Part of the deal of being a 'sovereign nation' is the right to control one's national borders. Nations have the right and the obligation to guard their borders and decide who they will allow into their country and who they not allow in. Just because you CAN get around border controls doesn't mean you SHOULD get around border controls.

NGOs of a particular variety take the view that individuals have the right to go wherever they want to go. Providing emergency assistance to, and advocating for people who want to live somewhere other than where they are citizens is the reason d'être of some NGOs. They are entirely focused on the dire straits people have gotten themselves into by getting on a leaking boat and heading for distant shores.

The NGOs who bring the sinking boat to port are pretty much done with the refugees at that point. It becomes somebody else's problem then, like Italy, France, Spain, or... whoever. A few million people from Central America and Mexico decide they would rather live in the USA, at least for a while, and our immigrant NGOs want everyone to celebrate. Admit them all! Of course!!!

Free movement of people anywhere they want to go, and the obligation of nations to accept all comers is what we call "an unfunded mandate". An example of an unfunded mandate is when city governments are ordered by the federal government to do something (maybe build new housing for all the poor people) but no funds are provided to pay for the mandated action.

Human Rights agencies tell nations what they should do about migration, but they don't provide any funds to do it, nor do they take into account the wishes of the citizens in the sovereign country.

Even if it was the case that every migrant was a saintly martyr of oppression, sovereign countries would still have the right to say, "Sorry; no, you can't come here."

Certainly the movement of people on the planet is going to get much, much worse as time goes on. Global warming guarantees that, even if the predations of corrupt governments didn't. As it happens, they both guarantee an abundant supply of refugees. I do not know what the solution for this problem is.

It is too late to be antinatalist. If one were going to nip child-bearing in the bud, one would have to have been actively promoting antinatalism to the immediate descendants of Homo Erectus. The day we became Homo sapiens -- hundreds of thousands of years ago -- was the day you should have been out and about preaching antinatalism. Now with 7.2 billion people, it is just too late. It is impossible to convince 7.2 billion people of ANYTHING.

some actual person will always experience harm if born (the Benatar asymmetry argument). — schopenhauer1

The same actual person will also experience good--quite possibly much more good than suffering.

In the words of a song from decades ago, "I beg your pardon; I never promised you a rose garden". Life is a mix of good and bad. Everybody knows that.

Antinatalism, like perfect socialism, can become an idée fixe, an obsession of sorts.

Being born means moving into a constantly deprived state. — schopenhauer1

Since we do not live in a system of continual homeostasis, that's true. We are always running short of something. If you stop breathing you will run short of oxygen. If you stop eating you will run short of calories. An idée fixe can lead one to be deprived of philosophical options.

Life presents challenges to overcome and burdens to deal with. — schopenhauer1

Amen to that. Like the fucking grass is causing me to suffer because it is supposed to be kept short. What's wrong with long grass?

Contingent harm is harm that is situational. You simply do not know how much harms there are in life for a certain person. This creates huge collateral damage that was not meant for the child to endure, but he/she must do it nonetheless. — schopenhauer1

As I often say, "You just never know where the next disaster will strike."

We are used as "technology/progress" advancers by a circular-production system. — schopenhauer1

Now here I think you have an excellent idea. Being the pinko commie I am, I naturally see capitalism as an evil system of continual expansion, an all-consuming juggernaut, moloch, gang of ravening thugs, etc. that subverts nature to its imperative for continually larger profits which turns out suffering by the megaton.

Capitalism manages to produce a good share of the suffering to which antinatalists object. When will you become a member of at least the Democratic Socialists of America?

people cannot choose the historical development and societal institutions/setup that he/she is brought into — schopenhauer1

True. You don't get to choose your parents, the world your ancestors made, or whatever catastrophes will happen once you are born. You also don't get to choose the refined pleasures and cultures and other satisfactions that will be available to you once you are born.

It is also the case that philosophers don't get to choose the rules of the universe into which they were born. In this universe consent was not, is not, and will never be an option for people who do not exist. The not-yet-conceived do not exist.

To the extent that antinatalism is founded on the denial of choice to people who do not exist, it is pointless. Beyond this point (where actual children come into existence) antinatalism begins to have some real value.

People who do exist have choices (up to a point). They can decide whether they will produce children or not. The amount of suffering in the world vs. the amount of pleasure and happiness in the world is something for potential parents to think about. As the human population increases toward 8 billion, as the concentration of CO2, methane, and other green house gases continues to rise; as global warming continues to heat up; as the problem of feeding, clothing, watering, housing, and educating 8, 9, or 10 billion humans becomes more and more problematic; as oceans rise; as glaciers melt; as all sorts of things get a hell of a lot more complicated and difficult; PROSPECTIVE PARENTS would do well to ask them selves, "Just how much 'excess' suffering will the present and future generations have to endure?"

There are quite a few groups around the world working to encourage potential parents to have fewer children. The people who work in population understand that too many people, more than the resources of the world can support healthfully, is a cause of future suffering and something that we can theoretically do something about.

I am pro 'antinatalism' to the extent that I think human population needs to be limited, and actually reduced. We don't have to decide how to reduce our population. Nature is going to solve that problem for us, as she does for any of her children who get to be too numerous for their support systems. She has a suite of options available to knock down excess populations, and as much as we will not enjoy the process even slightly, we are subject to Mother Nature's Final Decisions as much as every other creature.

It would be like if someone was being paid to tell stories and told everyone who heard the stories that they are true, although (obviously) there is no way to know if they are actually true. But the person is getting paid regardless, and in my opinion it is immoral to be paid when there is even the possibility that something might not be authentic, or when it is being presented as unmistakably authentic to those who are funding the payment. If people were not getting paid millions of dollars then it might be different, but a million dollars isn't exactly chump change, especially if it is based on a sham. — Maureen

Sham shpam!

Maureen, dear, of course we pay people to tell us lies that are convincing. What do you think The News is? Or the history that we learn? It's stories we pay people to tell us and that we like to think are true.

Pastors get paid for telling stories successfully. Some pastors are much better at it than others.

Man invented the gods. It is one of our several remarkable creations, like the lever; double entry bookkeeping; horse shoes; credit cards. The gods, and religion, have come in handy for numerous purposes, so it has paid off. During the dark days of WWII the Soviets made the highly distasteful and most un-soviet of decisions to let the Russian Orthodox Church do its thing on behalf of the war effort. In the Land of Church and State Separation we have prayers before congressional sessions, prayer breakfasts at the White House (which obviously aren't doing any good), and swear in lying Supreme Court justices on a stack of Bibles.

As for institutions being to blame - it’s a convenient barrier we hide behind so discriminatory behaviour can’t be attributed to us as individuals - “I’m just following policy/doing my job”. You can direct intolerance towards institutions as a scattered effect or as an organised resistance, but you can also get informed and connected, and effect change from the inside. — Possibility

Attributing blame to institutions may be a dodge to avoid personal blame, true enough. Nonetheless, the many individuals in concert who operate institutions are much more powerful than scattered, disconnected individuals. This is true across the board. Individuals working closely together for some purpose (good or bad) are vastly more powerful than 10 times, or 100 times as many scattered uncoordinated individuals.

In addition, "the institution" may behave like a large solid entity, rather than just an agglomeration of individuals. That's why armies are much more powerful than civilians, or the government is more powerful than citizens, or the church hierarchy is more powerful than believers who vastly outnumber them.

"Change from within" is sometimes possible, but I would say less often than would-be internal change agents would like to think. For one thing, it is quite easy for institutions to identify and shaft internal change agents who have the potential to be dangerous. There is also the matter of size: An institution composed of 100 people is more easily subverted (or reformed) than an institution of 10,000. It's the difference between a high school with 100 employees and a university with 10,000 employees. Large institutions are generally fairly successful In maintaining their raison d'être and modus operandi. Change happens when the cost of maintaining the status quo is greater than the cost of change, and it takes 'tectonic shifts' for that to happen.

A good example of the tectonic trouble needed for change would be the Catholic Church. Dioceses and archdioceses have been bankrupted because they had refused to change the status quo of protecting priestly misbehavior. Being busted by court settlements is the sort of tectonic event it has taken. (Time will tell how much change has or will take place.)

Another example is Deutsche Bank; it was fined many billions of dollars by several different national regulatory systems because they flouted national laws. They were finally compelled by tectonic failures to close their speculative investment division and lay off 18,000 people -- all at great cost--but less cost than continuing on the way they had been.

Deutsche Bank wasn't alone, of course. Banks like Wells Fargo were also playing loose with regulations and were fined substantial penalties.

How would you respond to the justifiable intolerance of dangerous criminals, murderers, rapists, child molesters and the like? Or my biological intolerance of things that may make me ill? — Mark Dennis

As you say, intolerance of criminal behavior and disease is justifiable. The community and individuals can and should protect themselves from these potential harms, which may be preventable through good policy.

Our concern is when intolerance or discriminatory policy/behavior is not justifiable, by current standards. Standards change over time, but we have to deal with what we have today.

I'm not very interested in personal biases and prejudices, any more, because the real damage that is done to the victims of systemic bias, prejudice, and discrimination is carried out by powerful institutions and actors, not by fellow members of the working class.

Take racial prejudice. Racial prejudice applied to housing policy in real estate, mortgage banking, and government policy was a juggernaut, a giant steam roller, compared to the petty prejudices of ordinary folk. The FHA (a federal program) instituted a scheme of deliberate exclusion of blacks, hispanics, jews, and asians from the program's inception in the 1930s into the 1980s. By the time the official policy of suburban housing with low interest mortgages for whites and rented housing projects in the city for blacks (if anything) was abandoned, the damage was done. White suburbanites had been granted the opportunity for significant wealth accumulation and blacks had been denied it.

Housing policy segregated blacks in slums, contract-for-deed buying plans, or rental housing (where equity could not be reliably accumulated). Job discrimination--not by individual workers, but by Fortune 500 corporations--further sidelined the advancement of blacks and other minorities. School districts -- tied to local housing patterns -- again limited black opportunities. Concentrating poor disadvantaged children in 1 school pretty much guarantees poor results.

Whites should not be blamed for taking advantage of the good deal in housing offered them between the mid 1930s on into the present. Blacks should not be blamed for being the recipients of the extremely inferior deal which they received from the 1930s forward. The advantages of whites and the disadvantages of blacks are quite explainable as the result of official policies carried out with the support of governments, financial institutions, and major corporations--much, much more so than individual prejudices.

As a gay man, I can say that if you [hypothetically] hate fags and beat me up, that's a result of your bias. But if because I am gay I can not serve in the military, rent or buy decent housing for myself and my partner, get a decent job commensurate with my education and skills, and so on, that isn't your fault. That's the fault of large scale institutions who have set discriminatory policies. I want those policies to be changed. You can continue to hate fags [hypothetically], if you want. If you beat me up, I will definitely report the crime against my person.

I'd agree that our prejudices, both conscious and pre-conscious, should be rooted out — Pantagruel

I agree with @Pattern-chaser that a large part of who I am, or who you are, consists of a long list of attitudes, prejudices, biases, preferences, likes, dislikes, antipathies, and so forth. Purging every bias would be impossible and would, as the man said, make me like Lieutenant Commander Data.

I'm old and tame now, but I remember being a fire-breathing SJW decades ago and making the demand that attitudes, prejudices, biases, etc. that I didn't like should be rooted out. I was, back in my days of confident righteousness, quite willing to expect compliance with my definition of what was just and good.

I was a pain in the ass--because I felt entitled to tell other people how their personhood should be remodeled to suit my standards. This imperious attitude is often a characteristic of people when they are young and burning with righteousness.

So, age has snowed white hair on my head and taught me that I was just as prejudiced, biased, discriminating, and hateful back then as anybody else--maybe more than many. Now I am suspicious of the people who are quite confident in their entitlement to tell me how I should think, feel, and act. I understand where you are coming from -- I've been there. \\

See below.

Where did you get that?

Some drugs are illegal to use for a reason: cannabis, cocaine, opioids, meth, LSD, etc. are substances that involve various risks (great and small) to the users. Tobacco and alcohol pose at least as much risk, and should be as illegal as cocaine or opioids, if we were to be consistent.

Illicit drug users who comprise the market draw to our shores suppliers who are much less benign than the Jolly Green Giant. Drug pushers help create the market in the first place.

Most pharmaceutical drugs are controlled because their unregulated use would either result in negative consequences for the person taking them improperly or would result in their loss of effectiveness, as when antibiotics are not used properly.

Why does the Supreme Form of Bad not exist?

In Christian theology the supreme form of bad is personified in the figure of Satan. In the mythology, Satan, also called Lucifer the light bearer, rebelled against God. He apparently felt his talents were not adequately appreciated. He was expelled from heaven and sent to hell with his followers. Satan is considered the ultimate 'bad' because he rebelled against God, the ultimate 'good'.

Maybe part of the problem of identifying "the ultimate bad" is that people keep raising the standard for how bad something can be. At one time, the Armenian genocide by the Turks was the ultimate bad. Then Hitler came along and was much worse than the Turks. At one time Pol Pot was considered the worst. Then the Rwandan Hutus wiped out many Tutsis with machetes. And so on.

World War I was really very very bad. But World War II was worse. World War III will be the ultimate bad. Until World War IV.

What is "good" is like pure gold. It can't get any purer than pure. Good is good. A pile of garbage might stink, but then the next pile of garbage will smell much worse, and so on. "Bad" is more subject to degrees of intensification than "good" is subject to degrees of good.

Maybe. What do you think.

If the theory of Plato is wrong, why does it influence so much in Western Philosophy? — nguyen dung

Whether one thinks that Plato was right or wrong about goodness or government or anything else isn't the same as whether or not Plato was influential. Plato was very influential, and his views were substantive, meaning they were weighty and not easily dismissed.

the Bible and Buddha are also highly influential; either might not be right or wrong about a good many things.

I was going to congratulate you on being the first to use "colonoscopy" in TPF discussions. But no, it has been used before. Then I thought maybe you meant "colostomy" bag. Unfortunately, that has already been used too -- several times, in unflattering ways.

Ah! the problem again. What IS the problem? — god must be atheist

Philosophers playing with their feces.

The article said, "Kaepernick’s concern over the shoe’s “Betsy Ross Flag” designs connection to an era of slavery resonated with investors"

That may be. And from listening to many years of reports on stocks going up and down (like a hooker's drawers) one can conclude that "investors" are a rather flighty bunch, scattering and flocking together at the slightest hint of negativity or positivity (however interpreted). "Oil stocks are down amid investor fears that Santa Claus may again use reindeer to power his sleigh."

the US has put its cultural footprint on the world — god must be atheist

This is true, but what vigorous culture hasn't stamped its footprint on the world? Going back to the Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Arabs, the Chinese, the French, the Russians, the British, the Spanish, the Japanese ... everybody that could has done that.

The American footprint is as unique as the Roman footprint, but the business of foot printing isn't unique at all. The current footprinters are pervasive because of technology. Chicklets are in vogue in Bulga-Torogov because communication and transportation can put Chicklets there. Capitalism, which isn't uniquely American, will put Chicklets on Mars, as soon as there is a market there.

Capitalism doesn't try to wipe out local cultural features or traditions, it wipes out local culture as a consequence of its urge to dominate all markets.

Yes, the loss of local cultures is lamentable -- as long as the locals are doing the lamenting. Is there any virtue in first world people lamenting the loss of tradition among third world people? (I think there is virtue in lamenting the loss of other people's cultural traditions, but only so far. If the people of Bulga-Torogov decide that electricity beats yak fat lamps, or that Mayans in Central America decide that Spanish is a more useful language than their local tongue, well... that's up to them.

As for Islamic fundamentalism, the sooner it disappears the better -- along with Christian fundamentalism and Hindu fundamentalism.

The steps from 1620 [Mayflower at Plymouth Rock] to 1776 [the DOC] to 1861 [Civil War] to 1954 [Brown vs. Board of Education] to the present have been dogged by moral contradictions all the way. The United States is not unique in this way. Morally contradictory behavior is endemic to the species. We can write and celebrate the Declaration of Independence while contradicting it in our personal life, as Thomas Jefferson, and all of the slave-holding Founding Fathers did, and generations of ordinary Americans have since right up to July 4, 2019.

The Civil War was not a black and white conflict, so to speak. There were pro- and anti-slavery people in the north and the south alike. Abolitionists were against slavery -- and many of them did not intend to grant equality to freed slaves. The Great Emancipator, Abe. Lincoln, did not envisage black and white people living together on equal footing. Part of the Southern Cause was states rights, part of it was slavery. Jim Crow laws were the norm in the south after the Civil War; in the north a different system of segregation was practiced. The power centers of the United States were determined to prevent significant black advancement and equality, backed by the force of law, up until the 1960s, when court rulings and civil rights legislation struck down old laws.

Reform in the 1960s - 1970s was lukewarm to begin with, and was too little too late. By the time segregationist rules, lending practices, and so forth had been broken down, it was too late for most blacks. They were not able in 1980 to duplicate the enormous wealth accumulation that occurred for white people from the 1930s forward, and which they were legislated out of.

The long term post Civil War policy towards former slaves and their descendants was officially exclusion and suppression. It worked. It was successful. By and large blacks have have been excluded, impoverished, and. suppressed. There was, of course, resistance. A host of excellent leaders from

Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) ...
Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)
Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)

confronted corporate, municipal, state, and federal officials with demands for civil rights equality backed up by strikes and marches. They achieved some, certainly not complete, success.

We are still contradicting ourselves. Many may talk about complete racial equality, color blindness, and so forth, but opportunity is still hoarded by those who already have substantially greater resources and advantages, and not just the famous 1%.

It seems like progress has been made all along, but it has been achieved through very small increments. Some gains have been lost, others have been capitalized upon. But progress in achieving full, racially transparent integration has been very, very, limited.

Democrats, considered too liberal and left-wing, run on a platform that in any other country in the world is considered ultra-right wing — god must be atheist

Hyperbole, but I get what you mean. Democrats and republicans are the only two peas in the short pod of the established Party. The actual very liberal Democrats are distinct from the actual very conservative Republicans. Their policy objectives are somewhat different. But neither party is anti-capitalist; both parties believe in a well funded military (which is a critical half of the military industrial economy). Both parties believe in global dominance. Both parties have gay and lesbian members. The Republicans have the Log Cabin gay group, the Democrats have the Stonewall gay group.

But on to something else... Russia too has a very diverse demographic, a history of turmoil which has mixed its cultures; a long period of autocratic Tzars, a shorter period of soviet authoritarian government. I suspect that the ethnic diversity of the Russian Empire works somewhat differently than the settler colonialism (so called) of European emigration to the United States.

- kids here are popular in class with their mates if they are good in athletics or can beat others up. At home, the kids are popular if they are smart, get good grades, and are funny. — god must be atheist

This is a watershed issue in the United States: In a minority of school districts, high level academic success is expected/demanded and delivered by the students. (Not all, of course, but as many as can manage.) In another minority of schools, academic achievement is not respected--it's maligned by the students.

In most schools there is a distribution of performance from very good to very poor, and as you observed, being on the poor performance end of the distribution doesn't make one a diseased pariah. Status is enhanced, as you suggest, if you have something going for you--comic ability, sport ability, good looks, fighting ability, and the like.

everyone is a bit cranky around here — god must be atheist

This is true.

broad American culture — god must be atheist

Ok, ok, I get the pun.

But there is a wider American culture, and more narrow ones. The doings of the KKK below to one of the narrow cultures. Gay liberation, Planned Parenthood, Unitarianism, Jews eating Chinese food on Christmas Day, weekending in cabins "up north on the lake", etc. are all parts of narrow American cultures. Voting in November is part of the wider culture; so is eating turkey for Thanksgiving, the 4th of July, and so on.

Moon Unit Nine denies any connection with American Culture.

You aren't going to deny that there is such a thing as "American", "French", or "Russian" culture, are you? If you were randomly moved from one location on earth to another, how would you tell that you were in a different (or the same) country?

Is that logic, or emotion, or intuition? — Brett

Assessing how we thought about something after the fact is a fun game but I am not sure that it is reliable. First, there are mental processes going on out of sight of the conscious mind. Whether those processes are governed by logic or emotion or low blood sugar is very difficult if not impossible to determine.

To make one of those ugly computer and brain comparisons, we have all sorts of drivers and sub-routines running in the background of which we are not aware or in control of. As Freud said, "We are not masters of our own houses."

It may be less of a question of whether we use logic or emotion, and more a matter of how we initiate a decision making sequence. My guess is that emotional drivers initiate most of our decisions; logical thinking tests the possibilities. Actions begin with motivations (simple model), not with logic. The emotions involved in our consumer decisions can certainly be primed and shaped by outsiders using devilish logic applied to the problem of stimulating our emotions to achieve satisfactory retail results for the quarter.

Logic was employed, but yes, after the fact.

Most of our personal decisions are not made using logic, and a lot of our business or professional decisions are made without logic, too. For instance: Hiring new employees for professional jobs is supposed to be a rational process where logic has a strong role. In fact, many hiring decisions (and good ones, at that, are actually made in the first minute or so of the interview--positively and negatively.

Should hiring decisions be under the rationalizing control of the "human resource departments", or is it better if hiring is decentralized and decisions made on much more intuitive bases? I've seen it done both ways, and in combo, and in the end I don't think logic helps us much in hiring people.

Farmers deciding what, and how much, to plant in the coming year can not afford to use much intuition. For one thing, banks won't let them. Everyone is looking at current crop prices, futures markets, weather, disease, insects, international trade, etc. So... it looks like 30% beans, 40% corn, and try to get as much acreage as possible into a set-aside program [for example].

Logic is the only way to go when planning the nuts and bolts aspects of a moon shot. PR is important for funding, but public relations can't steer the rocket.

I just made a decision--I bought a pair of New Balance shoes on line. 1 hour prior to the decision and act I did not intend to buy anything. But I read 2 articles about New Balance in the Guardian US edition. It confirmed several positive impressions I have of New Balance shoes (I've worn several pair). I Googled NB 990 and in a click was at the NB web site. Ah ha, 990s (normally $175) were on sale for $129. A deal -- only they are a light gray-green. Is this tolerable? Period of dithering about color. Logic only tells me the color will not affect wear. They could be purple with pink dots, and wear as well as gray. IF they were purple with pink dots, I wouldn't wear them if they were free, however.

So far, the only thing that logic has helped with is recognizing that a $48 savings on line is a better deal than full price at a store and that the subtle light green shading will not affect wear. Logic did nothing for the slight unease I felt (feel) about the coloring. I suppose I can send them back if they are ugly.

The decision to first look (which is often about the same as the decision to buy) was driven by some consumerist arousal in my brain which led me to FEEL a need to buy these shoes.

I am generally successful in avoiding frequent or large stupid purchases -- purchases that are immediately regretted, are embarrassing, and/or unaffordable. But a lot of the purchases I make, if not stupid, are also not driven by any logic. They are driven by desire, eye-catching novelty, status-needs, imagined benefits, and so forth.

4 years ago I intended to buy a black leather jacket for everyday wear in the winter. I shopped carefully and watched for sales, and finally a fairly expensive jacket was put on clearance, and I bought it. Good deal, great jacket, warm, never regretted it. On another day I was at a different store and found a brown leather jacket for $75 and hastily bought it. It was a very good deal, but it is very heavy and is actually not very warm. It looks nice, but I did not, and do not, need it. Why did I buy it? Again, that consumer itch in the brain which has nothing to do with logic. I felt it was sexy looking.

But sexy clothing doesn't do me any good any more, because (LOGIC SAYS) I am not out and about, dating, bar hopping, and so forth where sexy attractive clothing is an advantage. Nobody at Target cares whether I look like a hot number or look like an old troll. So why don't I follow logic on these matters?

But when you focus on people who hate their job and earn just enough money to pay for rent and food, and have a poor health because they're constantly stressed because of the job they hate that they have to go to every day, and 40 years later they're still not owning a house and they live in poor health or die because of it, I think these people would have liked to have the opportunity to work on building decent housing for themselves and grow some of their food and take care of their health, making use of what they would have learnt in an education that taught them to take care of themselves. — leo

Good housing, good food, good health care, good education, good jobs (that people actually like)--all good and desirable things. No one will argue with you that these are not good. The issue that is arguable is, "How?"

Well, start by radical changes like getting rid of the capitalist economy which drives a lot of what is you are identifying as bad. People will then have to organize their lives along different lines: cooperatives, community based food production/management, very locally controlled schools, focus on public health promotion more than terminal disease treatment, and so forth. Work will have to be organized quite differently than it is now, and so on.

All this might produce a simpler society where people were much happier. Or maybe not.

Large populations either maintain complex systems or they crash and burn. Nowhere can hundreds of millions, billions, of people be fed, housed, and cared for without extensive networks of technology and trade. "A simple good life" of the sort you are suggesting can be had only in very protected environments for a small portion of the population--not only the rich, but of course being rich helps.

Even at a time when the world's population was much smaller, when aspirations for goods and services were much more modest (say, the average person in the mid-18th century) having "a good life" was still complicated--involving trade, imports, exports, a complicated supply chain of food, goods, and services.

I empathize strongly with people who are dissatisfied with their work lives. I'm retired now, but much of my time working involved unsatisfactory work experiences. I put up with it, like everybody else does, in order to continue getting paid. There isn't any solution to the problem of unsatisfactory work, poor housing, poor education, poor health care, poor food procurement systems, and so forth WITHOUT radical changes. A thoroughly organized, unionized work-force would be one necessary step. A very strong progressive political party would be another minimal step towards extensive change. Involve the mass of people in demanding and forcing change, and you can get big changes.

Let me know as soon as you figure out how to organize and unionize the people. It's an uphill struggle, not because people are stupid and uninterested in something better, but because there are power forces interested in keeping things the way they are. You have heard that 1% of the people own more wealth than 90% of everybody else? Well, they are very focused on keeping things that way, and they own the means to do it.

Political correctness is one of the most foolish things that have ever been tried. — Ilya B Shambat

I agree that political correctness is foolish, but it probably isn't up there with the most foolish things that have ever been tried.

You want to try and straighten out American women? Good luck with that!

The Russians also stand to improve American cultural output. — Ilya B Shambat

Actually they already have improved American culture... Russian cultural émigrés have added a lot! As for postmodernism, it's not just American culture that has been infected -- it's all over the place. Avant garde culture becomes just 'culture' over time, or it fades away. All music was once new, and took some getting used to.

Cultured Wusses? Where?

Donald Trump has the taste of a second rate real estate agent.

As I recollect, it wasn't very long ago that Russia's population was in decline as a result of rampant alcoholism. It was a world-class public health disaster!

I too worry about the state of the American family. Too many divorces; too many children born to single people who can not provide the stability of the standard two-adult household; too much chaos in families; etc. However, some of this is a result of economic chaos. Does Russia have a workable solution for that?

How familiar are you with the broad American culture???

He has commissioned some of America's most beautiful buildings — Ilya B Shambat

He has not!

the political state exists as the ideology, which is gone because we do not support it. — Metaphysician Undercover

I may not support it, and you may not support it, but who all is in this WE you are talking about?

Are you sure your wife didn't sneak in some new plants? Or maybe birds dropped some good seeds there.

Now wait a minute. I learned how to garden from my dad. He had a shovel (a spade), a pitchfork, 2 heavy garden rakes, and a hoe (the implement, not the other kind). He also used a hand-pushed cultivator. I'm still using his pitchfork. That's it. He did all his work himself by hand after work and on weekends. Never used artificial fertilizer (he used leaves). On this ground he grew beets, carrots, onions, Swiss chard, leaf lettuce, cucumbers, tomatoes, pole beans, and corn. The beets, tomatoes, pole beans, and corn were canned in a pressure cooker or big kettle of boiling water (depending). Cucumbers were made into pickles and canned. Apples were bought from orchards and canned.

So, these tools were made once and have lasted many years. Very simple metal working, wood turning for the handles.

I suppose packaging seeds was a boring job. And somebody had to drive around the countryside stocking seed displays in hardware stores. Hey, you could do that. It would be fun. Out on your own; going into small town hardware stores, selling seeds and preaching the anti-natalist gospel.

If you want to know what was boring, it was canning hundreds of jars of food every summer and fall. It was tedious and hard work at the same time.

not everyone can be a Jack Kerouac watching the world progress away in tedium — schopenhauer1

Is that what he did?

The world is an incredibly complex place; it takes a tremendous amount of work to keep all the necessary and complex systems running. A lot of that work is, inevitably, going to be boring -- especially when you get into the tertiary level of jobs.

Just take, for example, all the focused attention it takes to get a box of strawberries from a farm to your table. It's very complex, and that includes produce grown within 100 miles. Picking strawberries, for instance, isn't a mindless job. Pickers have to identify which berries are ripe enough but not too ripe -- it's not a "grab everything that is vaguely red" type job.

I've grown strawberries in my garden--they weren't worth the trouble. Raspberries -- much easier, because they just take over and rule. The soil on my lot is either poor or way too shady. I know how to grow vegetables and corn, but one needs a large garden, decent soil, and little shade to grow a significant amount of food for a family. Plus, I'm getting a little old to undertake urban agriculture.

take a sec and think of the most profound thing you could do and imagine doing it. — Franklin Crook

Some of us have not only thought about some of the profound things we might do -- we did it. I spent 2 years in VISTA (now Americorps) working with children at a mental hospital in Boston. Later I volunteered much time and some money for a socialist organization. I worked very hard for 4 years doing street-level safer sex education in the early days of AIDS. In the 1970s I volunteered lots of time for the then-new 'gay liberation' movement.

I did these and other activities because I think life can be made actually meaningful by the better kinds of work we do, voluntary as well as paid. Like most people I have spent a lot of time working jobs that were tedious and dull. They were socially useful but personally not very meaningful. That's just life.

Other members of TPF have also made significant personal contributions to the life of their communities, more than I have.

So, what would be a significant personal contribution that you would like to make to your community?

By the way, there is only one Chair allotted to anti-natal philosophy, and it is already occupied. What would your "next best option" be?

One possible reason is that they just don't think of it as "a hell which is full of suffering"

It's one thing to acknowledge that there is suffering in the world (that is hard to deny) but it is a sweeping generalization to conclude that life is a hell which is full of suffering. Billions of people are born, live, and die without enduring a lifetime of hellish agony. They might break an arm, or have a heart attack but neither of those things amount to a living nightmare. Even a death from cancer lasts a limited period of time.

they will one day die
cause grief to those they left behind
Life is full of suffering
Leaders are full of greed and aggression an
There are diseases, parasites, germs, blood-sucking insects
animals that bite and kill and eat each other.
Even humans are usually selfish and indifferent to the suffering of others
Every second is a second closer to death

Are you having a bad day, or what?

Some of your statements are true (we will all die) and some of them are just glittering generalities like "Leaders are full of greed and aggression". There are many people who are leaders at various levels of society and even you can probably think of some minor leader who wasn't full of greed and aggression.

Choosing to be "against life" is certainly an option, but it seems like one should come up with something a bit more profound and compelling than tape worms and blood-sucking insects. At the very least one could howl at the meaningless universe, for example.

You are here. Get used to it.

I think this may be what you are looking for.

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/6202/work-should-be-based-on-quantity-of-boredom-involved/p1

But, we are looking from two different angles. You are talking about ecological disaster, which very well might be inevitable. What about the idea about "progress" to begin with? ... This creates really boring jobs, that create outputs so people can pay for them and use them in their spare time. — schopenhauer1

minutia-mongerers and boredom-braggadocios — schopenhauer1

Whatever turns you off! Whatever makes one wish for the death of the last human... Ecological collapse, progress on a stick, extruded ennui, minutia mongers, boredom braggadocios, or titan of tedium...

If we're doomed anyway (many think we are) we might as well enjoy the show. Throwing in the towel, leaning back against a tree, and just observing might actually have some salvific power. Ceasing to strive, is, after all, the opposite of what has gotten us to our sad state of ourselves being bored to tears by technological production even as we breed our way to a more complex destruction.

this just means more boring — schopenhauer1

More boring is not just... more boring, it became unsustainable at least 4.5 billion people ago. Capitalism is predicated on expansion: expanding extraction and production, expanding markets, expanding volume of business activity, expanding profits, expansion expansion expansion. The regime of constant growth has been in place for quite a long time, now--several centuries--and the climate crisis, plastic in the oceans, too much population, and so forth are all a consequence.

The recognition that the world is unsustainable is profoundly alienating. We are stuck with the world in this unsustainable situation until natural forces intervene (which will be ghastly). It makes everything that is done a pointless nightmarish treadmill.

Were I to be as pessimistic as you, my route would be through contemplation of the unsustainable future. I just don't see a way of our species, and quite a few other species as well, making it through to the other side. "It was good while it lasted" is one response. A less sanguine response is that if it is not good in the future, then it wasn't good in the past either. What looked like great progress was actually a great disaster.

Of course, we don't do things (like who we fall in love with) on the basis of the diminishing law of utility. Sometimes we can apply such reasoning when the decision at hand is not too emotionally freighted. Like, "Is it worth spending another $300 to fix the large and very old refrigerator in the church basement." One can argue that it's throwing good money after bad. Just go ahead and apply the repair cost to the new fridge.

But when one meets someone and is infatuated with them, like as not no calculation took place anywhere that you had a chance of observing it. One might end up in bed with them before rational thought can come into play.