I don't quite understand your Christianity. You almost seem to be culturally christian, but less so on the supernatural (but not entirely absent?). Are your beliefs anything like Thomas Jefferson who took all the miracles out of his bible? That does not seem quite right.

If this does not seem overly personal, — ZhouBoTong

My up-bringing was quite conventional and I was raised as a Methodist, which is mainline Protestant. I have an abiding interest in Christianity, but I rejected the beliefs of Christianity as presented in the 3 creeds. This rejection took a long time to work out, because it was so central to my personhood. I may be an atheist now, but I do not hold a grudge against believers.

I sometimes come off as an oddball Christian because I don't believe in the religion I am discussing, even though I have some positive feelings toward it.

I had conflicted views about homosexuality and Christianity for a long time. Those conflicts wee resolved in favor of sexuality. So, if I couldn't be a Christian and a homosexual, then Christianity would have to go. That sort of choice is much less urgent now than it was 40 years ago, because some mainline churches have decided gays are OK.

But the Church accepting homosexuality was not enough.

I suppose I am a 'cultural Christian'. I don't believe in 'literal miracles' -- turning water into wine, raising people from the dead who were decidedly dead and starting to rot (Lazarus), or women getting pregnant with an incorporeal angel (the BVM).

People can be "good without god" as the atheist slogan says. I don't believe in a life after death, heaven or hell, god, resurrection, miracles, and so on.

That said, I don't feel the hostility that many atheists have toward Christianity and the various works of the church over the last 2000 years. There is a lot one could get torqued out over, but... life is short--a lot shorter at this point in my life than it once was.

I'm not convinced that meat was a common source of food for most people (not rich ones) in the ancient world. Only if you owned many livestock could you afford to regularly eat from your walking supply. If you had only a few animals (more likely) eating one of them would have decreased one's wealth, perhaps quite significantly.

Among non-Jews, and those not engaged in agriculture or fishing (urban dwellers) the pagan temple sacrifices would have been a source of meat for some people outside of whatever priesthood was in place.

Many people did practice hunting, however: Western Hemisphere Amerindians; Northern Europeans outside of the Roman Empire; Africans; Asians. One large problem of meat eating was storage and distribution. The meat would spoil quickly. It would have to be consumed soon after slaughter and locally wherever the weather was warm.

Places with difficult winters were also problematic for hunters.

The Roman Empire supplied BREAD and CIRCUSES not pot roasts and circuses to its population.

The upshot of all this is: Large numbers of people in the ancient world had access to an at least adequate source of calories, mostly vegetarian; meat was a highly desired supplement. Only the rich could afford to eat meat frequently.

Yes. IF the kingdom was at hand, then it was irrelevant because distant future generations wouldn't be happening, presumably. But it soon was apparent that the world wasn't coming to an end immediately after Jesus' death.

In fact, most people live in the present, and their momentous experiences belong to that day , rather than to "all time to come".

An analogy: I remember the Moon landing on July 20, 1969, at 8:17. It was a stunning event at the time; out of this world, very significant. 5 moon landings followed, which deprived that first landing of its stand-alone monumental status. Had an attack on a skyscraper happened 5 more times after 9/11, the WTC destruction would not be as significant in our memories as it is.

As time passes, even startling events fade to some degree. By 1975 I probably wasn't still amazed about the moon landing. I'm not amazed any more about 9/11, either.

So, as time passed, the events that people witnessed in Jesus' life would have faded too -- not over night, certainly. But in 25 years? Probably. New experiences connected to the previous generation's witness of Jesus' ministry would have been primary. Their high points might have been remembering what they had heard about, but not seen themselves. Another generation, and another... before long the events in the lives of people living several generations after Jesus would have been of primary concern.

After several generations, with some growth in believers, it would have become apparent to the leadership that the history of the nascent organization needed to be captured and frozen, else it would escape them altogether.

So it was, and the loose ends have been bothering people ever since.

In the days of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph (give or take a millennium) a meaty diet was a rich man's diet. Most people would have been de facto vegetarians a good share of the time, rather than de jure vegetarians. Animal products were welcome when they could get them. Otherwise their diets relied on grains, legumes, fruit, and vegetables in season.

One of the benefits of having a temple (of any sort) in town was the chance to share in the meat of sacrificed animals. It wasn't the mainstay of anyone (outside of a priesthood), but it helped.

Fish was the most readily available meat (or locusts, if one was waiting out in the desert for inspiration).

Very true. Jesus is presented by the Gospels and Paul as an indisputable fact, very much like Caesar Augustus or any other famous person. The problem is "minding the gap"--the disconnect between Jesus and the witnesses, the disciples, the camp followers, orally transmitted accounts, writers, redactors, editors, et al.

Jesus isn't the only problematic person in ancient history. 99.9% of ancient writings were lost over time to all the threats that prey on paper, vellum, and the spoken word. It would help us enormously (or not) if somebody had bothered to chisel into stone or baked clay tablets what Jesus had to say. Fortunately or unfortunately, that didn't happen.

There's never a Time Machine when you need one.

What a bunch of bullshit. He's a songwriter, not a poet. I like some of his stuff, but people worship him. And yes, his voice is crap. — T Clark

Pronouncing Dylan Nobel worthy was, as you said, a bunch of bullshit, but in that case I don't really believe my own bullshit. I have no desire to listen to anything beyond his early work. If all his later works were to burn up in a music warehouse fire (shit happens) I'd not weep.

Songwriter vs. poet... I quarrel with this, because a lot of song lyrics read just exactly like poetry. It's amazing. Whether a great hymn lyric, broadway musical lyric, or protest song lyric, great lyrics read like great poetry, and I'm fine with that.

Let's make a deal: I'll now say that the Nobel Committee was full of Swedish shit (in awarding the prize to Dylan) and you can now start calling Bob's lyrics poetry.

we all got old — god must be atheist

Growing old is a very good thing, because otherwise one is dead.

People pick and choose what they want to abide by according to their interpretation of the scripture. — chatterbears

And this is EXACTLY what people should and must do. Unless you think the Bible is inerrant, there are passages (like the levitical rule about not mixing wool and linen thread together in cloth) that are now irrelevant. All the rules about temple sacrifice are now irrelevant, because there is no more Temple, and hasn't been for roughly 2000 years (the Romans destroyed the Temple).

The rules about cleanliness were directed much more toward spiritual cleanliness than physical cleanliness. Women weren't impure during menstruation because menstrual blood was unsanitary; they were impure for obscure tribal reasons. 2000 years later, ritual purity is still applied by some people (Orthodox Jews), and some people practice ritual purity as a form of OCD.

Most believers consider the Ten Commandments still in effect; similarly they consider the prophetic writings and the psalms to be still in effect. Christians believe that what Jesus had to say is still in effect.

Jesus even tells slaves to obey their masters. — chatterbears

You're thinking of statements by the Apostles Paul and Peter.

Slavery was not just in the Bible; it was the modus operandi of the Roman Empire which ruled Israel before the Christian Era. Slaves were expected to obey their masters, and apparently a large enforceement system was not required to keep slaves in line. For one, many heavy labor and agricultural slaves worked on chain gangs, so there wasn't much choice about obeying. But domestic servants weren't chained, and were in [potentially dangerous] intimate contact with their masters.

The "social contract" certainly didn't require masters to be nice to slaves. The slaves were property, and as such, masters could do with them whatever they wished. Practically, however, it made sense to be reasonably pleasant to one's slaves, because they were up-close and personal a good share of the time, and outdoor slaves were much more efficient if they were well fed, well rested, reasonably healthy, and so forth.

Slaves who didn't obey their masters weren't ignored: they were generally punished, and they didn't have a lot of rights to protect them. So, as long as slavery was in force, it made sense to be a good slave, rather than being beaten up a lot for mis-behaving.

That slavery is wrong is an idea whose time was quite a long way off.

Excellent choice. Dylan deserved the Nobel for his poetry. For some of his singing, he should walk the plank.

Something about such questions seems very fishy. — Wallows

He probably thinks there are no real fish, as well. It's like all the "How do I know I am not a brain in a vat... I am not in the Matrix... I am the only person that exists... other people are not real... nothing is real... the universe isn't real... get real... etc.

"The child is father to the man." I think William Shakespeare. — god must be atheist

Thank god I majored in English! No, it was William Wordsworth (1770 - 1850).

My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.

Your being is simply an expression of the universe happening — Filipe

This is true. The universe happens, we exist. And we are real. The universe is real, right? Things that happen in the universe are real, right? One of the infinity of things that happen in the real universe is our existence as unique real beings.

personality is simply — Filipe

To paraphrase Richard Feynman, the now deceased bongo-playing nuclear physicist (1945), "Nothing is simply". (He said "nothing is 'mere'".)

Another thing he said was that "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself – and you are the easiest person to fool." An earthier form of this is "Don't believe your own bullshit." Big mistake!

the people that caused them — Filipe

So, how did these other people get executive agency (which requires a 'real you') so they could cause stuff?

when you boil down that person — Filipe

I am willing to boil you down. When would you like to step into my vat of boiling water? I predict the real you will appear in the form of screams before your foot is submerged, never mind the rest of you.

If you're a pig, how do you know the farmer didn't sneak into your stall last night to hand you over to some mad scientists who removed your brain and hooked it up to some machine? — Marchesk

The pig would know because they are not up to their ham hocks in pig shit.

They are smarter than dogs, and they are not cute. — god must be atheist

What do you mean, "not cute"? Have you held a recently new born piglet? Warm, dry, pink, tiny little pig-snout, soft hair: very cute. Granted, an old sow that has been wallowing in the mire all days is not cute. Adult swine fangs are quite dangerous.

Oh god! That gives me an idea for a horror story where aliens with a taste for human flesh recycle our brains into cloned bodies over and over. — Marchesk

I'm sorry, but I don't see why brains would need to be recycled into cloned bodies over and over. It is more likely that the preferred parts will be grown in tanks. That might be brains; we don't eat them any more, but veal brains, for instance, were recently considered fine food (till mad cow disease ruined it for everybody). So, maybe 'baby brains'...

Why do they call it 'pre-menstrual syndrome'?

Because 'mad cow' was already taken.

whiny Israelites — ZhouBoTong

Whiny Israelites, whinging Romans, bitching Greeks, sniveling Christians, peculiar pagans -- to hell with the lot of them.

"hint, hint, we made this stuff up." — ZhouBoTong

Hint, hint: they did -- all of it. Presumably. Unless YHWH was actually dictating the text.

That would be fine by me if they made it up (which is what I think happened). The texts weren't "written" the way a novelist turns out a new book. The texts were first an oral tradition, gradually taking shape over time, being used, being refined, becoming 'sacred'. Then, at some point, they were written down. The texts became fixed, and we have a copy. The timeline is complicated.

The closest we can come to most of the whole Hebrew Bible is a Greek translation, the Septuagint. I suppose there are bits and pieces of older Hebrew or Aramaic texts.

You: John shouldn't have had been a thief because it's destructive to society, even though that's exactly what society have molded him into.

John: I have no reason to NOT be a thief because that's what society molded me into, even though you lost your stuff as a result. — Three-Buddy Problem

"Society" doesn't make people into thieves -- or saints, either. Unless, of course, you believe in absolute determinism. But, as it happens, you don't believe in absolute determinism, because you are proposing that we voluntarily stop giving a rat's ass about whatever happens to us or anybody (everybody) else. Thieves are made through a combination of social norms and pressures working in contrary directions; parental neglect (failure to instill the sense of right and wrong); personal proclivities, and more.

People don't become thieves merely because other people are possessive. two year olds work on that level (if child A takes a toy that child B isn't playing with, child B will get upset). even older children, never mind adults, display more complex possession-related behavior.

Your proposal that we not give a fuck about anything covers your proposal, unfortunately. According to you, I shouldn't give a fuck about your theory. Because your theory is based on profoundly erroneous assumptions, I am responding. So I give a fuck for the next 5 minutes, after which fuck expires.

"Giving a fuck" or having emotional investment in objects, persons, and places--all things of which we can be deprived--is not a question of morality. It's a question of animal behavior. Animals tend to get attached. Birds care for and defend their nests. Lions don't casually relinquish a kill to somebody else. We protect our stuff because we like, love, and/or are attached to it.

Your proposal to not give a fuck has to overcome morality; more to the point, it also has to overcome animal behavior. Monastics practice detachment from objects, persons, and places, and find it quite difficult -- impossible beyond a certain point -- even though they are in a closed off society which supports abandoning attachment.

Jesus advised us to "turn the other cheek"; if somebody slaps the left side of your face, turn so they can conveniently slap your right side as well. That might sound like not giving a fuck, but there was a give-a-fuck reason for letting people slap you around. In his system, your standing in heaven (about which he thought we should definitely give a fuck) is more important than your standing on earth (which he considered less important).

You are advising us to turn the other cheek for no reason at all. Personally, if I am going to get slapped around, I want there to be some definite and considerable benefit. That's because we are endowed with 'fuck'*** which we can not give up.

*** At the conclusion of Margaret Atwood's terrific science fiction trilogy MaddAddam, the naive "new people" wondered what the old kind of people meant when they used the word "fuck". The old people, soon to die off, told the new children that "Fuck" was a god, and when they said "Fuck" they were invoking the god. Very fanciful.

In one of his novels, Tom Wolfe provides a complete sample of "fuck patois", giving all the possible uses of 'fuck' in a sentence. If I remember correctly, he also provided examples of 'shit patois'.

Thought you would like to know that.

I think starting a new thread on global warming or climate change or some similar term would be interesting. It's one of my favorite axes to grind. Of course it won't be the first. You can do a search (search box at the top of TPF page) to get some idea of previous discussions.

I'm pretty pessimistic about our collective future; how fast the plot will unfold, I don't know. What I have read suggests that time is running out for effective action to have time to work, and beside that, not much effective action is actually happening. Consciousness of the crisis is higher than it used to be; good results for installation of wind and solar is being achieved here and there. Etc.

The bad news for us is that the degree of change we need to achieve, if achieved, will be shocking; very difficult to adjust to; very consequential. It means, basically, backing up to before the Industrial revolution. Another problem that looms up, along with global warming or climate change, is the depletion of affordable petroleum supplies. We've passed "peak oil" so are on the downside of the production curve. The good news is the curve is quite long, so we won't run out next week. But oil will become harder to get in the long run (with less than a century of diminishing economically obtainable oil left).

The end of oil, even if there were no global warming, will be a catastrophic change event, and is why we end up going back to before the industrial revolution. We can't lower CO2 and methane, and operate a heavy industrial society without oil. Our whole industrial existence has been predicated on cheap petroleum and coal. Oil is part of just about everything.

I've been influenced by John Michael Greer and James Howard Kunstler (they think alike and both use three names), but what they say squares pretty will with other authorities on energy, environment, oil, climate, and so forth.

As Kunstler says, we've been relying on magical thinking to ease our justifiable worries about the future.

Mother's methods are so hard.
By the luck of the dealers card
Mother Nature selects the dead
from White, Yellow, Black, and Red — Mark Dennis

I started with the Sunday school ditty, "Jesus loves the little children..." and tried to subvert the loving message. "All the children of the world. Red and yellow, black and white; they are precious in His sight. Jesus loves the little Children of the world."

There is an environmentalist saying that "Mother Nature always bats last." In other words, nature, like it or not, has the last say. Then there was your "So whomever has the best cards" and the idea fell into place. As a quatrain, I'd rate it as mediocre. The rhythm of iambic tetrameter doesn't work very well.

But... it's OK. "Poignant as fuck" is perfectly acceptable praise. It's about as good as I get.

I don't know what God's expectations are, actually. I know the prophets who spoke on behalf of God had very high standards. But every now and then, some prophet will boil it down and come up with something like.

... what does the LORD require of you? To do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God (Micah 6:8).

Or "Love your neighbor as yourself."

That's it. Simple enough, and difficult enough.

Be more creative Wallows. By the way, "Wallowing in the mire" was used by William Byrd, not the English composer but an American Colonial who died in 1744, or thereabouts. I thought it was cooked up by the Doors. The song was largely written by the band's guitarist, Robby Krieger, but was credited to the entire band.

Row row row needs naughtier lyrics.

Peddle peddle ride your bike
Madly through the streets
When you find a buxom girl
Bed her twixt the sheets.

Rev up rev up drive your hog
Right into the mosque.
You will cause a wild uproar
But Allah's just a bore.

Just off hand, I can't tell you why God doesn't lead by example. I can tell you though that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are descended from Abraham, not Moses. It was to Abraham that God made the promise of descendants more numerous than the sands of the sea. Something like that.

Moses is associated with the 10 Commandments, Exodus, and all that. God did tell one of his prophets, Hosea, to marry a whore.

When the Lord first spoke to Hosea, the Lord told him, “Marry a prostitute and have children with that prostitute. The people in this land have acted like prostitutes and abandoned the Lord.” 3 So Hosea married Gomer, daughter of Diblaim. She became pregnant and had a son. — God

So what happened? Hosea's wife behaved badly, like a whore -- pretty much what was expected. Why did God want Hosea to marry a whore? So Hosea could understand what it was like being the God of Israel.

3 Then the Lord told me, “Love your wife again, even though she is loved by others and has committed adultery. Love her as I, the Lord, love the Israelites, even though they have turned to other gods and love to eat raisin cakes.” — God

Apparently the other gods were handing out raisin cakes that year. Good PR move, no doubt. I like chocolate chip cookies better, but a very good raisin cookie is OK too.

That is the sort of thing God does to set an example. Well, there was the bit with Jesus too.

S There will soon be 8 billion people. Let's say 6 billion of them will need -- not a safe haven, but permanent relocation -- to what great location do you propose to move 6 billion people? France? North Dakota? The new arctic circle Shangrl Las? Tibet? It isn't that there is not enough land. There is space enough. What there will not be enough of on any continent is food, fresh water, raw material (for housing, for example), and energy for massive increases in heating and cooling. (The north will still get cold in the winter.)

Why will moving 6 billion people into Canada and Siberia not work??

Because, as the zone of tolerable temperature moves north (in the Northern Hemisphere), the thawing and warming soils in much of Canada and Siberia will be wholly unsuitable for agriculture. That soil has been in a deep freeze for eons and has not turned into even poor soil, and it takes thousands of years for good soil to form. Also, as "the zone" moves north, more and more areas south of the zone (prime agricultural land now) will become unsuitable for intensive, extensive agriculture.

Global warming is a long term problem. The turn-around in climate may not occur for the proverbial ten thousand years, or as far as our species is concerned, ever.

What I am saying is this: The unfolding crisis will be implacable. It will be like the Black Plague was for medieval people: Equal opportunity doom.

So whomever has the best cards geographically/financially is going to get to decide the fate of the rest of humanity? — Mark Dennis

That is the way contingency works in this world. The fleas on the infected rats didn't have any preferential options for one group or another. Those that were bitten by the plague-carrying fleas tended to get sick and die. Some people were able to survive the infection. A few were able to actually resist the infection. The descendants of those lucky people were lucky again several hundred years later when it turned out that that the same gene that resisted the plague also resisted HIV. Most people in the world are susceptible to HIV, regardless of their race, religious affiliation, portfolio, or degree of virtue.

Anyway, not to get too far afield, Yes: Whoever has the best cards geographically and/or financially MAY get to decIde the fate of the rest of humanity. To what degree depends on two things: how organized the rest of humanity is, and how determined those with the best cards are. People with great cards sometimes lose.

A highly organized association of 6 billion people determined not to do the slow burn in India, Africa, Indochina, the Middle East, and much of the Western Hemisphere can probably dictate who will go where. The likelihood of 6 billion people being well enough organized to decide ANYTHING seems quite remote. Not only must they decide, they have to figure out how. Don't expect a swift or effective solution.

The 2 billion people retreating to the cooler, not very fertile northern reaches of Canada, Alaska, Europe, and Siberia will not be home free. They will have plenty of problems providing for themselves, let alone 6 billion more.

The upshot? A major die off, and human beings will not have to organize it. We are already on the outskirts of the planet's carrying capacity for our species, and Mother Nature has proven and reliable methods of reducing populations.

Mother's methods are so hard.
By the luck of the dealers card
Mother Nature selects the dead
from White, Yellow, Black, and Red

Mother has no favorites.

Sorry, I didn't mean to snap at you. The reality of climate change is something eats away at me as it seems to me like a slow eugenics movement wherein the individuals who benefit the most from ignoring man driven climate change also have the resources to survive it and it's a sick joke to me which I'm sure you can understand makes my blood boil. — Mark Dennis

I'm not offended. The climate crisis is eating away at a lot of us. I expect the richest 1%, wherever and whoever they are, will ride out climate change in comfort. The rest of us...

So we might have to give up growth and switch to alternative clean energy? So we are asking the scientific community for Terraforming countermeasures. These things are possible, with the universe out there, the solutions do exist. — Mark Dennis

Global warming is an unmitigated tragedy. The "survival of the fittest" won't be based on genetics, it will be based on geography. Various places on earth will be more severely affected and some places less so, and that includes the first world.

Just take for example the "bread basket" states of the USA. This area has been under cultivation for a short period of time, relative to climate change or world history. We have been fortunate in having pretty stable climate during this time. The soil was rich and the weather was very good most of the time.

Bread basket areas tend to be flat. Flat land doesn't drain very well. Nothing more dramatic than unseasonably heavy rains can wipe out a crop. A lot of land in the upper midwest is heading for a poor crop this year because of unseasonable wet weather, with water standing in the fields, or the soil being too wet to cultivate.

If the weather is too hot, too wet, too cool, or too dry, too many insects ... poor crop yields result. The same is true in Russia, Australia, and numerous other "bread basket areas". As the climate becomes more chaotic and hotter, crop yields (certainly in grains and soy) are going to decline. That means less food for everybody, around the world.

Alternative energy is here. Wind and solar with batteries (of various kinds) are now cheaper than coal in many places. That's one good thing. But coal is still being mined and burned, and the oil business is doing just fine. Transportation has become the leading emitter of greenhouse gases in the US (Europe and Asia aren't doing that much to lower emissions either), and we are doing very, very little to move to quality mass transit.

The fact is, nobody on earth has any experience with the gravity or magnitude of the unfolding crisis. A big rock might as well be heading our way for all the strategic responses we are collectively making.

It is certainly true that "building a wall" will not work. If you are really going to guard your borders so that NO ONE gets in or out, you have to do it the way the Soviets did it in parts of Europe: double fences, no-man zones in between, mines, guard towers, armed guards, spot lights, (and more up-to-date), drones, robots, etc. Very expensive.

Obviously, illegal immigrants from India, Ireland, or Indonesia are not swimming their way to the US.

The technical means to keep track of illegals who settle in the US and work exist, but it requires that US employers perform their legal requirements. IF they don't, then the various technical systems work poorly.

I'm gonna lose my shit — Mark Dennis

Don't soil your Depends on my account. I wasn't suggesting that parents were responsible for what happens in US border control facilities. What parents are responsible for is crossing borders illegally with children or taking large risks--like swimming across the Rio Grande with one's very young daughter. What follows after that decision (being detained in poorly managed facilities) is--as you said--the fault of "TRUMP, ICE and this SHITTY ALT RIGHT GOVERNMENT".

As I understand refugee status, the bar set by the international system is fairly high. A large portion of claimants will not meet the conditions required for refugee status. Desiring better economic opportunities, the desire to live in a less chaotic country, and so forth do not meet the standard. So, most of the people arriving at, or crossing the border illegally, are economic migrants, not refugees. Any nations obligations to economic migrants is minimal.

I loathe Donald Trump as an incompetent executive, narcissistic personality, and capitalist pig, but Trump or not, controlling borders is the legitimate responsibility of all governments, and no nation is obligated to take all comers. Nations exist for the citizens who support them, not for all the people who just decide that X nation is a better place than Y nation.

Who Will Be Admitted is going to be a major issue around the globe as more and more people In an over-crowded world with insufficient resources and a deteriorating climate (and everything that entails) seek tolerable living conditions. The numbers of people on the move will rise into the hundreds of millions. They can not all go to Europe or North America, or New Zealand, Argentina, or wherever.

The tragedy of global warming and the concomitant environmental and economic disasters is that a lot of people are going to lose the competition for survival. I don't like that, but because the global community (that's everyone) has done very little to prepare for the climate and economic crisis, that's the way it is going to turn out.

In the short term, a better policy for the US would be assistance to the Central American countries to rebuild their economies and civil societies. In the long run (say, 2099) much of Central America might be too hot to live in. What we will all do in 2099 is... anybody's guess.

Is "scientific" the right term for the attitude of people who think that there are reasons why things work the way they do, and that with careful examination and experimentation those reasons can be determined?

I think I have a scientific attitude, even though there is a VAST amount of science I don't know anything about. But my attitude is that effects have causes. Things don't "just happen" without something happening somewhere.

Maybe the WASP culture has been criticized too much, and it may be valid that it should remind people of the positives in it, of which once again there are many. — Ilya B Shambat

As a WASP, I can assure you that WASP culture has indeed been criticized too much, way way too much. Non-WASPs just have no idea how tremendously positive and valuable (irreplaceable, in fact) WASP culture is.

However do not in the process bring back features that are wrong. Do not bring back emotional repression. Do not bring back coldness. Do not bring back meanness and cruelty. If you do that, it will always be only a matter of time before something like 1960s happens again. — Ilya B Shambat

You mean we can have the 1960s back? That would be wonderful!!! Summer of love! Berkeley Free Speech Movement! Rock and Roll! Gay Liberation! Giant anti-Vietnam protests! 2001: A Space Odyssey! Youth!!! Actually decent meals on planes! Men (WASPS) landing on the moon! Emotional repression, coldness, meanness, cruelty is something that every Homo sapiens can manage. Let it happen.

For me to actually tolerate or respect you I must understand your perspective. — Ilya B Shambat

For The WASPs to actually tolerate or respect you, they first have to have a good reason. We are scanning the horizon, but so far nothing has showed up.

I don't know, @Ilya; there is just something about your posts that brings out the worst in my WASPish heart. How do you do it?

Take this post with several grains of salt. (That's an old Jewish expression brought over from their homeland after the Russians drove them out in horrendous pogroms.).

Well, actually it was Pliny the Elder, but you know what I mean. Pliny got it from a Jew, no doubt.

Thank you -- I should have known than -- #1, having read the story earlier, and #2 her being my congressmoslem.

I don't know what the Minnesota Democratic Farm Labor party was so hot to put her on the ballot. Or Ellison either, though he seems to be doing a good job as Attorney General for MN. We'll see whether she gets re-elected.

Do bad things not happen to children who live in Central America? Do no children get sick before they reach the southern border of the US? Does being taken on a hardship road trip up the length of Mexico have something to do with the condition they are in when they arrive at the Rio Grande?

We can do a better job of caring for people, especially children, who are detained at the border. Doing a better job doesn't mean just waiving and waving them through the border and on to where ever they want to go. The borders between countries are there for a reason.

The parents of these children are also responsible.

Which one wasn't? And which foreign country did she come from?

They are "real" in regards to our inner world — Wallows

Yes, absolutely. Maybe a lot of our dreams are just run of the mill subconscious mumbling, but every now and then we have a dream in which the subconscious seems to be very articulate. Those are the really interesting dreams, to me anyway.

It's just illogical that we treat these dream entities as having a mind of their own in my opinion. — Wallows

Of course, dream mages DO NOT and CAN NOT have minds of their own. Dream images are a blurry reflection of the mind that dreams them--blurry because crystalline logic isn't a game the unconscious (or non-conscious) mind plays. One of the ways in which dreams can be frightening, is the possibility that the bizarre content of our dreams is ACTUALLY the way the unconscious works, and WHY the deal was worked out that the unconscious mind would never fully reveal itself to the conscious mind -- which if it saw the unfiltered subconscious in action, would depart our skulls in shrieking horror.

I don't "believe" in dream interpretation -- like using a chart which lists what images "mean". Like "a thing is a phallic symbol if it's longer than it's wide"***. That's just malarky. A better method of interpretation is to teach the dreamer to "free associate" to the images. In my dream, for instance, what images, or ideas, or feelings do the 'files" or "Marian Hall" bring to mind. "Files" bring to mind feelings of frustration and unease. "Marian Hall" brings to mind a feeling of security, belonging. (I'm not, never was, Catholic.).

"Marian" normally references the veneration of the Virgin Mary, not Mary herself. The "Marian Year" is a year devoted to Mary, not somebody named Marian. When I was teaching smoking cessation classes for St. Joseph's Hospital, the class room was in "Mary Hall". Perhaps that is where "Marian Hall" came from, but the idea doesn't ring any free-associational bells.

That some of the clients (both males who looked like clients I had worked with in the past) seemed threatening in some way might have some sexual loading. That association does ring a bell. There are certain types of men who I find sort of threatening, or challenging, and that's definitely about submerged sexual issues.

Dream interpretation can be helpful in a therapeutic setting, when people have issues they can only witness in dreams. It can lead to insight, but one has to work at it.

*** As the latter day hippyish folksy singer Melanie sang in her song, glory glory psychotherapy, as the id goes marching on. Her more famous hit ws about roller skates.

What do you think the stupid dream (above) means?

apparently "man/men" is the Anglo-Saxon generic term for both men and women. So have a crack at dream interpretation, why don't you.

I am a non-lucid dreamer. The characters and objects in my dreams are self-directed. Last night I was meeting with clients (of some sort). Their files were not just falling apart, the items in their files were moving on their own, falling off the table, falling into crevasses, getting lost in other paper debris. Escaping. The clients in the dream were a mixed lot (about 6 were sitting at the table) and a couple stood out for having very aggressive personalities -- a bit threatening.

The business of the file contents moving around, getting disorganized or worse, lost, is a recurrent dream theme which resembles some real life experiences trying to keep paper work organized. The paper usually wins.

Tell me what this means: the meeting with clients was at a Catholic college; we were in the basement of Marian Hall, in a room off very complicated hallways and stairways. I sent the clients to another building (like a student union) to give me time to straighten things out. They returned after a while but I was still sorting things out.

The geographical setting where this dream was located has appeared in other vivid dreams.

I was also biking from one nondescript location to another in the dream, and the road and scenery of this dream is also recurrent.

I was relieved to have the dream over when I woke up.

From very early in life we become aware that other people exist. All these other people that we observe and interact with are pretty much self-directed because "they have minds of their own".

Authors create characters that seem to have minds of their own, though they are strictly products of the authors' imagination. When we dream, we author (verb) characters that seem to have minds of their own.

Our dreams should have characters that act as if they had minds of their own even though they do not, since that is the kind of world we live in. Could we have a dream where we were aware (in the dream) that all the characters were merely projections of our dreaming mind, and themselves knew it?

We don't dream that way (as far as I know) because "other people who have minds of their own" is such a basic, never-violated rule of reality. We don't observe, meet, or interact with our own imagined characters in the real world.

Please bear in mind that men and women are not different species, and gay and straight people are not different species. Homosexuality is, as I said, generally not a 100% deal. People aren't homosexual (or heterosexual) 100% of the time. So there is no genetic problem with gay guys having sex with each other.

Homosexuality occurs in other species besides humans. Wild geese are known to form homosexual pair bonds, and go through the ritual of mating. They build a nest, and -- this is most remarkable -- sometimes steal eggs from other nests. The two guys sit on the eggs and hatch them. Male/male bonded geese tend to have high status because males have more status than females, and two males have twice as much. (See Conrad Lorenz: The Year of the Greylag Geese)

I'm not an antinatalist, so I wouldn't want them to not have children. Actually Homo sapiens did very well for the first 190,000 years -- really an excellent record of sustainable life-style and resource conservation. Some say that our first really BIG MISTAKE was agriculture. So, let's go back just 10,000 or 12,000 years and tell them that raising their own food will lead to nothing good, and that in time (all too soon) one thing will lead to another and they'll wish they had never been born.

So we say, "Just stick with the nuts, berries, roots, herbs, and roast meat. It's keeping you healthy, strong, tall, and sexy. So just keep on keeping on. Forget about making bricks, planting corn, and domesticating horses. The dog is all you need, really. We will return every 1000 years to make sure that you don't get in over your heads and go all modern. If you do go all modern on us, we will commit suicide by lining you all up and shooting you."