Do you think there is a man who isn't concerned about his masculinity? — unenlightened

Yep. Never given a crap. Which apparently is quite masculine, so...

If I was tied to five other people it would really matter that we agreed on which direction to walk (I might get injured if we don't all agree), but none of us would consider the chosen direction to be objectively 'right', we might as easily have tossed a coin for it. — Isaac

I like this metaphor, not least for having a Beckettian vibe. It's interesting to think through the possible configurations of individuals and how they'd handle the situation. It seems clear enough to me that there's not always a right answer, and that the situation will play out according to the particular configuration of individuals.

However, the question "What is your reason for living?" is misleading, insofar as living is the default, and as such, there's no specific personal reason for it. — baker

There's that too :up:

This isn't merely about competing desires. It's about being sure that one is doing the right thing, the ethical, moral thing. — baker

What you're describing is a competing desire: a desire to be moral or, hopefully, to act upon a moral impulse.

1. Nature
2. Depends what you're talking about. "Human beings can exist" doesn't depend on anything afaik. Other facts, like the distance to the Sun, are certainly relative.
3. Relative, but universally biased.
4a. Other apes.
4b. Evolution.
4c. To our graves.

The same as people being against Minaret songs but ok with church bells. — Christoffer

I'm not aware of anyone having a problem with call to prayer, except when it's through loudspeakers at sweet FA o'clock in communities where people have to work, then it's annoying, in the same way church bells are annoying at 4 am (which is why they don't typically ring at that time).

Seems a quintessential 'Don't be a dick about it' issue.

An interesting bit of debate going on here. I think that the idea of 'cleansing' of prejudice is a bit problematic as a metaphor. It reminds me too much of the whole racist of the idea of ethnic cleansing. It also conjures up images of antibacterial gel and disinfectant, as if being applied to our thoughts and feelings. — Jack Cummins

Yes, this is why I tried to cast it in terms of self-cleansing, which is somewhat more positive. I love a nice, long bath, me.

I would suggest that what is important is that prejudices, preferences and dislikes are brought out into the open for discussion. Perhaps this is what is really needed for the raising of consciousness. — Jack Cummins

Yes but, as you say, prejudiced people don't typically observe their own prejudices and those that do are probably not very prejudiced at all. There's something of a cognitive dissonance with very prejudiced people, hence the much-ridiculed racism prefix: " I'm not a racist, but..." As someone mentioned on another thread, there's a downside to trying to bring prejudice out in the open. Much of the PC-bashing, cancel-culture--bemoaning, identity-politician--accusing, first-amendment--waving sentiments we see even here are really just statements that people should be allowed to express their prejudices without those prejudices being named. "I'm not a racist, but..." has become itself an entire counter-counter culture, and a huge one.

Bringing prejudices out into the open is recast as a prejudice, which devolves into each side of an argument accusing the other of prejudice. It's still better that it's out in the open, but it doesn't seem a promising route out.

Yes, I think the US is quite proud of its European heritage and seem to even identity themselves as Polish, Irish, Italian, German, etc. Despite having been invaded a lot by Europeans to the point that we're all mongrels of Celtic, Italian, Scandinavian and French heritage, we Brits are much more xenophobic about white people.

Like America, though, people here are probably the most hostile to the groups that are most incoming, which I guess for you is Mexicans and for us is Poles, Indians and Pakistanis. The Polish influx was very sudden and very large, and the UK has something of a village mentality.

I personally think the immigration issue is very separable from xenophobia. While I like living in a multicultural country (not least for the cuisine; restaurants were so shit when I was a child), I get that not everyone does, and I'm happy to bow to the consensus. But I think for most people in the UK, immigration is an ethnic issue interpreted as an existential one, the British way of life and British ethnic (no such thing) dominance seen as under threat. One prejudice -- nationalism -- begets another: xenophobia. Like in the US, there's a strong correlation between nationalism and anti-immigration. As a result, there's a very anti-nationalist subculture too, which I guess I belong to, in which, for instance, the English flag has become something of a new twist on the Nazi swastika.

I'd like to see immigration become a purely practical concern and not an expression of primacy, but it's hard to imagine, and so, as an equally pragmatic concern, I think we do have to take into account people's feelings about immigration when setting policy. I think good intentions might be the undoing of the EU in the end.

Here's a thing to keep in mind: it's the laws of particular countries that are wrong, not the clothing they command.

Sometimes this gets mixed up. — Banno

Well said, but just to be more clear, it's not just laws but cultures, especially patriarchal cultures, especially those that back up their unofficial laws with misogynistic violence.

There are plenty of countries like Indonesia that wear headdress without violent enforcement, where it is not only a matter of tradition but of fashion, and I'm sure that when we see those none of us are remotely perturbed.

We are the only ones able to consciously absorb information from the Universe and transform and/or shape it in any way we want. — Gus Lamarch

Unshown.

What I say is that the individual capacity of the human being to consciously experience existence makes the "existential" center of the Universe, "Humanity" - the individual - the Ego - -. — Gus Lamarch

Are you just verbally mangling the already stated idea that man is the centre of their existence? Jesus Christ.

"You're not even trying" — Gus Lamarch

You might be simultaneously trying too little (to make a salient point) and trying too hard (to seem like you are). What a waste of time.

As in "It cannot experience itself".

You're not even trying. — Gus Lamarch

That sentence has quite a different meaning to the one you originally wrote. Perhaps if you tried to achieve the bare minimum, I wouldn't have to try so hard to decipher bad writing.

Anyway...

"I" am the center of the Universe. — Gus Lamarch

still doesn't follow, and repeating it prepended with "undoubtedly" doesn't make it any better.

That is why we can conclude no two objects can occupy the same space at the same time. — Don Wade

I feel that probably isn't why, as shown in the example of my nose which is visible, part of me and therefore occupying the same location as part of me. I also think that early students of apples would probably have figured out that the seeds are part of the apple.

The idea that we can be cleansed of our biases, prejudices, dispositions, preference, et cetera is a non-starter. Frankly, I don't want anyone fumigating my mind for any reason. — Bitter Crank

One can be "cleansed" of our prejudices just by maximising our experiences; it doesn't require a nefarious individual reprogramming us. It's very difficult to be racist and have friends of different ethnicity, and if you're open to it, you'll find people you like of different ethnicities. It's very difficult to be misogynistic and friends with women. Point being, prejudices have to be cultivated by actively sealing off the subjects of your prejudice.

As you say yourself, "knowing" people of different ethnicities is apt to reduce prejudice, since it's difficult to be prejudiced against someone and "know" or even know them.

Like you say, it's a feedback loop.

Yes, my nose is part of me and occupies some of the same space as the whole of me, since the whole of me includes my nose. That's implicit in it being a part. What you've got here is a case of double counting: a part (the seed) plus the whole (the apple including all of its seeds).

The statement I believe I can make is: the seeds of the apple are occupying some of the same space as the apple itself. — Don Wade

There are gaps in the middle of the apple for the seeds to occupy. That ain't a coincidence.

What I do want to convey is the glaring inconsistency in allowing Christian nuns to wear their choice of clothes [clothes that bear an uncanny resemblance to the Moslem chador] and then taking umbrage at the Moslem chador. — TheMadFool

(My emphasis.) There is a glaring inconsistency here, and you obviously know about it because you avoided reference to a Muslim woman's choice.

If something exists, but it cannot be experienced, and there is something in this existing "something" that is capable of perceiving himself and perceiving the former, this "object" is undoubtedly the center of the first. — Gus Lamarch

It's weird how people only say "undoubtedly" when about to say something completely unjustifiable.

Also the universe can be experienced. You're experiencing it right now.

The protective effects of herd immunity just doesn't happen "magically" because we added more healthy immune people into the mix. There is a reason that we get this "protective effect". — Roger Gregoire

That's right, but it's not because of magical virus vacuums either. They don't exist. It's not a thing. People with immunity break vectors, that is all.

If what you say were true, then the protective effects of herd immunity would be impossible. — Roger Gregoire

No, they're very possible, just not by batshit crazy means. The probability of person C indirectly catching the virus from person A via person B drops if person B is immune. Since viruses need to spread to survive, breaking the vectors it can spread along can kill it dead even if a quarter of the people aren't immune. It's nothing to do with subtracting the virus, it's just to do with creating barriers to its propagation.

I don't know where you're learning this crap from but please stop going there, it's properly insane.

Iranian women have been forced to wear hijab since 1979. In 2016, an Iranian woman named Masih Alinejad dared to film herself driving (Iran is off and on about women driving) without hijab as an effective call for freedom. She started a movement as a mass of followers (millions on social media) took to the streets in protest against this thing they apparently choose freely to wear. Many of those women have been arrested, imprisoned for up to 10 years with up to an additional 74 lashes, and referred for psychiatric treatment. They have been assaulted in the street by police officers who have been commended by Iran's police commander. Masih Alinejad herself can't currently return to Iran because she'll be arrested, and she has received daily death threats for years.

A few years ago in Afghanistan, four women were beaten and arrested by police for insufficiently covering up. One of them, who was wearing a burqa but no face mesh, was beaten unconscious. They were then sentenced to severe floggings.

In 2016 in Saudi Arabia, a woman posted a photo of herself on Twitter that resulted in calls from conservative Saudis for her to be beheaded. She was arrested and imprisoned for three years, thankfully avoiding the lash. Activists who supported her were then arrested, imprisoned and, according to Amnesty, assaulted and raped while in prison. Her husband was then arrested.

In 2016 in Somalia, Ruqiya Farah Yarow was shot dead for not wearing the veil. Somalia is probably the worst offender for enforcing the veil, with women routinely being beaten, stripped naked, and raped for not wearing hijab, even if they are police officers or doctors or soldiers.

Dozens of women in Pakistan are attacked with acid each year, one of the main reasons being not satisfactorily covering their hair (the other being rejecting a proposal of marriage). Not no hijab, just not good enough hijab. Acid attacks against women for inappropriate dress are also common in Iran, and not unknown in the west.

Worst of all, none of these are atypical.

It's really not like being a nun.

Yes, there a millions of women who choose to dress this way, and too often they too are attacked by the same kind of dickhead men in the west. But that's not a reason to brush under the carpet the millions of women who are forced to wear it. For something that's supposed to be like wearing a nun's habit, there's an awful lot of women protesting being forced to wear it, an awful lot of men violently punishing them for not wearing it, and an awful lot of state, police and judicial effort expended on mandating the wearing of it.

As a matter affect, yes.

I forced it. :zip:

No they don't because the desire itself is not logical. — Darkneos

Desire doesn't need to be logical: decisions do. Yours are illogical. You love to dance, but don't have any additional reasons for doing so, so you don't? That's not logic; that's just masochism.

where you live, it's not an investment, actually — ssu

My first house put me through my degree, my PhD, a year-long round-the-world trip, and three months of volunteering. It was pretty good as investments go. :)

Yet if you put that house or flat for rent, then the debt is understandable: one can easily get an rent that pays for the interest and loan amortization still leaving a profit and you don't need to speculate where the housing prices go. — ssu

What you can charge for rent doesn't depend on how you paid for the property. You get the same whether you own it or have it mortgaged. The best thing if you're only looking for a short-term investment is to not get a repayment mortgage at all. Get an interest-only loan: the end result is the same, but you get to keep more of the cash every month.

But solving this problem doesn’t lend itself to an action-hero scenario. In fact there is no way to predict or control what follows, making it difficult to evaluate the ‘success’ of our actions, let alone get any form of thanks for it. — Possibility

You seem pretty dedicated to casting a man's dislike of violence against women purely in terms of self-glory. I can't really do anything with or about that. It's not only obnoxious, it's a conversational dead-end.

:up:

Desiring to do something (and knowing one enjoys it) is not a sufficient reason to do it, nor to want to do it. — baker

This has already been covered in the above discussion, e.g.

Competing desires weigh in on whether the ultimate decision taken is logical -- eating ice cream when you are obese is illogical if you wish to lose weight -- but those aside, logic dictates that that which you will to be done is that which you act to realise. — Kenosha Kid

Heartwarming, isn't it.

Well, interest rates are the lowest ever, like in thousands of years low. And creating mortrages is the most normal thing any bank will do. — ssu

Mortgages last a looooong time though. I'm buying a £270,000 house now that will cost me £367,000. Since houses are still one of the safest investment opportunities out there, it doesn't really make much sense to pay an additional £100,000 for the benefit of investing £228,000 elsewhere.

Oh yeah, avoiding paying all that mortgage interest is super dumb — Pfhorrest

And mortgage application fees and your solicitor's mortgage handling fees as the icing on the cake. Bastards.

The Universe exists;
"I" exist in the Universe;
"I" am the center of the Universe. — Gus Lamarch

Is the third supposed to follow from the other two?

What's helping you win arguments and prevail? — baker

I'm not sure I generally am, but if and when I am, I'd say caring about facts, such as that we are evolved to be ultrasocial.

In other words, you can be as masculine as you want as long as your version of masculinity conforms to someone elses version if masculinity. — Harry Hindu

Tbf that's true of all things. Basically: do what you want, just don't be a dick. You found God, great! Just don't be a dick about it. You like a drink, great! Just don't be a dick about it. You want to be the manliest man you can be, go for it! Just don't be a dick about it.

Toxic men reserve the right to be a dick about it.

Should we also consider extreme feminism as a problem? — Harry Hindu

Toxic women too.

Don't get me started on toxic prepubescence. Little dicks.

But then, you would probably be too sick to go out in public environments in the first place. — Roger Gregoire

No, people are contagious prior to being symptomatic. Some people don't have obvious symptoms at all.

But masking healthy people who would normally remove more of the virus than they contribute — Roger Gregoire

No one is removing the virus. That's not how it works. If the person is healthy and immune, they might still be a carrier. If they are healthy and have never had it, they might get it. If they not healthy, they might spread it. Masks mitigate each of these possibilities which, on are statistical level, reduces transmission overall.

But no one acts as a viral vacuum.

Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False. — Wayfarer

Sounds balanced.

The physical sciences can describe organisms like ourselves as parts of the objective spatio-temporal order

Apparently he didn't learn any science from the 20th century. Objective spacetime has been dead for more than a century.

The point of Non-Truth # 1 was to dispel the belief that people infect other people. — Roger Gregoire

People do infect other people. That isn't dispelled by the non-existence of direct lung-to-lung transmission, it just means that they infect one another across a given medium.

For example, we hear the propaganda slogan "Wear your mask to protect others" (or to protect your neighbors grandma, etc). The point is that grandma (and others) only get infected because they went into contaminated areas, and not necessarily because you and I did or did not wear a mask. — Roger Gregoire

Wearing a mask reduces the probability of you contaminating an area.

Well, they say that generals, CEOs, and politicians are natural jobs for psychopaths. Even if that's not true, it feeeeeeeels true. Sometimes to cope, you have to become emotionally detached and, in a way, I think that describes most people to one extent or another.

Take a defense lawyer, for instance. The chances are that any given client is a criminal, and the lawyer's job is to, where possible, protect that client's liberty and, where not, minimise the consequences. The bigger picture is that, if every accused person has the best possible defense, the number of innocent people convicted of crimes can be minimalised. In this case, being emotionally detached creates a greater good.

Bad faith and ill will are evolutionarily advantageous. — baker

Actually they're not.

There was a time when I wanted to become a Catholic nun, and I can say from personal experience that the standards of dress were never an issue for me — baker

And why do you assume that wearing a suit and tie in my first job was any more of an issue for me? Point is, they're equivalent. They are equivalently an issue, and equivalently a non-issue.

Becoming and being a nun is just not for every woman, nor is every woman required to be one. — baker

Neither is becoming a middle manager of a stationary company, or a police officer, or a surgeon, or a soldier, or indeed anyone else who's vocation dictates their attire.

How many Muslim women have you interviewed about this? — baker

Funny, that's the second time I've hit this kind of logic. If I interviewed 100 and 90 said that they weren't concerned about the repurcussions of not wearing hijab because they wanted to wear it anyway, would that make it okay?

From what you've said, I surmise that you're assuming that the baseline from which all women all over the world all over history start (or from which they should start) is the same: that they all want to live by a certain Western secular standard; and that if they can't live by that standard, they feel oppressed and only follow social norms out of fear. — baker

That's not from what I've said, so you're being dishonest. As I've repeatedly said, women are being attacked, disfigured, raped, and killed for not wearing hijab. Male government figures have repeatedly pushed the viewpoint that these women deserve such. Do you agree? Is that okay by you? Because I believe, as I've said, that that kind of coersion needs to be removed before you can make any ab rectum claims about women having a choice.

It's a false dichotomy to begin with. — baker

No, it isn't and, as I said, it's extremely troubling that you think it is.

Recourse to the law in "civilized" countries?
Where do you live???! — baker

In the countries where nuns dress as per the OP.

Heaven knows you feel a fierce moral indignation and your armor is shining on your white horse. — baker

I don't think I need an especially elevated moral ground to not be okay with throwing acid in women's faces. I'm sorry you're not there yet.

Agreed. But check your concern and how you interpret it.

There is a tendency to focus on the ‘victim’ as the passive object of our concern, rather than as a free-thinking agent who has been limited under conditions of culturally perceived potentiality. Men want to rescue the victim from certain ‘forces’, without examining the conditions that attribute potentiality to these ‘forces’ rather than the agent. — Possibility

The opposite seems to be the case here, where people are speaking up for a potentially oppressed person's apparent choices without reference to the limitations placed on those choices. Ultimately my argument is that you can only do this once the coersion is removed, e.g. the threat of violence is removed. Is your counter-argument that this coersion should be sustained? If not, and putting aside as unjustified your guesses as to men's motives and knowledge, it's difficult to see what your point is.

Incorrect. Liking something is not a wish to KEEP doing it, only that doing it elicits a certain feeling in you. It's like saying I enjoy dancing. However I do not dance. MY enjoyment of a task is not a reason to do it. — Darkneos

This sort of irrational behaviour is quite likely why you're coming up with nothing for a reason to live. Ultimately the only reason for doing anything is that you desire it to be done: anything else is a contradiction, a failure to reason. It seems to me like you reject this out of hand and are left in want of an alternative reason. But there isn't one. To act is to impact one's world. To act rationally is to impact one's world with a desired result in mind. Any other way of behaving is illogical.

No one believes that they catch Covid directly from other people's lungs without an intermediary, or that healthy people out and about are more contagious than unhealthy people out and about (it's the fact that they're out and about more), or that everyone needs to be immune to be relatively safe, or that mask-wearing is to promote herd immunity. And no one's policy is based on any of these things.

What about the theory that the Pope is not a Catholic?

Also, I have to admit that sometimes even when I read this site I get quite worked up by some posts I read. To some extent, emotion and anger do have a motivating effect in enabling us to fight for certain causes. — Jack Cummins

I think that's right. Great moments of progress in history (suffrage, civil rights) are not executed by chilled out people. It is perfectly natural to feel anger at injustices and antisocial beliefs and people. I agree with you on nuclear weapons and capital punishment, and totally get how contrary opinion seems upsetting because it is about killing people, which is the height of antisocial behaviour.

On nuclear weapons, I imagine the conflict is usually between their intrinsic horrific nature and the pragmatism of negotiating a world in which other, perhaps less trustworthy, nations have them. Capital punishment appeals most in the west to those seeking retribution for other, perhaps greater injustices (since, as Camus pointed out, the only witnesses usually allowed are family of the victims), which is easy enough to empathise with (who wouldn't feel like they wanted to kill the man who killed their parents?) but seems a very wrong thing to build a principle upon.

What's puzzling is the anger of people who aren't defending such a point. That's what I can't get my head around: the Magamaniacs and Qanoners and Brexiteers who seem to be looking for reasons to justify an emotion rather than being emotionally invested in a reasonable position. I'm happy to dispassionately discuss immigration policy and the susceptibility of voting systems to fraud, but when Hugo Chavez is conspiring with Jeff Bezos from beyond the grave... I just don't know what's going on there. It's all emotion and no reason.