although masculinity can break down as a useful concept when we think of it a moral compass, might it not have a positive role to play in our sense of self, in the same way that women find femininity a positive attribute? — BigThoughtDropper

I don't think of masculinity or femininity as having much to do with moral compasses. Men and women of a stripes can be equally moral and immoral. Having a strong "ethical gyroscope" is probably a combination of a genetic tendency (e.g., to be internally or externally directed) and instruction and training, gregariousness, and so on. I'm more of an introvert, inner-directed, and a loner. Those features go well with masculinity--and so do extroversion, other directedness, and gregariousness.

Sex and gender roles absolutely do have a positive role to play in our sense of self. Being masculine (according to the general definition) is a positive attribute for men, definitely. Masculinity is an essential element in my selfhood. While I dress in masculine clothing (vestis virum reddit, as the Romans said--clothes make the man) my work has been in white collar areas which tend to be dominated by women -- social service, education, etc. I'm glad I had an education which enabled me to perform this work, but at times I envied more technicallly, mechanically oriented workers.

There is another angle to the business of being a man (or woman) --embodiment -- the form of the body into which we are born. I was born with very poor vision. I just didn't see the world the same way most people did (do), and this part of my embodiment precluded a number of activities important to young men: driving, hunting, sports, military, and the like. Sexual orientation is another part of embodiment. Some gay men identify very strongly with feminine roles or personalities. I do/did not. I tended to identify with male roles and personalities.

Another issue complicating the subject is "mother". Females have a very large role in raising boys and both males and females are naturally going to identify with their mothers (as well as their fathers) and are going to take on some of the feminine behavioral and cognitive/emotional features of their mothers. Full-time 100% masculine behavior, cognition and emotion is hard to imagine, and IF it exists it is probably hell to live with for self and others.

I buy a girl once a month and that's enough for me — Gregory

New Yorker Cartoon caption (below sketch of 2 guys chatting)

Last summer I tried using prostitutes and found it surprisingly affordable.

I don't know what the actual ratio of young and old is here. I'm 75 and not the oldest guy here. There are many more men than women here (at least as far as I know).

I grew up in a working class family too; I'm gay and felt like an outsider in my small rural hometown. What it meant "to be a man" was a conflicted issue, though as I got older that resolved.

Hyper-masculinity and hyper-femininity exist but probably are not all that desirable as goals. Most men fall along the mid-line of masculine behavior and appearance--whether they are gay or straight. There are class differences in ideal types. There are a lot of ways one can slice and dice the population and a lot of these sortitions are valid. My idea of "A Real Man" is a male who has become an adult (characterized by features like: grown-up behavior, responsibility, reasonably conscientious, reasonably reflective, reasonably well informed about the world...) Beyond that there is a wide range of options available.

There are many activities which can occur without incurring material social costs: smoking weed, consuming narcotics and alcohol, engaging in unprotected sex, driving above the speed limit, hunting deer, sleeping on the subway, being substantially overweight for an extended period of time, and so on.

These activities, and many others, can be engaged in without individual or social consequences -- or they can have substantial material personal and social consequences. Risk is inherent in many activities--ranging from low risk to high risk.

How much regulation should be in place depends, partly, on how risk tolerant or risk averse one is. For the risk averse, more regulation will seem reasonable -- quite apart from whether one is a libertarian or not.

People can be personally risk tolerant for some behaviors and risk intolerant for others. Someone might be quite tolerant about the risks of using drugs purchased on the street but be very fussy about food sanitation issues. There are people who insist on organic food for health, and who smoke (maybe organic tobacco and weed) apparently without seeing a contradiction.

We can all endorse well-thought-out intervention programs aimed at reducing known risks, and we can all object to ill-conceived programs which end up causing more problems--whether we are libertarians or regulation loving liberals.

I agree: offending other people is a consequence. I would consider it a usually tolerable consequence, but others may not.

Despite of all the good we read, see and talk about, why it’s getting hard to act upon them. — RBS

Actually, it has always been harder to be good than to give into whatever primal urges we have and just ruin everything. We teach our children to behave, and to want to be good, and for the most part, people do behave pretty good -- until they don't.

Take Germany as an example: Germany was a reasonably good place to live prior to the rise of Nazism in the 1920s--not perfect, but you know, not too bad. It was a sophisticated, civilized, cultured society. In the 1930s it changed into a sociopathic juggernaut for many people (and not just the Jews). After they Germans were beaten to a pulp by the allies in WWII, and then placed under supervision for a while, they found their way back to being a sophisticated, civilized, cultured society.

We Americans tend to think of ourselves as a sophisticated, civilized, cultured society too -- despite having operated a slave economy, carried out genocide against the native peoples, stolen other countries' lands -- Mexico lost most of its territory to American lebensraum (we called it 'manifest destiny')--and perpetuating highly discriminatory practices against various groups (blacks, gays, leftists, labor organizers, workers, women -- just about everybody). And, actually, we do qualify as a sophisticated, civilized cultured society (well, maybe not all that cultured, when you get right down to it--a lot of us Americans are lowbrows--certainly not ME, of course).

Most societies are reasonably decent places to live, most of the time--that is, until they aren't. But they usually try to get back to reasonable decency. It might take a century...

"Be a good person but don’t waste time to prove it."

Good advice.

But on the other hand what if people have lack of perspective to understand of what is good and what is bad. — RBS

Good question, but an altogether different problem. There are numerous cases where large numbers of people have failed to understand the good they should do, and the bad they should avoid.

A bracket is missing from the end-quote at the end of my quote. The result is that I am credited with your very good response, You might want to fix that.

public enlightenment is the forerunner of justice and the foundation of democracy — Nikolas

That pretty much nails the case against excellence in journalism, or maybe journalism at all. From the POV of the oligarchy, the plutocracy, or the kleptocracy, who the hell wants public enlightenment? Keep the masses as uninformed about their reality as possible.

Commercial newspapers, television, radio, cable, and internet channels are probably not a good place from which to expect fairness, probity, integrity, and other such virtues. The lack of fairness goes back a ways (Milton wrote the Aeropagitica in 1644), and we have seen better and worse quality reporting and editorial content over the years. So called "yellow journalism" has been around for all of the 20th century and it's sensationalist tradition continues.

The News (in print) has been a competitive business for quite some time, and content has been steered either by the personal opinions of the press's owners, or it was driven by business competition -- what we call "reader share".

Where media has excelled has usually been the result of a key figure. For example, Edward R. Murrow is largely responsible for establishing CBS News as a quality operation in the late 1930s and through the WWII years. CBS isn't "the Tiffany Network" any more (nobody is) but for a time it was quite a bit better than it's rivals.

Is Nation Public Radio or the Public Broadcasting Service an alternative? Both have delivered some excellent programs, and both have had some outstanding "intervals" of high quality news and commentary. But NPR and PBS are hardly independent agencies. Both receive a lot of funding and backing from VERY mainline organizations and corporations. Funding sources inevitably shape the overall product.

you must refer to me as "Your Majesty." — James Riley

Which is OK, because 'majesty' can reference males, females, or God forbid, gender-liquified sovereigns or, for that matter, one's neutered cat.

Did they accomplish anything at all in this conference?

Sort-of radical groups often hold highly ineffective meetings in which all sorts of irrelevant issues are processed to the exclusion of the stated agenda.

Minister: From the fury of spoiled privileged children, dissatisfied by the presence of their inconvenient gonads and enlarged egos, deliver us, O Lord.

Congregation: Hear our prayers, we beseech thee, O Lord.

As we stumble forward — Fooloso4

Your use of the preposition "forward" implies progress. It seems to me that what they are actually doing is just stumbling, possibly stumbling in circles. Suggesting that some people are stumblers is, of course, ableist and oppresses people who are not graceful on their feet -- but then there are people who don't have feet, so I just offended them/they/its.

This whole discussion is triggering so I demand you all stop immediately.

You have limited resources. Are they better spent trying to prove state fallibility in an effort to get the death penalty removed, or do you try to save a single life? — James Riley

It is better to spend limited resource on eliminating the death penalty. Next best is proving that the state erred in its prosecution of specific capital cases, thus revoking the DP for those wrongly sentenced.

The state of Illinois found many of its capital convictions being overturned because of lack of evidence, or even falsified evidence. Eventually the state repealed the DP.

There are several problems about the DP: 1) it doesn't deter capital crimes; 2) the DP apparently seres oppressive purposes in some states; 3) it is somewhat ambiguous whether a life-time spent in a prison is more or less punishment than execution.

My friend is mad because they say I don't get to make that decision for them and that it's not about my comfort.

A lot of the pronoun abusers are mad period, They can call themselves whatever they want, but I get to make the decision about what I call other people, and I prefer gender-conforming terms. If they don't like it, tough shit.

I'm opposed to using new and peculiar pronoun usages. I also opposed to a lot of the gender nonconforming drivel. Theirs isn't the cry of the oppressed, it's the buzz-speak of the very confused.

a particularly lowbrow one at that — Ying

Cruelly insulting, like ridiculing the handicapped. I mean, people can't help it if they are lowbrow slobs, really. Also humiliating--particularly for people who have intellectual aspirations--is calling would-be elite aspirants "middlebrow. They want to be highbrow! They just don't have the right educational history to either be highbrow, or to produce the verisimilitude of natural born highbrow elitism. Getting nailed with the "middlebrow" monicker is much like hoping you can join the in-crowd for lunch and being told to fuck off.

Tragic really.

One aspect of DEBATE--at least as I understand it--is that is a contest in front of an audience who may vote on the question at hand, validating one or the other team's position and presentation. Or, judges may rate the debaters (preparation, delivery, content, etc.).

No, TPF is not a debating club. There's no "audience" per se; everybody is a participant. There are no judges. There is no formal structure for a debate. What we have here are discussions--or sometimes multiple monologues.

Insults? Not an acceptable method in debate. Sarcasm? Yes, but not casually sliding into ridicule.

Are insults OK here? They seem to be, as long as they don't trigger moderator action. Ridicule? Sarcasm? Seems to be fairly common here.

What should you do?

You have been presenting an immensely consistent anti-natalist argument with infinite patience for years, and you haven't resorted to ranting, raving, insult, or even (as far as I know) cutting sarcasm.

You could, possibly? Perhaps? Maybe? talk about something else. Granted, reproduction perpetuates suffering, but that does not seem to be a remotely effective reason to cease reproducing. For one thing, reproduction also perpetuates joy. Joy and suffering side by side, and much else.

Anti-natalism is a lost cause. There are almost 8 billion people most of who have or will attempt to reproduce, suffering and all. Given our pathetic collective response to global warming, everything may be a lost cause.

Maybe we should all just shut up and go plant trees.

I've backed lost causes too. Even If they were morally and intellectually superior, they just didn't appeal to most people. C'est la vie.

I'll put it this way: I have no interest whatsoever in a cloistered monk who contributes nothing to the world. All hypotheticals aside. — Xtrix

In fact, cloistered monks did contribute something: They participated in critical ways in the reproduction of society -- the cultural part in particular. Christian institutions were the source of literate people, for one thing. Young [usually secular] men were trained in the cathedral schools and were hired by important people to keep records, write letters, and so forth. The monasteries maintained libraries and produced copies of books (by hand) for the use of others. There was nobody else doing this in Europe during the medieval period.

The church also Christianized Europe, for better or worse. I don't know whether it was a good thing or not (probably was) but they did it, and it involved a lot of very hard field work.

Finally, the monasteries--cloistered or not--were not inert. They actively occupied the land on which they were situated, making improvements, farming it, practicing the usual agricultural trades.

It is the case that somebody else, some other organization, could have done what the monastics did, but there wasn't anybody else doing it at the time.

There is a convent in St Paul, MN which more closely matches your definition of useless: The nuns are cloistered, and live in concrete block cells where they spend their time praying. Useful? Literally, god only knows. Most nuns have never opted for that sort of 'labor', monks either, though a few have.

In "Sketch of Contemporary Social Life" (1934), Simone Weil develops the theme of collectivism as the trajectory of modern culture. — Nikolas

It certainly looked that way at the time -- 1934. Germany, the USSR, Italy...

But it is a mistake to oppose democracy and socialism: the former is a political system, the second is an economic system. Democracy is better contrasted to totalitarianism, and socialism is better contrasted to capitalism.

The extent to which collectivism dominates post WWII societies is another question, well worth pursuing,

Capitalism operating in ostensibly democratic societies produces a dehumanization of the individual not much different than the collectivist states Weil was observing.

Liberty is impossible without the help of Grace. The secular world rejects the help of grace so the descent into some form of tyranny seems inevitable. — Nikolas

Yet another category disconnected from collectivism, capitalism, democracy, totalitarianism, socialism, and everything else. Maybe Grace, freely bestowed by a loving God, is necessary for liberty -- but the idea is altogether untestable and undebatable because grace is a mystery for religious people, non-existent for secular people.

The kind of mass societies we find ourselves in are more atomized than collectivized.

If it is true that we are what we do, a corollary is that we do it with, to, for, by somebody else. As John Dunne said,

No man is an island entire of itself; every man
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;
... any man's death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind...

The philosophizing recluse is an extreme, of which there are probably not many actual examples. More common are the professional or devoted amateur philosophers, who are narrowly focussed, and likely involved with other people who are similarly narrowly focussed. They occupy islands with a small number of inhabitants. Their "field" is very proscribed.

There are groups of extremophiles who are similar to philosophers: Old line socialists and anarchists come to mind. They are very narrow in their views, quite restricted in their activities. Actually there are quite a few 'specialties' in which a sort of OCD takes over, whether the subject matter is Jane Austin, bird watching, or body builders.

Most of these extremophiles are not harmful to society; they are more just irrelevant. I am thinking of actual people I know who fit as extremophiles. They are not bad people.

The really bad people in this world are immensely involved with other people as racketeers of various kinds -- Bernie Madoff to Mark Zuckerberg.

Most people fall in between the extremes, in the middle. Their lives are indifferent, good, or bad (a continuum) as they live out the roles, the possibilities, of their particular lives.

From my POV, the quality of a life is determined by what we do, with whom, to whom, by whom, for whom. Any individual on earth has opportunities to make positive contributions in their interactions with other people. Most people act in small positive ways most of the time. When large numbers of people act in negative ways, and larger negative ways at that, life for other people begins to deteriorate. Lots of examples of both the positive and the negative.

Penetrating topic.

Way back in a college class we discussed whether "who the person was" could be separated from "what the person did". Back then I probably thought that the person's identity was separate from the person's actions. Fifty+ years later, I would now say that "what you are" (your identity) flows from "what you do".

In a number of instances, I don't come out ahead in the "who you are is what you do" formulation. A lot of what I did worked against who / what I thought I was. I would now claim that there is no exalted self above the dirt and mud of life as we live it. Who we are is the way we deal with the dirt and mud of real life.

The way we live our lives--what we do, the actions we take--IS our lives. We can't be crooks on the one hand (like Bernie Maddoff in real life or Tony Soprano in the TV show) and be a good person on the other hand, as both of these guys were to their families.

The neuroscientist would, presumably, share the leap. Would you, receiving the great insight, be changed in your control of brain operations?

There remains a gap between an individual's insights and understanding (of which the conscious mind is aware) and the operation of the brain itself. Would the neuroscientist's insights be able to altar the way her own neurons, networks, etc. operate?

Looking below your reply to Jack Cummins' response, he is saying the same thing.

Is humanity, as a species, capable of selecting competent, moral leadership with the will to move this world forward into an age of sustainable environmental stewardship and peaceful coexistence with each other......or are we totally screwed. — Steve Leard

As I said to @'counterpunch",

It's self-interest -- yesterday, today, and tomorrow. It's the Golden Rule: Them with the gold make the rules. One of which is pursue self-interest over the short run and fuck everybody else. The golden rulers are remarkably unimaginative. The people who run things are focused on a) continuing to be the people who run things; b) continuing to accumulate wealth because c) money and what it buys is an essential requirement of power d) making sure that would-be change-agents like you and me remain feckless non-entities until death removes us as an item of concern.

For my money, I'd say all this has to do with humans being in a transition phase between animals and something else. — TheMadFool

I agree with the animal part; the transition phase, not so much.

For one thing, what @Steve Leard speaks of, require a great deal of passion. The trouble is that we are not passionate about the right things. Nothing new here. It's been a problem for a while (last 20,000 years).

We do not have time to evolve into better, godlier beings. We either will find a way to solve our present dilemmas, or we will cease and desist.

If science were true we could solve it. — counterpunch

6:20 in Albion; soon you will awake. Good Morning. I totally disagree.

Look: Science is true. Science isn't the problem. It's self-interest -- yesterday, today, and tomorrow. It's the Golden Rule: Them with the gold make the rules. One of which is pursue self-interest over the short run and fuck everybody else. The golden rulers are remarkably unimaginative.

Take automobiles: Well, let's just replace internal combustion powered cars with electric cars. Problem solved. There are about 1.4 billion internal combustion powered cars. Has it not occurred to them that building another 1.4 billion cars (even if electric) might possibly have hugely adverse environmental consequences? Power so cheap it won't be metered hasn't arrived yet. Somehow an additional immense amount of electricity must be produced without adding CO2 to the atmosphere (never mind the pollution caused by the extractive needs of producing 1.4 billion cars with batteries, rubber, plastics, roads to run on, and so on.

I really have nothing against your Magma Carta. Good idea. The reason no one is busy drilling big 10-20 mile deep holes is that the means to make vast amounts of money from this idea have not materialized.

The people who run things are focused on a) continuing to be the people who run things; b) continuing to accumulate wealth because c) money and what it buys is an essential requirement of power d) making sure that would-be change-agents like you and me remain feckless non-entities until death removes us as an item of concern.

So, let's take our place on the Great Mandela as it moves through our brief moment of time.

I dream of catching asteroids, it's true. — counterpunch

Mining asteroids (which is why you want to catch them?--See John Donne below), to bring ores to earth for refinement in furnaces fueled by magmatic blasts from the deep, the better to expand into the solar system. I think there's been one or two science fiction stories along these lines. Just because Sci-Fi has gone where your dreams also dared to go is nothing against your dreams, of course.

t is beyond belief; even though all this happened - that the Church exercised a prohibition against taking science seriously, all round the world for 400 years. — counterpunch

Your "better living through magma" scheme has a lot going for it. Your belief that the Church exercised a prohibition against taking science seriously for the last 400 years has much less to recommend it. I would not argue that the church was a leading advocate of science. Rather, whatever the church thought of science became increasingly irrelevant. The forces of Science and Technology were inconvenienced by the views of the church, no doubt, but they were certainly not vanquished for 400 years. Science, mathematics, technology, and engineering advanced in every corner of Christendom.

Certainly there were holdouts. One thinks of religious objections to Darwin's evolutionary system, from fundamentalist Christians, for example. [Fundamentalism is an approach that is not native to nay particular faith tradition.] The fundamentalists were first offended by 19th century analysis of the Bible which called its divine origin into question--a result the fundamentalists found intolerable, being literalists and believers in biblical inerrancy, as they were. A multi-millions (or billions) year period fo creation was intolerable too, even if we didn't descend from apes.

As strong a group as fundamentalists are, they were unable to brake the on-rush of science. For one thing, science and technology are just fine with fundamentalists, as long as it brings personal benefits (like antibiotics or cancer treatments) or better crop yields, or industrial processes that make money. Religious people, even ardent fundamentalists, learn to co-exist with science because they can't argue with the many ways that "science works". Airplanes, television, cell phones, computers, atom bombs, etc. Fundamentalists, like most believers, wall off the exercise of their faith from mundane realities.

I agree that the pope blocking Galileo was a damned shame, but can you site actions the pope (or others acting on his behalf) took that crippled science in the 18th, 19th, or 20th centuries?

when it comes to healing the placebo effect is powerful — TiredThinker

Sometimes it is, but a placebo involves the material world. A procedure or medicine is faked, but something real (even if it has zero efficacy) is done. A confounding factor in our estimation of placebos is the immune system. A reduction in stress (less anxity) might give the immune system a boost in effectiveness.

Another factor is the natural history of disease. If you have a severe cold, you might seek any relief you can get, including prayer, chicken soup, or blue pills from the doctor. Even if none of those placebos have any actual effect, viral infections (like colds) can be very bad and last x number of days before they are at last vanquished by the immune system.

We rashly wish that mind could affect matter, but you know, it's a good thing that thinking can not bring down planes.

Yeah, I don't know about red or green or blue, not to mention chartreuse, beige, or puce! Very black and very white are more certain, and even then... Is your red better because of a touch orange? Is my blue a bit too pale, or too deep? The bland color I painted my office turned out to be extremely unstable, in one light it looks great; 5 minutes later it looks drab.

I like lists, and am duly impressed by long ones. You have found a lot and made your findings available. Thanks!

There is a website in England, "Forgotten Books": Forgotten Books is a London-based book publisher specializing in the restoration of old books, both fiction and non-fiction. Today we have 1,271,513 books ... I've perused a small fraction of their list and downloaded a few. Many of these books were forgotten because their content was far too narrow to survive (lists of graduates from the local college or meeting minutes of obscure organizations for example). Some of these books were stale to begin with and didn't improve with age. Still, the site is worth visiting (or not, depending on one's interests).

How many of the books on your list have you read or sampled? This isn't a hostile question. I too would include Gibbons' History of the Roman Empire, even though I have only sampled it and have no intention of ever reading it. So much scholarship in Roman Empire history has been done since the late 18th century.

If you had to list 5 or 10 books that were seminal in your intellectual life, what might they include?

I guess law is literally the reinforcement of morality... — javi2541997

Whose morality?

Law and morality may agree that murder is a bad thing. Most people agree.

Law and morality do not agree that the the state may take private property for public purposes, even with fair compensation. Most people are OK with that (unless it is their ancestral home) but some people consider the claims of the state as theft, due process or not.

The law (in many states) provides for "employment at will" meaning that employment is a voluntary arrangement. You can decide to continue to work at XYZ Company or you can leave. That's fine. Perfectly moral arrangement. What happens when XYZ Company decides to voluntarily separate itself from everyone who voted to unionize the company? Is that moral? I think not, but Jeff Bezos might disagree. [Corporations usually resist unionization. Amazon is the current target of a union drive.]

A given moral principle may not be universal. What the ruling class (people like Jeff Bezos) and working class people (like 90% of the population) think is moral may be very far apart. So, it can be difficult to square the law (which we either have to accept or revolt) and morality.

Prudhomme said that "Property is theft." The law and morality do not agree about that.

In what seems to be a less pressing situation, millions of people vote against the plug in the outlet (the fat man, in your example). Lots of people opt to minimally fuel efficient cars in favor of gas guzzlers; millions of people opt to fly to distant vacation sites; millions of people opt for luxury (of one sort or another) over the common good. The consequences for those who pay the greatest price for global warming are not immediately visible (to us), but are none the less real and are becoming more severe over time.

People who are very cognizant of global warming and its consequences still opt for the high-carbon output for their cars, lifestyles, agriculture, and so on. So do I -- I'm not a vegetarian, for instance.

In real life most of us seem to be willing to sacrifice people who are "in our way" especially if the sacrifice is at a distance.

There were 14,000 homicides in the US in 2018 -- situations where someone decided (with little to no deliberation) that someone else was expendable.

The point is, in real life--as opposed to forced-choice moral games--a significant number of people do decide "to kill the fat man" over stakes that are trivial. Collectively, billions of people toss the stick of dynamite.

Are so many people (billions) morally depraved? Maybe a bit dull, not depraved. Most of us will never have to make a forced-choice moral decision of a Trolley or Fat Man Plugging the Exit situation. Our capacity for empathy at a distance is cognitively limited--not absent, just limited.

Fat people are useful in these kinds of forced-choice situations. In the much discussed Trolley Situation, throwing a fat man off the bridge derails the trolley and saves 5 other people.

Suppose the person stuck was actually a gorgeous woman to whom at least several of the hikers were extremely attracted. Would a 'beautiful, sexy she' make the situation more difficult than a 'repulsively fat he'?

I am one of the hikers; I am also the fat man's doctor. I have been telling this guy for years that being as fat as he is eventually is going to kill him. So...

Isn't the point of living an adult life to become as independent as possible? — synthesis

Is it? Yes and no,

I wanted to be as independent from other people's control as possible. I wanted to be independent enough to have executive agency--and the time to use it. A substantial degree of independence can be had, but there are significant sacrifices one must make. One can not buck the system and expect to retire in style. I did buck the system, got more independence than most people have, and paid the price. It was a gamble.

Some people want a lot of security (which usually entails significant dependencies). There are attractive rewards for that particular gamble. Steady work, moderate wealth, comfortable retirement, lots of material options.

The conventional definition of responsible adulthood can be stultifying.

Have you been corrupted by these newfangled ways of not doing anything yourself? — synthesis

Guilty as charged.

I just finished a nice pork chop I cooked myself. I could have raised the pig and butchered it. Too much trouble. I could have gone out to California to fetch some grapes, which I also just ate, but again--highly inconvenient.

I will have to wash the dishes (no dishwasher). Is that not suffering enough?

But what strikes me when I have made remarks to people in conversations recently about totalitarianism, is that many people don't seem to be perturbed by it. — Jack Cummins

They may not have a very vivid idea of what it is you are talking about. Reading a few books about totalitarian states (Hitler's, Stalin's, Mao's, etc.) puts flesh on an otherwise abstract idea. Watching films and reading about how the holocaust unfolded, or how Stalin wiped out a few million Ukrainians makes totalitarianism something one can not be indifferent to. Back in the early 1970s when I was working at St. Thomas College, one day we asked a batch of students what the holocaust was. Most did not know. It isn't that the students were too stupid to know about it--most of them were bright middle class people--they just didn't read much history.

I didn't either. I've been shocked and appalled by a lot of the things I've learned as an adult.

I'm not excusing their indifference or ignorance. As the saying goes, "if you are not worried you are not paying attention." A lot of people aren't very up on global warming either, even though it is already affecting them. Their bandwidth just isn't very wide.

If you are a genetically-determined worry-wort, there is not much you can do about it. I won't tell you to focus on positive topics because such advice never did me much good when I was busy anguishing.

As for moving toward a culture of indifference, nah! It's a perennial condition. People, including educated, aware, sensible people, must, in the end, focus on tending their own gardens, as Voltaire says in the conclusion of Candide.

I always like it when philosophical messages are packaged up in Broadway Musicals: Here's the finale of Candide, the musical, by Leonard Bernstein performed at the 1915 Proms:\

CANDIDE, CUNEGONDE, MAXIMILLIAN, PAQUETTE, OLD LADY, DR. PANGLOSS
Let dreamers dream
What worlds they please
Those Edens can't be found.
The sweetest flowers,
The fairest trees
Are grown in solid ground.
ENSEMBLE (a cappella)
We're neither pure, nor wise, nor good
We'll do the best we know.
We'll build our house and chop our wood
And make our garden grow.
And make our garden grow!
(The cow dies)
VOLTAIRE
Ah, me! The pox!

It is probably not healthy to worry very much about economic collapse or the arrival of a totalitarian regime taking over your country.

Whatever John Maynard Keynes was thinking of, what he said, "In the long run we are all dead" it is certainly true. That's just life, like it or not.

We (the very large collective) should not be indifferent to current developments, of course. Long-term, medium-range, and short-term proactive planning have importance that is often honored in the breach, but we should do what we (collectively) can do.

Granted, to be young, aware, and worried makes life difficult. Being old, aware, and much, much closer to the end of one's life is much easier (something one doesn't feel until one gets here). When I was a young man I worried a lot. What will the next 50 or 60 years be like? How bad will it get? So many things could and seemed to be going wrong. Now I know, and while a lot of what happened sucked, it was endurable. Of course, I didn't live in Rwanda, Cambodia, China, etc. You don't either. You won't have to endure Mao's Cultural Revolution, for instance.

the only people I have ever known from there seem fairly wounded by so much unrest there — Jack Cummins

Literally and figuratively wounded.

For the same reason that 13 States United in the late 18th century--in union there is more power than standing alone.

The answer is ALWAYS more freedom and transparency. Those advocating the opposite are attempting to protect their dirty system. — synthesis

You perhaps think that any large system leads to corruption, opaqueness, tyranny, etc. A brief perusal of history, or group dynamics, will show that one can get the benefits of corrupt, opaque, arbitrary and capricious rule just as well in small groups as in large.

We are quite far apart in this.

However, I do think that everything is in such a state of confusion in Britain that it may result in draconian measures being introduced eventually. — Jack Cummins

My window on Britain's confusion is very small, but it does seem like public policy in the UK is disordered. I thought Brexit was always a colossal error, the consequences of which would unravel for a long time. As someone said, "Politicians are famous for screwing up big projects, but they can screw up small tasks too." At a distance, policy and politics in the UK look chaotic.

Draconian policy might be imposed only to freeze chaos in place.

The EU, composed of a population of something like 440 million, seems to have served people well with regulation, systems, organization, etc. Pulling out of the EU was so stupid... but what's done is done, at least for now.

As for Covid-19, the prudent policies of quarantine, mask wearing, and social distancing when public contact is necessary seem obvious. Now that vaccines are available, getting jabbed (as you say over there) is the obvious response. Somewhere around a 25% to 33% of the US population can be counted on to refuse vaccination. Who are they? Most often they are conservatives and evangelicals--always an unwholesome combination.

Because there is an epidemic of dithering, delay, and denial over prudent public policy, the length of the Covid-19 pandemic is being prolonged, maybe indefinitely. If it's any comfort, Britain isn't the only country having difficulties establishing sensible policy.

Imagine feeding yourself without any "systems": no agricultural system, no transportation system, no financial system... You'd have to do everything yourself. Imagine reading a book without any systems: Where would the book come from, and how would you know how to read it?

LIFE is a 4 billion year old system.

What matters to us is whether the systems we have constructed are working well or not. Neglect the maintenance of the transportation system and it will fall apart. Neglect public health systems and people die. Neglect the postal system and it takes a week for a letter to get from one local post office to another. Corrupt the judicial system and crime flourishes.

It's less "the system" and more "the quality of the system". Excellent systems contribute to our happiness. Bad systems are nothing but trouble.