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)

You raise many good points.

There is some research that indicates increased diversity decrease trust levels -- one of the essential elements in a healthy, stable society. Immigration from poor to rich countries increases the carbon foot print of the immigrants and the richer society. An influx of non-English speaking, relatively low-skilled workers distort the labor market, especially for our least wen-paid people. These are reasons to limit immigration, among others.

It is not difficult to understand why people in poorer countries would want to move to richer countries: life will probably be better for them there. On the other hand, sovereign nations have the right (even the obligation) to determine the nature of the society they will have. Countries may limit (or forbid) immigration.

One of the problems of predicting population movements over the remaining 79 years of this century, and on into the next, is that global warming is changing all sorts of things all at once. Whether large numbers of people distant from Europe or North America will have the wherewithal to make the trip is not clear at this point. As fresh water, tolerable temperatures, and food [among other much desired things] become scarcer, doors may be closed to migrant populations. It all depends on how bad how fast it gets. I'm quite pessimistic on the likelihood that we will accomplish much in the way of disaster prevention.

Accepting migrant populations in the United States so far at least, is less a policy decision and more a policy lapse. We didn't "admit" a good share of the migrants that are here: they arrived without permission. Then we failed to expel them, so here they are--millions of them. They could be removed (it wouldn't be pretty but it is possible), and we probably won't do that.

Whether or not rich countries admit 50 million (or some other number) poor people or close and bolt their doors, a lot of people will perish from global warming and the disruptions flowing from it. When push comes to shove, I would rather my country, my people, survive and prosper rather than some other nation's people.

Several billion years after the fact we can't go back and look at the beginning of life -- that time and space has long since been plowed under. True enough -- evolution describes the history of life, not its first enduring instantiation. How the primordial stew formed any of the components of what would eventually be 'life' is not, perhaps can not, be known at this time.

The answer might be found elsewhere in the solar system or galaxy, should we be lucky and alert enough to happen upon a pool of proto-slop stumbling toward life. Highly unlikely, at best.

Back in 1968 when I started a new job, I referred to "colored people". One of the "black" teachers laughed and said "I haven't heard that phrase in years!" Later on, "people of color" came to include all colored people -- Blacks, Chicanos, Native Americans, Asians, Indians, Africans, Arabs, etc--everybody except "whites". Of course we aren't white like copy paper. We're pale, pinkish, or tannish--some times as tan as colored folk. Then there are African Americans, or Afro-Americans, and so on and so forth.

today, even a thousand years counts as 'ancient' but what does it truly mean? — young god

"belonging to the very distant past and no longer in existence" is a useful definition when the word is used FORMALLY.

The Roman Empire is ancient, because it is in the distant past AND it no longer exists. The Papacy is not ancient because, even though it is, what--1500 years old [becoming more significant after the collapse of the RE around 500 AD]--it is still very much in existence. The League of Nations is not ancient. While it no longer exists, it was founded only 100 years ago.

My shopping list from last week is INFORMALLY ancient history.

There are other words available to describe the past:

Pre-cambrian (before 540 Million Years Ago)
Cambrian (540 – 489 Million Years Ago) ...
Ordovician (489 – 444 Million Years Ago) ...
Silurian (444 – 416 Million Years Ago) ...
Devonian (416 – 360 Million Years Ago) ...
Carboniferous (360 – 300 Million Years Ago) ...
Permian (300 – 250 Million Years Ago) ...
Triassic (250 – 201.6 Million Years Ago)
Jurassic (201.6 – 145.5 Million Years Ago)
Cretaceous (145.5 – 65.5 Million Years Ago)
Tertiary (65.5 – 2.6 Million Years Ago)
Quaternary (2.6 Million Years Ago – Present)
Anthropocene Epoch - we are in it


primevil
primordial
paleolithic (paleo- older or ancient, especially relating to the geological past
stone age
neolithic period
prehistoric
bronze age
iron age
classical
medieval
early modern
modern
modern

The truth is, the real problem is underpopulation. The fertility rate in the West is below replacement level. — fishfry

There are three population problems: Too many people, too few people, and the wrong demographic.

The Social Security problem is a policy issue, not a population problem. The US economy is large and healthy enough to pay for Social Security IF the Congress and President decide to transfer funds from the grossly undertaxed uber-wealthy minority to future Social Security beneficiaries. Eventually, (in a couple of decades, the last of the baby boom will begin to die off and the ratio of workers to retirees will improve. (The post WWII baby boom ended in 1964.) Hey, I'm one of the first baby boomers and I'm dying as fast as I can.

Why did women start entering the peace-time economy in the following the baby boom? One reason (not the only one) is that once the post-war economic boom started fizzling out towards the end of the 1960s into the '70s, it became necessary for families to add another wage earner to improve or maintain a middle-class standard of living. New house, new car, new aspirations -- it all cast more money. As the 20th century progressed, two earners became necessary to avoid sliding backward.

It wasn't policy, but it was once possible for a single wage earner to support (usually his) family. Workers could afford to have more children. We could, you know, pay people to breed. Have a baby, get a $5000 subsidy (provided you are the kind of people "we want more of"). No point encouraging the wrong kind of people to have more brats.

The world is over populated because it isn't just a matter of square yards per person, or providing enough of what might pass for food. Surviving global warming requires radical reduction in CO2 and methane emissions and that is hard to do when we are providing health care, schools, clothing, housing, transportation, clean water, etc. for 2 or 3 billion ADDITIONAL people, let alone the 2 or 3 billion people who need more of that stuff now.

I was rather hoping Covid was going to help in this area. — Book273

Only 113 million have been infected, and a mere 2.5 million dead. The 1918 influenza epidemic infected about a third of the world population (1920 population was about 1.5b), and killed around 50,000,000. Now we're talking! 1 out of 10 infected dead.

Have patience. Infectious disease specialists expect new viral diseases to appear periodically. One of them may be a grand slam winner. In the future hothouse, there will be a lot more insect populations of the disease-vector kind--so that's something to look forward to.

Don't forget global warming. If the outside predictions play out, severe disruptions in agriculture and reduced ocean fish production, intolerable wet-bulb temperatures (combo humidity/heat that is fatal), flooding, and so on may come to the rescue for over-population. But then there's the question of how happy the not-dead-yet will be in a seriously over-heated world.

Other possibilities? Stay tuned.

it is pornography, politics and religion that are the BIG THREE initial users. — synthesis

Just joking, but pornographers never used the telegraph, as far as I know, but they did pick up on the potential of photography pretty quickly. It took them something like a century to devise phone porn -- the "1-900 XXX xxxx" call-in numbers introduced in the 1980s. That probably had something to do with deregulation of the telecom industry. There was a debate over who was being exploited more, the women who answered the phone or the men who called.

Was there such a thing as Fax porn?

life in a religious context was so central to my thinking in childhood and adolescence that I have not really been able to break free from it, even if I have tried to do so. — Jack Cummins

Drawing on the computer metaphor, "Catholicism is your operating system. It is always in the background, no matter what applications are running." Even if you become an ardent atheist, your operating system (installed a long time ago) will still be there. That's OK. That's the way our brains works. The worst thing that can happen to someone is to grow up in a very chaotic home and community where chaos becomes the operating system.

Mainline Protestantism is my operating system, even though I have "officially" rejected much of what the church claims to be true.

Bertrand Russell observed that atheists resemble whatever religion they rejected. That seems to be true. People who grew up in narrow, hateful religious settings become narrow, hateful atheists. Broad church folk become broad church atheists.

One of the tasks of age seems to be accepting one's personal history -- good, bad, and indifferent.

beer — synthesis

Yes, beer. Definitely.

so the fact that religion has sprung up in nearly every culture suggests that such practices scratch a universal human itch — synthesis

The thing I want to bring forward is that people have MANY itches, scratched with art, politics, fashion, music, fiction, drama, and so on. Religion "works" because it offers rituals, a world-view, social activity, and so on. Clearly it isn't a unique necessity because lots of people scratch the ritual/world-view/social itch with other activity.

So, we could ask, "Do people need art (or anything else that isn't one of the basic needs)?" I think the answer is yes. The itch that needs scratching is real.

Do people need politics? Do people need games? Do people need fashion? Do people need fiction? Do they need alcohol, chocolate, coffee, tea, and tobacco? Maybe they do, maybe they don't -- but they were born into societies that had/have these things (and much more) and they are accustomed to them. People generally follow the patterns of the societies into which they are born.

The majority of religious people are religious because they were taught to be religious, and many of the people who are not religious were not taught to be religious. True enough, there are substantial numbers of exceptions, just as there are people who do not like games, are not fashionable, do not read fiction, and do not like alcohol, chocolate, coffee, tea, or tobacco (weirdos).

I have spent a lot of time on religion, like a lot of other people. Was there something essential about it? I could have been (might well have been) happier without it. Religion certainly has utility for individuals, but that doesn't make it essential. There are forms of religion which are unhealthy from the getgo.

What people need, above and beyond food, clothing, and shelter, are armaments to cope with what are often harsh realities. Religion, literature, music, science, industry, trade, philosophy, politics, games, fashion, and so on are all part of the armamentarium. Substitutions can be made.

So no: we don't "need" religion.

psychedelics — csalisbury

I missed out on most of the drug stuff. It was available, I could have. I am quite risk tolerant in some areas and risk averse in others. Psilocybin, and LSD too, seem to have some beneficial effects for some serious mental health conditions.

Illicit thrills, outsiderness, social recognition, status, dissonance, respectability -- I wish I had had a better way of dealing with that, when I was young. But then, that is what getting older and wiser is about, I guess.

I understand that many young people experience confusion about their embodiment - body and identity. It didn't seem to be the case when I was in high school. Various people had problems, but perplexing confusion about their bodies and gender identity didn't seem to a problem. I wonder if this comes from exterior psychological influences, or (worse) complex synthetic chemicals which mimic hormones. Sperm counts are down, there are more abnormal eggs, and more reproductive organ abnormalities--not just in humans, but in other animals too. We are awash in these fluorine/chlorine/carbon compounds used in the manufacture of fire retardants, teflon, and such. It can't be there without consequences.

I'm not familiar with John Ashbery; there's an awful lot of literature I haven't touched. Shameful for an old English major. I did check him out just now; is there a piece you especially recommend?

The New York Times titled his obit "John Ashbery in all his hunky glory" over this photo:



Just a few years ago I finally got around to reading some of the great beatnik poets and novelists (many who were either gay or bi). I was moved by many of the pieces. Had I read these in college (when the beatniks were still "a thing") it would have sailed over my head. BTW, the beatniks took their name from "beatitude". Or so one of them claimed.

What I'd be most curious to hear about, from your perspective, is how cultural-shifts shifted your own experience. There was a kind of taboo element to homosexuality. It seems like that used to be expended in the 'secret' place of gay hookups - is some of that lost now? — csalisbury

Yes, homosexuality was officially a perversion, a sickness, when I was growing up, and it was 'dangerous' to bring up the topic or show too much interest in it. Information--certainly positive information--was hard to find when I was in high school/college (I was born in '46). Naturally, I internalized the taboo and had all sorts of guilt issues. Guilt, however, didn't prevent me from having gay sex.

Gay men built social/sexual lives in the '40s, '50s, and 60s (according to informed sources) through networks, and there were places one could go to find sex -- out of view paths in parks, pubic toilets in stores or college buildings, and cruising in public -- using gaydar to spot other homosexuals, and try to make a contact with them. (I can't explain the details, but it does work often enough to be worth it.). Then there were gay bars, gay bath houses, and adult bookstores where one could have sex.

A lot of these features of gay life were swept away by AIDS, and the civic reaction to AIDS. Well, death kind of cast a pall over things too. But the bars remained--until hook-up apps like GRINDR made trips to the bars to find a partner unnecessary. Gay bars are still around, but at least where I live they have lost a lot of business (this way before Covid).

I've aged out of the active sex demographic--way out--so all this is more an intellectual interest than an urgent sexual one. But some important things have definitely been lost.

One big thing that has been lost was the outsider status a lot of gays felt (and cultivated). Being gay is now no big deal -- apparently. Perhaps "being proudly gay" is not as crucial now as it was? On the other hand, some gay boys (maybe some gay girls too) are getting kicked out of their homes by parents who reject them. They're usually like 15 to 17. Of course, homelessness entails a lot of problems for these young people.

Gay Liberation wasn't quite the revolution it might have been, but "liberating one's self", and joining up with other liberated gay guys felt like a tremendous step forward, back in 1969-70-71. Sure, it was scary to come out and risk rejection (or worse), but it was almost always worth the risk.

The risk of getting caught having sex in unapproved places raised the excitement value. Probably mot much risk dialing into GRINDR to see who's available.

advanced question: how do you think about trans sexuality? you don't have to answer that. — csalisbury

I have known maybe 10 transsexuals since the 1970s. Most of these people had clear identity objectives--from male to female or female to male. Kind of cut and dried. The trans people I have known seemed happier after they transitioned (having had surgery or not) than before. So, the most recent trans person I know I met about 2006. He was a veteran, alcoholic, college educated, M to F. He had to get a lot of problems resolved in the process (like alcoholism) but he made it.

So, these 10 trans people are one thing. The whole current trans-movement thing -- particularly how popular it is with the media -- baffles me. The number of people who are what I would call transsexual isn't much larger than .005% to .0075%--less than 1 percent of the population. It baffles me that this relatively small group of people (with a lot of help from people who are not even remotely trans) have managed to install the term "cisgender" on 99% of the population, and that many people are now listing their acceptable pronouns -- usually they are just what one would expect. I just don't get it.

Gender ambiguity isn't new, of course. Here's a song from 1926,masculine women, feminine men

Some histories note that the first third of the 20th century was sexually wilder than we would think. There were, particularly, a lot of loosened norms during Prohibition. When Prohibition ended, the forces of propriety clamped down hard, and things didn't loosen up again until the 60s.

most non-philosophers who mostly think that modernity is clearly better than living in the past. — TheHedoMinimalist

How long do you think that the present period is?

I'd be willing to say that the last 100 years, give or take 15 minutes, is the modern age.

WWI (started in 1914) was a watershed event which destroyed a lot of 19th century society and culture. It was in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that a lot of the scientific and technological discoveries were made that characterize our time.

Don't forget "the regression to the mean", also called "regression to mediocrity". Two stupid people who mate are more likely to produce an average child rather than an even dumber blockhead (this is a great mercy). Two geniuses are more likely to produce an average child than an incredibly brilliant one. On the other hand two geniuses may produce an idiot and two idiots might produce a genius--probably not, but it's possible.

One of the problems in tracking the regression to mediocrity is that people frequently have an unwholesome influence on their children, turning otherwise bright offspring into imbeciles. Were they cretins to start with, or did their parents degrade them into deep stupidity? Very hard to tell. You'd have to be a live-in observer for years, carefully charting the dismal progress.

Sometimes relatives or neighbors witness the process of idiot-making carried out by parents who really should never have been allowed on an unchaperoned date in the first place.

Here's an example from the BBC:

Scientists have discovered the specific mutation that famously turned moths black during the Industrial Revolution. In an iconic evolutionary case study, a black form of the peppered moth rapidly took over in industrial parts of the UK during the 1800s, as soot blackened the tree trunks and walls of its habitat.

Why would evolving into a black moth have helped the previously light colored moth? They were less conspicuous, less noticeable to birds. The birds ate more of the lighter colored moths, increasing the percentage of moths that were darker. Over time, there weren't any more light-colored breeding moths.

So, now what? As the air becomes less soot-filled and bark becomes lighter, dark colored moths will be at a disadvantage--the birds will pick them off more frequently. Two things may happen: the moths may lighten up, or they could go extinct (all eaten). ON the other hand, the birds may go extinct or shift their feeding habits, and it won't make any difference what color the moths are. They may stay dark.

Because of climate warming, migrating bird arrivals and insect hatching times are no longer synchronized in the same way they were 100 years ago. Birds may adapt, or they may have more difficulty feeding their chicks. Time will tell.