Some people in the United States, home of some colossal educational failures, are getting superb educations. They attend public and private schools known to offer effective conservatively defined education with at least some intent to develop the unique potentials of individuals. Maybe 10% to 20% of young people receive this education. Their parents are either wealthy enough to live in the communities with the best schools, or they can afford to send them excellent private schools.

Maybe 25% of the remainder receive something like adequate education mostly in public schools--suburban, exurban, and rural schools. The remaining half of all school children receive inferior education in either the conservative or liberal model. The personal uniqueness is ignored, they learn a minimum of basic skills, they are offered an indifferent curriculum.

From one point of view, the schools are mostly doing a fine job because their real task has been, since the 1960s, to manage the workforce. Part of this was to meter the flow of workers into work, part of it was to keep people in the role of consumer, and part of it was to keep people off the streets as long as possible.

From an even more extreme view, it doesn't matter to 60% to 80% of the students in school what happens during their "formal education". In the real world of the late 20th, early 21st century, what people really need to know can be taught by the 24/7 media of radio, television, internet, film, and print. Not a joke: The real function of most people is going to be a consumer who works in simple dead end jobs. What is taught in school (reading, writing, arithmetic, history, biology...) is mostly irrelevant to the mass of young people. At the present time, most of them are not going to be employed in demanding work (those people are getting high quality educations) and their most important role is as a passive consumer. You don't need to know about Homer or algebra to work at McDonalds or at an Amazon fulfillment center. You don't need American History to shop for clothes, food, toasters, etc.

ruthless, greedy — Agustino

It isn't the climb to the top that gives people ruthless, greedy, ambition. It's ruthless, greedy, ambition that drives them up and on -- despite whatever adverse headwinds, insults, and so forth they endure on their way to the top.

I would not say it is the liberal view to "revile anyone who has self-love and to teach that the proper mode is to be poor, helpless, and full of self-loathing." — m-theory

I agree. This sort of morality has nothing to do with liberalism or conservatism. It's the psychology of twisted people, whatever their political views.

There is a brand of morality that simply rejects anyone who has power. — Mongrel

That is true, there is such a brand, and it is indeed buried in resentment. However, quoting Jesus probably won't help a lot here. If Jesus came to overthrow the kingdoms and powers of earth, we have to interpret that as eschatology. In God's unfolding judgement, the first (powerful, rich) will be last and the last (the meek, the poor) will be first. The orders of status will be up-ended.

Take away the end of this world, the Kingdom of Heaven, the final judgement, and so on, and the preaching of Jesus loses it's fizz. If this is an unredeemed and irredeemable world, it makes no sense to celebrate meekness and poverty.

My guess is that resentment comes before the morality. "We are extremely dissatisfied with our wretched lot. "Some people are in the penthouse, eating foie gras pate; me and my wife are in the shithouse eating beans and hay..." "I hate those people; they don't deserve what they have got. I want more. I need more. I deserve more!" They hate the rich, especially if they are in close proximity.

A number of moralities come to mind. An anarchist might justify taking an elevator up to the penthouse and throwing a bomb into the middle of the rich folks' soirée, ridding the planet of the lot of them. The communist might take them all down on the elevator and line them up against a wall and shoot them. Some will denounce them for being privileged, for having power, and send them to North Dakota to work on the fracking rigs. They won't grieve when the rich folks go bankrupt.

According to the eminent philosopher, Alan Jay Lerner, "It's not the earth the meek inherit, it's the dirt." Camelot

What I'm looking for is education regarding the side-effects of capitalism (to continue the medical metaphor) rather than an excision. — Baden

Educate The People about the side effects of capitalism till the cows come home--it won't make any significant difference. Capitalism is a remorseless system, and it isn't going to play nice. What is it about providing an ever increasing flow of profit to shareholders don't you understand?

I think it would be worth the sacrifice of some economic and even some technological growth in order that human growth be focused on more. — Baden

Human growth will be the focused on more by capitalism as soon as it is commodified and becomes a profit center.

"Abandon hope all ye who enter here" the sign over hell and capitalist meliorism reads.

What should you do? “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it.” Karl Marx, Eleven Theses on Feuerbach. We have nothing to lose but our chains and a world to gain. So, workers of the world...

"But Hollywood is full of anti-corporate sentiment, and is now firmly seated on the green anti-consumerist bandwagon."
— jamalrob

You are mistaken. Progressivism is the new form of organisation of capitalism. In order to get people to work for the big and large corporations (which is becoming normalised, and a matter of prestige), they introduce all sorts of PR moves such as being green, such as levelling down hierarchies, and so forth. This is a way to get people to accept their chains. On top of this, Hollywood is reshaping morality in order to maximise the efficiency of capitalism. See my post here. — Agustino

Exactly!

Right. Supporting philosophy with advertising worked out so well for the old Philosophy Forum.

"When Heav'n had overturn'd the Trojan state
And Priam's throne — Mongrel

It's been quite a while since I read Homer (36 years...), but as I recollect...

Isn't Virgil's line about overturning the Trojan state a concern appropriate to Rome, but not to the very distant time of Homer? And if so, isn't the existence of the Roman State the result of radically different economic circumstances than what Priam (or anybody else in the Iliad or Odyssey knew)?

It is possible that we exaggerate the influence of various media, which we like or don't like.

We know, for instance, that children do not readily acquire language from television. A talking box is no substitute for a voice box, especially that of one's caregiver. Children don't pick up accents from television, either. If they did, some children would have British accents (too much PBS and Masterpiece Theater) or they would talk with standard California or northern Midlands accents. They don't. They sound like their peers and parents. If media were so influential, wouldn't we see more influence in language usage from television?

There is no overwhelming evidence that media strongly influences behavior. Various people have been looking for solid proof that it does influence behavior, and there isn't as much strong evidence out there. I am speaking here of imitative behavior. People watching programs with violence, sex, crime, and so on, don't become sexually violent criminals committing all sorts of violent crimes.

There is evidence that watching a violent program has subtle, short-lived effects on choice-making. So, after watching a brutal scene from a film, people tend to answer various unrelated questions differently than people who had seen a boring film about highway maintenance.

Similarly, people who watch a lot of porn generally do not lead sex lives even remotely like the sex lives of the people in the videos. Again, watching a sex scene very well might change the way people respond to questionnaires for a short period of time.

So, we can say porn, sex, violence, etc. do affect people, but it is short term, and it doesn't change people's patterns of life.

Can we say the same thing for television advertising? People watch it, they are affected for a short period of time, but they do not change their basic behavioral patterns. It might. For one thing, advertising is constructed with more care than the average television program is. The imagery is punchier, and the repetition of specific scenes is, over time, quite high.

There are ads for a product, and then there is the product itself. The experience of watching an ad for the #1 selling Ford F-Series pickup is one thing; seeing F-Series vehicles on the road is another thing, and contemplating the F-Series on the sales lot is something else again. My guess is that without on the road sightings, talking with owners, looking at the pickup in parking lots, and so on, the advertisements wouldn't drive the sales as high as they are.

One thing about people: Getting messages through our thick skulls and getting us to carry out our instructions correctly turns out to be quite difficult. People don't just do what they are told. They just won't rush out and buy whatever junk food they are instructed to buy. And they buy junk food they probably never see advertised. There is also sensual experience. There is junk food I like because it has high sensory appeal--a particular local store brand of potato chip. Why do I like Kix better than Shredded Wheat (which I actually eat a lot of)? I haven't seen an ad for breakfast food for many years. I like the crunch of the large-pea-sized pellets, taste, color, and mouthfeel of Kix. I like the big bright yellow box it is packed in. The manipulation may be inside box rather than on the television, but it does work. Kix is a Friday night party compared to Shredded Wheat's Monday morning back to work scene.

aside from the problem that we don't have good comparable data from 75-100+ years ago for mental illnesses and general happiness/unhappiness... — Terrapin Station

Going back to 1916, no. But post WWII, which is 70 years ago, I think there is comparable information. the General Social Survey is around 40+ years old, Gallops surveys go back 70 years. (Gallop, Inc. generously declares "For more than 70 years, Gallup has built its reputation on delivering relevant, timely, and visionary research on what humans around the world think and feel. Using impeccable data...") While the diagnostic standards for manic depression, schizophrenia, psychosis, catatonia, and so on might have been and might still be a bit dicey when it comes to telling one illness from another, these severe illnesses have always been obvious, whatever the cause was thought to be.

I agree that the definitions of the minor mental illnesses aren't comparable. The Freudian diagnostic regimens were tossed out the window, and pre-1960s and post-1960s diagnoses isn't readily comparable. I have no idea what, exactly, a practitioner meant by "hysteria" for instance.

I'd bet anything that apparent increases in minor mental maladies per capita are just as related to some combination of the following:

(1) People with psych degrees needing clients in order to sustain their careers; that encourages diagnoses of conditions that require regular visits,

(2) Pharmaceutical companies having similar motivations,

(3) People hoping to acquire some type of government assistance and/or excuses for special treatment at work/special employment situations — Terrapin Station

Yes, all of the above applies. Diagnoses are needed for return visits, but even more important, diagnoses are needed to get paid by insurance companies. And I would add that it isn't all scam and racket. Some therapists really are very competent and helpful. (So ask yourself, what kind of scam do philosophers have going to justify their existences on college campuses--and who else bothers to employ them?)

As for disability, some people have achieved disability status who seemed to be just fine, but in the US, at least, "disability" was always grudgingly awarded.

(4) Munchausen syndrome/factitious disorder, where people have a desire for attention/special treatment/etc. — Terrapin Station

I am more interested in Reverse Munchausen Syndrome where people feign sanity but are actually stark raving mad.

I should apologise for starting this with advertising; it has rather misled people. One can resist advertising, avoid it perhaps, but advertising is merely an example of a way of thinking about people that pervades the eduction system, politics, entertainment, the workplace, every facet of society.

Shall we start again with a different example? Psychology and education? — unenlightened

Why don't we just swallow the whole kielbasa and analyze what is wrong with "every facet of society"?

I there is something wrong with society that has not always been wrong, then it has a beginning. You seem to be suggesting that the problem began in the late 19th / early 20th century when Wundt, Ebbinghaus, James, Pavlov, Dewey, Skinner, et al started building 'scientific psychology' with measurement, observation, theorizing, and so on.

Or, do you have some other starting point in mind? Maybe the industrial revolution and modern capitalism? Surely all that didn't have anything to do with infecting every facet of society with a depersonalizing instrumental approach, did they?

I have "a feeling" that In the United States the "incidence" of mental illness (and some other maladies) rose fairly sharply when a law-change allowed for prescription drug advertising on television. Suddenly, antidepressant ads were advising people what to ask for at the doctors office if they didn't feel good. Some people really do experience accurately diagnosed "depression". More people experience fairly severe unhappiness which might be caused by too much debt, bad relationships, bad work situations, too much alcohol and drugs, and so on. They don't need antidepressants, they need to change their lives.

The major hard-core mental illnesses are not increasing. Psychosis, schizophrenia, bi-polar, and such affect the low percentages of the population they always have. It's the "soft-core" diagnoses that are popping up all over the place: ADD, vaguely defined depression, vague autism, oppositional defiance disorder, and so on. I don't doubt that people diagnosed with ADD, vague autism, "vaguely defined depression, and so on are having problems. Their problems just might be caused by very incompetent parenting and living in socially-deteriorating situations.

How many people had heard of "restless leg syndrome" before drug makers could advertise "Requip" and other such drugs (mostly older parkinson disease meds)? The incidence of ADHD is either of epidemic proportions OR pharmaceutical companies have found another nail to hit with a hammer. ("If you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail.")

Prove it. — lambda

Lambda, dear, you know damn well there is no proving or disproving these kinds of statements. If you think God ordains meaning, fine. Stick with that. I was stating what I think, and I'm sticking with it. Neither of us can prove God exists, or doesn't, and even less can either of us prove what God thinks.

The important issue isn't whether God provides meaning, or whether you cook up a meaning yourself. What is important is the quality of meaning that you think life has. "The meaning of life is to fuck as much as possible then die" is not a very elevated meaning. Some severe cases sound like that is what they think the meaning of life is. Maybe for sewer rats, it is. I think they could aim higher for people. The Chinese adage that "Getting rich is glorious" as a meaning for life isn't very elevated either. One would think the ideological descendants of Karl Marx could come up with something higher and deeper than that.

So why, presumably, would "killing people" not be a good meaning to give to life? — Noble Dust

Although we are not born into life with divinely assigned meaning, we are not blank slates either. By the time we are old enough to think about the question of life's meaning, our basic human nature has been formed, and (perhaps surprisingly) "killing people" is not what most people reach for first when they cast about for life's fundamental meaning. A few do find some sort of satisfaction in killing people -- some psychopaths for instance. Psychopaths are people who do not feel guilt, people who are not warmed by the milk of human kindness. They do not "cathect" with other people (bond, make connection with).

Of course people will kill. They will kill out of rage, out of greed, and if they are in the army, out of need. But, you know, they come home from the war and they go back to being carpenters, clerks, engineers, and teachers.

I don't know much about "transcendent" meaning. Religion is in itself an overlay that is quite rooted in this world and doesn't transcend anything. That doesn't mean it's not good. Lots of stuff in the religious overlays are quite worthwhile.

It just seems like a nonsensical pattern of misplacing objects/processes as a source explanation for larger things in existence/existence itself. — intrapersona

Apples don't ask themselves why they exist, for what purpose, or in what meaningful sense. The same can be said for bricks. They don't ask. They exist.

"Helping people" might be a good meaning for life. "I am here to help people." You could do worse. Or, "Finding pleasurable experiences gives the meaning of life." Or "Learning about the natural world makes life meaningful," Or "Becoming an expert in Anthropology makes life meaningful." Or "Fixing up old cars is the meaning of my life." Or "Growing oats for horses and oatmeal is the thing that makes my life meaningful." and so on. People are the only creatures that ask and answer this question. The rest of creation gets off scot free. They can just exist to their hearts content. So could you, of course, but you would find it more difficult to merely exist than a pear on a tree would.

The "Meaning of Life" is a theoretical overlay which we place on top of our animal existence. We can do that. Bears, pears, and mares can not. There are, of course, ready made meaning-of-life overlays on the shelf. You can go into the closet and look through the available models and try one out. If you don't find it satisfactory, you can try a different one.

Vestis virum reddit, sed homo vestimenta sua. Clothes make the man, but man makes his
clothes. Acerba Vectem, famous Latin Philosopher.

No one chose to respond to my post on the economy. The amount of money spent on global advertising--660 billion dollars in 2014--is a clue to how advertising figures into life as we know it.

WE did not call forth advertising because we are sex obsessed, sex deprived, or obsessed with trivial concerns. We might be all of that, but advertising wasn't our idea.

As a primate species, we tend to be insecure about our place in society. We neither emit nor detect pheromones so specific that we can tell where our standing in the hierarchy is. We are very often at least somewhat uncertain about it. We use other devices to display our status. Are we attractive enough? Is there something about me turning off that guy/girl? Why don't people ask me to go to lunch with them. And so on...

We had been psychologizing long before William James became the first Professor of Psychology", and Bernays didn't "invent" methods for manipulating people--all that had been going on for a very long time. What he invented was an industry. Industries like "Public Relations" or "Advertising" came into existence because the economic means made them possible. The first four media of mass advertising -- fast, high quality printing in color, radio, television and movies came about for the same reason: the means of production (electronics, factories, broadcasting technology, motion/sound/color film production) were in place by the early (and for TV, mid) 20th century.

advertising preys upon our insecurities and frustrated aspirations. Not everyone is equally insecure; not everyone worries about their embodied social presence; not every man's grasp greatly exceeds his reach. But MOST people do feel insecure, most people aren't quite sure whether they are have it all together (right clothes, right shoes, right hair-do, right powder, right perfume...) and most people have not yet come close to grasping their highest aspirations. They are nervous. They weren't made nervous by advertisers. Advertising only capitalizes and aggravates insecurity.

It is fruitless and pointless to complain that people are chumps; fall prey to advertisers blandishments; are too stupid to see what is going on; are too venal to resist; are too shallow to care, and so on. We live in a social world which is competitive. Because we are sentient, we can not ignore the fact that there is a hierarchy, a competition for scarce resources, a competition for social status, for comfort-enhancing acquisitions.

Can one drop out of this scene? Sure. You may have noticed a grating covered with a thick layer of bird shit and tragically splattered aspirations at the bottom of the hierarchy -- one can slip through the gaps in the grates. Once out, it's somewhat-difficultt to damned-near-impossible to get back in, however. The other approach is to float out through the top -- easy to do if you have a cart of gold bricks to finance the project.

Life below the grating is not hell on earth -- some people like it. But it is a life which requires a great deal of self-direction, a strong moral compass (whether it points toward good or not), fairly low material aspirations, tolerance for low status, and all that. You can't have high-status cake and eat it down below the grate.

So: That's what advertising leverages its messages against.

"The meaning of life is to give life meaning" — intrapersona

I've said that. Life has no inherent meaning, no meaning ordained by God. The universe doesn't provide us meaning. If we didn't exist, meaninglessness would not be a problem. We do, however, exist and we need meaning. Therefore, if there is to be meaning, we create it. We give life meaning.

What do you expect to happen when Walt Disney Company owns ABC?

It's extraordinary, really. Look at the depth of concern expressed in most of the responses on this thread about trivial bodily matters by supposedly sane and intelligent people. It's far worse than I had imagined; people are incapable of reasoning at all on the topic. — unenlightened

Selling stuff has been going on for a long time. IF there is anything different about what is going on now, (and I'm not sure there is) it's that there is more stuff to sell to more people, and more complicated ways of doing it.

Complicated, psychologically intrusive, and manipulative methods aren't needed to sell rutabagas and cabbage. Pork chops and beef roasts sell themselves to people who are capable of cooking. Transit companies don't bother to suggest that riding a bus is sexually enhancing. If you have to ride the big, stinking thing, you will, and they know that.

Because we live in a multinational capitalist economy where profit is the point, companies are driven to sell more of whatever they have. If it's toothpaste, toilet paper, or tampons, they don't just want you to buy their products, they very much NEED you to buy it. Hence, the intensity of the advertising methods--the propaganda of products.

5 largest advertising agencies and their 2014 revenues:

WPP Group, London $19.0 billion.
Omnicom Group, New York City $15.3 billion.
Publicis Groupe, Paris $9.6 billion.
Interpublic Group, New York City $7.5 billion.
Dentsu, Tokyo $6.0 billion.

These 5 companies are not raking in $57 billion because they employ cynical assholes with nothing better to do than to annoy people. Global advertising generated around $660 billion in 2016. Why? Because the companies that make trillions of dollars worth of goods need to unload market them at a profitable price.

Because corporations compete, they have to convince you to buy Proctor & Gamble soap rather than Unilever soap. It's in areas of stiff competition that the manipulative stops are pulled out. The main source of profitability is sales to consumers, and if they don't sell enough, they go broke. So it's us or them.

Proctor and Gamble introduced Tide™ in 1949. Since then it has been the leading laundry soap in the US. Is it #1 just because it gets clothes clean? No, indeed. There are a couple of dozen other detergents that will do the job reasonably well. Tide wasn't just manufactured and put in a box (or later a bottle). It was advertised as THE effective and reliable laundry soap to get clothes cleanest and brightest--a credit to the women who washed their clothes with TIDE.

I'd invite you to start your life over as a female and then if you're still inclined to discuss objectification with that brain trust of the species we call The Philosophy Forum.. go for it. — Mongrel

I guess I hear you saying that we are a bunch of heady males.

Probably.

It's far worse than I had imagined; people are incapable of reasoning at all on the topic. — unenlightened

At some point I expect you'll be wanting to change your handle to "Bitter Crank".

I don't follow you on the holographic bit. But as for transcendental memory... Squirrels, dogs, fish, bees, and people all seem to be born with larger or smaller skill sets. Our skill set seems to be relatively small. Many animals, however, are born, nurtured for a while, (and in some cases trained) and then live for years, added freshly learned stuff.

If there is transcendental memory, it seems to deliver more to wild animals than it does to us. We are born with some "information". For instance, human babies seem to have an understanding that objects fall. Show the little observer a balloon filled with helium, let go of it, and the baby is shocked (shocked!) that the object goes up instead of down. Is this an example of transcendental memory?

A horse wrote a limerick so coarse,
it offended the cops on the force.
Philosophers insisted they hear—
Smutty words make them smirk and leer.
Too bad when cops arrested the steed
he neighed and prudently swallowed his screed.

You can tell how stinky you are by how dry your ear-wax is — Wosret

Unfortunately there isn't anything you can do about it.

Feb 24, 2014 - Dry earwax, typical in East Asians and Native Americans, is light-colored and flaky, while earwax found in Caucasian and African groups is darker, wetter and, a new study shows, smellier. If you would describe yourself as white or black, your earwax is probably yellow and sticky.

Women actually like your BO if you're attractive. — Wosret

"Attractive" is a critical caveat. "Attractive" is very important in one's youth. It's important later on, too, but as one ages, natural attractiveness tends to go out the window. Lots of money is a perfectly acceptable substitute for any natural features one might wish for, however hideous the aged might have become. "Lots" = more than one knows what to do with.

Back in my salad days when I was young, fit, and/or reasonably attractive (Say, prior to 1990) I found that I had my best luck at my favorite cruisy gay bar if I hadn't carefully groomed (or groomed at all) for the occasion--like not removing all traces of my caucasian yellow, sticky ear wax. Could have been that I was more relaxed (fewer expectations) when just stopping in, unplanned. Or maybe it was pheromones. Maybe I had a certain apache vibe that other guys found appealing.

You know, deodorants increase the bacteria growth that causes BO ten fold, so that when you're not using it, you notice. It largely creates the problem that it then solves. Mouth wash was a floor cleaner, before Listerine invented bad breath, and said everyone's talking about you behind your back. Tooth cleaning is more damaging to the life of your teeth than never brushing at all.

Too many products literally do the opposite of the thing they're supposed to do. — Wosret

Deodorants mask smell. Antiperspirants plug up pores from which sweat is excreted. Some people stink more than others -- not a fault, just a fact. Masking body odor (or washing away the source) does work. The flora and fauna on the skin is affected -- washing will change the mix a bit, not a lot. Using harsh disinfectants would change the mix hugely, but people rarely take a soak in chlorine bleach. But soaps, deodorants, and ordinary cleansers don't change the flora/fauna mix that much. Besides, it's always changing anyway, soap and water or not.

I believe what you say about Listerine™ -- the stuff is ghastly. However, bad breath was around before listerine. Sonnet 130 by Shakespeare says

"And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks."

As for teeth, unless you are using a wire brush and sand on your teeth, you are mistaken. Good dental hygiene helps teeth last for a long time.

I would say that when there is produced within a person, the feeling of need, when that apprehended need has no rational basis, this constitutes a distressed emotional state. This would be comparable to an addiction which is not recognized by the addict as an addiction. There is a distressed emotional state which is not recognized for what it is. — Metaphysician Undercover

Interesting.

Addiction and aspirations intersect in the case of advertising for cigarettes: The pleasure that cigarettes deliver is "hit relief". Smokers are addicted to nicotine which has a short, dose effect on the body--it might be as short as 20 minutes. Once the nicotine has been metabolized, the need for another dose rises, and the smoker feels uncomfortable. "I want another cigarette." Nicotine is absorbed quickly, so the first few draws bring relief, which is experienced as a small pleasure. The purpose of advertising is to associate the addicts relief with a particular brand: Salem, Kool, Marlboro, True, American Spirit (an organic brand)... whatever. The imagery varies by brand. The Marlboro masculine cowboy is a prime example.

If I were to return to smoking (haven't smoked for 22 years) I'd resume where I left off with Marlboro. Why? The nicotine in Marlboro is the same as it is in every other tobacco product, the the taste is not all that much different from other brands. But... I identified with the brand, the label, the box, the imagery -- even though I am about as far from being a cowboy as everybody else is.

The image of the Marlboro Man

Were I to resume smoking, nicotine addition would be awakened almost immediately, and then the whole need/relief cycle would resume.

At least sometimes advertising takes a lengthier, more complex approach. "Lengthy" requires a very interesting narrative. The people won't sit still for almost 4 minutes of a dull commercial message. Four minutes of an intriguing message, however, is quite possible.

Clio Awards ("Clios" are advertising awards.)

With another year comes another slew of trends taking over the Internet.

These digital innovations and silly social media challenges are tempting for marketers hoping to stay socially relevant, but it takes thought, skill and creativity to execute such trendy marketing campaigns effectively.

Now as the end of 2016 fast approaches, let’s take a look at a few of the creative ways marketers capitalized on this year’s digital and Internet trends.

It's "merely" understanding reality because there is no transcendent there. Merely refers to the fact that there is nothing more than that. — Agustino

Richard Feynman says... "nothing is mere"

Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars — mere globs of gas atoms. Nothing is "mere". I too can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more? The vastness of the heavens stretches my imagination — stuck on this carousel my little eye can catch one-million-year-old light. A vast pattern — of which I am a part... What is the pattern, or the meaning, or the why? It does not do harm to the mystery to know a little about it. For far more marvelous is the truth than any artists of the past imagined! Why do the poets of the present not speak of it? What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent?

I’ve dreamed of falling to my death from a great height. I’ve dreamed of being shot to death. I’ve dreamed of drowning to death. I’ve dreamed of being eaten alive by wolves. And yet despite all that, I still exist. I am clearly indestructible. — lambda

You might be indestructible if you had actually fallen to your would-be death, and didn't die; same for being actually shot and not dying. Had you been eaten by waves, and yet still existed, you'd have a great point to make: "I am indestructible". However... you dreamed these events, and waking up from a dream is something short of a miraculous resurrection.

I think there is no evidence of anything happening when you die, other than we having a rotting corpse to dispose of. However, there is no reason why we would have evidence for an afterlife, were an afterlife to actually exist. You would die, some essence of your person, a soul, a vapor, something... would go somewhere, the great beyond, and never return. It might be perfect bliss, it might be perfect hell, it might be a boring drag -- we just wouldn't know, whether we were atheists or not.

Same for God. God might exist or not, but we have no way of proving or disproving it finally.

The second (hottie named Kevin) is very good.

As you know most faggots are thankful
because we have sex by the tank full.
We’d gather to tryst by bright moon light
Gay boys sex max suck fucking all night.

Because the Park Board was up-tightish
At last the dark shadows were banished.
Wherefore now congress we asked, with no dark?
We traipsed down to the Baths for more lewd larks.

The Revenant by Billy Collins

I am the dog you put to sleep,
as you like to call the needle of oblivion,
come back to tell you this simple thing:
I never liked you - not one bit.

When I licked your face,
I thought of biting off your nose.
When I watched you toweling yourself dry,
I wanted to leap and unman you with a snap.

I resented the way you moved,
your lack of animal grace,
the way you would sit in a chair and eat,
a napkin on your lap, knife in your hand.

I would have run away,
but I was too weak, a trick you taught me
while I was learning to sit and heel,
and - greatest of insults - shake hands without a hand.

I admit the sight of the leash
would excite me
but only because it meant I was about
to smell things you had never touched.

You do not want to believe this,
but I have no reason to lie.
I hated the car, the rubber toys,
disliked your friends and, worse, your relatives.

The jingling of my tags drove me mad.
You always scratched me in the wrong place.
All I ever wanted from you
was food and fresh water in my metal bowls.

While you slept, I watched you breathe
as the moon rose in the sky.
It took all my strength
not to raise my head and howl.

Now I am free of the collar,
the yellow raincoat, monogrammed sweater,
the absurdity of your lawn,
and that is all you need to know about this place

except what you already supposed
and are glad it did not happen sooner -
that everyone here can read and write,
the dogs in poetry, the cats and the others in prose.

As I interact with dogs I know that I am in the presence of another being, and another mind of some sort. The better the dog and person know each other, the more specific the dog's mental capacities seem. We observe them training us to bend to their needs and wishes. We try to train them and sometimes (quite often with some smart dogs) they just won't do what you want them to do. A dog trainer observed that very smart dogs are often difficult to live with because a sharper intelligence lies behind the eyes that never stop watching us.

Of course, they can't talk; they can, however, communicate some things with body language, whining, barking, nose poking, pawing, biting, cuddling, the cold shoulder, snarling, and so on. We have to make guesses about what they are thinking. That dogs think about their own deaths, or ours, is a leap which I find difficult to make. I like the idea of dogs thinking about death, I just don't think that actual evidence is possible. The behavior of elephants seems more convincing to me. Elephants live much longer than dogs--40 to 70 years, rather than a dog's 10 to 15. They have more time to think, more time to socialize their children.

We know that dogs are very good observers, and an unconscious, severely injured, or dead family member would be readily noticed. Their behavior repertoire is limited for responding to the novel experience of one of us suddenly dying. It would probably be similar to one of their family being gone too long -- they would find that disturbing. I've slipped on ice while walking our dog and she didn't seem to be worried about me -- she found my accident very stimulating. (Maybe she was just an unusually vindictive bitch.)

Another angle: Dogs are a predator species. Killing or disabling another animal and eating it is part of their repertoire. Whether they can be happy about both this death (dead rabbit) and unhappy about that death (dead family member) requires more complex thinking. I just don't know that we can demonstrate them either having or not having this complexity.

It's not the ship, it's the motion of the ocean, and besides, everything is relative. \

I've only come across rather old and decrepit stinkhorns and those not recently.

Pollock - a big flopping fish? Polock or Polack? A flopping person from Poland? Either would work.

Once upon a time I ate a lot of sesame seeds. The next day, when I went to the toilet (to do a dirt, not a wee as Borat would say), I saw that my stool was covered completely in those sesame seeds. I can swear that I've never seen a more disgusting scene than that — Agustino

Sig Freud!

You'd better come into the office and lie down on the couch right away. You're a very sick man.

It is interesting that you wouldn't mind standing next to someone who was smelly, but wouldn't want to be seen by others as having tolerated their smelliness. Shades of other-directedness.

At some point, life becomes easier when we come to terms with our own shit, literally. Raising children (which I haven't done) and raising dogs (which I have) are effective at busting up our cleanliness obsessions, and alleviating the shock of the stool -- that what goes in comes out and in sometimes quite identifiable condition. Once our young dog got into the dog food and stuffed herself. A bit later, while I was sitting on the back step, she crawled into my lap and vomited up an enormous Science Diet slushy. Yuck. But, because it was OUR dog, I wasn't freaked out--as I would otherwise have been. What she ate was sometimes quite identifiable when I picked up her stool for disposal. Like bits of raw carrot. Chewed up and swallowed bits of fabric. Wild baby rabbits swallowed whole were still whole.

Why feed a dog expensive dog food? Because it promises to produce a very firm, drier stool -- easier to pick up. Turned out to be true.

Having chronic bowel problems has helped many people understand that unexamined shit may not be worth excreting. Stools are a window into our bowels -- a place we do not want to go ourselves.

Excellent example of the created need/want. More: Downy, Airwick, Glade, and other odiferous products. Running shoe$ (for people who would die if they ran 2 blocks to catch a bus); all lawn care products; pick up trucks (for people who might haul 3 bags of mulch from the hardware store); and on, and on...

But surely a diamond is only valuable because it's hard to get — Agustino

You would find it profitable (possibly) to dip into the career of Edward Bernays, November 22, 1891 − March 9, 1995). He was an Austrian-American pioneer in the field of public relations and propaganda. He combined the ideas of Gustave Le Bon and Wilfred Trotter on crowd psychology with the psychoanalytical ideas of his uncle, Sigmund Freud.

He felt this manipulation was necessary in society, which he regarded as irrational and dangerous as a result of the "herd instinct" that Trotter had described. Adam Curtis's award-winning 2002 documentary for the BBC, The Century of the Self, pinpoints Bernays as the originator of modern public relations.

It isn't just diamonds. Companies who manufacture rather ordinary commodities also think about the herd and their various instincts. They don't do this because they are wicked (well, they may be wicked, but we'll discuss that elsewhere) they do it because their corporate existences depend on selling more stuff than their competitors. If they are honest, they will only manipulate the public with artificial wants. If they are crooked, like the recent example of Volkswagon, they'll also lie and cheat to get their products sold, or poison the public (like the bastard who was cutting costs in Flint, Michigan).

We are dealing with a problem in mass psychology. We seek to ... strengthen the tradition of the diamond engagement ring -- to make it a psychological necessity capable of competing successfully at the retail level with utility goods and services....

Very glad you pulled out the information on diamonds--excellent example of manufactured want. "Diamonds are forever." Well, no more than H2O is forever, or the lead pipes it is delivered through.

in 2015, 135,000,000 carets of diamonds were produced (mined and exported), or 59,526 pounds. The grade of all this carbon gravel varies, of course. (Google, the usual source).

As Ms. Monroe sang so memorably,

Men grow cold as girls grow old
And we all lose our charms in the end
But square cut or pear shape these rocks don't lose there shape
Diamonds are a girl's best friend

Behold, the Stinkhorn Fungus The fungus site was too prudish to mention it's obvious phalic shape, except to mention its name, Phallus impudicus. Looks like a big white dick to me. It does note that it is covered by slime, sometimes. But who and what isn't?

I have a friend who is always talking in terms of philosophies of life. — Rachel

You understand, I would guess, that you are addressing a room full of people who are "always talking in terms of philosophies of life". You are probably making a couple dozen souls jittery just by bringing up the topic of unproductive philosophizing.

The guy likes to talk. It's a way of being in the world, his shtick. Maybe he needs new material--more interesting content, better jokes, improved delivery.

While some of the world's problems are the result of people who are all talk and no action ("All that is required for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing,") most of the world problems are caused by very efficient and effective people who are very good at doing things, whether they talk about it or not. Like Donald Trump, for instance. He's one busy guy and a royal pain in the body politic, par excellence.

On the other hand, I assume he is not holed up in a basement closet playing video games and reading Plato. It is good for people to engage the physical world -- do something, run, walk, swim, climb, dig, lift, pile, build, destroy -- something.

What does he do all day?

Have you read that book, The 7 Habits of Not Very Effective People? I wrote that.