Science, for example, has been the beneficiary of simultaneous competition between research groups and cooperation within those groups. There is a difference between friendly competition (we are both on the same side) and hostile competition (who will be killed first?)

Competition stifles innovation. Collaboration strengthens contemplation. — Lif3r

You will need to explain how competition stifles innovation. My theory is that when a research group knows that others are seeking the same goal, they work harder so that they can claim the prize of success first. Collaboration is just as critical as competition.

I'm not sure that it follows logically that collaboration strengthens contemplation. The two terms seem to belong to different spheres. (In a monastery, collaboration might very well strengthen contemplation, but that would be a rather out-of-the-way example.)

I do believe in a real connection to the divine, that is severed through sin, and can be regained through confession, and change. To me, this is by far the highest good, and in itself sustaining of a person through all measure of trials. Nothing is comparable to the goodness of it, and nothing is comparable to the pain of its absence. — All sight

From the POV of the believer, this is entirely consistent and valid. When one falls away from belief, there is nothing quite like faith to take its place.

But what we can do individually has no counterpart for collective action, unless the individuals in the collectivity are extremely well aligned. In most cases (real life) people belong to collectivities provisionally and without strict alignment.

It is easy to win the battle of survival of the fittest and just go round and kill your competition. The reason we don't all just fight to the death is because cooperation is better for ourselves. — Andrew4Handel

Obviously it isn't so easy to win the battle of survival of the fittest. The competition, after all, is as capable of coming round to kill their competition (i.e., us) as we are them. We cooperate because we are less likely to be stabbed in the back, just when we are busy thinking about something else.

Cooperation is better, and competition needs to be kept to the useful minimum (which still leaves room for sorting out the best without killing off the rest).

Ayn Rand came up last night on the Philosophy Now radio program I hear late on Sunday night ("The radio show that questions everything -- except your intelligence"). The speaker mentioned that Rand's "philosophy" is best explored in the economics of economists like Milton Friedman, one of Rand's acolytes.

People love to hate Ms. Rand, poor thing.

she wasn't a bad stylist. She could actually write decent sounding sentences — Baden

Right. Well, so can I. So why am I not more famous? My lack of fame, compared to Miss Rand's, leaves me peckish; even peevish.

I think you will find that quite a few "rhetoric" classes are offered, but they no longer appear under the heading of "rhetoric". Too too old fashioned. The term now is "writing" or (my term) communication production. There is a course at the U of M writing program in "visual rhetoric" for instance. This isn't entirely new -- "visual literacy" has been a thing since the early 1970s... some 50 years, now.

It's not always delusional to think that. But in the specific case of Hitler (and those like him) it seems to be, doesn't it? — Baden

So, how far should one go with Jesus' instruction in Matthew?

43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you — Jesus

Is it a "stumbling block" or sound and moral advice?

Some countries which have good reputations (Ireland and Sweden, for example) and some which didn't at the time (fascist Spain, for instance) were "neutral" during WWII. They either helped Germany (Sweden traded high grade ore and steel products with Germany) or they did nothing.

A world war might have been avoidable and Hitler might have been throttled had we (the future allied states) declared war on Germany in 1938 at the time of Hitler's annexations of the Sudetenland and Austria, and at the very latest, the invasion of Poland in September of 1939. Of course, that didn't happen and one can list compelling reasons why it didn't. The US didn't declare war until December of 41, by which time Europe was pretty much in Hitler's hands, and more besides.

Similarly, Japan should have been resisted earlier. Japan invaded Manchuria in 1931. How much resistance did Japan meet then?

I am not sure that Jesus' admonition is workable for individuals, outside of an impending Kingdom of God. It isn't workable for nations. When it comes to foreign relations, nations don't have morals, and they don't have friends or enemies. They have "interests". Recognizing the nation's interests early enough is a large part of success. What, exactly, a nation's interests really are at any given moment isn't always obvious.

A nation's domestic interests are not always obvious either. There is so much churn, so much sturm and drang sometimes that it is difficult to separate out groups, mobs, and crowds, never mind deciding about individuals.

The Tin Man might not have had a heart, but he was not "heartless".

I once tried to keep a purse (wallet, keys, phone, etc.) I found on campus. It had $110 bucks in it. I wanted to keep the money, but I felt too guilty about converting a find into a theft. Finally I turned it in (it took a week to get to that point).

On the one hand, I felt that I did the right thing. On the other hand, I really wanted the money. I felt... inadequate for not having enough nerve to just ditch the purse and keep the money. That was 18 years ago. I am still stewing over the decision.

Delaying a week probably cost the woman at least $100 in screwing around getting keys replaced, new IDs, credit cards, license, worrying about what somebody was doing with her stuff (performing black magic in her purse, laying a curse on her ...)

Not true. It did not continue "unabated". Here are the numbers for the last years of the war. I — Baden

ALERT ALERT
major memory error

So... the Moratorium Committee organized the biggest Washington, D.C. demonstration for November 15, 1969 -- that's the one I was thinking of. (Hey, this was 50 years ago... I can't remember everything.)

Looking back at these figures, and at the time (when anti-war sentiment was peak) it didn't seem like it ended so soon. But... we were out of there in 1973.

1968-----536100
1969-----475200
1970-----334600

Social change has happened -- you've seen it, I've seen it. But I don't feel like I can claim with any certainty what it was, exactly, that led to it.

Activists are one force in any change. Take school integration: There was some agitation for integration prior to the 1954 SCOTUS decision, Brown Vs. the Board of Education which ruled that separate was not equal, and segregation was unconstitutional. By the time integration was widespread, far more than activists were involved: the US Department of Justice; Federal Marshals; the National Guard; local police; an army of lawyers, school boards, city councils, state governments, mass media, political parties, etc -- all this on both sides of the issue.

Somewhere along the line, school integration reached regional peaks, and then declined. Many schools are now effectively re-segregated.

The process of de-segregating and then re-segregating covers more than 60 years. There have been so many players involved, it is difficult to identify WHO or WHAT was most instrumental. At least two generations of activists -- pro integration and anti integration -- have been involved. Suburban land developers, building mass housing after WWII, were one of the major players. Mortgage lenders, operating on 1935 guidelines, were a second major group of players. Both would seem far removed from education policy. Despite an immense amount of litigation, community action, and so on -- many schools remain as segregated as schools ever were.

And not least -- segregation or integration is maintained by the individual decisions of millions of parents making family decisions about education.

it assumes that caring about social justice, whether through talking about it and the ways in which to secure it, and/or securing it through direct action, is somehow meaningless... — Maw

If anything makes social justice advocacy and action "meaningless" it is the belief that "the establishment" can be easily toppled, like Joshua marching around Jericho making noise until the walls come tumbling down.

The Establishment has walls that do not crumble from trumpet blasts. The foundations of the very thick, highly reinforced concrete walls are very deep -- right on bed rock. The gates of the establishment are closed to noise makers, social justice activists, do gooders, preachers, the perfectly politically correct (or not) and all sorts of other riff raff. Admission is by invitation only.

"Social Justice Activism will be tolerated in so far as it doesn't interfere with the flow of commerce. You are free in so far as you obey. We consider "irrelevant" what social justice advocates do -- so keep on doing it. Our motto is: "We don't care; we don't have to."

Human beings are (rational) animals — gurugeorge

No one ever went broke under-estimating the average rationality of human beings.

The breakdown of the Black family and the atomization of the Black middle class in the 1960s, and the connection of that breakdown to crime is well documented — gurugeorge

It is well documented, true enough, and it isn't accidental. Black people were generally the recipients of very unfair treatment in housing policy. FHA rules explicitly or practically excluded blacks from its inception in 1935 through at least 1985. By the time this institutional disability was eliminated, housing prices had risen far too high for blacks to be able to buy houses. They were cut out of the major wealth generating device of middle income Americans. The black family has also been subjected to welfare policies which undermined the stability of families. The black population that migrated en masse out of the south in the 20th century were not able to establish an economic base for themselves before the depression, automation, and globalization began to eliminate the kind of jobs that they were generally hired to do.

Like most people of all races, blacks have authored some of their own problems. They have not collectively prioritized education; they have not practiced thrift as effectively as they could (cutting themselves off from internally generated funds); et cetera.

Discourse started getting more difficult, let's see... was it after the Hitler-Stalin Pact when the Communist Party USA identified the sin of "premature anti-fascism"? Or was it in the late 40s and 50s when Joseph McCarthy, Republican Senator from Wisconsin, began a witch hunt for "are you now or have you ever been" communists and homosexuals in the U.S. Government? Or was it during the war on Vietnamese communists that "we had to destroy a village in order to save it"? Or was it when "socialist" became a term of opprobrium equivalent to 'pedophile'. 'subversive' and 'communist'? In the 1980s some socialists were wondering whether they should just stop using the term. Alas... there wasn't any other term as serviceable as "socialist".

And so on and so forth down to the present. The "Overton Window" - the range of ideas tolerated in public discourse - changes over time, certainly.

Race and/or ethnicity, sex and/or gender, any number of identities, and feminism don't seem to have been shut out of the Overton Window. (Like, "Would the love that dare not speak its name please shut up for a while!") Some operatives in the swamp of the right wing may ridicule social justice warrior operatives in the left wing swamp on the other side of the road. If "SJW" is the worst epithet right wingers can come up with... stop worrying.

I don't find SJW as dismissive a handle as you two seem to find it. It seems like a good fit, to me. SJW is no more offensive than "weekend warrior". I've been a "social justice warrior" a number of times. Also a "do gooder". SJW is less derisive than "do gooder". It's better than "guilty white liberal"; it beats "dead white males" -- a category to which I'm close enough to be touchy about.

The efforts of the majority of people committed to the fight for social justice strike me as very similar to the the efforts of anti-war peace activists during Vietnam--efforts that I thought very highly of at the time. We marched to Boston Commons (or wherever the location was) and chanted slogans and sang "we shall over come" and listened to impassioned speeches. Then we went home.

There was an enormous amount of talk among small groups, tons of planning, lots of leaflets and buttons were printed, arguments had with family and friends, and so on. A million people showed up one fall day in Washington, D.C. -- 1 out of every 200 Americans overflowed the mall for that biggest peace demonstration.

And you know what the concrete outcome of all this was? PFFT. Zilch. Zero. Nada. The war lasted another 5 years, unabated. It is as safe to criticize SJWs now as it was to criticize hippie faggot peaceniks in 1970, because there was very little of importance that hinged on their efforts.

I disparage social justice advocates now no more than I disparage peace efforts 50 years ago. But let's be clear: Neither peace advocates nor social justice advocates ever got anywhere close to getting their hands on the levers of social and economic policy. Those levers are never left unattended or unguarded and they are well protected behind locked thick-steel doors.

The benefits of social justice advocacy and peace activism flow primarily to the activists, to the benefactors--not to the beneficiaries. Why? Because the act of protesting is good for the protestor. Literally. It's a healthy exercise in every sense of the word. It just happens to be totally ineffective as a method of getting at those policy levers.

I dislike a lot of what I hear from over-the-air media, on-line media, blogs, etc. I've never read a 4chan page, and I haven't come out for confederate statue fan meets. On the other hand, I haven't come out for antifascist demonstrations, feminist demonstrations, and so forth. My demo days have been over for quite some time. Most of what I hear/see is a somewhat incoherent cacophony from all sides.

Take the current problem of Venezuelans fleeing to Brazil, Ecuador, Peru, and Columbia. On the one hand, of course they are fleeing -- life in Venezuela has become economically untenable for millions. On the other hand, the neighboring states are not rolling in gold. Let an aid agency exec. who spoke this morning stand in for the SJW viewpoint. "People have a right to go wherever they want to live!" he said. "The response in neighboring states is xenophobia."

No, it isn't "xenophobia". It's competition for scare resources. The theory that people should be able to move to and live wherever they wish sounds good in theory, but it entirely dismisses the people in the destination cities. Their right to live where they wish also requires a stable economy and decent pay, and it isn't xenophobia for them to fear the consequences of 500,000 or a million economic refugees suddenly taking up residence.

The argument for refugee rights is incoherent when it is one sided -- and quite often SJW talk is very one-sided. Pay equity for women isn't a simple issue. Claiming that all women are victimized by wage discrimination is sometimes true, but is often not. Men who do not adhere to the desired corporate commitment of time and talent (long and late hours, extremely competitive environments, continuous employment over decades, etc.) are also penalized, just as women are who do not conform to the desired pattern.

I'm well informed about how black people have been and are now discriminated against in a multitude of ways. Still, I don't buy everything that black activists are doing. some of the most critical black problems can only be addressed by the black community. Gun violence, for instance. It's a lifestyle issue that the black community has to resolve. Nobody can do it for them. Stopping traffic on freeways accomplishes nothing useful beyond publicity (and as every school girl knows, there's no such thing as bad publicity). Likewise, the failure of blacks to buy into property isn't entirely the fault of banks. Even illegal immigrants manage to buy houses on their low wages. How do they do it? They scrimp and save, live at the lowest standard of living tolerable for a time, and work hard at whatever work they can get. This method works -- it just means that everyone has to forego most spending until the family has enough saved to make a down payment. Poor Americans, white or black, generally don't see their way clear to making these kind of temporary sacrifices.

I expect the shock jocks on the radio to be one-sided and unsubtle. People working for social justice know more, can be, and should be more nuanced in their thinking and strategy.

Good job as Devil's Advocate. BTW, the Devil's Advocate is a real role in sainthood proceedings in the Catholic Church.

First, Christianity is not exclusively about ideology — Jake

I didn't say that Christianity was about ideology. Some people think it is, though. My "operating system" is Christian theology, basically, even though I disavow belief in the Creed. I might wish that I had grown up among liberal Manhattan atheists, but that just wasn't the case.

What to make of it? 1) Given the low level of participation in Christian religious life the UK, it is hardly surprising that giving among Christians would be low. 2) Given the operation of a (formerly) robust welfare state in the UK, one would expect atheists to give less than committed religionists. 3) Given the tendency of committed religionists to give more than uncommitted and non-participating persons, it would make sense that Muslims would give more.

The average individual in the US whose income was $50,000 gave $2,868 to charity, or about 5.8% of income (according to the Internal Revenue Service).

Corporations and foundations (established by the uber rich) along with individuals donated about $420 billion dollars to charity last year. Some corporations, like Target, donate 5% of pretax profits to charity.

I would expect that people living in countries with fragmented and inadequate state welfare programs (like the United States) would see more visible need among their countrymen. It also seems to be the case that those with fewer financial resources tend to give a larger percentage of income to charity -- maybe because they can better identity with raw need.

However generous individuals are, a well-run social welfare state is a better solution to solving social equity problems than the best intentioned helter-skelter charity approach.

Here's an example. Catholic Charities is the second leading provider of social services to the needy in the United States, topped only by the federal government. To me, that's impressive.

But I've spent years exploring the Catholic web and it's almost impossible to find discussion among Catholics of this amazing accomplishment. — Jake

Probably because Catholic Charities is not funded by, or for the most part performed by individual Catholics. Large religious service organizations like Catholic Charities do not rely very much on direct individual donations; they rely on collective donations from the church, as well as fees for services and contracts. Take refugee settlement: Catholic Charities and Lutheran Social Services (in this part of the country) are the main contractors with the government for refugee settlement and other social services.

Large social service operations like shelters, medical facilities, housing, settlement programs, etc. have to have secure year-long or multi-year budgets to operate at all. Income dribbling in from individual donations isn't nearly reliable enough.

I'm certainly not claiming that there is no connection between the individual in the pew and Catholic Charities: donations are where the church's money to operate comes from. But funds are then aggregated and distributed to various and sundry programs--among them Catholic Charities. And as I mentioned, contracts with federal, state, and local governments provide big bundles of operating funds.

Most Protestants and Catholics are not reminded about Matthew 25:35-40 anywhere close to often enough.

35 For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36 I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’

37 “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38 When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? 39 When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’

40 “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’ — Jesus

A priest or prophet can command because he has authority. — Bitter Crank

Because it uses the boogeymen man to scare the bejeezus out of people so that the toe the line. — Sir2u

Same thing, essentially.

The prophet comes to deliver the truth: "This is what God wants; woe unto you if you don't do it." A philosophical justification for obeying the gods or demonstrating the benefits of obedience to the gods can be developed (by a philosopher/believer) but his book won't be a sacred text.

Why compare religion and philosophy at all? Is it sensible to compare religion and politics or religion and economics?

Religion is based on prophecy, ritual, magic, authority, and belief. These are not properties of philosophy. Religion has the wheels of institutions to maintain it from generation to generation. Philosophy has no system of institutional maintenance (since the early schools of philosophy, at least). What philosophy has is verbal and written discourse. Religion begins with truth, philosophy seeks truth.

A priest or prophet can command because he has authority. He might also have power (the ability to enforce commands). Philosophers may be highly respected, but are there any philosophers who have commanding authority and power?

One thing about intelligence and evolution... Life appeared early in earth's history, and evolution was at work for billions of years BEFORE the Cambrian explosion of multi-celled life forms, a half a billion years ago. Intelligence, even counting the intelligence of dinosaurs, is still very recent in earth-life history, and our intelligence is so recent as to be barely visible on a timeline of earth's existence.

For a long time--most of the time--evolution wasn't tending toward intelligence.

The jargon affirms
the reliability of the universal by means of the
distinction of having a bourgeois origin , a distinction
which is itself authorized by the universal. — Number2018

2018, it isn't your fault that Adorno writes this way. I can't figure out HOW this sentence could be meaningful. Is a truth-teller merely a juggler of jargon?

I have heard about the quick freeze method, they put you into something, I think it is liquid nitrogen, and then drop you so that you turn into a million pieces. When it is dry it is a fine powder you have become. They then can use you as fertilizer for a tree or something. Sounds nice, but expensive. — Sir2u

I've seen demonstrations of smaller objects like carnations being dipped in liquid N, and then being shattered. Impressive. Unfortunately, liquid nitrogen is expensive. But you know, you can fertilize a tree by just digging a hole, getting into it, and pulling a tree in after you. If you're on the edge of the grave at the time this might be too strenuous.

I have heard that if you use liquid oxygen as a charcoal starter and light it with a very very very long match that the result is incandescent. So, get some liquid O, use that instead of gasoline on your funeral pyre, and the flash will be truly magnificent.

If you aren't buried in a lead lined concrete box, eventually you'll end up fertilizing a tree, pretty much however you decide to rot.

No, then I have to think about the disposal of that crap. What the hell can anyone do with a bunch of used caustic potassium hydroxide? — Sir2u

The beauty of this system is that the potassium hydroxide is expended in the process. What's left is water and bone.

There are barge brokers who can sell you a used barge. Like this:



Fairly expensive, but if you want to go in a blaze of glory, I think this size might be right.

If I have my way, when I die it will be on top of a mountain of firewood with a dead man's switch hooked up to a big tank of gas so that I can have my Viking funeral. Fuck funeral directors and coffin makers all. — Sir2u

I like the image of dying on top of one's very own funeral pyre, composed of cardboard, household furniture, waste wood, sawdust, branches from diseased street trees, and the like. BUT Vikings didn't use gasoline in their funeral pyres. Even so, it was all their huge funeral pyres (them and Hindus) that started global warming.

There are green alternatives, however:

One type of green alternative is to self-compost your body; this is a pleasant, no-cost outdoor process which involves no chemicals or carbon emissions. It's NATURAL. You just find a pleasantly remote spot, make a deep bed of leaves and other plant material, lay your dying self down, pull a large amount of more green stuff over you, and die. If you live in a civilized part of the world with few large scavengers and nosey hikers running about, your bodies demise will be quite peaceful and private.

For a livelier physical demise, plan on dying in an area with lots of large scavengers (hyenas, vultures, beetles, etc.). The flora and fauna will have your body taken care of in just hours or days, at most.

For a more graceful physical disappearance, (it could be rigged up so that your deadman's switch could be used) plan on expiring in a large thick-walled plastic tank (just big enough for you). The deadman's switch will open a valve from a large tank of caustic potassium hydroxide which will dissolve your fatty/protein body leaving only bony material. It takes... less than a day. It's 72% more energy efficient than the bonfire approach.

You might like to know that the Mayo Clinic developed this method of "green cremation" to dispose of donated cadavers and other tissue from surgeries, etc. By the time the potassium hydroxide is done, what's left in the tank are bones and clear water.

Plastic tubs and potassium hydroxide are affordable and ready available.

There's no reason to suppose that an authentic person will also be pleasant company: honest, considerate, thoughtful, etc. The internal consistency and congruence of any given jerk may be very high. They may be the real thing -- and also a thoroughgoing jerk.

and spread it as best I can — ArguingWAristotleTiff

John Deere makes a device for spreading the heavy wet product our Georgia Peach produces:

What people must have used in the millennia before the scientific method was developed was practical problem solving.

For instance, [it is thought that] hunter-gatherers harvested kernels of grain and learned that the kernels had to be scattered around to get more of that food later on. They may have discovered that using bigger kernels of grain led to more big kernels of grain being produced. At a later date they apparently discovered that grain that fell on hard soil didn't grow. From this insight hunter-gatherer-agriculturalists starting roughing up the dirt a bit with a stick. Eventually (over what... maybe several hundred seasons?) a system was worked out to grow reliable crops of grain.

There was no theory and practice didn't become theory.

There are many early innovations that had to proceed from luck, observation, and some simple problem solving. Someone, for instance, discovered that nuggets of metal could be worked and turned into metal versions of bone or stone tools. Later on it was discovered that metal could be melted; still later it was found that heating rocks would melt out metal. Smelting metal took many centuries of practical effort to emerge.

Using practical methods led to many critical innovations over several millennia, quite a few of which are still in use.

I don't know of any evidence to suggest that pre-modern people formulated a "system of practical common sense" which could fuel a revolution. The consequence is that technological development was fairly slow and tended to hit fairly low ceilings.

The scientific method is, among other things, a way of turning practice into theory and turning theory into practice.

A person is the physical being who passes through time and during that passage maintains enough continuity to maintain self-recognition and be recognizable to others. Most of us (a large percentage, fill in the percentage to suit yourself) manage this passage which ends at death.

Death may be viewed as tragic, natural, necessary, unfortunate, horrible, final, a transition, good... all sorts of things. What is very difficult is when the former person remains animate but unable to recognize self or others, and to navigate the world. There personhood has ended before death. Alzheimers disease, for instance, places individuals in this netherworld towards the end stage of disease. Severe injury may do the same thing.

Take Henry Molaison who lived for 50 years at the age of 27. The catastrophic damage to his brain was the result of radical surgery to alleviate very severe seizures. His memory prior to the surgery was intact; his sensory and motor apparatus was intact; his pleasant personality was intact. What was lost was the ability to acquire new permanent memories because he lost the capacity to form short-term memories.

In a sense, Mr. Molaison was not a real person any more, because he could recognize nothing new about himself or anyone else. When someone to whom he had been introduced and had been speaking with left the room briefly and returned, Molaison did not know who they were.

He spent many years in the care of others, and participated in laboratory studies. His unique condition made him an exceptional human subject for cognitive and memory studies.

By themselves, things like eye contact, uninvited first name use, informality (as opposed to rigid formality), style of clothing, volume and content of speech (loudness), etc. can't be measures of authenticity. These are all cultural features.

Authenticity, as I understand it, derives from the consistency between aspiration and actuality within one's person. When what one strives for as good for ones self is contrary to how one acts with respect to ones self and others, one is probably losing authenticity. For example, if one considers equality between persons as good, but one maintains inequality with most other people, one would be inauthentic (in that respect).

“To thine own self be true!” Polonius says to Hamlet, as the conclusion to a speech of good advice.

But what do we mean if we say that somebody is an authentic person, or a very genuine person? Personal authenticity is often defined as being true and honest with oneself and others, having a credibility in one’s words and behavior, and an absence of pretence. Its meaning is then often clarified by contrasting it to inauthenticity, like comparing light to darkness. But in the absence of any clear criteria for judging authenticity, the boundaries between being authentic and being inauthentic are amorphous and uncertain, and often porous.

Philosophy Now

Authenticity is more of a process than an established condition. Authenticity is also difficult to judge in other people. If I am being served by an obsequious waiter, I can't tell whether the waiter is being authentic or whether he is playing a role. I also can't tell whether a waiter is being authentic if his behavior is caustic and condescending. He also could be playing a role (which may or may not be consistent with his own person).

One has to know someone quite well to know whether they are being authentic or not. One can't even automatically assume authenticity for ones self without some self-examination.

I would think it would stop. Or... hope it would stop.

But maybe not existing is different than being dead. — Marchesk

What would that difference be?

"Life goes by so fast when you're alive." my mother said.

... that you are always walking away from, that is always next to you... — unenlightened

Yes.

Yeah, right.

An optimistic Welcome to The Philosophy Forum.

I don't know how "rampant" pessimism is. It seems to me that if people were paying attention to what is going on, they would certainly be very pessimistic. That's 25% joke, 75% statement-of-fact.

As far as depression goes, I have found that "whatever depression is" and "whatever parts of the brain it affects" it does disrupt my thinking. It has tended to give my thinking a pessimistic, perfectionistic cast, and at the same time produced behavior which was anything but perfection. More like self-defeating.

About 6 years ago my chronic mid-range-severity depression lifted. Since then I have had a quite positive outlook on life. Of course, it's possible that I simply became totally insane, and am seeing fields of flowers in lala land instead of nettles and burdock. But I don't thinks so.

Is pessimism merely brain chemistry? I don't think it is entirely chemical. Real circumstances, real facts, real experiences can lead us to a state of relative hopeless pessimism. And real events can lead us to a state of relative optimism. Brain chemistry can give mental 'trends' an extra push.

Risk and depression: Some people are risk tolerant and other people are risk averse to varying degrees, and that is independent of mental health. Depression might exaggerate either risk tolerance or aversion, depending on how an individual's brain works. I've always been fairly risk tolerant and depression didn't change that. My partner was always risk averse, and nothing ever changed that either.

There are certain philosophies which seem to set up a pessimistic view of the world. Our active member Schopenhauer1 is an example. I haven't read the original Schopenhauer, but to the extent that his quotes from Schopenhauer are representative, he was a philosophical pessimist. Arthur Schopenhauer played the flute. I gather he had a pet dog too - a poodle. When the dog misbehaved, Schopenhauer would say to the dog, “You are not a dog, but a human being, a human being!" So, human beings never misbehave, Arthur? Flute playing dog owners can't be too pessimistic.

There are antinatalists, among others, who from whatever source are philosophical pessimists.

The whole group of dinosaurs were around for what... 100 million years? A long time, and they filled many niches. Any body happen to know how big the brain case of velociraptors was? They'df be my choice for "most likely to make it to sentience in another million years" -- not because of their role in Jurassic Park, but because they were relatively small hunters. They didn't have T Rex's size advantages.

On a more specifically biological point, I would like to point out that human beings are descendants of fish -- vertebrates. Fish established the basic facts of life for vertebrates, T Rex, small mammals, and birds--and us. How much fish is in us? Quite a bit, actually. For instance, our inner ears contain repurposes parts of fish jaws -- two relatively mobile bones which over time were incorporated into the mammalian jaw, and eventually into the inner ear.

For a good time, read Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body by Neil Shubin

As a former creed-saying Christian, I can honestly say I NEVER found the doctrine of the Trinity helpful in any way, shape, manner or form or even remotely explainable. Preachers don't like explaining it on Trinity Sunday, either. It's just one big headache.

I guess I had Unitarian tendencies from the get go.

The Mormon — Hanover

It's official: "They" don't want to be called Mormons anymore. They want to be called "The Church" (Catholics will object), or The Church of Jesus Christ. So, if you see two guys dressed in dark suits and white shirts and ties walking down the street, they aren't Mormons--you insensitive lout. They are "two Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints". You have to say the whole thing to be polite.

This is only applicable to people who insist on using whatever pronouns the transgendered demand we use. The rest of us can continue to call them whatever we like.

Star Trek 2nd Generation is as valid as any other source here, so let me site the case of a virus or force field or oil slick or something that caused the crew of the Enterprise to regress backward a few million years. Most of the crew became apes, of course, and were depicted by chimps who didn't receive so much as a penny in royalties for their efforts.

The Klingon Worf reverted to his reptilian ancestor.

So, there you have it -- humans could have evolved from dinosaurs (look at those problem solving corvids). We probably would have looked more like Worf.

Now where the Cardassians (not kardashians) came from, or the Rumulans has not been revealed. The Kardashians came from Planet 9 in Outer Space and descended from crotch lice.

The universe, one microsecond before could be the very same one microsecond after. — LoaderBot

Isn't 'change' one definition of 'time'? Time would stop if nothing changed (truly nothing changed).

we don't know where in the brain we 'think' — LoaderBot

That isn't quite true. functional MRI (fMRI) scans show that when we perform mental tasks specific areas of the brain become active. fMRI scans are not so granular that we can point to a particular neuron, but we can sort of localize how thoughts are put together in different parts of the brain. In other brain research involving lab animals, researchers can narrow down mental activity very granularly.

Had you written your OP while being scanned in a fMRI machine, a record would have been made of which areas of your brain (larger and smaller areas) were active as you typed various words and sentences, or did nothing.

I think that there is a natural proclivity for institutions to quickly become about their own survival and growth. They always go too far, because they don't do enough, and then all celebrate and disband. They keep on their track until they are forcibly derailed. — All sight

What you say here may be true, but we could provide some concrete examples of this process happening.

We create "institutions" like Congress, United Way, the Church (whatever denomination), the Metropolitan Sewer Board, Universities, General Electric, libraries, etc. with the intent that they will and should perpetuate themselves. Persistent institutions are one of the ways we maintain continuity in culture (for better and for worse).

Here's an example: MN AIDS Project was founded in 1983 to somehow deal with the then-new disease among gay men. It grew rapidly, did very good work, had successes and failures like most organizations. By 2003 it was no longer very connected to the gay male community (which had itself changed over the years), it had found stable funding, it was thoroughly professionalized, (no longer fueled by volunteers). It was "an institution". It began looking for new problems to deal with, to continue its existence, rather than just admitting that it had done what it could and would throw in the towel. AIDS and HIV haven't disappeared, of course, but the problem of 2018 requires a newly founded group to deal with the much different circumstances (like HIV now being more common in young black men than in gay white men).

Many organizations have followed the same path. They begin with an urgent problem and committed people, work on that problem for a while, reach a stage of routinization, become entrenched, and go about surviving because they exist.

I've proposed that non-profits should come with a sundown clause: After 25 years, they come to an end, disband, liquidate, and disappear. New non-profits tend to do their best work during the first 10 years.*** IF the problem that the nonprofit originally addressed is still around (it often will be) then it is time for new people to start a fresh project to address that problem--for a limited period of time.

On the other hand, institutions like the Carnegie Foundation, Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation et al, set themselves up to exist for a long time, for better or for worse, and tend to stick with their initial goals (which might or might not be good).

***No proof, of course. This is just my impression after working in nonprofits for 40 years.

I think that social justice has gotten to the point of ridiculousness — All sight

"Social justice" as in "social justice warriors" (saw) is not the same thing as "Justice". Much of the sjw kerfuffles we witness are outrage exercises directed at the small potatoes of cultural forms. Real Justice concerns very large and substantive issues such as distribution of wealth, destruction of community assets, pollution, crime against persons, etc.

It isn't that social justice warriors are unjust; their efforts are misdirected.

As far as your title goes, "the resurgence of the right"... "right" and "left" wax and wane on the basis of movements in the population at large. Big political movement change is generally driven by major events. For instance, economic depressions and booms, recessions and recoveries, war (especially unpopular wars, all have a large effect on the way people "feel" about their lives, society, politics, government, etc. Propaganda leverages itself on real events and drives movements further than they might otherwise go.