All you have to do is not die and you can't help but get wise — T Clark

Not dying is insufficient. Wisdom does not necessarily grow with age. There are stupid, arrogant senior citizens who were stupid, arrogant junior citizens. Look no further than our esteemed maximum leader!

No, I don't think I am cynical. But one definition of a cynic is "a disappointed idealist". I have an idealistic streak, and I am even now shocked--shocked!!!---to find that events were made to happen by various operatives. Nope -- not a conspiracy theorists -- I don't think 9/11 was a government plot or that the CIA killed Kennedy. But 9/11 is a good example of a splendidly engineered event.

The person who might well think of conspiracies is Al Gore, the way he lost the presidency in what certainly seemed like a rush to judgement in Florida, then to the SCOTUS. I really don't know how Gore managed to endure. I'd have dissolved into a puddle of bile.

The Gulf of Tonkin business was engineered. Watergate! Nixon was very actively trying to engineer a crooked outcome.

But the biggest example of being shocked was to discover that American consumer culture was not the result of Americans merely having extra cash to spend, and lots of stuff to buy. I was shocked to discover that the culture of consumption was engineered in the latter part of the 19th--beginning of the 20th century by retailers, public relations firms, housing companies, and so on. Consumption as a way of life was a radical change from the previous centuries of thrift, production, and minimal consumption. It's been the new normal for 120 years, and it required a lot of industrious labor to get people to change their behavior that much.

I was shocked to discover that many of the manners and habits which get described as "middle class" (and references the petite bourgeoisie) and may or may not have anything to do with the middle class, were introduced and encouraged by manufacturers, magazine editors, retailers, in a very deliberate effort to shape future consumption. A lot of people's material and experiential aspirations are the result. Mine too, to some extent.

Every time I read a new book about gay history, like a recent title on Chicago's "fairyland" I am shocked and annoyed to discover that 'they' were doing stuff that 'we' 1970s people thought was scandalously revolutionary 40 years (or more) before Stonewall. What all they were doing was suppressed after prohibition. Crackdowns all over the place. Which underlines one of my theories about progress: it can always go into reverse, so we should not think that todays gains are forever.

I never worked in a book warehouse, but a guy I know did, and he also loved the job.

This is a very good topic.

I had some knowledge of American history. The oldest layer (and framework) came from elementary and secondary school lessons. In 1400 and 92, Columbus sailed the ocean blue; the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock; One if by land, two if by sea; Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence; Lincoln freed the slaves and was assassinated; Teddy Roosevelt; Teapot Dome; FDR; WWII.

Much of what I learned in school was more myth than knowledge. I didn't know that at the time. I thought I was getting the straight dope. In a different sense of the word, dope, I was getting straight dope.

I got by for a long time on myth-history. Myth works, really, as long as one isn't trying to critically examine one's life or one's country or one's world. It wasn't until later adulthood (way way after college) that I began to read material that was more knowledge, less myth, and sometimes not myth at all.

The pieces of mythic history fit together with delusions based on myth, so how can one tell that what we had been given and what we had gathered was not all that true? Was, in fact, bullshit?

It's a process, not an event.

It takes time. First, one hears contrary information -- maybe at a demonstration. Maybe one reads contrary information in a free Newspaper, or a cheap one, anyway, like The Militant, or The Body Politic (gay paper from Toronto) -- NOT the New York Times. Or one goes to a study group. One hears stories on NPR (at least one did in the good old days), or PBS. One sees an eye-opening film like The Fog of War, about Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara who escalated the Vietnam War.

Then one starts seeking out contrary information, and one finds that it too fits together, and decidedly doesn't fit the myths on which one's delusions were based. Noam Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent was a wedge (like a log splitting wedge) that broke open a large hunk of history.

Many books, talks, magazine articles, films, discussions, etc. later, I have a new history that much better accounts for reality. A book on the history of advertising, marketing, and the creation of desires goes a long ways in explaining how I got some of the myths and delusions that are still deep in my memory.

Not only are we deluded, we have been deliberately and elaborately deceived. Somebody will say, "well that just your new myth". No, it fits too many other pieces in too deep a way. So, knowledge about history doesn't necessarily feel good -- I don't like knowing "I drank the Kool Aid willingly".***

***Historical Factoid: drinking the Kool Aid™ references the mass suicide of the cult led by Jim Jones in Guyana in 1978. It means swallowing all sorts of stuff.

Kool Aid, Kool Aid, tastes great
Wish I had some, Can't wait.

Jingle for Kool Aid.

Kool-Aid is a brand of flavored drink mix owned by Kraft Heinz based in Chicago, Illinois. The powder form was created by Edwin Perkins in 1927 based upon a liquid concentrate called Fruit Smack. Smack is now, at least, another name for heroin; the word is Yiddish, meaning 'sniff' (but not snort). It's a word the Yiddish lists do not eagerly embrace (unlike "schlong").

Tom Wolfe wrote a book, "The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test.

Kool Aid is the official soft drink of Nebraska.

DO NOT DRINK THE KOOL AID!

One of the 'facts' of mental activity that makes us who we are is that so much of it is invisible to that part of the brain that operates as the conscious self. Most of those sensory signals that pour into the brain don't pass over the desk of the conscious self. They pour in, are processed and stored. Sometimes we take note of them as they happen: A bee stings your foot; you smell roasting meat; you see an inordinately sexy body; you hear an unusual bird call and you stop to listen.

Worse, we don't know what the brain is busy doing. The endless chatter in our heads or the scratching of EEGs, or fMRI scans tell us that a lot is going on in there, but we don't have control over most of it. When I write, "I" -- my conscious self -- is mostly not composing the sentences. What I write is news to my conscious self, quite often -- like when I start a reply to someone, and realize that what I am writing is decidedly not what I want to say.

Even so, we needn't think that anyone else other than "us" is doing the composing. What I see coming out on the screen is almost always completely agreeable, and I recognize the source, the phrasing, the examples, etc. "Great -- that's my stuff, alright."

Sometimes, when we are dealing with a very unfamiliar problem, and we set out to think about it very deliberately, we can (that is the conscious self) do the thinking first hand. But most of the time, all that is carried on out of image, sound, odor, tactile, flavor, etc. We just don't have cameras inside our heads monitoring what is going on in "the big factory" surrounding our little command post of conscious self.

All to the good. We really don't want an update on every operation going on in the brain, let alone going on in the rest of the body.

As our brain forms prenatally, postnatally, in infancy, and on though to adulthood, these capacities are built. A baby doesn't have a big factory surrounding the not-yet-finished command post. As William James put it, to a new baby the world is one big buzzing confusion. It takes time to learn how to process all the input. And it takes time to put together a working self.

I certainly didn't mean to offend those who advocate for the interests of various snakes. It was not I who put the snake in the story.

I will have to take your objection to the identification of snake/evil tempter under advisement for now. You may be right, that the snake was not yet identified with Satan when the Eden story was composed, and I may have dipped into doctrine.

What was going on in the story is more portentous than Snake merely inviting Eve to doubt what she doesn't understand. What interest did Snake have in Eve partaking of the forbidden fruit? What was his agenda (or her agenda -- the snake could have been female; in fact, I have the distinct feeling just now that the Snake in Eden was definitely female).

Revelations is certainly later than Genesis, but where did the Revelation author get the basic idea of snakes not being reliable advisors (I don't know, I'm asking).

Note that the Jews see our elevation which Christianity sees a fall. — Gnostic Christian Bishop

good point

How do you understand the fall of man in a different way? — TheMadFool

The story is an attempt to explain why life is a bitch, and then we die. It would not have escaped the notice of the biblical authors that some, many, most, or all of our problems (depending on the situation) are a result of our own unwillingness to a) follow the rules, whoever announces and enforces them, b) take responsible courses of action, c) reject the seductions of various snakes in the grass who have agendas which are not in our interest, d) avoid really stupid policy and practice, and more.

For the biblical writers who believed in a just God, there had to be a monumental cause to justify/explain the enduring disagreeableness of life. Their artistic solution to the problem of the difficulty of life was to place in the story of Eden, where Adam and Eve sacrificed their innocence to the seductions of the snake/evil tempter. the cause of our daily suffering.

The faithlessness of the descendants of Abraham, is a recurrent theme in the Bible. Again and again they display ingratitude, disobedience, wanton disregard toward God. Gross negligence followed by unpleasant consequences. It's a pattern that needed a symbolic explanation which the biblical writers placed in the story of Eden.

The ancient biblical authors weren't the only writers/compilers of myths to explain the problems of the world through various kinds of divine action. Some parts of the Bible are straightforward (if biased) history. Some parts are liturgy (the Psalms). Some parts are law. And some parts are literary. The stories in Genesis are literary, mythic. They aren't intended to be literal explanations. Take the story of the flood that ends with the promise of the rainbow. It's a second creation story with a happier ending. We don't have to go hunting for evidence that there was once a flood that covered up the whole earth. Noah and the flood is another nice story that explains our being here.

If you read Job, you would not go looking for evidence that somebody named Job actually existed. Job is another story about the evil one and suffering. It is literary material, not historical. Don't take it literally.

In the New Testament, the lovely story of Jesus born in the town of Bethlehem--stars, angels, shepherds, kings, etc. is clearly LITERARY not historical. The authors who wrote that story were separated in time and place from Israel. The Temple in Jerusalem had long since been turned into a temple for the worship of Roman (pagan) gods [referenced in Jewish literature as "the abomination of desolation"]. A good share of the Jews had been deported. It wasn't a few years of separation -- it was centuries. The authors had probably never been to the former nation of Israel, now a province of the Roman Empire.

The Christmas story places the messiah in the right place and time (per literary requirements). We don't have to take that part of the story of Jesus literally.

1. We lack a complete knowledge of "good and evil"

2. God punished us for knowing "good and evil" — TheMadFool

Well, I suppose we won't have "complete" knowledge of good and evil until our time comes to an end.

Feel free to interpret the Bible however you want -- everybody else does. But in my arrogant opinion, I don't think god was punishing us for knowing "good and evil".

It doesn't make sense. Sentient beings MUST distinguish between good and evil, and nothing in the Bible suggests that we can get along without knowing what is good, and what is not good -- or evil. the Bible teaches us to do good and avoid evil. One has to know the difference.

The creation story wasn't written as biography, you know. Or history. Even if you thought the world is 6023 years old, it is OBVIOUSLY the case that nobody was walking around behind God, Adam, and Eve and taking notes. Furthermore, you know, the creation story in Genesis has common features with creation stories in adjacent cultures (in the ancient world).

The Creation story is in part the story of why there is anything at all. (God made it.). It's the story of why life is such a predictably severe pain in the ass. (A & E fucked up.).

One might think that in a world made by the hand of God that things would be a lot nicer. Instead of living in the grandeur of a spiritual 'house beautiful', we live in dismal shit holes, and carry on the way we do.

The creation story is a great piece; just don't take it literally.

If neither confer any survival value — 3017amen

I'm not a biologist, so this may not be precisely right.

That said, it seems like one of the principles of evolution is that new traits, capacities, abilities, don't just appear out of thin air in organisms. Rather, traits, capacities, features, etc. that are already present in some form are gradually modified until they are something different. For instance, early in life history, some multi-celled organisms possessed light-sensitive cells on the surface of their body which aided the organism in avoiding harm, finding food, or moving purposively. Eventually. these light-sensitive cells became more numerous, more structured, more complicated. Eventually they became eyes. Nervous systems likewise started out as very simple arrangements, and over time became more structured, more complicated, and eventually developed little brains, to which the little eyes supplied sensory input.

Music, or counting or calculation, didn't suddenly appear either. Organisms need to signal information to each other (warnings, mating availability, calling to young, etc.) and this is often done by sound. Making sound, and hearing sound, starts out simply and over time gets more complicated. Some animals make sounds with different pitch, tone, rhythm, and so forth. Similarly, counting and calculating come into play in very simple ways, like figuring exactly how an insect is located in 3 dimensions from moment to moment, and snatching the meal with a long, sticky tongue. Or an animal may need to know how much of something is available. There is a big difference between 1 wolf and 10 wolves, if one becomes the focus of wolfish attention.

Humans probably did not evolve from a line of animals that were capable of seeing ultra-violet or ultra-red radiation. As handy as it might be now, that feature was never in the cards--or the genes. We're not going to develop that kind of vision.

I was pretty sure it was Augustine, but I was too lazy to double check. Thank you for confirming.

Harvey Cox, a Protestant theologian, says this: Adam and Eve were meant to eat the fruit of The Tree. Cox emphasizes that in His relationship to mankind, God constantly calls us to fulfill our potential as God's creation. God, Cox posits, wished that Adam and Eve would decide on their own volition to gain the knowledge the tree offered. That happy event isn't what happened. Eve, and by extension, Adam, allowed themselves to be seduced by the Serpent into eating the fruit of The Tree.

So, God sees that the artificial perfection of Eden is no longer suitable to Adam and Eve. It was nice while it lasted, but now it is time for them to leave the cradle and start dealing with the kind of problem that mankind has always been dealing with. You know what kind of problems humans have to deal with, because you, being human, have to deal with all this crap too.

God keeps urging his human creation to live up to its potential.

Some time well after the death of Christ, the Church cooked up a plan of salvation which begins with Adam's and Eve's "original sin" and ends with Christ's crucifixion. Christ died to take away the sins of the world, the first of which was Eve's disobedience.

Listen, YouCrazyFool: For the time being, just forget the whole business of sin and salvation. Think about God trying to get people to be good, be ethical, be honest, loving, faithful, and so on and many so forths. That's what a lot of the Bible's prophetic speech is about: Live up to your God-given potential, people. Stop dilly dallying around in the fleshpots of the world, where you just end up getting gonorrhea, syphilis, chlamydia, herpes, warts, and worse. "I know sex feels good," God says. "After all, I created sex as part of existence. It is meant to feel good. But pullllease, raise your standards a little, will you!" You get a stiff dick and all judgement and reason goes out the window. At least go for quality!"

You can read Harvey Cox's exegesis in his short book, "On Not Leaving It To the Snake".

Your misinterpretation of the Bible is one reason why some people say that only adults should be allowed to read it. It is a richly complex book, and the uninitiated, unguided often make a hash out of it.

It is probably not the case that "music" and "math" evolved as we now experience them. "Music" and "mathematics" are cultural inventions, resting on innate capacities. Language involves a number of 'musical' qualities: tone, pitch, rhythm, and so forth. Our need and capacity to think about the world involves quantitative elements -- how big, how far, how many, how fast, and so on.

Animals which have evolved along side us also employ some of these innate capacities because they did have survival value.

Our evolutionary line has been developing these innate qualities for a few million years, and it is likely that the innate qualities mentioned DID play a role in evolutionary success. The first evidence of a musical instrument that was made to purpose is an ivory instrument with holes drilled at regular intervals. This instrument belong to 'modern man' and was made 45,000 years ago. There may be other, and earlier musical devices, which have either rotted away or we have not found.

Did musical instruments play a role in survival? Yes, because 'culture' is how we live, and everything that helps bind a group together and stimulate interaction has survival value.

At an early stage, I suppose, what mathematics did was make explicit skills that are implicit. You can throw a rock and hit the target because you are capable of calculating (not consciously) the required force, the necessary trajectory, and timing of the the throw. Other species have to do similar background calculations to be able to catch prey, or avoid becoming dead prey. But the first applications of math were (as far as I know) applied to trade, which is very recent, 5,000 years ago, after the invention of writing.

We have been evolving for a long time, and we won't be finding any evidence in the fossil record of how innate abilities that would one day produce music and math developed.

Monte Python is up there with the greats, in my humble opinion, and I have laughed a lot in some Seinfeld episodes.

My John Donne never saw a film and never wrote a screenplay. He died in 1631, London; he was 59. He is considered one of the greatest love poets in English. He was a poet and a clergyman, Church of England. What my Donne and your Dunne have in common is that they are both dead.

Here is one of his characteristic poems - about how likely it is that a beautiful woman will remain both both beautiful and faithful. It's read by Richard Burton who had problems remaining faithful, as I recollect. So did his wife, Elizabeth Taylor.

Donne doesn't condemn the lady in the poem, however.

In The Flea, he contemplates the parasite that has just sucked blood from him and is now doing the same thing to the woman sitting near by. In his day, people had fleas. Fact of life.

Mark but this flea, and mark in this,
How little that which thou deniest me is;
It sucked me first, and now sucks thee,
And in this flea our two bloods mingled be;
Thou know’st that this cannot be said
A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead,
Yet this enjoys before it woo,
And pampered swells with one blood made of two,
And this, alas, is more than we would do. (two more stanzas)

The flea has mingled blood that is not going to get mixed in any other way -- certainly not by he and she having sex. The flea is luckier than he.

Writers like Shakespeare's and Donne's writing was loaded with memorable phrases that have taken an independent existence -- like "for whom the bell tolls" or "First thing we do is kill all the lawyers".

What I said was in the context of, and stimulated (caused?) by TheMadFool's Latin quote. It directed me down a particular thought-path.

Generally, I am very tolerant of unproven, evidence-free statements--Not because I believe everything I hear, but as you said, "because it can lead to fruitful lines of thinking".

I do not have a dog in this fight, but it seems like Quod grātīs asseritur, grātīs negātur is valid. I can claim there is intelligent life on 23 planets, but I make this claim without evidence. There are quite a few planets that MIGHT POSSIBLY host life of some sort, and there is evidence for that claim. But there is no evidence at all for the claim that 23 planets host intelligent life. So you can say, "No there are not." with as much confidence as I said it with. "Donald Trump is a moron." can be asserted and dismissed with equal confidence. There does not seem to be any evidence for his being a moron. There is no evidence that he is a distinguished statesman, either. He provides daily evidence that he lurches from topic to topic in his Twitter pronouncements.

A lot of discussion that goes on here is based on assertions without evidence. This is an entirely normal state of affairs, because we understand that we all have opinions about all manner of things that are not supported with evidence. If we had to present evidence for all our opinions, we would become terminally constipated and would eventually explode.

There was a scene in a movie made from a Kurt Vonnegut novel, where a couple finds themselves in a bubble/cage in the middle of space. They are in a large bed. The aliens ask them, "Have you mated yet?" We don't know why the aliens care whether they have mated or not, but apparently they are scientifically oriented aliens.

The humans protest that they have free will and may or may not mate, depending on their wishes.

The aliens respond that they have studied millions of sentient cultures in the universe, and only on earth is anyone concerned about "free will".

POINT OF STORY IN THIS THREAD:

MAYBE what the aliens will tell us is that some of our philosophical concerns are nothing more than oddball hangups. Being concerned about free will and the meaning of the universe strikes me as hang ups. For one thing, we probably can not determine whether we have complete free will or are completely determined. And we can not determine what the meaning of the universe is, either. If we want the universe to have a meaning, then just fucking get on with it and give the universe whatever meaning we think it should have -- or no meaning at all.

From what I can tell, we are a mix of determinism and freely chosen acts. And if we are totally determined, then it still feels like free will -- so what difference does it make?

I do not think it is controversial to state that your childhood really sets a lifelong trajectory. Can we abandon this narrative that if you just work hard and make good choices you will succeed? — rlclauer

One's parents, and the head start they give their children (or not), does indeed plot much of one's trajectory. There are enough exceptions, though, to warrant working hard and making good choices. Up to the spring of 1964, I did not, could not plan on going to college. Several fortuitous events happened that made it possible for me to begin college in the fall. I did work reasonably hard (could have, would have, should have worked harder) and I could have made better choices about careers. I thought I would become a high school teacher, but I did not know myself well enough to realize how stupid that choice was for me. Things eventually worked out OK after graduation, without me teaching so much as 15 minutes of 12th grade English.

Children can often exceed their parents economic achievements under some circumstances, especially during a vigorous growth economy, and if one's parents weren't very high achievers. It's possible to exceed one's own predicted trajectory through life if one has at least normal intellectual assets and a lot of drive, and not too many unfortunate accidents.

Greatly exceeding one's own expectations and parental achievements shouldn't be counted on. In the long run of history, continual speedy upward progress is NOT normal. (In the long run of history, people more or less match their parents' achievements when things are going well.). Centuries have passed with no net economic growth. That doesn't mean life was terrible during those hundreds of years. Life was just very stable. One's life was like one's great grand parent's lives. Another angle to remember is that when economic growth does occur, it is never evenly distributed. The rich get richer, of course, and the poor get poorer. When England colonized North America, it was not the riff raff that benefitted economically; it was the leading families of England who owned the colonies, and made investments. "It's not the Earth the meek inherit, it's the dirt."

I believe we should temper the western narrative of everyone deserves where they end up, and place more emphasis on social responsibility and economic determinism. I would be interested in reading your thoughts. — rlclauer

Anglo-America, at least, has been fairly strongly flavored by Calvinist theology which holds that material success is a sign of God's grace. The successful man is successful because he was predestined to receive God's grace of salvation, and material success is a sign of grace. The poor couple with 5 sickly children are also evidence of God's plan of salvation. Their wretched state is a sign of their damnation by God, and their poverty is a mark of God's displeasure.

God's pleasure or displeasure is a flying fickle finger of fate, as it happens. It is quite often IMPOSSIBLE for us to perceive the virtues of the elect and the flaws of the damned. I mean, a lot of assholes seem to be among the elect, and a lot of very decent people seem to be among the damned. I say fuck John Calvin and his theology of fucking predestination.

So I have heard that "no man is an island" phrase hundreds of times. I just assumed it was some idiom. Thanks for the cultural learnin'. — ZhouBoTong

And now you also know where Ernest Hemingway got the title for his novel, "For Whom The Bell Tolls".

The movie wife of W. C. Fields, who played comic drunks, said in her usual harsh, stentorian voice, "You're going to drown in a barrel of whiskey." Fields' movie reply was "Drowned in a barrel of whiskey! O death where is thy sting?" Another line from a John Donne poem.

The source of power is the desire of those it subjugates. — Tzeentch

How does that work for slaves?

No, individuals determine their own fate, collectivism is a hindrance — rlclauer

I disagree with this option.

No man is an island entire of itself; every man
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;
if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe
is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as
well as any manner of thy friends or of thine
own were; any man's death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom
the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. JOHN DONNE, 1572 -1631

You understand, of course, that "man" is the generic for humankind, which includes men and women.

Certainly, individuals play a part in their becoming; we are not automatons. "Fate" is a really old-school concept; Fate deprived the individual of ultimate autonomy. (Or in the words of the Roman poem, La Fortuna, "Fate crushes the brave".) Our 'fate' for better or worse was determined by The Fates – or Moirai – who were a group of three weaving goddesses who assign individual destinies to mortals at birth. Their names are Clotho (the Spinner), Lachesis (the Alloter) and Atropos (the Inflexible).

The 'self-made individual' is a fiction of the narcissistic personality, the rugged individualist, the deluded loner.

We are social creatures, and without society and everything involved in society, we are no more than wolf-children, clods.

Exploitation is a recurrent feature of human behavior -- whether it is exploiting the land, the sea, the air, animals, plants, or other humans. It's what we do; it is a feature of our species, not a bug. So, as much as we depend on collective society for our existence, we also can count on probably getting screwed by our society. No one is exempt: one is either a member of the small group of beneficiaries of past and current exploitation (rich people) or one is the object of exploitation (that's most of us).

Now, despite all this verbiage about collectivity, it is also the case that individuals, singly and in combination, are critical drivers of society. Being a driving force doesn't mean one wasn't affected by membership in the collective community. Indeed, their particular community is where individuals learn how to be drivers/leaders.

here has been for quite some time an obsession with power and looking at everything through the lens of power, domination and exploitation. This narrative sells so well. Especially to young students. — ssu

what you say is true enough. The current crop of students (and maybe the theorists from whom they get ideas) seem to think that power comes by way of race and gender. Power iS connected to race and gender, but the source of power remains exploitation of resources--mineral, plant, and animal--including our esteemed animal selves.

Your Philoscience prof was probably correct. My impression is that the the old whore of philosophy has been more than adequately plowed. However, I doubt that either AI or aliens will change the situation.

Our putative replacements (computers and aliens) will have to deal with the same problems every other conscious, knowing species have had to deal with.

College does not seem to consist of strictly 18-22 year olds, anymore -- it has not for quite a while, actually. Good luck to you on your education project. It is a good idea to focus on study while you are in school.

As for unionizing a work place, one needs the support of an established union--there are a couple that represent restaurant employees.

I have shoplifted in protest before. — thewonder

I used to do that -- back in the 1970s -- until I got caught and had to pay a hefty fine. My partner was nearly arrested at a local grocery store for sampling chocolate covered something or other that were sold out of a bin. He was very humiliated, and was not doing it for politics, but because it was a convenient snack item while he was grocery shopping.

I spent a lot of time in gay bars once upon a time. (I'm 72.). Cruising for sex, of course, and to chat, listen to the music. I sometime drank too much, which sometimes is the point. So, at this point I've settled on being as suave or gauche as I am. I am what I am.

The IWW was/is an interesting group. The do exist, but nothing in the way they did 100 years ago. But I think their theory, their songs, their attitude was all good. You familiar with Billy Bragg -- a British folk singer?

Here's his version of the Internationale.

The Internationale
Billy Bragg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v85NWc0RIKc and Pete Seeger doing the original version in French

Stand up all victims of oppression
For the tyrants fear your might
Don't cling so hard to your possessions
For you have nothing if you have no rights
Let racist ignorance be ended
For respect makes the empires fall
Freedom is merely privilege extended
Unless enjoyed by one and all

So come brothers and sisters
For the struggle carries on
The internationale
Unites the world in song
So comrades come rally
For this is the time and place
The international ideal
Unites the human race

Let no one build walls to divide us
Walls of hatred nor walls of stone
Come greet the dawn and stand beside us
We'll live together or we'll die alone
In our world poisoned by exploitation
Those who have taken now they must give
And end the vanity of nations
We've but one earth on which to live

And so begins the final drama
In the streets and in the fields
We stand unbowed before their armor
We defy their guns and shields
When we fight provoked by their aggression
Let us be inspired by like and love
For though they offer us concessions
Change will not come from above
Billy Bragg

So, again, good luck to you, and much success.

I'm a bit of lifestylist and a utopian idealist who isn't too terribly involved with the labor movement. — thewonder

I've was involved in a leftist political group for 15 years, but was a union member all of about 15 months. I've always worked in the NGO sector of the economy -- the non-profits -- and they are very rarely unionized. The one time I was able to join a union was when I worked for the U of MN, for a short period of time. I wasn't impressed by the AFSCME local.

Many of us are life stylists and utopian idealists. My favorite political day dreams are utopian. The problem with me was that I didn't really practice the kind of lifestyle I would have liked to lived on a sustained basis. Had I done so, I'd probably be dead 20 or 30 years ago. I wanted to be a man-about-the-gay-town; suave; a coherent radical (some were, some were not); a notable person. Trouble was, I didn't know how to be all that--at least not until I was too old to be that kind of person.

Plus I was pulled in other directions. That was really the problem -- I was pulled by short-term enthusiasms rather than sticking with the main chance. And all of this is about life style, ideals, and all that.

I actually think that too much of the Left is ostensibly opposed to radical reform motivated by some sort of revolutionary notions. — thewonder

Much of the left has its collective head up its collective ass. The insistence on revolution over reform gets one off the hook of having to figure out what to do to make things 10% better right now. It's easier to just say, "oh, woe, reform just undermines the revolution. We mustn't settle for reform because then the revolution won't happen." Bull shit. Get out there and work for whatever gains you can get. Everybody will be better off, and you just keep working for the revolution.

Do you think that the political system could be meaningfully, substantially, and radically altered without waging something like a general strike? — thewonder

No. Though, when you think about it, "a general strike" in this country would already be pretty radical. Workers in France have done it a number of times; students have joined in (and visa versa). But France's history and political experience is much different than hours.

But it would take more than a general strike. It would require a genuine political alternative that was organized, powerful, extremely broad based, and popular. It would take a disciplined movement of workers, unemployed, youth, and seniors. The protest movement in Hong Kong demonstrates discipline. Without it, they would have fizzled many demonstrations earlier. The labor movement in the US has demonstrated disciplined solidarity, like when they forced the Big Auto companies to negotiate with them back in the 1930s. A lack of discipline is revealed when union members cross their own picket line. That has happened on more than one occasion.

Very eloquent. Now follow that up with a full faced grovel on the floor of the main drag in St. Pete's big basilica while the college of cardinals walks all over you, and maybe then we'll reconsider your case.

Or... maybe not. It depends on whether your act of contrition meets the hazy qualifications for being genuine, authentic, and true.

The whole idea of either convincing the United States Military to wage a coup d'état or to actually combat them is, to me, just totally absurd. — thewonder

Wise revolutionaries do not take on powerful armed forces even with a batch of citizen soldiers armed with assault rifles. Daniel DeLeon proposed that socialists living in democratic countries would be best advised to use the available democratic machinery--free speech, the right to vote, freedom of assembly, and so forth. One key element which for DeLeon was key was extensive union organizing. Laws have been accumulating on the books for the last 60 years which heavily tilt the field (not a level playing field) against organization and unionism. That creates more obstacles but does not make organizing impossible.

Heavily unionized work forces, on industrial lines -- all auto workers, all oil workers, all maintenance workers, etc., have real leverage to force changes in the work place, including less opposition to unions. The well organized workforce, and the well-educated public can complete some of the central revolutionary tasks at the ballot box, but they have to be widely and well organized, both. 4%, 7%, 12% of the population isn't enough. Socialists need to be able to turn out majorities in elections (or at least, people who vote for socialist candidates, whether they themselves consider themselves socialist.

I don't see 12% of eligible voters casting ballots for socialists in the next election, let alone a majority. Success in this endeavor is many years away, following a lot of very hard work in the political/union/propaganda fields. There's nothing impossible about it. (I'm quite aware of how strong the grip of the existing political system is.).

Chou Enlai, the former PM of The People's Republic China (back in the mid-20th century) was asked whether he thought the French Revolution was a good thing. He said, "It's too early to tell." The story is almost certainly apocryphal, but it suggests that one should be cautious about judging revolutions too soon, or maybe too positively or too negatively.

The American Revolution took quite some time to deliver on its Enlightenment heritage (per @Schopenhauer but it did, eventually, deliver some of the promise. It took at least 200 years for some of the promised goods to arrive.

The Revolutions of 1905 and 1917 in Russia (which brought about the USSR) was a mixed bag. The 300 year rule of Romanov despots (only occasionally enlightened) was nothing to celebrate, something that needed to end. The Russian Revolution was fucked from the getgo. Russia had little experience with industrialism (some, not a lot), no experience with democratic government, low levels of educational attainment in the masses, an entrenched wealthy class, and so on and so forth. It's not surprising that it didn't turn out well.

Germany was a much better location for a socialist revolution, and there was a good chance that a socialist revolution could have succeeded there, had it not been for the crude political/violent methods of the German national "socialism" (sic) aka, the Nazis.

I totally agree about the importance of the enlightenment in establishing the concept of universal rights and unifying concept of man. It is a long bridge from positing the rights of man to institutionalizing them. We're still working on that part. And I agree on the desirability of abandoning tribalism.

Your opinions stated here are vulgar and absurd.

Merely being born somewhere does not amount to signing a contract — alcontali

"Merely" being born somewhere is all that it takes to become subject to this unwritten, unsigned "contract". You are taking the libertarian approach here, of course. "I owe no one anything! I touch no one and no one touches me. I am a rock, I am an Island, and an Island never cries..."

As far as I am concerned, the millennials have no obligation whatsoever to pay for the retirement benefits of the baby boomers. — alcontali

Of course you would think that, given your peculiar view of the world. [Not you, personally, but the entire cohort of all you ungrateful wretches.] Of course, in your scheme the baby boomers had no obligation to nurture, house, feed, and educate you either. They could have saved themselves a great deal of trouble by not conceiving you in the first place, or having the misfortune of giving birth to you, dashed your brains out on the nearest brick wall.

And since you resent the favors done for you, you can start paying for all the products and services which you received before becoming a libertarian.

Just don't pay! — alcontali

Stop with the whining and get back to work. Earn as much as you fucking can so the government can rob you of enough to keep me in the lap of SSA luxury.

Obviously the attractive "universal rights of man" were a problem right out of the gate. We had been practicing slavery for a century, in 1776, which fits poorly with the enlightenment ideal.

Colonial North America was a very stratified society, nothing like an egalitarian community. Most Americans did not have suffrage, for instance -- only about 6% did, propertied white male citizens. Most Americans were counted as riff raft by the elite. Our elite inherited the attitudes of the British elite who considered the poor, the landless, the worker as little more than white trash.

Yes, they were making it up as they went along. That's pretty much what people do, everywhere. There aren't any manuals that tell us how to assemble a society from scratch.

The slave-holding FF probably recognized the contradiction between their ownership of slaves and "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness". etc. but... Jefferson was chronically in debt and freeing his slaves would have had very negative economic consequences. When the push of ideals meets the pull of economic necessity, it's always a risky bet to assume that ideals will rule the day.

The elites were not happy about the riff raff taking off over the Appalachian Mountains into Kentucky Territory, western Virginia, the Northwest Territory (Ohio), and so on. The elite planned for them to do the heavy lifting, of course, but they didn't want the white trash rushing out ahead of them, settling, establishing communities, and so on -- without their express permission, and profit. And, of course, many of the riff raff often had difficulty once they arrived wherever they thought they were going. Successful settling unsettled land all by one's self was a really difficult thing to succeed at.

Our current system of government no longer works. — Pantagruel

Of course our current system of government works -- it works as well now as it ever did. Just because the current system is not working for you, or for me, or for most people, doesn't mean it isn't working as designed.

As far as I can tell, the Founding Fathers NEVER intended an egalitarian distribution of wealth. Most people (like 94%) couldn't vote in the US in the 18th century. White men who didn't own property finally gained suffrage in all of the states around 1850. Black men didn't get voting rights till after the Civil War. Women didn't get the vote until 1920. The political and economic elite of the United States has neither liked nor trusted working class people. Most people (at least 80%) are working class. That there is a huge population of "middle class" people is a falsehood aimed at class division. There are some middle class people -- maybe 10% - 15%of the population.

It seems to me that a real, "informal" social contract covers much more than government. It involves how we interact with each other. The informal social contract seems to operate pretty well most of the time in most places. There are continual isolated breakdowns -- like drunk driving, public fighting, gun play (not talking about mass killers -- more the idiots who start shooting at each other and the wildly fired bullets go through houses and kill people), child neglect, etc. -- but by and large people stay within the "social contract of common behavior" because it works, it's safer, it's more effective.

we can manage to live without the printing press, internet and other facilities — Wittgenstein

Of course we can -- our hunter-gatherers managed to live without all of it, for what, 200,000 years? But without the Gutenberg Revolution maintained, intellectual life as we have known it for the last 580 years will come to a screeching halt. We don't absolutely need all the tech we have used for the last several hundred years, let alone the 20th century tech. Remember, though, that the Grecian and Roman philosophers operated at the top of the social pile, with a lot of human labor needed to maintain the upper levels.

When the Western Roman Empire fell apart, the intellectual traditions of the ancient world were just barely preserved, or they were lost. The Medieval elites of Europe, and the monasteries, held on to a hunk of it, but most of it disappeared. Life was much simpler in the centuries following, closer to the soil for sure. We don't want to repeat that sort of loss.

Look, I agree we are suffocating in material excess, and the heaps of stuff that tower over us are mostly entirely unnecessary and/or run counter to our good health and happiness. Circumstances may yet require us to learn how to get along without all this accumulated dross, but let's not throw out the gold with the trash.

Living in society involves negotiating the rules and regulations. IF one wants to be naked in public, one should expect a certain level of resistance. One can probably find a beach or park where people can get away with nakedness, but walking stark naked into Macy's or Target will not fly 99.99% of the time.

I approve of gay sex in the park and nude beaches (preferably with sex options) but I don't want sex and nakedness everywhere. It's distracting, for one thing. It's a major crossing of boundaries, which most people find annoying. There are reasons why stores and restaurants have "no shirt, no shoes, no service" rules.

Though, as far as clothing goes, I'm pretty tolerant. I find overly weird costumes off-putting, but I don't call the cops whenever I see somebody dressed strangely.

Materialism is a spiritual sickness and progress always happens in ideals and ideas not in building skyscrapers and countless industrial units. — Wittgenstein

Ideals and ideas are a fine thing, but The Philosophy Forum, Wikipedia, your favorite publishing house and preferred media outlet, and so on wouldn't exist if it weren't for all that plethora of industrial units (computers, cables, routers, server farms, high speed printing presses, broadcast equipment, electricity, telephones, and so on.

It takes a fair amount of devotion to material stuff, unless one is going to live in a box under a bridge, and even then, you need the box, the bridge, a blanket or two...

The idea of a universal salary is naive and l doubt if it will stop people from participating in a rat race. — Wittgenstein

One of the reasons it won't stop people from running the rat race is that the "universal wage" is, in one version, intended to provide a survival income base for people whose jobs have been eliminated by computers or automation. It's nothing like a 'living wage'. Another version of the universal wage is that it would be available to everybody -- universal. It would allow more self-development (education) and allow for more risk-taking. It is pitched as a good sized supplement. The universal wage isn't intended to finance a nation of philosophers and artists.

Such a goal is not only naive, it's absurd. Most people don't want to spend their days studying philosophy or very much else. It isn't that most people are stupid, or troglodytes, or beer-swilling slobs (even if some are). A lot of people are not adept at productively filling vast stretches of time. They like structure; they live and work well with in a structured environment. Or, they might spend their days listening to National Public Radio, or laying on the couch, smoking, and watching TV. And so on.

The rat race yields rewards--like money, social contact, a sense of belonging, having a role.

I'm not sure that "production" can be de-ratted. It's a treadmill, and once on...

people cease to be people, instead functioning as cogs in a machine whose purpose it is to produce the necessities of life so that people can afterwards be and do the things that what I would argue is what makes us people, viz. the act of socializing, Art, philosophy, and exchange of ideas, beauty, truth, humor, love, and community and belonging to reality. — Noah Te Stroete

Our hunter-gatherer ancestors found the necessities that allowed them to "be people". They left behind some stone tools, the very occasional piece of art, and bones -- their own and bones what they ate. They had time, presumably, for art, philosophy, ideas, beauty, truth, humor, love, sex, community, and all that--including "belonging to reality".

Did they live in a Garden of Eden until they were expelled by agricultural statists who made everyone work in the fields from dawn to dusk? Or did they live in a great emptiness of few people, no great ideas, certainly not truth, and maybe not much humor either?

I don't know. Nobody else does either.

Once we settled down and reaped the grain we had sown, built our mud hut villages and later stone cities, it was a long time before there was a great flowering of what we would call art, philosophy, beauty, truth, and all that. It took about 10,000 years.

There is a very real question of whether "Society" which enables individuals to be artists, philosophers, thinkers, creators, ingenuous inventors, and so forth can exist without a lot of excess labor. Again, I don't know.

It seems to me that it just does require an awful lot of work to keep society going so that great things can happen. It takes a certain amount of hard-work necessities, and then beyond that, it takes a hefty hard work surplus.

pretty much every church that I have attended has had the same or similar messages and talked about similar things during the Sunday service — Maureen

Seems reasonable, since the thrust of "The Church" from the get-go was to preach the Gospel of salvation. All Christian churches share the same foundation document (NT).

I have nothing against the Mormons, but they are beyond "denomination" and head into heresy and new religion. Their peculiar set of beliefs place them outside Christian theology. That said, they do a fine job of missionary work, they have numerous healthy social practices, and, of course, their great choir in Salt Lake City, the Mormon Tabernacle Cheese Press (as one sarcastic guy called it).

The Church (all of them) are continuing to decline, and religion is continuing to evolve and devolve. There is perfectly normal, and we should not lament it.

What is lamentable is the extent to which real estate concerns drive the church. Lots of institutions the world over have edifice complexes, and that is certainly true in the United States. I love a nicely done building, but for churches, the needs of the building drive the program of the church. Keeping the thing up takes so much money (the roof, the heating/ac system, drainage and leakage problems, repainting, the mortgage, etc.). Then there is well paid staff, office equipment, healthcare plans, and so forth. After all that, the churches do not have enough money left over for the corporal works of mercy, to do much about feeding the hungry, caring for the sick, visiting those in prison clothing the naked, teaching the untaught, and so on--which should be their primary concern.

As for WHY there are so many denominations, it's because the US never had an established church, or law limiting the formation of churches--as still is the case in some European countries. The process of denomination formation (biologically speaking, its meiosis rather than mitosis) has kept the churches more vigorous in the US than in countries with established churches. That's my theory, anyway.

In On Organization, Jacques Camatte basically calls all political organizations "rackets". — thewonder

Let's start with a basic definition:

an illegal or dishonest scheme for obtaining money. "a protection racket"
synonyms: criminal activity, illegal scheme/enterprise, fraud, fraudulent scheme, swindle, scam, rip-off; shakedown

"he was accused of masterminding a gold-smuggling racket"

"Racket" may be used in a 'self-disparaging way; when some one says, "I'm in the insurance racket", they mean that's their line of work. — dictionary

Political parties might qualify as rackets IF they engage in illegal schemes to obtain money. The law is such that political parties have numerous ways of obtaining money without the violating campaign laws. Political parties are more likely to qualify as "rackets" if they regularly raise money on the understanding that they will pursue a designated policy, then do nothing in pursuit of said policy, or worse, pursue politics opposite the designated policy.

Idealists are most likely to think political parties are rackets. Realists understand that politicians generally serve the interests of wealthy and economically powerful individuals and groups, and they expect politicians and political parties to behave in their usual and customary groveling and ass-licking manner.

Lower case "new atheists" of the world UNITE. Since we've already lost our tickets on the Hallelujah Express Salvation Train to heaven, we'd best take care of one another in this world.