There would be no reason for that to cause conflict between us unless one of us tried to inflict our beliefs on the other. — T Clark

Well apparently society caters to your worldview so you got lucky.

How would you fair in Theistic Iran or Saudi Arabia or in Communist North Korea?

Some people in The wealthy West still have to fight to get their needs met and voice heard. People who have been their can't afford to be complacent. You have to fight constantly against other peoples prejudices.

I say that as someone with a late diagnosis of autism after decades of struggling and someone now seeking help for ADHD. You get frequently judged for not fitting in. You are supposed to conform for everyone else's sake and society does not have to do anything for you unless you have an advocate or yell loud enough.

All they have to back down from is a determination to control other people. — Vera Mont

You are putting the onus on someone else to compromise their beliefs for you it would seem.

Those are two different cases. Getting the car to move is a very short term practical goal that does not call any deeply held values into question. — Vera Mont

The goal of getting a car to move is not simply a shared goal but one that leads to an undesirable outcome. If I opposed abortion I would not want to do anything to assist an abortion like wise if I was pro abortion I wouldn't want to do anything to prevent an abortion happening. I wouldn't drive someone to pro life rally or alternately to an abortion clinic.

The assumption people seem to have then Is that they are not helping other people achieve goals counter to their own interests. But just by forming a society with an education system etc you are helping everyone achieve a variety of goals.

I remember when people didn't use to recycle and now that seems insane but we were complacent back then. I think we can be complacent until serious damage has been done (in that case to the environment).

A lot of people are mentally lazy. Even more are intellectually timid - been slapped down so often for so long that they're afraid to question or doubt — Vera Mont

But my hypothesis is that the majority of people are in denial about the consequences of their beliefs possibly for an easy life. It may be we can never agree and never backdown so have a state of underlying conflict sometimes breaking out into all out conflict.

So I guess you're saying that you in particular are not willing or able to work and live with people who have strong differences in opinion from you. And so you come here to whine about all the conflict in our society. It's hard to feel sympathetic. — T Clark

That is a strawman.

I have given the example of my own family who held extreme beliefs in opposition to society yet worked in society and I found that hypocritical or contradictory.

When I grew up I wasn't allowed to watch television, or listen to the radio, or shop on Sundays etc. But you can't live completely inde[pendent of society.

I am saying you are being complacent by thinking your beliefs are compatible with others.

I have always found it absurd that my parents and others believe Billions of people are going to hell but are very nonchalant about it. It is one of the many reasons I left Christianity and reject religion.

It is an absurdly macabre and malicious belief and If I believed it I would everything in my power to try and prevent people from going to hell and not creating more children to expose to hell (my parents had six).

But clearly people are complacent and half hearted about their own beliefs.

So, their short-term goals coincide: get the car moving. To that end, they can put off any discussion of world-views or ideology — Vera Mont

I don't think it is a case of short term goals. People are helping things that go against their own stated aims and values.

I think it takes a lot of energy to actually enact and defend your beliefs. Society and prosperity allows us to be more complacent then ever before.

My examples is pointing out the absurdity of helping someone achieve a goal at odds with your own, people don't take seriously enough conflicts in values and aims.

I would be out on the street protesting every day about something if I had the energy. It is only tiredness and apathy holding me back.

This is not true in my experience. Whatever their politics, religion, philosophy, or other characteristic, humans always have more in common than in opposition. Just about everyone wants security for our families, the ability to make important decisions about our own lives, good education and medical care. I get along well with people who appear very different from me on the surface. There are people of good will everywhere. — T Clark

I am an antinatalist and there are increasingly large numbers of us now. We think it is unethical to have children and don't seek to perpetuate humans. That is a radical stance. And most antinatalists are not half hearted about it.

I think it is easy to get along with people in to days society because we live in a time of relative security. We are not living in Ukraine. Our beliefs are not being tested. It is superficial.

Atheists are far more likely to push for assisted suicide and abortion than religious people. If religious people don't backdown than you have a serious conflict.

I think if people don't think the afterlife or lack doesn't matter then they are being complacent.

The dead body question is not one of beliefs, but of duplicity — Vera Mont

I can speak from personal experience here. I grew up in a fundamentalist Plymouth Brethren Christian household.
They did street preaching on the weekends and sent tracts around peoples houses which in essence said if you don't convert to our form of Christianity you are going to burn in hell for eternity.

Yet fundamentalist hell believing Christians work along side other people to help keep society a float. My Dad worked in the UK's NHS.

People don't realise or appreciate the depths of feeling behind peoples beliefs or the incompatibility. It is not that they are being deceived it is that they are busy superficially helping complete common goals.

(This response replies to everyone here)

We help other people because we assume we have something in common with them but I am questioning that assumption.

For example, the paradox that there are the same amounts of even numbers as there are odd ones , when dealing with infinities, this proves problematic and incoherent.
Other mathematical paradoxes include Russell's, Braesses, parrondos and Richards paradoxes. — Benj96

Applying mathematics to thought seems to lead to infinities such as that we could produce an infinite number of different sentences and responses but we are not usually aware of that when we speak and select from a limit number of responses.

But thought does seem to expose us to the infinite and I have thought about the infinite since I was a young child. In this sense I think thought has more freedom than physicality and physicality is usually the basis for determinist theories of things.

I think writing down thoughts or verbally exchanging ideas does expand the realm of thought possibly making some thought a group activity.

It doesn't. And I didn't say that. Language is an approximate manifestation of one's thoughts on paper or spoken but isn't their thoughts exactly. It is at most a best attempt to capture them. — Benj96

I agree there is a relationship between language and thought but I am not sure it is and I think language is also mystery so it doesn't demystify what thought is.

I am discussing this in relationship to the threads question about choosing thoughts.

I am also interested in the phenomenology of thought. We can observe that it is raining outside and we can state in language "It is raining outside"

The mere observation of rain could lead us to pick up an umbrella. The statement "It is raining outside" could be uttered by a character in a novel.

How we characterise thought will depend how we answer the questions regarding the causes of thoughts.

I think language is more formal than thought where we plan to attempt to communicate something precisely to others.

The alleged reliance of thought on language has lead people to believe animals cannot think and even to the belief animals aren't conscious including consciousness skeptic Daniel Dennett.

Are you not using that exact function of characterisation of one's thoughts by the writing you put down here. I have access through your post to how you think and what you believe. — Benj96

I don't think language captures the phenomenology of thoughts. I am not saying we are not in contact with our thoughts but that we cannot properly characterise the phenomenology.

The inner speech theory of thought does view all thought as language but that seems to take thought into the realm of meaning and semantics and outside the realm of physical causality.

Causality between beliefs and language seems unrelated to physical causality. My belief that London is the Capital of England should be independent of a brain state and relate only to an external fact hence why I don't think thoughts are causally determined.

I want to emphasise the dead body in a car point.

We would not cooperate with other people or someone else if we really believed there and goal was detrimental and counter our beliefs.

We would only cooperate under the illusion we shared values and goals.

I suppose that the situation we have is that we regularly have to fight back against ideologies we don't believe in if we can. And judging by the internet we do have many ideological battles raging.

But are these surmountable through increased communication and increased knowledge? — Pantagruel

I think the incompatibles are created by the unknown. That is partly why I am an agnostic.

A society I imagine can be created on saying I am not sure.

But the situation we have is people with clearly stated beliefs and goals that they appear to think are final. May be more people are agnostic than I realise. (I am referring to a general agnosticism about facts not gods.)

Maybe the problem is people have to assert facts to create a society until those ideas are overturned? I feel that religion created complex societies through useful mythology.

I suppose it depends on what motivates knowledge seeking and society building. Science can find out things but to what end we apparently cannot derive goals or teleology from science. People might resort away from science for personal meaning and morality.

Before you decide whether or not thoughts are determined you have to get an agreed upon definition of thoughts.

My own position on thoughts is that we don't know what they are and cannot characterise them in a way to causally and deterministically explain them.

But here is the Long Wikipedia article on thoughts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought

This is the Initial definition:

"In their most common sense, the terms thought and thinking refer to conscious cognitive processes that can happen independently of sensory stimulation. Their most paradigmatic forms are judging, reasoning, concept formation, problem solving, and deliberation. But other mental processes, like considering an idea, memory, or imagination, are also often included"

I think the processes mentioned need freewill such as reasoning and problem solving and a thought relies on consciousness which is a mystery in itself.

In response to my own post I think you can have the belief in free will and blame people for all their actions but the parents actions have added weight because different actions have differing degrees of harm or potential harm attached.

I was thinking about the validity of an argument I wanted to make concerning antinatalism and it made me think how I could frame an argument in the most coherent or formal way to examine it for flaws.

Here is one way of framing the argument I was going to make.

Premise 1: You cannot be responsible for something you didn't cause

Premise 2: You didn't cause your own existence

Premise 3: Your actions are caused by what caused your existence

Conclusion your parents are responsible for your actions because they caused you existence

However this leads to the ad absurdum that no one is responsible for their actions because of their parents actions.

We are all not here by consent. But I want to differentiate between the responsibility of the person creating human life and the person who never creates another human life.

I usually resort to a notion of causal responsibility. Your parents caused you which caused your actions. It might not be a moral responsibility but they were a causal necessity for your actions. Nevertheless in a purely causal deterministic world their actions were forced by their parents actions.

Is there a way to frame all this to something beneath the concepts involved like a mathematical equation?

but it is really an illusion in the sense that all the activity in your body and being is determined by physical unbreakable law — punos

I have heard of there being laws of physics but not in biology and neuroscience. I don't think people are describing thoughts accurately. For example a thought could be like "Is the Universe infinite?" or "The Estonian economy is booming"
I can't see how these can be reduced to neural activity coherently or reductively. Even something basic like colour seems to be created by the brain and can only be reduced to colourless electromagnetic wave lengths scientifically speaking. Then there are the various illusions we have that pose questions about the veridicality of perception.

It is not clear what the world looks like not from our perspective or without us in it. Theories of atoms have continually changed so every model we create in science is usually adjusted so we don't appear to have some final physical substrate behind our perceptions to refer to.

The idea that there are lots of things going on in the unconscious seems irrelevant because if they are truly unconscious we can never know about them.
But we do have a huge range of knowledge and access to millions of articles on the internet and vivid experiences. I would not demote consciousness to an epiphenomenon.

Emergence in the universe is fundamental for the production of higher orders of complexity — punos

If we believe everything started in some basic simplistic state then we would need a theory of emergence.
But emergence can seem like magic if you don't have a solid causal, testable/predictable explanation from property (A) to Property (B)

from Wikipedia:

"Some thinkers question the plausibility of strong emergence as contravening our usual understanding of physics. Mark A. Bedau observes:

Although strong emergence is logically possible, it is uncomfortably like magic. How does an irreducible but supervenient downward causal power arise, since by definition it cannot be due to the aggregation of the micro-level potentialities? Such causal powers would be quite unlike anything within our scientific ken. This not only indicates how they will discomfort reasonable forms of materialism. Their mysteriousness will only heighten the traditional worry that emergence entails illegitimately getting something from nothing."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence

This is a long article and there is an even longer one on the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, so it's a contested issue.

All the emergent properties and phenomena that come out of the brain's activity is called mind. — punos

How are you defining an emergent property and its relationship to a substructure?

A large pile of sand has emergent properties but these are quite similar in some ways to a small pile of sand and with the same physical character of a grain of sand and not particularly mysterious.
But the kind of properties that thoughts have to be correlated with in neural properties have no similarities. My memories of my Grandmother tell me nothing about neural properties and can not be observed or correlated with neural properties.

People have advocated a Grandmother neuron where each person and or each aspect of a mental image is directly correlated with an individual neuron. I think these view of thought is to restrictive.

It would mean you abruptly forgot your grandmother when one neuron or a few were degraded which doesn't tend to happen but also I think for truth to be meaningful we need to be able to evaluate our thoughts so that we can under stand why 2+2 =4 and not just forced to believe 2+2=4 because we are in a particular brain state.

I think evaluating thoughts is where free will comes in.

As the first signals in life come through the brain certain initially random activations occur in the brain network directly correlated with what was received by the sense organs — punos

I am not sure what this means. Are you saying that sensory signals can preserve accurate and factual information about the world without interpretation?

I don't know what information means or if it has a strict definition but I think the meaning of information can invoke consciousness or not invoke consciousness. I think mental representations invoke consciousness which is an added layer of mystery and we are conscious of our thoughts quite clearly (which is enabling me to post them here lol)

I don't know why anything in the brain would become symbolic. For example if we see a foot print in the sand it usually tells us a human has walked by but we are using a non symbol as a symbol and interpreting it through consciousness. We are creating the notion of symbolism.

Some people have an (incoherent?) epiphenomenal view of consciousness were we have no free will and just observe. It would beg the question of why we would be conscious if we could function as automatons.

Conditions affecting conscious perceptions do indicate we need consciousness such as how people that don't experience pain injure themselves. That to me proves that we need to freely act on stimulus and need to be consciously aware of it.

Has anyone defined what a thought is and or its relationship to the brain?

You can evaluate your thoughts. You have a set of thoughts like propositions and consider which one you are satisfied with.

Choice is not instantaneous.

I believe it is wrong to hit children. I hear other opinons over time on the subject and weigh up the different viewpoints and decide what I now believe which may or may not be my original belief.

A lot of these free will debates simply mischaracterise the phenomenon especially the issue of how choices are made.

I can book a holiday a year in advance and change my plans anytime over the year. I am not constrained any previous thought or decision I have had. I am not forced to go on the holiday I booked a year in advance.

I think choosing to have children is a denial of causality.

I don't think parents believe they are responsible for the things they are causing.

Do you think we can control our thoughts and behaviour?
What kind and degree of risk-taking? — Amity

I don't know to what extent we can control thoughts and behaviour? When I was studying the "no free will" position was most popular. I defend free will with constraints of circumstance personally.

How can we know that we are in control? Freudians would say we need extensive psychoanalysis to uncover our motivations.

Taking a risk would be doing something that is risky for you in terms of the unknown and consequences. Training for a profession is taking a risk. Some people regret the career they end up in and feel stuck. Sometimes making a random decision can have really positive of unforeseen positive consequences.

Some people advocating taking lots of risks and seeking out new opportunities all the time.

On the other hand some people believe we already know what we want and would automatically find our path in if it weren't for obstacles. I had a strong preference for music and have sung in choirs, joined an amateur orchestra and collect sheet music etc. I was just drawn to do this despite my parents not liking it. In this sense we might know what's best for us somehow.

I think the things we cannot change are relativist. The reasons we can't change them are situational and the claim we can't change them can be tactical.
— Andrew4Handel

What do you mean by 'relativist'? — Amity

It can depend on your perspective and knowledge base.

In a child abuse/neglect scenario The child from his or her position likely has less knowledge of resources than an adult but this can also apply to some adults. So they have to make decisions from their perspective and what they know.

But a child welfare expert, a social worker or someone with legal knowledge on child protection issues is in the position to make more decisions and more informed decisions and intervene. We wouldn't expect the social services to be stoical.

But in relation to the wider topic every decision can only be made with limited knowledge. Nowadays with the internet we have a huge amount of knowledge hence the dilemma in my opening post. More knowledge can bring greater responsibility, less knowledge and power can shift responsibility for those with greater knowledge and power.

There is an emotional constraint as well because decisions can have emotional and mental well being impacts where the consequences of decision would seem to painful.

Isn't that view in conflict with the understanding that animals act more on instinct than humans do? Maybe not. Maybe we could say that animals act more on instinct, so they have less choice, therefore are more reactive to outside forces. — T Clark

Behaviourism had a model based on instincts learned by stimuli responses. It was undermined by studies of rat behaviour which suggested they had mental maps as they performed short cuts in mazes and led to the cognitive revolution.

It is a big topic in psychology. Some biologists think all organisms behaviours can be described without reference to volition or perception and some even apply that to humans where our responses are caused by neuronal or biochemical reactions to stimuli.

But these reductive explanations become incoherent because at some stage you have to refer to symbolic representations such as in the language we are using here. Science it self relies on symbols. So that is a criticism of the naturalistic, physicalist, materialist world view.

Agnes Callard and Myisha Cherry both defend anger as a motivator.

I am just listening to this Agnes Callard discussion:



Agnes wrote a paper called "The Reason to Be Angry Forever" which I also need to reread.

Myisha defends rage on Philosophy bites and elsewhere.

https://podtail.com/en/podcast/philosophy-bites/myisha-cherry-on-rage/

The classic question is are emotions rational and which emotion should guide action?

Do people get anger for no reason or is there always a good reason for anger. Are emotions caused by judgements? Should emotions and judgements be divorced?

Psychoanalysts would proper look for the unconscious roots of emotions.

Therefore, we should learn to lean in and embrace those that we do have control over. — Stoicism

That is the issue I am raising here I suppose.

We don't know whether we have control or not and cannot predict outcomes so we are in a kind of Wild West of decision making. How does stoicism square with risk taking?

Therefore, we should learn to lean in and embrace those that we do have control over. We should check our judgments and actions, journal daily, and investigate what we’re doing, asking penetrating questions to get to the bottom of what we’re thinking and the direction we’re attempting to move our lives into. We have far more control over these aspects of our lives than most think, and need we must learn to embrace them. Too often we create excuses for why something does or does not work out in our favor when if we were to investigate it, we could see we may have had more power over the situation than we realized and just did not take the necessary steps to advantage ourselves. — Stoicism

This amounts to self blame.

People are aware they cannot have much control and this develop justified apathy. This is apathy caused by other peoples unreasonableness and can lead to learned helplessness.

I had abusive parents. I was stoical about that. I was bullied a lot as a child especially in school. I was stoical about that. Grew up in a religious cult. Was stoical about that.

I have always reflected intensely on my own thoughts and conduct it is the people affecting your well being that should be doing the reflecting. I should have been more proactive as a child but I couldn't see any options.

Like I sad in favour os psychoanalysing stoicism I think it is motivate by the person who advocates own desires.

Are the stop Oil Protestors being stoical or are they causing disruption in other peoples lives to save us all from destroying out environs and the future of peoples offspring?

I think the things we cannot change are relativist. The reasons we can't change them are situational and the claim we can't change them can be tactical.

Your choice of top web search definition is a result of typing in 'What is stoicism?'.
From the 2 dictionary definitions, you chose the first 'stoicism' with a small 's'.
A case of cherry-picking. You know that. — Amity

No it is not. I stated which definition of stoicism I was referring to. I assume the common used and philosophy are somewhat related however.

I found this "The Stoic Conception of Fate Josiah B. Gould"

"Aristotle maintains in his Nicomachean ethics that no one deliberates about things which cannot be otherwise."

Who decides that things cannot be otherwise? As I suggested before

"A privileged person telling a disenfranchised person to be stoical is way of preserving the power imbalance. The people requiring the most stoicism are the most disenfranchised and least fortunate."

I feel that we are in a nihilistic position where we can't can justify any of our actions by reference to rules, objectivity or teleology. — Andrew4Handel

This was my main point.

Making choices without out any recourse to truth.

The Hitler example was an ad aburdum of the unforeseen consequence of an action. And in that sense we have to predict the future before we act and make assumption about the results of our choices. On forming some beliefs about future outcomes we can decide to act.

this could be a quick process where I come to believe I l refer apples to oranges and quickly choose an apple based on prior taste experiences.

But I believe with out recourse to facts of the matter about what we should do we could be said to acting on faith, faith in the validity of our beliefs and ethical stances but can they ever be validated? It can make our situation seem absurd.

Animals know what to do to live without some outside force motivating them. — T Clark

I didn't notice this claim before.

Isn't the environment the outside force motivating animals?

I tend to view animals as more driven by outside forces than us. Once we have food and shelter we can then live the life of the mind so to speak. That has been given as a reason by some for poor mental health such as too much introspection and to little interacting with our natural instincts.

I think the inner outer distinction is complex because theories of perception can make it so that we live solely in our head with mental representations of an external world that are misleading.

Misleading perceptions and false beliefs can be a source of motivation. Evolutionary theorists/psychologists have to defend the idea that we have evolved accurate representations of the world to preserve truth claims.

I wonder if you watched the TED Video and have any thoughts. — Amity

Barry Schwartz seems to be considering different types of choice to me and advocating reducing exposure to choice to create less stress. And this seems to be in relation to aspirational or capitalist choices. I think the communist tried his solution.

I think knowledge creates choice and that you cannot unlearn what you know. We are never going to be in a situation of relative ignorance again especially after having a high level of education.

My issue was of the way that choices of any nature have no way to be resolved. In religion issues are resolved by a gods commandment. The undermining of meaning is when you cannot replace the alleged Authority and purpose of God.

Religion still seems to benefit peoples mental health by giving them a degree of reassurance, axioms or structures and something bigger than themselves. The existential crisis comes I think from overburdening the individual with the onus to make their own rules and meaning.

If you think a deity is in control then you can content yourself with pottering away at whatever and achieving a small goal. If you follow a religions morality then there are no moral questions.

Tell me more about how you think modern stoicism is commonly applied as a psychological tool. — Amity

I think Cognitive behavioural therapy is an off shoot of stoicism. Training people to cope rather than resist or examine.

It can reframe reasonable responses to trauma as pathological. It is using a biased notion of reason to undermine ones own instinctual reason. I don't people would develop trauma for irrational reasons.

That was the top web search definition.

I would apply the psychoanalytic critique to stoicism.

I believe people have motivated beliefs and ideologies. Who is the stoic? Why are they stoical?

A privileged person telling a disenfranchised person to be stoical is way of preserving the power imbalance. The people requiring the most stoicism are the most disenfranchised and least fortunate.

Outside of this critique I think stoicism can be a defense mechanism against anxiety. Away to not confront fears or our existential dilemma by limiting exposure to the emotional ramifications of our situation.
In one of her books Germaine Greer talks about an elderly woman was sedated after she was running up and down a ward afraid of dying.

Was this for the woman's benefit or for the observers benefit?

And Finally I think stoicism is just a cover for stifling dissent and rational criticism.
— Andrew4Handel

Really? How did you come to that conclusion?
But perhaps that is for another thread... — Amity

I am judging by the way stoicism is applied. I am not referring to the whole philosophical school but the common usage as a psychological tool.

I am referring to the definition "the endurance of pain or hardship without the display of feelings and without complaint."

On Quora a while back I asked "How does Physics describe volitional motion?" I have yet to have a response.

This relates to this issue. If we are governed by physical laws how do they cause us to chose (or force us to act if you don't believe in free will?

We know we chose and make complex movements like typing on the computer or painting an elaborate art work.

Is this governed by conscious control as it seems? How is consciousness able to move our bodies so we can act? Are there laws governing our choices.#

In psychology there various perspectives Humanism is based on Existentialism and puts humans at the centre of decision making and with a so called existential freedom. Two other perspectives the Psychoanalytic and the cognitive think the unconscious is the main actor and we are more driven by either hidden psychological influences or automatic cognitive processes.

Before I go, Andrew4Handel - How long have you been presenting the same questions on discussion forums? You remind me of someone, also called Andrew, from an OU course whose situation was as near yours as to be your twin brother. That was quite some time ago. — Amity

That was probably me.

Here are some of the many issues I think are relevant in decision making.

1. Upbringing influences the kind of choices we can or do make.
2. Religious belief or atheism guides decision making
3. Physical disability effects decision making
4. Cognitive issues like Autism and ADHD, OCD, brain damage etc impact decisions
5. Decision often effect others from mild to major effects
6. Ignorance of the law is not an excuse. Consequences of actions don't care about motive.
7. there is a vast amount of information for sentient humans to process and that our brains do process.
8. Decisions are made at the level of consciousness and also with unconscious influences
9. Defence mechanism will influence choice justification.
10. At least one or more persons will disagree with your choices
11. We may or may not have free will and may never know.
123. Inaction and stoicism has consequences.

I come at this and a lot of issues from an antinatalist (procreation skeptic) position which I see as having relevance on a lot of issues.

I think we are in an existential position with existential dilemmas. Up to a million people a year commit suicide and say no to more life.
We seem to be the only species that can do this and the only species that can ask any questions including philosophical and existential ones like "why am I here?" and "what is it all about?" and we are making decisions from a position of that level of awareness about our existence.

But this situation is created by parents choosing to create new profound sentient individuals. This was my first post topic ever on the old philosophy forums. My existential dilemmas are not self created.

So the first constraints on our choices come from our parents based on the country and culture they give birth in and the motives they have. My parents brought me up in a religious cult and spent my whole childhood indoctrinating me so obviously that is an ineradicable part of my later decision making processes.

When I go to the supermarket and chose what to buy for dinner that seems trivial but is is just another choice imposed on me because my parents created me and they didn't create me by accident or like an automaton like some animals might but with desires and stated goals.

I attempted suicide twice when I was younger by overdosing. I am not suicidal now but that was due to the burdens placed upon me then. Parents can be giving their children serious burdens. So I don't see anything trivial or mundane or inevitable about the human situation and I don't treat us like just another animal governed by biology or a giant lumbering gene robot as Richard Dawkins described us once.

I think these narratives hide the fact that we are here through our parents explicit choice often and it is not a neutral non ideological choice. And in that vein that I will elaborate on in next post we are effected sometimes profoundly by other peoples choice including our parents. And Finally I think stoicism is just a cover for stifling dissent and rational criticism.