According to Berardi, we are now experiencing conditions similar to those in Germany and Italy in 1920s. — Number2018

When or if fascism developes in America, it will have an American form -- not a 1920s German form. The prime example of American fascism has been the Ku Klux Klan. The Klan developed during a period of severe upheaval (the post Civil War south) where the Klan did a pretty good job of short-circuiting the benefits of emancipation of black people from slavery. The Klan was active for... maybe 70 years. (It hasn't disappeared, but has been severely suppressed).

1920s Germany was not like 21st century USA.

1. Germans (and most of Europe) had just come out of WWI. Many were exceedingly bitter towards the treaty ending the war which saddled Germany with crushing payments for the costs other countries incurred from the war, and for other terms such as denying Germany military resources.

2. There were unemployed German soldiers without jobs who grouped together into the paramilitary Freicorps. They were very nationalist and anti-communist. Many of these would be transformed into the SA (the brown shirts) by the Nazis..

3. Germany's economy endured extreme inflation (equivalent to a gallon of milk costing billions of dollars)

4. Despite all that, culture, especially in Berlin, was extremely dynamic in movements like the Bauhaus, or decadent (depicted by Isherwood, eventually in the play "Cabaret"). It was a time of intense cultural ferment.

5. The political situation in Germany was completely different than the existing situation in the United States.

I loathe Donald Trump and his allies, but whether he will usher in a fascist episode of history is unclear -- of course; the future is always unclear. The extremely tight control over politics wielded by the Democrat and Republican parties is not conducive to the political disorder that fascists quite often exploit. Our representative system is harder to crack than parliamentary systems. The economy is less healthy than it could be, but it doesn't appear to be on the verge of collapse. Were the economy to collapse (I mean, really fall apart here and globally) all bets would be off about political developments.

Here is an interesting "long read" in The Guardian about denial and denialism.

Ignorance does not cause, or put one into 'denial', but denial and denialism can shift one solidly into ignorance. Why do people deny accepted truth? Like, "HIV causes AIDS"; or "Human beings are causing global climate change"; or "evolution explains how a myriad of specialized organisms arose"... and so on.

It might take a certain amount of psychoanalysis to determine why some people deny accepted fact. For instance, what is the motivation for denying the holocaust occurred? Something -- and I do not know what it is -- sends some people on a course from knowledge to doubt to denial to denialism. Get deeply enough into denial and one becomes ignorant about some aspects of reality. (But ignorance definitely is not a cause of denialism.)

No doubt, denialists who think HIV doesn't cause AIDS or that the US Government was responsible for 9/11 find comfort in their sealed off view of reality. They have "special access to the truth" which most people have been robbed of. For the denialist, most people are fools for accepting the commonly understood version of reality.

Denialists are more dangerous than the merely ignorant because they energetically defend their ignorance.

The emotive aspect of humans -- and animal species down the line -- are part and parcel of being animals that feel threats viscerally, feel arousal, feel hunger, thirst, etc. It's biological. A.I. isn't biological; it is plastic, silicon, and semiconductors.

Emotions touch everything that humans do cognitively -- but set that aside. Presumably what A.I. would be is the cognitive aspect of humans--thinking, remembering, calculating, associating, etc. Why would you (and how would you) give A.I. "emotion"? Emotion is characteristic of 'wet systems'; A.I. is dry. No blood, no mucus, no neurotransmitters, no lymph, no moisture. Just circuits and current.

A.I. is, as the term states, "artificial".

It has been suggested that the future of this "artificial intelligence" is not to duplicate the mind, but to enhance the performance of specific human intelligent activities. In a sense, various pieces of software do that now -- correcting spelling (and inserting totally irrelevant words), translating text (at a level that is much less than fluent but a lot better than nothing), finding routes, storing oceans of information on the Internet, etc. A.I. might take the form of a chip that could supplement a failing retina, or perhaps supply vision where eyeballs are missing altogether. Cochlear implants do that after a fashion for deafness. Etc. Etc. Etc.

One can have high iq and be a high functioning psychopath. — raza

I can't think of any reason why not.

"I read your posts as a protest against the fading narrative which has served the West for many centuries, and the tardiness of a satisfying replacement to appear."

The idea we need motivations, desires, and needs in order to have meaning becomes its own farce. — schopenhauer1

Speaking of 'vanity' Ecclesiastes has this from about 2200 years ago:

“Meaningless! Meaningless!”
says the Teacher.
“Utterly meaningless!
Everything is meaningless.”
What do people gain from all their labors
at which they toil under the sun?

We don't have motivations, desires, and needs in order to have meaning. We have motivations, desires, and needs, period. If there is meaning, it's gravy (meaning 'something extra'). Whether there is meaning depends, I think, on the creative capacity of the individual and the culture in which he is embedded. Of course having creative capacity is no assurance that meaning will be created.

Let me make a sweeping, glittering generalization: Successful civilizations create sustainable meaning. Creation myths establish the foundation of meaning; the narrative of the (tribe, people, nation, cosmos) provides a foundation for on-going meaning. In the Christian west, the master narrative was focused on God's creative acts and the redemptive work Jesus Christ. Into that master narrative everything was situated, meaningfully.

Master narratives are neither eternal nor guaranteed to provide a place for every cultural development and individual. We seem to be in a era when the master narrative of the Christian west is becoming less useful to many people. We are in an interregnum of master narratives. I read your posts as a protest against the fading narrative which has served the West for many centuries, and the tardiness of a satisfying replacement to appear.

Keep protesting, but keep an eye open for possible meaning.

"Why should I bother doing that? Life is meaningless, and that's that! What's the point?" you ask.

The point is, "We don't do well without a life-narrative that provides us meaning." Having purpose, meaning, internal guidance are essential features of human beings. All creatures have motivations and needs, but humans seem to be unique (as far as I can tell) in requiring meaning and purpose. We also seem to be unique in our capacity to shred meaning, and then not guess why life seems like one big pile of shit.

A.I.? Pfft.

Not nice guy "Shut the fuck up or I'm gonna do the same to you" — Sir2u

He probably would have said "Tais-toi ou je vais te faire la même chose". I'm not sure that French speakers are able to use "fuck" with the same grammatical flexibility as we clever English speakers can. In English fuck can be a noun, verb, preposition, adjective, adverb, or article, and more. For some people variations on fuck are an entire sentence: Fuck you miutherfucking fuck; I'm gonna fuck you up, fuck." Or just a verbalization, as when one has nothing else to say, one says "fuck". "Shit" operates similarly. The recipient of the energetic face-slap probably said "Merde" as she turned to be on her merry way.

Should you need a tough-guy line, and can't think of anything else, here's a line from an actual tough guy, used as a threat to somebody who was in his way: "Hey you fucking asshole, I can live in prison -- can you live in a wheelchair?" -- not really a question, more of a declarative statement. Another tough guy statement, one I used to good effect on some old guy who lived in my building who was, for some odd reason, strenuously objecting to me locking my bike to a street sign. "If anything happens to my bike, I'm coming for you."

Lines like that coming from me would normally only work on a 5 year old or an 85 year old. But if one were big, filthy, greazy, and hell's angelish enough to look truly threatening, that might work.

Everything that rises must converge. (Chardin)
Everything begins in mysticism and ends in politics. (Peguy)
The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong; but time and chance happen to all. (Ecclesiastes)

Good or bad? Positive or Negative?

I'm using a super computer here and it is overheating trying to figure out whether your post is a positive or negative. I think it's going to explode any minute.

Of course it was a bad idea!

What was the guy holding the chair going to do with it-- Yell "Get back in your cage!"? I noticed that nobody rushed to the aid and comfort of the allegedly abused woman. Did she have it coming? perhaps that is why none of the women rushed over to commiserate with her. We didn't hear what the guy told the citoyens concernés de Paris. Perhaps Monsieur's explanation was éminemment satisfaisant, Oui?

not all ignorance is the same. There is the ignorance stemming from a lack of instruction. One has to be taught the multiplication tables and the Periodic Table. There is the ignorance stemming from having forgotten the elements listed in the Periodic Table. There is the ignorance of knowing that something exists, but not knowing very much about it. I know that Burma is sometimes called Myanmar; I know that it is located between Bangladesh and... Thailand, maybe. I know it is a predominantly Buddhist country. That is about it. There is the ignorance of avoiding information. People who avoid viewing sources of news are deliberately ignorant. There is the ignorance of those who can cite 100 things that President Obama did totally wrong, but have not heard of one fault in President Trump (and visa versa).

Then there is "invincible ignorance": Ignorance so firmly rooted, ignorance so well defended, ignorance so impervious to enlightenment, that nothing will ever get through to them. (It is my belief that Donald Trump is the exemplar of invincible ignorance in our time.)

Perhaps people who are ignorant through no fault of their own (innocent savages) are blissful. The rest of the ignorant have no excuse.

(For those who have forgotten, here is a list of the elements, presented by Prof. Thomas Lehrer, Department of Mathematics, Harvard University

Interviewer from the House UnAmerican Activities Committee: Are you now, or have you ever been a Hugoenot?

Mr. Andrew K. I am not a Huguenot!

HUAC Interviewer: But Mr. K, we have documents that prove you have aided and abetted known Huguenot conspiracies. Are you a Christian, then, Mr. K?

Not any more.

HUAC Interviewer: According to informed sources, you were brought up Catholic; do you admit you were lying under oath when you said that you are not a Christian?

Attorney for the subject of interest: Mr. K refuses to answer the question on the grounds that any thing he says may incriminate him.

HUAC Interviewer: Huguenot fellow traveler; not Christian; brought up Catholic! Obviously a lying subversive! Take him away.

NEXT

So, are you any clearer about whether you are better off discovering the truth, or not?

Life is unsatisfactory in many ways and sometimes one just doesn't need hourly updates on how unsatisfactory it is.

Your link in the US says "404 - Page not found". The fat cat story linked up just fine, naturally.

I'm not seeing any earthquake news, which is very disappointing -- I was hoping for pictures of toppled high rise apartment blocks and distraught peasants looking at their collapsed hovels. Nothing! Fake news.

The president of the US is the only one who can push the button for a nuclear strike. — ChatteringMonkey

That was once a comforting assumption; it's not quite so comforting at the present moment. In any case, presidents long since began delegating to Naval command the power to launch defensively in the event of communication failure or severe time constraints. Fortunately, Pacific Fleet Command, and officers far down the ladder, were prudent, cautious, and careful. They might have, but did not launch on warning. See Daniel Ellsberg The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner.

2) Or, should we accept the group consensus which assumes we should learn as much as possible, thus giving ourselves as much power as possible? — Jake

In one respect, the group consensus is for a limitation of knowledge and power. The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty has sought to stop the expansion of nuclear bomb technology beyond the 5 recognized nuclear states: the USSR, USA, UK, France, and China. The effort has not been highly successful. Israel and the Union of South Africa presumably developed atomic weapons in combination. India and Pakistan both developed nuclear weapons, and more recently, so did North Korea. Iran was well on the way (apparently) to The Bomb.

Limiting the spread of nuclear weapons technology is difficult. No state that said they would develop nuclear weapons has so far failed to do so. (Atomic weapons knowledge spreads; it isn't reinvented. It was discovered only once, during the Manhattan Project. From the the US and the UK it passed on to the USSR, France, and China; Israel and South Africa; then to India and Pakistan, North Korea, and Iran. There are few "secrets" left, but the technological methodology is daunting.

The manufacture of chemical and biological warfare also was banned, but the ban can be evaded. No inconveniently noticeable big explosion is required to test C&B weapons.

1) Should it be a goal of society to look for ways to limit the powers available to human beings? — Jake

It isn't clear to me how "we" would limit "us" from learning whatever "somebody among us" decides to learn, be it benign or malignant. I can decide what I will not learn, but I don't know of a way to prevent you from learning what you wish to learn. (Well, I know a way, but it happen to be highly illegal and severely punished.)

We are what we are: inquisitive, intelligent, excitement seeking, short-sighted, selfish, (piggish, a good share of the time) poorly self-regulating beings. Worse, we do not have a high-resolution big-picture view over all human affairs. We can not see everything that is going on, and we are not able to interpret a good share of it. And even when we know that some people are engaging in skullduggery of the worst kind, there is sometimes nothing we can do about it.

Somewhere, right now, somebody is openly engaging in legal research which will likely have quite negative consequences. They are pushing the envelope, maybe too far. What are "we" going to do about it?

With respect to the Amish, you might like several of James Howard Kunstler's A World Made By Hand novels or some of his essays about knowledge, resource exhaustion, etc. like The Long Emergency".

His fictional town of Union Grove, New York is, along with the rest of the world, experiencing technological collapse. But life in this dystopian world is surprisingly wholesome, if somewhat precarious. The standard of technology has been set back to roughly 1890, roughly where the Amish prefer to be: No oil refineries, no cars, no planes, electricity IF you can figure out how to generate it, no antibiotics (the factories can't operate), no plastics, horse & human power only, etc. Not many factories, either, thus the "world made by hand".

Another post apocalyptic book I like is Earth Abides written in 1949. Techno collapse in this novel is caused by a world-wide epidemic which kills 99999 people out of 100,000--not many left and those widely scattered about. Bands of people, here and there, use such tools as they can find to grow food, and meet there bare needs. The 'hero' grows old in the novel, and at the end, his grand children have adapted to a vastly simpler life.

I like the Amish people I have met. They are, of course, quite religious and of necessity rather conservative, but they aren't naive country bumpkins. They've found sustainability, even if through the route of their old-world religious roots. They are maintaining technology we should pay attention to, because most of us are 3 generations from knowing how to work with a horse or oxen, raise food without RoundUp and artificial fertilizer, preserve food (canning, drying), make cloth (I don't know that the Amish spin wool, flax, and cotton or tan leather, but those are skills that would be critical without polyester, rayon, and nylon.

Why do even the most intelligent and best educated people find this so hard to grasp? — Jake

• Our evolutionary descent gave us extensive linguistic and cognitive abilities tightly coupled with blinding primate ego-centricity (power without probity).
• 20:20 vision with respect to Immediate self-interest, and blindness with respect to long-term collective interest
• Our capacity to deal with future consequences of current (and past) actions is quite limited. We can not effectively plan and act in time scales longer than the remaining lifetime of a middle-aged adult -- maybe 20, 30, 40 years. Meanwhile we have created problems that require centuries of attentive management.

We have successfully avoided the worst consequences of natures because the reciprocal revolutions of science and industry are (in long time scales) very recent--in fact still underway. The discovery of how to unlock the power locked up in the atomic nucleus is not a century old, yet--and that's just one problematic discovery. The problems generated by discoveries and deployed technologies in chemistry are perhaps as problematic as nuclear knowledge. "Better living through chemistry?" *** Bah, Humbug!

21st century people are just lucky that the scientific revolution didn't happen 2000 years ago. If it had happened during the Roman Empire, (everything being equal) we would be dealing with fully unfolded global warming, an extremely disrupted planetary ecology, and rather poor prospects. The mass die-off of human populations would be past, and we survivors would not know why. Et Cetera.

IN OTHER WORDS... The human situation is tragic. We are very flawed heroes and our flaws have been, are, and will be the cause of our downfall.

An aside: One theory about why we haven't encountered intelligent beings from other star systems: Evolving beings develop intelligence and technology, and then (over a period of time) exhaust the resources of their world. By the time they reach the threshold of space exploration, they no longer have the social stability and resources to pursue it.

***The phrase "Better Living Through Chemistry" is a variant of a DuPont advertising slogan, "Better Things for Better Living...Through Chemistry." DuPont adopted it in 1935 and it was their slogan until 1982 when the "Through Chemistry" part was dropped. Since 1999, their slogan has been "The miracles of science".[1]

Well, just update the figures in the fundraising thread.

Actually, I'd like two numbers: One, what does it cost per month to operate the site, and two how much money has been received to meet those costs.

Well, um, so prove it. — Jake

There is no proof to any of the theories about the larger context our lives reside in. — Jake

I was prepared to prove that the world is meaningless, pointless, fleeting, temporary, and transient, but then you said there isn't any proof, so... there's probably not much point in posting the formula that would prove it. Nope -- won't change my mind. Sorry -- you don't get the proof -- ever.

The truth is that nobody has a clue about the larger picture — Jake

Isn't that a rather sweeping generalization? How would you know they have no clue if you had no clue?

Goal #4 needs some work. If you want to "get" lots of girls, it would be wise to change your mindset to wanting to "serve" lots of girls. Don't think about what you will get from them, but what you will give to them. — Jake

Interesting. Is that true? I'm gay, so I wouldn't know whether "serving" girls is the best strategy for a straight guy to get laid. What if what the straight guy wants is a "serving wench" rather than a girl to serve?

Neither the 'big picture' nor the 'granular' approach are exclusive, and we combine them all the time. But just for an example, beginning geology with memorizing crystal shapes and colors would not give one much useful knowledge about how earth forms come into existence. And opposite that, only learning about continental drift, up-life, subduction, and erosion wouldn't help all that much either, without some specifics. For instance, rocks on the eastern coast of North America and the northwestern coast of Africa are similar. "See, look at these two sets of rocks: same crystal structure, same sedimentary layers, same age. What does that tell you? It tells you that the two continental coasts were one and the same land mass at one time." Blah, blah, blah.

Having some large 'big pictures' provides a necessary place to put details one picks up off the sidewalk as one walks alone (figuratively speaking). A big picture box might be "chemistry and color". Some plant-based dye changes color depending on whether it is exposed to an acid or a base. Litmus paper (using dyes extracted from lichens) is used to determine the ph of a fluid. If you want to make red sweet and sour cabbage, you use red cabbage and vinegar. Using bicarbonate of soda turns the cabbage blue. Acids and bases affect the colored dye one can extract from iris or orchid flowers. A red dye might turn to lavender when exposed to an acid or base (can't remember which).

Those two details about color change collected in a big picture box can help one understand why bleaching a pale pink towel may turn it pale green. Bleach is a base and the dye is sensitive to bases.

It seems to me that general education courses, freshman and sophomore courses in college, are intended to provide "the big picture". That was true for me in courses like sociology 101, political science 101, geology 101, English literature 101, art 101, etc. I didn't go on to study more in poly sci, geology, and art, but over time the "big picture" I got from general education courses was useful as a foundation.

On the other hand, the two classes in American History that were taught in high school were all detail, with a not-very-clear or downright erroneous big picture emerging (which I didn't discover till years later). Teaching/learning history as "one obvious and necessary event after another" makes it easier to build in a hidden narratives, like "Americans have always been egalitarian". Never mind the black slaves, white people were definitely never all equal. [White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America, 2016 by Nancy Isenberg]

If American History is taught with a view toward presenting the "truths and lies of American History" one would still later learn about the same events -- they just wouldn't fit into a "hidden narrative". "The westward expansion of the United States" could better be viewed as "conquering the west" because "the west", from the Pilgrims down to the closure of the frontier in the late 19th Century, was always occupied by aboriginal people or other nations. I like my country reasonably well, but there is not hiding the fact that its construction ran roughshod over just about everybody. That truth is best presented in a holistic approach.

I vote for big picture first, details later, but not too many.

Another Fine Topic from

Welcome to The Philosophy Forum.

Fascism breeds in certain environments which may not exist in an anarchistic society.

This is similar to why is does not make sense to argue that the state is necessary in order to quell crime. — darthbarracuda

These are interesting questions, but perhaps another thread? Never mind.

Fascism requires certain political conditions to gain power; they could exist in an dysfunctional anarchist society. It isn't "anarchism" that works against fascism, its a society in working order that protects against fascism, be it anarchist or parliamentarian.

Crime exists where there are opportunists willing to fuck over other people, state or no state. There is nothing about a stateless society which would prevent ruthless opportunists from arising among the population to prey on others.

Just remember, some people are sons of bitches and just don't play nice with others.

Since good food is better than bad food, add the Joy of Cooking to your library. It's a proven classic.

Hell no we gotta shoot dem too. — Sir2u

Yes but... they got guns too -- big ones, and they practice.

During WWII peaceful neutral Switzerland had to accept some fairly distasteful business dealings with the Third Reich in exchange for its continued neutral existence. If Sweden didn't supply the Third Reich with steel and high quality iron ore, I rather doubt that their neutrality would have been worth much.

I think irresponsible or excessive use of military force has more to do with the governing administration rather than the fact of there being a military. — aporiap

I think that is quite often true.

I have spent far more time thinking about how to justify pacifism than how to justify military action. Short of the second coming, I don't see any reason for nations to do away with their military establishments in the near future.

For one, military power is sometimes needed to quell internal dissent. Were a home-grown fascist terrorist organization attack from within, the military (army, marines, or state national guard) would probably be needed to destroy such a group.

For two, the military is an on-call personnel pool in times of emergency. Should the Really Big Quake happen in California or off the coast of WA, OR, and CA, the resulting severe and widespread damage would exhaust local emergency resources almost immediately. The Army/National Guard would need to be deployed as rescue and recovery workers, in addition to FEMA (for whatever they are worth).

For three, many individual countries could find themselves with dysfunctional states on next door. In order to defend themselves from disorder, if not military attack, a functioning military is required. We have problems now with people crossing our border illegally; what if Mexico became even more dysfunctional. The military would be needed to help manage the situation (however you care to define "manage").

War is the conduct of diplomacy by other means. That is likely to remain true for some time into the future. Sometimes you can't solve issues with negotiation. You need to just shoot the problem.

Plain old-fashioned war is likely to break out again in the near future somewhere for some reason. Those who can resist with force of arms will fare better than those who depend on prayer and fasting.

we should just shoot all of the politicians so that there will be no one to start them — Sir2u

Except the military. You would then have a military state. Good luck with that.

there are people who will not shrink from calling X a Y when they can give account neither of X nor Y, — tim wood

Well, sure enough. That is so. It's part of the larger problem of stupid people.

It would appear the case that the problem is almost entirely attached to people who do not like homosexuals and seek to attack, punish, injure, and/or disadvantage them. People who hate homosexuals can also be difficult to define and understand.

George Weinberg coined the term, and "homophobia" made its print debut in the May 23, 1969 edition of the distinguished straight porn newspaper, Screw. Screw may not have been as scholarly as the Journal of Psychoanalysis, but was certainly read as avidly. Google Ngram shows that the word "homophobia" was, as neologisms go, a hit.

Weinberg defined homophobia as "the fear that other people would think one was gay", and was based on a strong aversion to homosexuality. This is a more straightforward (so to speak) meaning than the more rococo, pseudo-Freudian type of misinterpretation that "homophobia is a fear that a man might himself be homosexual--apparently without knowing it", and the cause of outward directed hostility".



I believe that people are entitled to hate whatever it is they can't stand, be that strong perfume that smells like insecticide, homosexuals, or fascists. Their right to hate homosexuals, however, doesn't entitle them to close the 2 inch gap between their fist and my nose.

I think the likelihood of homophobia (per Weinberg's meaning) has little likelihood of disappearing. Indeed, I rather expect a resurgence of both homophobia and a withdrawal of some legislation that was intended to protect gay people. A more conservative Supreme court might rule against gay marriage. It isn't just Trump. Look at Roe vs. Wade. When R vs W was handed down in 1973, I thought that would be the end of the matter. But no, the anti-abortion groups persisted in a very long campaign to seriously undermine, if not gut, the principles in the ruling. They have been successful in many states.

If various civil rights rulings and legislation have not been repealed, it is also the case that not much has changed for many minority communities. (It hasn't changed a lot for many poorer black gay men; for middle class gay men -- white or black -- conditions have changed a lot.) Urban gays have always been less oppressed than small-town and rural gays, because the social structures of large cities are just not as close as they are in small towns.

There is nothing guaranteed about social progress. It can always move retrograde, and has on many occasions. And sometimes, it should be noted, the causes of regression are located within the minority community.

Should I cease the pursit of earthly achievements?

No. Get back to work.

That's it in a nutshell, but you might like the expanded version.

First, stop reading pessimistic philosophy, at least until you are 60 years old. Now is the time for you to embrace the world, engage fully in life, and flourish. When you get older you will have plenty of time to poke around the sub-basement of Philosophy's House of Horrors.

Without a good education (in something useful) your chances of having a job that pays enough to travel around the world, making friends, getting laid, seeing the sights, trying new foods, etc. are slim to nonexistent.

Is the world meaningless, pointless, fleeting, temporary, and transient?

Well... sure. The material world without life and intelligence is kind of pointless, meaningless, dreary. But... with life and intelligence the possibilities of meaning and purpose are extensive. Our lives do not last very long -- 80 years out of 13 billion years is not even a flash in the pan, but that's what we get. The history of civilization is not very long either -- 5,000 years, give or take 15 minutes. Not a long time, but it is our time, our place, and our task to make the most of it.

The world, your life, your legacy will be as meaningful as you make it. This is true for everybody. And because most people do engage, embrace, and enter their lives fully, life is good.

And remember: You are a teenager. Teenagers quite often have a lot of sturm and drang in their lives just because their brains are not actually fully formed yet. Depending on your age, your body isn't quite finished either. You want to get on with living your life, but you can't yet. Very frustrating. Life gets better as you get older, in most respects. (In some respects it gets worse, but uplift is my purpose here, so we'll not go into all that.)

Study hard, pay attention, learn a lot. Find a good career and pursue it. Read widely in the arts and sciences, but avoid those fucked up life-is-meaningless pessimistic philosopher pricks -- no Schopenhauer for you for 40 more years, at least). And do get laid regularly.

I was looking up explanations of "Cis" and ran into the same thoughts. — Patrick McCandless

The same thoughts as what?

Fuck the prefix "cis". Cis boom bah humbug!

Is part of your challenge the fact that homosexuals may be "invisible" when they display no characteristics of being gay? A gay farmer milking cows, a gay railroad mechanic working on a diesel engine, a gay surgeon removing a tumor, a gay homeless person begging... may all display zero features of gayness while they are doing their job. That doesn't mean they are not gay at the time; it means they are fulfilling a typical occupation role and that is all they are doing at that time.

It appears you believe there does exist some "absolute," — tim wood

No. Self ID-ing; consistent report on phantasy; visible arousal; performance, and social -- that's enough. Your social workers probably can't tell whether somebody is an auto mechanic either, even though they can take a Chevy engine apart, fix it, and put it back together--and enjoy every minute of it.

When people talk about artificial intelligence, it is either hard to know what they are talking about, or there is an assumption that "actual intelligence" is just around the corner, somewhere. Most of the time what looks like artificial intelligence is just brute force calculating. For instance, Google's algorithms have no insight into what you are looking for. When they translate, or convert speech to text, or offer predictive text -- there is nothing intelligent going on in its various mainframes and servers. It looks sort of like intelligence, but that is entirely due to the efforts of actually intelligent human programmers who designed it to appear intelligent.

I believe the best use of developing computational technology is to serve as resources for intelligent beings like ourselves. For instance, when I want to know the name and lyrics of a song from which I have only a fragment, search engines can find that for me -- assuming somebody told the db about the song in the first place. Or, it can serve up entries from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, or porn, or biblical references, or chemical formulae, pictures of dinosaur bones, you name it.

The least good use of computational technology is when we use it as a crutch -- the way many people use GPS driving instructions. IF one is in a metropolitan area one has never been in before, fine. That's when it's helpful. Using it to give instructions on how to get from one's house to the mall, however, weakens one's own ability to navigate. Spell check is handy, for sure, and I use it (like right now) but there it is useful for one to use one's own spelling skills to detect errors, lest one lose the ability to spell and proofread anything.

IF you are looking for an absolute test, such as:

The essential test of homosexuality is found in a specific brain structure. A male human is homosexual if the hypervent and the deciduous sulking of the postfrontal pretext communicate via a nerve bundle measuring at least 80 µm tracked through the angular gyroscopium.

you will be disappointed because no such absolute tests exists, and is unlikely to exist any time in the near future.

The reason for the absence of an absolute test is not that all the king's horses, all the king's social workers, Tim Wood, and Humpty Dumpty himself could not figure out whether Humpty Dumpty was gay (before his unfortunate fall). The reason is that there is a severe insufficiency of information about how genetics, prenatal development, brain structure, and experience combine to constitute intellect, personality, and behavior. We do not know why some people are musical prodigies and other people are tone deaf; why some people build commercial empires and others panhandle; why some people become champion bicyclists and other people prefer to do gastrointestinal surgery. We do not know the why and wherefore of a multitude of human characteristics.

The difficult identity question is not WHETHER someone is homosexual, bisexual, or heterosexual; the difficult question is HOW the identity of gay, bi, straight, or trans came to be.

But is there such a thing as a homosexual? is there such a thing as a heterosexual? As a practical matter, of course! Beyond that? Well, you'd need a test of some sort, wouldn't you, and self-identification wouldn't do, would it. — tim wood

Self-identification would not alone be sufficient as a test. Anyone can say they are gay or straight. Backing it up with behavior is much more compelling.

Your answer, as I understand it, is that there is no such test — tim wood

I did not intend to give you the impression that there was no "test". If you rate sexual behaviors on the various axes I listed (affective, cognitive, physical, performative, social) most individuals will report or display feelings, ideas, physical responses (erections, intense interest...) sexual activity, and social activity that will place them as exclusively or primarily heterosexual, bisexual, or homosexual.

The objectively observable axes (physical and observable emotional responses, sexual performance, and social behavior) are, I think, reasonably reliable indicators of what and how much sexual interest one has in someone else. If a guy does not get an erection while kissing and fondling an attractive, willing, and available woman, what would that indicate? It strongly suggests he is not interested in women--not heterosexual. You would buy that much of a test, wouldn't you?

If a man who is kissing and fondling an attractive man gets an erection, and further professes and demonstrates strong interest in having sex, wouldn't that indicate he was homosexual? Especially if the social setting where the encounter is taking place is exclusive to homosexuals (like a park or a gay bar). If in conversation the man offered additional information on the affective and cognitive axes that backed up the observable behavior, wouldn't that further strengthen the test results?

From my experience, if someone in a gay environment acts like they are interested in gay sex, and says the sort of thing that gay men say in conversations about being gay, then they are gay -- until proven otherwise. And they aren't proven otherwise very often. Yes, I have met a few people who seemed to be gay for all practical purposes, but who couldn't or wouldn't perform sexually in an appropriate setting. In 40 years of looking for and having sex with hundred of men, and talking with hundreds more men about being gay (some in encounter groups) very few -- less than... 10? failed to deliver.

So I ask you: do you really think the gay social workers are unable to define what a homosexual is? How, for instance, do they find sexual partners? How do they assess whether someone they have had sex with all night is a one night stand or a potential for a longer relationship? I submit they go by the sorts of tests I provided.

A heterosexual is what a heterosexual does. Heterosexual men court and have sex with women--again and again. Is there some mystery still lurking here?

It's not news to me that the decalogue is an optional matter of belief.

I was taught that Jesus Christ in His person and sacrifice superseded the Law -- not just the decalogue but the whole corpus of Jewish law. Even so, we were required to memorize the decalogue in Sunday school, as a very significant part of the Old Testament.

Before Jesus the law applied, pure and simple. After Jesus it didn't--for those who believed that Jesus was the Messiah. Jesus "fulfilled" the scriptures. "He began by saying to them, "Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing." Luke 4:21. At first the reviews were very good, but then JC proceeded to piss off everybody in the synagogue and had to make a quick exit.

I sold my stock in XPian doctrine, but it does seem to be the case that a lot of XPians feel under no obligation to worry about them.