The apprehension of beauty is not universal (everyone will not agree on what is beautiful) but it is sufficiently shared among people that, were we voting, the world would elect the same objects to the Beauty Hall of Fame by wide margins.

The Myron's Discobolus is a Greek classical bronze sculpture (450g BC) has been admired for a long time and has been reproduced many times in bronze and marble. The sculptor captured the discus thrower's motion and focus, in itself an important aspect of the work's beauty. The form of the male athlete is also beautiful, and beautifully captured.



This photo of a world record discus throw probably would not make it into the Beauty Hall of Fame. Why not? It's not a sculpture, it's not a work of art, of course. It's a document. But the main thing about the real discus thrower in the photo is that he is too "particular", "specific". It was that athlete, that throw (as it happened, a world record). The Myron Discobolus is "universal" -- representing not one particular toss, but the athleticism and beauty of discus throwing.

The Greeks held the body--both male and female--mortal and deity--as inherently beautiful. They had in mind an idealized, beautiful form, body; the Greeks didn't do roly poly adults.

By the way, @Ilya B Shambat, beauty is beauty. "Absolute beauty" isn't better. Beauty doesn't exist apart from the physical world, some "essence" or "absolute" quality.

A painless death is the last gift you can give to a pet when they are suffering the debilities of age and disease. "When" is a judgement call, of course.

But, "consume less"! Not really, just change the means of production to robots and the endless demands of productivity increases and all boats will rise. — Wallows

And you think I'm dreaming!

I'm just going to be blunt and call you out on your catastrophizing here. The markets have lifted countless people in India and China out of destitute poverty. You might brush that aside and counter with another knee jerk response that this has happened at the cost of the environment, especially in China. But, it goes without saying that there is no free lunch and we might as well accept the fact that the world is becoming a better place despite what Marx or Engels might have said some 100+ years ago. — Wallows

That's fine; you don't have to believe whatever catastrophizing I do here. And I would agree with you that economic activity in China, India, SE Asia, Korea, and elsewhere has indeed lifted many people out of destitution over the last few decades. Trade has helped, internal consumption has helped. Shaking off very stultifying systems of peonage has helped a great deal too.

Yes, there have been environmental costs. There were, are enormous environmental costs as a result of our own economic development. Economic development, in general, has tended to be a dirty game, because whether in a command economy or a capitalist economy, managers prefer to externalize costs by throwing waste into the river.

The catastrophe that I catastrophacize about, however, is quite novel. the crisis of global warming owing to CO2, methane, and other greenhouse gases is unprecedented and is pretty much cross cultural for industrialized nations. It's also novel in that it isn't a crisis that can be thrown into reverse quickly or easily. We already may be past the point where strenuous reductions of CO2 will prevent a sharp rise in global average temperature. Strenuous reductions would certainly be a good idea, but we might get the consequences of CO2 increase before we experience the benefit of CO2 decline.

Global warming probably won't wipe out our species. I don't think it will do that. But it is already wiping out many species. Warming, and excessive use of pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, and so on. And global warming certainly threatens to cull human population. that will be pretty ghastly. It's worth avoiding.

at this moment, there is a dramatic shift in the market towards a more sustainable future due to a rise in the efficiency of existing products — Wallows

What, pray tell us, is efficient and sustainable about selling water in plastic bottles? arranging society so that everyone who can owns at least one car? A product packaging system that consumes and buries or burns many tons of paper, plastic, and metal every day? Housing built for 2 people that comprises at least 3,000 sq. feet of space, where a century ago, a house for 2 people might have had 1000 square feet?

To sound philosophical there's an unsatisfiable desire for "more" than what people already have. This breeds discontentment ... — Wallows

So, do you think that "the desire for more" is the basic driving force in human development? Some people think it is. Should we suppose that human beings have been hungering for more for the last... let's say, 100,000 years? It seems like our species has spent far more time living in equilibrium with needs, wants, and resources than in incessant hankering after more.

Most of our history has been lived as hunter gatherers whose societies were very stable and who did not accumulate goods. The couldn't carry more than the absolute minimum gear needed to carry out hunting, gathering, and consuming food. Studies of contemporary hunter gatherer societies reveals people who are reasonably healthy, and reasonably happy. Our basic formula for success has been 'travel light'.

Of course, we want 'more'; just because you ate well at breakfast doesn't mean you will not want 'more' at supper time.

The idea that humans hunger for ever more and better goods, experiences, and services is a treadmill made to serve corporate purposes, not an inherent human desire. "Always more" is the motto of capitalism, which requires ever expanding sales to maintain profitability. This, by the way, is capitalist theory, not Marxist theory. It's just a fact: corporations can not achieve steadily increasing profitability on the basis of flat sales and consumer contentment.

Henry Ford understood this. His very short list models (any color you want as long as its black) were not made to be bought and enjoyed for decades. Ford engineers strove to produce a vehicle that would not last too long. Why? Because if everyone who wanted a car bought one, and the car lasted them for decades, Ford would be out of business fairly soon. Ford soon had the company of many auto manufacturers who offered an array of cars in various styles, colors, luxury, or utility. They all followed the same principle: car sales can be driven by encouraging dissatisfaction with what you have in hand in favor of what is at the showroom. And we haven't gotten to 1930 yet!

So, this idea of driving sales by the whip of dissatisfaction wasn't invented in 1901. Sales of fashionable goods (clothing, shoes, jewelry, home furnishings) had been applying this principle to the affluent bourgeoisie for a while; let us say, during the 19th century. The further back you go, the fewer people there were who had sufficient resources to engage in discontented buying (we are talking about very small numbers).

You know this: there is a huge industry devoted to the careful, 24/7 cultivation of discontentment. It is so ubiquitous that it might seem invisible. It is certainly so ubiquitous that it is inescapable short of becoming a cloistered monastic or falling into a coma.

Yes. I don't know how, exactly, but to this semi-untrained economist, it seems obvious that the work economy as going to fracture. It isn't that economic activity will cease -- it won't until human life ceases -- but it will break up into less economic activity much less widely distributed.

For example, before the supply of oil is exhausted (maybe 100 years away), once heavy manufacturing becomes impossible because of labor, resource, and market, problems, global trade is going to come to shrink. It isn't that people won't want to buy anything; producers may not be able to make stuff to sell, AND get it to where buyers are. And if the buyers economy is collapsed, they won't be able to afford to buy anything. The fracturing and collapse of parts of the world economy probably isn't 100 years away--it's somewhat less. No, I don't know.

But it stands to reason that with heat waves, floods, crop failures, fires, and disease (animal, plant, human) taking an ever larger toll, (I left out major wars) economic activity is going to shrink.

this most inept and mendacious of presidents — Wayfarer

Well, I don't think anyone expects this most inept and mendacious of presidents to solve the problem. On the other hand, the presumably less inept and mendacious presidents that preceded this one, and their party leaders in the House and Senate, didn't do anything about the problem either.

It's a complicated problem. We have a very long border. There are a lot of people who would like to live here rather than in some shithole further south. So, they walk right in. It isn't that they are bad people (most of them are not bad people), but the fact is it isn't up to the restless people around the world to decide the immigration policies for everybody else.

Sovereign Nations, in one of which everyone on this board lives, have the responsibility of defining how to manage population and resources. No nation has to accept all comers. No nation has to believe that everyone who shows up on their doorstep is oppressed and is entitled to asylum. What every nation has to decide is how many people does it want to have? Which age? Which skill level? Which ethnicity? Which x, y, and z. Maybe it determines that the need for low skilled Central Americans, is simply not very high, and they can't come in. Or maybe they decide that average true Scotsman is likely to have chronic health problems and bad teeth. So no to them, too. (Ok, so Andrew Carnegie was an exception.)

Maybe they will decide that very clever, young, healthy, educated Chinese are what we need many more of. Or more French. I'd vote for that. We need more French people in the United States, especially French good at le fine cuisine. More French, more Finns, and more Fuji Islanders.

Unfortunately, inept governments in Washington have not evaluated the problem of resources and population very carefully, if at all.

sales of luxury items that only the very rich can afford will decline, and they will decline to the degree that the wealthy are, so to speak impoverished. — Janus

Let me respond as a semi-untrained economist: The current taxation level on the rich is about 30%. It used to be closer to 90%. And you know what? When it was at 90% there were still rich people getting richer. Granted, it might have taken more work on their part to get rich, and their children may not have been made quite as rich through inheritance, but they made do. They recycled their mink coats into mink stoles, their silk gowns into fancy curtains (the opposite of Scarlett O'hara in Gone With the Wind), and so on. The Gold Corvettes could eventually be used for grocery shopping instead of lavish display, etc.

impoverished — Janus

Just to alert the rich to the risks they face, "after another 5 seconds of whining about being impoverished, we'll just blow your tits apart". If they don't shut up, fire away.

The only hope would seem to be that everyone very gradually reduces their level of consumption, particularly of fossil fuels; — Janus

OK, so here you have stumbled upon an inconvenient truth: The present level of consumption (all goods and services) is unsustainable. Global warming is a reality, and one way or another consumption is going to get cut -- probably by some unpleasant process where heat and high water eliminates large batches of consumers from existence. Fossil fuels are not just our achilles heel, they are the bulging aneurism in our aorta that will burst, bringing this whole fandango to an abrupt and clumsy finish.

Deflating the intensity of religious feeling probably would reduce intergroup friction over religious issues. Banning from public display crosses, hijabs, saffron robes, crescents and stars, forehead dots, etc. might help. However, it isn't scapular crosses, head coverings, or other symbols or clothing items that give religion public intensity. Let's go a little further: Let's also ban religious education, agitation, and religious preaching. After all, it is in churches, mosques, temples, madrasas, Sunday schools, and so forth that people get religiously revved up.

We might as well go ahead and ban the existence of religious organizations. If we really don't like religious static in society, then let's just ban it altogether. NO RELIGION ALLOWED.

Banning religion won't make it disappear overnight, of course. The Soviets banned religion, and while it's vitality was considerably reduced, once it was no longer banned (1991) it seems to have sprung back with remarkable resilience.

We could ban religions selectively. The soviets tolerated the Russian Orthodox church more than some other religions. I find Catholic and mainline protestantism quite tolerable, but would be glad to see Islam and fundamentalist Christianity banned. Judaism is OK, and the Orthodox are good for local color. I suppose the Buddhists, Sikhs, Jains, and so forth could be put up with. I have my doubts about animism. Certain screwy heretical groups, like Mormons, should probably be suppressed. Though, they have gradually been getting slightly more liberal, lately. However, the gay valedictorian at Brigham Young University (a Mormon school) didn't get much applause at his speech to his graduating class in April.

How about turning churches and mosques into granaries? Or gay bath houses? Or atheist lecture halls? Or squash courts? or... There are some gaudy Catholic churches that would make fabulous bathhouses and bordellos--very campy.

See. Your @Gnostic Grace, you just are not being imaginative enough.

I sense a lot of bitterness in this post — Wallows

It's dirty work but somebody has to do it.

Does that sound familiar to you? Maybe I just need to hang out in better circles :chin: — ZhouBoTong

Oh yes, very familiar. Americans have been receiving a steady diet of anti-socialist/anti-marxist/anti-communist education since at least the end of WWII. The last decade when one could find a lot of socialists around was the 1930s and the Great Depression. (Or so I gather I wasn't alive in the 1930s.)

In fairness, Marx's ideas are really very radical. I think they make sense, but they are still very radical. He is, as they used to say, "far out". Where we have people trying Marxism--the USSR and China, particularly--the results were terrible. (Marx wasn't a marxist. He didn't attempt to instantiate his revolutionary predictions.)

What we have instead are a couple of centuries of free-enterprise propaganda that insists, over and over again, that there is nothing better, more humane, more productive, better for the whole universe than The American Way of capitalism.

I'm not a hard core Marxist. When there was a local movement, I participated in a DeLeonist interpretation of Marx promoted by the Socialist Labor Party, and later the New Unionist Party. More or less it's industrial unionism. Marx, Engels, DeLeon, and a lot of leaders of the various forms of socialism are 19th century figures. I mention that only in the context that one has to update their thinking. Updating it isn't an invalidation. But a lot of socialists, communists, trotskyites, stalinists, maoists, and so forth are really slavish followers of their hero. The Socialist Labor Party were slavish follows of Daniel DeLeon. I've read his stuff and there's nothing wrong with it, but the reality he was working in isn't the reality that prevails 120 years later.

And I don't know how you have a perfect mini-example ready to support every idea you have, but great stuff. — ZhouBoTong

Being 72 helps, having a good memory helps, and of course not responding to topics where there is no handy mini example available is especially helpful.

It's about how similar, in a number of ways, fish and people are.

Well, you've met people who you thought were cold fish, so there you go.

It's about how evolution carried through fish development into mammal, and eventually human development. For instance, during the fetal stage (in utero) the fetus forms gill slits and arches. Why do they do this? Because all vertebrates have a common fish ancestor from which we all descended. Chick, pig, and human embryos all display this feature. It's a good read written for the at-least-somewhat informed general reader.

I thought "Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body" by Neil Shubin was very interesting. I don't think he resolved the question of a continuity of consciousness between fish and humans, but there is a continuity of structure between fishes and people that have made our consciousness possible.

Insects, fish, mammals, ourselves have ancient common roots. The way neurons operate, for instance, was worked out very early on, and their operation has some continuity throughout the species.

(Interesting factoid: the bones of your inner ear were once part of fish jaws.

Have a piece of your distant cousins today - fried, baked, broiled, stewed, or raw.

I know, from reading Dr. Science (He knows more than I do; he has a masters degree -- IN SCIENCE!) that I have recycled through my corporeal cells several times since I was born -- save the brain, maybe the heart muscle. Legally, I am the same person I was 72 years ago, and I feel like there is continuity as far back as I can remember (like 68 years ago). Something drastic has to happen to break that sense of continuity -- like a run in with a brick wall, a brain tumor, alzheimers, or something like that.

"Should the future concern me?"

Nah! No reason for you to worry about the future. Just carry on as if there was no tomorrow! (just joking)

The future should concern you, me, everyone especially when there is something we can do about it. It makes sense to save today for tomorrow's unexpected expenses. It makes sense to consider how yesterday brought about today will bring about tomorrow.

There is no point worrying about an asteroid killing you, because, chances are, you won't know about it in advance. (There might be some warning for a general area, like southern Africa.)

Worrying or not worrying about the future is, of course, always a gamble. You might go through the pain of withdrawal, all that misery, only to discover that you have an incurable cancer. Or, you might go through all the unpleasantness of withdrawal, only to discover the heroin fairy has left you a life-time supply under your pillow (and bed, probably -- wouldn't all fit under your pillow).

I'm assuming that your opiate scenario is a hypothetical.

Marx lived in the most advanced capitalist country of his day (Great Britain, empire and all), and was aware of how complex its economy was. He expected industry and technology to continue developing, and along with that, the complexity and variety of social life that is based on the means of production.

I don't believe Marx ever laid out a blueprint for a socialist society. Comrade Lenin, Trotsky, et al had no input into Karl Marx's thinking. The resolution of the conflict between the contending forces of labor and capital was too indefinite to predict what could/would happen. It seems to me that Marx said somewhere that if the conflict between labor and capital wasn't resolved, it would result in the destruction of both classes.

Marx wasn't thinking of CO2, global warming, mass extinction, and so forth, but in a way his production could come true: The capitalist insistence on externalizing (dumping) the real costs of production onto the people in the form of pollution, nuclear waste, CO2, etc., is clearly against the interests of the vast majority of people. It looks like we will all go down together.

In an economy serving 300 million, 500 million, or a billion plus people, there pretty much has to be a hierarchy of coordination. Supply chains from raw material to finished retail are just too complex to be managed in a decentralized way. Just for example: if an economy wants cell phones, flat screens, tablets, et al it has to have access to a string of rare earth elements, extremely thin but strong glass, all sorts of different grades of computer chips, and so on. I can't imagine how a decentralized manufacturing system could coordinate all these elements coming together in one place as the finished product.

Or berries. It doesn't make sense for a grocery in West Cupcake, Iowa to find a way of obtaining supplies of raspberries beyond whatever happens to be growing near by. It takes a lot of hierarchical organization to get even one blueberry from Chile to West Cupcake.

Maybe The People will decide that it is immoral to fly blueberries from Chile to West Cupcake. That would simplify that part of the problem. But if The People insist on blueberries, other methods of producing them closer to West Cupcake will have to be found. This can be (has been) done, but again it takes complex arrangements to bring about, and that takes hierarchical organization.

Commissar: "After the Revolution there will strawberries for all!"
Worker: "But Commissar, I don't like strawberries."
Commissar: (growling) "After the Revolution you will like strawberries."

But the main point of this thread is rather about the intractable problem of exploitation that Marx thinks can be resolved in his Manifesto and Das Kapital with a complete worker-led economy. — schopenhauer1

Here's a practical example that illustrates your point. A group of grass root food coops were organized in Minneapolis back in the late 1960s-1970s. They were shoestring operations using volunteer labor. In exchange for working x number of hours, one received a discount on one's whole grains, nuts, roots, cheese, whatever. They were kind of ratty, but had great esprit d'corps. Over time, they found their niche and flourished. A number of the original coops are still around 50 years later, and have become successful financial operations.

The simple "coop" of the early movement couldn't survive. As sales increased, and consumer expectations of the coop rose, the operations had to become more 'professionalized'. "The People" wanted higher cleanliness standards, a wider variety of organic foods, longer hours, better lighting, and so on. Volunteers were and are still used, but the larger more complex operations require paid staff who can work with complex warehousing, health standards, commercial refrigeration, and all the rest. All to the good.

However, the once grass rooty coops are now Co-op Corporations. They are owned by the members who receive discounts and bonuses from their shares in the coop. There has been dissatisfaction among the paid staff which sounds pretty much like the dissatisfaction one would hear about at any for-profit business: pay too low, no benefits, work-expectations too high, etc.

The critical difference between the old, ratty grass-root coops and the shiny, clean corporate co-op is the form of ownership. The share-owners of the Co-op are the governing group, not the volunteer committee that ran the old coop. The alienating principle of ownership came into play fairly quickly. The share owners were stingy and unsympathetic to their paid workers. The volunteers began to feel like chumps, and drifted away -- requiring more paid workers who became resentful, etc.

That's clearly NOT how socialism should work.

I don't think Uncle Karl was proposing a 'flat organization of society"; he wasn't a radical an-archist, after all, bent on eliminating every trace of hierarchy. You seem to be supposing that the ideal socialist arrangement would be 'flat' -- no hierarchies sticking up above the plain of equality.

Some of the problems impinging on equality among workers are the province of human psychology and group dynamics. These human factors--ambition, cliques, group solidarity, insiders/outsiders, individual manipulations of the group and other individuals--will abide for ages to come, with or without a workers paradise. So, a primary task of people living in this workers paradise will be to self-manage the features of human psychology that work against social harmony.

Remember that phrase, "from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs". Everyone will have the exactly the same level of responsibilities, nor will everyone receive the same rewards. Some workers (say a worker with 5 children) will need more pay than a young single. Similarly, some workers will present managerial talents rather than excellent eye/hand coordination. Managing involves more complicated tasks than parts assembly. That doesn't mean that the manager deserves to be living in a penthouse. Managing the flow of work is just another job at which some people are better than others. A much higher level of thinking will be expected of brain researchers than will be expected of enterprise managers. Brain research is a job. Just because it is highly specialized and technically demanding, doesn't mean the brain researchers should live in palaces overlooking the ocean.

This idea isn't altogether unknown and untried. The abbot of a Benedictine monastery has power and responsibilities greater than the average monk, but he still lives in a room like the other monks live in and eats the same food.

Marx didn't lay out a blue print for a socialist society. The first seizure of power, where the capitalist possessors are dispossessed isn't the heart of the revolution. A redistribution of land isn't the critical step either. There are several preliminary steps. The real revolution is when the workers (who are, again, almost everyone in a society) begin to devise the kind of socialist economy and way of life that is workable and acceptable.

A revolution can't be sprung on people. It's absurd to think that way. The Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, leading eventually to the formation of the USSR, happened TO the people. The Maoist revolution in China happened TO the people. So, HOW a revolution comes about is a critical thing. I prefer a revolution that is the outcome of extensive organizing, political work, and education. If the final step has to be violent, so be it, but in many cases the violent element can be minimized.

The people have to be involved in thinking about what kind of society they want, really, before the revolution begins. Hence, organizing, political work, and education. The instantiated revolution has to come FROM the people, not happen TO the people.

Thank you for alerting me. No, I had not seen this before now.

As I understand him, Marx envisioned a radically different economy and culture than the one that exists now. Which revolution will bring about the fruition of Marx's vision?

There are a series of revolutionary events that will need to happen, like dispossessing the capitalists of their wealth, before any sort of marxist vision can be realized.

The last, most difficult. and longest phase of the revolution will be the working class (which is, you know, most of the people in an industrialized country) learning how to be Socialist Citizens who can intelligently and competently manage their very large economy, regulate their own industrial activities for the common good, maintain a free, culturally rich society, attend promptly to the massive environmental problems which we have, and so forth. A lot of individual and group learning will have to take place in this revolution. The tricky part will be surviving this stage until we all get good at playing our respective roles.

It's too late to say more -- got to go to bed. 3:30 a.m.

The world is changing so fast that people who are over 30 born and lived in another world than there is now. And they compare the old world with the new and many of them dislike the new world. — Geo

Not so fast. I'm 72. Unimaginably old to you, I suppose. But let me tell you... I've been using computers for the last 40 years and have used the internet since 1991. A lot of us old farts have stayed abreast of technology.

You need to do a little recalibrating. The really big leaps were in the later part of the 19th century and mid 20th. Cell phones are nothing but a marriage of land line and radio technology--miniaturized of course. Computers have been crunching away for 70 years. Telegraphing messages around the world got underway around 150 years ago. Global capitalism has been shrinking the world a lot longer than the Internet has.

Is the Internet amazing? Sure it's amazing. I love it. But let's not get carried away. High tech devices and systems are bent to serve commercial masters. Google has always been an advertising company (whatever else they were up to). Like young guys, us old guys like tech. We've liked tech longer than you've been alive twice over. Our fascination with technology didn't stop with CD players 40 years ago. We've updated regularly.

The gadgets change, sure, and gadgets don't define reality. Human reality does not change very fast. That's why people over 30 (even over 40, 50, and 60) run the world and people under 30 do not.

A lot of people border on (or actually are) hysterical when it comes to childhood sexuality. Some children tend to be precocious in their sexual activity. I was, like you from an early age. I didn't have sex with an adult male, but I certainly thought about it. The hysterical reaction of people who compose your family and community can make an indifferent experience into either a traumatic, or a more traumatic one, post facto.

Had either one of us grown up in another time (not that distant) our sexual experiences would have been deemed much less significant. But since in the latter half of the 20th century (at least) sex between children and adults has been deemed always and totally bad.

I'm not arguing in favor of adult/child sexual relationships. I'm just acknowledging that it happens, and is probably not always experienced as traumatic by the child. Many of us have a range of non-sexual experiences in our families that we wish we had not had. People can, and do, behave badly toward us. As adults we have to find a way of putting bad experiences away -- either through therapy, maturation, or just plain denial, if one can make that work.

So I wish you well. I hope you find everything you need.

By the way, is anyone helping you with homelessness? Don't know where you live or what your circumstances are.

I began having what is considered to be an unhealthy and "immoral" sexual relationship with a 34 year old man when I was 10 years of age; this lasted until I was about to turn 14 — THX1138

How do you classify this experience in your life? Traumatic? Troublesome? Ambiguous? Pleasant? Good? Have you experienced negative experiences by telling others (your mother, for example - or your therapist) about this relationship? Do you think the relationship played a causal role in your mental condition, or was it incidental?

All sorts of things happen to children. Myriad events in our home lives, school, play, civic and religious organizations, etc. are good, indifferent, and bad. We have all had them (not necessarily sexual). Children are adventurous and explore -- sometimes running into problems that are difficult to solve.

All that just to say, your experiences are not isolated and unique. We all have complicated 'histories'. And yes, children seek out sex with other children. Seems pretty normal to me.

This "cis" business was cooked up by misfits who decided that they were normal and everybody else required a new adjective. Ok, so I'm being sarcastic, but that's what it amounts to. The most adventurous sexual theorizers groove on sexual fluidity. They are trying to convince us that binary sexuality is a horror and an abomination. Hence, "cis" gendered people are burdened with their restrictive normality.

So, no. The vast majority are not cisgendered. The fact of the matter is that a small minority are misgendered.

It does, indeed, require "exacting minute understanding of complex processes" to master complex technology. A minority of people possess that understanding to create and service the technology. The rest of us have varying degrees of comprehension about STEM fields, and that's good. STEM is one part of the broad culture which requires expertise and mastery in other fields.

Your thread title includes the word "still" which makes me think that you suppose religion and spirituality "should" have withered away by now. Yes? To the extent that one thinks of religion as obscurantist manipulative superstition, that makes sense. And, truth be told, there is a certain amount of obscurantist manipulative superstition (aka 'bullshit') in various presentations of religion. But...

Religion also serves useful social functions. It is a low cost opiate, for instance. It provides cultural continuity (both over time and space). It is a spring and reservoir of important cultural output -- music, architecture, painting, sculpture, stained glass work, etc. It provides a framework of meaning. Granted, it's not the only such frame, but it has a proven track record; it works reasonably well; it is cost effective; it's on the ground, in place, and functioning.

STEM doesn't offer much in the way of meaning. Minutia mongering just keeps people busy.

It's also worth noting that a lot of the technology we have is for the benefit of its corporate owners, not us the people. From the corporate point of view, people are poor substitutes for robots.

I am probably just making up bullshit. — ZhouBoTong

Of course. I make up my bullshit, you make up your bullshit. That's OK. The important thing is not to believe your own bullshit. That's where people go wrong. They believe their own bullshit.

Does a person who lives a healthy lifestyle exhibit free will, or are they enslaved by an irresistible compulsion to eat well and exercise? — whollyrolling

They may be victims of their natural history. Children raised to like fruits and vegetables are doomed to a lifetime of broccoli, apples, rutabagas, kiwi, and carrots. Seriously. As Alexander Pope put it, “Just as the twig is bent, the tree's inclined.” Children raised on junk food are not all that free to become vegans (even though Twinkies are a kind of perverted vegan food-like substance).

Similarly with exercise. The 40 year old who has been a couch potato for life will need a great deal of free will indeed to become fit. Our lives, so far, have a deterministic influence on our lives to come. The deterministic weight depends on various factors, just as free will does.

I wasn't a couch potato when I was in school, but I was in my mid-twenties when I got interested in fitness. I had enough will (freely exercised) to jog, do calisthenics, swim laps, and bicycle, but I couldn't overcome 25 years of doing no particular body building exercise.

The crucial point that I want to find is about the nature of free will and when it can be taken away. — Purple Pond

How "free" do you think "free will" is? It doesn't seem to be an absolute condition. It is more often constrained than not.

The heroin [or other substance] addicted person may not have been free to be indifferent to a drug, if his or her brain was so composed that it was very susceptible to addiction. A portion of the population may be predisposed to addiction.

Some people are more risk-averse; others are risk tolerant. Which of the two responses to risk one prefers may be biological or learned at an early age. So, if one is risk averse, equipment free mountain climbing will not be an activity they can be freely chosen. Some people are thrifty "by nature" (the trait appears early on) and others are not. Thrift may not be freely chosen. We like to think that our virtuous acts and other people's wickedness are freely chosen.

So you or I, virtuous people both, can freely choose to be good. Can we freely choose to perform acts we consider evil? Could we, for instance, freely decide to blow up a building and kill everyone inside? I have my doubts. In order for us to make such a choice, we would have to undergo considerable desensitization training. Having undergone such training, we might no longer be as free willed as we once were.

In summation: "free will" might be a useless concept in the real world of a million confounding factors.

At that particular moment? Once one has let go of the bridge railing it's a bit difficult to freely change one's mind about committing suicide.

So, having gone to a great deal of trouble to get the $10, having found the dealer, having found some hole to shoot up in, having everything ready, set... GO is probably a fore drawn conclusion. You are asking whether one can cancel shooting up when the act is all but completed. I don't know -- ask 1000 former heroin addicts. I would guess that the point at which heroin (or cocaine) addicts decide to quit is not the moment before use, or the moment after use--neither at the peak of pleasure nor the pit of pain. It's probably somewhere in between. One has to have presence of mind to make a freely willed act.

I do know that tobacco addicts can put a cigarette out, throw their cigarettes in the toilet, and not smoke again. Addicts supposedly have to 'hit bottom' before they can effectively decide to quit. I don't know whether that is true or not, but if t is true, then your addict will be in a critical situation whenever he decides to quit. (I haven't smoked in at at least 22 years, but periodically I really, really want to buy a pack and light up.)

What, by the way, is the critical point you want to find in this discussion?

Since there are heroin, cocaine, alcohol, and cigarette addicts who have quit using their preferred drug on their own, based on their decision made while addicted, we can reasonably suppose that addicts have free will (in as much as any human being has free will).

However, there are also heroin, cocaine, alcohol, and cigarette addicts who have not been able to carry through on their own decision to quit using. They wanted to quit; they tried to quit (many times, likely); they failed. Either they are functional addicts (addicted, but able to participate in normal social activity) or they died as addicts at some point.

I don't think we can say, though, that failure to quite using addicting drugs is a demonstration of the absence of free will. They may have WILLED QUITTING, but were unable to buck the demands of their addicted bodies. The wish, or will, was still present, operating. It was just not powerful enough.

If one supposes that humans have free will, can we imagine situations where free will didn't exist? Is being addicted, or preferring dogs to cats, and not wishing to change one's life a sign of free will's absence? I like strawberries and have no wish to change that preference. Is my persistent preference for strawberries over horseradish indication that I don't have free will? No.

People who have been committed to hospital treatment (against their will) and have been cured of addictions are no evidence either. Being forced to do something says nothing about free will. Supposing the cured person is discharged. Free of the hospital, they again have the agency to exercise their will. They can smoke a pack of cigarettes and drink 3 double martinis, or not. Which act proves the existence of free will? I'm not sure.

Or maybe earlier by Luther who taught that all work is holy. The work of the coal miner or tailor or street cleaner is as holy as someone who has taken vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience in a monastery, or pastors and preachers.

The labor required to produce a society for mankind is the work of the people is the work of God.

one where they are confronted by destitution on a daily basis. In the USA, 30 per cent cannot afford basic health care, the others go bust if they get ill, and the workforce is treated as slaves.No unions, no holılidays in the first year? — Ricardoc

Work sucks, and many workers are not treated well, but most American workers are not confronted with destitution on a daily basis, are not treated like slaves (yet, anyway) and do not go bust if they receive health care through the insurance that they have paid for. Granted, many people can not afford health insurance, so depend on emergency rooms and free clinics for their care. The rate of uninsured is more like 15% than 30% -- not a small number--45 million is still a lot of people.

The reason the rate of non-insurance is not higher is programs such as Medicare and Medicaid which provides health care for persons below the poverty level and for retired persons.

That may be. I don't know what the "TRUE" method of criticizing literature would be. For me, all sorts of factors go into evaluating literature: the background of the period from which a work came, the biography of the author, his or her intent, and of course the work itself. Then there are some features of literature, like the various forms of poetry that can either be observed or ignored to good and bad results.

I always prefer simpler, more direct language over obscurantist opaque language--something that a lot of contemporary, post-modern, deconstructionist, or whatever-the-hell-it-is, is very guilty of. (Not that they invented opaque language. There are English texts from the past--way before our modernism, that are quite difficult to follow. I'm not referencing Middle English; I'm talking about some Victorians. Other writers, like Boswell (18th century) are very easy to read and comprehend. So is the 17th Samual Pepys, probably because he was just writing for himself, informally.

You have to look at the history of the countries involved. Now I don't know anything about mosque and church building in Turkey and Romania, but I am familiar enough with American history to say something about that.

First, religion is quite alive in the United States. There are many denominations (which is an interesting historical matter in itself) and congregations. "Success" is important to people, as are the major signs of success, like a congregation possessing a nice building. Many congregations get along with make-do facilities (storefronts, adapted-use buildings, etc.) but for many the 'edifice complex' is very strong.

Multiplying population, multiplying denominations and congregations, and population (and doctrinal) mobility has created a need for ever more facilities.

The way capitalism operates makes most churches with nice buildings a combo theological and real estate operation. Once you have the building to serve the church's needs, the building-itself soon enough becomes the driving force in the congregation: roof repair and replacement, plumbing repairs, HVAC costs, utilities, landscaping costs, interior painting, flooring, etc. Never mind accidents when expensive things get broken.

Fry, in his book The Great Apostolic Blunder Machine (out of print since the 1980s) differentiates the "right kind of churches" and the "wrong kind of churches". The right kind have nice buildings. The wrong kind occupy storefronts and make-do facilities. They emphasize the religious function over the real estate function. For instance, providing weekly services to the city's gay population usually began as a shoestring operation back in the 1970s or 1980s. Those early groups--very much the WRONG kind of church in ever so many ways--have now moved on from storefronts, bars, borrowed facilities, and the like to regular church buildings (usually old churches purchased by the congregation).

This isn't unique to Christians. Moslems in Minneapolis, for instance, are doing the same thing. At first they occupied sometimes very ratty facilities; as they accumulated resources, the mosques started improving a bit. Later on they rented better buildings -- still make do, but better. The more successful ones remodeled buildings, added a dome and some middle-east architectural flourishes. They "fit" the local vernacular architecture picture. I don't know of a local mosque that has built a nice centerpiece structure. It takes time to accumulate the cash and credit to build big.

Whether all this is primarily owing to capitalism or people's desires for status, belonging, comfort, and so on, I can't generalize. Certainly some congregations are obsessed with demonstrating their financial clout. They may do a good job with the religious function too (as long as one doesn't dwell on camels getting through the eyes of needles) or not.

It would be nice if someone from the Institute of Institutional Archeology would launch a major dig into the (unfortunately still damp) dung- and garbage-filled middens of Academia to determine who, what, when, where, and how post-modernism infected English Departments, American Studies, GLBTQIXXDV Studies, etc.

One of the first counter voices I came across to PM was the magazine Lingua Franca, a great little trade magazine that among other things was involved in the Sokol Hoax. If you've never heard of it, or want to revisit a dead friend, here is the link to some of its issues. archive.

Sorry about your education being derailed by a typewriter. Very weird. Why would a Dvorak be better than a qwerty layout of keys?

I just cannot touch type. I produce gibberish. — orcestra

I take it that you have no problem producing cursive or printed writing? This isn't a neurological problem in the language section of the brain? You weren't sexually abused by a typewriter when you were a child?

You can hunt and peck? Lots of people get through life without touch typing.

One writer related how his college writing teacher told him that he should "stop writing with his fingers" (meaning touch-typing); he should write with a pencil. So he did. That was Robert Caro, who is writing the final volume of his multi-volume Lyndon Johnson biography. He also wrote a bio of Robert Moses, the Czar of New York City planning fame. All written out in long hand, and revised before he typed the publisher's copy.

Before the typewriter came along, everything was hand written. Shakespeare. Dickens. Trollope. Johnson's dictionary. Scribble, scribble, scribble.

On the other hand...

You know, when you read 19th century letters and non-fictional narratives, men seem to be much more expressive than they were or were thought to be in the 1950s. They express feelings, they weep openly (sometimes, anyway). Injured Civil War soldiers were stoical, for sure, but they also seemed to be more "in touch" with the affective side of life. (I'm generalizing, of course. Some of them were also unexpressive dolts who lacked all subtlety. Some were swine.)

Guys are CONSTANTLY encouraged to share their feelings. — ZhouBoTong

There's been a sea change over the last half century and more. When I was a young boy in the 50s, I noticed that women had much different (and often more interesting) conversations than men did. When family and friends got together, men and women separated at some point, the men talking about farming, machinery, and the like. The women talked about family, individuals, cooking, etc. Maybe women didn't constantly share their feelings, but they dealt much more with affective topics than the men did.

I suppose it was in the 1960s-1970s when men started to talk about more personal topics, without giving up machinery, farming, sports, and the like. The gay circles I travelled in were more like women in conversational topics, but straight men I knew had changed (but not 180º). Straight, younger, more socially conscious men were quite ready to share personal feelings, opinions and so on.

So, 1980 - 2019, 40 years of being harangued to open up and share, god damn it, they have.

It is a good thing. Now, no one, male or female, blathering away about their feelings should be taken at face value. People are sometimes perfectly honest and accurate about what they say they feel, and sometimes they are confused, and/or misrepresent themselves, deliberately or not. So, take all that emoting with several grains of salt.

Less risk aversion and more familiarity with guns, perhaps. Or maybe they are better at engineering. They just intuit how the noose should be arranged, how high the jump has to be, what gravitation forces will do, etc. Men tend to be more successful than women when killing themselves. I don't know... maybe the women just aren't trying, but this disparity in suicide success needs to be addressed. Women will just have to get better at it.

Maybe enough women who have gone into STEM will end up competently killing themselves to equalize the success rate. Are women who served in the Israeli military better at killing themselves than your average French woman?

:up: