I would not want to minimize the consequences of the lockdown. While I am an old guy and don't get around much any more (every day is a sort of lockdown), that's not true of younger people. Some people think the shutdown in Minnesota contributed to the ferocity of the riots last may that did so much damage, and the crime wave that has followed. I'm not sure about that, but it seems plausible. I'm sure the lockdown has been quite emotionally distressing to children and youth.

The lockdown was an economic disaster for service workers in closed businesses -- absolutely no doubt about that. Use of food shelves has been very high. Homelessness has increased too.

Still, 530,000 dead from Covid-19 in the US is unlikely to be matched by deaths from domestic turmoil caused by the lockdown. 2.6 million Covid deaths world-wide is more than a blip on the radar, but it's a fraction of world deaths from all causes. By contrast, in the 1918 Influenza Epidemic, about 1/3 of the world's population became infected with influenza and around 50 million died -- that at a time when world population was significantly smaller than now -- below 2B. 50 million dead from influenza was close to a doubling of total deaths world wide.

I didn't look at your list of links -- too late just now to do that, bed time coming up. But I still think the strategic business closures, social distancing, mask wearing, and avoidance of group gatherings helped.

One reason for thinking that it helped, is that there are many reports of reduced colds, flu, and such.

I binge watched the Netflix ROYALS, so I guess you are right.

Fishfry is a nice guy, but the quoted statement is BS.

HIV & AIDS presented a similar problem for gay men from roughly June of 1981 going forward. (June 1, '81 is when the first cases were described.). As the disease became more familiar, we had to decide what it was worth to us to have frequent sex with many different partners. Many of us decided it was worth enough to continue, even if with more caution. Condoms (not masks) were very strongly recommended. Civil authorities eventually intruded into the gay male environment by closing down many of the venues which facilitated easy sex. Lots of education was conducted, deliberately and accidentally (in the press). (Grindr hand't appeared yet.).

It took maybe a decade for a solid consensus to form about safe sex, condoms, HIV testing, and so on.

In contrast to the 40 years of HIV (which has not disappeared) the process of consensus guided behavior for Covid-19 developed far quicker--about 12 months. It developed rapidly because, unlike AIDS, anybody and everybody could catch Covid-19 unless they were scrupulously careful about exposure.

Communicable diseases, whether they spread through the air or through precious bodily fluids, are always a community affair. So yes, people should avoid exposing themselves and others to Covid-19. And yes, the dive bar you were going to go to on your suicide errand should be closed for the duration.

Had public health measures been taken to suppress HIV that were as vigorous as Covid 19, many of the 700,000 Americans who died of AIDS in the last 40 years would have lived. 18,000 Americans still die of AIDS every year, even though we can now prevent most of those deaths.

The deaths of at least 530,000 people from Covid 19 in one year is enough to lower the average life span of Americans.s

Just put your fucking mask on and stay the hell away from everybody else -- 6 feet. And wash your hands, too. Get the vaccine, too, or else. Can you manage all that?

Marries into the Royal family then says, "It's not working for me." — fishfry

I have tried really really hard to find an ounce of sympathy in my heart for poor Megan, and you know what? There just isn't any. When it comes to Megan Markle, I have a heart of stone, No empathy either.

I do have sympathy for people who are born into the royal family of GB without granting permission first (See Schopenhauer1's antenatal fixation). They didn't ask to be born as relatives of QEII. But Markle? She went way out of her way to get there. Poor little disappointed rich girl.

A plague on both their houses -- Buckingham Palace and the California shelter for still-over-privileged couples.

That was a nice read--detailing how the Mother Country has fallen! What I felt was less schadenfreude and more relief at getting a cohesive explanation for the national act of shooting its collective self in both feet.

But I am not convinced that GB has stolen the crown from us in the Stupidity Bowl game. Stay tuned.

It can also be seen as a code of conduct that is largely shared by a community or culture — Tom Storm

Yes. Morality is individually applied but reflects the morality of the community. Sometimes individuals develop deviations from the standard morality, such as radical pacifism--rejection of all war, including just war. We may be able to do that when we bear the cost of the deviation. The pacifist pays the price. The community will reject moral deviations that impose costs on the society--fraud, arson, rape, bloody murder, riot, and so on.

Gay men once violated the standard Euro-American morality by engaging in deviant sexual behavior. Gay sex was not tolerated, even though homosexuality imposed no cost on society, except that it offended society, and by persistently violating morality homosexuals undermined the authority of social enforcers.

Sometimes the morality of communities imposes costs on individuals -- think of all the costs imposed by racial discrimination--costs for which society has generally had little interest in compensating. Blacks and other minorities have had to work very hard over long periods of time to change the operation of community morality (and have not been successful in many cases).

One problem that anyone would have in considering this question is that they already have a religion-based system of morality which is religiously based. I may be an atheist now, but I was taught Christian morality as a child. It is as difficult to lose that religiously-based morality as it is to lose my native language. Short of a bullet to the head, both are permanent. That said, people can and may alter their religiously based morality.

My understanding of morality is that it is intended to reduce the friction and conflict among people who are consistently fractious. Secular morality can ignore the god-man relationship which religious morality attends to.

Minimizing conflict among people is an objective advantage. An orderly society allows individuals to conduct their lives as they see fit (up to the point of interfering with other people's lives). Subjectively, individuals prefer to go about their lives without excessive disruption. We do not flourish when we are constantly disrupted (like, if you keep running over the tomato plants, you will get zero tomatoes).

not many 3 year-olds there.
— Tom Storm

Yes, there are. They just have older bodies. — Banno

This raises another point about morality: Three-year olds learn to obey their parents because they fear that their parents will punish them. Sounds crude, but it works because the brain is so structured that fear (limbic system) and proper behavior (frontal cortex) are linked. When that link fails to form, the result is sociopathy or psychopathy.

The 3 year old's fear turns into the adult conscience. Conscience isn't 100% reliable, but it is reliable enough to result in most people (75%? 80%? 90%? ...) conducting their lives "morally".

Morals, of course, can backfire when humans start killing each other to enforce their morality.

Mother always warned us to not discuss politics or religion at the table when we had company. Not talk about politics or religion--what else is there?

Theism per se isn't the problem--it's the people who believe in it. Same goes for politics, literature, art, science, technology, etc. It's all possibly splendid at one end of the continuum, a shit hole at the other end. Religious experience can be sublime or supremely tedious--it all depends on who.

No matter how you slice it, we primates are the problem. Had we stayed in the trees, a great deal of trouble could have been avoided.

Abolish theism if you want -- our clever sapient selves will cook up a replacement.

The truth, allegedly, is emptiness. — praxis

Archeologists say "the truth is in the garbage." They are not being cynical. People's garbage testifies to their real activities, contrary to what they say on surveys. This would be true for Hindus and Buddhists too. As for emptiness in garbage cans, we suspect they are using the neighbor's.

I was going to volunteer as a gorilla in case that kind of warfare was needed. — frank

Good of you to volunteer in place of a gorilla, they being a peaceable and endangered species.

On the other hand, you might want to volunteer as a guerilla. Perhaps there will be a battalion of gorilla costumed guerillas.

Whether cross-racial attraction is racist or not depends on how it is done. A black guy and a white guy hit it off in the bar, go home together, and have a great time. Not racist.

A white guy exclusively prefers black men. Racist? Possibly. A black guy exclusively prefers white men. Racist? Possibly. What would make these relationships racially suspect would be the motivation. If economic power or economic opportunity plays a significant role in one's preference, classism coupled with racism is more likely. I don't think it is racist to find a handsome black guy as attractive as a handsome white guy. Where it gets dicier is when blackness (or oppositely, whiteness) is a requirement for someone to find interest in a prospective partner.

There used to be a gay group, BWMT, Black and White Men Together. They held social events, and all of the white guys had black partners (more or less exclusively). There was almost always a significant wealth and class difference--the whites being more better-off middle class, the blacks being poorer working class. Were the white guys slumming? Possibly.

It seems like the people who are "happy" and the countries that are "happy" (whatever it means for a country to be happy) would have some elements in common:

a) noticeably improving conditions (economic particularly, but also social and political aspects). Getting a good job almost always makes unemployed people much happier. Seeing that others are getting reasonably good jobs when the seek them, gives both the job seekers and observers a boost in confidence. The reverse is true; rising unemployment makes job holders less confident.

b) on-going good and stable conditions seems to make people happy. People don't usually complain that the weather every day has been just perfect -- and tediously boring. Things like a major hunk of your country deciding to secede (Catalan, perhaps?) might contribute to collective unhappiness -- just because it marks a sharp increase of instability.

c) seeing a route to a better future would tend to make people happier. Declining population (people reproducing below replacement levels) might make people unhappier. People who live in cities where there are numerous empty houses might be less happy, and so might individuals remaining in these cities.

d) squalid, impoverished, ugly environments (your basic shit hole) tend to make people less happy, individually and collectively. On the other hand, clean, prosperous, attractive environments tend to make people happier (assuming people prefer prosperity over poverty, clean over squalid, attractive over ugly).

76% of people in Britain claim to be rather happy or merely happy. If that figure is truly reflective of the UK's level of happiness, then it's probably the case that they just aren't paying attention. Have they not noticed the negative consequences of Brexit? Can a nation really be happy with a PM like Boris (or Donald)? The answer is obviously NO -- happiness under Donald Trump was a sick joke; a delusion; a scam; a filthy trick. The only thing that would be worse than Trump's presidency would be Trump's presidency again. Perish the thought!

Junk DNA might not be all that junky. But the workings of DNA are not something I know much (like, anything) about.

I take my guidance on DNA-influencing-behavior from other animals. Dogs, for instance, exhibit a lot of similar behaviors: gaze following (dogs are unique in this ability), retrieving, assistance seeking, playfulness, and so on. Dogs have been bred to herd. True, useful work-dogs have to be trained, but some behaviors are bred in the bone. You won't teach a retriever how to herd.

Children exhibit behavioral differences early on. Of course, parents also influence babies from the start, but still. Some babies seem to be more inquisitive, more reserved, or risk-taking than others. Then there are the differences among children in large families. There are major differences among children; the easiest explanation is the scrambling of genes. Fraternal twins are as unlike each other as children born years apart.

The Russians did an interesting experiment on the silver fox. http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20160912-a-soviet-scientist-created-the-only-tame-foxes-in-the-world The selectively bred animals that showed less aggressiveness toward humans. Within a surprisingly small number of years they had produced a silver fox that a) no longer had nice fox fur, b) held its tail more erectly than ordinary silver foxes, c) had less erect ears, d) were readily friendly, and e) cortisol levels had decreased significantly.

It took quite a few generations, but it revealed that there were genes controlling silver fox behavior.

There is no reason to think that Homo sapiens operate differently, when it comes to genetics. We behave the way we are bred to behave. (And that may well be a supremely depressing fact.)

It seems to me that some people get a better chance than others, because they experience more advantages physically and socially. — Jack Cummins

Quite true.

It is quite possible to think that we have an extremely large role in making ourselves who we are because our physical selves form "in the background", shaded by our very noisy foreground brains--chattering away as they do. Of course, the brain is body too, and even if it's content is open ended (whatever got stuffed into our heads by unauthorized and authorized agents) its shape is controlled by genes.

It's quite possible that many behavior traits are inherited (or at least expressed biologically): thrift vs. gambling; caution vs risk; big-picture vs detail orientation; gay vs. straight; good way finding skills vs. lost without a map; language acquisition vs. language difficulty, mathematical skill vs. innumeracy; good spatial relationships vs. none; and so on.

To some extent we are stuck with our bodies and their changing nature. ... But I do believe in a way, our bodies give us so much limitation in expressing who we are and how we would like to be perceived, sexually and artistically. — Jack Cummins

Our intellectual development is preceded by, and flows from our physical bodies and our interactions with the physical world. Our egotistical brains want to claim credit for everything, but nature made the first design decisions that determined much of who we are, who we became. Yes, of course we adapt, resist, strive, and so forth on our way to maturity, but it's quite possible that how much we adapt, resist, and strive is biologically determined.

I would never counsel someone to live passively, taking whatever comes as fated to happen. On the other hand, I would never counsel someone that they can be whatever they want to be. There is a critical role for acceptance balanced with striving. We should strive to achieve (provided that what we want to achieve is worth having), but we should also accept who we are.

I can look back over my life now and accept that I made some really stupid, cockeyed decisions--not just when I was younger, but more recently too. It's way too late to start over (75 is not the ideal age to start a new career). But what one can do post-retirement is pursue avenues not previously investigated.

Erving Goffman's The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life — Jack Cummins

It really is a damn shame that this book wasn't taught in kindergarten. So many things would have been clear so much earlier.

I executed my stage presentation worse than many others did/do; preferred time back stage more than front stage; and sort of managed my presentation of self in everyday life. I just didn't realize that I was doing it, or that it could be done 'better', more congruously. I was, in a word, oblivious a good share of the time.

At the end of a voluntary public service stint Boston in 1970, I decided to grow a beard. When it was grown out, I realized that was the sort of anti-war demonstrator, hippyish, somewhat radical 'look' I had been looking for, and have kept it ever since, What was once curly brown is now white, but it still works. I generally have preferred working class clothes over 'professional dress' even though I was a professional (in education). Vestis virum reddit! Clothes make the man, they say,

Among the anti-war demonstrators, hippies, and several variety of radicals, there was a firm rejection of one kind of self-presentation (the corporate look) and a firm embrace of the counter-culture look. most of the counter cultural radicals eventually dumped the counter-cultural look and went back to the conventions of ordinary work life. The genuine long-term radicals I have known avoid counter-cultural appearance. It's all very confusing.

Back in the medieval period there were 'sumptuary laws' that specified what various classes of people could and could not wear--could not use in their self-presentation. For instance, fur and silk were forbidden to most people -- those being the preserve of the top class. Nicer colors were not to be found in peasants' clothing. It was a matter of considerable irritation when the shop keepers got their hands on a bit of silk or bright cotton and wore it in public. Disgusting!

At any rate, I have generally cultivated a deviant look -- just deviant enough to signal that I was busy marching to the beat of my own drummer. But in my old age, that's pretty much over. I'm not marching any more, and the world is too cluttered to know what is dominant and what is deviant (which is annoying).

@Jack Cummins This from PubMed.gov, T. A. Judge, D. M. Cable

Abstract

In this article, the authors propose a theoretical model of the relationship between physical height and career success. We then test several linkages in the model based on a meta-analysis of the literature, with results indicating that physical height is significantly related to measures of social esteem (rho =.41), leader emergence (rho =.24), and performance (rho =.18). Height was somewhat more strongly related to success for men (rho =.29) than for women (rho =.21), although this difference was not significant. Finally, given that almost no research has examined the relationship between individuals' physical height and their incomes, we present four large-sample studies (total N = 8,590) showing that height is positively related to income (beta =.26) after controlling for sex, age, and weight. Overall, this article presents the most comprehensive analysis of the relationship of height to workplace success to date, and the results suggest that tall individuals have advantages in several important aspects of their careers and organizational lives.

So, this showed some relationship between height and 'success'. I think the popular thinking is that height and success are strongly correlated. I'm 5'10" -- 178 cm tall, close to the average American male height of 175.4 centimeters). That's about 5 feet 9 inches. Obviously there are numerous other factors contributing to "success": weight, intellect, social background, race, sex, geographical location, personality factors, and so on. One reason for the popular thinking on height may be the relative success of tall males in school athletics. Short, light-weight boys are usually not going to be stars of the team. Even if lighter weight shorter males are excellent athletes in individual sports, those usually don't get the acclaim given to team sports.

Tall athletically successful males leave school with a certain amount of social capital (personal confidence, self-esteem, status...). What gave them social capital in school may be entirely irrelevant in corporate work settings, so performance has to be exhibited for the former stars to get ahead in their jobs. Never-the-less, self-confidence and self-esteem help.

Everyone knows tall men who did not succeed. The upshot: height helps but is not deterministic.

I am a gay man who was born with very poor vision. These two aspects of my embodiment proved problematic in my now-distant youth. In my rural midwestern world, homosexuality dared not speak its name, was sanctioned, stigmatized, etc. This ground has been covered by lots of writers. Visual impairment has been less well covered, at least in the popular press (never mind ophthalmology). Blindness, near blindness, low vision, etc. limited my experience of the world. So does any other sensory defect. They also limited / affected my social interactions.

I don't regret being gay; I do regret having poor vision. Perhaps in a cosmopolitan urban setting, these would have been less significant; maybe even insignificant. As it was, these were problematic until I finished college and set myself up in an large-urban setting.

Here's a specific example: Difficulty in reading texts which are too small to see easily interferes with learning. Too much attention is required to acquire the shapes of the text, not enough to absorb content. I have always been an enthusiastic reader, but would have read more and better if tablets with a few million downloadable books had been available in the 1950's and 60s. Technology really has made a difference to visually impaired people. (Yes, there were clunky work arounds back then, but this was the rural midwest, remember.)

Not seeing, not being able to drive, not being able to participate in sports (what ball? I don't see any ball), mediocre school performance, social exclusion, and so forth had a decidedly negative affect on my sense of personal efficacy--my sense of capacity to accomplish goals, and my self-esteem.

I think the sorts of experiences I had contributed to a more pessimistic philosophical approach to life, and a lower estimate of what is possible for me. Sure, over time I compensated, but successful compensation took a long time.

Whether we are embodied as a perfect specimen or as a problematic body, "being a body" is a critical issue, especially for problematic bodies (persons who are blind, deaf, missing limbs, paralyzed, disfigured, obese, ambiguously gendered--hermaphrodytism, and so on). Defects (my preferred term, not "differently abled"). Disabilities are a problem per se, but are compounded by negative social experiences.

"Who we are" is largely socially formed, and growing up as a disabled person may warp one's self image, and this warping ramifies in various ways for the individual: a sense of inferiority undermining social confidence; decreasing one's sense of personal efficacy (ability to accomplish goals); loss of at least some self-worth; and so on.

None of this is news; but insufficient attention has been paid to how we are embodied. In 1978 theologian James Nelson published Embodiment: An Approach to Sexuality and Christian Theology. I found it very useful in addressing my own issues.

The thing is, our bodies are the lens through which we experience the world, including the social world of other bodies. We can successfully counter distortions in this lens, but not without help--help which is not always available.

Bitter Crank What do you think of the idea that we are just productivity-agents for the superstructure? — schopenhauer1

As Uncle Karl said, one of the tasks of the working class is to reproduce society. And that's what we do -- not merely replacing dead bodies with babies, but diapering, feeding, protecting, and teaching them from 0 through graduate school. The whole society -- individuals and institutions -- has to be replaced IF the bourgeois classes are to continue accumulating wealth from the labor of the working class. Producing wealth is, of course, the other task of the working class.

We are not for ourselves, we are for others' purposes. If the bourgeoisie (the wealthy owners of everything that's worth having, pretty much) could produce everything with machines, they wouldn't need workers at all. And in fact, fewer workers are needed per pound of production than in the past. One farmer can operate a large farm [with large machinery. A computer and sensors on board the tractor guided by GPS keep track of yield by the square meter, and plant and fertilize accordingly.] Robots perform many of the tasks on the assembly line. Computers have replaced a lot of functions in the office.

Millions of working class men, white men in particular, have come face to face with their economic irrelevance. Their irrelevance is literally killing them (leading the men to drink, drugs, etc.)

The essential task, at this point, of much of society is to consume. 70% of the GDP goes into consumption. Were 'the people' to turn to thrift and a simpler lifestyle that wasn't organized around consuming, the economy would crash. There is a gradually increasing level of anxiety among people as they discover that going to work in order to consume is not very meaningful.

In the good old days, religion provided an anodyne for this discomfort. It provided meaning for people's lives. Martin Luther declared that all work was sacred. Farming, mining, carpentry, street cleaning, collecting garbage -- whatever -- is as sacred as the work of priests--that's the Protestant Work Ethic: work is a sacred activity. Luther (1483-1546) lived before our economic world began to come into existence. Still, one can look at work as sacred, because it contributes to the common good of all men. It does that IF it does that. One can certainly argue that a lot of work does not contribute to the commonweal. It's essentially pointless, or contributes to the wellbeing of a very narrow portion of 'men'--mostly very rich ones.

one can bitch, moan, and gripe — schopenhauer1

If you like bowling does that mean everyone should like bowling? If you like the whole "project" of the socio-cultural-economic enterprise of human existence, why must then others be pressed into this? — schopenhauer1

Commissar: "After the Revolution, there will be enough bowling alleys for all. Nice ones.
Worker: "But Commissar, I don't like bowling."
Commissar: "Comrade, after the Revolution bowling had better be your favorite activity."

You can be exempted from participating in the Fertility Follies. You can march to the beat of whatever drummer you like. Mass societies are willing to tolerate a few people being out of step, as long as it doesn't frighten the horses or annoy those in charge.

My experience has been that IF the horses are frightened, and IF those in charge are annoyed beyond their very modest limits, toleration comes to a screeching halt. Then the deviant discover how punitive mass society can be. No, they probably won't lynch you, jail you (more than a day or two), or bankrupt you with fines. There are plenty of other things Those In Charge cam arrange that one will not like.

But we all know that this is not cut-and-dry. Certainly one if one really wanted to, can refrain from sex for the rest of their life. It isn't as enjoyable as far as pleasure, but it is possible. — schopenhauer1

Of course it is "possible"; some people actually do remain celibate for all or much of their lives, some even without being monks, nuns, or priests. For most celibates, no-sex is a sacrifice (else it would have no value). For a few people, never having sex is a non-issue.

Roller coasters are also fun for many people — schopenhauer1

When it comes to roller coasters, I'm a celibate. Once was enough.

introspecting... they should. They have the capabilities to self-reflect on an existential level, why wouldn't they? — schopenhauer1

Come on, Schop; introspecting might be hard, or they did look into their inner beings, and found that there wasn't much there (he said, sarcastically).

... we can self-reflect on any given task, condition, state of affairs we are in AND we can aggregate and self-reflect on "EXISTENCE" as a whole. Why would we not question this practice of simply continuing this arrangement of (and I know I repeat..) — schopenhauer1

Two reasons: 1, the pain of continuing along as we have been is less than the possible pain of deviating from the path. 2. Analysis Paralysis. It's real: Examine a problem from enough different angles and one often finds there is no superior arrangement towards which one should move.

Change is not always successful, short, medium, or long run. Look where the great ideas of the Industrial Revolution have brought us. It all seemed like a great idea at the time. A couple of centuries later we discovered that we have been digging our own global grave.

We can evaluate what we are doing in these social structures, and come to conclusions that we do not like doing these things while we are doing them. — schopenhauer1

Yes, we can "evaluate what we are doing..." and can conclude that we do not like doing these things. That does not mean that we can then change without lifting up the great weight of the social overburden. There are good reasons why people don't behave the way we think they should.

There are preferences here that are being willed into existence for human existence to do the whole socio-economic-cultural thing. That THIS arrangement is good. We should like it. — schopenhauer1

I'll say here that these preferences are, in fact NOT willed. I do not believe we can WILL a liking or a preference into existence. If you do not like chocolate (some people don't) can you just decide that it is delicious and then enjoy it? No. Can a heterosexual will himself to find other men sexually attractive and then prefer to have sex with them? No. We can learn new tastes. People have to learn to like cigarettes. Having gotten addicted, they have to learn to like not smoking. Is the decision to smoke the same thing as willing to like cigarettes? No. The decision to smoke is willing to put up with a foul taste until one learns to like it. (Same thing with coffee, horseradish, fish sauce, etc.).

It is indisputable that we are a social species. We have inborn traits that PROPEL us into social behavior from kinderhood on up to ancient age. We don't will ourselves to be social -- we just are. (As Winston Churchill said, "It doesn't take all kinds of people to make a world, there just are.")

There is, as it happens, plenty of room for anti-natalists in this world. All of my best friends have avoided having children (easy for gay men to do). But a few of my heterosexual friends have also not wanted to bring children into this world, as they put it, and they didn't.

Antinatalists need Meet-Up groups; lodges, clubs, fraternities and sororities, associations, foundations. Bowling clubs, marching bands, nudist beaches, roller-coasters, coffee shops, bars, brothels, and bookstores. You all have got to BUILD THE SOCIAL MOVEMENT. Fucking will it into existence, dammit.

I can trace my slender but sufficient means to numerous decisions I made in college and in employment. I'm not complaining about my own case. And yes, I can see that many people made decisions that led to their having much more wealth than myself, placing them solidly in financial security. I'm not complaining about their cases either.

The kind of inequality that is also inequity is the share of wealth held by the 1% vs. the 99%.

The disparity of wealth between the 1% and 99% (which to a significant extent was engineered through tax law) distorts the whole economy. It isn't Mark's, Jeff's, and Bill's high-end furniture, wine cellar, and house as such that is the problem. It's the draining of cash out of the 99% that is the problem (see the French economist Thomas Pikety).

But unlike eliminating waste or eating, procreation is never such an immediate need, and so the motivations are much more complex and culturally based. — schopenhauer1

Procreation (the whole rigamarole of conception, pregnancy, and birth, feeding, diaper changes, etc.) isn't an immediate need. For women it's kind of a pain. But sex is an immediate need. Heterosexual sex, however much aimed at short-term gratification, leads to conception with enough frequency to achieve a growing population.

Is a growing population a problem? Until quite recently, it was not. In 1700 there were about .6B people. In 1800 the world population was about 1B. A century later it was 1.6B. Today it is 7.8B. Something (technology? better public health? more food? strong economy?) enabled population to more than double twice in 100 years. Culture hasn't kept up. Lots of people do not see a problem in 10 billion people converging with global warming. More fools they.

We are stuck with a large population, barring savage and draconian measures; a horrific epidemic (much worse than anything we have seen so far); or, my guess, agricultural collapse. No individual solutions will help, given the immensely unlikely possibility that 8 billion people will voluntarily refrain from reproductive sex.

Why does this package seem justified to perpetuate onto more people born into the world? — schopenhauer1

Well, there is this "way of the world", the way things work. The higher-order self-questioning that leads to voluntary non-reproduction isn't very common among the world's people. There's nothing wrong with everybody; they are just doing what people do -- getting through their day. That is the world's way, from microbes on up.

Your thinking is explicitly anti-natal, but there are many millions of people who have opted for less than self-replacement levels of reproduction. Millions of people so opting is far short of enough to make a difference in world population. Until very recently, there was no good reason to promulgate antinatalism: the death rate was too high.

You will probably argue that high rates of grim death were actually an excellent reason to promote antinatalism. Collective thinking, habits, patterns, and so forth -- culture -- was no where close to finding your reasoning palatable (like in the medieval or Roman period when perhaps 25% to 33% of the area population died off from epidemics).

I do not drive (never have), so I should leave this alone, but fools rush in...

The liquid-like flow of traffic must have something to do with your arriving at the beach in one piece. Freeways, by definition, (are supposed to) have fewer entrances and exits than a typical street resulting in a smooth traffic flow. Until, that is, something happens which disrupts the flow--ice, rain, snow, debris, alcohol, etc.

Something similar happens on a bicycle. Once moving, the rider doesn't have to think about balance, pedaling, and the like until something goes wrong--pot holes, ice, traffic, and the like.

My guess is that tasks like driving, biking--really all sorts of tasks involving multiple-repeated functions are managed non-consciously. Various parts of the brain are processing in/out information related to the task, leaving the frontal cortex sort of free to wander far and wide. Sort of, but not too much.

Drivers have benefitted from numerous engineering improvements over the last 70 years or so, on both highways and freeways: curve banking, drainage, barriers, surface materials, all sorts of things that aren't very prominent. Cars are also better engineered, all because humans are the same old design that formerly traveled exclusively on two feet.

I do not think of myself as a bad person, and doubt that many people think of themselves as bad people. — Athena

Individually, people are usually quite nice. We can be, sometimes, quite nice in large groups, too. Think of a church picnic. But it is when we get into large groups and are not nice, like the Republic Party or Nazi Party, that we become really awful.

It's safe to say the if Occupy had been really effective, the powers that be would not have stayed the hands of the police. It was very much amateur hour at the OK Corral.

We need to be fully honest and swallow the fact that humans have not been very nice and we did not have such good lives until after the second world war — Athena

Lives were much better after WWII for those who happened to survive it. But it is extremely true: Humans are just not very nice. Seriously. It always seems to surprise us when fresh evidence of our deep-down-awfulness is revealed.

There's no more discrimination against the Irish and Italians. Why? I think mostly because they mixed into the pot.

I think one of the purposes of Jim Crow was to keep it from happening with whites and blacks. Now that Jim Crow is gone, it's happening.

Latinos are already mixed with whites and blacks to some extent. — frank

According to Pew Research, slightly less than 7% of children have racial mixed parents. I assume that figure does not include the children of Irish/Italians (shudder). Advertising agencies like to people product ads with mixed-rave couples and their children. Maybe this is just a cheaper way to advertise to white and black audiences at the same time.

The Occupy protests were about class issues. "Banks got bailed out, we got sold out!" was a common refrain. — fishfry

The Occupy protests may have been initially mistaken by the overly-eager as the revolution. Sadly, not, but it was a good thing. Too bad it didn't endure. One reason it didn't endure is that the powers that be had enough sense (from their POV) not to martyr the children camped on corporate or government plazas. They let them sit there till they got tired of it.

You are absolutely correct about race, racism, and racists being hyped as a distraction. Towards the end of the 20th century, It took a certain amount of bending over backwards to identify fresh, active racism as the #1 problem. There was, and is, active racism, still. But much of what is identified as current racism is actually the long-economic-tail of racially discriminatory policies executed in the 1930s.

In the Talking Union labor song, Pete Seeger in 1941 sings:
"If you don't let race hatred break you up,
You'll win. What I mean, take it easy, but take it!

The ruling class has always recognized working class solidarity as a danger, and has consistently moved to break it up, quite often by breaking heads. Racial conflict has been an excellent tool.

Why do we accept it? Is it because we need it? — frank

People maintain all sorts of delusions. One delusion: I could be rich, too. Another delusion: People get rich by their own efforts; work hard, get rich. Rich people deserve what they have. Yes, Mark, Jeff, and Bill earned every cent!

Do I have a choice about severe inequality? Do you? No. It's deeply, systemically embedded and protected by laws and courts.

Will we, should we, all be equal? Maybe we should be, but there's not much danger of that happening soon.

We could, at least, aim for such modest reforms as trimming the extremes -- reducing the wretchedness of the poor on one end and reducing extravagant wealth on the other end. We could engage in moderate income redistribution through taxation.

I'm not sure we know how to bring about educational performance equalized UP, not down. How well, or poorly, a child performs in school is often rooted in a family's ability and motivation. More, students and families need to see that education pays off. If they can't see a pay-off, what's the point?

Do you think the 4 racial groups will become homogenized? Should they?

What Sanders was proposing was not all that revolutionary. You know, one can say we need revolutionary change. Whether one really wants to experience a revolution is something else.

These days progressives have a major problem of 'social efficacy': we have some good ideas, goals, objectives, desired ends, etc., but we are not able to achieve much. Conservatives, reactionaries, and propertied interests are hostile to anything more than token changes. Redistribute income? Reform education? Undo unjust, century-long housing discrimination? Not a chance.

Progressives are more likely to wear out than sell out. Anyway, nobody is offering much of a bribe to progressives.

I don't know what precisely should be done, anymore. The progressive housing reform advocates working during the 1930, '40s, and '50s are the people responsible for the nightmares that many public housing projects turned into. Some of the progressive advocates predicted in the early '50s that the high-rise housing projects were a huge mistake, and they turned out to be right. Other equally sensible progressives were shocked and appalled by how fast and how bad the housing projects ended up being.

Waves of progressive educational reform have come and gone, without eliminating the sometimes huge gaps between white and black or hispanic student performance. Anti-poverty programs often end up benefitting only the middle-class workers in the programs. on and on and on...

The thing is, rational sensible plans for progressive change end up being severely warped by the existing system which creates and maintains the problems in the first place.

There was once (1970s) a small magazine, The Radical Therapist", whose motto was "Therapy means change, not adjustment." Their logo was a chick just-hatched from its egg shell.

I've taken medication and used talk therapy for depression and anxiety; I've benefitted some from both. What really worked was substantial change in life circumstances. I wasn't successful in engineering the changes that worked -- that came about by chance events.

I spent decades being a discontented person, and regularly sharpened the edges of discontent. [Fan the flames of discontent--old labor slogan] My expectations of what life was supposed to be like were not all that well grounded in reality, a good share of the time. As I got older, I found work life increasingly oppressive and stultifying.

A lot of my personal history became clear after I retired and began reflecting on my life. Theoretically with 20/20 hindsight, I could have thought about life differently and been happier.

Today I feel mentally contented, effective, and happy; I do happen to be hooked on an anti-depressant. I don't know whether it does any good--just that I experience very unpleasant withdrawal when I try to stop. I'll probably take it until the end.

But where's the race war? Maybe I just don't understand what a race war is, if there's one underway. Do you see it? — frank

Personally, I prefer "The only war is the class war", but I'll stick to race.

What people call a "race war" is really just "business as usual".

If we read the histories of housing discrimination, for instance, we find that "red lining" was a survey conducted in the 1930s by the Home Owners' Loan Corporation (HOLC), a government agency. If we look at white people organizing to repress black people, we find that "Jim Crow" was organized in the 1890s. Slavery had just ended 30 odd years earlier. In the post-WWII period, the government financed a huge growth in suburban building, and it was both explicit and implicit that the suburbs were to be white.

The consequences of government and private actions during the century--1860s to the 1960s--locked in the race-poverty relationship. Circling back to "the only war is the class war", government and private actions have also locked in a lot of people (white and colored alike) to the increasingly impoverished working class.

The upshot of all this is that long term race and class discrimination is impossible to overcome without very radical changes, and short of a revolution, which is unlikely to happen.

So what form do you think pronoun usage will take in the future?
Are they helpful?
Are they arbitrary?
Is there need for such a label? — GTTRPNK

I prefer the standard gender pronouns applied in the usual way.
I don't think changing pronouns to fit the fantasies and peculiarities of a very small minority makes any practical sense at all.
Gender, and the appropriate pronouns, are not arbitrary.
There is no need for new patterns of pronoun usage.

BLUEPRINT FOR DISASTER by D. Bradford Hunt, part of the series Historical Studies of Urban America, University of Chicago Press is about the successful and unsuccessful efforts of the Chicago Housing Authority to house the poor. The period covered runs from roughly 1935 to 1985. It sounds like a very wonky book, but it is really quite accessible. If you want WONK, the extensive notes section provides that.

How did it all turn out? Starting around 2000, Chicago began leveling the vast housing projects they had built 40 and 50 years earlier for many thousands of poor blacks. By itself, Robert Taylor Homes at its peak housed 27,000 people. 15,000 lived in Cabrini Green, and in many other larger and small Chicago projects.

If you don't want to read about it, This PBS documentary about Robert Taylor Homes is 56 minutes long--well worth an hour on YouTube. (Note: the program is mislabeled "Cabrini Green". CG is another can of worms.)

Dan Rather Reports - A Public Disgrace [there are so many] is about the bad bad very bad Detroit Public School System and what seems to be their marinated-in-slime and fried-in-corruption school board. (aired in 2011)