This is a crucial point for me, there are no supernatural scapegoats available, there never has been and there never will be. Humans must own evil and only by fully understanding why humans do what they do, can we successfully combat evil, in all the ways humans demonstrate it. — universeness

You and I agree that evil, to the extent it exists at all, is human. Maybe that's the difference between us - I don't believe there is such a thing. Evil is just something we call the worst human behavior. I've never seen it as a religious thing.

the model of voluntarily exchange for such services has been in effect since time immemorial. — NOS4A2

Name an effective comprehensive implementation of such a model. There hasn't ever been one in any but the smallest societies, if then. It's just another anarchist pipe dream.

Is this because childhood is commonly viewed as a state of innocence and therefore unaccountability? If you cannot be held responsible for your actions you cannot have done wrong or right? — Benj96

Not exactly. For me, at the heart of all moral questions is the need to protect the vulnerable. Beyond that, I think the purpose of human society is to raise and protect children. Why else go to all this trouble?

I just can’t see how man in his government form is the only one capable of providing or funding such services. — NOS4A2

And I can't see how it can be otherwise.

Who do you propose would:

• Provide schooling
• Build roads
• Protect property rights
• Fund fire departments
• Enforce contracts
• Protect the vulnerable
• Provide a reliable medium of exchange
• ....

Perhaps much of this could be addressed voluntarily in a simple, isolated agrarian society, but I find it hard to imagine it could in one like what we have now.

I personally do define evil as a purely human measure/judgement of behaviour. — universeness

I agree. I think the idea of evil is generally not a useful one. It often leads to responses that are not effective in addressing the behavior in question. E.g. revenge rather than prevention and deterrence. "Evildoers" are human. If you want to stop them, you have to understand that.

That being said, the worst thing a person can do is hurt a child.

The claim is that ‘cause’ refers to a relationship between the WORD for the cause and the effect rather than between the cause and effect itself. — invizzy

Seems like I didn't understand the distinction you were trying to make. To be honest, I still don't. I don't think we need to go any further.

It seems most people who write about causation take causation to be ‘in the world’ in some way, as some sort of force or a relationship (e.g. perhaps regularity as per Hume) between things in the world or something like that. I think probability raising would be covered by this seeing as we’re talking about probabilities of things in the world.

What are the alternatives?

Perhaps causation is a relationship between a WORD for a thing in the world and the FACT of another thing in the world. — invizzy

Two lines of thought.

First, you write about a kind of linguistic creation of causation as a phenomenon that somehow doesn't "really" exist. I understand what you're saying, but I think it's true of many, maybe most phenomena. The physical process I usually think of is force, which is really just a relationship between mass and movement. Speed is just a relationship between distance and time.

Second, the idea that causation is not real, or more accurately is not a useful way of thinking about interactions between phenomena, is not a new one. Bertrand Russell wrote an essay - "On Causation" - in 1912 that claimed it was no longer needed. We've had discussions on that several times on the forum.

I've always liked "The Song of Hiawatha" by Wordsworth. A link:

https://www.hwlongfellow.org/poems_poem.php?pid=288

The poem is capital "R" Romantic - it tells the legend of a hero in the golden age of his People - and small "r" romantic - it tells the story of the love between a man and a woman. The meter is trochaic tetrameter - four metric feet of two syllables with emphasis on the first.

By the shore of Gitche Gumee,
By the shining Big-Sea-Water,
At the doorway of his wigwam,
In the pleasant Summer morning,
Hiawatha stood and waited.

It's a very long poem and I guess that sing-songy rhythm could be tiresome to some, but I like the way it pushes the story along and draws me into the poem. My favorite section is the verse "Picture Writing" about how Hiawatha invented writing.

"Face to face we speak together,
But we cannot speak when absent,
Cannot send our voices from us
To the friends that dwell afar off;
Cannot send a secret message,
But the bearer learns our secret,
May pervert it, may betray it,
May reveal it unto others."
Thus said Hiawatha, walking
In the solitary forest,
Pondering, musing in the forest,
On the welfare of his people.
From his pouch he took his colors,
Took his paints of different colors,
On the smooth bark of a birch-tree
Painted many shapes and figures,
Wonderful and mystic figures,
And each figure had a meaning,
Each some word or thought suggested.

My favorite part of this verse:

Nor forgotten was the Love-Song,
The most subtle of all medicines,
The most potent spell of magic,
Dangerous more than war or hunting!
Thus the Love-Song was recorded,
Symbol and interpretation.
First a human figure standing,
Painted in the brightest scarlet;
'T is the lover, the musician,
And the meaning is, "My painting
Makes me powerful over others."
Then the figure seated, singing,
Playing on a drum of magic,
And the interpretation, "Listen!
'T is my voice you hear, my singing!"
Then the same red figure seated
In the shelter of a wigwam,
And the meaning of the symbol,
"I will come and sit beside you
In the mystery of my passion!"
Then two figures, man and woman,
Standing hand in hand together
With their hands so clasped together
That they seemed in one united,
And the words thus represented
Are, "I see your heart within you,
And your cheeks are red with blushes!"
Next the maiden on an island,
In the centre of an island;
And the song this shape suggested
Was, "Though you were at a distance,
Were upon some far-off island,
Such the spell I cast upon you,
Such the magic power of passion,
I could straightway draw you to me!"
Then the figure of the maiden
Sleeping, and the lover near her,
Whispering to her in her slumbers,
Saying, "Though you were far from me
In the land of Sleep and Silence,
Still the voice of love would reach you!"
And the last of all the figures
Was a heart within a circle,
Drawn within a magic circle;
And the image had this meaning:
"Naked lies your heart before me,
To your naked heart I whisper!

Talking of poems about poems--and apologies to Moliere if this is off-topic--I recently read the "The Thought Fox" by Ted Hughes. It's a poem about writing poems, or about creativity, and foxes:

I imagine this midnight moment's forest:
Something else is alive
Beside the clock's loneliness
And this blank page where my fingers move.

Through the window I see no star:
Something more near
Though deeper within darkness
Is entering the loneliness:

Cold, delicately as the dark snow
A fox's nose touches twig, leaf;
Two eyes serve a movement, that now
And again now, and now, and now

Sets neat prints into the snow
Between trees, and warily a lame
Shadow lags by stump and in hollow
Of a body that is bold to come

Across clearings, an eye,
A widening deepening greenness,
Brilliantly, concentratedly,
Coming about its own business

Till, with a sudden sharp hot stink of fox
It enters the dark hole of the head.
The window is starless still; the clock ticks,
The page is printed. — Jamal

I like poems with vivid visual imagery, and this one certainly has that. I also really like foxes. We had a pair in our back yard. They kept the groundhogs away and their kits rolled and play-fought back by our garden.

I also like the poets self-awareness about his writing process. Watching his ideas sneaking closer and closer. It's a different way of thinking than mine. Especially now that I'm retired I can wait for inspiration. I don't have to work to coax my words out into the open.

I'd forgotten about it but searched there for a memorable poem posted by tim wood': — Amity

Another poem of his I like, for a certain visceral vividness, that's longer, is Home Burial, here.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/53086/home-burial — tim wood

I just reread "Home Burial." It had been a long time. I love the way Frost writes about men and women. I think of "West Running Brook" and "The Death of the Hired Hand." I don't know anyone who does it better.

This thread is excellent. — Amity

Yes. Thanks to @Moliere for starting it.

tim seems to have taken a lengthy break...for whatever reason. — Amity

Tim told me he is bowing out of the forum. There's always a chance he will rejoin us.

Well, Yeah, that's fleeing poverty and misery in their home countries. — Xanatos

So, if I move from Boston to Cleveland, where my brother lives, to see if I can get a better job, I am fleeing poverty and misery.

I agree with you. I love the forum. I appreciate your comment.

As I've written to you previously, your English is good. You shouldn't be shy because of that. On the other hand, if you just want to read and not participate, that's fine.

Interestingly, while many would agree with these principles and endorse legislating to protect these rights for human beings, they seem far less concerned with the rights of other species. While the UN can observe that "disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind", I would say the same in regard to the treatment of other species. — Graeme M

Your seeming disregard for the difference between humans and other animals from a moral point of view makes your argument hard to take seriously.

This is quoted text I've posted before. It's from R.G. Collingwood's "The Principles of Art." I have an affinity for Collingwood's way of seeing things. His writing says things I've been thinking better than I can say them myself.

What is meant by saying that the painter ‘records’ in his picture the experience which he had in painting it? With this question we come to the subject of the audience, for the audience consists of anybody and everybody to whom such records are significant.

It means that the picture, when seen by some one else or by the painter himself subsequently, produces in him (we need not ask how) sensuous-emotional or psychical experiences which, when raised from impressions to ideas by the activity of the spectator’s consciousness, are transmuted into a total imaginative experience identical with that of the painter. This experience of the spectator’s does not repeat the comparatively poor experience of a person who merely looks at the subject; it repeats the richer and more highly organized experience of a person who has not only looked at it but has painted it as well.

This was lovely to read. It's the exact sort of thing I'm looking for. Meiner Deutsch ist Kerput ;) -- but I remembered enough to get the phonic structure out of it, and it was nice to be able to read two renditions of lines for the purpose of preserving the meaning found in the original language -- the adjectives you use, I get exactly what you mean when you say them, though they are often physical metaphors: a line being "heavy", or debating between two translations on the basis of the way they "feel" in each language. That's exactly what I'm after. — Moliere

I took one year of German more than 50 years ago. Back in 2014, my brother and I went to Europe and I refreshed my memory so I could use it when we went over. I love the language. I feel at home in it, even though I am very far from fluent. The gutturals just feel right in the back of my throat, like a mildly bitter IPA.

There's an imaginative poetic subtlety involved in Taoism that can't be readily described - hence the The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao I think that's what you've been getting at. — Tom Storm

It's true that I tend to talk about the Tao Te Ching with the same kind of language I do about poetry. I think that's why Lao Tzu's poetic language works so well. For me, both poetry and the Tao Te Ching are about the experience.

Do you deny that developing countries are, on average, poorer, more miserable, and more oppressive than developed countries are, with the difference between them being quite stark in some cases? — Xanatos

I think people try to come to this country for economic opportunity. They think they will be better off here, and it seems reasonable to think they may be right. That's not the same as what you wrote.

So whatever I said about the translation above wasn't actually meant to denigrate the translation. — Dawnstorm

I've reread what you wrote about your translation. I don't think I expressed my enthusiasm enough in my first response. I would love to hear any more you have to offer if we have any more German poems.

How does this play out in your appreciation of the Tao Te Ching? — Tom Storm

I was looking at my previous response to your question:

For me, it's a circular process. Iterative. Without any real feeling I'm trying to get anything right. I try not to try too hard. — T Clark

I'm afraid I somehow gave the impression I have some deep insight into the Tao Te Ching. I don't believe that at all. Lao Tzu was clear that knowledge was not the way to follow the Tao. Maybe that's why I like Taoism so much - it's a lazy man's philosophy. I doubt many would agree with that.

How does this play out in your appreciation of the Tao Te Ching? — Tom Storm

I've read lots of translations. When I'm fiddling around with a verse I'll usually read four or five. I see each one as looking at the text from a slightly different angle. I try to look at them all impressionistically to try to build up an understanding.

Also, I come at it from the other side. I think Lao Tzu is trying to describe an experience, help us share it with him. If I start with an idea of what that experience is like, I can try to work back to the meaning of the text. For me, it's a circular process. Iterative. Without any real feeling I'm trying to get anything right. I try not to try too hard.

So whatever I said about the translation above wasn't actually meant to denigrate the translation. — Dawnstorm

I thought your comments were interesting. I didn't think you were denigrating the the translation. It's something I've often wondered about.

The translation is quite a nice poem in its own right, and I'd recognise the original in it, but I get different things out of both of them. — Dawnstorm

It has always struck me that when I read a translation, I'm reading something new, not the original. It seems like translating a novel, story, or poem would be harder than writing it in the first place.

I loved it, but I gather that several other intelligent readers do indeed find it tedious and obvious. — Jamal

Got it from the library electronically. What a wonderful world we live in.

Incidentally, I posted something about it in the Shoutbox a few hours ago. It’s also relevant to your discussions of literary interpretation. — Jamal

Yes, I saw that. That's why I asked. Thanks.

Italo Calvino, If on a Winter's Night a Traveller — Jamal

From the Wikipedia description, this sounds all post-modernist and self-referential and stuff. It seems like it might be fun and funny, but I could also see it might be tedious and obvious. From your emojis it seems like it's not that.

BY RAINER MARIA RILKE
TRANSLATED BY MARY KINZIE

After the summer's yield, Lord, it is time
to let your shadow lengthen on the sundials
and in the pastures let the rough winds fly.

As for the final fruits, coax them to roundness.
Direct on them two days of warmer light
to hale them golden toward their term, and harry
the last few drops of sweetness through the wine.

Whoever's homeless now, will build no shelter;
who lives alone will live indefinitely so,
waking up to read a little, draft long letters,
and, along the city's avenues,
fitfully wander, when the wild leaves loosen. — Tom Storm

As I wrote previously, I like this poem. The first two stanzas are lush and evocative... sensual, especially the second. There is particular light in the fall, the long shadows. There are wild grapes in my front yard that give off a very strong sweet smell in fall, so "the last few drops of sweetness through the wine" means something specific to me. It's funny, although there is this sensuality, I also get a feeling of rushing. Let's go, let's go. Snap it up. Closing time.

The third stanza feels like it could be a separate poem. The first two lines are dark, bleak. I guess the whole stanza is supposed to be, but I got a different feeling. "Waking up to read a little, draft long letters..." doesn't sound so bad to me. My posts here are my long letters. I don't mind being alone. I like winter, even "fitfully wandering." I picture a small apartment, warm, lit by a single lamp next to a comfortable chair. I'm sure that wasn't what the poet had in mind.

Pallet cleanser? — Tom Storm

I do like this poem. I'm thinking about my response.

Billy Collins, Poet Laureate, says this about poetry and meaning:

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means. — Bitter Crank

@Bitter Crank - I hope you don't mind me stealing your post for this different thread.

I see it retains its power to provoke and rankle. — Tom Storm

Sure, anti-natalism always makes me bare my teeth. But this is a poetry discussion. As I noted, there is no reason for Larkin's thoughts to be a poem.

I don't intend any of this as a criticism of you.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf. — Tom Storm

Thinking more, I kind of liked, but ignored this image - misery depositing on top of misery like sediment on the continental shelf. Then as I thought about it I changed my mind. The continental shelf is part of the continent. It doesn't form from sediment. Perhaps it should have read:

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a delta deposit.

This Be The Verse

By Philip Larkin

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself. — Tom Storm

This shares the sour distaste for humanity that all anti-natalist polemics do. Added to that is the smug, self-congratulatory, vulgar language. The author clearly thinks it's funny. Lord, maybe he thinks it's witty.

As for the poetry, why? I see no poetic purpose in these verses. Nothing beyond than that the person spouting off happens to be a poet. Perhaps it's the old hammer seeing everything as a nail thing. Perhaps he thinks his renown as a poet will add heft to his argument.

POETS’ CORNER
there’s lots of poets
round our way,
can’t move for ’em
(though I should like to).
not so handy
should there be a fire,
a traffic accident,
or an unexpected
celery stick-up job
at the wholefood store,
but should your
iambic pentameter
get broke
and need mendin’
these folk
are the ones
to send in.

I'm not sure I like this one. It's almost saying that poets are useless and can't do anything else other than write and theorise about poetry...or that firemen would rather pick up a hose and have no nose for anything else. — Amity

I read this poem as ironic and self-deprecatory. I hear it as the imagined voice of a country resident complaining about the influx of all those useless artsy types from the city. That includes Bilson who, after all, is a poet.

This is a fascinating 2003 interview with 'Anne Gregory', then Anne de Winton in her mid-80's: — Amity

Wonderful. Thank you.

Desirable traits for people is a much deeper question. Should the state try to engineer people? If so, what traits should be re-enforced and what traits should be discouraged? Much tougher questions. — Art48

Yes. I agree.

In trying to pose the question I was careful of the wording. Rather than using happy I chose satisfied. The main reason I pose this question is to elicit the views on the material world and ownership and possession. Of course our possessions can be many and varied but this is physical possessions we own. — David S

I'll describe some of the possessions that matter to me:

• A New England Patriots hoodie my younger son gave me when he was 15. I don't wear hoodies much, but I keep this in my car for when I need extra cover. Whenever I put it on I feel good remembering he gave it to me.
• A hardcopy of the Oxford Dictionary of the American Language given to me by my daughter. I told her it was the best gift I ever got, and that's still true, even though I don't use it anymore.
• A small orange woven rug. I am strongly attracted to orange things. This was a rug I gave my wife. She didn't like it, so now it's mine. It makes me feel good every time I see it.
• Silverplate - Roger's Brothers "Oval Thread" pattern. I found a fork with this pattern in an old box of silverware. I looked for the pattern on line and then started buying it when I found it on Ebay or Etsy. I've given sets to all my children. I feel pleasure whenever I use these. I think they're beautiful and they feel good in my hand.
• The same for W.S. George petalware plates and bowls. They're thinner than most chinaware, but still have some heft.
• When someone asks me what I want for Christmas, I usually say "something orange." I have a large bowl and a pepper mill I got from my younger son. Both are orange and both are beautiful. I feel good whenever I use them.
• I used to wear Aloha shirts a lot, although I don't so often now. I like the way they look. I like the way rayon fabric feels as it drapes over my shoulders.
• I like glassware in general. It always amazes me how inexpensive beautiful glassware can be. I like the feel of a glass in my hand. The way it looks. I generally like thin glass, delicate but with some weight.
• I have a pair of silk long underwear I only wear about once a year. I just used them this past weekend. It always amazes me how well they help me keep warm under my clothes. They're very light and thin but they work wonderfully. I'm a hairy guy, so they also help keep heavy clothes from pulling and binding on my skin.

I could go on but I guess that's enough.

Love Lyle Lovett. Love that song. But maybe this one is a little closer to my own attitude towards what I own. Actually, it's exactly how I feel about the things I own.



When I went looking for this, I was surprised to find out Lovett didn't write it, Guy Clark did. Love Guy Clark too.

Who is Anne Gregory? Someone Yeats cares for. He speaks to her and there is a conversation about love and its conditions. — Amity

Turns out she is the granddaughter of a good friend of Yeat's, so I think it's likely he does care for her and knows her fairly well.

The Englishness of a fair maiden. — Amity

Irish, if that makes any difference.

'Ramparts' suggest an external barrier, defence or gateway.
'At your ear' - a veil hanging down or styled as Princess Leia in 'Star Wars'? — Amity

I wondered about this too.

Next up, the view of traditional religion. Only God loves you for who you are. The Bible tells us so. — Amity

I see this last, religious, section of the poem as ironic. I see the whole poem as lighthearted.

One thing about the poem I wasn't sure how to read was "yellow hair". "Honey coloured" is familiar. "blond(e)" would have been, too. Golden, flaxen, wheat... I'm not sure I've ever come across the simple "yellow" before. — Dawnstorm

You made me realize I really like the "yellow hair." It just feels right. Now I'm trying to figure out why. I wonder if it's just the way it sounds, flows. Or maybe it's your idea about its mundanity - you can overlook yellow but not gold. I don't know.

"ramparts" aren't exactly an obvious comparison to hair, and ramparts aren't exactly renowned for their beauty, — Dawnstorm

Now I also realize I should have thought more about "ramparts" too. What does it mean here. Ramparts are fortifications. Meant to keep people out. Does that mean that the hair, her beauty, is something to be fought for? That it's daunting? Does it mean the hair is piled up on top of her head? Maybe it's a rampart because nobody can get past it. I actually like that a bit.