True enough. Suicide is rarely a strictly private event.

Maybe it could decrease unecessary tragic suicides of older people? — Baskol1

Why is a suicide by older people "tragic" and helping somebody (eg., older person) to die NOT a tragedy?

There are not a lot of statistics on the matter, but apparently people who have the option of commencing a painless death (say, someone with terminal cancer) -- not just the theoretical option, but the actual barbiturates -- they usually don't use them.

I think that what people fear in dying from terminal illness is the run-away chaos of disease: severe pain, loss of bodily control (incontinence, etc.) nausea, paralysis... lots of very unpleasant stuff.

Hospice can greatly reduce the chaos and discomfort of dying.

Maybe. Allow me to wade into deeper water that is even farther over my head.

Whether a discrete event is determinative or irrelevant would depend on whether the event closed down species' ability to reproduce. My guess is that the resident plant life in some places has been changed by dramatic geological events (like volcanos). If species were unique to the vicinity of the volcanic blast or meteorite strike, they might become instantly extinct. On the other hand, conifers, for instance, wouldn't have become extinct because of Mt. St. HelensNM because there are millions of acres of conifers nearby to re-seed the altered slopes of the volcano, and any wrecked territory. Some plants have very limited ranges and volcanism could wipe them out.

Suppose one of the global extinction events had happened 130 million years ago, just as flowering plants were appearing. They might not have spread and diversified enough early in their history to survive a catastrophic environmental change. Other plants, we know, did survive, because have thrived on both sides of the catastrophic divide.

Horsetail plants (Equisetum) are around 300 million years old -- they are a "fossil species" but they aren't particularly rare. They are sometimes called "pot scrubbers" because they have a very high level of silica in their stems (they don't have what we would call leaves). There is enough silica in the plants to dull combine blades when the horsetail is in harvested fields. It's hard to eradicate. They are a dark green with segmented hollow stems. They reproduce by spores, and were once one of the dominant plants on earth.

Most plants from 300 million years ago are extinct -- they were unable to survive the several big environmental changes that occurred. Conifers (gymnosperms) are another plant that survived from the period of horsetails.

Oh, dear. I though it was a Greek custard wrapped up in philo dough, baked, and served with strong coffee. No wonder so much of this site doesn't make sense. BTW, the raining on people's parade was self criticism.

I don't know what @FDrake is up to here. One should really not rain on other people's parades unnecessarily, spoiling the floats, filling the tubas with water, getting the horses all wet...

So, some volcanoes produce lots of airborne particles (which settles on the land, sometimes a long ways from the volcanic event, if it is powerful enough. Other volcanoes ooze magma which hardens and may take a long time to turn into soil. Dust good; magma, not so fast.

Central North America was given feet of volcanic dust whenever the Yellowstone supervolcano blew up. It's about due to blow up again. With any luck, it will blow up before November, 2020 while Donald Trump is visiting there to announce big cuts to the Department of the Interior. Maybe the Republican National Convention could be going on there when it blows. Get rid of the whole damned party.

Plant growth requires the formation of soil. — fdrake

Or, more to the point, plants make/produce/form soil. It isn't a fast process. In mountainous areas, it may take a century for the plants to produce an inch of soil. It's faster on well watered, temperate plains. Tropical jungles produce soil, but the high volume of rain and drainage wash most of the decayed plant matter out. Regular falls of volcanic dust would definitely help.

My apologies. One should really not rain on other people's parades unnecessarily, spoiling the floats, filling the tubas with water, getting the horses all wet...

I think we all know, Mr. Wallows, WHICH animal you will be reincarnated as.

So, why stop with Buddhism? Why not try a whole smorgasbord of ancient and oriental religions?

I see no problem with people investigating, trying-on-for-size, sampling, playing with, becoming novices in, and dithering over other religions suitably distant from the wicked western wasteland of materialism, consumerism, industry, etc. Go for it, but you still have to work out your personal salvation (whatever that may be) where you are, in the cultural milieu in which you exist, using the too familiar materials at hand. Just like every Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Jew, Moslem, Jain, Zoroastrian, Shinto, atheist, etc. has to do.

Your best bet will, in the long run, will be to "grow where you are planted". For you, Western heritage, no less / no more than the Eastern, is a mixed bag and has depths that are difficult to fully plumb. You have a long head start in the Western traditions. "Your people" are westerners. You are a westerner. You may think that westerners are uniquely monstrous colonial, imperialist, materialistic, polluting... blah, blah, blah but we are not. There is no escape, this side of the grave, from human folly. We are all (7 billion+ of us) bozos on the bus, messing things up as we go along.

Finding your personal salvation (whatever that is) will be no easier here, there, or anywhere else.

@FDrake & @BrianW seem to have been affected by the same energy spike bouncing around the solar system. Hopefully they will recover soon.

I don't like the way this article was constructed.

I don't own a gun but I don't object to other people owning guns, but if 1/3 of the population owns guns, then that has to be accepted (like it or not) as a mainstream, normal, practice.

The amount of gun violence resulting in death and injury is a public health issue of enormous importance. But let's be clear about this: All but a small fraction of gun deaths and injuries are caused by civilians, and in any community--black, white, or hispanic, the gun deaths will be caused by black on black, white on white, or hispanic on hispanic killers. Some deaths are caused by interracial killers, but most are intrararacial. White and black cops alike are involved in shooting a greater number of whites, but a smaller percent of the white population.

Black on black violence is concentrated in black neighborhoods, and generally the victims and perpetrators know each other.

Did not mean offence. I too know educated rural people, including one heading to law school with me But there are statistics showing that anti-gun people are more likely to hold at least a bachelors degree, and that the less education someone has the more likely they are to have pro-gun views and die a violent death. — Grre

Oh, I wasn't offended. And. I agree that more education tends to equal less likelihood of pro-gun right views. I think that one of the background processes affecting this is that older, white people in general tend to be more conservative. Older people in general tend to be more conservative in various ways, but because older white people also tend to be voters, they are targeted by conservative interests.

Another background process is that opportunities for educated people tend to be fewer and farther between in rural areas, so people with educated skills tend to move to urban centers. This leaves a less educated population in rural areas. The opportunities for advancement aren't great for them, either, but may be better than in urban areas.

Older white folks also tend to stay in rural areas. So, one has less educated, older people, people with fewer opportunities forming the bulk of the population. This fits the hilly agricultural county I grew up in, and 55 years later, it is still like that. It's something like 92% white. There are only very small towns (less than 2500, with maybe one exception of 3000 people. It's average income is not impoverished, but it is poorer than the average Minnesota county, quite a bit poorer than metropolitan MN counties.

Agriculture is always a dicey proposition, and that is true now. The difference is that the small dairy farm with some cash crops on the side, and a small herd of pigs and a flock of chickens or geese is totally obsolete. Milk, corn, beans, hay, poultry, and hogs just aren't produced that way any more (unfortunately). It's been obsolete for a good 40 years.

So, if this county is at all representative, I think a lot of people there feel trapped by economic forces they can do nothing about. (Of course, the rest of us are also trapped by economic forces beyond our control, but we haven't been totally shafted yet.)

Well, I don't think you have to worry about gun confiscation or a massive gun buy-back. Too expensive, too much effort, takes too long, etc. You know, some problems are just insoluble. The number of guns in the possession of American citizens is one of those insolubles. More than 99% of those guns are never going to be used improperly, but .0005% of 100,000,000 guns is still 50,000 possible fatalities.

The lunatic fringe is everywhere. The difference between New York City and Oconomowoc, Wisconsin is that New York can absorb and dilute far more lunatics than a small Wisconsin town. That's why I moved to Minneapolis -- it's a safer place to be a rural lunatic than rural Podunk. In a small town, a few lunatics are very noticeable. It's easy for the whole cloth community (to which the fringe is attached) to make life difficult for the small group of deluded, mistaken, misinformed, deviantly opinionated, bigoted, faggoted, torqued out, commie, rebel yelling people. Or at least make them uncomfortable.

ignorant, hot-headed people in my community who wave confederate flags — Noah Te Stroete

Ah, like one of my in-laws...

What people lunatic fringe about changes over time. When I was a kid, the lunatic fringers were worried about communists. Later they were worried about women libbers, hippies, and fags. Then drugs and motorcycle gangs, or welfare queens. Or Islamic Terrorists, or immigrants, or martians.

Hold, on there. I grew up in a rural community (and got the hell out asap) and am related to a number of people who also grew up in that sort of place, and might be, as you say, "ignorant, rural, poor white who were exploited and manipulated into believing all this propaganda by the elite rich".

That's what's called a "glittering generalization". Sounds good; probably not all that true. Rural, poor whites may be more ignorant than they need to be, but a lot of rural whites are not poor (not rich, either), and not ignorant. Some of them are reasonably well educated.

I do agree that millions of Americans have been manipulated into believing all sorts of propaganda, just as most people everywhere have, excepting Canadians, whose minds are 100% free of any propaganda, whatsoever. I mean, they see propaganda on the CBC and it just doesn't make sense to them. It's like the announcer was suddenly speaking Swahili or something. They, of course, never watch American TV or film, listen to American Radio, or read American publications, so they stay pure and uncontaminated.

NRA gun owners and non-NRA gun owners are somewhat different.

Here are a couple of graphs from PEW RESEARCH which clarifies some of the differences between NRA gun owners and non-NRA gun owners.

I have not heard whether sardines are individually unique, but researchers have found that honey bees can differ slightly. Some individual bees that forage (look for flowers) are better at it than other forager bees. Individual birds, which are more easily observed than bees, differ individually in various ways -- song, mating success, etc. New Caledonia crows, which have been observed quite a bit, not only exhibit individual differences, but appear to differ in tool making from one part of New Caledonia to another.

My guess is that most creatures differ. Does one C. elegans nematode differ from another? Don't know. One snail from another? Don't know. C. elegans only has 900+ cells in its whole body, so... not much to work with. Bees have far more cells than that in their brains.

In all animals, including our esteemed selves, there is an interplay in the ways we are all alike and the ways we are all different. Humans exhibit a remarkable degree of sameness from person to person, which is appropriate since we are a species, not de novo creatures.

More positively, the Amish are preserving a "green" way of life we might need to emulate, one of these days. They don't consume excessively; the successfully use pre-chemical industry methods of agriculture; they live fairly well without electricity.

The way the Amish live is, after all, the way pretty much everybody lived 170 years ago, before electricity, before telephones, before autos, airplanes, and all that. We won't live like we do now, if we emulate the Amish; I like telephones, electricity, television, computers, cars--all that stuff. It's just that once we exhaust oil, and once we really cut back on CO2 emissions (along with methane and other greenhouse gases) we won't have much of a choice. It will be back to reading books, playing board games, riding a horse if you are rich enough to afford one (they were expensive), working much harder than we do now just to live, never mind employment.

Am I looking forward to doing laundry by hand? Absolutely Not! Am I looking forward to tending a big garden? Not at my age, I'm not. Am I looking forward to heating with wood, if I had to? No indeed--more hard work. Am I looking forward to hauling water, using an outhouse, etc? I have, I could. Not looking forward to it.

Can we feed 340 million Americans with horsepower? No. 8 billion on earth? Clearly not. What will happen to all these people we can't feed? Let's talk about something else.

They were always in power — Grre

The NRA hasn't always been powerful. At some point, less than 70 years ago, they decided to pursue a strong political program to insure that "gun rights" (something that had previously been a minor issue, if an issue at all) would be promoted/protected as a constitutional right. They collected allies, donations, and sympathetic congressmen (suckers all) to do their bidding. Their propaganda was effective. Here we are with gun rights being more important than massacres.

May God damn the NRA to the depths of hell.

It's interesting: I have no idea whether your historical claim about the State being a critical development in wrenching us up out of a state of nature is true. But I do know that Chomsky would take serious issue with it. I believe he locked horns with Pinker on just this issue. — Virgo Avalytikh

Pinker's claim is certainly debatable. He based it not on crime stats, but on archeological evidence of the number of found skulls that showed signs of a violent death (crushed skull bones, for instance) and the number of found skulls that were intact. Pinker's contemporaneous evidence indicates that where the state is weakest, and where the citizens disrespect the state, pursue justice themselves, and subscribe to an 'honor system' the rate of violence is highest. One of the places where these conditions apply is the American South. Violent death at the hands of one's fellow citizens is much, much higher there than in places like New England or the Upper Midwest. In New England and the Upper Midwest citizens tend to have a strong civil culture which respects civil institutions, the states are well funded to carry out their functions, DIY justice is anathema, and the prickly personal honor system is mostly absent.

Some how one has to account for one area of the country having one of the highest rates of violence, and another area -- with a different cultural heritage -- having a very low rate, about the same as Scandinavia.

I would submit that pro-state New England or the upper Midwest is a better place for libertarian politics to develop than the much more anti-state south would be, because the latter are just "crazier" than the former. Crazy libertarians will just kill each other off before the year is out.

What you’ll observe elementally is a return to the distant past. They drive horses and buggies, wear modest attire and live in farms or plain houses. They like to live off the land. They are a type of cloistered sect (with exceptions), as indifferent to modernity, technology and social media as is possible. — Reshuffle

I admire the Amish lifestyle, though I'd probably choke on their theology. But Lord have mercy, they are not hearkening back to a long distant past. My father grew up with horses and buggies among ordinary Iowa farmers, and he died only 13 years ago (granted, he was pretty old when he died). They do live off the land, (they're farmers), they resist modernity, technology, up to a point, and social media probably entirely. But, you know, they consume modern health care services, and they finance health care as a community responsibility. They like to travel--by train, since that fits into their idea of acceptable technology, to their extended connections among the Amish who have spread out across the northern Middle America States. I've chatted with a number of Amish on the train over the years, and they're pretty down to earth people. It's not like talking to someone who just crawled out from under a rock.

Is a system of private ownership and non-aggression flawed? Yes, but not uniquely so. Whatever problems a libertarian world might face will also plague the non-libertarian alternative — Virgo Avalytikh

Your trimmed statement, as I quoted it, summarizes the human situation. The human species has difficulty living together when many share close quarters. The reason our distant ancestors (Homo sapiens, just like us) were able to live on the land for many millennia is that they were generally few and far enough between, and they maintained a very modest level of material aspiration. Hunter/Gatherers lived in some sort of equilibrium with the natural world. Were they saints? Of course not -- they probably killed each other quite a bit more frequently than we do because there were no over-arching state bodies to mediate.

Indeed, it was the creation of the state that seems to have been the critical cultural development that reduced violence among people (US -- not Homo Erectus et al. See The Better Angels of our Nature by Steven Pinker.

You probably have Idealist tendencies. That's not a criticism. The problem with us idealists--I'm counting myself in this group--is that we tend to privilege theory over the actual practice of the people. Thinking idealistically isn't a fatal flaw, as long as we touch base with reality regularly.

Consider the so-called ‘tragedy of the commons’. There is common land, ownership of which is shared by the community as a whole. Because nobody is individually responsible for its upkeep, it goes to ruin. — Virgo Avalytikh

England experienced a 'tragedy of the commons' in the form of the common agricultural land being enclosed and made private. The commons had been maintained by the community for a long time. Neglect wasn't the tragedy. The tragedy was the loss of the commons, not its neglect.

The management of common agricultural land was (is) well within the operational capabilities of ordinary people. Our distant ancestors lived "in the commons for maybe 200,000 years without ruining it. In more recent times, in England, it wasn't ruin, but a land grab, that was the tragedy.

Chancy events, like one’s phone battery finding itself empty at the most inopportune time, can lead one to nihilism. Life begins with a chancy, quite often inopportune event, and the unfolding events that follow may lead those without a firm catechism of some sort to conclude that life sucks, the universe is meaningless (it is), and that, therefore one one should sit about whining, bitching, and carping instead of boldly imposing a shovel full of meaning on the face of the abyss.

Logos. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

Another take on words.

We are but some of us less badly programmed than others.

Conservatives spend plenty, and all they have to do is divert a few billion from weapons systems to Central American Reconstruction (or some such moniker.

And what do you know; at the end of the previous sentence my laptop once again died. Screen went dark and it won’t reboot. So I am using a tablet now, which sucks. That’s twice since May. Perhaps it is time for the old computer to receive its last rites.

“The identity that matters most is one's identity as a human-being-becoming-a-person. We can be grouped into pairs, families, clans, tribes, interest groups, nations, and so forth.” BC quoted by JP


JP, I was probably unclear in my post. The identity that most matters to individuals is their human becoming a person identity. This isn’t the identity that matters most collectively. It seems to me that some individuals are demanding collective consideration for their individual features, even those “features” conjured out of thin air, like the various freshly minted genders.

One of the little collectivities I left-out was support group which some people clearly need. They then begin to confuse their support group’s approval for broader social acceptance.

“I´m 40 years old (probably older than all of you), and what I perceive is that we humans, both individually and socially, are getting much more sensitivity to differences. And also overreacting to their existence” JP said.

Yes, that is what I was getting at — especially the over reaction.

By the way I’m 73, and not the oldest.

“I don't want to debate about whether there was or wasnt a Big Bang. Instead I'd like to ask you all to talk about, before the Big Bang“ RK

There can’t be much of a conversation if you rule out of bounds the POV most will have.

It sounds like you would prefer Hoyle’s Steady State universe which some followed until the more compelling BB theory was proposed. You might even prefer an earlier view —

In the 13th century, Siger of Brabant authored the thesis The Eternity of the World, which argued that there was no first man, and no first specimen of any particular: the physical universe is thus without any first beginning, and therefore eternal. Siger's views were condemned by the Pope in 1277.

Whether I am anti-state, pro-state, indifferent or deferential depends very much on the state.

Just a personal tick, but I am beginning to wish people would just shut-the-fuck-up about all their alleged differences.

Yes, it is true we all have differences, and are kind of wedded to our many delightful uniquenesses. To the quip that "It takes all kinds of people to make a world." Winston Churchill drily remarked, "It doesn't take all kinds of people, there just are."

It is also true that human beings are fundamentally more alike than we are different. We are, after all, a specific species, and like all the other species on earth, we are identifiable by a mass of features which are common across the population. One of our common features is the capacity to come up with absurd ideas which verge on or slop over into the territory of the downright stupid.

One such absurd idea is that a man can become a woman, or a woman can become a man, and that once this has been declared, everybody should fall into line in acknowledging this miracle which occurs with singular rarity in the animal and plant kingdoms. Mammals. as it happens, can not change their sex. Period. You can slice things off and reconstruct, but sex can not be changed.

We can be grouped into pairs, families, clans, tribes, interest groups, nations, and so forth. But more than the details of clan, tribe, interest group, and so on we remain human beings, Homo sapiens, with so much more in common than that which differentiates us. We are, of course, individuals. Most animals, rats on up to the Pope, are individually unique. The identity that matters most is one's identity as a human-being-becoming-a-person. Because becoming a person is something everyone in our species tends toward.

Proud to be a member of the anti-Boris tribe.

It wasn't as if Europe had a lot of choice. The refugees from the Syrian state disaster just "arrived". Hungary was excoriated (or praised) in the press for putting up a fence, and channeling refugees THROUGH, but not TO Hungary.

Arrivals by the ones and twos ask to come in, because before 1 or 2 at a time, the door is easily kept closed. Hundreds of thousands of refugees, economic migrants, opportunity seekers, people fleeing disaster don't generally ask if they can come in, because they are more like a fluid mass who push the door open. Short of setting up banks of machine guns on their shores and borders, how was Greece to resist the arrival of so many? They, being civilized people, did their best to care for the arrivals before they moved on. Once in Greece, the refugees had arrived in Europe.

One of the lessons here is: If you don't want near by countries to collapse into shit holes, then help them. This idea certainly applies to Central America. We could stem, even reverse, the flow of migrants from Central America by a comprehensive development program which could do for the area what the Marshal Plan did for Europe. And we should, since we have been fucking this region over for what, a century at least, and longer.

In my opinion, the very first question is rather: do corporations even make sense any longer?

We do not need taxi companies any longer, because we have Grab, Lyft, and Uber. We do not need hotels any longer, because we have Airbnb and similar networks. — alcontali

What are Grab, Lyft, Uber, Airbnb, et al if not corporations listed on stock exchanges?

The first food chain stores disrupted the locally owned food stores. Sears and Wards disrupted retail trade across the country. The auto disrupted the horse business, and we are still talking about events a century past. What Amazon or Airbnb calls "disruption" or "innovation" is the old capitalist principle of "creative destruction". The "destruction" isn't "creative". The purpose of destruction is to get rid of a competitor in order to create new business. We didn't need CDs; the music companies needed a way of destroying the old vinyl record business so they could sell it all again. CDs have since been "disrupted".

The entire system works like that. Lots of women say that they do not need a man (as a provider). Why? Because the government will provide them with money and free services. And where does the government get the money for that? From the men, of course. — alcontali

Speaking of something steaming, This is unadulterated bullshit.

When a person becomes a person is a matter of convention. Some thoughts: — T Clark

I had intended to say that very thing, but didn't. Quite so: For various purposes we can define a person as an object, and we do. From the POV of the person as subject, personhood develops over time, with a gradual awareness of personhood. This gradual appreciation of ones own personhood continues to develop throughout life. All persons pursue their self realization within the constraints of their individual reality, which can range from impoverished to rich (in various ways).

Let me drag in another contentious issue: the movement of humans across borders, and the term "Illegals".

There is nothing at all inappropriate about defining an unauthorized entrant into a country as an "illegal"--illegal alien, illegal immigrant, illegal whatever, because this definition is limited to whether they are here or there with authorization from the state, or not. It doesn't affect or apply to their existential personhood.

Immigration activists, it seems to me, behave as if the term "illegal" applied to the person's existential quality. It does not.

Nations are fully entitled to differentiate between legal and illegal entrants into the country, in order to protect the interests of the citizens who make up the nation. Both authorized and unauthorized border crossers are full persons with the usual human mix of laudable and lamentable motivations and characteristics, but they are also "legal" or "illegal".

States and citizens had better sort out this very difficult problem, because more and more people are going to wish to be somewhere else as life on the planet becomes more difficult. On the one hand, we feel for the suffering of persons; on the other hand, we want to protect--we should protect--our own interests.

There will not be enough room in the coolest, richest, most pleasant geography for the populations of the hottest, poorest, least pleasant places on the heating, overcrowded map, especially if the most pleasant places have a chance of remaining pleasant. I don't know what the solution should be -- I don't know how we are even going to attempt a conclusion on the matter.

It isn't even a question of race. People in Scotland won't want all the southern English people fleeing heat and flooding. People in Northern France won't want everyone from the hot parts of France and Spain to move there. People in Northwestern European countries certainly won't be happy if all the hot, thirsty, hungry people from France, Italy, Spain, Greece, Germany, Hungary, Bulgaria, Rumania, et all decide to move into Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Norway, and NW Russia. 4 million lily white Minnesotans don't want 30 million lily white southerners arriving on their doorstep.

Very true. If you are criticizing the New York Times, it makes sense to criticize not only authors, but editors and owners. Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr. (publisher) is fair game. Institutions, of course, do not have "agency". What they have are human actors with agency who do things under the umbrella of the institution.

I haven't heard Chomsky speak recently, but as I recollect, he didn't shy away from targeting specific human actors. The thing is, though, the NYT has many writers, reporters, editors, and managers. Criticizing "The New York Times" is easier than naming every person who wrote something that adds up to the NYT presentation of Iraq, Vietnam, Trump, Obama, et al.

You think keeping up a sharp critique of the status quo, analyzing the way thinking is warped and/or controlled by major institutions (government, press, corporations, etc.) and doing this for decades on end is trivial? Cheap? And what have you done that entitles you to be so demanding?

Chomsky isn't God, of course. But I think you might cut him some slack if he doesn't happen to meet your criticism needs at some particular moment.

Chomsky's contributions are immense. If he had wished to lay out a political program, reflecting his political philosophy, he would have. I have found his refusal frustrating, but we can't hold it against him. He has done his part -- describing and criticizing the existing political world.

It is someone else's part--my part, your part, anyone's part--to decide what kind of political action to take.

Read Chomsky, listen to his speeches. But what, Virgo Avalytikh, do you want to do?

When do we begin to have personhood?

Somewhere between zygote and the grave, I suppose. I view "personhood" as a continuum.

All that a zygote 'has' is the DNA of its parents, and a temporary location. With luck, the zygote will move through the stages of development and become a human baby in about 9 months, and then be thrust out into the world. A cigar, but no person. Another much longer period of time is required before the young human can begin to apprehend "self" and begin to direct its self-development. All this time DNA, parents, siblings, playmates, caregivers, teachers, climate, diet, the biome--the terroir (think of what gives a wine a particular flavor) is shaping this person. Personhood is beginning to emerge. We can see the sculpture emerging from the stone

By adulthood, the human is closing in on personhood. Perhaps we have 'built out' 50% to 99.9% of the personhood we might ultimately have. For the next 15 minutes on to 80 years, we progress, but we are always on the way to the final act of becoming. We never arrive at Full Personhood. So, personhood may become richer and deeper and wider and higher. It may plateau early on. It may begin to shrink--by disease, for instance (Alzheimers) or by a slow flagging of will, of interest, of vitality.

A 'more fulfilled personhood' is possible and I wish it for any and all. Alas, not all will progress the same way.

Dying is the person's final experience and death is the end.

Sorry for the personal nature of this post. However, where does a philosopher go for therapy? As if the psychologist or psychiatrist could be prepared to deal with the kind of existential depression that comes hand in hand with increasing ones understanding of the nature of reality, or the clear ethical conflicts of duty that arise when our personal lives are rocked by tragedy and we have to consider the world we bring our children into or whether we even should bring any into it? — Mark Dennis

For some problems, you may have to heal yourself. There ain't no cure for the global warming blues Terrifying? Indeed it is. Difficult choices? Absolutely.

IF you need a therapist, I think you will find that there are psychologists and psychiatrists who are familiar with existential despair. Finding a good practitioner is always tricky. Good luck.

It makes a difference what kind of war we are talking about.

There are a lot of wars around the world (quite a few long-running wars in various shit holes that have not risen to First World significance) where no one has set up any rules of engagement and where anything goes. It can be difficult to sort out soldier from civilian; beneficiary from benefactor; good from bad; perpetrator from victim.

We have had Total War characterized by WWI & WWII--war as a great slaughter house. The enemies were great and evil enough to justify virtually any strategy, any weapon, any method--on all sides. So poison gas, fire bombing of cities, death squads, genocide, Total War, etc.

Are Soldiers, of whom fuel the scope of war, responsible for immoral actions that occur without the central guidance of the law? — SethRy

Maybe wars in third world countries, those long low-grade conflicts, are driven by soldiers. But big wars conducted by First World nations are not driven by soldiers--certainly not conscripted ones. In the First World, war is diplomacy, economics, politics, foreign relations, and so forth conducted by alternative methods, and the driving forces in First World countries are the civilian, military, and industrial leaders. (See Eisenhower on the military-industrial complex.).

Boris's Boy Sajid Javid bears a remarkable resemblance to Fester, one of the ghastly Addams Family.

Boris's Boy Sajid Javid bears a remarkable resemblance to Fester, one of the ghastly Addams Family.

I think that if potential students and their parents are aware of the problem and make clear that they will not apply to schools with a high percentage of adjuncts things may begin to change. — Fooloso4

I'm not sure, but my guess is that avoiding adjuncts would require one to attend very expensive private schools.

An excellent PhD adjunct instructor in Classics at the U of Minnesota said back in the early 1980s that college teaching was turning into 'migrant labor' because one could never put together enough jobs at one institution. One would end up running all over town.

The funding problem in state universities (like the U of MN or anywhere else in the country) is that legislatures started to reduce the state's share of higher education around the middle of the 1970s. Up until the early 1970s, state-owned high education operated with full time staff, except in emergencies like the death of a professor in the middle of the term.

I'm not entirely sure what the motivation was for cutbacks in state support. I assume that it was a conservative push to reduce government expenditures. Or it could have been a way to cut down on the anticipated over-supply of college graduates. Or it could have been a way of abandoning commitment to high quality higher education for middle class which was gradually becoming more prole-llike. Or maybe it was born out of a basic hatred of college professors. Like I said, I'm not entirely sure.

Grad students teaching courses is another problem — Fooloso4

This is another long-standing complaint. Teaching low level science or engineering classes may be good for future scientists or engineers, but the grad students don't seem to think so -- outside of the opportunity to earn money against tuition. What they want to do is research and pursue their own studies.

Basically, TAs are just one more way for the college to stretch budgets. If they could get away with it, they'd have them cleaning the buildings too.

Oi, the Union of Assassins -- I had overlooked their student loan repayment needs.

Well, alright -- needles between the toes, accidental attack by a dozen rare Australian spiders (in Central Park in the winter), decapitation by a weirdly malfunctioning Cuisinart food processor, or exsanguination at the opera.

The bible just plainly says to put away the things of children. The supernatural and literal reading of myths. — Gnostic Christian Bishop

I'm all in favor of NOT taking myths literally. Corinthians 13:11... When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.

I'm also all in favor of people growing up and being 'men' (responsible adult humans).

I haven't read much about gnosticism -- probably because of the Calvin / Luther dominance on my earlier Protestant thinking. I probably won't become a gnostic in the few years I have left. One can only think about so many things in a day.

No reading comprehension. — Gnostic Christian Bishop

Yeah yeah, I'm just one more too-stupid-for-words brain dead slouch. But really, taking on the title of a god is kind of hubristic.