I am well. Thank you. And you -- are you and your family also well?

I would encourage you to avoid nihilistic thinking. Granted, it can seem like there are too damn many things going wrong in the world. But what we worry about usually becomes selective, and we start picking out the worst-case-scenarios to think about. Not a good idea. Bad for your mental health, and it doesn't help.

In the middle of everything that seems to be going wrong, there are also things that are going right. Good things happen to people--not all the time, not enough, the deserving get overlooked, but it just isn't all bad. Even Government, Banks, and Big Corporations do good things. Target, for instance, had blueberries on sale for $3 a pint, a couple of weeks ago. From Chile--yeah, I know--very unecological, air freight from Chile to Minnesota; but they were very good.

Brave New World is a good book. If you have not read it, you might want to read 1984, too. It's a grim book, but it will provide you with lots of rhetorical fuel for future posts. George Orwell was a very good writer. He wrote several books which are not novels that are enjoyable writing. The Road to Wigan Pier and Down and Out in Paris and London are two that I read and enjoyed. The subject matter is the depression of the 1930s and British domestic policy, but Orwell is just such a good writer its enjoyable to read. (I suppose you need to be in the right mood, but that's true of every book.) He worked in several kitchens in Paris during the Great Depression, and described how the restaurant staff hated the people who were buying the fancy food they prepared. Someone in the kitchen not infrequently spat on the food before sending it out to the dining room.

The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin is a science fiction novel that is (among other things) about a society organized along a strict anarchist model. It's a good story on its own, but her development of the society is quite thought provoking.

You might like the writing of James Howard Kunstler. He is... what? An environmental critic? He wrote a series of novels, one A World Made By Hand which is about survival after some sort of apocalyptic event, when electricity and oil products disappear. A History of the Future and The Harrows of Spring are two additional novels in the series. He also wrote The Long Emergency and Too Much Magic: Wishful Thinking, Technology, and the Fate of the Nation. The last two are about what a post peak-oil future means.

Is the support of those who have assaulted, taken advantage of others a feasible moral choice? — Cavacava

I would say it is an unavoidable choice. In the real world, people actually take advantage of others all the time: economically, socially, psychologically, politically, intellectually ... any way you can think of. As for assault, it certainly is not proper behavior. But, you know, it happens, both sexual assault and ordinary assault and battery. I'm just not in favor of black listing every person who has done something wrong. BECAUSE, Cavacava, there literally won't be anybody left to do the black listing before long.

but the question is will you go see the next movie by someone who had sex with a 14 year old? — Cavacava

Yes, I would, assuming that the movie was of interest. Am I indifferent to the possible misfortune of the 14 year old? No. And I don't know what all the producers, directors, crew, actors, editors, and everyone else who worked on the film may or may not have done to whom, how, where, and when. A lot of people work on a film. People do good, bad, and indifferent things, and they may not even have done things for which they are reviled.

Many people (a large percentage of the population, let's say 25%) have done things that when exposed in public are likely to be condemned by one group or another--and viewed as OK by others. There is a long list of things that someone might have done, or be doing now, that will result in their being pilloried. The are tried, convicted, and punished by mob justice, these days conducted on line, like #metoo and TimesUp.

Take Woody Allen. It isn't as if the charge against him (by Mia Farrow and his adopted daughter) hasn't been investigated and disposed of more than once. There is no evidence that he ever had sex with Dylan. There are no witnesses who think that it even could have happened. (This case isn't new -- it started during a bitter divorce proceeding in 1993. It was recently revived by #metoo.)

I'm not in favor of these shunning/censoring maneuvers; the casting out of some group's devil de jour. Of course, I understand righteous indignation; it's one of my favorite emotions. But... conviction in the Twitter Court does not require a response from me.

Whatever else you may be, you are being difficult.

There is clearly a connection between the artist, his time, his place, his methods, and his works. The artist and his works are not the same thing, however, so we can separate the two. Haydn is long gone, but his works remain.

Harvey Weinstein, whatever else he probably did do, produced a lot of good movies. So did Woody Allen, whatever it was that he probably did not do. Garrison Keillor, the avuncular Prairie Home Companion, produced hundreds and hundreds hours of perfect radio. So, he could be slightly lecherous every few years. So, he could be grumpy. So, he could be hard to work for. Mother Theresa was hard to work for. Big deal.

If Leonard DaVinci had murdered Mona Lisa, he might have hanged for it. His hanging (or his getting away with murder) takes nothing away from his work, though it probably will affect his reputation as a man.

This is, actually, true for all of us, whether we are artists or common laborers. If I perform 8 hours of honest labor for you, you got what you paid for. If the other 16 hours of my day I drink, fuck whores, smoke pot, shoot up heroin, and piss in public, but am ready to work again at 9:00 a.m., what's it to you, Jack?

This business of "Well, she is a good enough screen writer, but you know, she isn't a real feminist" is confusing categories. "He was a great actor, but he was a communist (or a Nazi, a homosexual, a rapist, heterosexual, a Republican, mass murderer, arch fiend... whatever). "He always sold more than his quota of vacuum cleaners, but you know, he cheated on his wife." So, why should Electrolux care? Maybe he needed to sell a lot of vacuum cleaners to keep both his wife and his mistress happy. Fuck Electrolux. They should be happy he was strongly motivated.

Welcome to The Philosophy Forum.

Interesting assumptions, interesting question. But say more about what you consider "justice" and a "just society" and how far (or near) we are from it.

One reason we may or may not live in a just society is that my idea of justice might be different than yours. You may think society just, I may not.

I think what people dislike about the major institutions in their societies is their being too big, too inflexible, too unresponsive, too inaccessible, too bureaucratic, too authoritarian. The central government; the Church; the corporations; the military; the civil service; one's city, county, and state governments; universities, and so forth can all be unfriendly, and alienating.

Modern societies have tended towards being unfriendly and alienating as they have grown in complexity and size. This applies to governments at many levels, corporations (especially large ones), systems (like markets), religious organizations--all kinds of large institutions in a society.

Feeling hostility, fear, and loathing towards one, several, or all institutions is really a perfectly normal human response. It's actually desirable that people not love these huge, distant, unresponsive, uncaring institutions.

Unfortunately, and it is unfortunate, huge populations require huge service establishments, whether they be governmental, corporate, military, religious, or educational. If one wants to avoid falling into existential despair, anomie, alienation, pervasive hostility and fear, and all that bad stuff, one has to find friendly local community--and that is fortunately possible. Difficult at times, but possible.

Every citizen armed isn't going to solve any of our problems, because the most dangerous attacks on your personhood won't be in the form of armed assault. It will be more insidious, bureaucratic, omnidirectional, insubstantial. Shooting at it won't help. There will be no specific target to hit.

Why do you trust the government so much to not have any way to protect the people from said government? — yatagarasu

That is a fair question. My answer has to be somewhat equivocal and lengthy.

I do not think the federal government (the level we are talking about) is an unalloyed good. On the one hand, the government pursued an extremely and existentially dangerous atomic weapons program from 1942 to the present. The federal government has pursued a series of "limited" conventional wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan towards no clear and achievable purpose. They have also pursued a policy of destabilization and interference in Central and South America (for instance, in 1973 supporting Pinochet's violent coup against President Allende in Chile). They have interfered in Middle Eastern political affairs since the 1950s (like, assisting in the overthrow of the democratically elected Mohammad Mosaddegh, considered to be the leading champion of secular democracy and resistance to foreign domination in Iran's modern history, then installed the "crowned cannibal" Shah of Iran, Pavlavi).

The federal government has been something of a corporate adversary at times -- such as in the progressive era (early 1900s) when it broke up the giant corporate trusts. At times the federal government has regulated corporations energetically, and at times it has done very little. Generally, the federal government has been a friend of the corporate establishment.

On the other hand, the federal government finally began acting to promote the civil rights of black Americans, starting in 1954. At the same time Federal Housing Administration (FHA) continued a formal policy of economic discrimination against black people.

The federal government is primarily responsible for funding many social services, such as Social Security, Unemployment Insurance, Disability Programs, Medicare, Medicaid, Food Assistance, some welfare programs, and so on.

The saving grace of the federal government is that Congress and President are elected. They can be replaced by the people--theoretically at least. The Supreme Court isn't elected, and is pretty much there for the lifetime of its appointed judges. The "permanent government" -- the civil service and the military establishment -- are somewhat independent of Congress and the President. This is both good and bad.

So, some actions of the government are good, some actions are bad. It's a mixed bag.

The PRIMARY reason to NOT plan on resisting the federal government by force, is that the federal government has overwhelming resources for violence at its disposal. Most central governments possess the means to suppress their population's discontents. That's just part of the deal of having governments that are capable of defending the nation against foreign aggression: they can also defend themselves against domestic aggression.

So far, our federal government hasn't often found it necessary to engage in combat with citizens in the streets. State and local governments have, however, found it necessary, convenient, or both.

Only in America could the question of which one is trying to control you be a reality. Everywhere else in the world it's always been both. No wonder they are so cozy with each other in American politics. They have and will always be best of friends. — yatagarasu

If I have more hostility towards corporations than toward government, it is because I interact with corporate entities much more often than with government agencies. Plus, while the government is theoretically the servant of the people, corporations are more openly predatory. What saves the corporations from being even worse than they are, is that they are competing with each other. This alone has helped keep them from being overly aggressive. Except when they achieve monopoly status, then its a different story.

Before the American Telephone and Telegraph Corporation, the Bell System, was broken up by the government in 1982, it was a very reliable but inflexible company. A joke about AT&T was "We don't care; we don't have to." They were the only telephone company that served the whole country and provided long distance and local service in most areas. They owned the telephone on your desk. They had no competition: they were a protected monopoly. If you didn't like their service, you could just do without telephone service altogether.

The good thing about Trump, as opposed to many other Republicans, is that he's not afraid to be conflictual with Democrats when he must. For example, about the importance of God in American public discourse, etc. — Agustino

Oh, please! Surely you are not counting on Donald Trump to restore God to some alleged central place in American public discourse? Give us a fucking collective break.

In a related thread on guns (yesterday), I said:

The political block that is most dangerous in the politics of gun-control is the one which holds that The People need to be armed to protect themselves from a malignant, freedom suppressing Federal Government. The Armed Militias see the Feds rolling into town and Marshals forcing them to be vaccinated against measles, taking away their independence, their property rights, their children, their women, their reproductive organs, and their guns. — Bitter Crank

AND, right on cue, here you are!

So, I don't know how serious you are about this. Maybe you're just being provocative. But there are people running around out there who are not merely being provocative.

"The government coming to get us" has been a leitmotif of a deranged (paranoid) subset somewhere out on the far right wing for a good share of our history. It isn't clear to me exactly what happens to people that they think this way. Harsh toilet training? Siblings snatching their toys away from them? Brain infections? Worms?

So, come in, lay down on the couch, and tell me about your innermost thoughts.

Where would this tiny black hole come from? It takes a star collapsing (a supernovae) to produce a black hole. The collapsing core of the star needs to be a minimum of about 3 times the mass of our sun to have enough gravity to achieve black hole city.

Super-massive black holes like the ones at the center of galaxies (including ours) are many, many times solar mass. It is thought that the super-massive black holes at the centers of galaxies formed about the same time as the galaxy itself.

It might be possible to create tiny (microscopic) black holes in a big, big, big particle accelerator. Why wouldn't this tiny black hole consume the earth? Because Hawking radiation from the black hole would cause the little black hole to shrink faster than it could grow. It would disappear.

"The smallest ones are known as primordial black holes. Scientists believe this type of black hole is as small as a single atom but with the mass of a large mountain." says NASA.

When did he know this and how did he know it?

10 minutes ago he googled "how are black holes made?".

https://www.livescience.com/27811-creating-mini-black-holes.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro_black_hole
https://www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/5-8/features/nasa-knows/what-is-a-black-hole-58.html

Well, actually, I read about this first 10-20 years ago.

The political block that is most dangerous in the politics of gun-control is the one which holds that The People need to be armed to protect themselves from a malignant, freedom suppressing Federal Government. The Armed Militias see the Feds rolling into town and Marshals forcing them to be vaccinated against measles, taking away their independence, their property rights, their children, their women, their reproductive organs, their guns.

They can hardly bring themselves to entertain the thought that perhaps, possibly, maybe, the deranged should not be allowed to have guns. But then, who gets to decide who is deranged? The Feds, again... keeping their big databases on potentially deranged Americans -- who knows who is on their lists?

Another dangerous group is the political block of gun fetishists who have sexual feelings about guns leading to orgasm. Naturally, they are gun-protective. While not possessed of the paranoia of Fed-fearing right wingers, they make up a large denomination of gun worshippers. Their main reason for opposing any sort of gun control is that they fear being pathologized. Deep deep down down in the bottom of their hearts, they intuit that there is something quite screwy about their affection and enthusiasm for guns, which would probably not look good in the broad light of day.

A third troublesome group in the body politic are the numbskulls who prattle on about gun culture, happy hunting, how they, pioneers all, defend themselves from varmints of all kinds, and how it is up to them to defend the defenseless from crazy or just extremely ill-advise shooters.

The paranoid Fed Fearers, the gun masturbators, and the numbskulls do not form any sort of majority, but they are--of course, who else?--most convinced of their righteousness and are the most vocal. Braying jackasses all.



At the very least these three groups should be subject to the most scathing, cruelest, most humiliating ridicule that can be devised. They should also be guilt-tripped to the max, deemed to be entirely politically incorrect, addicted, un-American, perverse, child-endangering, condemned by the Pope to perpetual hellfire and damnation.

Shouldn't the NRA be investigated as a front for child pornography?

At least you won't be disappointed by the absence of an after-life.

At least you won't have to listen to Donald Trump ever again.

You managed to not exist just fine for around 13.3 billion years before you were born; you'll do fine after you're dead.

BTW, the earth probably won't be sucked into a tiny black hole. Chances are we won't get sucked into a black hole at all, and if we do, it will probably be larger than tiny.

You won't have to worry about misspelling ever again:

Like, "Seizing to exist"; "centre"; British much? "planet gets inhibited by another form of life; or maybe you meant 'inhibited' instead of 'inhabited'?

The fact that we didn't exist, and that we won't exist at any moment (maybe before the next 10 minutes is up) should stimulate us to make the most of existence while it lasts. Eat, drink, be merry; fuck your brains out; don't bother finishing dull boring books; eat dessert first; tell your son of a bitch boss to shove his head up his ass... As you have surmised, once you are dead, that's it. FOREVER.

The problem of nuclear war doesn't need an orange buffoon for ignition. The reason that the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has moved the minute hand of the doomsday clock to 11:58 pm (2 minutes before midnight -- doomsday) is that the Orange buffoon need not be involved in the initial launch.

First, seven other nations have nuclear-tipped missiles: China, Russia, India, Pakistan, France, UK, and North Korea. Israel has nuclear weapons; I don't think they have missiles to deliver them, but I haven't checked out their security arrangements yet.

I don't know what our current security arrangements are either. During the cold war, the authority to launch nuclear weapons had been delegated and sub-delegated. The Dr. Strangelove plot idea of a base commander launching B52 bombers was entirely plausible. It makes sense (if you buy into the idea of nuclear weapons at all--and the major powers have) to delegate authority. An off-shore nuclear attack could eliminate Washington, D.C. the Pentagon, the orange buffoon and much else, before any arrangements could be made for a counter attack.

I don't think anybody thinks B52s could be a significant factor at this point, but we have around 400 nuclear tipped land based missiles and a batch of nuclear-launch subs, somewhere. We wouldn't want these resources to be paralyzed for lack of an order should the US be attacked. The same goes for China, Russia, and everybody else.

Were Pakistan to attack India with nuclear weapons, were Israel decide to nuke any one of several Arab neighbors (or Iran), were India to attack China, were the North Koreans to sell a bomb to Iran (Iran has been working on missiles for quite some time), were NK to attack the US or SK, it's just very difficult to suppose that this would not escalate.

It's questionable which animals would survive. The cockroaches in your kitchen have good reason to fear that they would be totally screwed.

Were all the nuclear and thermonuclear bombs to be used explode at high enough altitude, the radiation alone would be survivable. Look at the area adjacent to Chernobyl. The problem is, the bombs aren't going to go off at high altitudes. They are going to be detonated immediately above, or on targets, including cities and industrial zones. The firestorms that will result will lift a massive amount of soot into the upper atmosphere where it will stay for... maybe 10 years, give or take a few. Nuclear winter will be the result. Will this trigger an ice age? No. What it will trigger is crop failure year, after year, after year. Crop failure and failure to reproduce because the weather will be unseasonably cold and dark too much of the time to produce flowers, bees, and food for insects, animals, and humans.

Wild cockroaches will probably survive -- along with an assortment of plants, micro-organisms, animals, and most likely some humans. But life will definitely not be great for the survivors at any time in the immediate and intermediate future, or ever -- maybe.

Once the cooling effect of soot is gone, then global warming on steroids will kick in, and that will get rid of a lot more life forms. Who will survive very severe global warming? Unknown.

I was just going to to explain to you that if it were you personally who was affirming the claim that "All men are created equal" and the particular dimension/principle of equality to which you were alluding was MORAL equality ( I assumed this might be the case from your use of the phrase "equal before God" ) then your position is totally untenable; and I would be happy to tell you why this is the case. — Dachshund

Well, go ahead and explain why it is untenable. You never know -- I might backslide into a less equivocal POV without your explanation. I admit it: I'm not entirely certain about what I think about equality. (How can anybody not be certain about what they think?)

I gather from your phrase, "Let me get this straight" that you didn't like my interpretation of what Jefferson may or may not have meant.

I might think

that no difference that exists between human beings, be it in skin colour, race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, cognitive capacity, should negate their fundamental EQUAL (identical) worth, value and dignity — Dachshund

but whether Jefferson believed that is open to question. When rhetoric like "We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal..." is deployed, the authors are not accounting for the major inconsistencies in their own affairs. Holding that "all men are created equal" and owning slaves (and fathering slave children) is a serrated-edged inconsistency.

Jefferson may have aspired to harmonize his rhetoric with the facts of his life. He may have intended at one point to free his slaves, but in the end, he didn't -- he needed their cash value.

Still, the rhetoric is there in the D. of I. It's good rhetoric, and if we make it consistent in our own lives, good on us. Unfortunately, when we talk about the EQUAL worth, value, and dignity of human beings, we are as likely as Jefferson to be inconsistent, but maybe not as egregiously.

I don't know... these days do a lot of people sincerely claim we are all created equal? And if we say that all people are created equal, do we mean that in a specially, restricted way? Like, "We are all created equal, but some of us are better and more equal than others." I suspect that most people feel they are superior to at least some others, even if they grudgingly admit that some people are better than themselves.

And if we are all equal before god, then that is god's problem to deal with, not ours, thank heavens. We'll just go ahead and operate on the assumption that some of us are better, and some of you are worse.

Would there be a need for religion if there was no fear of death?

The sum of Christianity (the religion I am most familiar with) is not all about dealing with the fear of death.

First, not everyone (Christian or other) is very afraid of dying. Some people are reconciled to the end of their existence at the time of death. Not all Christians believe in in an afterlife, and there can be sharp disagreement about what "afterlife" even means.

For some Christians who take God to be a vindictive torturer of souls, there is is more hazard in a life after death (it might be hell on steroids) than no life after death at all (merely non-existence).

The fear of life after death is, to some extent, part of the package of religion, which posits an afterlife about which you need advice and direction. If Christianity offers a way to avoid hell, a lot of the wide-screen technicolor propaganda on hell came from the church in the first place.

You are just reading from the Torah. — Rich

Daniel wasn't in the Pentateuch (Torah), the last time I checked.

So who is the shepherd? — René Descartes

Jefferson Airplane will feed you sheep and look after you lambs. They're the shepherds.

Are humans a herd-animal, a pack-animal, a troupe-animal, a family-group animal, a solitary animal who periodically tolerates others' proximity, or simply a large group of braying jackasses? Reveal

Culture is a herd product; it's simultaneously produced, modified, and utilized by the herd. So sure, we all engage in herd activity. But, contrary to the sneering tone of people who like the term "sheeple", we don't suspend our individual intelligence to utilize our cultural resources. Most people take at least some meals from "fast food" joints during given year. It isn't all McDonalds. A gyro, for instance, or pad thai are both "fast foods" -- street foods, or can be, anyway. The old-fashioned diner was fast food; so were coffee shops, with a menu of sandwiches, ready to serve blue plate specials (like roast beef on white bread with mashed potatoes, peas, and gravy uber alles) and pie. Herd.

Most people read a newspaper and their opinions are affected by what they read; true, there is a difference between reading the New York Times and the National Enquirer, between the PBS News Hour and Fox news. Herd

Even intellectuals and philosophers like to watch popular movies and TV shows. Herd.

What is the purpose of boredom? Why is it such a universal emotion? — CuddlyHedgehog

Why do people (and other animals, for all we know) get headaches? Some reason? Some purpose? Headaches happen. Boredom happens. One does something about it, then moves on. Nattering on about boredom is... boring.

OK, I'll take your word for it, then.

This Google Ngram would indicate that antinatalism has been in use (in print) long enough to be noticed and included.

Yeah, who does the OED think they are, anyway? Just a bunch of linguists in a formerly great imperialist power college town.

thanks for accepting me into this group — Oldphan

Let's not be hasty. You're here; whether you have been "accepted" remains to be seen. On the other hand, we have accepted our resident antinatalists, so there's hope. >:)

What difference does it make to you whether the OED editors have included it or not? You are using the word, other people know what you mean (I guess) so... what's the problem? Do you need the imprimatur of the OED, or something?

Maybe a £100,000 bribe would help.

The itch to build or melt into something deathless intensifies perhaps with aging. — foo

I find that I have less and less itch to melt into something deathless as I age.

Matter is deadened Mind
— Rich

That's stupid.

matter is deadened light
— Rich

That's just as stupid, if not more so. — Sapientia

Nice and direct.

BTW Jonathan AB from SA, welcome to TPF.

I just agreed with him, that's all. Neighborly, you know.

Or maybe you inhaled water, sank, lost consciousness and died, and discovered there was no second act. Sic transit gloria Rich.

Maybe not. There might be life after death or maybe you snagged a life boat before your ship sank. Or maybe your ship was driven into the rocks of grim reality by the insistent waves of misfortune, but you were close enough to shore to wade to safety. And maybe the island you were fortunate enough to wade ashore was fruitful, pleasant, and unoccupied except by another castaway who happens to be quite voluptuous or a stud, whichever you prefer. And you lived happily ever after.

So, is there some golden mean of 'control' towards which we ought to strive towards? — Posty McPostface

One thing an individual can do is save some money--enough to get by on, living cheaply, for 6 months. Let's say that one can live cheaply for $2000 a month. Save up $12,000. If you have enough money to live on (cheaply) for 6 months, you will be able to afford getting fired from a job. If you get fired, you can collect unemployment for 6 months -- and still have another 6 months left.

If you have $12,000 in the bank (hell, if you have $5,000 in the bank) you can weather minor emergencies. Major emergencies -- no, but then, if they are major enough, nobody can weather them without big problems.

If you have enough to live cheaply for 6 months, you can afford to work on and off to keep from going broke too quickly. $12,000 gives you a significant amount of control, and freedom. As much less than $2000 a month that you can live on, the less you have to save.

How do you save 12,000 a month? You live cheaply and save as large a percentage of your income as you can manage. You can have bad habits and minor vices, but they have to be inexpensive. You take public transit instead of buying a car. You live in a little apartment instead of a nice big one. You wear your clothes out. You don't travel, except by hitchhiking, staying with friends or tricks, or the sleaziest of hotels.

Doesn't this take all the joy out of life? Not really. For one thing, this is temporary. It's a short term project to save enough to allow you to take risks with employment. Having college debt, a mortgage, credit card debt, and expensive vices means YOU HAVE TO KEEP WORKING UNTIL YOU DIE. You can't stop, because a swarm of debt collecting vultures is always circling overhead, waiting for a missed payment.

I treat life more like a sailor — Rich

In this manner I learn — Rich

Until the damn boat sinks, then we're done.

No, I am just an average Joe - nothing special, no special talents or skills really. — Dachshund

All that seems to be true.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Even though Jefferson was a Deist (and not a Theist) the concept of a god-created world would have been part of his world-view. "All men are created equal" by their Creator.

All men (humans) are equal before God as products of God's creative power. There is nothing in the concept of egalitarian creation that conflicts with men (humans) occupying all sorts of different stations in life, from King of England on down to the lowliest field slave.

Did Jefferson ever claim that everyone was going to equal in the future? I don't think so. Can a slave and a slave owner be equal before God? Yes. Did Jefferson have doubts about the morality of slavery? Yes: "I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever."

You are getting hung up by insisting on rhetorical consistency. People, you may have noticed, are consistently inconsistent. If they aren't inconsistent right now, they will be inconsistent later today. Tomorrow at the latest. Everyone is inconsistent except me and thee, and even thee was inconsistent just the other day.

Was that estimation peer reviewed?

You know, "consent" is kind of tricky business. If you go to the hospital, you will be asked (kind of required, really) to sign a consent form giving the hospital permission to provide treatment to you. You sign it, of course, because if you don't the hospital isn't going to do much for you. But when you give consent at a hospital, you are consenting to various unknown possibilities.

I'm a gay man who was once very sexually active (sigh). Age has since snowed white hair on my head and cooled my carnal enthusiasms. As a mature adult (before and after reaching 40) I sometimes "consented" to sex with other men that turned out to be ill advised in retrospect (interest = consent). I was never risk averse in sexual encounters. Some people are very risk averse, and shy away from situations that present any risk whatsoever.

One of the "risks" of having sex at 14, 15, 16, or at 30, 40, or 50 is that one may regret having taken risks that one later feels were too high or not rewarding enough. Exactly what happened in an encounter is always subject to reinterpretation later--and this is true whether we are talking about sex, medical treatment, financial activity, trying out herbicides on the lawn, and so on. Maybe the sexual experience wasn't as great as one hoped it would be. Maybe a sexual partner had annoying habits; wore too much cologne; popped chewing gum constantly; didn't make the right moves, didn't measure up to expectations, etc. Or, in one case, was far more progressed with AIDS than I thought.

I had sex as a minor, sex which also happened to be illegal at the time on a couple of different counts, with a guy who was about 10 years older than me. I later had regrets about it, NOT because I was abused in some way -- I don't feel I was abused, though I had been carefully seduced and coaxed into the encounter. The sexual relationship went on for several years, and while I was glad to have sex available, I just didn't like the guy that much. I regretted it. I wished it had not happened. (What I really wished was that it had happened, even earlier, with somebody else.)

I didn't give "consent" the way "consent" is now interpreted. I'm still OK with that part. Where this relationship became really problematic was when the desperate neediness of this guy resulted in intrusive, highly inconvenient behavior. Worse, he was kind of like velcro and I couldn't figure out then how to get him unstuck. I wasn't quite mature enough to call his suicidal bluff, a device he used a couple of times to get me to come visit him a few hundred miles away.

So, a first sexual encounter, whether consented or unconsented, can have unforeseen consequences, which we may or may not regret for various reasons. We don't know, sometimes, to what, exactly, we might be consenting.

As an analogy to help you see where I am coming from, consider product reviews on Amazon. Assuming that they are truthful, you'd probably consider it some evidence as to the quality of the product if you had no experience with the product in question. — Tree Falls

But the effect is the same whether the reviews are truthful or not, which of course, we don't know.

That depends on whether you are very attractive without pants and socks.

Would the difference between telling my friends and telling the world be the private versus public nature of the statement? — Tree Falls

Yes, the public vs. the private is a piece of it. When I say, "Due process. You are not a court." I mean
"you have not seen evidence from a prosecutor and the defense. You have heard no witnesses. You have not heard arguments by both sides; there has been no expert testimony. You are not a jury. You do not have the authority (like, given to you by the state) to declare to the public that your brother is a menace to young womanhood.

Limiting your action to members of your family and the couple with the 14 year old may damage relationship; may prevent harm; may cause harm; but, it is limited to yourself, your parents, your brother, and the couple with the 14 year old. That's already 7 people who might wish you had kept your nose out of it.

If you post your considered but unsubstantiated opinion on a public web site, the whole thing gets messier and nastier.

Of course, you are weighing the good of preventing the 14 year old from having an unpleasant encounter with your brother (the assumption being that it will be unpleasant) against the harm of doing nothing.

The situation recalls a piece of Buddhist advice, modeled after a cliche: "Don't just do something; stand there." Sometimes doing nothing is the best choice because you can not predict what any outcome will be.

In my own family I witnessed a very well-intentioned intervention to protect a sibling and child which poisoned relationships within the family for decades afterwards. I can't say that it was worth it. Once done, it could not be undone.

Once you are convinced of the righteousness of your proposed action, you, like me and everybody else, will put the pedal to the metal and roar off down the road to your good, bad, or indifferent rendezvous with destiny.

Good luck.

Could you expand on why you think a public warning seems too much? — Tree Falls

Due process. You are not a court.