But still the most *profitable* (not the best) thing for any individual is to freeload on the charitable giving of others, to take all the benefits of social cohesion and to pay none of the costs. — Cuthbert

There is a slope of diminishing returns here. Freeloading discourages the charitable giving of others, ultimately resulting in the coarsening of society.

Your position is spot on. Fair and square -- no exploitation -- a fortune of almost any size is unobtainable.

After they get done exploiting the workers, they exploited the consumers -- giving and taking a way at the same time. Yes, Microsoft did do away with the rather opaque command based Disk Operating System (DOS) but it also imposed another monopoly of software on PC consumers (outside of Apple). Later other OS came along, but they weren't in a very good position to challenge Windows.

Yes, this is true. Globalism though has mitigated that fear along with the abundance of information at one's fingertips. I don't think a cataclysm would set back us as a civilization that dramatically. — Question

Question, think! Most of the information at your fingertips is dependent on a continuous supply of electricity. Delete the electrical supply (lots of cataclysms would do that) and the information at your fingertips disappears, some of it/most of it forever. Turn off the electrical supply and don't turn it back on again... how long do you think it would take the next generation, or the one after that, or the one after that, to figure out what all those little black boxes had been for? How long to figure out how to reconstruct modern science--from near scratch?

In a post cataclysm novel A Canticle for Leibowitz it takes roughly 1000 years to figure out electricity again. Sounds about right to me.

I guess this is just me whining about why people tend to appeal to ideals when the fact of the matter is that historically idealistic notions of governance don't stand the test of time. Perhaps only democracy, yet the concept of 'democracy' seems at odds with idealistic beliefs about governance. — Question

I guess, but I am not sure what you are trying to get across here. Clarify, perhaps.

We have barely tapped the surface of this planet in regards to minerals and other natural resources. — Question

There is something problematic about this statement:

First, there is a difference between easy to get and hard to get. It takes a mammoth amount of energy to obtain the "easy to get" resources. Think of the huge open pit iron and copper mines. Those resources were easy. for the most part, those resources have been extracted and used.

Second, the "hard to get" mineral resources are dissolved, very deep (too deep), or very dispersed and diluted--even on dry land.

There may be a lot of oil in the ground, but when it takes more energy to suck it out than is available in the oil, then the extraction process is over. All resources have to be "affordable" to be useful.

There are megatons of minerals to be had, but they have to be had at a reasonable cost and with only manageable damage to the environment. Strip-mining the ocean floor for mineral nodules might not be a great idea.

Thus, this somewhat justifies my sentiment that most philosophers are committing an error in omitting what the future may be like with respect to the past, and instead propose monolithic and idealistic conceptions of society and governance. — Question

Any "general thinker" should try to get a grip on as much past and future as he can manage: understand where we have come from (not an easy task) and where we seem to be headed (a more difficult path). Some cataclysm can create altogether new and unexpected possibilities for the future (like the meteoric hit in the Yucatan that ruined things for the big lizards and created an opening for us mammals). Cataclysms are rare, though.

I like the analysis of the industrial revolutions (which began a bit before the steam engine and ends in the early 20th century, 200 years later (give or take a few). We now know the limits of matter and energy. (No, that doesn't mean that everything has been discovered and invented, only that we now know what we have--and don't have--to work with.)

We can be confident that this terrestrial ball is ALL THERE IS for us. We either survive here, or we don't survive at all. Decamping to a planet around another star is a fantasy. Setting up a shop on the moon or Mars is technically feasible for a few dozen people, maybe, but as a "new territory" for the species they are both non-starters.

We can be confident that if we do not preserve and enhance the environment we have (even though somewhat degraded) we reduce our chances of biological and cultural survival into the longer-term future. If our biological survival is quite likely--sex and DNA will take care of that--our cultural survival is only as certain as generation-to-generation maintenance. A full set of culture has to be successfully transmitted from one generation to the next. When the transmission is less than complete, the culture can be gone in as few as 3 generations -- maybe less.

When the western Roman Empire went out of business, a millennium was required to recover the cultural goods that had been everyday fare in the empire. A collapse of our culture--happening rapidly or slowly--might take longer to recover, likely not much less.

It's not obviously feasible, so if colonizing a planet belonging to another star is a serious suggestion, then you should suggest a feasible way to do it. That's my point.

Sivad, what is your plan for colonizing space? When? Where? How?

The earth is ultimately a deathtrap and the longer we remain earthbound the more we run the risk of being wiped out by any of the many natural cataclysms that are certain to occur within the next millennia or so. Fortune favors the bold, better to shoot for the stars than be sitting ducks. — Sivad

For soft, juicy thin-skinned endo-skeletoned beasts like ourselves, I imagine the whole universe is pretty much a death trap.

True, there are various cataclysms stalking us, some of our own making. And riding our fleets of interstellar ships to comfy planets that we don't know about will involve risks of other cataclysms and catastrophes.

Fortune is a tricky bitch -- don't trust her.

Game of cards bit from a W. C. Fields movie (1930s...)

a player: "Is this a game of chance?"
Fields (the dealer) "No, not the way I play it."

But who was taking the risks? — Agustino

Everybody. The investment groups that fund large projects; the entrepreneur who has put up his own funds and borrowed more; the employees who risk injury on the job, unemployment, and lost opportunities. Not all risks are the same. But, the worker who depends on a job to exist in many ways has much more to lose than the investors and bankers who will not starve if the project falls apart. Entrepreneurs are sometimes bankrupted.

So I think this "original accumulation" is often the product of either (1) chance, (2) hard work, (3) catching the right opportunities. — Agustino

Chance certainly plays a role. Having the right idea at the right time in the right place and pitching it to the right investor is often a matter of sheer, unadulterated good luck. Of course entrepreneurs work hard: To bed late, up early, on the phones, running around all day negotiating, taking risks, doing research -- all that. They hope to be rewarded handsomely.

The hard work that is generally not rewarded so handsomely is the hard work of people hired to turn the ideas into profits. Like the employees at Walmart that VagabondSpectre was talking about. Or the employees of lots of companies who are not well paid. Apple is not the norm.

The exploitation that I was referencing earlier is just the bedrock of manufacturing. Workers create products which are worth more than their wages. Even though the UAW workers at GM, Ford, and Chrysler were well paid--very well paid after WWII--and even though the auto companies payrolls were gargantuan, the workers produced automobiles which sold for far more than the workers made. That's why autos were blue chip stocks for a long time. Thats why the old American Telephone and Telegraph company (ATT - the Bell System) was the bluest of blue-chip stocks: their employees produced products and services at a low enough cost that the revenues of the companies greatly exceeded them.

The shareholders of the auto companies weren't working; the board of directors of the companies weren't working. It was the manufacturing workers who produced the profits.

As many companies have discovered, someone else's opportunities can be the occasion of their collapse as well as their growth.

o be honest, I've yet to see a supermarket - even in my own country - that doesn't do (or try to do) EXACTLY the same. — Agustino

That's right. All sorts of businesses are jockeying to be in a commanding position where they can dictate as many terms to customers, employees, and suppliers as possible. Behind a lot of this dictation are the institutions of finance that are demanding maximum profits.

I think Amazon might be different in some ways. — VagabondSpectre

Amazon is following a different model, in that they have grown the volume of the business enormously without producing a lot of profit for investors. My understanding is that they plow profits back into the business for expansion purposes.

Aside from selling stuff, Amazon is a big server farm operator. Google and Amazon both use extraordinary amounts of electricity to run the warehouses full of little black boxes serving up things like The Philosophy Forum and Facebook.

But retail has been in flux for a good century and a half. One wave of innovation after another has occurred: First the big department stores up ended retail; then the catalog companies -- early Amazons, really -- came along. In small towns, the regional chain stores (selling groceries) disturbed the local market place. The shopping center was invented. Then more and bigger chains, and finally Walmart. The department stores have mostly died off. There are hundreds of dying or dead shopping centers--structurally sound as far as the concrete goes, but without any business, no cars in the lot.

When wall-mart is through destroying local businesses they jack up their prices and hire all the out-of work community members all on part-time shifts for minimum wage. They contribute nothing to any community other than to drown it in a temporarily affordable wave of stuff. — VagabondSpectre

Walmart doesn't just destroy the competition, they are very hard on their suppliers -- forcing down prices until the companies are forced to take their manufacturing to the lowest paid workforce overseas or go broke.

And not everything in Walmart stores is remarkably cheap. A lot of their prices (for things like electronics) are about the same as Target or other mass merchandisers. Specials are cheap, of course.

They aren't unique, but they are a very bad model.

I wish a UK labor person would provide a good "25 words or less" explanation what Corbyn does or does not stand for (might take 25 pages or more) and why there is so much disaffection directed his way -- at least, that's the impression I get from the Guardian.

Wall-mart — VagabondSpectre

Good example. Amazon?

The past is never past.

We have a lot of technology on hand already. Here's a picture of the Erie Canal, which it turns out, is coming in handy for moving cargo that is too long, too large, and too heavy to move on railroad or truck. The cargo are tanks (12 in all) for the Genesee Brewery in Rochester, New York.



Twelve enormous beer tanks, headed to the Genesee Beer Company in Rochester, are among the oversize cargo populating the Erie Canal. Credit Nathaniel Brooks for The New York Times

I think you are quite right about asymmetric advantages. Possessing substantial advantages (the well-defended high ground; or rich resources; or a corner on beans; or relatively more cash than others -- whatever it is) lays the groundwork for maintaining or gaining more advantages. If one is lucky or careful and doesn't lose it, the advantage keeps delivering.

In life, somehow an "original accumulation" has to happen.

Sometimes the advantages fall from the sky. The western railroads in the United States were given swaths of land alongside their intended routes as an incentive to build and invest in the barely settled areas. The Great Northern Railroad (survives as the Burlington-Northern-Sante Fe owned by Berkshire Hathaway) got great wheat land, timber, coal (still mining it) and other resources.

Sometimes the advantages are the product of shrewd investment, ruthless competition, and the labor of others -- Andrew Carnegie or John D. Rockefeller for example.

Financial assets (see Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty- First Century) are highly rewarding and are somewhat disconnected from production and consumption (unlike steel and oil). Having a lot of financial assets is very much like having a lot of chips in poker.

The original accumulation generally involves the exploited labor of others -- Andrew Carnegie couldn't make enough steel himself to make a difference to anyone. The highly paid help at Apple Corporation doesn't make phones, computers, or music. Other people do that -- generally not at much profit to themselves. Apple employees design and manage. A lot of "original accumulation" has happened there (and at other corporations, of course).

So, the asymmetry of wealth depends somewhat on chance opportunities, but it must rest on exploitation and quite often the exploitation has been simply horrific, appalling, and ghastly.

I don't know much about Faulkner, but can any of us be certain we are telling only the truth about our individual pasts? Maybe it is necessary to lie about our pasts? Maybe the truth about our pasts is impossible?

Thoughts? — Question

At 70, my future is a lot shorter than my past. I'm fine with that. Ten more years would be about right--twenty, too long. But I could be dead this afternoon. There aren't any big exciting events on my schedule, so that would be alright too.

Our collective future is more interesting and most likely at least somewhat dystopian. Dystopian rather than utopian, because our species does not have good skills at foresight. I do not see a techno-utopia in our future, but certainly more machines and AI. Some people expect life-altering, paradigm-redefining technology. I do not, because I expect that little new technology will be developed first and foremost for the benefit of humankind as a whole. IF retinal replacements, enhanced memory and thinking implants, or body replacements made to order turn out to be practical, they will be standard fare for only a small elite.

We won't be leaving our terrestrial ball for distant celestial orbits, and for the same reason that I don't expect life-altering, paradigm-redefining technology to remake this world. We have discovered the basic principles of matter; that revolution can not be repeated. Human travel to the nearest star (Alpha Centauri) isn't inconceivable, but offers no escape from our difficulties here. Biological science has plenty of room for development, but the hazards researchers will risk will create more, and perhaps insoluble new problems. Our deficient foresight comes into critical play here.

Our best bet is orderly devolution to a smaller population, sustainable lifestyles, and no innovation beyond our capacity to manage risks. Fat chance, right?

""The past is never dead. It's not even past." Faulkner

An old psych professor in college put it this way, "Want to is more important than IQ." A person of measured average intelligence (say, 100-110 on a Stanford Binet individually administered test) who is ambitious, energetic, persistent, and curious about the world is likely to become a learned fellow whose intelligence won't be questioned. Similarly, a measured high IQ person (say, 140) who has little curiosity, not much ambition, is lazy, and feckless will probably come off as a dumb cluck.

Plus, people often "get smarter" as they get older. Years of reading, good conversation, paying attention... all that, greatly enrich one's working intellectual resources. So, one "gets smarter" as one gets older.

On the flip side of the issue, people who are extremely depressed can come off as rather dull, because their mental activity is very subdued.

Perhaps the problem is that "The philosophy forum" is a bit of a misnomer. Perhaps you could rename it : "The subset of philosophy that allows for the deletion of posts based on arbitrary judgement and a hidden agenda forum." I know it is a bit of a mouthful, but at least you would avoid the risk of being done for false advertising. It could also be a point of difference between this forum and other philosophy forums. — A Seagull

I don't know why they pull one post and not another. I would be much more worried if they started killing off threads, wholesale. I have never seen a thread deleted except for being a product sales pitch or a bald "you can only be saved by the Blood of the Lamb" thread. (There's a clear, unambiguous difference between discussing whether you think people can be saved or not, and from what, and making specific religious demands of forum participants.)

You, and others, have strongly reacted to having posts deleted. I would be a bit upset too, but I wouldn't worry unless you see a clear pattern of depravity on the part of moderators toward your posts.

I don't know what it is, or even if indeed there is one; but I am hoping to find out. — A Seagull

Remember, the Mods are volunteer, unpaid, and have lives to lead apart from moderating. How much time do you suppose they have to pursue obscure agendas?

Over the last x number of years, I've been active on the old PF and the new PF, with some of the same people moderating. I haven't seen evidence of moderators pursuing private agendas. Of course, I don't know what all they do behind the scenes. Maybe it's all smoke and mirrors.

Good question. Quick answer: Sort of, perhaps, maybe. We all make these assessments. Usually we have to get to know somebody well to judge whether our assessments were right or not.

A person can make rough estimates about someone's intelligence, but which way would be best would depends on context, content, and you.

First, intelligence isn't one single aspect of thinking. There are verbal intelligence, spatial relationships/mechanical intelligence, social intelligence, visual intelligence, and so on. Some people can't look at a realistic painting and see anything except a literal picture. Maybe they lack visual intelligence, or maybe it's a bad painting.

Second, the context is critical. What time/place/activity are you interacting in? Bus stop? Bar? Classroom? Coffee shop? Very late at night, or mid morning? What are you talking about? The weather? Existentialism? An art show? a mechanical problem with your car? A ball game?

Third is you. How smart are you? How good do you think you are at assessing others, compared to how good you actually are at assessing other people?

So, you're talking with a new acquaintance in a coffee shop about a science fiction book you are reading, in which worm holes enable travelers to cross large distances in the galaxy very quickly. Your new friend is a musician and doesn't like science fiction. You think worm holes are a reality, he thinks it's kind of stupid. Which viewpoint indicates intelligence? (I don't know.)

It turns out you both play chess, a chess board is on hand, and he beats you in short order. Does that mean he is more intelligent than you? (I don't know.}

The skill needed here for you to evaluate his intelligence is "How well does he explain his objection to worm holes. Is it a knee-jerk reaction to science fiction, or does he have reasons for his opinion? Then too, how well do you explain your belief that worm holes are real? What about chess? How much chess have both of you played? If you are just learning, and he has played all his life, he would of course check mate you in short order, whether either of you were very smart or not.

If you like somebody a lot, you'll probably up-rate their intelligence and other features. If you dislike somebody, you'll probably down-rate them.

That's why intelligence testing is best done under controlled circumstances.

Have a wider variety of moderators — Agustino

That would mean people like you stepping up to the plate. You too could be a moderator!

I would agree that the moderatori are more left than right, more atheist and less theist. This doesn't represent the demographic of the United States (which demographically is the opposite) but it might represent EU countries better. It does represent the academic faculty profile in the US which tends now to be more leftist and atheist.

I don't know whether my posts are getting weeded out or not, here or in the old PF. I don't know whether I'm getting a pass or not. I haven't been tracking it.

Were I a moderator, there are posts I would delete. A few people take offense too vigorously with too little provocation, and I would at least tell them to calm down. Some posters have very poor writing sills, and sometimes one can't really tell what they are trying to get at. Some posters are repetitious. Some, like me, are too verbose. Oops, verbosity reach critical stage... must stop.

The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains — Dawkins

This is pretty much meaningless, at least as far as I can tell. No one else could be Dawkins, nor me, nor you. We aren't missing any number of Newtons and Keats; neither are we missing any number of monstrous despots.

I don't especially care for the lottery idea either, though if Dawkins imagines there is a gate through which only so many beings can pass, I suppose a lottery is a logical idea. But only so much water can run out of a faucet and we don't call the kitchen sink a lottery of water. We need have no feelings or thoughts about the water that didn't make it.

In ancient Greek mythology, Lamia (/ˈleɪmiə/; Greek: Λάμια) was a beautiful queen of Libya who became a child-eating daemon. Aristophanes claimed her name derived from the Greek word for gullet (λαιμός; laimos), referring to her habit of devouring children.

There are various web sites about Lamia, some behind paywalls. For those who feel a need for free assistance in understanding Keats' poetry, the links below might help. Some of the assistance is elementary and obvious (which can be quite helpful, actually) and some of it is a bit more elevated.

https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/k/keats-poems/summary-and-analysis/lamia
http://www.keatsian.co.uk/keats-poetry-lamia.php
https://henneman.uk/john-keats-biography/lamia-annotated-text-part-1-lines-1-26/
https://henneman.uk/john-keats-biography/lamia-annotated-text-part-2-form-structure-language-context/
http://crossref-it.info/textguide/john-keats-selected-poems/40/2965

That's the kind of thinking that misses opportunities. Anyone who is interested in philosophy should be hooked in - it's not the healthy that are in need of a doctor, but the sick. — Agustino

There are many websites catering to the lowest common denominator, in every category of website you can think of. The achievement here lies in rising above the LCD and aiming for "mid-brow" quality. "High brow" quality (sites like Stanford University's Encyclopedia of Philosophy) requires major institutional support.

As for needing a doctor, we are not going to be the Mayo Clinic of philosophy websites. We are a volunteer-run aid station.

It seems that the mods are pushing this place to become more academic and less communal. That is a mistake. — Agustino

What do you think the academic credentials of the moderators are? As far as I know, none of them are any more academic than you are. Like you they have jobs, families, laundry, meals, other interests--lives, in other words, that take up much of their time.

From what I can tell (and from experience here and on the other PF) they are serious readers of philosophy (far, far more than I am) and, for some odd reason, willing to slog through all the text we all generate. Their's is a tremendous contribution to the quality, consistency, and vitality of the site.

Everything is a business. Even a Church is a business. Any community is a business. Any organism is either growing or dying. To grow effectively, and in a lasting manner, it must cater to the needs of its people. It's quite simple. I know you have a personal vendetta against me, but it's not my fault that you can't put 2 and 2 together. — Agustino

Everything isn't a business; there are other models. I'd say we are an "enterprise of common interest". That any enterprise might have to rent a room or a server and software in which to meet doesn't make us a "business".

An organism grows if it meets its needs as the kind of organism it is. The Philosophy Forum caters to the needs of people who want a reasonably orderly, not academic but reasonably serious place to discuss philosophical ideas. The moderators and contributors make it "reasonably orderly" and "reasonably serious" or not.

I don't think anybody here is running a vendetta against you. You take 'minority positions' on many issues and defend them vigorously. This stimulates a lot of response from others, which is a very good thing. Don't take equally vigorous offense responses as vendettas; they are just "in kind" responses.

Your chicken's gizzard was found wanting. The Moderators are inscrutable and therefore irrefutable.

What criteria do the mods use for the removal of posts and/or threads? — A Seagull

A chicken is slaughtered by the High Moderatum of the Forum who drags out the bird's innards onto the altar and searches for the gizzard. If the gizzard is found to be insufficiently bright and firm, the Post or Thread is struck from the record and the offal is then handed warm, wet, and stinking to the corroding and offensive author.

The chicken is forthwith barbecued and enjoyed by the Moderata on duty.

Hunger raises the standards by which the gizzard is judged.

I'm not interested in educating you on history, so I will just respectfully say that I think the picture of the world you paint is not only inaccurate, but morally problematic. — Colin B

Well! Just share a tiny bit of your historical knowledge to tell me which of these is a) inaccurate and b) morally problematic.

Piss poor governments? Care to defend the Assads?
Don't think the western government style has singular virtues?
No internal rifts and dissension?
Lots of jobs for young people?
Internet doesn't help disseminate crazy jihadi poison?
No jealousy of the west's imminence?

Morally Problematic? What? Hey, I'm not claiming that the Middle East is run in a uniquely awful way. Every single state on earth has been run in a perfectly awful manner at one time or another. For their own good, not for any one else's convenience, they need to get their acts together and start taking care of their rather large demographic, water, food, and economic problems.

Schopenhauer, sweet honey comes from bees that sting. Listen to Bernstein's Candide

Life is a pleasure in the groin...
It's what keeps our species going,
If we all thought life was only a pain in the ass,
we'd all kill ourselves en masse — Harry Hindu

Quite succinct. Here'sLeonard Bernstein's musical version (from Candide)about how everything works out for the best, even having syphilis in exchange for chocolate and tobacco.

Dear Boy lyrics

PANGLOSS
Dear boy, you will not hear me speak
With sorrow or with rancor
Of what has shrivelled up my cheek
And blasted it with canker; [syphillis has rotted away his nose already]

Twas Love, great Love, that did the deed,
Through Nature's gentle laws,
And how should ill effects proceed
From so divine a cause?

Dear boy:
Sweet honey comes from bees that sting,
As you are well aware;
To one adept in reasoning,
Whatever pains disease may bring
Are but the tangy seasoning
To Love's delicious fare.
Dear boy.

CHORUS
Sweet honey comes from bees that sting.

PANGLOSS
Columbus and his men, they say,
Conveyed the virus hither,
Whereby my features rot away
And vital powers wither;

Yet had they not traversed the seas
And come infected back,
Why, think of all the luxuries
That modern life would lack!

Dear boy:
All bitter things conduce to sweet,
As this example shows;
Without the little spirochete,
We'd have no chocolate to eat
Nor would tobacco's fragrance greet
The European nose.
Dear boy.

CHORUSA
ll bitter things conduce to sweet.

PANGLOSS
Each nation guards its native land
With cannon and with sentry,
Inspectors look for contraband
At every point of entry,
Yet nothing can prevent the spread
Of Love's divine disease;

It rounds the world from bed to bed
As pretty as you please.
Dear boy:
Men worship Venus everywhere,
As may be plainly seen;

Her decorations which I bear
Are nobler than the croix de guerre,
And gained in service of our fair
And universal Queen.Dear boy.

CHORUS
Men worship Venus everywhere.Dear boy!

Don't you think this has more to do with the fact that a predominantly Muslim region was under Western colonial rule for more than two centuries? You really think it's Islam, and not the continual attempt of Western powers to control the middle east? — Colin B

No, I don't think colonialism explains it. Most of the world was colonialised by Spain, Portugal, France, Great Britain, Russia, and to a lesser degree, by Italy, Germany, and Belgium. Some of these colonial operations were really brutal, and for the most part there was little or no terrorism sent back from the 3 quarters of the earth that were or had been under somebody's colonial rule. The Ottomans also operated an empire in the Middle East, and so did the Persians and the Mongols. For that matter, so did the Romans.

Also, ancient, tribal Islam boiled out of the Arabian Peninsula and swept across Northern Africa, Spain, into India, parts of China, and SE Asia, changing local cultures as they did so. Europeans aren't the only ones who conquered. It's a rather ancient human tradition.

The current variety of terrorism involving Moslems stems from several factors.

Number One factor is that most of the Middle East has been run by piss poor governments for quite some time. The have been, are, and will probably remain corrupt, ineffective, often brutally oppressive, poorly operated, dictatorial, petrostans. The don't have much to offer their people.

Number Two, the French and English colonial powers didn't have control of the Middle East and Northern Africa long enough, so they didn't have enough time to significantly improve the piss poor governmental habits of the area.

Number Three, there is a rift among Sunnis, Shi'ites, Arabs, Persians, Turks, and so forth. Iran and Saudi Arabia have done what they could to rev up and poison these rifts. The Saudis have been busy using their oil wealth to export extremely conservative Wahhabi Islam all over the place. All sorts of tribal rivalries play into the mix. In short, anyone growing up in this region, or following its progress has a model of violence to follow.

Number Four, young people in this region do not have a lot of job opportunities and can not find a place in the economy. Wealth in the Middle East is not well distributed (just like is badly distributed pretty much everywhere else).

Number Five, the Internet and older media have made it possible for sociopathic groups to serve up their gloomy, nihilistic vision of annoying successful, rich, western heathen countries to and their pathetic fantasies of new caliphates to the young moslems in the west who probably don't know much about history, economics, civics, and so forth.

Number six, there is the history of wealthy, powerful western countries dominating the Middle East economies. So that provides a not very productive focal point to agitate around. Surprise terrorist attacks on people in Manchester, London, Paris, Nice, Berlin, Belgium, is doing exactly nothing for any cause, except the game of bloody uproar.

...what I mean to say is that the problem that exists today with terrorism has its roots in religious ideology. — rickyk95

Sure. But terrorism and religious ideology was part of the IRA bombings in England -- Protestant / Catholic. That wasn't the only ideology at work there, but it was a big hunk of it.

And ideology is ideology whether it's anti-militarism, communism, veganism, animal rights, criminal jihadism, or what have you. Given a high enough confidence in their ideology, some people are willing to subvert the social controls which most people have in place which prevent us from blowing people up in a terroristic fashion (formal war is a different situation).

How enjoyable to feel the vigor and strength running through your body, to feel that you can rely on it, that it can take you wherever you ask it. — Agustino

I used to bike, swim, and jog, do yoga and calisthenics. I was svelte and fit. Then injuries and age snowed white hair on me. When you start getting old, then one's body sometimes says "No!" when you ask it to take you somewhere. But even us old folks need to keep moving as much as we can.

Once they understand their own self in a positive and affirming way. — Agustino

Believing is seeing. If one believes that there is a positive self inside, then they can begin to actually see it and do something good.

Of course, sometimes seeing comes first. There are objectively bad situations (like bad work places, like bad relationships, like bad schools, like bad neighborhoods ) that one can and ought to leave, or not accept in the first place.

what I don't realize is why ↪Agustino can't take it as a simple tip. — Noblosh

I don't know -- it just rubbed his fur the wrong way, I suppose. Certain things bug me disproportionately, too.

How worthwhile is love which does not have an effect in action? Whether it's filio, eros, storge, or agape, It exists as an action we wish to carry out or do carry out. I would say that the "thing of love" is action from which comes the noun "love".

We love by acting in a family, with erotic objects, or among community.

But whether noun or verb... I don't care.

The thing is that not everyone responds to medication, or even if they do respond the efficacy isn't great enough. The same however doesn't seem to apply to talk therapy, which is more work but tends to get the job done more effectively and persistently. — Question

Yes, I think antidepressants have relatively low efficacy for middling depression, compared to some other medications. Tranquilizers are quite effective in quelling acute anxiety; a little Xanax or Ativan can calm one down pretty quickly and if one isn't prone to addiction (most people are not) they're effective. The same can't be said for antidepressants. They can have substantial efficacy, but people differ greatly in their response, so finding the right one (or combination) can be difficult.

"Middling depression" isn't an acute or severe condition and may not have a biological cause in a given case. So whatever people take may not perform dramatically, like tranquilizers. Plus, antidepressants can have side effects which people don't like -- such as libido suppression.

↪Agustino Evangelism is against the site guidelines, so tread carefully. — Noblosh

I disagree with a lot of what Agustino has to say, but I wouldn't accuse him of evangelizing politically or religiously -- certainly no more than a lot of us evangelize from our personal pulpit point of view.

It's because of that situation that you are depressed, it's not within your control - so you don't do anything except cry about your disadvantages. But, if your belief, on the other hand, is that how I feel, and how I react depends on myself - I am in control - and not whatever external circumstance, then that is empowering - it allows you to free yourself. — Agustino

IF someone believes that they are in control and not at the mercy of external circumstances, then they probably won't be depressed in the first place. If they don't believe they are in control and are at the mercy of external events, telling them to snap out of it probably will not work.

People are sometimes taught passivity and inability, but fairly often we teach ourselves further lessons of inability. We structure our thinking about our 'situation' as a no-win negative situation, and then we get stuck. Maybe we don't like our job and we don't believe there are good and better jobs out there. We don't do well at the job, then people at work get angry at us, but we don't care, and down the spiral we go. We could change our ideas about work, jobs, and our place in them -- without giving up everything else we believe.

Maybe she wishes that her children would pay more attention to her at Christmas, Thanksgiving, her birthday, or Mothers Day. They habitually don't, but every year she expects that they will, and is freshly crushed each year when they don't -- once again -- perform as desired. She gets angry each time, and reaffirms her suspicion that her children don't care about her, and down the spiral she goes. She could revise her expectations and recognize that her children probably won't fulfill her expectations.