If god did not want rivers to speak, He would not have given them mouths. — unenlightened

A fresh quip I have not heard before. Adding it to my repertoire of irrelevance.

You didn't ask me, but Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyon, and others contributed to the idea by the 2nd century, and so did St. Augustine in 412 CE, all drawing on St. Paul.

The sin of Adam which all people inherit, is balanced by the Christ's sacrifice to save mankind.

It seems to me that the core of the idea of original sin -- that people generally can't go very long without doing something awful to each other -- has been abundantly proved.

They've had 2000 years to work these things out, and unsurprisingly, some random poster is not going to trip them up now. — unenlightened

True, but it was only in 1854 that Holy Mother Church got around to settling the matter for those creepy old-line Catholics who buy the idea of papal infallibility (which in itself is not an ancient doctrine--it came out of Vatican I, 1869-1870):

We declare, pronounce and define that the doctrine which holds that the Blessed Virgin Mary, at the first instant of her conception, by a singular privilege and grace of the Omnipotent God, in virtue of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Saviour of mankind, was preserved immaculate from all stain of original sin, has been revealed by God, and therefore should firmly and constantly be believed by all the faithful.
Pope Pius IX, Ineffabilis Deus, 1854

,

Apparently annoyed and feeling the need to nail this question, Mary revealed herself as the Immaculate Conception in Bernadette's vision at Lourdes in 1858 which put the stamp of God's (or at least the BVM'a) approval on the doctrine.

By the way, Martin Luther was enthusiastic about the Immaculate Conception, etc.

And the beat goes on.

The cause for homelessness in California, where between 25% and 50% of all US homeless live, is a severe shortage of affordable housing. Why do all these people live in an expensive state like California? Because it's -1ºF in Minneapolis right now. The minimum estimate of homeless in California is 130,000 (the 25% of US estimated total).

People become homeless through several routes--everything you listed, plus poverty and rising rents.

The solution that makes the most sense to me is HOUSING FIRST. Get people into good quality SRO rooms with services or small apartments with services. Once people have a warm, secure place to sleep, take a bath, keep dry, and so forth they start doing better. Provide services with the housing: addiction treatment, assistance with medication (obtaining and administering), and access to adequate food.

Housing First with services reduces ER visits and expensive treatment (county expense) for neglected disease. It improves the quality of life for those now housed, and also improves the quality of lie for everyone else.

At $50,000 for a built-to-purpose unit of SRO or efficiency apartments, California could house 130,000 people for about maybe $7 to $14 billion. Isn't that a lot of money? Yes, it is but Bill Gates could buy 130,000 units of housing and afterwards still be among the richest people in the world. Ditto for several other billionaires in California and elsewhere in the US.

Arranging affairs for the benefit of the rich and property owners is one of the reasons why there are so many homeless people. It's only reasonable to claw back some of those dollars -- about, oh, maybe $20,000,000,000 worth--for housing first across the country.

Cities used to have skid row areas where men (usually) could find the cheapest possible housing: warehouse floors divided up into small rooms with plywood and chicken wire with a lockable door. It was a step up from sleeping on the street--not a big step up, but slightly better. Cities used to have a lot of ratty apartment buildings where poor people could live -- with water, toilets, heat, and privacy. Probably plenty of cockroaches and bedbugs too, but it was a step up from living in the warehouse box-rooms.

Some cities used to have SROs -- single occupancy hotel rooms. You got a bed, a window, a radiator, and a lockable door--quite possibly a sink. The bathroom was down the hall. These were also a step up from living on the street or in warehouse-boxes.

These poverty-linked housing options are pretty much gone in most cities--torn down, redeveloped into loft spaces, turned into condos (provided the building bones were very good), and so on -- but no longer available as cheap housing. So, that's another reason why people are homeless.

BTW, the GDP of California is $2.751 trillion -- bigger than the GDP of the UK. California has one of the biggest economies in the world.

I'm thinking there were jobs programs in the 1930s. — tim wood

Unemployment in the US was at least 25% during the Great Depression. Job programs helped some, but by no means did the programs help 25% of the working population.

I'd vote for either Sanders or Warren.

Sanders is 78; Warren is 70. Biden is 77; Pelosi is 79; Bloomberg is 77. Buttigieg is 37. Klobuchar is 59. Trump clearly has the most youthful mind of all the candidates -- mid-teens. People in their 70s often have agile, resilient minds. What most people in their 70s and 80s do not have in abundance is the kind of endurance one would find in a much younger person.

I don't think the Democratic Demolition Derby Debates has been helpful to the party or to the public. In the good old days, the party bosses got together in 'a smoke filled room' and had a frank discussion about the would-be candidates. They decided who would be prepped to win the nominating convention. Of course, potential candidates had a role in all this; but they had to pass muster with the party's political experts and power players before anything else happened.

The back room system wasn't all bad. Candidates who had a good chance of embarrassing the party were deflected; candidates whose closets were well populated with skeletons could be interviewed frankly about their histories. The press back in the good old days was far more likely than the press today to extend personal privacy to candidates. John F. Kennedy was thus able to carry on an apparently very active sex life with all sorts of women, and the reporters and editors closed their eyes.

We probably won't be going back to the good old days, but it seems to me that the old system of experts picking the candidates had some merits.

Modern Science is an atheistic endeavour. — VoidDetector

I think of science and religion as two separate spheres of human activity with little or no overlap.

Where they confront each other antagonistically is when the religious claim their theogony and creation myths accurately represents the state of the cosmos (i.e., a god created it), and when science claims there are no such things as gods. Or at least there is no evidence for them.

Scientists can be religious, and the religious can be scientific. For instance, I know fundamentalist Christians who believe in a god-directed world but who, never the less, accept the science of medicine and do not count on faith to cure disease. How do they manage this contradiction? Compartmentalization. Religion and science are separate categories which do not inform each other.

although I don’t know why he wouldn’t be the ultimate Scientist and Mathematician — vmarzell

That is a way for the religious scientist to bridge compartments.

It isn't at all unusual for even smart people to hold contradictory views. There are people who fully understand the facts of global warming, but who, none the less, buy SUVs to tool around town.

A more obviously false view is hard to conceive of — Bartricks

What is harder to conceive is that there is any reason to continue this discussion with you.

I pointedly used conditionals in the OP. I said 'if' sex is constitutively determined by physical features (including chromosomal structure) then it can obviously be changed. — Bartricks

So you did, and I don't agree with that statement.

The identity of an animal is determined by billions of base pairs of DNA. A creature's identity, once composed, is fixed -- that's my view. You don't have to agree with it. A rabbit is a rabbit; it can not become a wolf. a salmon is a salmon; it can not become a bear. Homo sapiens are a particular variety of primate, and there is nothing we can do about that. Nor should do.

A female conceived is a female, and a male conceived is a male. Just because one can not altar fundamental facts does not mean that we then have to be rigid and unyielding about various aspects of existence.

Men and women can fulfill an array of roles which are very diverse, without needing to change their identity.

But we (all creatures great and small) have a stable and, for all practical purposes, an unchanging identity. This is a good thing, again in my opinion. A creature can fulfill the role for which it is suited. Some creatures can fulfill several roles. An ox can be a source of meat, and a source of traction. An ox can not breed, however, because oxen are sterilized male cattle.

What a man can do is take the role of a woman; visa versa for a woman. There may be satisfactions in so doing. Again what can not be change is "identity".

I do disagree with you about weather or not someone can truly change their sex, because i think that changing you appearance, organs, and societal roles to match the opposite gender constitutes a sex change. — sarah young

I do agree with your definition of what constitutes "a sex change" as the term is used, to which we can add an official name change.

All sorts of people decide to occupy deviant roles in life (deviant used here in the sociological sense of non-conforming). I grew up in a very conventional working class family. Once I left home after high school, I lived a much different, non-conforming kind of life than what I had practiced at home. Many of the people I associated with were pretty "far out" as the saying went.

You might be gendered non-conforming, yet very conforming in other aspects of life. Fine by me, as long as you are not trying to be a ruthless capitalist.

But I don't care whether or not you think I am a true woman — sarah young

No reason that you should care, as far as I know.

so how do you feel about the transgender bathroom situation — sarah young

My main concern about public toilets is that they be well maintained -- clean, supplied. Who else is using them at the moment is not a major concern to me, as long as proper decorum is being observed. No loud cell phone talking, no panhandling, drug dealing, that sort of thing.

The issue seems to be of primary importance to females, who fear that a male in disguise will be lurking about. The issue seems to be particularly volatile in schools (where students, parents, and staff all get involved).

I have known, worked with, socialized with, and provided social services to maybe a dozen transgendered person. This goes back to the 1970s. In those earlier days of gay liberation, there was no separate movement for trans people, at least where I lived. Actually, among GLBT people, the 4 groups all had/have separate issues, sometimes with no overlap. We took shelter in 1 big tent, more or less peaceably.

What I accept as a practical matter in my personal life (mostly tolerant of difference) is not the same as what I might theorize about philosophically. So, on a practical level, I have few problems with it. Contradictory? could be.

Sex lies even deeper than that — TheWillowOfDarkness

How does sex lie deeper than the chromosomes in which reside DNA?

there a more efficient argument than that — Brett

Like, "The word is not the thing" and "The map is not the territory" perhaps.

but gender dysphoria is a very serious issue, the rates of suicide and attempted suicide by transgender people are upwards of 75% and I feel like you are just trying to say that it is a casual want instead of what it really is, the ability to be who we really are — sarah young

Indeed, gender dysphoria is a very serious issue. I would not say otherwise. I also do not say that gender dysphoria is a casual wish. The difficulties which transgendered people endure argues strongly against it being a casual desire.

Can a man take on the outward appearance of a woman? Yes, clearly. People can take on the appearance and the roles (within limits) of the opposite gender. Can a male become a female? I would say 'no', because "maleness" and "femaleness" is deeper than appearance and roles. Sex (male/female, as opposed to appearances and roles of man and woman) is built from conception forward, resides in the chromosomes and sex-linked traits, and is immutable (in mammals, at least).

Not only is sex built up from conception, it has been built up in the evolution of species. Many (most?) plants and almost all animals are either male or female.

Transgendered people can (and do) change their appearance and roles. As long as that produces a long-term increase in personal satisfaction, fine. What can not be done is an actual change of sex -- switching out the XX or XY chromosomes for their opposites. The organs that were made in utero can be removed, and hormones can force changes in appearance.

Re-gendering rests on a delusion IF individuals think they have actually become the opposites - switched from male to female, when what they have achieved is a change in appearance and role.

Silly fellow.

Why are you invested in the idea that nothing has an inherent identity? If you were a 14th-15th-16th century alchemist you would be trying to transmute lead into gold. Nuclear engineers can transmute gold into lead (by adding particles to atoms). The reverse, lead into gold, is much more difficult because it requires deleting particles from atoms. It's possible, but extraordinarily difficult and unimaginably expensive.

Real gold is born in supernova explosions and collisions of neutron stars (the creation of heavier elements like gold).

The simplest way of turning pigs ears into silk purses would be to bury pigs ears under a mulberry bush; the pig's ears would be broken down into simpler substances which a bush could take up, make leaves, and feed silk worms. Except, a bacteria/worm-reduced pig's ear no longer has the identity it once had. Now it is only chemicals. Calcium is calcium, indistinguishable from its sources. Were you and a pig buried side by side, or cremated, neither of you would have the same identity you had before you were transformed by bacteria, worms, or fires.

One of the sleights of hand that pro-trans advocates pull is saying "sex is assigned at birth". Not true. Sex is observed at birth. Hospitals, doctors, midwives, and parents don't arbitrarily "assign" a sex at birth.

Penis? check = male
Vagina? check = female
XY chromosome? check = male
XX chromosome? check = female

Granted, a small fraction (1 in every 4500 births) of babies are born with ambiguous genitals, and an extremely small number of babies are born with chromosomal abnormalities which leave the baby in the lurch as to whether they are male or female. Most babies with ambiguous genitals have unambiguous chromosomes and are clearly male or female.

Transexuals usually have a perfectly normal body; the idea that their identity does not match their body is a delusion. Look, I completely understand that some men would rather be women and some women would rather be men. They can pretend. I might wish I looked like Adonis, sang in a baritone voice, possessed the mind of Einstein, and had the wealth of Bill Gates, but I don't. They can have organs lopped off or sort-of-look-alike organs fashioned out of skin and fat tissues. An artificial penis is not a real penis; a glass eyeball is not a real eyeball.

I didn't realize the question would be hi-jacked in this way. — frank

Come on, Frank. Anyone with 3,980 posts (--you, at the time of this post) should know that your topic was doomed from the get go. The least you could have done was say something devastatingly clever, sarcastic, and insulting about the royal parasites.

Megan kissed the right frog and is now ungrateful. Send her back.

And who is this person pontificating on the video? Why should we spare her the time of day?

The US doesn't have an illustrious past, and instead has a history of struggling to survive. — frank

As national states go, the US has a sufficiently illustrious past. We successfully seized our country from other people, which is the usual way nations get big and powerful. Powerful nations have never been established through a sensitive respect for native cultures or peaceful coexistence. Never mind this e pluribus unum crap. Our predatory symbol should have in its talons the legend, "Accipere facilis est et accipe illud!" -- Take it easy, and take it all!

We ought to enjoy the remaining years of our supremacy before someone else decides it's their turn for a go at world domination.

Sometimes self pity is the only option available.

Someone (maybe you) attending the meeting at your place of servitude should have distributed the "Bullshit Bingo" cards (there are various games for various kinds of 'sensitivity' and 'diversity' "training").

Someone should also have offered the white person who thinks that their whiteness is harmful to others a cyanide pill and advised them to "do the right thing".

I thought that this kind of nonsense was quarantined in institutions of "higher learning". Sadly, it appears that the disease has followed graduates out into their places of employment. (I gather that you work at a NGO or a non-profit. Most capitalists, a cursed lot, wouldn't waste company time on this crap.).

Can you change your sex? I think so. — Bartricks

Can you make a silk purse out of a sow's ear? I think not.

Here is a picture of a silk purse. Below the purse is a picture of a sow's ear. Vive la différence!

I think the best explanation is that race clearly does have an essential historical component, whereas sex - it would seem - does not. — Bartricks

It seems to me that you have reached for the wrong comparison here. Among progressives (who are all in favor of loosely defined gender definitions) there is very strong support for the idea that race is an arbitrary social construct than that it is an essential historical component.

In the real world there is a distinct difference between "what is, in fact the case" and "what one can get away with". In the real world, males have XY chromosomes, and females have XX chromosomes. Men have penises, testicles, prostates, and so forth; women have vaginas, ovaries, fallopian tubes, and uteruses. Women can bear children; men can not,

Through art a man can look like a woman, and a woman can look like a man, but through no amount of surgery, hormones, clothing, cosmetics, and propaganda can a man become a woman, or a woman become a man.

is man-made climate change just a natural process or is it not? — TheMadFool

We are, imho, NOT space oddities. As a species engaging in hunting and gathering we did no damage to the planet. The HG regime lasted for most of our history. It was only when we stopped hunting and gathering, and started planting the wheat we found in the fertile crescent (around 12,000 years ago) that we started becoming a problem. Agriculture led to settled existence, and settled existence led to more children which led to more agriculture, more villages, and so on. A few thousand years later we started developing technics, writing, and all that. Philosophy! Finally, after hundreds of thousands of years, we were on our way to becoming a real problem.

It took another 2 thousand years for us to get really good at being the problem we naturally are -- smart apes driven by the emotions of stupid apes, with more power than we know what to do with. Then we discovered industrialism and became hell on wheels, and here we are.

We are engaging in natural, uninhibited, greedy, ugly, bad (and occasionally splendidly beautiful) behavior. We are naturally self-fucking, which is why we may have achieved conditions which will wipe us out. Perfectly natural. For us. Unfortunately.

And what happened at the end of the Communist/McCarthy hysteria; nothing but ruin. — Brett

The Unamerican Activities Committee was itself kind of un-American. In 1954 McCarthy was censured in the US Senate by a vote of 67 for and 22 against censure. McCarthy died young, 57 years of age, just 3 years after being censured. He died of acute hepatitis, maybe aggravated by heavy drinking.

We have had two intense red scares -- the first in 1919 following WWI, and the second starting after WWII. The post WWII 'red scare' was combined with a 'lavender scare' since the people who were death on communism were also death on homosexuality. I suppose one could say that the Cold War was one long third red scare. Too bad we can't get a tax refund from all the money they spent on nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.

Whats wrong with nuclear (fission) power. Fusion is just another type of nuclear power. — christian2017

Fusion is "thermo-nuclear power". What's 'wrong' with fusion is that we haven't been able to sustain it. Fission reactors can be operated at a temperature low enough that the nuclear fuel (enriched uranium) doesn't melt the reactor as long as the reaction is moderated. When we lose control of a fission reactor, they melt (like they did at 3 Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima. It's a horrendous mess to deal with.

Fusion reactions are too hot to come into contact with a physical container. Fusion is what stars do, and a star, as you know, are very, very hot. Instead of being held in metal tubes and covered with water (fission reactors) the fusion reaction has to be contained within a non-physical container composed of powerful magnetic fields. While the theory is sound, the actual achievement of an ongoing sustainable thermonuclear fusion reaction in magnetic suspension has proved very very very difficult.

The good thing about fusion is that if the magnetic sphere fails, the reaction stops abruptly. I should add that there is a container in which the magnetic sphere is produced, because the heat has to be captured to do anything useful with it.

So FUSION power has been a dream for a long time -- 50 or 60 years. Several international projects have been working on the goal, but nobody has scored anything. Like I said, the technology is very, very hard to perfect.

A further difficult problem with fusion is that once the magnetic container is in place, the thermonuclear reaction has to be started by focussing many powerful lasers on a small piece of fusion fuel. The lasers provide the intense heat to trigger fusion. When the fuel is used up, another ball of fuel has to be put in place and triggered. And so on -- every step of the way has been one enormously difficult problem after another.

Yes, I was aware of the cyanobacteria. They began their oxygen producing career a very long time ago. If your point in asking was to underline the idea that "change is the only constant" then I agree. The planet has gone through extremely radical change ever since it started to coagulate out of the primordial disk of our solar system.

The moon was created by a very cataclysmic collision of a small planet with earth, but no one was here to be inconvenienced, since the earth was still too hot, hadn't formed oceans yet, and so on. The event was a good thing, however, since satellites like the moon help stabilize the movement of a planet, and later on produce tidal forces which are helpful to life.

The problem with the current constant of change, global warming, is that we seem to have a rather large role in it, and it is turning out to be highly inconvenient for ourselves and our co-evolved environment. Change will remain the only constant, no matter what, and big things are yet to come. For instance, the sun will eventually enlarge, envelop Mercury, Venus and earth (at least) in its much enlarged but cooler sphere, and we will be reduced to a cinder. Once that happens, a cinder we will stay for eternity, continuing to orbit the dwarfed sun. That assumes, of course, that another star, ejected from its region, doesn't come sailing through our solar system and send the lifeless planet off on a solo trip to nowhere.

In the long run, the universe will continue to expand, continue to cool, continue to thin out, and eventually die -- the energy of the atoms finally dissipated -- somewhere in the trillions of years in the future.

So, stay tuned. More to come.

Now I know one of the arguments is that the children did have the opportunity to give or withhold permission — Brett

Of course they did not have the opportunity to give or withhold permission. Why on earth would they even be asked? Parents get to make decisions about their children without consulting the child.

Yes, kid, you are going to bed now. Yes, you are going to get a measles shot, Yes, you are going to get a bath. Yes, I'm going to photograph you today, however much you may resent it 15 years from now. You are also going to stop hitting your sister, you are going to eat the food we give you (or you can go eat somewhere else -- which is what our parents told us) and so on.

Parents are on-the-scene decision-makers--legitimate in loco parentis. Sorry kid, your ma and pa are the boss of you.

I quite agree that the controversy corrupted the images. Some parents who photographed their naked young children (not as art, but just as casual photo-documenting) have been subject to very unfriendly and IMHO, unreasonable scrutiny. I haven't seen Mann's photos recently, but they struck me as perfectly acceptable.

the Piss Christ could be that small chink in the moral armor that could eventually widen into a big gaping hole through which all forms of immoral acts can be introduced, even rape and murder, in the name of art. Of course this seems to require the artist to be an idiot to try a stunt like that but there was a case of an artist, name forgotten, who put 3 goldfish in a blender and asked the audience if they'd like to turn on the devices. I believe one person did and the result was well-blended goldfish. Police arrived on the scene and arrested the artist for cruelty to animals. This, to me, is a first small step to greater acts of cruelty/evil in the name of art. — TheMadFool

You may remember that in the 1980s there were a series of kerfuffles over Robert Maplethorpe's photography of gay men, some dressed, some not. Piss Christ and the Blessed Virgin painting with elephant dung pieces attached were another installment in the saga. There were also uproars over performance artist Karen Finley rubbing chocolate all over her naked self (at Lincoln Center, not at an avant garde gallery), another artist who cut himself on stage at the tony Walker Art Center, soaked up the blood on thin towels, and then waved the towels over the audience (it had something to do with AIDS), and the case of a band that threw feces at the audience (literally, not their crappy music). And the liquified goldfish. (But then, oysters are still alive when they are opened and eaten, and they are related to the brainy octopi, and lobsters are alive when dropped in boiling water.)

Back in the day when artists were carving large blocks of marble, or meticulously painting large canvases, one has to assume that they were serious about A R T. I am suspicious that people who do things like Finley's chocolate bit, the act with the bloody towels, or the goldfish are using provocation in place of artistic technique and skill.

We have to maintain some sort of standard of what art is, or go with Marcel Duchamp and just accept that anything people call art is art. I'll grant that artists who have followed Duchamp and used "found objects" in art have sometimes been successful. "Urinal" (it was a bathroom fixture) was deliberately and self-knowingly provocative--aimed at the A R T establishment of the day. But Duchamp's view that if somebody thinks something is art, then it is art is just resigning the effort to have a critical opinion that is worth hearing.

Provocation has a place in the world; I've enjoyed some provocations quite a bit. But we don't have to get all confused about whether someone provoking a strong reaction (for whatever reason) is producing A R T just because they say so. John Water's movie Pink Flamingos is a deliberately provocative scatty comedy. It's well done comic provocation; I loved it. But nobody is comparing Waters with Fellini or Bergman.

So, an artist may feel justified in displaying a crucifix in a vat of urine, because it's art, a communication between aesthetic agents. — Gnomon

It was just a glass of his own urine, not quite a vat; the crucifix was not very big--which is neither here nor there.

When New York artist Andres Serrano plunged a plastic crucifix into a glass of his own urine and photographed it in 1987 under the title Piss Christ, he said he was making a statement on the misuse of religion.

Controversy has followed the work ever since, but reached an unprecedented peak on Palm Sunday when it was attacked with hammers and destroyed after an "anti-blasphemy" campaign by French Catholic fundamentalists in the southern city of Avignon.

The violent slashing of the picture, and another Serrano photograph of a meditating nun, has plunged secular France into soul-searching about Christian fundamentalism and Nicolas Sarkozy's use of religious populism in his bid for re-election next year.

. The Guardian

The Right probably wouldn't like Smokey's song "I wanna be your piss slave" either.

I don't know who said it but I'm reminded of the assertion that if god doesn't exist anything is permissible: — TheMadFool

Dostoyevsky sort of said: if God is dead, then everything is permitted. The literal quote from The Brothers Karamazov, (where Dmitri speaks first) is

"But,' I asked, 'how will man be after that? Without God and the future life?

"It means everything is permitted now, one can do anything?' 'Didn't you know?' he said. And he laughed. 'Everything is permitted to the intelligent man,' he said."

Is autonomism "Art for art's sake?" Oscar Wilde (as a critic) takes the 'art for art's sake' view.

Take two art works that depict an event in Roman mythology -- the Rape (or more properly, abduction) of the Sabine Women -- an event where Roman men went woman-hunting. The ME TOO movement does not approve, I'm pretty sure.

In the presumably mythic event, Romulus led a band of Roman men into the Sabine cities near Rome to acquire wives. The Sabines didn't want to feed Rome (who they correctly thought would become a disruptive rival), so the Romans just walked in and grabbed a batch of wives and took them back to Rome. It seems highly unlikely that the women consented to their abduction.

An ideologue literalist looks at the painting or sculpture and sees propaganda encouraging violence against women. Literalist ideologues are why security in museums has been beefed up. The artists wanted to produce a representation of the event, whether it was morally good, bad, or indifferent.

The sculpture is from around 1580, a complex 3-figure composition carved from marble. The painting is by David (the 'official painter of the French Revolution')

Jesus prophesied that "the poor you will always have with you". That may have been more of an indictment than a prophecy, but it seems to have come true.

It doesn't matter if climate change is a complete lie! — Lif3r

It does matter because lie-based policy involves a lot of screwing with one's mind, and everybody else's. "let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay." Speak truly, honestly, in other words.

[\quote="ernestm;368834"]People in the USA are particularly susceptible to 'self evident' fallacies.[/quote]

I disagree for two reasons: #1, no country anywhere on the planet is inconveniencing themselves very much on behalf of global warming (which is adding to the tragedy). It is not the case that the people in the USA or any other country are stupid and deluded. What IS the case is the global economy is based on fossil fuels. Take away coal, oil, and gas and the world economy (local and global) would crash and burn. Shifting from fossil to renewable energy is not at all simple, quick, convenient, or free.

Reason #2 is that fossil fuels are by no means a US monopoly. Many countries mine coal, pump up petroleum, or utilize natural gas. Granted, the USA has been and is one of the largest producers and users of fossil fuels. Granted, the fossil fuel and allied industries (transportation, electric generation, construction/building heating and cooling) have propagandized intensely on their own behalf. For some odd reason they are not just sitting there and letting eco-green meanies put them out of business. But its a world-wide business, and everybody participates in it--whether they want to or not.

I am 100% in favor of converting to renewable energy with haste--if it isn't already too late--but doing so will not entail severe consequences (but better consequences then continuing to burn every last pound of fossil fuel we can get our hands on).

Yes, and then again, no.

The issue of identity and permanence vs. transience which Heraclitus raised remains, and will remain. For practical purposes, I am confident of my identity and think the world is stable and remains the same from minute to minute. If I step away from practicality, however, I can see that the world isn't entirely stable (it really is changing all the time, from the sub-atomic scale to the macro scale of the universe, though usually in an orderly and more or less predictable way). Whether my identity is stable or not is a more complicated matter than I want to get into right now.

Pick a river, any river. Yesterday you swam in the river. Today the water you splashed around in someplace else. The water you swim in today is not the same water you swam in yesterday -- quite literally. The water is moving past you even as you dive in. The shores of the river remain; the name of the river remains; the water which composes the river (without which it would be a dry gulch) moves, mixes, becomes more or less turgid and turbid from time to time, increases and decreases in volume, is more or less pure--depending on how much crap we dump into it.

Pick some thing: Any thing. It is changing as you look at, even if you can not see the change. Take the window through which you are looking. Glass is an extremely slow-moving liquid. Five hundred years from now, the window will be thicker at the bottom than it is at the top. But it will be "the same window". Chances are that the view you see through your window will also change -- is changing so rapidly you can see it. A bird lands on a branch: a change. A car goes by: a change. The neighbor's dog barks: a change.

You have an identity. Whoever you are, masquerading as aRealidealist, you probably think you remain the same from day to day. Obviously you are, and are not. You have some new skin today that you didn't have yesterday. You have new memories in your brain you didn't have yesterday. You are older today than you were yesterday--a day closer to the grave. But still, your name didn't change; your address probably didn't change; your social security number didn't change; your shoe size didn't change (since yesterday, anyway, unless you feet swelled up and you can't fit into your shoes). We are all a bit impermanent beings living (temporarily) in a changing universe.

That things remain the same is a construct we use for convenience--until some change happens that reveals to us that, lo and behold, nothing is the same.

Very interesting so far. I would have expected nuclear weapons to come up higher! — Xtrix

Nuclear bombs could be the end of all our problems, so it's hard to rate it.

I voted for Climate Change, and would liked to have chosen overpopulation as well -- not as #2, but as a draw with global warming.

Political corruption smells bad, is ugly, causes other serious problems, kills people, and so on -- but corruption just goes with the human territory. Like fresh fish, we spoil quickly.

Inequality and poverty? Endemic. Epidemics? See overpopulation. Biological weapons? Are they worse than nuclear weapons? Terrorism? Nah. Bad people do bad stuff. Calling it terrorism doesn't make it worse, really. War? "War is the health of the state" Randolph Bourne said during WWI. He wasn't recommending war, btw.

You've heard of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse... Pestilence, War, Famine, and Death?

The 'Simple Living' movement, generally active in churches, attempts to get people to, you know, consume less -- much less -- crap. Those who cite spending habits as a significant contributing factor to money problems are, of course, spot on. It's not buying a better brand of canned tomatoes that gets people in trouble, it's the bigger, better car, the increased square-feet per person homes, the expensive cosmetic orthodontics for children, high end clothing (for whatever niche one is in), and so on.

"The average size of new homes built in the United States grew 62 percent from 1,660 square feet in 1973 to 2,687 square feet in 2015, an increase of 1,027 square feet, according to the U.S. Census Bureau." The 1918 house I live in was built for 2 adults, 1 child, more or less) and has about 900 square feet of main floor space. And, it seems to me, meals away from home are a major expense for many people. Live entertainment and alcohol (never mind recreational drugs) are another layer of expense.

The death of God? I agree it's not a government failing. However, I've observed more than a few people who think God is as alive as ever engage in the same nonsensical spending that the godless riffraff engage in.

If you want to blame somebody, blame Edward Bernays, Sigmund Freud's nephew, who did so much to sharpen the practice of public opinion shaping and propaganda. The "desire manufacturing industry of advertising" deserves a lot of blame for the vast waste of money in the land.

Just a suggestion -- for ease of reading, break up very long paragraphs into shorter one.

there is the mandatory charity — alcontali

As there is in Christianity. Matthew 25:31-40, which lays out the basis of God's judgement. Many churches ask for (and receive) a 10% tithe from members.

I am quite sure that within Islam there are believers who follow the Quran faithfully, and there are those who do not. In all religions there are people who don't give a rat's ass about anything but taking care of Number One--themselves.

As nations progress down the road, many are going to find that over the long run, capitalism erodes all of the familial and sacred bonds that compose the warmth and security that people require to live well together. Maybe some developing countries will be able to avoid the fate which capitalism tends to deal out, but I wouldn't count on it.

"Millennial" is not a very substantive term; I wish people would stop using these "generation" labels. They might be useful as marketing concepts; not much more.

In the long run, the economy matters way less than generally perceived. — alcontali

"In the long run we are all dead", as one famous economist remarked. You are a social conservative, apparently, given your "It could also be handled by solidarity at the level of the extended family, along with charity at the level of the religious community" statement. It could be, but that hasn't been the case in the United States (and other industrialized countries) for a long time. By the 1920s multigenerational arrangements were pretty much history. Working class houses were too small to accommodate 3 generations. In addition, women began entering the workforce en masse (by necessityP) in 1941, and have stayed there, in varying numbers since. Welfare a la religious and secular charity has been practiced in the United States, but it was meagre. Further, private charity buckled during the great depression. 25% employment (a minimum estimate), widespread foreclosures, farm failures, business failures, and more pretty much shot the capacity of private charity out of the water.

Further more, the United States (in particular) could, can, and would be able to afford very satisfactory publicly financed welfare programs, if so much money wasn't sequestered by the richest 1%.

Thinking that the economy matters less than perceived is an extremely flawed idea. It's not even wrong, actually. What individuals, families, and societies are able to do depends on the economy--and that includes everything from private charity, to pre-school programs, to abstract expressionism, to sending mobile robot labs to Mars.

In fact, the population could even make do with less than half their current income — alcontali

What would your life be like if you "made do" with 50% of your current income?

Sure, people do waste an appreciable percentage of their income. Buying complicated cups of coffee and meals away from home (which many people do every day) is very expensive. A thermos and a bag lunch would save lots of money. (I brought my lunch to work for many years.). Impulse purchases at stores (I'm guilty), buying a big new car, frequent vacations away from home, lavishing care and feeding on dogs (which I love) but I never forced a dog to endure a long illness by buying expensive canine health care to keep it alive). Dearly beloved dog, you're very old, you're sick, and I love you enough to give you a painless and peaceful death. Maybe somebody will be kind enough to do the same for me, someday.

I have practiced thrift all my life -- not because I am virtuous, but because I grew up poor, and thrift was a necessity at home. The downside of poor folk's thrift is that we are usually not very knowledgeable about finances. I knew how to save, I didn't learn how to prudently invest what I saved (until late in the game). As an unmarried man with no huge expenses, thrift worked well for me. Had I added a wife and 1 or 2 children, a house payment or much higher rent, even an old car, etc. I would have gone broke in short order.

I attend a church with a reasonably well off congregation; there are a few there who are very well off. Giving to the church is quite respectable. How much charity could this church actually disburse? Maybe we could support 2 or 3 small families. If you take all of the churches in Minneapolis that are financially sound, (let's say there are 100) that's 2 or 3 hundred families--let's say, 600 to 900 people. There are about 90,000 poor people in Minneapolis. Let's say the churches really stretched themselves and decided to spend enough to support 3600 people, instead of 900. Even if my fairly well-off church spent for charity instead of its other discretionary spending, we could take care of only a few people (total support) over the long run.

That still leaves 86.400 people to care for. Who's going to do that, in your privatized scheme?

Things that go Trump in the night at the White House haunted by insane policy

Wait a minute, your take on family composition is way, way off: According to the US census and Bureau of Labor Statistics, 69% of children (<18) live in families with both parents present. Among married-couple families with children, 96.8 percent had at least one employed parent, and 61.1 percent had both parents employed.Apr 27, 2017. During the last 20 years, the percent of families with both parents present has not declined.

Evidence shows that raising children without a partner is an option with some negative consequences, poverty among them. Single parent families have more instability because of poverty, work demands, shortage of day care and pre-school care, and so on. Life becomes more precarious with only one parent and one income.

Government benefits are intended to be insufficient -- part of the "end welfare as we know it" neoliberal scheme.

Granted, there is a higher percentage of single men and single women now than in the past two generations. The current trend started in the 1960s. I would agree that single men are doing better financially than single women with children. The reason is obvious. I also agree that single men who are not in a long term relationship of some kind (gay or straight) tend to have poorer outcomes over the long run, in terms of physical and mental health. Some men, though, are better at self-care than others.

Two points: #1, reproduction rates are dropping in many countries--most of Europe, China, the US, Japan, and so on. Dropping reproductive rates produces the 'mushroom' problem of too many old supported by too few working people. It isn't just a question of money, though. There are not enough younger people to supply the kind of assistance older people need toward the end of their lives.

#2, over the long run, there have been periods where demography changed dramatically without sinking a given society. In the United States, there have been several episodes of high immigration (like from Ireland in the 1820s, 30s, and 40s) where large numbers of single men and women arrived. Yes, as the natives suspected they would be, large numbers of single people were kind of disruptive to their orderly life, and it took a substantial period of time for that wave (among them my maternal ancestors) to become integrated into society--roughly a generation.

Consider the radical disruptions that occurred in Europe between 1914 and 1945: two devastating wars, economic depression, occupation, death camps, displaced populations all over creation. Bad. Twenty to thirty years after WWII, recovery was (more or less) in place. Europe is certainly not the same place now that it was on the eve of WWI, but it isn't remotely the shit hole one might expect after so severe a 30-year beating. Look at all the turmoil over the same period of time in Asia. People tend to reconstruct orderly society.

On the long run, it is the diseased social structure that will sink the economy and the living standards. — alcontali

The current capitalist economic derangement is a critical part of the diseased social structure.

In my impression, the decline in living standards has only started. We have arrived in the long term of lots of past, misguided, short-term decisions. It is time to pay the bill now. — alcontali

This is probably true. I started working in 1968 and stopped in 2008; over that time I witnessed the decline in living standards that one could have at a given income. I didn't suffer very much, but many people have been stuck in jobs where income did not keep pace with inflation, and where rising expenses required a continual paring away of necessary and discretionary spending. It isn't that millions of Americans are starving, but many millions are living paycheck to paycheck, not because they are spendthrifts, but because their income simply doesn't cover the necessities of a family (adults and children).

Still, there is room for things to get much worse--not for the 10% -15% who are the poorest Americans, but for the the broad part of working population called "middle class" and for the "working class", immiseration will take a while. The thing is, it hasn't been happening so abruptly that people feel the hit most of the time. They are gradually sinking, and adjust themselves to slightly less as time goes on.

Only a narrow range of the upper middle classes and upper classes, the professionals and successful entrepreneurs, have avoided the agonizing reappraisals of their shrinking budgets--"What will we have to do without this month, this year, that we used to take for granted?" (And this isn't a question of which luxury items to give up; its small pleasures and necessities.)