Alice in Wonderland is great. I need to reread it.

Some science fiction books rise to the level of philosophical novels and they are good stories to boot. I read several sci fi titles by Ursula Le Guin which had some good solid philosophical content.

The main thing is to write and keep writing, and don't throw away stuff that you have written because you think it isn't any good. Just keep writing. Producing a good book takes a lot of sitting still at a desk and working away. Practice, practice, practice...

Also, be a bit shy about showing stuff to random people. No matter what you write, many people will shoot you down and there is nothing helpful about that. Writers need encouragement, not withering criticism. Once you become a famous established writer, then you can open yourself up to withering reviews.

How about cancer or other diseases affecting the genes? If DNA is the primary predictor of individuality wouldn't that person be biologically changed in such a manner that they're not the same anymore (especially if said mutation/condition has large implications on appearance and/or personality)? — Pelle

Were our genes to become very disordered, we would drop dead. Big change, for sure.

On one level we are constantly changing and on another level we are stabile individuals from one year to the next. It is a paradox. Even if all my cells have regenerated 100% I maintain the same identity, cognition and personality characteristics. If I learn something I didn't know before, I might be slightly altered, even though that alteration wasn't the result of new cells. The Lacks cervical cancer cell line has been multiplying rapidly since 1951, yet remains the same; that's why it is a workhorse of cancer research.

I could lose quite a few pounds of corporeal weight and remain the same person. The brain weighs about 3 pounds; an ounce or two of tissue loss there might make me a different person (depending on which ounce disappeared).

POINT IS: I don't want to open the door to an interpretation of mind which isn't solidly anchored in the physical brain. Mind is derived from matter, and experience tells me that despite all the changes going on cell by cell, my self-identity, my perceived identity to others, and my legal identity is quite stable.

Substantial changes in the brain, and an injury or diseased ravaged body may alter me so much that lose my previous identity. But then look at Stephen Hawking: his body was practically gone, but he remained the same insightful thinker long after his body stopped working. (Granted, he required a lot of support to continue functioning so well.)

A philosophical novel needs a good plot, interesting characters, convincing dialogue, and so forth. The plot and the characters should lead in a compelling way to the philosophical content. If characters start philosophizing in an unmotivated way, you can end up with something like Monte Python's cleaning 'ladies' launching into discussions of Kant. By Python, it's very funny. That probably wouldn't be your intent, but if it was -- that would be fine too.

So, writing a philosophical novel is like writing a novel. Give it a whirl. If you turn out something as good as Brothers Karamazov, great. If it's just for yourself, that's good too. The process is probably more important than the finished product.

Right, almost all of the body cells are replaced periodically. The exception is the brain and the muscles of the heart.

It's not quite settled whether the brain adds brain cells; it may add some, but nothing remotely close to replacement numbers. That's why neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson's disease are so devastating. Once the substantia nigra cells are destroyed, one has advanced Parkinson's disease for the rest of one's life. Injured brain tissue (tumor, fall, impact) doesn't recover. Other parts of the brain may take over a function, but the injured tissue is not repaired the way a broken bone is repaired. When you have a heart attack, the damaged muscle is replaced by scar tissue, not new muscle.

a way that trancends matter, otherwise we wouldn’t be able to even be a ”consistent” person for more than 10 years post-birth. — Pelle

There is something in the body, some specific matter, that provides guidance for the continual replacement of the skin, bone, blood, lung, liver, etc. cells: DNA. All of the tissue you recreate during your lifetime are constructed according to very specific DNA instructions. Sure enough, over time we change: as we age (say... past 60 years) our spinal structure begins to collapse and we will lose height; the eyeball changes shape, and glasses are required. The cartilage in the joints wears away and we become arthritic. Our hair turns gray (if we are lucky) or it falls out altogether. All of these processes are overseen by the genes.

It is true that many species, some of them much-honored megafauna, are being killed off by deliberate human acts of killing. Whales, lions, elephants, rhinos... for examples. Far, far more animals -- most of them not on anyone's list of storybook creatures, are being wiped out by chemicals we use on plants -- chemicals like Round Up™ or neonicatinoids, and others. These chemicals are greatly reducing insect populations, a key part of the food web -- a food web on which we are also quite dependent, whether we are carnivores or vegetarians. Field studies from around the world are showing precipitous declines in insect populations.

Ecology is a real moral issue, as is the social, economic and industrial system we have built. No matter what we eat, the goods required to support soon-to-be-8 billion-people has been, is, and will continue to be highly UN-ecological. It isn't just food, vegans of the world: It's oil, coal, steel, glass, plastics, electricity, clothing, housing, transportation, health care, education, and so on -- all of it requiring much more intensive extraction of resources and food production. If one is really worried about the welfare of the animal kingdom (including spiders, grasshoppers, bed bugs, beetles, wasps, wood ticks, mosquitos, et al one should foreswear having children.

Humans are the first animals known to have what we call morals. Ethical living is of concern to us. — TheMadFool

And is it not the case that moral, ethical living is directed toward the manner in which we treat each other? How central to the moral and ethical codes to which we subscribe is "not eating chickens, cows, fish, and pigs"? We have been eating animals for a very long time -- at the same time we developed morals and ethics.

Health is one issue. So, some people maintain that it is healthier to eat only plants; others think it healthier to eat mostly plants, but allow eggs and milk or cheese. Most people think it is healthier to include at least some meat in their diets.

We don't expect moral or ethical consideration from animals such as chickens and we have not considered it appropriate until recently to extend moral and ethical consideration to animals. (I'm not reckoning Buddhist or Hindu religion here.) Animals are outside moral and ethical consideration. (That doesn't mean that we can't be sentimental about animals. I think squirrels are very cute; I wouldn't deliberately run over one of them. Deer are very attractive, warm fuzzy animals, too. Killing a squirrel or a deer deliberately (like, by shooting it) is neither moral nor immoral. It is only legal and illegal, depending on the laws governing hunting season.

For our good, food animals should be raised under "humane" conditions. Factory farming doesn't qualify as humane, as far as I know. But if a chicken is crowded in its cage, that is a health concern, not a moral concern. (We are concerned about a chicken's, pig's, cow's health because it may affect our health.)

But are they abstract thinkers or concrete thinkers? — Athena

It's not a warning. You haven't done anything yet... — Baden

Maybe I didn't follow the rules, not sure. — Janis

When it comes to concrete, the moderators tend to be brutalists -- that is, they like seeing the forms of concrete fully exposed and visible. I suppose there are abstract views of concrete -- people who see platonic forms emerging from bridge abutments and raw concrete loading docks. I have no truck with them.

Here is a photograph of The Philosophy Forum HQ: The colorful and decorative blue garbage bin on the left side of the HQ is where deleted posts and banned members end up. (That is not a threat.) There is only one door into the building, and that is guarded by Charybdis and Scylla. The building is designed to protect moderators from the angry mobs who want to get at the TPF HQ denizens to settle old scores.

Thick concrete comes in handy for foiling their evil plans. That and monsters guarding the gates.

Religion poisons everything?! — TheMadFool

I have enjoyed reading Hitchens. I once read a laudatory biography of Mother Theresa (Something Beautiful for God) and later read Hitchens' The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice. The woman seems to have been a rather hard boiled bitch saint. I'm glad I didn't have to deal with her.

Christopher (meaning 'Christ bearer' -- a most ironic name for a militant atheist) Hitchens was a chronic ax-grinder. That was his specialty. Ax grinders have a necessary and useful role in society. It's dirty work but somebody has to do it. So read his books, derive benefit from them (a clearer view because some of the dead wood has been cut away) and then move on.

Magic and religion are human creations, obviously, as are the gods. We called the gods into existence, not the other way around. It follows, it is obviously guaranteed, it is a law of nature, it is as sure as the sunrise that religion will have all the flaws, failures, and faults of humankind. And all the virtues as well.

Religions provide people with necessary narratives, myths, stage settings, codes, rules, and so on to give meaning and order to life. Are there other ways of doing this? Sure. There are secular equivalents, there are the arts. There is science. There are folkways.

It isn't that religion poisons everything. What is true is that human reason and rationality are insufficient to structure a reasonably perfect world without too many flaws. The world would not be the Peaceable Kingdom if religion were to disappear.

Someone should welcome you to The Philosophy Forum, so I will. Consider yourself one of the family. We're kind of a prickly family, however, so don't be surprised if you run into a bit of adversity every now and then.

The moderators are all volunteers: unpaid, unthanked, unappreciated, unrewarded, unloved, un-etc. They are mysterious behind the scenery characters. Like god, they move in mysterious ways.

Does Trump need help making up the stuff he says? "You can't make this stuff up" so the saying goes. It's just too off the wall! No, I think Trump thinks up his own claptrap.

As for fear and paranoia, you know... "If you are not fearful and paranoid, you're not paying attention." A lot of stuff is going haywire, of which Trump is but one instance. There are good reasons to be at least somewhat fearful and paranoid.

According to this angry woman (there are so many) there are 3 characteristics of the right-wing authoritarian personality:

Authoritarian submission: submissiveness and acceptance of authorities which are perceived to be legitimate and established in society, such as government or the police.

Authoritarian aggression: aggression against outgroups and “deviants”–people who the established authority mark as targets. Examples of this includes travellers, immigrants, Muslims and other kinds of scapegoats.

Conventialism: high adherence to traditions and established social norms. This can manifest in a respect for “traditional family values”, for example.

Seems like an adequate description of the RW authoritarian. Now, left-wing authoritarians are pretty much the same except their list of deviants is not the same and LW authoritarians require at least some deviance from conventional norms.

Authoritarians of any stripe also tend to have closed minds. This makes sense because authoritarians know what is good, true, and beautiful. Authoritarians (whatever stripe) tend to be controllers. Not "control freaks" exactly, but they can't accommodate others in decision making unless the decisions are entirely to their liking.

As for drinking the KoolAid™, "Drinking the Kool-Aid" is an expression commonly used in the United States that refers to a person who believes in a possibly doomed or dangerous idea because of perceived potential high rewards." The origin of "drinking the Kool Aid" is the mass suicide (+ murder) of over 900 people in Jonestown, Guyana on November 18, 1978. The group was started in Los Angeles, if I remember correctly. Jim Jones (the authoritarian running the show) chose grape flavored Kool Aid laced with cyanide and a sedative -- they mixed up a barrel of the stuff, 1/2 of which was used to kill everybody off.

The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe is an example of "new journalism" and is about Ken Kesey, apostle of psychedelia and leader of the Merry Pranksters, etc. etc. etc.

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

Much like sisyphus, only smaller boulders. One could actually roll them to the top without too much difficulty. The drawback is that one was not allowed to aim them at anyone in particular before you let them loose to roll back down.

When I was in college, we sometimes climbed up into the bluffs along the Mississippi. We found it amusing to roll large limestone rocks (which Gawd Almighty had provided for our amusement) down the steep hillsides. They would pick up a lot of speed and bounce quite high as they traveled down, sometime breaking into pieces which together kept on going. It was a great demonstration as to why a rolling stone gathers no moss. The problem (or the frisson) with this entertainment was that Highway 61 (the same one Bob Dylan sang about) was at the bottom of the hills.

Very exciting as the trajectory of rock and Chevrolet approached the same point. Fortunately they never quite met. But they could have.

We were almost the means by which some killing could have been done out on Highway 61. This was 1964 -- shortly before he wrote the song. Maybe he was in the Chevrolet and experienced a foretaste of his future lyric? Could be!

Indeed there are. Here is an example: The Virgin Mary with elephant dung



Chris Ofili. The Holy Virgin Mary. 1996

MOMA

Depicted on a lush, glittering ground of shimmering orange resin that recalls the gold leaf of religious icons, Ofili’s Virgin appears resplendent, majestic, and imperious, yet also suffused with sexual potency. Close inspection reveals the delicate, fluttering cherubim surrounding her to be crafted from images of women’s buttocks clipped from pornographic magazines;in place of her bared breast, a lump of elephant dung sits on the canvas, protruding into the viewer’s space. A material often used by traditional African artists, elephant dung has been incorporated into works by a number of contemporary African-diaspora artists to evoke their cultural heritage. Ofili began to use dung in his work following a visit to Africa to explore his roots. “There's something incredibly simple but incredibly basic about it,” Ofili told The New York Times in 1999. “It attracts a multiple of meanings and interpretations.

Hmm, sounds like bullshit to me.

Am I consumed entirely while being “in the present” of a gigantic cyber-machinic environment? — Number2018

No, of course you are not being consumed by a gigantic cyber-mechanical monster.

You are merely a meaningless cog in the remorseless extraction of profit by capitalists. Cogs, however, are needed to make the gears work -- so you have a bright future before you. (My cog years are behind me; I'm just waiting to be recycled--the final extraction of surplus value).

it would get boring — frank

I was going to say that everything gets boring, but then I thought of sex (good or better), so that's an exception. Eating very good food when one is reasonably hungry also doesn't get boring. One shouldn't confuse "familiar" with "boring". Sex is familiar, even when exceptionally good. Beer is not boring. It's familiar and effective when used as directed. Sleeping well night after night is not boring.
On the other hand, sleeping poorly night after night is imminently boring.

Cleaning toilets? Chuck the church janitor's favorite expression is "same old shit in a new toilet bowl". Chuck badly needs a new job or early retirement. But cleaning toilets is probably no worse than 75% to 85% of all jobs. I've felt like "same old shit in new toilet bowls" about most all of the jobs I've had, and several of them were good non-toilet-bowl-jobs. 7 years is the max time I've been able to stand any of them.

Imagine being an infectious disease specialist. A doctor! What could be boring about that? Well, one diseased, pus-filled-running-sore-pariah after another for 40 years? Oh yes, very much same-old-shit-in-a-new-toilet-bowl job. One would probably feel like flushing the patients.

I don't want to clean out toilets either. But I would if I had to. — frank

You would want to clean toilets if the wage and benefit package was excellent, and if the job was structured as dignified safety and health work, which it in fact is. Can we afford to elevate toilet-cleaning and adult-diaper changing?

Of course we can afford it. The money could, would, and should come from that small group of avaricious bastards who presently have among themselves more wealth than the rest of the population put together.

The richest people, let's be generous and say the richest 1000 people, have more wealth among themselves than about 4 billion other people. (According to Oxfam -- which is of course not an unbiased economic reporting service, the richest 8 people have more wealth than a third to half of the world's population.)

Oxfam's figures might be exaggerated, or maybe they are understated. I don't know. But at least in the developed world, it is established fact that the richest 1% (several million avaricious bastards) have the lion's share of the wealth.

If you ask the lions what their share is, the answer is "all of it".

I think that it's not so much that there aren't enough of us to fill these gaps in the job market, but more that there aren't enough of us who are willing to do so. — S

The unattractiveness of a given job can't be separated from the wage that will be paid. Supposedly, meat packers have to hire Mexicans to slaughter and pack cattle and hogs. "White people don't want to do that kind of work." One does not need to go back many years (about 40) when meatpacking was a good job that white people were quite happy to do. What changed? What changed was union busting, wage cutting, and conveyor belt speed up. That's when Mexicans started to do that kind of work.

Because of the prevailing low wage level of Mexico (or even more so, Central America) migrants can work at a low wage job here and still make more than they would in Mexico. It's a way of importing 3rd world wage levels into a first world country. (The other way is to move the factory to Vietnam or Bangladesh.)

So, Frank and Sap, what happens to the extra money that's left over? It is part of the flow into the wealth of the top 1%-5% of the world's population. What has happened in the US has happened elsewhere. Capital behaves pretty much the same all over.

Europe and North America are nowhere close to full employment. There are plenty of people capable of doing many kinds of work IF the reward is adequate. People don't like being viewed with contempt, and nothing says contempt like paying people a low wage for work that is dirty and unpleasant.

Immigrants contribute directly to economic growth - boosting the population and increasing demand for goods and services. — BBC News

Wouldn't that be true for Europe and particularly for the UK which is leaving the EU in order to avoid having so many immigrants?

There are some downsides to immigration from Mexico -- a low wage area (even more so with countries further south in Central America: A) immigrants who are better off working at low wages in the US but which are higher than in Mexico put downward pressure on wages for unskilled and semiskilled work (possibly for more skilled work, too). B) falling wages are not a boost to the economy, they are a drag which hurts working class people. C) I will grant that immigrants from Mexico -- mostly not legal - do make contributions to the society. They start small retail businesses and restaurants -- a classic step in upward mobility. They tend to revitalize dead commercial areas because rent and property is cheaper in such areas.

A lot of the money Mexicans and Central Americans earn here is actually not cycled into the economy here; it is sent home, where it is a vital source of income for families (and communities).

There is a difference between illegal immigrants and legal immigrants in their ready integration in society. Vietnamese, Hmong (Cambodians and Laotians), and Somalis have integrated at various rates, much faster than illegal Mexicans. They have, for instance, begun participating actively in public life--running for office, setting up community organizations, and so on. Of course, illegals aren't eligible to run for office and vote, nor should they be.

Boosting the population in the US and Europe is actually bad for the world's future -- the more people living like Americans, the worse global warming.

The thing about GDP is that while it has been growing for the last 40 or 50 years, wages and wealth have been declining for most of the population. So I don't buy the idea that granting citizenship to 10 million illegals and having another 10 or 20 million come legally would actually help the average American. I think it would make things worse.

Is being average put you at odds with accomplishment in intellectual work? — Drek

That depends on want to, preparation, and IQ. A determined person of average intelligence who is well prepared can do quite well intellectually. A poorly motivated, poorly prepared, but high IQ person isn't magically going to come up with the next BIG THEORY OF EVERYTHING probably. Most high achievers were probably very smart, but they were also ambitious and well prepared.

Does mental illness have anything to do with intelligence? — Drek

Mental illness generally impedes one's intellectual performance.

Eternity is infinity -- no place, no time. Forever.

There are too many answers. — Number2018

Yes, people would mark out their political, or technical, or romantic or current cat present however they wish. The point is that "present" is a fleeting moment only in some descriptions. In other descriptions, the present may be years long.

When someone says, "be in the present" they don't mean a 20 year present. They mean a few minutes, at least. Maybe 1/2 hour. Everyone who has read anything on this forum has lived in a fairly long techno-present time. Even if they are 85 years old, they have always lived with steady technical progress.

If you think about being situated in the history of Western Civilization (or Chinese or Indian civilization) you are talking about a present that is 2500 years long. I haven't been around for 2500 years, and nobody else has either, but our cultures have been developing over that period of time. We are part of that development. Western Civilization didn't die along the way, only to be resuscitated later. It's been alive and growing all that time. Same for other cultures.

many people do not appear especially anguished, but we maintain that they are merely hiding their anguish or trying not to face it. — J. P. Sartre

So, how do "we" know that people are pretty much all anguished, even though they don't look like it? "Oh, you are happy? You must be in denial."

Maybe what Sartre has to say here is hogwash?

***deleted***

hues from rose to shit — Kippo

Shit is not a hue.

The past is pretty clear -- from now back to eternity, and so is the future--from here forward to eternity. What is unclear is the present -- at least to some people. I don't know how long your present is. Some would say it's measurable in nanoseconds. Practically (every day usage) "now", "the present", "currently", and so on can be fairly long. How long is the "political present"? Some would say since Donald Trump was elected. I'd stretch the political present back to 1968 and the Democratic Nominating Convention in Chicago. It wasn't so much that Humphrey lost as it was that Richard Nixon won. Humphrey was a long-time honest progressive and Nixon was a long-time shifty bastard. Shifty but competent. It's been downhill ever since. The 1960s marked the end of the international progressive wing of the Republican Party, and they haven't been replenished. The Democrats started losing their edge in the 60s, such that a Democrat (Clinton) could "end welfare as we know it" in the 1990s. It wasn't that welfare was so great, it's just that ending welfare as we knew it was pretty bad for a lot of people.

So, the political present is about 50 years long.

I'd call the "technical present" about 120 years long, minimum. How could that be? 120 years ago weren't we still using horses as the main source of traction and transportation, outside of the railroad? We were, true. But look at it this way: Lincoln used electronic communication (the telegraph) to manage his generals during the Civil War. That was a huge innovation -- the top guy jerking the chain of a general at a distance of 1000 miles in real time. That's 1861-1865. Photographs of Civil War battlefields shocked civilians in the north. Sort of like Vietnam a century later. By 1900 the telegraph was ubiquitous and telephones were becoming more common. Radio communication had commenced (not broadcasts quite yet). Recorded sound was available--not great, but compared to nothing it was amazing. Moving pictures had arrived. The auto had made its appearance.

Röntgen won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1901 for his discovery of x-rays. Henri Becquerel, Marie Curie, and Pierre Curie won the Nobel prize for their discoveries in radioactivity in 1903. Einstein published his paper about relativity in 1915. And so on...

Google Ngram reports the frequency of words and phrases in print. Here is the Ngram for "time nowadays". Its heyday (another time-expression was in the first half of the 20th century, like... 1920 and 1940. Perhaps those were times when people felt that the familiar was dislocated?

Camus would have called my theism a form of philosophical suicide. An easy out to avoid a difficult question. He maybe right, but it works for me. — Rank Amateur

Why would Camus called your theism a form of philosophical suicide? Explain further, if you would.

Every philosophical question has a musical answer.

The dodger from the American Song Book, Aaron Copland



Oh, the candidate's a dodger, yes, a well-known dodger,
Oh, the candidate's a dodger, yes, and I'm a dodger too.
He'll meet you and treat you and ask you for your vote,
But look out, boys, he's a-dodgin' for your note.
We're all a-dodgin',
Dodgin', dodgin', dodgin',
Oh, we're all a-dodgin' out the way through the world.

Oh, the preacher, he's a dodger, yes, a well-known dodger,
Oh, the preacher, he's a dodger, yes, and I'm a dodger, too.
He'll preach the gospel and tell you of your
crimes, But look out, boys, he's dodgin' for your dimes.

Oh, the lover is a dodger, yes, a well-known dodger,
Oh, the lover is a dodger, yes, and I'm a dodger, too.
He'll hug you and kiss you and call you his
bride, But look out, girls, he's telling you a lie.

I was looking for an honest answer to a serious question, and got a dodge — Rank Amateur

I too would dodge the direct question because I can not give you a full explication of my life's meaning. My life has meanings, I am quite sure, but I have not parsed all of them out. I find some meaning in serving others for a while, as long as they are not too demanding. I find some meaning in loving others in the several ways there are to love. I find meaning in discovering (or reading others' discoveries) in history, sociology, psychology, etc. I find meaning in food, clothing, warmth, exercise, sunshine... and various bodily functions (we are after all, embodied beings, and it is our bodies that have all the fun and do most of the suffering). Everyone has some historical meaning -- I don't really know what mine is, yet. I myself will probably never know.

An individual's total sum of meaning is difficult to name, composite, dynamic, unfinished, and relative to other people. So, I can't just dash off a few lines describing my meaning. Even if I say, "serving others for a while..." I haven't spelled out meaning, I just indicated a place where some meaning develops. Loving and being the object of love gives us meaning. But "I love him" isn't exactly the meaning, is it? I love him, he loves me is a relationship. The meaning can be approximated by "I am loved" but I am not sure "I am loved" is the meaning. The meaning that "I am loved" gives is, in some ways, unsayable. Not unmentionable, just not named.

So... people dodge the question.

Before we can talk about how to answer any question about "the" meaning of life, we need to ask whether there is one. That's "a" meaning, not "the" meaning. — S

They say philosophy is like a 2500 year old conversation. So you walk into the laundromat and there are two guys standing by a dryer arguing about THE meaning of life. One of them quotes Camus, the other doesn't. Or is it A meaning or THE meaning of life?

I used to think that quote sounded good... really deep. Not so much now. The people who are most likely to be thinking about whether life is worth living or not are adolescents, and they should be discouraged from coming to negative conclusions. Why? Because, for adolescents and other immature people the benchmark value of life is too volatile to trust. It can swing between "life sucks" to "life is sweet" in 15 minutes. Pity to jump out of the window just because the going price on the worth of living dropped 50 points.

You are here. Get used to it. There are a number of questions that rank as important, and generally the answers don't involve blowing one's brains out or not. Like “What can I know? What should I do? What may I hope?” Kant posed a more useful question than Camus. For that matter, "What shall I have for lunch?" beats Camus' question.

Life has a whole bunch of meanings, depending on the year, the proper functioning of one's various body parts, the price of tea in China, and numerous other factors. So you think your life has reached junk bond status. Well, you can make money on junk bonds if you chose carefully. Meaning, of course, you can make a life worth living.

By all means read his works and prepare a talk about Nietzsche. The problem comes in comparing Nietzsche and Hitler, tracing influence. It isn't that there is no way of doing it, it is just that such a comparison involves a lot of cultural history that takes time (years) to sift through and can't easily be compressed into a reasonable classroom presentation.

Remember, your audience is probably not as interested in Nietzsche as you are, so what is it about Nietzsche that makes him a "hot property" -- or a philosopher who is likely to stay on the shelf past his sell-by date, depending on your view of him?

God luck and enjoy the study.

The subject of Nietzsche & Hitler is too broad unless you have quite a bit of time to prepare and talk.

Adolph Hitler did not invent antisemitism -- it was in the European air, more here, less there; encouraged here, tolerated there, suppressed elsewhere. Antisemitism is a key piece of Nazi thinking; how does it figure in Nietzsche's thinking?

Hitler doesn't compare well to Nietzsche as a thinker. I don't know a lot about Nietzsche; I know more about Hitler, and I wouldn't describe him as any sort of systematic thinker.

One of the reasons why the Nazis decided to kill all the Jews was a critical food shortage. The Jews were characterized as "useless eaters". Getting rid of several million of the "useless eaters" helped ease up the food situation for a while.

Germany suffered a severe labor shortage, and they needed to pressgang several million workers from other countries in Europe to meet production goals, and these extra laborers had to be fed if they were going to work. Did it make sense to be killing several million Jews, many of whom could have worked in factories, to save food while importing several million workers who needed to be fed? No. It's completely irrational.

Hitler, as the embodiment of the fuhrer principle, wasn't the only decision maker, but his decisions carried more weight than anybody else's. In order to compare Hitler and Nietzsche, you would need to isolate Hitler the man and thinker (such as he was) from Hitler-and-the-Nazi-party. That would be a difficult and time-consuming project.

Any thoughts welcome — Wallows

I don't follow, Wallow. I stick to the shallows.
Drums sound good because they are hollow.
Be careful what you swallow.
Even great minds can choke on marshmallows.
The spokes boy looks like a fellow who's callow.
Perhaps they will all hang from the gallows.
If you can't stand the darkness; light a stick of tallow.

Prolly a good idea if I shut up now and just lay low.

Hence to understand the word, one must read the sentence.
To understand the sentence one must read the paragraph.
To understand the paragraph one must read the chapter.
To understand the chapter one must read the book.
To understand the book, one must know the society/culture it was written in.
To understand the society/culture one must know it's circumstances like:
existence in time, geographical location and (pre)history.

All those are minimum requirements in order to understand them in an even greater context like the devine. — Tomseltje

Your method is sound. So sound, it's foundational.

But... you say "minimum requirements". What more can one do to determine the meaning that a divinity may or may not have expressed? Some divinities (Jesus, Buddha...) were present here as men, so we can apply your method to what they had to say. God almighty? I don't quite know how to get more certainty from him, her, it, them.

There is just no way that a text, no matter how well written, could convey the minds of people or supernatural entities that lived thousands of years ago. Or in the XXI century. — DiegoT

True enough; I can't experience your consciousness, but I can sample it by way of your words, physical expression, emotive affect, and so on. Even people who have lived together for decades are up against the brick wall of the skull inside of which consciousness takes place. Separate the person and his words by 2 or 3 thousand years, and Tomseltje's method is the most one can do.

As for the thoughts of divinities, well... Supposing divinities exist, they don't operate printing presses where their words flow from the mind of the gods onto paper for our edification. They are expressed through persons in particular times and places. One would think that all powerful deities could set up a printing works. After all, their highly fallible finite fickle followers manage to do that with aplomb. Fortress Publishing for Lutherans, Cokesbury Press for Methodists, etc.

That happens quite a lot. But it wasn't my wisdom; I was just quoting. There are people here who do not like biblical quotes. I can't blame them (considering what gets quoted most often) but when the topic is the Bible, it's hard to avoid quoting it.

May your posts always find positive response (or at least interesting negative response).

Matter over Mind — Mind Dough

Suppose you didn't juxtapose matter and mind in that way? Suppose you just said, "Matter and mind." If consciousness arises and exists in the material brain, then the two are on equal footing (as far as brains and minds go).

What we do not understand is how material (neurons, molecules, atoms, etc.) arranged in a very dynamic and complex network produces mind. We are, however, working on it. C. elegans has about 960 cells in its body. some of them are neurons. With only 960 cells to deal with (of which maybe 150 to 200 are neurons) we can study neurons and their various works more closely. The brain has something like 100 billion cells. Even mice have more cells than we can easily observe and chart. But... we're working on it.

I can't observe your consciousness directly, and I can't be objective about my own, so... sure. There is a problem there. But from zillions of hours of conversation and interaction among ourselves, we can gather that most people's brains, minds, and consciousnesses are very similar. If they were not similar it would be very difficult for us to make sense of each other. But we can -- at least most of the time. (Granted, there are people who have never made sense, but that's another story.)

Who we are is the sum total of our genetic inheritance and our experiences. Yes, that's a lot to make sense of, but it isn't as if we have no idea how we became who we individually are. People like me born in the rural midwest (USA) to a relatively poor family have different kinds of experience than people born in Manhattan to quite rich, highly cultured families with high expectations. We all know that some of what we are owes to chance. Had your highly influential 6th grade teacher been run over by a truck when you were still in the 5th grade, things would have turned out slightly differently.

And so on...

I'm not suggesting that we are cut and dried, and that there is no mystery about how we exist in the world. But if mind is material, then there is a likelihood that we can, at some point, understand how mind is created and operates.

By the way, I'd just as soon you not put cats and chocolate cake in the same sentence. Doing so gives me the image of a cat getting hair all over the cake's frosting. and maybe walking on it to boot.

Graffiti on a fence in Madison, Wisconsin... many years ago:
"What is mind?"
"Never matter."
"What is matter?
"Never mind."

Thank you for your exhaustive answer to my question about "Faustian". You exhibit a very Faustian Urge in your study of Spengler, Nietzsche, et al. I haven't read Goethe's Faust; I did read Marlowe's Faust, but that was 50 odd years ago, probably during a summer term class on Shakespeare. What I remember about it isn't worth mention.

But WHO precisely, are these people ? Are their "primary emotions" different from those of humans from other cultures? If they are, then why is this this case? — johnGould

This is the key question in our discussion of Western Civilization. On the one hand I am hesitant to embrace the idea that Western people, personified by Europeans and North Americans, are fundamentally different than African or Asian people. On the other hand, there are clear cultural differences among peoples. The Chinese culture is clearly capable of producing high achievement-oriented individuals, but collective effort (emphasizing community over individual) seems to be a hallmark of that culture. African cultures (from what little I know of it) did not produce much in the way of large scale projects or batches of high-achievement individuals--outside of Egypt. Western hemispheric aboriginal people exercised extensive dominance over the landscape, and at least between northern South America and Central North America built some outstandingly large projects over an extended period of time.

Let me cite again Jared Diamond's theory that geographical determinism had a lot to do with which people dominated which territory and how. The Indo-European and East Asian cultural areas came to dominate the world because geography favored the development of high energy crops (grains and animals), and provided this part of this world with two huge assets not available in Africa or the Americas: an animal appropriate for domestication (then traction and transportation)--the horse--and thus the wherewithal to further exploit resources.

Africa and the Americas had no animals suitable for traction and transportation, and agricultural gains simply don't move very well between north and south--because highly desirable plants are hard to adapt to the N-S climate changes. It's much easier to move agriculture and cultural development east and west--which is what happened across the Eurasian continent.

The spread of agriculture, horse power, metal technology, etc. presumably came before the establishment of cultural characteristics -- like the Faustian personality. The European peoples are the product of a demographic mixmaster that was at work well before the Roman Empire stirred things up even more.

By the time of Augustus some of the major population movements were finished. The Scandinavians were largely in place and would stay where they were. Some of the Germanic and Celtic people were also settled, and would stay put for some time (until the later days of the Empire). There was quite a bit of population movement after the Empire, and some of it during the late medieval - early modern period, mostly affecting eastern Europe.

Some people claim Classical Greece as the source of the western personality (basically your Faustian type) and some claim the Vikings. It would seem like the hardly-laid-back Romans would figure into this somewhere. Christianity is given credit too in various quarters.

Whatever it was, it would appear that individualism, a respect for the individual person, was a key factor. Every human strives for individual survival, but not every culture rates individual achievement as paramount. Western culture did, at least for some layers of the society, and here we are, for better or worse.

I would like to have the Faustian capacity to review Western Civilization back to its earliest roots and trace all the various contributing factors that produced our unique characteristics. While I'm at it, I might as well do the same thing for Asian, African, and Amerindian cultures -- and publish it all in one big fat book that would leave the intellectual community gasping in awe. Alas, the world is safe from this epiphany. It was never going to happen.

The western personality now seems to have become a global personality. China recently landed a vehicle on the far side of the moon. (Why didn't we do more on the moon? My impression is that Kennedy's challenge to land a man on the moon within the decade was motivated by competition with the USSR. We had to prove ourselves superior (after missing the boat on satellites). We did, and there didn't seem to be anything about the moon that was of financial interest.) Maybe the Chinese will find something of more interest.

I'm not certain of specific things such as my parents' everlasting love for me — Joker25

Past performance is the best predictor of future performance, but as the investment disclaimers say, "Your results may vary". So, your parents' past love is predictive of their future love. I am quite sure that if you were to try very hard and persistently, you could probably put a stop to their love. And anyway, their love for you can't be everlasting, since they will not exist forever, and neither will you (or me).

In a nutshell, the answer to your question "Is it possible to be certain about the future?" is no.

In cheap, machine generated book reviews (it seems like that, anyway) the text will say, "... changed the world forever"; or "After that, she was never the same". As Eric Vuillard says, "We never fall into the same abyss twice" after Heraclitus, "We never step into the same river twice". It isn't that the future is just too quirky to predict. It's that the present is always changing as it becomes the future, and therefore we can not be 100% sure of what will happen next, never mind what will happen a year, a decade, a century, or a millennium from now.

Anything changing changes the world forever, if you look at things close enough. If you drop a cup and it breaks, the world is ever so slightly changed, and it stays changed. On a larger scale, we have added many billions of tons of CO2 to the atmosphere, and we continue to add more. Some things about the future that once seemed secure (the future of agriculture in North America or India) now seem doubtful if we project climate trends a ways. The changes of the past and the present time will remain forever. Even if you fix the broken cup, even if CO2 was reduced to pre-industrial levels, the world will still have been changed.

Does that make sense to you?

If this "once around world" is depressing, then reincarnation is a horror.