So, I am asking how do you think about making sense in the maze of philosophical pluralism? — Jack Cummins

Since I am definitely not a professional philosopher, and might not even be an half-assed amateur at it, I stay out of tedious postmodern mazes. I am not especially interested in diversity and pluralism, and at this stage in my life, it doesn't matter. Hey, I'm almost over, and I'm OK with that. (Well, sort of. Not much choice, come to think of it.).

Everything is text is post-modernism's stance. However, starvation is a bitch. — schopenhauer1

A nice pairing. It shoots down the literary balloon and then nails it with a jagged icicle.

So much of the serious talk of the times dissolves into the hot air of intellectual dithering when confronted by the indifference of nature--birth, eat, starve, death, rinse and repeat ad infinitum. [Work! Strive! Persevere! You are all victims of a monstrous hoax!)

The decentralization of knowledge is a paradigmatic moment history will remember — NOS4A2

Is knowledge actually "decentralized", or is it merely being distributed far more widely than 100 years ago? I don't think the generation of significant knowledge has been decentralized, and I'm not sure it should be. A large group of institutions harbor a lot of the knowledge creators, and they further nurture them. Good thing, because significant knowledge creation is hard work. One needs labs, libraries, and colleagues.

True enough, a volunteer archeologist can hike out into the field and find something quite important. A number of significant finds in England have happened this way. Someday a janitor might find the lost Ark of the Covenant in the attic of a remotely located Vatican warehouse. Serendipity happens in a very decentralized way.

We have innovated, invented and advanced technology, health and social systems consistently for millenia in order to combat these problems.

So it seems we should have less problems now than ever before. When do we reach utopia as if problems are decreasing in number and severity, then surely utopia is just around the corner? — Benj96

The more I read history, the more often I am shocked to discover that something I thought happened in the last 50 to 75 years, actually happened in the last 100, 200, 300 years and more.

One way of defining "progress" is by increased energy consumption. While it took a lot of energy to build the great pyramids--hauling all those big chunks of rock around for starters, it took even more energy -- and complexity -- to run the Roman Empire. The centuries following Rome show that progress waxes and wanes.

By the time of the early Renaissance, energy requirements were rising again, and haven't stopped since then. Innovation is a precondition of getting and using more energy, and complexity is the result.

As we are discovering, there are limits to how much energy the planetary system can manage. Trillions of tons of energetic coal and oil have turned into an existential threat. Innovation, in the form of using less energy, may enable us to thrive IF we can avoid (or survive) a global warming apocalypse first.

Simplifying our lives, and using much less energy may be more difficult than achieving an ever-more complex style of living.

As someone who has had a beard, sometimes quite bushy, for the last 53 years, let me suggest that beards have too little mass to significantly cushion a determined punch. Worse, they provide a handle an opponent can grab onto and pull -- which is quite excruciating. Beards are very helpful in cold weather, provided they are more than just a 5:00 shadow.

Beards are said to give their wearers an aura of sagacity and power. but I'm not sure to what extent. They seem to communicate 'something' beyond mere hairiness.

Canada chose the more compassionate route. Unfortunately, it is at the expense of low-income earning native Canadians, indigenous or not. — Bug Biro

Being poor -- anywhere -- is an all-around bad deal. The poorer you are, the worse it gets. No, this is NOT a Canada-only problem.

You must all have jobs and associate with only the working class. — Bug Biro

Many of us have jobs, or are retired, mercifully, from the job market. You said you are a communist, which means your POV won't be shared by a lot of people here, but keep your left hand high, just the same.

The welfare programs can at worst, if not run well, become rackets for some investors and officials to make money. — ssu

Minnesota shoveled a lot of federal pandemic money out the door to programs without (apparently) sufficiently vetting or auditing the recipients. One agency, Feeding Our Future, was a central player in defrauding the state/federal government of $250,000,000!!!!!. A perfect NEGATIVE example of not letting a crisis go to waste.

Back to @Bug Biro. As a communist, none of this should come as a surprise. The State, even the Canadian State, has a limited interest in its poor people. Really, what can the poor people of Canada do for Justin Trudeau and the ruling class? Not too much.

Per @ssu's comment on prosperity and a growing population: A number of countries -- China, among them, will have difficulty maintaining prosperity in the years ahead as the prime producing age-group shrinks. 45 year olds will be 65 in 20 years, and won't be very productive. If breeding pairs have only 1 child (which is still the case because of living costs in China), the very large working class China has now will shrink -- age out of existence.

North America isn't, at this point, heading for a demographic crisis like China largely because of immigration and higher birth rates among immigrant groups. That may not help your personal situation of course. U.S. prosperity doesn't help our poor people all that much either, but it does produce the tax revenue needed to do anything for anybody.

Maintaining a large working-age cohort doesn't automatically mean taking care of poor people. It's in the interests of the state to have as many working people as possible. That a good share of the working people are also poor is just frosting on the cake -- poor people are cheaper pairs of hands.

Now, the poor don't consume as much as better off people do, but everyone seems to be consuming enough to keep the wheels of business turning. Hey -- we all live in a bourgeois states -- the state runs on the turning wheels of business! I don't like that, but that seems to be the way it is.

If we have no head of government, somebody will invade — frank

Yes, because The Prez stands at the Gates of America very much like Gandalf stood before the Gates of Minas Tirith, and by his power turned away the servant of Sauron. EVEN Donald Trump was able to thwart invasions from the Bahamas and bird-like aliens from a distant star system, just by standing resolutely in front of the the urinal in the oval room powder room.

Iceland is waiting for a lapse in our powerful presidency, as is Lichtenstein, Morocco, and Sri Lanka.

Can the POTUS by force of his high office turn back ICBMs? Apparently -- otherwise the Soviet Union would have long since buried us, as Nikita Khrushchev foretold. Unfortunately, coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) was able to slip past the Great Guardian and Guarantor of Freedom.

I agree that Biden is too old to run again. Granted, there are very lucid 95 year olds, but they aren't under the pressures of POTUS.

Elections have consequences, at least to some extent. As it happens, Twiddledee and Twiddledum will have slightly different policies, and there might even be differences that "make a difference". On the other hand, T'dee and T'dum generally have the same large policy objectives -- maintaining the capitalist order, maintaining the two-party system (Demican / Repocrat), maintaining the highly uneven distribution of wealth, maintaining military strength, and so on.

The election is roughly 17 months away; Nikky Haley and others ??? may be irrelevant way before then.

I find it difficult to get aroused about 2024. I expect the process and result to leave me underwhelmed, very disappointed, deeply chagrined, highly annoyed, and more!

It isn't just that the existing political process will fail to solve our significant -- even existential -- problems. It IS the case that the existing political process CAN NOT solve our problems.

Obama just happened to be black. — Agent Smith

See George Carlin on "He happened to be."

"Overthinking" is probably a misnomer. It's more likely endless dithering that is happening. If I remember correctly from a Tests and Measurements course in college, your first choice of the answer to a question is more likely to be correct than stopping and dithering over it, maybe changing your answer 2 or 3 times.

It's a matter of intuition vs. dithering over too little information. Of course, your best bet is to study thoroughly for the test. Burn some midnight oil.

When it comes to interpersonal affairs, dithering doesn't help. If your ethics are firmly in place and you know the facts of the case, your intuition about what should be done is probably not too far off the mark.

Should intuition be trusted? It's much better to know what you are doing and not have to depend on seat-of-your-pants guesses. A lot of the time, we do not have enough information and we do not really know what the hell we are doing. This isn't a function of stupidity. We might be thrust into the position of having to make an important decision for somebody else -- without knowing all the facts of the case. Maybe we guessed wrong with the best intentions, and caused more problems down the line,

That's a risk we might have to accept.

Civilization.



Not Civilization?



Civilization? Not Civilization? Can't tell.

different — Vera Mont

Exactly.

The vast scale of industrial exploitation by capitalists certainly hasn't gone unnoticed.

The Soviet State is a better example of government exploiting the people than the American State. The Soviet government was essentially "state capitalism" -- the government owned the means of production pretty much lock stock, and barrel, and the people were by and large its employees.

I like civilization, but ask yourself, how much longer did the pre-civilization cultures like the Australian and North American indigenous population last? The Egyptians had a very long record of civilization; some came and were gone in a few hundred years. Many indigenous cultures were longer lived.

The Aztecs, Incas, and Mayas were civilized--cities, big stone monuments, and all. Did the Western Civilization reps in the persons of the Spanish view them as fellow civilized people? Did the Pilgrims and Puritans from Merry Old England recognize the Nauset tribe of the Wampanoag Nation as a culture, a civilization, or primitive barbarians (even though the natives helped the Pilgrims survive)?

Do anthropologists have an edifice complex? A bias for the material? The North American tribes were mobile and they memorialized events through their oral heritage. The Irish did this too, as have other groups.

I'm not especially interested in aboriginal cultures, but they seem to have built monuments in words. I much prefer reading about the civilizations of the Middle East, Egypt, Greece, and Rome than about the ancient people of the western hemisphere, Africa, Eurasia, and so on. That doesn't mean that these other cultures are inferior to my preferred civilization-topics. Or does it?

Marx said that "the government is a committee to organize the affairs of the bourgeoisie." The gov is a servant. While the government sets the ground rules (sort of) by which business plays, Business is bigger than government. The bulk of GDP is produced by business. The government may have a monopoly on heavy duty violence, (outside of the 300 million guns in private hands) but its primary duty is to insure that the worldwide interests of its capitalists are protected.

Most of the depositors in the Silicon Bank were very wealthy individuals and funds. Not many payrolls were at stake.

I object to a lot of government activity (and to a lot of corporate activity too), but the government is also a service provider and its services are paid for with taxes. Mostly it seems like a good deal (especially at the state and local level).

They - science, innovation, laws, mores, beliefs and rituals are part of culture, but many cultures predate civilization. — Vera Mont

So, when I speak of "civilization" I use the same scheme that National Geographic uses. So ancient Egypt was a civilization, the Lakota people were not. Ancient Rome was a civilization, the typical African population were not.

Even though I use "civilization" in that way, such usage is certainly not above criticism. Whether one lived in Athens, on the plains of North America, or in the tropical forests of Africa, South America, and so on, the problems of survival and regulation were very similar. Cultural continuity required transmission of heritage through oral or written language. Both have been successfully used.

Does the fact that Athens built temples with fluted pillars make them superior to the Lakota who prioritized portability--so superior that Athens is a civilization and the Lakota are not?

I probably won't change my actual practice, but in a fight it might be hard to defend it.

not the polishing of church pews. — Vera Mont

I've cleaned the pews at Christ Lutheran a few times, and the main epiphany was that somebody else ought to do it.

Stone-chipping and hide-tanning; canoe construction and making fire; wheels and pottery were all invented before civilization. — Vera Mont

Or they ARE civilization. Even Neanderthals had a set of technologies. They could, for instance, extract a strong black pitch (glue) from birch bark. Not sure what they did with it, just off hand. Maybe repaired their bone china? They turned animal hides into leather (one of their processes involved chewing on the hide; we can tell by looking at their teeth.)

6000 years ago, aboriginal people were mining copper on Isle Royale in Lake Superior.

First, all that does not serve power; then, all that contradicts doctrine, then whatever does not generate monetary, political or military advantage. — Vera Mont

I don't know. Say more about that.

Personally, I wouldn't put Putin in charge of a forest -- too much chance of him burning it down. Maybe he'd be suitable as a toilet cleaner at a large, very busy airport?

Yep. People are stupid. — Banno

How does the person making this generalization exempt himself? Are you immune to bullshit?

Our famous rulers, from William the Conqueror on down to Joe Biden, Rishi Sunak, Anthony Albanese, et al didn't have to consult the masses to begin their ascent. The relevant gate keepers are relatively few in number. Only after Tweedledee and Tweedledum have been admitted as acceptable possibilities, do The People get to vote.

Minutiae!

Here's a good example. A friend of mine who is interested in a lot of different topics, was a volunteer at a museum. One of his tasks was sorting "debitage" from an aboriginal site in Minnesota excavated some years earlier. Debitage is the rocks, bits of wood, bone, charcoal, and stone flakes and such that aboriginal people deposited on the sites they used. Each little piece is examined, identified, sorted, and characterized. It might sound mindless (and it is mind-numbing work) but it yields a lot of real data about diet, tools, trade, and so on. For instance, many of the stone pieces used in making arrow heads were from a distance of -- sometimes -- 150 to 300 miles away.

It's all about minutiae.

I did a project of my own minutiae back in 1990. I put together a long list (thousands of entries) of words derived from Anglo-Saxon. This was before the Internet became useful. I went through a collegiate dictionary and found the words, one by one. Very tedious, but I found it interesting. Then I wrote a program (more minutiae) to determine what percent of words in given text were derived from Anglo Saxon, and from that determine reading difficulty.

Hundreds of hours went into this project. There was a real, practical reason for doing this project, and we don't have to go into detail. It was "successful". (No animals were harmed by this research, but nobody's life was saved either, as far as I can tell.)

Life can so easily get bogged down in the foggy murky bog of minutiae.

I mean learning the secrets of stars and clouds and oceans; learning the language of whales and cicadas; rediscovering the magic of knowledge that civilization had shut down for so long. — Vera Mont

Learning the secrets of stars, whales and cicadas involves a tremendous amount of tedious work -- work considered tedious by the people who love doing it. The exciting moments are thinly scattered.

Now wait a minute... one of the benefits of civilization has been the rich discoveries of science, boring details and brilliant discoveries alike. What "magic of knowledge" did civilization shut down for so long???

"Everything begins in mysticism and ends in politics." The most famous quote of a Frenchman who who died in the first Battle of the Marne.

The term is used in anthropology, ethnology, sociology, psychology, and philosophy. No doubt it’s used loosely sometimes in those disciplines. I guess you’ve been unlucky and have somehow, in all of your reading, managed to miss the more rigorous use of the term. — Jamal

Quite possibly. I haven't read much in anthropology, and have not found a lot of magic in sociology, psychology, and philosophy--literally and figuratively.

BTW, one example of "magic" might be the placebo effect. The fake pill can not have a beneficial effect, yet the patient improves. Conversely, the "nocebo" effect also works, where delivering a very bad prognosis seems to speed up the progress of the disease. Low expectations tend to produce low performance. This "magic" is possible because the knowing brain (that thought it was taking a real pill) is also in charge of the details of the body's operation. Ditto for the "nocebo".

Look. I understand that magic is "really real" for many people. A lot of people believe in witch doctors and their magic, for instance. Atheists may think that nothing fails like prayer, but a lot of believers would vehemently disagree. At the beginning of the AIDS epidemic, some gay men resorted to magical cures (crystals, for instance) because there was, literally, nothing else. Part of the "magic" was the real camaraderie of the afflicted, but one doesn't need magic to understand that. When effective medication came along, the crystals were dumped. Many cultures have employed magic to control nature. While granting that magical acts may be truly comforting, when it comes to control of nature, magic has no efficacy. Dancing does not make it rain, but it is a meaningful activity.

I'd add something like a mode of behaviour to "a way of thinking". It's real, as real as religion, although like religion, it might not always work, or work in the way people think.

I admit I’ve used the concept loosely. — Jamal

Yes, but "magic" is a loosey goosey term, once it's taken out o the theater and pressed into service at the Academy. A lot of what we say about religion is also loosey goosey—not because we are sloppy thinkers. (I mean, we might be sloppy thinkers, but there is an awful lot of slop in the topic to start with,).

As somebody said, "Religion is magic you believe in; magic is religion you don't believe in."

I would now reveal all to you, but it's time for my Tuesday lunch date; if I remember, I'll disabuse you of your enchantment later.

I guess I don't find "magic" and "enchantment" very helpful concepts. Some people do, of course.

an interesting aside: Ursula LeGuin's phantasy worlds remain 'magical' all the way to the last page. The practitioners of powerful magic spells remain. Tolkien, on the other hand brought magic to an end in Middle Earth. The practitioners of magic were either destroyed (Sauron) or their powers were exhausted–Gandalf, Elrond, Galadriel, et al). Men without magic would rule the 4th Age.

It's been a long time since I read Harvey Cox's Secular City which is about Christianity in a secularizing/secularized world. I've wrestled with thais issue since the late 1960s. Perhaps that's why I'm leery about magic and enchantment.

In one way we do have magic a plenty -- it is the performed prestidigitation of advertising and public relations--much (most?) of it is trickery and falsity. The magician's skill isn't in harnessing occult power, of course; it is in misdirecting our gaze and attention so that we miss the critical step. In retail mall architecture, the "Gruen Transfer" is intentional disorientation of the mall customer. (Might be a dated concept; are people still dazzled when they walk into a retail mall? I kind of doubt it. But still, successful retail is highly distracting -- the better for you to buy something you didn't really want or need.

Advertising is predicated on deficiencies -- ours -- that products offer to emend. You can have the sexier smile, the sex-getting sexy figure, the status-giving car, the love-inducing diamond, etc. If it doesn't work, well... there are other products to sell you. Advertising is not magic -- it's just ordinary lying and deceit, most of the time.

A rich topic!

"incommensurable value-fragmentation into a plurality of alternative metanarratives" — Jamal

That phrase alone is going to require a fair amount of unpacking.

are people today enchanted by magic spells? — Jamal

From a secular POV (which everyone, of course, doesn't share) we never were enchanted by magic spells so we can't be disenchanted now. There never was any such thing as 'magic' if by 'magic' we mean 'effective control over the material world'.

* Conspiracy theories
* Demagoguery, nationalism, the alt-right
* Science (as scientism)
* New Age spirituality: "I'm spiritual but not religious"
* Progress/Decline/Catastrophe
* Consumerism

Your list is infused with incommensurable value-fragmentation and plurality of alternative metanarratives, so to speak.

Conspiracy theory–a shared narrative which unites an 'out group' around a supposed falsehood–is entirely separate from science. I'm not sure what anyone means by 'scientism'. Demagoguery*** is in disfavor, and isn't equivalent to nationalism and populism, which are currently in ill repute in some circles. New Age spirituality is one of my pet peeves, so no quarrel there. "Progress / Decline / Catastrophe" Consumerism ..... All four terms have meaning, of course, but what did you mean?

such generic bores as our captains of industry — Nietzsche, The Gay Science

Great phrase, like Mark Zuckerberg for instance.

Max Weber described modernity as a world ‘robbed of gods’. ‘The fate of our times’, he wrote, ‘is characterized by rationalization and intellectualization and, above all, by the “disenchantment of the world” ’. This, he suggested, ‘means that one can, in principle, master all things by calculation … One need no longer have recourse to magical means in order to master or implore the spirits, as did the savage, for whom such mysterious powers existed. Technical means and calculations perform that service.’

However...

if a process of disenchantment was under way during the twentieth century, it was hugely uneven. As Wolfgang Behringer has recently observed, it is probable that a majority of the world's population today believes in witchcraft, which would mean, in absolute terms, that there are vastly more believers than there were in 1600. Oxford Academic

***demagoguery "political activity or practices that seek support by appealing to the desires and prejudices of ordinary people rather than by using rational argument." How disfavored I suppose depends on the desires and prejudices of 'ordinary people'.

Is "Progress: an insufferable enthusiasm"?

Interesting topic and already 6 pages of discussion, which I haven't read. So...

how have the "primitive conditions" he lists, namely "war, scarcity, disease, ignorance, and lethal menace," actually been alleviated or overcome by "Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress"? — Jamal

Primitive conditions have been eliminated here and there, for a time, for some people. If one happens to be at the right place, time and people, then the culture will seem to have progressed. Unfortunately, in lots of places, much of the time, and for many people not too much abatement of the primitive has occurred.

Why not?

he truth is that nothing can absolve humanity of its crimes and nothing can make up for the suffering of the past, ever. Nothing and nobody will redeem humanity. Nothing will make it okay, and we will never be morally cleansed. We certainly ought to strive for a good, free society, but it will never have been worth it. — Jamal

You seem to be suggesting that "primitive conditions" are the result of crimes of commission, sinfulness, evil, etc. Of course, one can finger times, places, and people where crime sin, evil, etc. has been regnant. World wars, genocides, great leaps forward, many forms of organized oppression.

One could attribute all of our suffering to the venality, greed, selfishness, shortsightedness, pig headedness, corruptibility, invincible stupidity, feral viciousness, and MORE of humans. All that is true, I think, and we can do no other in the long run.

We are the species we are. As far back as we can see. Global warming may in time (but not far distant) return us all to a quite primitive state, complete with much suffering. Are we to blame?

Global warming is the result of our discovery that hydrocarbons were a really terrific energy source which beat out the alternatives. We have never been the sort of species that would discover hydrocarbons and then pause for a few decades to consider carefully what the consequences might be of using coal, oil, and natural gas like water.

The coal and oil were there for the taking! Burn, baby, burn, Drill, baby, drill. Even though we now know what we are doing to our only home, most of us who use a lot of hydrocarbons are very unenthusiastic about changing our way of life very much. We are just not that kind of species.

I hear you. I doubt that much of this is held in place by a deep reading of politics or scripture. It seems more emotional, a form of tribalism which has become embedded in cultural identity in some parts of the US. — Tom Storm

It absolutely is NOT held in place by any sort of deep reading of politics, scripture, or anything else, save some sort of dark, nihilistic claptrap.

Tribalism strikes me as an accurate term. Some parts of the US have been more violent than others since the beginning. I like to contrast the New England Puritans to the Southerners. The Puritans, arriving from Eastern and SE England who became "Yankees", believed in the efficacy of the state as the means to achieve a better society. The southerners, deriving from the Cavaliers and Scots/Irish fringes, were implacable individualists. The Yankee culture was transplanted across the northern tier of states as far as the Upper Mississippi Valley (leaving an imprint on city names, speech styles, forms of government, and community involvement). The coastal southern planters spread across the south, taking with them speech styles, forms of government, and slavery of course. The southerns generally had difficulty cooperating as states (at least until the Civil War). The southern states were reluctant to cooperate in the construction of canals and railroads.

In more recent years, a sort of cowboy fascist gun, don't tread on me, anti-government, etc. culture has developed in various parts of the country--mostly rural areas. A lot of these yokels are anti-urban.

I can't succinctly trace out how this kind of fascist tribalism was hatched and disseminated, but if you were going to start looking under rocks, you'd want to start with conservative protestantism, parts of the south, parts of the Republican Party and conservative politics, parts of the military (places like Colorado Springs, Colorado), and so on. It didn't just happen by accident.

When one looks at gun violence, for instance, one sees substantially less of it in the northern Yankee influenced states than in the Cavalier/Scots-Irish influences states. The same goes, generally, for health, education, and welfare stats. The Yankee areas are healthier, better educated, and better off than other parts of the country.

I live in the Yankee state of Minnesota. Alabama is the bottom and we're the top (per Cole Porter, not sexual position).

D’oh! Not Taiwan invading Australia! China invading Taiwan! — Wayfarer

OK, I've tortured you long enough.

Tensions between the US and China with respect to Taiwan have been daily fare on the news here for some time. "Will they or won't they" invade? "Can they or can't they" defend themselves? The nuclear angle figures into it, but the nuclear angle with respect to Russia is more common.

Will we insert ourselves between China and Taiwan? Will China resort to nukes if we do? If we don't, how long can Taiwan hold out? And most importantly, what about Taiwan's chip factories? (That would be computer chips, not potato chips. Fortunately, the US is self-sufficient in the area of potato and corn chips.) High end computer chips are neither designed nor made in China -- most of that is done in Japan and Taiwan.

The fear is not China invading Australia, but Taiwan, which then turns into a global nuclear confrontation. Gun ownership won't have any bearing on that either. It'll be fought by remote control. — Wayfarer

Interesting concept -- Taiwan invading Australia, but why not? Will it be in the interests of the US to protect Oz from Taiwan with nukes? Don't know. Would you prefer PRC or Taiwan to be your invader and benevolent overlords?

If you are really very strongly against being invaded, then you might want to keep a gun handy to off yourself before the new management does it for you. .

Whether we like it or not, every society or country has been built with the use of violence and wars. — javi2541997

This is basically true. Just off hand, I can't think of any group that gave up their land willingly without a fight. There hasn't been any unoccupied territory on earth for the last 20,000 years, at least, so anybody who wanted to move their operations had to take land and resources away from somebody else. The taking of occupied land is generally a little more violent than a garden club plant swap. Somebody, maybe many somebodies, are going to end up dead, and the conquerors are not going to apologize.

When it comes to territorial acquisitions and mergers, humans just aren't very nice.

Didn't the Brits already invade Australia around 1788? Used it as a penal colony? Boomerangs didn't stop them, either.

On the other hand, China probably won't invade Australia with troops equipped with small arms. Against a shark what can a herring do? Sing out a Te Deum when when you see that ICBM and the party will be "come as you are".

Damned if I know why people believe in their guns more than they believe in Jesus.

But note, it's been 40+ years that the the NRA and conservatives have been grinding away on guns. And every mass shooting provides fresh justification for gun ownership to those already so inclined.

There is a devious activity going on; we just had an example of it in Northern Minnesota. This week the Itaska County Commissioners voted in favor of a non-binding resolution opposing any form of gun control. The resolution was sponsored by some conservatives, including the sheriff if I remember. This sort of resolution seems similar to attacks on libraries by conservatives. The primary object is less to get rid of a particular book like "Heather Has Two Mommies" but rather to find, collect, and animate their 'base'. As a side benefit they probably will get some of the books they don't like pulled.

I don't believe authors such as Paul Auster do a very good job of accounting for the level of violence present in the United States today by linking it to colonial era religious fanatics, slavery, and genocide. Those causes all had long-term and catastrophic consequences, so I am not discounting them. More recent developments also need to be considered.

One is the manufacture and sale of guns which has resulted in a glut of guns suitable for purposes ranging from squirrel hunting to near-warfare. Estimates vary, but there seem to be around 300 million guns in the US.

Two is the rhetoric surrounding guns. The NRA has not always been an organization promoting a rabid firearm fetish. The change to its present presentation occurred in the mid 1970s, when the NRA expanded its membership, quite purposively recruiting conservative voters.

The Second Amendment was for a long time a rather dull topic. Gun control and the 2nd Amendment, became a cause célèbre after 1977 when anti-gun-control NRA members took over the NRA at their annual convention in Cincinnati.

There have been periodic surges of violence in various countries, including the US. The late 1980s to mid 1990s saw such a surge in the US, then the rates declined -- and then in the past few years went back up. A quick and dirty summary would be rates peaked in 1972, 1992, and 2018 (give or take a year).

There are factors apparently accounting for some of the waxing and waning of violence. Various suggestions have been made. Here's a chart that reflects a possible contemporary influence:

Auster believes peace will not come to the US unless an honest conversation is had about the country’s violent and racist past. Right now, that doesn’t seem very likely though.

I am definitely in favor of Americans understanding the history of their country. I am not sure, though how this 'honest conversation' will change behavior.

This statement has been sent back to the Politburo for further consideration.

I suspect that people with a high level of personal confidence, self-efficacy, agency, and so on are less likely to seek social shelter in conservative groups. They are more likely to be comfortable with change and risk taking. Some people seem risk-averse early in life, and some are more likely to seek risk.

As difficult as it is to exceed 100% nut content, American politics is nuttier now. I don't know of any politicians in office who are working for open national borders either. It comes from individuals and groups focused on migrant issues.

Some socialists call for an abolition of national borders. I'm not in favor of that either, even as a card-carrying socialist. (Oh, maybe after the Revolution is complete all round the world, and workers have crushed the capitalists everywhere... maybe then. Please don't hold your breath waiting for that to happen.)

My opponents on the border issue are actually not conservatives, Republicans, or Trumpettes. Rather, they are my left liberal kin who are focused on the individuals and their hard-lot circumstances and feel we should admit them all because... we're a big, rich country and the would-be immigrants are from little poor countries, and they deserve a chance to succeed in America, etc.

I recognize the hard lot circumstances and aspirations of migrants and immigrants. Unfortunately, their aspirations can not set our national policy. IF we decide to officially let them all in and call for more, fine. Unfortunately for a lot of US-bound people, we haven't decided to do that.

Please bring your experiences into alignment with my inerrant suspicions.

I'm sure it's a common attitude among those on the liberal/socialist side, but it's a bit self-serving and it's disrespectful of those we disagree with. — T Clark

Of course! Every generalization about personality, politics, predispositions, etc. is going to be full of holes. I'm pretty risk tolerant, open to new experiences, at least left-liberal, etc. BUT contrarily I am opposed to open borders. I'm neither xenophobic nor neophobic. In my humble (probably inerrant) opinion, sovereign nations have the responsibility to their citizens to control their borders, both for trade and the movement of people. It may be that border control will amount to open borders, as it was during much of the 19th century for the US (at least for Europeans). Or not, depending on policy.

I approve of legal, authorized, planned immigration. Immigration is one of the reasons the US doesn't have the very problematic demographics which China, Korea, Japan, and much of Europe have, where the low birthrate spells serious economic trouble.

I think people may be born with a kind of nature that predisposes them to one way or the other — praxis

I think we are born with quite a few predispositions. It isn't that we are born "Republican" or "Socialist" of course. It's more about how we respond to risk, how we seek kinship with others, how we negotiate social roles.

EDIT: 3/6/23 10:19, CST The following paragraph is retracted.

I suspect that people with a high level of personal confidence, self-efficacy, agency, and so on are less likely to seek social shelter in conservative groups. They are more likely to be comfortable with change and risk taking. Some people seem risk-averse early in life, and some are more likely to seek risk.

This is something of an aside

Yesterday I watched a short Deutsche Welle documentary Are Humans Getting Dumber and Dumber?

During much of the 20th century, the "Flynn Effect" showed average IQ increasing a few points every decade across different populations. The increase seems to have stopped--again, across different populations. So, what's doing it?

Deutsche Welle didn't provide a definitive answer, but 2 suggested explanations seemed compelling.

a) We have off-loaded some cognitive tasks onto devices, tasks like navigating, calculation, remembering information, and so on. None of those are trivial tasks, and neglecting them may result in less mental agility. Map reading, remembering routes, doing arithmetic, remembering telephone numbers, etc. exercise vital mental abilities. Reading books and long articles helps us maintain focus over time. We're kind of screwed if we can't pay attention for more than 3 or 4 minutes at a time.

b) We are immersed in a wash of manufactured chemicals from agriculture and industry which may be having deleterious effects on our brains. Chemicals could have a direct effect (getting drunk kills off a batch of neurons), or it's a knock-on effect of various chemicals that resemble hormones that could affect brain function.

Individuals can't do much about chemicals, but they can change their use of gadgets and do more long reading.