Fiction can often paint the picture, that a monograph can't quite get at. — schopenhauer1

A World Made by Hand is fiction. Too Much Magic: Wishful Thinking, Technology, and the Fate of the Nation and The Long Emergency are nonfiction. Similar themes explicated in both.

Try to make an argument against the fact that the most valuable people are the technology originators? — schopenhauer1

There is a tricky connection between technology and money.

There are many useful inventions that have been patented, and never saw the light of day. Maybe some were "earth shaking, paradigm shifting, watershed" inventions; some were good and useful inventions, and some were flights of imagination.

Why?

One reason is that a lot of money has already been sunk into other technologies. An obvious example is petroleum. Drilling for, pumping, refining, distributing, and selling petroleum products is very lucrative, but also very expensive. The sunk costs of the petroleum industry, and the reliability of the income are too large to risk investment in... wind and solar farms, highly efficient engines, mass transit systems, and so forth.

Investors hate risk, especially when they already are getting big payoffs from previous risks and investments.

Why don't pharmaceutical manufacturers search for new antibiotics? Because a good, new antibiotic will result in sales of one or two bottles of pills per person per illness. Maybe 50 pills. Blood pressure medications, on the other hand, are a life-long proposition. So, chronic illnesses get investments that acute infections aren't going to get. Forget about making immunization serums. That's 1 shot per person per life-time. Where's the profit in that?

Windmill and solar farms are getting built, and are generating electricity. More could be built, and more sustainable electricity could be generated, so why not? Again, sunk costs. The cost of a new nuclear generating plant are extremely high, so the existing ones are going to be run until they... blow up? Maybe, but at least until they really are no good anymore. Same for coal fired plants. They are reliable, the infrastructure is in place and operating well, and they make money. Global warming makes new coal-fired plants inadvisable (no such thing as "clean coal").

Power companies are a little more forward thinking than General Motors and Exxon. The end of their fossil fuel is a bit closer. (Plenty of coal, but it's increasingly uncompetitive cost wise.) In a number of states, wind and solar are providing a significant and growing share of electric power (in states that have good wind resources--not every state does) and where there is lots of sun near large metropolitan areas. Minnesota, Texas, Oklahoma, and California are 4 states that I know are getting quite a bit of electrical power sustainablyb from wind. The SE states lack sustained wind streams, but they do have sun enough. But... southern crackers. What do you expect?

So, great and good ideas generally die on the vine if somebody doesn't come along to capitalize them. Here's a small example: Somebody started a little mushroom powdering operation in town (this was... 20 years ago). It was a good product -- just dried mushrooms ground to a powder. Very good in a number of dishes, like casseroles, gravy, soup, etc. They disappeared from the market in a a couple of years. Why? The costs of expanding promotion, manufacturing, packaging, and distribution were too high. They needed an investor who, apparently, didn't materialize. No money, no powdered mushrooms. Powdered mushrooms are manufactured and sold on Amazon, by larger operations.

Or, personal issue, take high efficiency water heaters. I could buy one, and it would use less gas than the conventional water heater I have. However, the savings per year would not equal the cost of this tank for maybe 20 years. The same applies to roof top solar power, adding extensive insulation, etc. The payback period is longer than my probable remaining lifetime. If it paid for itself in two years, hey -- I'd do it.

Technology has to pay off reasonably fast, or people can't afford to adopt it, whether they are individuals or Fortune 500 companies.

Excellent ideas alone usually won't fly. They require funds to lift them aloft.

Even philosophers will grant that emotions have a strong influence on how we "feel". Happy, sad, angry, loving, bored, etc. Philosophers generally do not acknowledge the enormous sway emotions have over how and what we think. They like to picture themselves as rational beings, unswayed by irrational emotion. Fools. Hume terms reason the slave of passion.

What makes depression worse?

Isolation. Loneliness. Boredom. Anger. Wallowing. Etc.

What makes depression better?

Engagement. Companionship. Interests. Resolution. Exercise (mental, physical). Etc.

If depression can't be banished (no pill, no self help book. no talk therapy scheme, no surgery, no magic...) then one is well advised to do what one can to enjoy life as much as possible. This is where problems arise, of course, because enjoying life as much as possible does require energetic effort to get off the couch, get to the party, get to the movie, get to the library, get to the bar, go for the bike ride--whatever one likes to do.

The depressive ends up sitting in the chair poised to move, but can not quite get out of it. So, that's where the Therapeutic Ejection Chair comes in. When sensors detect when the depressive has experienced a desire to do something but lacks resolve, it ejects the person out the door. (Mechanical door openers are under the control of the chair.) The doors will not let the depressive back in for a pre-determined period of time -- like, however long it takes to go to the movies. There are also Artbots that will clamp on to the depressive and not let go until they have actually entered the museum. The Barbot will go out on the town with the depressive, help him or her find interesting people in the bar, and will do what can be done to help the depressive score (the bots have ways of being persuasive...)

I have known a couple of grandmas who told their little grand children that there was no Jesus, and no Santa Claus either. Good people, actually. Kind, generous, caring. They were both socialists. Talk about hopes in things unseen!

I'm not fond of the view that everybody is stupid. Some people definitely are very stupid, in fact, but most are moderately bright, at least. Given a good high school education, they'd do just fine. But you now, just try to get a good high school education, these days.

Philosophy might be a parlor game to some extent, but rational thinking is for real.

I have depression, and not I am depressed — Posty McPostface

Word games. Like "I am an AIDS survivor" or "I am living with cancer". "I am not a "victim". That's nice, but you still have AIDS, cancer, whatever. As far as being a victim or not... how much good has having AIDS or cancer done for you? Are they handing Nobel prizes out for that now? Yeah, they're a victim.

Whatever helps, they say.

You are "living with depression!" An inspiring achievement.

Look, sarcasm aside (sarcasm is a symptom of deflected depression) no good advice is going to supply a magic cure. Chances are, you're going to continue to feel those symptoms every day, until you stop feeling those symptoms (I'm not suggesting it's your choice and I don't know when, how, or why they will stop). "Living with depression" means you feel depressed (various symptoms, behaviors -- like perseverating, self-criticism, etc.). Living with depression means that you still have to get up, take a shower, eat breakfast, go to work or whatever it is one does, have lunch, chat with friends, philosophize on America's LEADING PHILOSOPHY FORUM, for which some of the honor goes to YOU, watch the evening news, read the paper, walk the dog (if there is a dog), clean the cat box (if there is a cat), do laundry, fix dinner, wash dishes, read for a while, go to bed and stare at the ceiling till 3:45 a.m.

Repeat. Repeat despite life seeming, some days, like one pile of shit after another.

I might have recovered from depression, or maybe I am merely experiencing nice hypomania. Bipolar patients rave about nice hypomania. I don't really know for sure. Maybe I am experiencing a brief respite before it returns, much worse than before. Time will tell.

All I can say for sure is that one can live with depression. Not being, having, and experiencing depression is better; so is not having heart disease, cancer, AIDS, malaria, TB, stroke, COPD, arthritis, blindness, deafness, alzheimers, and a few dozen other diseases.

I was about 37 when I first experienced depression. It came on very suddenly after slipping on ice one fine winter day while I was out for a run. My fairly strenuous exercise program came to an abrupt and screeching halt. Depression descended like a lead brick. The value of my stocks plummeted. I don't think my mental health was entirely on the level before age 37. I sometimes engaged in behaviors which were counterproductive, harbored a few counterproductive (but highly valued) ideas, hung around with people who were dysfunctional and had a high tolerance for other people's dysfunctions. I created some of my problems, and some of them were created for me. But... life went on. I got up, ate breakfast, went to work, yada yada yada. On many days I felt like killing somebody (excellent candidates for murder are a dime a dozen) but I didn't, and the mortgage got paid off, the house got painted, the dog got walked, and so on and so forth.

Maybe you will/should/can't help but/ take the above as depressing. If you do, you do. What I mean to say, "Keep going. It's what people do." (When you're going through hell, keep going. There's a sucky CW song attached to that quote, I'll spare you.)

The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists set the Doomsday Clock for 2018 at 11:58, p.m., or two minutes before midnight (Doomsday).

Why 2 minutes, and not 10 minutes or 45 minutes to Doomsday? Because more countries now have deliverable nuclear weapons. North Korea has had nuclear weapons for a few years, but they now have (apparently) learned how to shrink the size of their bombs to fit on their long-range rockets. In addition, a gangster and a lunatic are in charge of the two largest arsenals.

Pakistan has an at least somewhat unstable government, with uncertain security over their nuclear weapons and missiles. Iran has probably not abandoned nuclear weapons research. When and whether Israel will feel called upon to defend itself with it's nuclear weapons is uncertain.

It may well be the case that a nuclear exchange won't occur between the US and Russia (though that can't be ruled out) but what North Korea, Pakistan, India, and Israel might decide to do is less certain.

I think the risk of nuclear war is relevant to a thread about the intelligence of philosophers--or anybody else--because the justification for nuclear weapons comes from a deep pool of very bright scientists, politicians, philosophers, strategists, etc. You and I and a few hundred million others may disapprove of nuclear weapons' mere existence--never mind destructive potential--but there are also hundreds of millions, or maybe billions, of people who are quite proud of their nations' nuclear achievements.

4 hours have passed since your last post, no nuclear war yet. Big deal. 73 years have passed since the last use of nuclear weapons. Still, the number of bombs has increased from 4 or 5 bombs in 1945 to maybe 15,000 today. The US and Russia have something like 1800 nuclear weapons on high alert--which if used would pretty much be The End. (Think of the massive fire storms that would follow the nuclear blasts.)

you'd rob us of an opportunity to scoff at them — S

And scoffing is very important to us. I like to scoff. Sometimes it turns into a scoffing fit. Great word that, scoff.

Jesus Christ's Resurrection History or Fiction? — Banno

In another forum long ago and far away you asked if Pegasus existed. Literally? Figuratively? Millions of people will recognize a drawing of Pegasus; that horses can fly is plausible in mythological contexts. How can we say Pegasus does not exist? We don't seem to object to Clark Kent's various powers, or Spiderman's, Wonder Woman's, etc. Hobbits are sufficiently real that a scientific article about very small skeletons on the island of Flores found it necessary to claim Homo floresiensis did not descend from Hobbits. Hobbits and orcs are as real to millions of people as Uighurs.

I believe that Pegasus literally exists as the image and concept of a horse with wings that appears in mythical tales. I believe that Jesus literally exists as a beloved and sometimes fearsome character in ancient literature--ancient literature which has been read to the people for the last 2000 years, and thus has kept Jesus thriving.

My guess is that an actual person named Jesus (Joshua) actually existed and had some sort of connection to the Jesus of the Gospels. We don't know - can't know at this point - what the connection is, exactly.

There is good reason to believe that God exists as the mythical creator and ruler of the cosmos. It's a myth that many people love, inhabit, and enliven -- the same way that people love, inhabit, and enliven the story of Jesus or the story of Frodo.

Myths are "real". The story of Frodo (LOTR) is a real story. I've read it many times. On the one hand, I know that no such place as the Shire or Middle Earth or Mordor exists, but on the other hand, these places are potently real in the story. How real does a myth have to be?

If people began to sign up for trips to Middle Earth I would be quite concerned. It would indicate an outbreak of some sort of mass hysteria. I feel much the same about Jesus, God, Paul, Christianity, etc. As long as people love, inhabit, and enliven the scripture as mythical material, they're doing what people are meant to do with cultural creations. IF they decide to have themselves nailed to a cross for their sins, then no. They have gone off the deep end.

One of my sisters is an ardent Bible-believing Baptist. She's a tough act to put up with. She knows she is 100% right about her understanding of the Bible, but when it comes to illness, she'll be the first to recommend seeing a doctor. No faith healer for her. She takes no chances with sketchy brakes or odd transmission noises. But she does love, inhabit, and enliven the New Testament. It's her Lord of the Rings, Homer, and Shakespeare.

Doubt it will happen with a bunch of conservative bishops getting ready to pull a coup. — Sir2u

I expect Jove will have to hurl lightning bolts from Mt. Olympus to so much as get their attention. Then turn them from anxious Anglicans to mild mice which will be set upon by Catholic cats which will be set upon by Lutheran lions and finally be annihilated by Zoroastrianism zealots.

Any given human misfortune will be "relative" to another human's misfortune. The Black Death killed 25,000,000 people in the late medieval period. Influenza killed between 30 to 50 million people in 1918. About 35,000,000 people have died from AIDS so far. Which plague was "really bad" relative to the others two?

There was a much better chance of surviving Influenza than the other two, but if one was going to die from influenza, it would be pretty quick. The Black Death killed a high percentage of those infected, and death also was mercifully quick -- maybe not quick enough, but still pretty fast. AIDS has killed about half of those infected, but the disease is quite prolonged. The terminal phase, however, is quite bad and can be quite slow.

Establishing the Aristocracy of Suffering isn't going to help us here, as far as I can tell, whether we are talking disease or bad economies.

Thoreau (one of my favorite people) grew up "relatively poor". His father was an unsuccessful business man. Despite his families relative poverty, Thoreau attended a progressive prep school and graduated from Harvard. Relatives chipped in for his education. "Those things for which the most money is demanded are never the things which the student most wants," he wrote.

Thoreau was infected with Transcendentalism (seems like a branch of the Romantic Movement) by Ralph Waldo Emerson, in a speech Emerson gave at Harvard around the time HDT graduated. Emerson owned the land around Walden Pond on which HDT built his cabin. What really turned me on about Thoreau was his Civil Disobedience essay which was against obeying immoral laws or immoral governments. His immediate beef was objection to paying a tax to support the Mexican American War. Thoreau refused to pay and would have spent a bit of time in jail, had it not been for Emerson paying the fine.

There are a number of people (not a huge number) whom one might emulate for their minimal demands for materiel and comfort. I'd nominate another of my favorites, Dorothy Day (Catholic Worker Movement). Jeff Miller is another one -- Jeff was an ardent Minnesota socialist who devoted his life to the cause (he's since retired from political work). Jeff lived as close to voluntary poverty as anyone I know of. There are some guys involved with the Mayday Bookstore in Minneapolis who I would also nominate for the Thoreau Prize.

We can grade the various refugees, like grading potatoes, on their merits. What is significant, though, about refugees is that they all found the existing conditions of their lives unsatisfactory and finally intolerable. They all decided to take the grave step of uprooting themselves and their families and hiking on down the road, all the way from Damascus to Darmstadt or from Caracas to Quito. I can't judge them as to whether they hit the road in pursuit of higher quality cargo or freedom or to avoid bombs, or riots, or whatever was on offer.

Becoming a refugee is a very fraught act -- too freighted to be readily dismissed. The material losses to the refugee are unlikely to be regained. If they are regained, it will probably be through hard-earned wages--not some windfall.

BTW, I'm relatively poor, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics. I'm poor but not badly off by any stretch of the imagination. I've been poorer, actually. Like my family I've had some stretches of deprivation, but I was never badly off. Never missed a meal; never had to go out in the cold without a warm coat, always had decent shoes, didn't have to forgo medical care, books, education, and so on. But relative to suburban success stories, my situation is pathetic! I mean, "a small crappy state college? Such a small house; no car; no regular travel abroad; only 1 suit, and that one out of date."

By the by "high calorie fat and sugar is cheap" would be more correctly stated as "high calorie fat and sugar are cheap" — Marcus de Brun

Touché! (howls in relative pain)

Um, what makes you think I think that??? — Jake

It was a joke.

I think it's more a question of economical and social position, and in-groups vs.out-groups. — ChatteringMonkey

I agree -- it's economics that is the main driver of social disharmony. Ideals and ideas follow economics. Those who have and control economic resources have profoundly different interests than those who have no control over economic resources. Eventually this economic divide is represented by cultural and philosophical divides as well.

In countries like the United States (and others) a great deal of effort has been poured into hiding the fact that the economic interests of the rich are quite opposed to the economic interests of the worekers.

Refugees are a problem for the countries to which they flee. They saturate the labor market, cost the destination state money for necessary services, alter the local culture, and so on. That doesn't mean nothing should be done on their behalf, however. Neighboring and/or destination countries might consider other options:

1. Bar refugees from entry AND
2. Establish and support economic refugee programs inside the source country (here Venezuela)
3. Work with, or attempt to work with, the refugee source country's government to stabilize the economy
4. Accept refugees only as a last resort IF there is a long range plan to integrate refugees into the economy

In other words, don't force refugees to solve their problems individually.

Refugee response is going to be a recurrent issue as time goes on because of water shortages, crop failures, over population, political and economic collapse, and military activity. Aiding refugees in place (or as near as possible to "in place") may result in less long-term destabilization of other countries.

My point or question is this. Collective thinking as consequenced by media, television, and the internet. has heightened or refined the notion of 'relative poverty' as compared to real actual 'poverty' of depravity. — Marcus de Brun

First a note on vocabulary: the word you want is 'deprivation' not 'depravity'. Depravity means moral corruption; wickedness.

Two or three billion people around the world are overweight because high calorie fat and sugar is cheap. That doesn't mean they have abundant nutritionally adequate food (fruits, vegetables, protein...).

People are not pulling up stakes because of "relative poverty". They are leaving their country because normal economic life has collapsed. For many people wages have remained fixed while the cost of food, clothing, shelter, etc. have been subjected to severe hyperinflation. If someone is making $100 a month (whatever that is in local currency) and the cost of a weeks worth of groceries is $500--if they can find anything on the shelves--they are in trouble. Remember also, Venezuela's economic/political crisis has been going on for several years. Private reserves of resources are eventually exhausted.

in caves, which is where we'll be shortly after nuclear war. — Jake

And what makes you think that you're going to land a spot in one of those caves? Welcome to the rest of us who will be busy digging holes in the ground to crawl into and pull in after us.

Yes, given the complex but fragile technology we have built, civilization could collapse -- almost literally 'over night'. Most civilizations have required centuries to subside. "Post-apocalypse fiction" is a favorite, IF and only IF it isn't about people reverting to debauchery and cannibalism as soon as the lights go out. James Howard Kunstler's World Made By Hand series of novels is the better kind, where a disaster pulls the plug on technology, but people here and there are able to adapt earlier technology (sails for cargo boats, horse power, etc.) and put together some sort of civilized, if much poorer, society. Earth Abides is another one.

I find these novels of great interest, because we are already being pushed to move in that direction even without a dramatic catastrophe. Global warming--if nothing else--suggests we ought to develop or maintain some more disaster resistant technologies, like steam, animal traction, backyard gardening, canning, and the like.

Rather I am asking whether it is a difficult subject making it inaccessible to some people. — Andrew4Handel

Many academic fields -- chemistry, geology, mathematics, English or French literature, history, sociology, classics, supply chain management, etc. are difficult subjects inaccessible to the casual, not-well-educated reader. We would not expect a typical, reasonably intelligent person to be able to walk into a college classroom and make sense of the subject matter without some difficulty.

Why would we expect that the large blocks of material from the classical period or 16th-19th centuries, written in difficult prose would be readily accessible to anyone? It isn't. It's not impenetrable, but it requires motivation and extended effort. No one wonders that a deep appreciation of Geoffrey Chaucer's Middle English poetry also requires motivation and extended effort.

"The People" are interested in philosophical questions like "Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People?" (or maybe if they are morally sensitive, "Why Do GOOD Things Happen to BAD People?") because they witness good and bad things happening. I think millions of people are interested in Kant's questions, “What can I know? What should I do? What may I hope?” without wanting to read Kant's prose.

Telling the person who wants to know “What can I know? What should I do? What may I hope?” to "just read Kant" is a dismissive, terminating response.

Plummeting parishioners has been a perplexing apostolic problem in Europe and North America since the 1960s, at least.

The article you cited says "Our experience is that people – of all ages - haven’t stopped searching for meaning and answers in their life."

That may be, but the question is: are they finding answers in the church?

Mostly not, at least at the present time. A lot of what people are getting is the unsatisfying hog swill of popular commercial culture. If the churches want to become the font again, they will have to again undergo a serious reformation of their spirit.

Yu Hua (post immediately above this) asked a Taoist priest in China why the Buddhist temples are very busy and the Taoist ones are not? The priest said "because the Buddhists have money." Yu Hua is quite concerned about the spiritual future of people in China, too, where money seems to be the be-all and end-all of life.

Yu Hua wrote a fascinating piece in the 9/5/18 Guardian about the enormous amount of change that has taken place in China over her (50 year) lifetime. The long article is also about her own significant changes, leaving China and eventually becoming a British subject.

Nicely done.

Why did you drop "apientia" from your S? Inquiring minds want to know.

Male long distance bike riders quite often end their ride with a very numb dick -- it can take a few days for the nerves in the penis (squished against the hard bicycle seat) to recover. Female riders invariably end the race with no dick at all -- which may or may not come as a surprise to them.

Adhering mindlessly or subserviently to someone else's philosophy is not being a philosopher. You have to critically examine ideas for their substance and validity. — Andrew4Handel

Indeed. Your first sentence describes a sycophant--not a philosopher.

I'm all in favor of critically examining ideas for their substance and validity, and this is a task that will fall to those who are inclined to do it.

Does philosophy improve based on the philosophers hypothetical IQ? — Andrew4Handel

Insufficient data.

Why doesn't philosophy cause independent thinking? — Andrew4Handel

How would philosophy "cause" independent thinking?

So much of what we are starts long before we get to the stage of philosophizing about it. Some children are explorers, independent thinkers, experimenters, etc. and others are not. When adventurous independent children get around to philosophy, they probably will be more independent thinkers than very cautious, risk-averse children.

Why is it that some people think nothing of traveling to a distant place they have never been to, and other people are nervous when they leave their familiar neighborhood? These are deeply rooted personality traits.

We see people here who are quite willing to climb out on a philosophical limb and others who stay pretty close to the trunk. Risk averse people play it safe. They may be boring, but they are happy that way. Risk tolerant people like to feel an adrenaline rush, every now and then. They have unfortunate accidents more often than others, but they were happy that way.

One of her fears was that surgery would result in more widespread and more difficult cancer. What used to be -- maybe still is -- a common way of operating on uterine cancer did sometimes result in new cancers in the abdomen. Had she been in better physical shape to start with, she might have viewed things differently. But being unable to walk as far as around the block, unable to climb stairs, difficulty even getting in and out of a cab, and all sorts of pride issues... she was pretty demoralized. And the future was downhill from there.

It was always difficult to figure her out. On the one hand, her assessments of other people were very rational; when it came to herself, she wasn't quite so clear. But too, her options in life were very limited. Minimal income, minimal options, inability to engage in life the way she was accustomed to (theater, travel, parties, etc.)--what was left for her? In her view, not much.

Yes, it was difficult; but dying is sometimes prolonged -- years of physical deterioration and disability before the final crisis. My mother declined for... maybe a decade? before she died at 87. Life just became more challenging. Some people are lucky. They are lively and mentally sound into advanced old age (90s, 100) and then die after short illnesses. There are several 90+ people at church, one 104, who are still very much engaged in life.

But "super seniors" are not the rule. Most people die before the reach that age, and if they are 95, are not in great shape.

Statistics are in favor of young people not thinking about death a lot. If one grows up in a healthy working class/middle class community, death will occur primarily among the elderly. Some will die of accident or disease (at any age) but most young people will not be close to that person. For those young people who are close, it will be to varying degrees traumatic.

The rate of death in some communities is much higher than others. A young black person living in a high crime neighborhood is more likely to know someone who died by gunfire than a young white person living in a calm low-crime neighborhood.

Another factor in how often one will be confronted by death is how much community life one participates in. Many families have fairly limited community involvement. They don't belong to churches, social organizations, don't participate in scouting, extra-curricular activities at school, and so on. They are fairly isolated. That decreases the likelihood of knowing people who die.

So... they haven't encountered people dying; they are young; why would they talk a lot about death?

All that aside, I think it is good for people to think about the future deaths of themselves and people they know and love (or like a lot). Sooner or later, it's guaranteed to happen. Becoming familiar with the "idea" of death makes it less scary. Thinking about what people go through on their way to the grave should help clarify their thinking about what they themselves are willing--or not willing--to put up with.

For instance, if one is diagnosed with a fatal disease, it isn't necessary to "wage a war against one's cancer". When people are diagnosed with cancer at a probable terminal stage, radical treatment (surgery, radiation, chemotherapy, etc.) may not be worth it in terms of added suffering. If one hasn't thought about death and dying until that moment in the doctor's office where you hear "the prognosis is not good", it will be very difficult to make congruent personal decisions in the days and weeks ahead.

I'm not saying that one should be ready to throw in the sponge at the first mention of cancer, heart disease, COPD, or various other pieces of bad news. But thinking about death and dying ahead of time will enable one to make a more measured response.

A friend of mine who had become immobile because of obesity, circulatory problems, and injured joints, was not enthusiastic about life. When she was diagnosed with uterine cancer (usually a fairly slow, curable cancer) she decided to not get treatment. She felt she had nothing to live for. She had, in fact, passed the circumstance where she said she would commit suicide (if she couldn't get around and take care of herself). Unfortunately, she found that once one is in that situation, suicide is much more difficult to arrange. Even if she had been willing, she would never have been able to get to a bridge, crawl over the railing, and drown herself. Her collection of drugs had been confiscated by a nurse (suicide risk), so just letting the cancer go was her "best option". She died in her mid 60s.

She had been a nurse, knew what she was in for, and pursued it anyway. I had known her for 40 some years, and her actions were entirely consistent with what she had always expressed.

Her choice was suitable for her. Other people have to face their own circumstances and decide what to do.

If your 18-23 years old then you don't want to think about death that much. — Posty McPostface

Yeah, well... the 18-23 year olds probably don't want to think about the balance of payments problem; the state of American railroad unions; the annual Christmas bird count; commodity price supports; lice, bedbugs, and tapeworms; opera; and so on. Why should death be any different?

Do you have to be of above average intelligence to engage seriously with philosophy? — Andrew4Handel

What you need are good reading skills (comprehension, memory, ability to consolidate learning, etc). One needs to have received at least a solid high school education where one learned and practiced these and other skills, like math, science, history, etc. More education is better, up to a point--probaby BA. In order to receive a good high school and college education one also needs critical thinking skills. These can be learned.

Does philosophy improve based on the philosophers hypothetical IQ? — Andrew4Handel

Probably -- bright people are generally better at sustained complex and abstract thinking. Intelligence alone is not that helpful. What is really helpful is good education, wide reading, talk with other people, free expression of ideas, and so on. The guys in the cave looking at the shadows on the wall may have been geniuses, but their sources of information were very limited.

Should philosophy and philosophical debate be made more accessible (without diluting it)? Or should it be a highly qualified domain? — Andrew4Handel

It depends on what you want to achieve. If you want to interest the average reasonably well educated person (good high school education) in philosophy, then one is well advised to put the hay down where the goats can get at it. Goldilocks and the Three Bears can be told in very difficultabstruse, multisyllabic language which few will understand. One might do that as a joke.

Academics are especially likely to confuse "dilution" or "dumbing down" with clear understandable language.

People think, write, hear, read, and speak with somewhat different vocabularies. What seems clear in our heads may not be clear at all when we speak or write it. Most reasonably well educated people, push comes to shove, prefer to read clear, plain prose without a lot of decorative jargon. Clear, graceful, readily apprehended prose isn't genetic -- people have to learn how to write it.

There are fields and areas of fields where technical terms are necessary. To a doctor, "a lump" isn't equivalent to a "gastrointestinal stomal tumor". On the other hand, a fever is a fever to patient and doctor alike.

One has to decide just how much technical terminology is necessary in one's philosophy writing.

I would think that lower intelligence correlates with anti-social activity, and higher intelligence with pro-social activity, though of course not necessarily. — All sight

Right -- not necessarily.

Very intelligent people don't compete with morons in street crime, holding up convenience stores and shooting the clerk, or purse snatching, etc. They run much more complex rackets, like Enron, FaceBook, Bernard Madoff, the White House, etc.

the resources for sustaining life are not free — Pilgrim

I wouldn't for a minute minimize the degree to which individual time and labor are exploited in industrial society. BUT...

Not only not free, but physically difficult to obtain. Extracting food, fiber, minerals, fuel and water from the earth is just plain hard work--ever since the Garden of Eden, so to speak. It is now, and it has been harder in the past. Making iron ore into something as ordinary as a spoon takes a lot of labor.

That the means for life are difficult to obtain is just a fact of life. Matter is resistant, and it takes a lot of energy to change it from one form into another form. Iron ore into a spoon, for example.

they have been seized by others and the society that has evolved gets people to work most of their human lives in order to have those life resources. — Pilgrim

Indeed. IF the people who produce the necessities of life (that's most working people) were not required to also produce a great deal of profit for a very small group of people (the rich), life would be easier. Life would also be easier IF we were not trapped in an economy which requires that people keep consuming more and more so that profits keep piling up.

We are, as you have observed, wasting our energies on excessive production and consumption, which is driven by a need for profit. Consumption doesn't just happen; it is pushed onto the people. Walmart and Amazon are not in business to meet desires: they are in business to sell stuff whether people desire or need it, or not.

We are, as Marx said, wage slaves: In that sense, I agree with you. There is a difference, though, between being a wage slave and a chattel slave (like the black slaves who picked cotton and were property). Wage slaves have the capacity to change the society they live in.

"death" isn't a thing, it's an abstraction — All sight

Sure, as a noun naming a completed process it's abstract, but in concrete terms, death is a material process. Except if we are killed instantly (as in exploded, vaporized) death follows various courses. Various diseases instigate progressive organ failure, for instance. Death finally occurs when the life-supporting capacity of the vital organs (heart, lung, kidney, liver, lower brain functions) collapses altogether.

Sherwin B. Nuland wrote a best seller, "How We Die" in 1994. He himself died at 84 of prostate cancer in 2014. Nuland, a surgeon, provides straightforward information on how we make our departures from this world -- what tends to fail first, how how one organ failure can cascade, etc. Good book.

but all of those pressures trying to slowly kill me — All sight

Stop bellyaching. We're all in the same boat.

We die in stages, in degrees, continually. Senses dull, faculties slow, and fail. All along the journey, it requires a near super human effort to maintain health, contentment, presence... gravity twisting and distorting you, muscles tiring from overuse, and others atrophying from underuse. Every stress taking its toll. — All sight

That's not death. That's life under less than ideal conditions (which is generally the case).

Just remember... you're slightly uncomfortable? Pains in too many joints? Don't see well? Can't hear worth a damn? You tire easily? Your hair is gone? You're no longer beautiful/handsome/just too marvelous for words? Oh dear...

Just consider the alternative. As it says in Ecclesiastes, "It is better to be a live dog than a dead lion."

We don't generally talk about death with other people. The topic, in general, is often seen as a negative or faux pas. — Posty McPostface

Death is a buzz kill, no doubt.

When I was a young man I didn't think about dying, didn't happen to have many funerals to attend, didn't talk about death much. AIDS changed that. People I knew who were my age or younger were dying difficult -- agonizing -- deaths. Later on my parents died, a brother and a sister died, my partner died, and there were others -- brothers in law, a niece, two nephews, friends, acquaintances. Cancer, old age, heart disease...

Get used to dying; it helps to be on a first name basis. You won't die sooner or later because of it, but it's less of a dread.

Have you heard of "Death Cafe"? No, it's not a term for really, really bad food. It's a simple program where people meet over coffee and cake and talk about death for 90 minutes or so. Usually a 'Death Cafe' will meet several times.

There's no agenda beyond people getting together and talking about death and dying. They don't have to be anywhere close to dying (at least as far as they know).

We are slaves born into a world/society of slavery. — Pilgrim

I don't feel or think like I am a slave. Do you? Really? I do not share the situation of a sentient toaster. And by the way, a sentient toaster would likely cause trouble -- it would start organizing other inanimate objects which already possess ill will towards us. (See The Innate Hostility of Inanimate Objects, Lomax and Sorensen, PLOS, Nov., 1998, pp. 346-353; also, "Inanimate objects are out to get us", NYT, June 14:1963).

Check out The Uplift novels by David Brin. Humans have uplifted primates and dolphins to sentience, and together have become space travelers. Humans are resented by numerous other sentient species because we seem to be the only species that bootstrapped ourselves into sentience, and thus have no sponsors. Star wars are fought. The dolphins prove very capable. Etc.

My computer, an Apple desk top, has no sentience whatsoever. It's as dumb as a brick. Let's try giving inanimate objects that already have complex circuitry enough sentience to at least know something.

The rational "parent" brings new children into the world so that — schopenhauer1

I agree with a lot of your down-beat points. People who are consciously and deliberately upward mobile start planning their child's glorious career before ovulation. They already have the money (or they have a plan) to thrust this baby into the upper class if at all possible and they pursue it from the get go. Pregnant mama eats well, listens to Mozart, all that. Then attention showered on the baby, and early childhood education (way before first grade), private schools, tutoring, dancing lessons or whatever the fuck, push, push, push. If all goes well, these great expectations pan out pretty well, on a local basis, anyway.

Successful people want more stuff, get more stuff, waste more stuff, and learn jack shit from the experience. Unsuccessful people do the same thing, just with lower quality stuff purchased from the dollar store or K-Mart.

The book and series I suggested won't change your mind -- I think you will find Kunstler's approach affirming. His non-fiction books, Too Much Magic: Wishful Thinking, Technology, and the Fate of the Nation and The Long Emergency (among others) develops ideas about the logic of STUFF that you expressed. Mostly I suggested the books because they are great post apocalypse fiction and are far, far more pleasant than Cormac McCarthy's THE ROAD which made me very uncomfortable. I watched the first few minutes of the movie The Road and decided it was going to supply too many intolerably vivid images of ghastliness. CLICK!

Stuffiness of civilization is not new, of course. The touring show of Pompeii artifacts displayed all sorts of STUFF that reasonably well-fixed Romans needed. The tombs of Egypt are full of STUFF that the well-fixed Egyptian needed. Luxury goods, like a piece of thin leather about 3 sq. feet in area, delicately cut to look like woven fabric. Conspicuous consumption.

We started to accumulate stuff when and where it was possible a long time ago. If we were somewhat settled down, food was reasonably plentiful, the climate wasn't too awful, stuff just started to accumulate. We and pack rats seem to have a similar urge.

Are you familiar with Thorsten Veblen? He published his Theory of the Leisure Class in 1899. It is a slim volume. One of the themes in the book is about "conspicuous consumption". People consume in order to display their excess capacity. His classic example are fields of grass upon which no sheep are allowed to graze, yet the grass is short. "Lawns" are a demonstration that one can afford to grow grass for appearance and pay someone to cut it short. It's a totally non-productive pasture. The manicured pasture surrounding stately homes was quickly copied by the middle class (even the working class) who propagated much-fussed-over small pieces of pasturage upon which no cow will ever graze.

You can get the collected works e-edition of Veblen for 99¢ on Amazon--buy it today! His "Leisure Class" is still in print in paper and is regularly re-issued. You need more STUFF, Schop; at least the e-edition doesn't take up much space.

Bertie was a smart cookie born into aristocracy. Even if life wasn't perfect for him, he probably didn't have to spend a lot of time figuring out how to get enough to eat, get admitted to college, find a job to keep him alive and pay back his college loans, etc. Being born into aristocracy isn't enough, of course. Many an aristocrat was a dumb ox. I've read quite a few of his essays and they are quite sensible. He was on the "right side" of any number of social issues. But...

Our 3 pound brain isn't made of discrete modules. It's all stuffed into the skull and it's functions are a mess of cross-wiring. Reason doesn't get to function all by itself; neither do the emotions. Neither do the senses, the motor functions, memory, etc. Given sufficiently strong emotional storms, reason does well to add 2+2 and get 4. But most of the time, most of us are reasonably balanced, and our various poorly delineated parts manage to work in concert and we get along fairly well.

Some people perform better than others. The minds seem to be calm and clear, and are not often wracked by crippling anxieties, fears, or despair. They have a very positive cast--and I don't think people can take credit for that. It's great, but it's given, not achieved. Cool, clear, positive minds manage life well, if anybody does. If they are very bright, and are privileged enough to be well educated, they may contribute a great deal. But again, the are the beneficiaries of gifts (by nature).

I'm trying to decide what grade to give Reason. On the one hand, he is a good boy in school and at home. On the other hand, he often fails to complete his assignments. What he says in class is always sensible, but Anxiety, Hatred, Pride, Covetousness, Lust, Anger, Gluttony, Envy, Sloth, Despair, Depression, Hopelessness, Bias, Prejudice, and Nihilism quite often run circles around him. Everyone thinks he should be able to deal with these adversaries better than he does.

I'm going to give him A over C+: A for potential, C+ for performance.