• Is Evil necessary ?
    Sometimes I think evil is attractive. — Rosalina

    You are not alone in this. Many people have found evil quite attractive at times.

    It's necessary in this world or else we won't be able to appreciate good. — Rosalina

    Can you appreciate the goodness of a beautiful flower WITHOUT having to wade through a bed of poison ivy and nettles? I bet you can. Can you enjoy waking up in the morning and feeling great without having to be very sick the day before? I bet you can. We appreciate good things because of their nature, not because bad things provide a contrast.

    True enough: Sometimes bad things improve and it is a great relief. It's great when a bad headache is gone. It's very nice when we have finally cleaned up our home and gotten all our chores done. It's good when the car has been fixed and we can drive it again. But headaches, dirty houses, and cars that don't run are not necessary.

    We try to destroy evil by punishing it. How fair is it for society to play God. Evil ones are generally strong, dominant and aggressive. By gradually weeding them out , are we creating a society of Cu*ks and puss**s(sorry for those words but couldn't find a better alternative ). — Rosalina

    Sometimes we punish evil. It's entirely fair for society to do that. Playing God? If you want to bring God into this, God gave us laws (the Ten Commandments, the various laws in Leviticus and elsewhere) to help us live together. It's our job to see that everyone follows the law. That's one of the things that society is for.

    "Evil" doesn't operate as an implacable agent in the world. Evil is something that people do. We try to reduce evil behavior through punishment, education, rewards for good behavior, and so forth.

    Sometimes people who are strong, dominant and aggressive perform evil acts, and sometimes they perform good acts. "Strong, dominant and aggressive" aren't traits of evil; they are just personality traits. Some very good people who do very good things are strong, dominant and aggressive. Some very bad people who do very bad things are weak, sneaky, weasels.

    "Cu*ks and puss**s"... We're all grown up here, you can spell the words out. Maybe you were looking for "cringing weaklings"? btw, what is a 'cu*ks'?

    I mean even a criminal could be very intelligent and smart. And his potential gets lost when he is put to death. — Rosalina

    A criminal may well be very intelligent and smart--but usually not so much. I'm against capital punishment, but one reason pro-death people put forward is that criminals' potential for evil needs to be terminated.

    Is evil excessively used as a scapegoat by a society too hellbent on being righteous and sanctimonious. Is evil sensationalized and exaggerated to feed our morally superior egos. Or is our outrage for evil acts justified. Sometimes I even think that our strong vilification and resistance to evil actually causes people to find it even more appealing. It's like you resist fear and fear grows so maybe when we resist evil too much, we allow those forces to grow. — Rosalina

    Real evil requires all the resistance we can muster. Some examples:

    Genocide
    Regimes that terrorize their people
    Criminal enterprises which cause death and injury
    Theft or destruction of public goods
    Corruption in business and government
    Abuse of persons
    Murder, rape, torture...

    True, some people crusade for causes because they are sanctimonious hypocrites. And sure, people who got stuck in the juvenile stage of development might find the forbidden attractive merely because it is forbidden.

    Are we losing more through punishment. Is there a way to retain some of the good or transform evil into something protective, strong and formidable but not harmful. — Rosalina

    What we need to do is guide the footsteps of evil doers back onto the paths of righteous behavior.
  • The Pros and Cons of nuclear power
    ↪dclements
    Chernobyl may well have caused 40,000 cancer deaths. Is that not a big deal? Well, of course it is -- but 40,000 cancer deaths in a large population is not a lot. 2,626,418 people die in the US every year--about 1/3 from cancer, about 1/3 from heart disease, and about 1/3 from stroke. The "about" leaves room for accidents, infections, and other causes of death. If 875,472,667 people die of cancer, an additional 40,000 or 50,000 isn't going to be terribly noticeable. And certainly the CAUSE of 875,472,667 cancers isn't going to be known in most cases.

    Still, I am disinclined to trust the risk-minimizing statements of the nuclear industry. No industry that I can think of has been forthright about the harm it causes.
  • The Pros and Cons of nuclear power
    ↪dclements
    A competently designed, properly sited, and carefully operated nuclear power plant is an appropriate source of energy, at least for the time being. However, competent design, proper siting, and careful operation--being human attributes--can and do fail.

    Chernobyl and Fukushima are both excellent examples of human failure in one or more critical areas. Why do these failures occur? Haste, over-confidence, insufficient thoroughness, cheapness, momentary inattention to detail, unimaginative planning, bad practices, etc.

    The waste-disposal problem seems to be primarily political. I don't view nuclear waste as benign in any way, shape, manner, or form, but there are methods of disposal that can be final:

    Site waste disposal in the most geologically stable rock. In North America there is the Laurentian Shield, for instance, which is the igneous / granitic core of the continent. It's as stable as rock is going to get. Most of it is in Canada, but some of it is in the US--in the Great Lakes region, like northern Minnesota.

    Bore a shaft well below the water table. Put the properly packaged highly radioactive long lasting waste in halls branching off the shaft. Back fill. Plug the shaft with a lot of concrete.

    The very hint of a whisper of suggestion that northern Minnesota would make a better waste disposal site than the desert southwest will cause 5 million Minnesotans to rise in wrath. But it makes sense. The desert southwest is more geologically active than the Laurentian Shield. It's therefore a bad place to put waste.

    Other features that make northern Minnesota a good location: It's flat--thanks to the glaciers 10,000 - 100,000 years ago. Most of the dirt was removed. Better to bore way down below the mean surface of the land than bore into a mountain to bury stuff. Another thing: Northern Minnesota already has lots of big holes--like the underground Tower-Soudan mine which is about 2300 feet deep or the big open pit iron mines.

    The biggest risk we take is leaving highly radioactive (and chemically toxic) waste on site -- like fuel rods, whether in the reactor or in storage pools. In the event of a not-unimaginable deterioration and unraveling of society, we would be leaving unattended roughly 500 time bombs of toxicity in the world.

    In 2014 11% of all electricity in the world came from nuclear plants.
  • The Pros and Cons of nuclear power
    I was really shocked to know that only about 4% of energy stored in fuel rods are used. — OglopTo

    It would be shocking that only 4% of the energy in a fuel rod were used, IF it were simple to use say 80%. It isn't. For another, one might not want too much fission going on. Even 4% produces a tremendous amount of heat.

    My understanding of nuclear physics is pretty poor, but if I remember correctly, the older atomic bombs only used a very small percentage of the potential energy in the bomb.
  • The Pros and Cons of nuclear power
    ↪dclements
    According to the linear no-threshold model, any exposure to ionizing radiation, even at doses too low to produce any symptoms of radiation sickness, can induce cancer due to cellular and genetic damage. Under the assumption, survivors of acute radiation syndrome face an increased risk of developing cancer later in life. The probability of developing cancer is a linear function with respect to the effective radiation dose. In radiation-induced cancer, the speed at which the condition advances, the prognosis, the degree of pain, and every other feature of the disease are not believed to be functions of the radiation dosage.

    However, some studies contradict the linear no-threshold model. These studies indicate that some low levels of radiation do not increase cancer risk at all, and that there may exist a threshold dosage of ionizing radiation below which exposure should be considered safe. Nonetheless the 'no safe amount' assumption is the basis of US and most national regulatory policies regarding "man-made" sources of radiation.     — Wikipedia
  • The Pros and Cons of nuclear power
    Use less energy. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

    Yes. Our largest and least expensive new energy source is CONSERVATION.

    There are several reasons why "use less energy" makes good sense.

    1. We waste a lot of energy through inefficiency. Some prime examples:

    a. basing mass transit on one person riding in one car instead of using busses and trains
    b. transporting goods in trucks rather than railroads
    c. inefficient heating/cooling systems in homes and non-housing buildings
    d. inefficient agricultural practices
    e. widespread low-density population distribution (i.e., the suburbs and exurbs)

    2. we are not capturing a reasonable proportion of our energy from wind and solar -- though this is improving. Many areas are now producing small but growing shares of electricity from wind and solar, where 20 years ago the figure was close to or at zero.

    We waste a lot of matériel which takes energy to produce. Some prime examples:

    a. compostable organic material that is either buried in landfills or incinerated which can be industrially composted for use in agriculture.
    b. packaging ordinary water in plastic bottles and shipping the water from here to there.
    c. growing corn (which depletes soil, requires extensive energy) for fermentation to make ethanol to mix with gasoline
    d. burying or incinerating paper, plastics, metal, glass, etc. rather than recovering the resources in garbage
  • John McEnroe: Serena Williams would rank 'like 700 in the world' in men's circuit play
    I'd rather be labeled a prude than a sex-crazed maniac *shrug*. — Heister Eggcart

    What is a sex-crazed maniac shrug?
  • John McEnroe: Serena Williams would rank 'like 700 in the world' in men's circuit play
    And I'm not sure that if a child gets raised by a pack of dogs he will act like that pack. — Agustino

  • John McEnroe: Serena Williams would rank 'like 700 in the world' in men's circuit play
    Man is a spiritual being (and before Vagabond jumps up in arms about some bullshit), all that means is that we are rational creatures, possessed of both will and intellect - we are PERSONS. — Agustino

    Sure, we're spiritual beings if that means we are rational creatures possessed of both will and intellect. Sure, we are PERSONS. however...

    Evolution did not start from scratch with new species. It always (has no choice) incorporates last year's design into this year's model, with additions or the occasional deletion. The basic kernel of human sexual drive isn't all that different from other animals. For instance, you don't have to decide to be sexual. Sexual is baked in. You don't have to figure out how to get sexually aroused. The circuitry of arousal is pre-installed. You don't have to figure out how to thrust. It's part of the program.

    Human sexuality, the sexuality of embodied persons, however is more complicated -- as you point out. But it is in the complexity of human existence that we get screwed up by bad/stupid/evil ideas.
  • John McEnroe: Serena Williams would rank 'like 700 in the world' in men's circuit play
    I don't want to just fuck a woman like a dog. — Agustino

    I would hope that you would fuck a woman rather better than a dog would. >:)
  • John McEnroe: Serena Williams would rank 'like 700 in the world' in men's circuit play
    ↪Agustino
    Well yes, I do understand that celibacy is more complicated than a neurotic repression of sexuality (or anything else).

    self-controlled - your own master, captain of the ship — Agustino

    It isn't celibacy that makes one self-controlled, it's self-control that makes celibacy possible.

    poor Freud — Agustino

    What poor Freud thought was that we sublimate our sexual drives to produce civilization. We don't repress, we redirect. Celibacy is an institutionalized form of sublimation. The celibate sublimator doesn't deny his sexual urges, he redirects that energy to other goals.

    Most of us are sublimators. We forgo the time and energy it takes to acquire lots of sex and instead go to work every day, we write books, dig ditches, build houses, cook, clean, mix concrete, change diapers--all the stuff that it takes to build and maintain civilization.
  • John McEnroe: Serena Williams would rank 'like 700 in the world' in men's circuit play
    Sexuality is important, like all other factors of our existence, but not the absolute central bit — Agustino

    No, sexuality isn't the sin quo non of human development. Sexuality, along with physical development, cognitive development, personality development are also central. The importance of sexuality derives from our physical embodiment. What the child experiences first are the pleasures and pains of physicality. Sexuality is central to our development because it is such a strong, evolved drive, common to many other species.

    Most animals don't have the cognitive ability to screw up their off-spring's sexual development. It just unfolds and that's that. Humans, on the other hand, do have the cognitive ability to screw up the sexuality of their offspring (and much else), which they do with regularity and aplomb.
  • John McEnroe: Serena Williams would rank 'like 700 in the world' in men's circuit play
    Okay, how is this possible if I have no emotional response at all to exposed torsos, especially for man? Growing up this was a VERY common sight for me. There's no emotional reaction. I still think it's wrong. — Agustino

    Keep digging.

    Thinking something is wrong may be only the result of educated morality. If you think tax fraud is immoral, then that is probably the result of educated morality. But because sexuality is central to our personality and physical development from infancy forward, (and one doesn't have to cite Sigmund Freud for support) the morality of all things sexual are probably strongly influenced by experience and emotions.

    Also, you are presumably straight, so you probably wouldn't find a male torso arousing. But still, too much nakedness (uncovered breasts! Oh, no! Save us from concupiscence!) is immoral.
  • John McEnroe: Serena Williams would rank 'like 700 in the world' in men's circuit play
    We will always care about it because people are born with a sense of decency, that has to be then overcome through education. — Agustino

    Baloney.

    If there is one thing that infants don't have, it's a sense of decency. It takes education (and screwed up experiences) to develop warped values--or values which aren't warped.
  • John McEnroe: Serena Williams would rank 'like 700 in the world' in men's circuit play
    No, I'm not "bothered" by seeing it at all, it's just that it's not decent, and it would be better if it didn't happen. — Agustino

    It's quite possible (even probable) that your emotional response to exposed torsos led you to view it as indecent and (if carried to far) immoral--rather than morals being the reason for your emotional response.
  • Religious Discussions - User's Manual
    If you are an atheist, EDIT: isn't there some burden of proof for you to bear?
  • Religious Discussions - User's Manual
    When God is the topic, specify what you think God is or is not. If your God is unknowable, say no more. If your God has attributes which you can not explain to the rest of us, say no more.

    Confess what your source of knowledge is about God. If you have personal evidence, great. If all you have is hearsay evidence, admit it. Religious books are hearsay evidence.

    Before you say anything, decide whether your God has to be Perfectly Nice. Maybe your God isn't. God could very well be inconsistent, contradictory, arbitrary, and capricious, peevish, periodically unloving, unkind, indifferent to your problems, etc. If God is not nice, that would explain a lot.
  • Eternal history
    History started about 5,000 years ago, when the first writing was developed. — T Clark

    Oral history existed prior to written history which began about 5,000 years ago. Oral history captured sequences of events that were important to a people and could be packaged in an epic format which was easier to remember and pass on than just a collection of assorted facts. Natural history, of which we are a part, began relatively recently -- in that we started to read the physical record more carefully. In the last few hundred years, and in the last few years (or months) we have pushed the beginning of natural history ALMOST back to its beginning -- something like a few trillionths of a second before it began 13.82 billion years, give or take 15 minutes, either way.

    I think, for example, mankind and our achievements are in some way eternal. — gunner

    You could go further and say that the physical history of life on this planet (of which we are a small part) is eternal. Life, in one form or another, began perhaps 4 billion years ago on earth. That's about 33% of the age of the universe itself. We are here because 4 billion years of life preceded us. Life is the major achievement.

    You go still further and say that the physical history of the universe, and everything contained within it, is eternal.

    How long is your "eternal"? Infinity?
  • John McEnroe: Serena Williams would rank 'like 700 in the world' in men's circuit play
    Staying cool on a hot day requires clothing. — Agustino

    Why does he want to appeal sexually and attract attention? — Agustino

    I probably would have done so if I had the abdomen that I used to have. — Sapientia

    Based on observations over several years, it is apparent that some (many? all?) of our philosophers here have body issues, and that some have mixed their personal hang-ups into their morality.

    First in line we have Agustino wondering why someone wants to appeal sexually and attract attention. Agustino: You are Exhibit A in the Case of the Prudish Philosopher. Why are people prudish? Because they have a problem with being an embodied being. One suspects they have rejected their own body, and then generalized this rejection to others. If they thought being a body was really a good thing, they would celebrate it instead of constructing barbed wire fences and visual screens around it.

    People who are physically and mentally healthy NATURALLY want to appeal sexually to others. It's NORMAL. As it happens, some screwed up people find a shirtless male as risqué as a topless female. Maybe where you come from that is so, but I doubt it. At least in many places, the male torso isn't as eroticized as the female torso. Exposed and eroticized torsos (of either sex) bother people who are uncomfortable with eroticism.

    Then we have Sapientia suffering from the heat (of the UK -- not to be confused with the heat of Alabama) in his black polyester-cotton mix T shirt because his abdomen isn't adequate.

    Sapientia: For your own good, (and as a sign to the rest of humanity) take your T shirt off and walk down the street--insouciantly--regardless of your less than perfect Rectus Abdominis muscles. Maybe you are 3 pounds over weight, maybe you haven't done your usual 500 sit ups, or whatever... Tough. As you are is just fine. You don't have to measure up to some ideal of physical shape. (Of course, you can if you want to, but there is no point of dying from heat stroke in a black T shirt because your six pack is fading.)

    The Philosophy Forum really should arrange a 2 week meet-up at a nudist colony so everyone could, once and for all, get over these body-neuroses.

    Get naked and get over it, once and for all.
  • John McEnroe: Serena Williams would rank 'like 700 in the world' in men's circuit play
    Um, well are you saying that she's ugly because she's a black woman? If so, then I think you might be guilty on both counts. — geospiza


    Shirley, there are black women who are ugly, just as there are white women who are ugly. The beauty or ugliness of a woman will probably have at least something to do with her racial make up. Would one be a racist for saying so? Or a sexist?
  • Forcing people into obligations by procreating them is wrong
    when it comes to suffering, snakes never cross my mind — Marchesk

    "Snakes" was a cultural quote that missed the target.

    In the libretto of Candide, music by Leonard Bernstein, Pangloss is explaining why this is the best of all possible worlds. The students are raising objections, like "What about snakes?"

    MAXIMILLIAN:
    Objection!
    What about snakes?

    PANGLOSS:
    Snakes!
    'Twas snake that tempted mother Eve
    Because of snake we now believe
    That though depraved
    We can be saved
    From hellfire and damnation
    (Because of snake's temptation!)

    If snake had not seduced our lot
    And primed us for salvation
    Jehova could not pardon all
    The sins that we call cardinal
    Involving bed and bottle!

    Now on to Aristotle.     — Prince & Bernstein
  • John McEnroe: Serena Williams would rank 'like 700 in the world' in men's circuit play
    ↪geospiza
    A little bird told you that, I suppose.
  • John McEnroe: Serena Williams would rank 'like 700 in the world' in men's circuit play
    ↪geospiza
    Bu bu but Geospiza, some women are "airbrushed, photoshopped distortions of reality".
  • John McEnroe: Serena Williams would rank 'like 700 in the world' in men's circuit play
    I really hate it when fat old women on bicycles pass me. It's just intolerable.
  • The Epistemology of Mental Illness Diagnosis
    What's your views on things like personality disorders and how they might affect social interactions in particular? — schopenhauer1

    Clearly, a personality disorder can affect social interactions. This is always true because personality (good bad or indifferent) is that with which we interact in the world.

    ... what looks like just someone who has abysmal social skills might have an underlying personality disorder. Of course, it may be that someone just has abysmal social skills. I guess when does one look deeper and when does one say that it is just a feature of this person but no underlying issue? — schopenhauer1

    Oh, I don't know. It depends. I knew a guy, Eric, who was a paranoid schizophrenic. When he was feeling well, he was smart, charming, perceptive, and a pleasure to be with. BUT, when he was not feeling well (when he experienced intense fear and delusions) it was instantly obvious--even to a casual observer--that this fellow was not doing well on any level.

    I don't have as much knowledge about personality disorder as I would like, and I don't have well developed theories about it.

    We develop our personalities over time, along with all our other personal resources. Some disorders seem to be built in -- like schizophrenia -- while others -- like PTSD -- are a response to experience. Eric had developed a very pleasant personality and a brilliant mind as a young man. He was well educated and well read. I don't know when his symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia emerged -- I didn't know him as a young man.

    Some people develop odd, eccentric, weird behaviors and affects from childhood on up. "Why?" is hard to say. I don't know. Determining when "oddness" or "weirdness" is diagnostically significant requires more knowledge than I have.
  • Why do people believe in 'God'?
    Granted. Was that meant as just a comment or as an argument against something I've said? — Sapientia

    You had commented on belief in god(s) being like belief in extraterrestrials. "the claim that one has experienced the presence of God in their life is analogous in ways to the claim that one has experienced the presence of extraterrestrials or ghosts in their life."

    I assume you meant that experiencing the presence of extraterrestrials or God was a bit nutty.

    It could be nutty. Sometimes it is nutty. But IF one had been taught that it was the case from childhood up, it would be natural rather than nutty to claim that they were present in one's life.

    Whether it's nutty or natural would depend on the content they put forward. Christians are suspicious of Christians who hear God making outlandish requests, or who seem overly involved in this presence. It's a different story if a Christian feels called upon by God to help someone out of a very bad situation. (But there are limits, here.) St. Francis deciding to lick the sores of lepers might have gone off the deep end. Similarly, one could think one received messages from extraterrestrials, and that would be OK, more or less, as long as what the ETs were saying wasn't too outlandish--like shoot the prime minister or something.
  • Why do people believe in 'God'?
    My claim - and I maintain that this was quite apparent from the start, and in retrospect you might be able to see this - is that the claim that one has experienced the presence of God in their life is analogous in ways to the claim that one has experienced the presence of extraterrestrials or ghosts in their life. — Sapientia

    It wouldn't be at all bizarre to claim one had experienced the presence of extraterrestrials, ghosts, spirits, devils, angels, or any other spooky phenomena IF one had been taught that these beings were real and that one could experience them.

    Look, some people see in P.M. May and President Trump splendid, thoughtful, and effective leaders. I don't know why they do; it's probably the work of the devil. But whatever the cause, rational people can believe all sorts of things.

    If my memory serves me right, you grew up without any significant religious education, and didn't feel any need to go out of your way to get any. Under those circumstances, it would make sense for you to not believe in God, and to be at least somewhat unsympathetic toward the idea of belief. What would be far more remarkable than your disbelief is for you to experience a spontaneous conversion. God could certainly arrange a bolt out of the blue and turn you into an ardent Jehovah's Witness or Southern Baptist, but hasn't seen fit to do so.
  • Why do people believe in 'God'?
    I was taught/trained to believe in God. First parents and siblings, then the influence of Sunday school and church, and peers. By the age of 18 I had not come across anyone seriously urging me to cease believing in God, and I had not heard any sustained arguments against believing in God.

    I did not believe in God as a way of meeting psychological needs, any more than saying the pledge of allegiance or learning the Minnesota state anthem met deep psychological needs. It was just something everybody did.

    I was taught that I had direct access to God through prayer, and that God had direct access to me through omnipresence and omniscience. (Those words weren't used in Sunday school.) It was more like, "God knows what you are doing and thinking all the time" so there was no escape.

    Also if Jesus didn't exist or if he never claimed he was the son of God, than I'm pretty sure that would be a major flaw with Christianity. — dclements

    If Jesus had not existed, there would be no such thing as Christianity, never mind it having a flaw.

    I am certain Jesus existed. Whether he was the Messiah, whether he performed miracles, whether he said he was the Son of God, I don't know and can not know with certainly.

    Why not?

    Paul is our first source (but Paul never met Jesus) and the Gospels (formed up and finished later than Paul) are the "authoritative" story of Jesus. There wouldn't have been a Jesus movement for Paul to first resist then join if Jesus had not existed.

    What Paul learned about Jesus was apparently powerfully persuasive, and Paul did have access to people who knew Jesus first hand (like Peter and James). What people of Jesus' time experienced of Jesus must also have been persuasive, else there would have been no Jesus movement.

    The Gospels were formed up and published by editors in the nascent church several decades after Jesus, the Disciples, Paul, and the first or second generation of witnesses had died. The editors were at a temporal and geographical distance from the time and place of the Gospel narrative. This nascent organization, the letters of Paul, and the pieces of text, oral tradition, and liturgical practice that existed are all testimony to the fact that Jesus had existed, and something remarkable happened in his person.

    But what, exactly, happened -- we do not know, and short of Jesus coming to us and telling us all about it, we never will know.

    My skeptical view of Jesus-as-God incarnate took quite a while to form up--becoming clearer when I was about 40 years old. From skepticism I settled into a frustrating on/off belief/disbelief pattern.

    If now, 30 years since becoming skeptical, I feel a pull towards God, it is the need to resolve cognitive dissonance between the deeply held belief I once had and the skeptical-verging-on-or-being-disbelief position I hold now.
  • Are women generally submissive to men?
    ↪Mongrel
    I see your pain, but to what, exactly are you responding?
  • Are women generally submissive to men?
    ↪Bitter Crank Neither. It just shows that your telepathy skills suck. — Mongrel

    I'm sure my telepathy skills are worse than sucky. Like non-existent. Same for you. It doesn't exist.

    For a lot of people in the late 20th, it's like the ghost of the patriarchy was around.. maybe from childhood observations. — Mongrel

    "Wooooo moooooan" the vaporish ghost of patriarchy howled, "I have come to haunt you now, and I will haunt you forever... We're coming for you, Mongrel..."

    Telepathy, ghosts, the imaginary patriarchal social systems -- I don't know when I've been attacked by so many spiritualistic terms.

    But the real world was chaotic when it came to gender roles, family structure, etc. Sometimes a lot of energy would go into trying to deal with that chaos. One imagines past generations weren't burdened so much with that? — Mongrel

    "Real world was chaotic"... like how far back are we talking? 1995? 1763? 1066? 1000?

    I'm Gen-X. It just occurred to me that the gap between my experience and yours might be a barrier to communication about it. — Mongrel

    BS. I am older than you, but not by centuries, after all. Any two people might find it difficult to communicate, but most likely the cause will not be from being born 20 years sooner or later. Things just haven't changed that much. Gender roles and family structure have been changing under various economic and social pressures pretty much since the Industrial Revolution began.

    It does seem to me that the lives of many families have become more chaotic in the period following the end of the baby boom and the beginning of the alleged X Generation.

    here's a song from 1926 reflecting gender fluidity (and here the progressive POMOs thought they invented it!):



    Anyway.. I wasn't talking about anthropology. The OP wasn't either. If he had been, he wouldn't have abandoned this thread to waltz around this forum randomly congratulating and complimenting posters. — Mongrel

    The fucking nerve --handing out compliments randomly. Do I hear a waltz?
  • Are women generally submissive to men?
    ↪Bitter Crank You answered my question as if you're a consulting anthropologist. — Mongrel

    I'm trying to work out whether "consulting anthropologist" is a positive or a negative.
  • Are women generally submissive to men?
    ↪Wosret
    And a warm "thank you" for attending to my attention needs.
  • Are women generally submissive to men?
    I came along when there were prescribed roles. Maybe you swore you'd never step into that sitcom, but due to the power of archetypes or whatever, you did it unconsciously... And the fun continues.

    You didn't deal with that kind of shit too much, did you?     — Mongrel

    Yeah, well, so did I. b. 1946. Other than siblings, friends, and co-workers, I haven't had that much to do with women, whimper or whopper. Mostly just gay men. But among the women I've dealt with, the distribution holds. And it holds among gay men, too, On one end the wise and gentle angels, on the other end the vicious sons of bitches.
  • Are women generally submissive to men?
    ↪Wosret
    Or maybe people have had it up the ying yang saying "up the ying yang".
  • Are women generally submissive to men?
    ↪Wosret
    Where is the ying yang located, exactly -- like when people say "up the ying yang"?
  • Are women generally submissive to men?
    Could somebody explain why asking if all women are submissive is not demeaning but asking if a particular woman is...is? — Mongrel

    Why should the question be limited to women? Men range between whimpering submissive to bared teeth, big-hard-dick dominant. From experience I know that women also range between whimpering submissive and bared teeth, (well, not big-hard-dick dominant, but) enraged scorned-woman dominant. How people manifest their relative position in the social hierarchy varies -- among men and women alike.

    Maybe women's mean score on submission/dominance is lower than men's, but we're not talking a world of difference here.

    Because the ethics of men reduces to looking the most awesome, and being the most dominant. — Wosret

    Men who reduce ethics to a robust ability to use force, or look like they could/would/will use force think that way, no doubt. A much larger number of people -- both sexes -- have rather more complicated ideas about right and wrong than you average goose stepping Prussians.
  • What Philosophical School of Thought do you fall in?
    I don't believe in progress. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

    I seems really unreasonable of me to say this, but I doubt very much that you have no belief in progress. Why so?

    a) One has to do a tremendous amount of disassociating with the world one grew up in (the modern world) to really have no belief in progress. That much disassociation would make it difficult for you to operate in this world -- which it appears tp not be a problem for you.

    b) I would guess that you expect certain benefits of progress, which you recognize as superior to what you could get in the past. For instance, you know that if you developed an infection in 1850, there was a fairly good chance you would die from it. Take your pick: tuberculosis or streptococci, or whatever you might get. In 1950, there were effective treatments for TB and strep infections. Why? Progress in medicine, bacteriology, micro mycology, and industrial production of antibiotics.

    I don't see how you can deny the progression of events that has taken place since you were born. Even if you are only 18 years old, there has been a progression of speed in digital processing, digital memory, and communication since your post-modern nativity. You saw the photos from the Pluto Fly-By, didn't you? The latest pictures from Saturn and Jupiter? Fake news?

    If by progress you mean "progress in the nature of human nature" well, sure -- there's not much evidence there of progress in the last 18 years (or however long either one of us has been on earth).

    c) Your view of progress is itself the result of a progression and promotion of ideas. Post-Modernism didn't step out of a scallop shell like Aphrodite.

    d) I don't know you, can only guess about this, and I don't mean it as an insult (and many of us do the same thing for practical reasons) but I suspect this is a position assumed for the time being.

    How would Plato feel about modernity and the Enlightenment? Well, when you opened the door of the time machine and he stepped into 21st century Manhattan, he might very well have a stroke, and you would never find out. At the very least, he'd probably faint when you turned the lights on.
  • Do you feel more enriched being a cantankerous argumentative ahole?
    It's people like you who turn otherwise thoughtful, kind, generous, thoughtful -- all round NICE people -- into cantankerous argumentative assholes. If you weren't so fucking stupid, it wouldn't be necessary to beat you over the head again and again.

    We get very tired of trying to pound common sense into your thick skulls.
  • Are women generally submissive to men?
    ↪Agustino
    ↪Cavacava
    Some significant part of human behavior is encoded in the operations of DNA and another significant part of human behavior is learned. We don't know precisely how much and what of either. Sorting out what is learned and what is genetically inherited is difficult.

    Take for instance the difference in the way parents handle male and female babies. Both men and women tend to handle male babies more robustly than they handle female babies. Is this learned or inherited?

    That men wear pants and women wear dresses is clearly a learned behavior and is culturally determined. My understanding is that Romans wore tunics and togas while the barbarian Germans wore pants. It's cultural.

    The idea that males and females are essentially the same (except reproductively), or are essentially different in many ways is clearly cultural, and will remain debatable until the evidence is in, one way or the other.

    My bias is in favor of essential differences, though it is obvious that there is a significant amount of plasticity in our behavior.
  • Concepts, History, and Nietzsche
    This may all be totally unhelpful to you. I don't know.

    Human culture certainly has a history. We (humans) started accumulating culture because very long term biological evolution (which is long, but not quite eternal) enabled us to do that. Eventually our cultural accumulation became "civilization" and we invented writing as a way of capturing spoken language. We started recording our ideas VERY recently in our species' history -- only 5,000 years ago (give or take 15 minutes, either way).

    "Concepts" are a language thing. Prior to our development as a species with language (much further back than the invention of writing) there were no concepts. So, everything in our cultural accumulation, including everything written and passed on through word of mouth (language), has a history.

    since Ancient Greece, a major philosophical enterprise has been to define reality in terms of immutable, eternal concepts. — Brian

    Things get a bit tricky, partly because of the historically very recent post-modernist idea that "reality is constructed". Let's not go there.

    There certainly are real "immutable, eternal" things which are part of reality -- like matter and energy, which have behaved more or less consistently since the universe came into existence. What we think about matter and energy, however, is strictly historical. DNA has been around for a long, long time (billions of years) but we have developed the concept of DNA, genetics, evolution, etc. only recently in our history.

    The same goes for all of our thinking about behavior. Our "human, animal behavior" has existed far longer than our collection of concepts (which arose, presumably, with language). It is likely that people behaved "kindly", "cruelly", "mercifully", "bravely" -- maybe even "morally" before there were "concepts" of morality. We didn't invent kindness when we invented language. We gave it a "sign" -- a word.

    The history of concepts apparently extends back into a time before we have history, but it is "historical" none the less.
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