It isn't clear to me why you think the "deficiency needs" at the bottom of the pyramid are "negative". DB (Darth Barracuda) said the same thing.

↪Bitter Crank Well said BC. What's the conversion rate between pesos and pfennigs? — _db

I have no idea. I was surprised to see "pfennig" in my post -- its a word I don't think I've used more than twice or thrice. That was 6 years ago. I am quite sure I haven't used the word since.

the laws of God — Cornwell1

They are above my pay grade.

I would agree that, if the spelled-out methodology was incompatible or in conflict with someone's innate method, it would constrain the accumulation of knowledge. An extreme example of this is psychoanalysis: The methods of classical psychoanalysis (Freud), as well as its peculiar concepts, constrained knowledge gathering a lot. I'm not sure the analyst was able to generate real knowledge at all, never mind the person being 'analyzed'.

"THEY" at least thought they were. But then, their income depended on believing it.

It doesn't need to be spelled out. Your innate methodology was put together way before you started thinking about not wanting to deal with systems of knowledge.

What we have here is a failure to communicate.

But not according to any method — Cornwell1

by which, just guessing, you mean "somebody else's system". You, your brain, your mind have a unique system of knowing things -- we all do -- and it works for you. If it didn't work for you you would either have changed, or you would have major problems. You don't seem to have major problems.

"Of course you will use your knowledge." If I don't wanna use it I don't use it. — Cornwell1

Your knowledge includes things like an intuitive grasp of gravity. Infants exhibit this grasp. It's a piece of knowledge. You use it all the time. You know that ice is slippery, You can slide on it, sled on it, slip on it, skate on it, or chill a gin & tonic. You know that a hot stove burns. Therefore, you do no touch it. All very basic.

You have more complex information too. If you don't fill your car's gas tank, you will run out of fuel on the freeway somewhere inconvenient and will be attacked by a vicious gang of flashy lycra-wearing cannibal cyclists. You don't want that, so you fill your tank.

Of course you will use and manage your knowledge, all the stuff you have accumulated over the years. You could avoid it by falling into a deep coma.

I will yield some territory here. It is clear that we make decisions (think) using emotions. Consumer behavior has been studied in this context, and billions and billions of dollars are staked on people buying on the basis of cognition + emotion. I see it in my own consumer decisions: Why buy a shoe at an upscale shoe store (Allen Edmunds) instead of Target or god forbid Payless (no longer in business). I like (emotional content) the looks and build of Allen Edmunds much better than the look and build of a shoe or boot costing 1/3 of what the upscale store is charging. Also, I didn't like the feeling I experience in the lowest price outlet. Payless was a just plain shabby experience.

The quality of the build and materials mattered once upon a time when I was doing a lot of walking. I don't walk much anymore. A Target shoe would do, as far as adequately covering the foot.

But emotions are, I maintain, also a catalyst for thinking as well. The desire (emotion) to understand is the motivation to stick with the problem (of adding 2 and 2 together) until it is solved. Thinking is a pleasure. "Pleasure" per se does figure into the task of cooking (which must involve thought if disaster is to be avoided) because pleasure is one of the goals, aside from surviving for one more day of posting on TPF.

Pleasure in thinking about emotions and thinking is evaporating, fast.

Just the act of using my mind is a pleasure — T Clark

And, judging from your posts, not a novel experience.

People who have had the portions of their brain strongly involved emotion damaged sometimes have trouble making decisions, even very simple ones. My point is, emotion is not an adjunct to thinking, it is a fundamental part of it. — T Clark

The brain has lots of different parts but thinking and emoting both seem unitary. The physical basis of thinking and emotion is one of the critical things that computers can't have, without also having a wet body.

2+2=4 regardless of how one feels about it. Whether one cares that 2+2=4 is a function of emotion. I have been aware of eugenics for many years. I just finished Richard Overy's book on Britain during the inter-war period. The chapter on the eugenics and birth control movement in Britain was very exciting because the names of eugenics promoters and supporters were given, and the details of what they were proposing were shocking. Leonard Darwin, son of Charles Darwin, lamented that Britain was not emulating Nazi Germany in its approach to eliminating "defective" people. Some Anglican bishops were on board. Numerous Tory politicians were too. "Death chambers" were one of the methods proposed for disposing of the defectives (which wasn't, by the way, a very precise term).

All this was exciting because something very appalling was revealed. I finished the eugenics chapter with much more disgust than when I started it. I have the same experience in reading about Nazi Germany: fascination and intense interest because the working out of Nazi policy was so granular and awful.

By contrast, contemporary economic leaves me cold. It is not emotionally stimulating (well, a lot o it is vaguely repellant). A lot of political news is the same--more stultifying that stimulating.

If I don't reject the idea that emotion is an integral part of thinking, I can't parse out how they are integrated.

intensity/extremity of the emotional state — universeness

It seems reasonable to suppose that the intensity of emotion would play a role.

Psychedelic drugs for example? can they alter knowledge 'flow' and aid creativity — universeness

I don't know--no personal experience with psychedelics. I'm not a neurologist or psychologist. It is possible, I suppose. There is some current interest in using psilocybin in treating people with PTSD. Harvey Cox, a theologian, tried psilocybin; as I recollect, he thought the experience was interesting, but not an epiphany. The standard treatment for depression is an Rx for mood altering drugs that boost neurotransmitters. I've taken them for many years. They have helped. What helped even more, along with the anti-depressant, was a major change in circumstances.

I experience depression typically -- loss of focus, concentration, and memory. Mental function is "depressed". Reduced depression means better focus, concentration, and memory. So mood definitely affects thinking.

other than to make ourselves feel good — TiredThinker

If "making ourselves feel good" is the cause for doing good, then have a ball.

Also...

a) many are taught to do good for righteousness' sake -- do good because it is good
b) mirror neurons facilitate empathy

Mirror neurons are one of the most important discoveries in the last decade of neuroscience. These are a variety of visuospatial neurons which indicate fundamentally about human social interaction. ... Apart from imitation, they are responsible for myriad of other sophisticated human behavior and thought processes. — https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov › articles ›

c) we want to do good things

We don't select using reason, for instance, unless our emotions have made us privilege a rational approach — Tom Storm

As Schopenhauer said, "'A man can do what he wants, but not want what he wants'? I take to mean "we can not choose to desire something". We desire it, or not, but not by choice.

Is that what you mean?

A lot of amateur philosophers, at least, seem to avoid the emotions in their thinking. They have as many emotions as everybody else, maybe more, but they don't want to include them in their system of thinking.

this thread is not about behavior, it's about knowledge. How we know things. — T Clark

As if we could know anything at all without information-acquiring behavior first. I don't want to suggest that "emotion" is either a way of knowing, or knowledge in itself. The relationship of emotion to knowledge is not causative. It is an adjunct, or maybe a catalyst--it participates in the formation of knowledge without becoming part of it. But that is not 100% true: the pleasure we experience in figuring out how the gadget works, or how the squirrel builds its nest, or how a chemical reaction takes place, is colored by pleasure--positive experience is attached to the fact.

This fall I observed two squirrel nests that had fallen out of trees. I always assumed that a squirrel nest was just a flimsy cluster of leaves intended to hide the squirrel. Not so. It is a tightly packed roll of leaves, at least 12" in diameter, with a small hole in the middle. It would hide a squirrel, but more, it would also keep it dry and warmish (if it's -25ºF as it will be tonight, the squirrel will not freeze -- but it won't be "warm". It is clear that IF a squirrel loses its nest in the winter, it might not survive because it would be hard pressed to rebuild the nest without an abundance of green leaves.

Learning this was a pleasure. After noticing distant squirrel nests in trees all my life, I finally know new information about local squirrels.

I think strong emotion is more likely to lead you to making the wrong decision about what to do than clear thinking. — T Clark

Strong emotions are intended to produce quick decisions, like "get the hell out of town before the 350 pounder buries the knife in your gut". (As you already know) that's the function of the limbic system -- to save us from immediate danger (the knife, the snake, the spider, the snarling dog...) The limbic / emotion system, as you say, can disrupt clear thinking. This has been proved to me over and over again in my life.

But still, strong emotions arise for a reason. If you have anxiety attacks when thinking about selling your house, you should probably rethink the reasons for the sale. Same for buying a house. Or for quitting a job, taking a job, going on a second date, or getting married.

Our particular emotions are one of the elements we do well to know about, understand, and manage. Sometimes emotions have nothing to do with thought: Leaping away from the snake in the grass has nothing to do with our thoughts on snakes. But for less primitive responses (like feeling nauseated when thinking about taking the questionable job offer) one's emotional response is a piece of data that should be taken account of.

Maybe not, but my guess is that you agree with my take on emotion. We want to direct our lives by relying on reliable knowledge, clear perception, logical thinking, and settled emotions. In order to achieve this happy result, we have to take the volatile aspects of our brains into account.

The situation is quite dire and could escalate into something very, very dangerous. — Manuel

I agree, and I don't know what the Nato group should do next, or what the Russians will do.

What proof are you looking for? Please explain this. — L'éléphant

If some one says, "Men are usually taller than women", numerous citations can be provided. If someone says, "More women than men are attending college now", numerous citations can be provided.

If some one says, "Women are more ethical than men" I would want to now how that had been determined. Just off hand, I am not sure anyone has determined that one sex is more ethical than the other. Men and women often occupy quite different roles in life, and the ethical decisions they make may not be comparable.

A group of men working in a business have one field of ethical decisions making, a group of women working in an elementary school have a different field of ethical decision making. A business might disappoint a customer. A school may discourage a child from thinking he can succeed. Disappointing a customer is less significant than discouraging a child's success. The school teacher may have exhibited a serious ethical lapse.

Giving to others should feel good because it IS good. Give what feels good to you to organizations doing work that makes you feel good (assuming that isn't the local Nazis) and that you can observe (if you want to).

Does PayPal let you designate the charity? (If not, forget it.). Amazon has a program where they donate a small percentage of your purchases to a charity of your choice. I designated "Resist!"-- a very small social/political action group in Cambridge, MA. Some others have selected that group as well, and they receive something like a $1000 a year from our various purchases at Amazon. There is a long list of organizations you can choose from. [I think the name of the Amazon program is "Smile").

If PayPal is interested in charity, they can start by donating 1 - 10 % of their ample profits to charity. Target, for instance, donates 5% of operating profits -- millions - to charities.

As to how much you should give to any and all charities, from the beggar on the corner to the Red Cross, that's up to you. If and when I donate a significant sum to charity (say, $50) I prefer to give it an organization that is local and whose efforts I can observe, like particular food shelves, shelters, or subversive organizations (of which there are damned few).

If I give a beggar a dollar, I don't worry about whether or not they are going to buy alcohol or drugs with it. Begging seems like a hard way to earn a living. There has to be something wrong with a person who is willing to stand by a freeway exit for hours on end in heat and cold, being ignored much of the time (or jeered at), to collect money. They probably need the help.

Well, Mary was meant to be... I guess ironic, but the other two were serious. — T Clark

What is the irony in mentioning Mary?

In a way, I'm not sure one can say Jesus was the founder of Christianity, let alone his mother.

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph certainly had something to do with Christianity. He was the central character in the story, but... he died early--way before "Christianity" came into existence. Risen from the dead? Sitteth at the right hand of God? So they say.

If we are looking for a founder, Paul comes much closer. The real "founders" were people long removed from Jerusalem in time and space. The founders saw that the testimony they had received from a previous time required an institution in which to house it. That institution was the "church".

If this is in some way accurate, then I think it is also the likely route by which the church came into existence--not by divine fiat, but by necessity, later on. The gap between Jesus and the church is the location of a great deal of Christianity's complexities or contradictions. What Jesus had to say was, as far as we can tell, pretty straight-forward. Paul, less so. The later the writer, the less straight forward and the more peripheral the issues were that got mixed in.

This is a touchy subject because it has reference to sexist ideology. — L'éléphant

Touchy and tricky. Tricky because we tend to make generalizations about the differences and similarities of men and women without having a whole lot of proof. I'm not sure, for instance, whether men and women grieve differently or not. Aside from surveys, I'm not sure how one would find out. Experienced therapists might have some idea.

Then there is the question of whether it matters if they do grieve differently, if both find relief in the process.

Some people say that women are better conversationalists than men. I think that's true, but... so what? I think gay men are better conversationalists than straight men, but again, so what?

Women are clearly socialized one way; men are clearly socialized another way. Does one have to be better than the other? Is one better than the other?

No women have founded a religion — Agent Smith

Mary Baker Eddy founded Christian Science, the Christian Science Monitor, and wrote Science and Health with Keys to the Scripture.

Mother Ann Lee founded the United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing, AKA the Shakers.

The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism — Apollodorus

Russell wrote that in 1920, shortly after the Bolshevik Revolution.

I've been Reading Richard Overy's The Twilight Years: The Paradox of Britain between the Wars. At that time, between WWI and WWII, there was a lot of doubt in various circles about the future of capitalism. A lot of people, following Marx and others, thought that Capitalism was bad, and on its last legs. If it was doomed, it still wasn't clear when, exactly, it would collapse. Many of these people thought that socialism was the natural and humane successor to capitalism. It was difficult for intellectuals (including economists) to decide what, exactly was going on. Clearly, what was happening was not good -- especially after 1929.

Some feared that the conclusion of capitalism would not be socialism, but barbarism. Especially in the 1930s, that must have seems increasingly likely.

Bolshevism deserves the gratitude and admiration of all the progressive part of mankind ...

A lot of British progressives were at least pro-socialist and some were pro-Bolshevik, or pro-communist. This was still early in the future USSR's revolutionary history. On the other hand, the state of capitalism which was in front of their eyes was not good. Rising unemployment, underemployment, and poverty were ruining many lives. it didn't seem like the ruling class (where the wealth was) were competent to deal with the problems at hand. Indeed, many economic advisors were not sure what should/could be done.

Faulkner's aphorism that "The past is never dead. It's not even past" seems truer as I get older. No, I don't think our situation is like the 1920s or 1930s. But in the face of global warming and rampant viral infections, one has to wonder whether the existing establishment is up to the task of governing effectively. It's clearer in 2022 than it was in 1932 what we should be doing -- but we don't seem to be able to do it (cut CO2 emissions significantly now--something we should have done 30 years ago).

This church is not diverse. But then, it's a liturgical Lutheran church, and most Lutherans (never mind Hare Krishnas) do not like liturgical worship--chanting the psalms, singing the Eurcharist liturgy, etc. It's all in the Lutheran Book of Worship--more honored by Lutherans in the breach than in the observance.

Officially, we desire diversity. Just about every church does--officially. But not really, and that's OK. The benefit of diversity for diversity's sake is slight. Neighborhoods that operate like concentration camps (the ghettos) are bad too. But just moving people out of the ghetto to dilute the demographics of both the ghetto and the suburb probably doesn't accomplish much. It is thought (by some reformers) that poor children perform in school better IF they and their families live amongst people who value and perform education, have regular jobs, mow their lawn, and so forth.

I've read some of the research, and it sounds plausible--which isn't the same thing as likely. Whether it works or not clearly would depend on a cluster of disparate factors. It all gets very complicated very fast, at best. At worst, the project blows up.

like Vivaldi's Four Seasons and such. Not Stravinsky. — baker

Stravinsky reportedly said, "Vivaldi didn't write 500 concertos; he wrote the same concerto 500 times."

The quip is established enough that a 1986 book—Bach, Beethoven, and the Boys by David W. Barber—riffed on it: “People who find [Vivaldi’s] music too repetitious are inclined to say that he wrote the same concerto 450 times. This is hardly fair: he wrote two concertos, 225 times each.”

Or

"Even someone as informed as pianist/musicologist Charles Rosen attributed the quote to him [Stravinsky] when asked which composer he found most overrated:

“I'm tired of [Vivaldi]. Stravinsky once said that Vivaldi wrote the same concerto 500 times. I disagree. Instead, I think he began 500 concertos and never achieved anything in them. So he kept trying over and over again without ever quite succeeding.”
—Charles Rosen to The New York Times, 1987

The most they can do is "enjoy" some piece in their dark corner. They can be consumers, and nothing more. A nameless, faceless mass. — baker

It would be clinically interesting to know more about the source of such opinions as this that you expose to the right of day.

Classical music now mostly strikes me as pretty things that are ultimately vain and serve no wholesome purpose. — baker

If all the classical music heaped up over the centuries serves "no wholesome purpose", what in God's name does? That many people find classical boring, I can understand. Some of it bores people who love classical music.

One is not supposed to speak ill of the dead. I haven't heard any rules against speaking for them.

The body brain and physical world can reappear again after a new big bang. How much we don't like this, it will still happen. — Raymond

That's what you think.

Or the way we treat many animals and plants. Still lots to improve with feminism, racism, classism and things we can't even see are wrong. — Manuel

Last week I was at a church discussion group for which the the topic was racial discrimination. Someone asked the question, "Why do people practice discrimination in housing--discouraging blacks from becoming their neighbors?"

People like to group themselves by similarity of race, class, culture, politics, sexual preference... The church at which the discussion took place exemplifies this grouping--Northern European, "middle class", well educated, Lutheran. Likely we evolved this tendency to 'stick to our own kind'. Is that a bug or is it a feature? I think the latter.

Urban dwellers tend to prefer the variety of the city--racial, class, politics, foodways, etc--but they also tend to maintain boundaries of race, class, culture, and so on. Hence, different kinds of neighborhoods. Some people prefer suburban environments where demographics are homogeneous.

I've always preferred the city (because I grew up in a very small town), but I think the suburban are wrongly criticized for being monotonous, boring, all-the-same, racist enclaves, and so on. 25% of the US population lives in suburbs. 40% of blacks live in suburbs. They like where they live. Are 80,000,000 Americans wrong? I don't think so. (There was a musical, "Sixty Million Frenchmen Can't Be Wrong). 31% of Americans live in large cities. They aren't wrong either. Different strokes for different folks.

Concentrations of similar people, be they blacks, whites, asians, gays, Sikhs, Jews, Buddhists, singles, and so forth provide the necessary demographic density to build up particular cultures. Similar people who are too widely scattered have difficulty doing that.

Manuel, don't take this too personally. Your post simply provided the opportunity to fulminate. Blessed are they who provide the opportunity to preach,

his societies quite appalling views — Manuel

Yet he was also a racist. — Manuel

But, if we are going to have the standards we have today, apply to the important figures of the past, we won't read anything. — Manuel

You are quite right about wrongly applying contemporary values to the past. Our contemporary values aren't so settled that they can be called universal. We probably should not say "his society's quite appalling views" unless the people of the time thought the views were appalling. Hume died in 1776. According to Google Ngram, the noun "race" appeared in print before 1700, and had little in common with our use of the term. "Race" could apply to the ancestors of Angus, a Scottish family, for example. The adjectives "racist", "racism", and "racial" scarcely appear in print until the middle of the 20th century. Our categories were not the categories of Hume's time.

The founders of the Imperial College of London, Thomas Henry Huxley (Darwin's Bulldog) and Alfred Beit, a German Jew who richly endowed the Imperial College, are being scrutinized for rejection because they fail the test of purity--the same test that most people prior to the 21st Century (if then) would fail--the test of having the proper progressive anti-racist views of the present moment. Read all about here: Quillette.

In 2222, the participants of The Philosophy Forum may look back to our time and say, "The people of 2022 had appalling views about artificial intelligence and mechanized beings." (In their time, "humanist", "humane", and "humanism" -- never mind David Hume -- had come to mean something much different, much more negative and socially destructive, than those words mean to us.) Are the superiority pricks of 2222 better than the superiority pricks of 2022? No.

Who made the "defaced" painting? — Raymond

"Either way, the piece, “Untitled,” by John Andrew Perello, the graffiti artist known as JonOne, is now a magnet for selfies. And on social media, South Koreans are debating what the vandalism illustrates about art, authorship and authenticity."

The piece was valued at $400,000. Don't now who determined its value.

I think the after you die bacteria, enzymes, creepy crawlies, and maybe larger animals break the body down into its most digestible forms and when that is all done, one's substance is taken up into other organisms.

For the individual there is nothing, then there is life, then there is nothing. Everything that composed one's life -- muscle, senses, memories, ideas, dreams, fears, hopes... disappears forever.

My view rules out the existence of an after life; it doesn't rule out the existence of God. Perhaps God thinks that one life is sufficient, is gift enough. I haven't checked with God on that point. I don't find the idea of an eternal life all that attractive.

The "art market" is not eternal. A lot of stuff has been bought at high prices, and may or may not hold value. "Past performance is no guarantee of future results."

It may well be the case that some art work will remain very expensive, and that some presently expensive art will lose a lot of its cash value.

Whatever happens, the cash value of art is mostly a concern of the buyers of art and their heirs. You want to spend $100,000,000 on one art work? Well, if you have the cash, go right ahead. After the revolution we will confiscate all your stuff anyway. Take good care of it in the meantime. (This applies only to rich people. 99% of us do not come close to that category.)

Plato wrote about Spartan society mainly, which the Greeks looked in very high regard — Shawn

Sparta had a higher percentage of slaves per master than Athens. Does that speak well for Plato? (This is just getting back to the issue of master/slave, stratification, etc.)

In the ancient world there was considerably more social stratification, and the hoi polloi were held in low regard. — Wayfarer

Wayfarer is correct. The classical cultures were stratified, but did not have many layers in the strata. There was the top, a small middle, a big base. Being in the base didn't necessarily mean immiseration. Being a slave, depending on one's role, didn't mean immiseration either. Some slaves were "white collar" workers, so to speak (Nobody wore collars back then). They were also managers, scholars, teachers, etc. Keep in mind, though, that a scholar slave was once a free scholar. What would you prefer being? Most slaves just had to work. Sounds like. total drag to me. Still, Rome was more heterogeneous than Athens.

Ancient societies, in general, were not 'free and open', Shawn. Whenever people start waxing enthusiastic about Rome, I wish I could go back in time with them to see what it was actually like.

Why do you think Aristotle made humanity too dependent on magnanimous men from-which one would derive some privileged status over your brothers and sisters, as seen in the form of master-slave relations or slavery to state it explicitly (according to Russell)? — Shawn

Look first to the society they lived in. Greece was not egalitarian. Privileged men played leading roles at the top of the heap with not too many in the middle, and a lot at the broad base. Not only did they practice slavery, but anyone unfortunate to be bankrupted or captured in battle could become a slave.

Were Plato and Aristotle abolitionists? Who was their Lincoln? Slave was then and would remain for centuries, the status of many, many people--between 5 and 10 million.

Also, there was a LOT of water under the bridge between Plato & Aristotle and the Medieval period, like the Roman Empire, Jesus, Paul, and Holy Mother Church. (BTW, Dark Ages is not considered a proper term any more--not out of political correctness, but because the medieval period just wasn't a "dark age". As scholars study it more, they find that there was quite a bit of good stuff going on.)

I had a Gary Oldman moment, like here, in The Professional, starting at 2.40. — baker

Sorry, I don't get it.

I only need to remember my music teacher and my literature teacher from elementary school! And then some teachers from college, and the general attitude among the academics and the intelligentsia. In their view, people like me are not able to "genuinely" like the music. I mean, there are essays and other texts written on how people from lesser socio-economic classes (ie. "peasants") can have only a shallow and sentimental understanding of art. One of my college professors convinced me to never go anywhere near a theatre again or to read a book by a notable author. — baker

Your paragraph perfectly captures the view of 'the elite'. I remember, with dismay, a professor at university (19th c. American lit) saying that literature was the business of an elite coterie, a clique. This statement seemed then (1967) to be discordant with the popular '60s mood.

Your concert hall experience tells me you have much better ears than I did, once upon a time. And you were diligent in your preparation to hear formal music -- something I never was.

"The peasants", like goats, need the hay put down where they can get at it, not locked up in art barns. My guess is that if you took small art shows to the local mall, staged concerts of formal music in neighborhood venues, sent acting companies on the road to small towns, etc. "the people" would be responsive audiences. This wouldn't happen over night. Someone raised on rap and nothing but won't be ready for the full court press of 'high' art. Give it time.

but we we're always at the cheapest seats high up many times on the last row sweating. — ssu

Seats so far from the stage that it's the next best thing to not being there!

Part of the problem is the rectangular design of a lot of concert barns (halls). The wall opposite the stage will be distant. The side balconies close to the stage have partial views. 1/3 of the hall is cheap sats for a reason--people with enough cash won't sit there.

Concert halls don't have to be rectangular barns. Rounded designs can provide better sight lines and reduce distance from the performers. Smaller might be better.

I enjoy first-class orchestra concerts once in a while (too expensive to do often). However, the pleasure I have obtained from small concerts in more intimate settings like small churches with good acoustics, or even places that don't have great acoustics, has been just as good if not better. Semi-professional groups can deliver splendid performances. University orchestras can deliver great results, sometimes in free (!) concerts.

I wonder if your system would be compulsory or not, and what you’d do to those who refuse. — NOS4A2

The Revolution has to occur before one can think about creating an economy based on voluntary cooperation. Without a prior revolution of thinking among the people, cooperation will end up being forced. You don't want that / I don't want that.

I come from a religious upbringing, and to me "a voluntary cooperative economy" has the same rhetorical flavor as the Kingdom of God. It would be the final and best arrangement for humankind, Despite a religious upbringing, I do not expect God to intervene on socialism's behalf and assist in the establishment of socialism -- or to even lift so much as a hair on our behalf. Humans have to do this on our own, period.

We are capable of conducting voluntary cooperation in a small group for a limited period of time (maybe 3 dozen people for a week or two). We have not evolved the ability to do this in a population of several hundred million. Lock 36 people into a room and they will quickly conclude (with Sartre) that hell is other people.

Our hunter-gatherer forebears were apparently able to sustain voluntary cooperation for millennia. They had a couple of things going for them that we do not: a) they had lots of space to spread out in; b) they weren't compacted enough to get on each other's nerves. c) They presumably had pretty clearly defined roles -- one hunted (roles with that) or one gathered (roles within that). c) Because they were mobile, they didn't accumulate a lot of stuff or to have arguments about who owned what. d) Life presented enough outside threats (lions, tigers, and bears...) to help maintain solidarity. e) On the other hand, life was (apparently) good enough that they didn't have to work all that hard to be healthy (their bones indicate good health).

We predictably get on each other's nerves; our roles are fuzzy or conflicting; we are burdened with stuff; clear and present existential threats are much less common for us than vague, impending forms of possible doom, under which solidarity cracks; we work very hard (probably to no good end much of the time) and are often kind of sickly. We suspect that we are going to get preternaturally screwed.

@Schopenhauer1 Most of my work years were spent in non-enterprise operations: non-profit agencies, universities, and the like. Only occasionally did I work in business and that was through temp agencies. Most of the time I didn't like the jobs I had. If they lasted more than a 3 or 4 years, they became routinized and boring. I liked starting things better than maintaining them.

But whether a workplace was business or non-profit made little difference. Employees were generally viewed as interchangeable means rather than ends. Hierarchy worked exactly the same in both kinds of employment. Control was the name of the game. A lot of work was terminally boring and tedious, and should have been performed by machines. (As time goes on, more of it IS being done by machines.)

Work seemed like a theft of my time. Much of the day (more than 8 hours, more like 12) was spent getting ready for work, getting to work, working, returning from work, and unwinding from work. That left too little time to just BE.

The job that I liked the most combined the joy of being with the satisfaction of collaboration at work and recognition. It involved outreach work in the gay community during the early years of AIDS. The job was fairly difficult, loosely supervised (of necessity, it involved outside work away from the agency office), and was very fulfilling. it was a fulfilling place for most others, as well. We didn't feel exploited.

Exploitation of workers (by corporation, state, or non-profit) requires everything that makes work unpleasant: hierarchy, control, tedium, devaluation. Management theory recognizes the fact that if managers don't keep a tight grip on the work place, the workers will take control (bit by bit, not a revolution). Hierarchy and control will be lost. Crackdowns will be required to regain control; people will be fired (not just at the bottom of the heap); and production (of widgets, statistics, paper flows... something) will be lost.

The Great Question is this: Can one have a socialist workplace without hierarchy, control, tedium, and devaluation of workers? IF you can't, then there much less reason to hope for the revolution.

What makes you think that this isn't a problem solved more by antinatalism than it does by communism? — schopenhauer1

Antinatalism solves all problems by eventually eliminating the species that thinks about problems. I'm in favor of being. Were I in favor of non-being I could become a militant anti-natalist. I don't equate anti-natalist with some sort of death wish. Apparently you do not either, since you are an active forum participant when you could be, with just a little effort, in a box 6 feet under.