ago. Is that the beginning of settled life? Almost certainly not. Before we built with stone, we built with wood, material which rots away under ordinary circumstances. Stone tools were poor for making planks out of a big tree, but smaller trees and branches could be harvested for simpler construction.

My guess is that they hunted, gathered, built shelter, and cultivated--gradually shifting away from the former and toward the latter. All of this required community -- cooperation -- along with preserving memories, methods, and material culture. Eventually they arrived at a stage where they could grow the food they needed, and began other agricultural / material cultural tasks, depending on their location.

We do not know why hunter-gatherer people, who had been doing reasonably well hunting game and gathering roots, nuts, and berries, decided to pursue the much more difficult approach of agriculture. Presumably this conversion from spear to plow was gradual.

One theorist (maybe in Against the Grain--not sure) proposed that agriculture was not intended to make life better for the farmer; it was intended to make life better for those who controlled the farmer. Capturing labor for economic exploitation would have had to wait until agriculture was developed well enough to produce a surplus for the new exploiters. Getting from the first bowl of oatmeal (so to speak) to the first grain collection bins may have taken several millennia.

The prosecution of the case against agriculture is a search for The Fall. Ah, it was settling down, living in one place, and working the land that corrupted us. Before agriculture, we were free and virtuous.

Some people suspect other serpents in the garden.

I've also considered fire as a potential culprit. — James Riley

Whether it was grain, fire, forbidden fruit, or something else -- many people think we were once innocent. For some, the entire population of the Western Hemisphere were innocent until the Europeans came along and fucked everyone and everything over.

A question: Do human beings have much choice about developing elaborate responses to the conditions in which they live? If we were to start all over again--15,000 or 20,000 years ago--we'd probably do the same thing over again. Does that make us bad actors?

China announces no more foreign coal plant building — Xtrix

That doesn't mean the plants will stop burning coal. And of course China is not suspending its own coal plant building program. it is, as you noted, somewhat good news. It might be vanishingly slight good news. Time will tell.

Very good point about school-of-music recitals.

Other sources are small community orchestras and church-sponsored performances of secular music. Costs have risen for everyone over the last 20 or 30 years and there are fewer outright free concerts than there used to be. Still, the cost of a community orchestra concert can be quite affordable.

Today audiences listen to recordings with veneration and expect the performance to be true to the note, at the expense of the spontaneity and innovations of the presentation. — magritte

That's why it is highly desirable for people to -- at least occasionally -- attend live performances. The live performance does not have to be up to Carnegie Hall standards, but it should be reasonably competent. I've attended amateur / semi-professional performances that were very satisfactory concerts -- and yes, sometimes noticeably imperfect. That's fine. The thing is, hear music that is performed live, before a live audience.

Personally, I can't afford to regularly attend professional orchestra performances at Orchestra Hall, though when I do attend, it's worth the cost.

Also in St Augustine's confessions, this prayer... "Lord, make me chaste—but not yet."

It's a minute before midnight here, 59 minutes past midnight where you are. And he's still not banned!

Is there such a thing as "impure evil" in contrast to "pure evil"? What is "pure" about "evil"?

Anyone who commits an evil act, is pure evil. — AlienFromEarth

What makes a person "good" and what makes a person "evil"? If merely committing an evil act makes someone "pure evil" then I suppose we are all evil, given that most of us either have committed evil acts (graded from trivial to very substantial) or will in the future. Can someone be sort of good and commit a sort of evil act? Visa versa?

Life is vastly more complicated than your conclusion will admit to.

would you be willing to answer those three or at least one of those questions — schopenhauer1

No, because your game is rigged in favor of very depressing conclusions:

Does that really matter when the outcome is the same (the person plays the game of life?). — schopenhauer1

It is almost if not exactly the same in terms of amount of choices allotted (play the game, or die of depredation, suicide, and poverty. — schopenhauer1

Life itself doesn't offer much beyond it's own game, homelessness, and suicide. — schopenhauer1

On previous occasions I've acknowledged that your anti-natalist view of the world has some validity and merit. The world we are born into is no Big Rock Candy Mountains of hobo fame:

I'm headed for a land that's far away
Besides the crystal fountains
So come with me, we'll go and see
The Big Rock Candy Mountains
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains
There's a land that's fair and bright
Where the handouts grow on bushes
And you sleep out every night
Where the boxcars all are empty
And the sun shines every day
And the birds and the bees
And the cigarette trees
The lemonade springs
Where the bluebird sings
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains — Harry McClintock

There's more, but you get the idea--some sort of paradise.

This world is mostly not paradisiacal. On the other hand, if one is even slightly lucky, life is not a living nightmare either, most of the time.

We are here, without having granted permission, suffering or not suffering because of everything that happened in the last 4 billion years (the history of the solar system, our planet, life, evolution, etc.

Plus, for those who don't like how they got here, it will all be over soon enough. It will all be over soon enough for those who LIKE the way they got here, too. So life sucks, but it is short.

A forced situation would be if a benevolent villain pointed a loaded gun at your head and announced, "No more antinatalist threads from you until after the 2022 elections, or else!" ... Else the trigger would be pulled by an autonomous fateful finger. As an alternative, you would be allowed to discuss whirled peas; globular warming; why the unfortunately born should consume less, and less, and less; Best mutual fund managers. Or Which candidates in each congressional district will support your antinatalist agenda.

Why these draconian measures?

It's not healthy to think about the same thing all the time. Antinatalist neurons start burning out from over use. They are lost forever. And besides, somebody forced those neurons to spend so much time thinking about antinatalism that they short circuited.

Probably not that much as academic philosophers. What they could do is join in efforts to solve / prevent / stop / reduce... urgent global matters.

Presumably professional professors can think clearly. Clear thinking is needed. For instance, there are no effective individual solutions to global warming. The changes that are critical (whether they are implemented or not) are at the corporate / regional / national level. Haranguing people to recycle shopping bags and water bottles is a waste of time. The critical step is to stop producing one-use plastic--something corporations have to change.

People can consume less -- especially in industrialized developed countries. Use less, buy less. But it still requires large scale corporate action.

But what determines the value of money? The goods produced and services delivered? Trust? Quality? — Thunderballs

The value of gold is determined by the demand (people like gold, it's a useful metal) and the supply (it's not easy to extract). The same goes for pork chops, alfalfa, Fords, and everything else. Stuff that nobody wants isn't worth much.

The value of money is somewhat artificial. A $50 bill, in itself, isn't worth any more than a $1 bill -- both are just ink on paper. Money depends on faith. I believe that I can pay for what is currently $50 worth of groceries with a $50 bill. The merchant who takes my $50 bill believes he can pay the wholesaler with the $50. The wholesaler believes he can pay the canning company for $50 worth of canned tomatoes, and so on,

As long as we all believe in money, it works just fine. What happens when people stop believing in money? We are totally screwed.

As for why economies need to grow, some answers have been given. Growing population, for instance, needs more goods, services, and jobs. Supplying expanded demand expands the economy.

A growing economy also allows wealth to be accumulated. It isn't impossible to accumulate wealth of some sort in a stagnant subsistence economy, but the wealth will be very small potatoes (maybe literally). The more economic activity, the more wealth there is to accumulate.

This bears very directly on global warming: IF 2 billion people in the developed world all decided to cut their consumption of goods (food, clothing, autos, shelter, dildos, etc.) by 25% to reduce CO2 output, the economy would go directly into a tailspin. A collapsing world economy is not something anyone wants to experience.

We might avoid an environmental catastrophe, but at the cost of a severe economic catastrophe.

I heard Plato was a really smart guy. — Shawn

I would not presume to criticize any of the 'great philosophers'. Plato was no doubt an outstanding individual amongst other remarkable men. The long-dead philosophers aren't the problem.

And yes: The Cave is a rich, rich metaphor. It's got legs.

However...

To suppose that 2500 years later we (collectively) are still in the cave, still confusing the flickering shadows with reality, is a profoundly pessimistic take on history and the present. No, we are not 8 billion "enlightened" people who, with cool dry vision, see the world with 20/20 vision. But...

Widespread education, literacy, freedom to think (when and where possible) and communicate has unshackled masses of people; they've left the cave. I'd say we have made enough progress in the last few centuries, to have no one but ourselves to blame for our persistent collective problems.

Take climate change: Billions of people have at least a basic understanding of what it is. Are we solving this existential problem? Not yet, not now; we are not heading toward success. Whose fault is that? It is ours, unmistakably, Pick a collective -- neighborhood, city, county, state, province, nation... Very, very little sign of success, anywhere.

The people in the cave were not, could not be, active agents. They were, after all, chained to the wall. They did not have any options. No remote: the channel was always the same. They could not be responsible for their situation. We are not 100% free, of course, but we are sufficiently responsible of our own actions. We are, to varying degrees, active responsible agents. If we fuck up, we can, we shall, we must, we will take the blame.

Why can't the prisoner unshackle and free himself? — Shawn

Did you free yourself from your shackles? If so, how did you do it? If not, what seems to prevent you from unshackling yourself?

But to back up, is Plato's cave real--is it a valid metaphor of our world? Are people figuratively chained to the wall and capable of viewing only shaky flickering shadows on a wall?

The opposite is a very attractive -- that we know reality; that we are not stuck with flickering shadows of reality. Thinkers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains and a world to gain!

Was Plato himself free of the cave? He may have had the insight that what he saw of flickering shadows was not reality, but did HE know reality? I suppose he thought he did. Forms schmormes.

Why is philosophy still associated with no inherent value, or even more practically, valued so little? — Shawn

Maybe because it's stuck in Plato's cave.

Look, Pig: It's up to you to decide for yourself. You have the wherewithal to declare what your values are, practice them, and defend them. If philosophy does anything, doesn't it enable you to think for yourself?

Maybe we should just burn philosophy's libraries. Smash its statuary; close down philosophy departments. Fire the faculty. Slam the door shut on 2500 years of rehashing stories like The Cave. Publish a notice in every newspaper, on every website -- hell, print it on the currency -- YOU ARE ON YOUR OWN. THINK FOR YOURSELF.

But all this is "body" (except "mind", but this is not the issue). Where is that "someone" involved in all this? — Alkis Piskas

The "someone" is a product of the whole body. I could say the "someone" is located in the brain, but the brain is an inseparable part of the whole. The functions of the brain are almost entirely non-conscious. One of the functions of the brain is the manufacture of a self, which isn't "located" anywhere in particular (as far as I know). There are many brain functions that are specifically located, but not this one (as far as we can tell). The self is an emergent entity, and the self is real. It's located in the brain, just like memory or proprioception or the senses. It's just that it isn't located in this or that lump of brain tissue.

Because we are "embodied beings" (existing only in flesh) our 'self' can't be located anywhere else.

If you have a body, then what are YOU? — Alkis Piskas

Someone who has a body. Like, everybody we know, including you.

Embodiment is not a trivial matter. Embodiment has very ancient roots, and there is continuity across time. Life on earth arose once; it didn't arise repeatedly after extinctions. Some creatures survived horrendous environmental conditions, and everything that is alive now (and embodied) are descendants of the survivors.

Complex animals with complex central nervous systems. Muscles, blood, skin, bones, brains, minds.

There is nothing "mere" about bodies. We are amazing systems.

Hospital overflow fears were driven by the unreliable death estimates made by Imperial College, whose model - according to Johan Giesecke (one of Sweden’s prior state epidemiologists) - did not take into account that hospital capacity could be increased, which happened in the UK. — AJJ

So, my perspective is the US, not the UK. Though I have heard plenty about the UK's situation on the BBC and from the Guardian.

I'm not so sure that hospital capacity can be increased ON SHORT NOTICE, in the UK, Sweden, or anywhere else. Yes, true enough, overflow wards can be, and were, opened across the US--especially for non-ICU patients. But space is only one part of the deal. Hospitals also have to be able to expand the number of staff able to provide ICU care, which involved procedures, practices, and knowledge that an orthopedic or OB-GYN nurse would not have. Further, the ratio of patients to staff in ICU is often 1:1. Scores of skilled ICU staff happen not to be waiting in cold storage, just needing to be warmed up and put on a shift.

Some local hospitals took over closed or under-utilized care facilities and turned them into full-time ICU buildings, in order to separate infectious patients from the main hospital population. However, they could do this ONLY if they had the staff resources necessary.

What Covid-19 revealed in the US, is that the health care industry is not all that resilient. It also revealed serious deficiencies in many state-level public health departments and public health infrastructure.

Good quotes.

“All brain divisions are present in all vertebrates. ” — Joshs

"Affect is not just necessary for wisdom; it’s also irrevocably wo­ven into the fabric of every decision.” — Joshs

Absolutely. When we talk about our brains we divide it up as if it were a computer with very discrete parts--memory chips, logic unit, emotional fire box, etc. That's one of the many problems of brain as computer. Emotion may cloud thinking, but without emotion, we probably wouldn't think a whole lot. People burn the midnight oil because they WANT to succeed (at whatever it is they are doing).

A seemingly irrelevant anecdote: a Lyft driver told me about a Thai restaurant where he had a cooked salmon head. He apparently liked it--cooked, seasoned, meaty. This included the salmon brain which he described as about the size of a large grape. I do not have a salmon brain handy to look at, but it seems reasonable that a fish with a complex life cycle might well need a good sized brain to succeed.

there hadn’t been any cogent demonstrations of the effectiveness of lockdowns — AJJ

At an earlier stage of the pandemic (before vaccines were ready) the primary purpose of lockdowns (at least as I understood them) was to reduce the number of cases, some of which would be severe enough to require hospitalization. This was critical because the capacity of hospital ICUs is always very limited--both in terms of staffing and facilities. Of necessity its a low volume specialty.

Lockdown = slowdown. The fewer people mixing, the fewer new cases. The fewer new cases, the fewer severe cases. With luck, fewer severe cases means everyone who needs ICU will get it. Lockdowns and mask-wearing when public contact couldn't be avoided, distancing, and hand-washing all helped.

True enough, no one knew what to expect. If one compares C-19 to the 1918-1919 influenza epidemic, clearly 1918-19 was worse--at least 675,000 dead out of a population of 105 million. We now have about the same number of US C-19 deaths, but the population is 3 times as large --330 million. While there have been around 4 1/2 million C-19 deaths in the world, in 1918-19 there were between 25 and 50 million deaths from influenza out of a population of less than 2 billion.

There were difficulties coping with influenza a century ago. People were not always cooperative; hospital over-flow wards were swamped, never mind the hospitals proper. Far fewer effective medications for anything were available--not even sulfa drugs. Public health services were anemic or missing in action in some states.

I'm just old enough to remember polio. I had influenza in 1969 and I was very sick. There was also a 1976 outbreak of hepatitis B (which made me intensely sick), and then AIDS came along. Older gay men have certainly not forgotten how bad AIDS was -- hundreds of cases in a very small community in the Midwest, thousands of cases in larger communities on the Coasts. Years of severe sickness and then death. Now, of course, AIDS is treatable (not curable).

So, it seems like Covid 19 hasn't been the worst thing that has come along, though plenty bad enough for those who had serious to severe cases.

Right, humans have difficulty maintaining intellectual effort while keeping their vigorous emotions under control. To assert that "almost no one can really think" is another sweeping generalization with a decidedly negative load. Are you sure your generalization doesn't include yourself?

The fact is that we do manage to think reasonably well most of the time. I do not like the kind of thinking that a lot of people do, but that doesn't take away from the fact of their thinking.

Don't leave out small pox -- the world was declared free of smallpox in 1980. "One of history's deadliest diseases, smallpox is estimated to have killed more than 300 million people since 1900 alone." The fatality rate for smallpox was about 33%. Those who survived were usually scarred, sometimes severely.

Polio is very close to being eradicated world wide.

Here we have two sweeping generalizations--one more useful than the other.

Stop thinking of yourself as a good person. You’re not. Hardly anyone is. — AJJ

From the Christian POV, what with original sin and all, NO ONE is free of sin--all capable of rot. Is this the POV to which you are hewing? I don't like the doctrine of original sin (it was cooked up to solve unnecessary theological problems). There is a common view that most people are, generally and basically good, unless and until they engage actively in bad systems--like fascism or capitalism.

This is simple psychology. To have ones fundamental view shifted is to lose ones bearing. — Yohan

This is an accurate statement: Shifting one's fundamental views can be very difficult when it is performed under one's own volition. When prosecuted by missionaries of various types, fundamental ideas are, for all practical purposes, damned near immovable.

Anti-Vaxxers, Creationists, 9/11 Truthers, Climate Deniers, Flat-Earthers, Covid-19 deniers, et al have the specifics of their quirky views tied to deeper fundamentals. Those who found a home for all their various resentments in the person of Donald Trump can't change their views about vaccinations for the virus. Election fraud and disease hoax are welded together. Getting vaccinated is tantamount to accepting that there was no fraud in the 2020 election.

We can be rational, but so often are not. Why is that? Why narcissism? Why neuroticism? Free floating aggression? Etc.???

Our primate ancestors bequeathed to us both the physically bound emotions (the limbic system) and the capacity to think--about the physical, the abstract, the past, the future... The emotions are not reasonable, but they motivate reasoning. Abstract intellect is cool and dry, but it can cause pleasure when we realize we have solved the problem.

Of the two, the emotions usually have the upper hand. No thought is as powerful as a murderous rage (once ignited) or the prospect of sexual ecstasy (once erected). As the saying goes, a stiff dick has no morals and takes unreasonable risks. Hey, I've been there!

Later, rational reflection can parse the murderous rage, the ecstatic tryst; if rationality is good enough it will try very hard to make sure that those situations resulting in, for instance, murderous rage, are avoided.

Or the whole thing is a PR strategy and he's not a narcissist at all, he only plays one, as an actor. It's feasible to do so, because in our society, people tend to succomb to narcissists one way or another and narcissits can take advantage of that. — baker

Interesting insight, I think it is true that narcissism can be attractive, provided it comes in a reasonably attractive package. It doesn't always. We do like to believe in people who believe in themselves.

(But he stopped being so attractive once he opened his mouth and sounded exactly like every other teenager.) — baker

In other words, shut up when you are ahead in the game.

I met him about ten years later, I could hardly recognize him. The pale complexion turned reddish, his hair was already thinning, the lustre of his eyes was gone.

Alas, vanishing youth.

No. See, thinking takes place in West Cupcake, Iowa. It always has. West Cupcake is not on the map, so don't go there. What happens to mind, thought, ideas, etc. when a double barreled shotgun blast sends large slugs through a brain, is that the connection to West Cupcake is broken--like when satellite service is terminated by a meteor smashing the orbiting machine into smithereens.

West Cupcake is not a server farm--it doesn't house individual thinking. There is no such thing as individual thinking, All thought happens in one place alone, West Cupcake produces all thinking. It's THE thought provider.

How long has this been going on? Hmmm, let me check... ... ... ...

Ah, here: for 97,000 years, 9 hours, 43 minutes, and 7 seconds. Before that, there was no real thinking. It was just slack-jawed Neanderthals, Denikovians, and Homo sapiens muttering, groping, and doing stuff like they were in some kind of a fog. Let me tell you, it was QUITE A SHOCK when West Cupcake began operations that Monday morning.

I hope this clarifies things.

yes, it's strange. I have no idea what the artist was intending. I just tripped over the painting on Tumblr after reading your comment about that damn mirror.

Thank you!

TPF doesn't have to change (lower or raise) its standards. You, Jem, et al can/will continue your efforts. This isn't an elite Philosophy Department blog. It's a public forum, and as such there will always (a guess) be participants with varying levels of sophistication in writing and in philosophy. There is room for a pretty wide range--a big tent.

At this stage in my life, what I'm not good at now is likely to stay that way. Fine. Younger participants have time to improve. And, you know, you don't have to be good at every single area of philosophy, because it like history or literature covers a huge amount of territory. Its time runs from 500 b.c. to the present, over dozens of different categories. You will find some are just the ticket and others you won't be even remotely interested in. All normal. All OK.

Philosophy is not reserved for the "better educated". Neither is anything else taught to the "better educated" (within limits; I think quantum mechanical engineering might be reserved for the lucky or unlucky few. Same thing for Sanskrit and Babylonian studies).

Intelligent, "better-educated" people vary in their ability to spell and punctuate. I finally learned the difference between its and it's, and when to use semicolons as a middle-aged adult--and I was an English major. I just learned something new about correct spelling the other day -- now I'm 75.

My computer spellchecks on the fly. It adds novel errors of its own, of course.

I keep seeing adds for Grammerly on YouTube; maybe that would help. Or not.

here's the trick: Read carefully; decide what you think about a post. Write in clear, shorter-rather-than-longer sentences. Use words that are familiar to you. (I rarely if ever use the words 'metaphysical' and 'ontological' because I'm still not sure what they mean.). Before you post comments, proof read them, looking for obvious mistakes or ridiculous corrections by Spell Check.

Welcome to philosophy forum. Pick a thread that doesn't look too hairy. Here, about "Is Climatology Science?"

That is a legitimate philosophical question. give it a try. Or try something else.

More damned mirrors



Viktor Safonkin, The Mirror Drinker, 2020

So, Narcissus is locked into an external image (his reflection) rather than self? Echo is at least obsessed by the man and not the reflection of the man.

Your interpretation is a plausible explication of the psychological disorder of narcissism. The narcissist is less involved with his actual self than with his projected self -- the "image self' the real self thinks he or she is.

So Donald Trump, seriously put forward as an example of narcissism, is less infatuated the "real" DT and more infatuated with the DT he imagines himself to be. Egotists, who always put themselves first, may be more realistic about themselves than the narcissist.

A varying amount of narcissism seems like a normal component of personality (because nobody is perfect, save me and thee, and even thee is a bit crazy). Just speaking for myself... objectively I know that my long-term performance on earth has been in the middling range -- sometimes in the basement. Only once in a while have I peaked out in the higher ranges of performance, and then briefly. The image I like to see in the mirror, however, is more accomplished, suave, sophisticated, less of a clod. I have learned that most other people don't buy the suave sophisticate version, so I pretty much restrict it to private viewing.

All this is probably another feature of the normal personality, neuroticism is OK (but only in SMALL doses). The five features are: extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability, and openness to experience. Neuroticism affects emotional stability.

The terrible symmetry of the story of Narcissus is that he becomes one of the spectators he hates. — Valentinus

Could you expand on that a bit. From which part of which version of the myth did you find this idea?

Oh, it might not be odd. Professionally educated people, like Freud and his fellow researchers in the late 19th century, had a lot more familiarity with classical literature than we usually do. That they might tag a pattern with a classical character who exhibited some of the pattern's features would not be surprising. So, Oedipus, for example. Or guys with a Napoleon Complex (short ambitious).

I wasn't myself granted such irresistible beauty that people were swooning at my feet. I'd find it tedious, pretty quickly.

But Narcissus was sooo beautiful, people could not resist him--even if he'd just as soon they go bother somebody else. Maybe such people are born for real who are irresistibly beautiful and who do not need the help of agents and PR to attract admirers. I think these characters are more fictional vehicles than real.

Hmmm. I've never thought of masturbation as a problem. The situation I was thinking of was a Roman Catholic college counselor who was concerned that some students were jacking off 6 or 7 times a day. How did he know that? That's only once every 2 or 3 hours. That leaves plenty of time between each round to read, take notes, go to class, sleep, eat, say a Hail Mary or two, and so on. Do Roman Catholics think that lost sperm is as bad as abortion? Maybe that was the problem.

So, the story of Narcissus is a bit larger than this dope looking into a stream and falling in love with his reflection. The story of Narcissus is by the Roman, Ovid, in his epic The Metamorphosis. It's a pretty good story. Narcissus's is just one of several characters and plot lines.

There are two characters: Echo and Narcissus. Echo has been punished for some offense by being reduced to repeating the last few words she hears -- an echo. Echo's situation has been used as a medical term, too -- echolalia, where autistic children repeat whatever they hear. Some adults have this problem too -- Trump says something, and Republican dip shits keep repeating it.

Narcissus was out hunting with the boys. He apparently wasn't paying attention, or they deliberately slipped away. Meanwhile, Echo sees Narcissus and is stricken with love (or lust, or both) and wants to call out to him -- but she can't. Remember the curse on her? Fairly quickly it happens that Echo is able to come out of the bushes, and approach Narcissus. He's not pleased or interested. He's so uninterested that he tells her he hopes to die before he allows her to enjoy his (manly delicious) body.

Despite the harshness of his rejection, Echo's love for Narcissus only grows. What a nuisance! When Narcissus died, wasting away before his own reflection, consumed by a love that could not be, Echo mourned over his body. When Narcissus, looking one last time into the pool uttered, "Oh marvellous boy, I loved you in vain, farewell", Echo too chorused, "Farewell."
Eventually, Echo, too, began to waste away. Her beauty faded, her skin shrivelled, and her bones turned to stone. Today, all that remains of Echo is the sound of her voice.

So... what is it with Narcissus?

Maybe he is some sort of homosexual? [The sort of egalitarian relationships between men and women that are more common in the modern west were absent in Rome and Greece. To a large extent, "men composed society". The Greeks and Romans had attitudes toward sexuality that were somewhat different than ours.] A guy falling in love with the image of a male, his own or somebody else, seems kind of 'gay' to me. He's not at all aroused by the presumably beautiful Echo -- another gay feature. Gay guys usually are not excited by women. A lot of gay men tend to be attracted to men who generally look like themselves. People tend to eventually look like their dogs, too, but that's a different process.

Gay or straight, Narcissus is a sick boy. A sexual deviation that some young men (men in particular) experience is the self-involvement of excessive solitary masturbation. They apparently have a lot more than the average amount of tension to resolve--sexual or academic or something else. The main feature of narcissism is very excessive self-involvement, to the point of isolation. Perhaps it's a defense mechanism (escape from reality). Narcissists are not usually what one would call realistic about their own importance. (For many famous narcissistic people, realism would be the kiss of death). Donald Trump, again. He would likely find an objective appraisal of his talents and accomplishments devastating.

There are gay narcissists, though most of the raging narcissists I have observed have (presumably) been heterosexual.

Perhaps the early death rattle of the republic. The court is packed, the Senate unresponsive to the majority, and a temporary allocation of power to those who see the end written on the wall. The only avenues left are delay, procedural frustration, rallying the base, and driving the opposition to non-participation (due to hopelessness, numbness, or short attention span). — Ennui Elucidator

It's not the death rattle of the Republic. Progressive policy and practice (in the US and everywhere else) is generally an uphill battle, with only a chance that Virtue will be victorious in the next election.

We without long memory (having not read much history) see current problems as exceptions. What look like exceptions may be rules. That our economic system (capitalism) is based on exploitation in order to maximize profit or stockholders, is a rule that produced a lot of suffering, and has been doing this since before the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock. Women won universal suffrage only 100 years ago, after a 72 year struggle (1849 to 1920). Blacks were emancipated in 1863, but were legally suppressed for another century, and even then they did not gain real equality. They still haven't.

Most people are working class, but the quality of life for working class people, men and women, has never been great -- workers have rarely had enough power to gain good wages, decent working conditions, and ancillary benefits for working families. The American founders owned slaves, true enough, but they also considered "poor working white people" as white trash. That attitude has prevailed since Plymouth Rock.

So, in every generation we see things that make us think of Republic Death Rattles. What looks like the 'end times' ("it can't get any worse than this!") is just business as usual. Look, the Republic doesn't exist to serve you. Be grateful for crumbs, but the Republic is built around providing the ways and means for the wealthy. Its health is robust.

What to do about it? A revolution, like as not.