So perhaps we should do our best in the situation we find ourselves. Perhaps like Peter Singer we should give large proportions of our income to charity. — Cuthbert

I think it's important to give wisely, out of an enlightened interest for the future and not from a misguided compassion. I think it's naive to think we can save people from themselves, but we may be able to save the future from people and that's where we should be focusing our efforts.

Many workers from across the spectrum of employment experience "social disorganization" -- the effects of inadequate education, drugs and alcohol abuse (directly and indirectly), mental illness, maldistribution of wealth (a major factor), the effects of the military industrial complex, and so on. — Bitter Crank

The question is whether that's the cause or the effect. To be fair I'd say it's a bit of both, the system we have is in no small part due to the vulgar myopic pettiness of normal people, but it also exacerbates and compounds the problems created by those character defects. Really nothing has been done to the normal people that they weren't already doing to themselves and to each other.

The answer to the question, "So: WHY THE HELL DON'T THEY DO WHAT IS BOTH ETHICAL AND SENSIBLE?" is fairly straightforward: most people are working hard to stay afloat, and they do not have the time and energy to become politically active agents of change. — Bitter Crank

I've heard this excuse more times than I can count. This isn't czarist Russia, we're not serfs here toiling from sunup to sunset, the vast majority of us have plenty of leisure time and enough disposable income to afford internet access. People have the time and the energy, it's just not important to them. What's important to them is sports, pop culture, and other trivial diversions. They can rattle off sports stats from 60 years back but they don't know basic geography, they can tell you exactly who's dating who in celebrity land but they can't give you the three basic functions of money or even how money is created. There's no excuse for their ignorance or their apathy.

"Philosophy is to be studied, not for the sake of any definite answers to its questions, but rather for the sake of the questions themselves. Because these questions enlarge our conception of what is possible, enrich our intellectual imagination and diminish the dogmatic assurance which closes the mind against speculation; but above all that because, through the greatness of the universe which philosophy contemplates, the mind also is rendered great, and becomes capable of that union with the universe which constitutes its highest good." Bertrand Russell

People can easily deal with the here and now and with concrete events. 3 dollar pants? Yay! The abstractions behind it, all the different steps of causality, the minor and remote impact of a single set of trousers; we're not programmed to integrate all those details in our thinking because they are nearly irrelevant for the here and now. All those irrelevancies add up. And that's not just "normal" people but everybody. — Benkei

There's nothing preventing people from viewing the world in a wider perspective. The average person is perfectly capable of thinking globally and acting locally. People are aware of these issues, they know that they're all contributing for the good or ill to an outcome. These issues don't escape normal people, their part in the larger process is something that occurs to them. And some part of them knows that when they minimize or dismiss their acts of complicity as 'just a pair of pants' that they're really just bullshitting themselves for the sake of ease and convenience in order to just get on with it. You give people far too little credit, people know better but they just don't want the inconvenience of struggle and sacrifice. They'd rather just go along to get along and not jeopardize their stake in the system by rocking the boat.

If my posts in this thread are upsetting to you then I welcome the mods to delete them. It's not my intention to disturb already troubled people. I sincerely wish you the best and hope you feel better and have a long happy life. Mea culpa.

Are you a psychologist? Are you a trained expert in this area? If not then maybe take it down a couple notches, eh?

The problem here is this mindset places the impetus on the person to develop those skills. The reality is that context, environment, is what enables or prevents someone from developing those skills. This means the onus is not specifically on them to make such developments, at least during developmental stages. — Noble Dust

In reality it's entirely up to the individual to seek help and develop those skills, it's on them to learn to deal with life. I'm not saying it's fair, life rarely is, but the only people that can be helped are those that are willing and able to help themselves. I'm not trying to be harsh or cold, if some people are beyond help then I feel for them, there's no judgement or condemnation on my part, but it is ultimately up to the individual in crisis because nobody can do it for them.

A "tough love" approach to the problem of suicide, like you're using here, is incredibly inappropriate. Tough love is appropriate when dealing with someone unwilling to face the cold hard reality of their situation. "Soft love", if you will (as the alternative to tough love), is appropriate when dealing with someone unable to even acknowledge their own self-worth. Survey any number of depressives or suicidals, and 99.9% will tell you they fit the latter category. Telling someone at risk of suicide that they're "taking it all far too seriously" has a high potential of that person taking you far too seriously, and ending their life. — Noble Dust

This isn't an area I know much about, I'm just spouting off on the internet, so anyone in crisis shouldn't take anything I say to heart. Contrasting my small problems with the grand sweep of the human journey and the scale of the cosmos is one of my coping mechanisms, it helps me put everything in perspective and carry on, but if that's counterproductive for someone in crisis then in the future I'll just keep that to myself because I really don't want to nudge anyone in the wrong direction.

Workers actually have very little leverage in some industries. Apple doesn't make it's products in this country, and no other electronics company does either. A majority of our autos are made elsewhere. A lot of many products are made elsewhere. Until recently, the US was not energy self-sufficient. Many industries employ a very small fraction of the population. Automation, robotics, digital control, etc. make workers less important in many companies than they used to be. (This is a crisis in itself, but let's talk about that in another thread.) I'm not suggesting that workers have become unnecessary -- just that they don't have the amount of leverage they once had.

Consumers have a considerable amount of leverage. If consumers stopped buying products, that would also bring the economy to a screeching halt -- but again, a modern society can not survive without all parts pretty much functioning normally. — Bitter Crank

We have the political power to enact trade policy which prohibits trading with countries that don't have strong labor, environmental, and human rights protections. We also have the power to prohibit corporations that don't operate at those standards from doing business in our country, but we don't do any of that. In fact we do the opposite, we ratify trade deals which encourage that kind of malfeasance and give huge subsidies to vicious corporations who in turn offshore most of their profits.

And you're right, as individuals we have the power to divest and boycott socially irresponsible businesses, but we don't do much of that either. Instead we have human herds trampling themselves on Black Friday to get sweatshop swag at insanely low prices.

The dense network that enables a modern society to operate can not be disrupted very much, and still allow the society to go on functioning. Too much disruption and society falls apart. This is more true now than it was two centuries ago. More true now than one century ago. Anyone stopping the economy would be shooting themselves in the head. — Bitter Crank

Giving people a vested interest in maintaining and perpetuating the system was rather ingenious. Now the normal people are highly averse to any meaningful reform because any change in the status quo could potentially cost them their jobs, their healthcare, their children's college fund, their retirement, etc.
I think they all know that this system is a bit depraved and isn't at all sustainable in the long term, but they're all just hoping that the music won't stop till after their puff is done. In fact I've had people come right out and say that and it was quite shocking because of the petty selfishness it conveyed.

The system is a dense, complex network of interdependence but it's not necessary to bring the whole thing crashing down on our heads, we could strategically dismantle it piece by piece while replacing each piece with something more sane and decent. But what if it did require us as a generation to make that kind of sacrifice? If we couldn't find it in ourselves to do the right thing then I'm not sure we deserve any sympathy as victims of a cruel and unjust system, we should be viewed by history as corrupt collaborators.

There's a disconnect between the first quote and the second quote. First you properly accuse the big corporations of being corrupt and callous, then in the second paragraph you blame the workers for the consequences of corporate America bastard policies. — Bitter Crank

The workers make their livings from these companies and live on their products, so they do share some of the responsibility. They also live in a democracy which makes them even more accountable for the bastard policies, it is well within their power to change those policies and the only reason those policies remain in effect is a lack of widespread, committed opposition to them. I don't think the working class can be so easily absolved.

You may be exaggerating how much people know about the conditions under which the food they eat was produced, or the products they buy were made. — Bitter Crank

They would still be culpable for their ignorance, but really who doesn't know that their iPhone was made in a sweatshop?

I'm not quite sure who you are counting as "middle class" but as it is usually used, you can rest assured they are not taking healthy profits from corporate activities. Only a small percentage of the population own enough stock to worry about corporate misbehavior. — Bitter Crank

Really? Just think of all the working class people who pay into pension funds which are heavily invested in blue-chip companies like Dow or Apple. Their retirements are funded by human and environmental exploitation.

It isn't immediately (or even not immediately) obvious that when you buy blueberries grown in Mexico, you may be causing starvation there. — Bitter Crank

I'll grant that there are certain instances where ignorance is a valid excuse, but it's pretty obvious that most of us wouldn't care even if we were made aware of the harm our purchases were causing given that we do buy many products with full knowledge of the abuses that went into the production. So we can't really take those cases in isolation, we have to consider the broader context.

This isn't how depression works. It's not something the person is in control of. It's a sickness. — Noble Dust

I think it is to a certain extent, despair could swallow any one of us if we let it. Some people just never developed good coping skills, that's where counseling can be helpful. If the problem is too severe to be treated by therapy alone then medication is probably something to consider. If a person hasn't experienced any horrific tragedies or traumas or are facing some fate worse than death and they're contemplating suicide because of some general existential despair, well then they're just blowing life way out of proportion. They're taking it all far too seriously.

My advice is don't indulge in gloom and depression. A lot of people just like to wallow in that stuff for some reason and that is pointless. Cheer up, get a hobby, do something fun and maybe a little risky. If you still can't shake yourself out of it get some professional help. Unless you're in a really fucked up situation suicide is just senseless, you're gonna be dead in a few short decades anyway so you might as well ride it out on the off chance that things get better. If life is meaningless then it's meaningless, that would suck but it's no reason to off yourself.

Thanks for the thoughtful replies and sorry I took so long to respond.

Depends quite a bit on exactly how you want to define or understand "responsibility," or how far down you want to dig into it. — tim wood

I'm thinking of responsibility in terms of basic decency really. I don't think we have to dig down very far to see that many of the companies we invest our money in are engaging in extremely unethical business practices, activities that most of know to be wrong and would condemn outright if we didn't have a stake in them. Many of the top fortune 500 companies exploit labor, pollute the environment, corrupt political processes and governments, destabalize economies with reckless speculation, and then lie about all of it through their controlled media outlets.

Theres a running narrative on the left that has the bankers, financiers, and corporate executives as the bad guys taking advantage of the good and decent middle classes and the innocent poor, but that's not really accurate. The middle classes are heavily invested in these corporations and take healthy profits from their unscrupulous activities. The poor can't really be considered victims either because 1) they're mostly politically apathetic, they've demonstrated very little concern for or solidarity with their fellow paupers and 2) most of them aren't living in poverty due to any protest of conscience, they're poor by happenstance and they would gladly get in on the action if given the opportunity.

For instance, in 2007, whether bad mortgages were being palmed off as grade A instruments by default swap operators or not, millions of home buyers were willing to pay ever-increasing prices for real estate which wasn't in critically short supply, which hadn't been improved, and which (in some cases) wasn't even in very good shape. Thus a bubble developed and eventually broke, to many people's harm. — Bitter Crank

Even before the bubble popped the speculation itself caused quite a bit of harm in that it drove up prices to the point that many people couldn't afford decent housing. Doesn't that sort of speculative frenzy demonstrate a certain callous disregard on the part of "normal people" for the harmful consequences their activities had for the rest of society? Maybe most people were just blindly carried away by the madness but I don't think that's too abstract for most people to realize if they gave it a moments consideration.

The difficult part of your question is that individually, most consumer decisions are too insignificant to matter. So, "normal" people are not at fault. On the other hand, if the manager of Calpers (California state employees retirement funds) decides to dump all their coal stock, he or she will have had a direct and significant effect on those stocks, and maybe the whole energy field. — Bitter Crank

Maybe economically, but there is still an ethics issue, and again while I don't think the likely consequences of the aggregate behavior is obvious, it's certainly not too remote or byzantine to occur to most normal people. I don't think people can plausibly plead ignorance or incompetence on these issues.

They want what we have to give them but they also wanna, you know, play innocent and pretend they have no idea where it came from. Well, that's more hypocrisy than I'm willing to swallow, so fuck 'em. Fuck normal people.

I don't understand that? The world doesn't seem physical to you?

When it comes to "Trump's agenda" I wouldn't be so quick to assume that he even has one beyond securing his own legacy. — VagabondSpectre

I agree, his agenda is just petty self-aggrandizement, beyond that he's rudderless.

Getting screwed by a world-class villain feels every different than getting screwed by a clown. The villain makes you feel good about yourself, but with the clown things just get weird. — VagabondSpectre

That actually makes a lot of sense, good point! :D

There are no reasons so far as I know to think that the nature of the mundane world is physical to begin with — The Great Whatever

The main reason I suspect is that it appears to be physical. It's not much of a stretch to think that it appears that way because it is that way.

Maybe, but the rest of them are just as brazen, the only real difference is that Trump isn't protected by the establishment. Hillary Clinton ran a massive pay for play operation with all sorts of nefarious entities(including Russia) and she basically got a pass. The only reason they're going after Trump is because Trump has his own agenda and Trump's agenda conflicts with the establishment's agenda. Trump is no better or worse than the rest of them, if anything Trump is just a two bit crook while the people that are going after him are world class villains.

Not to justify it, but what's the difference between Trump colluding with the Russians and virtually every other politician in DC colluding with transnational corporations and international finance?

Some context for the the current state of affairs -
The Harvard Boys Do Russia

Post-Soviet Russia, Made in the U.S.A.

I doubt there are any reasons for the assumptions behind physicalist worldviews — The Great Whatever

What are the assumptions behind it? As far as I can tell physicalism is the assumption, there don't seem to be any underlying assumptions supporting it. It does carry quite a few implications for a range of issues but implications aren't assumptions. I'm with you in that I don't think it's a warranted assumption but then I think metaphysical commitments in general are mostly just philosophically gratuitous presumptions.

it makes no sense to talk about the 'nature' of religion outside of it's social, historical and economic dimensions — StreetlightX

It's sensible to talk about religion in terms of human evolution and psychology. I don't think it's possible to really understand religion without considering what all religions have in common whether they be secular political religions, or doomsday cults, or major world faiths. I wouldn't say there's an essence of religion necessarily but there do seem to be elements that are near universal.

Now, I would not object if the idea would be discussed from various viewpoints of usefulness, sustainability, ecology ... etc. But soon there will arise the question whether it is "ethically acceptable" and I ask myself what shall this question be for? Does it not suffice to discuss the utility, the risks, the benefits and the long term consequences? What can be added by an ethical examination? — Kai Rodewald

Since most people are religious the inquiry does have a religious dimension. But even for atheists ethical considerations are important because without them you would lose your humanity. If cold rationality was the only consideration then if it made good sense for reasons of usefulness, sustainability, and ecology to exterminate 90% of the population then that's what would be done with brutal efficiency. Most people feel that if we don't proceed with conscience and empathy then something important wll be lost, that something that makes any of it worth while to begin with. So religious people, which is most people, are litterally asking if they are allowed by God to proceed in whatever way by whichever means, and atheists are asking if their humanity will allow them to.

Sharia isn't merely a set of religious practices, it's a legal code that specifies offenses and punishments.

A poll of 600 US Muslims does not a representative sample of five hundred million make. — StreetlightX

It's not only Muslims, a large percentage of religious people favor some form of theocracy -

In only a few countries did a majority say that Sharia should have no role in society; yet in most countries, only a minority want Sharia as "the only source" of law. In Jordan, Egypt, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh, majorities want Sharia as the "only source" of legislation.
Most surprising is the absence of systemic differences in many countries between males and females in their support for Sharia as the only source of legislation. For example, in Jordan, 54% of men and 55% of women want Sharia as the only source of legislation. In Egypt, the percentages are 70% of men and 62% of women; in Iran, 12% of men and 14% of women; and in Indonesia, 14% of men and 14% of women.
Ironically, we don't have to look far from home to find a significant number of people who want religion as a source of law. In the United States, a 2006 Gallup Poll indicates that a majority of Americans want the Bible as a source of legislation.

Forty-six percent of Americans say that the Bible should be "a" source, and 9% believe it should be the "only" source of legislation.
Perhaps even more surprising, 42% of Americans want religious leaders to have a direct role in writing a constitution, while 55% want them to play no role at all. These numbers are almost identical to those in Iran. — Do Muslims Want Democracy and Theocracy?

A Public Policy Polling (PPP) national survey conducted between February 20th and February 22nd of Republican voters, found that an astonishing 57 percent of Republicans want to dismantle the Constitution, and establish Christianity as the official national religion. Only 30 percent oppose making Christianity the national religion. — 57% Of Republicans Say Dismantle Constitution And Make Christianity National Religion

Why doesn't that support the claim and how is Muslim jurisprudence not theocracy?

I don't know how the numbers stack up. — Bitter Crank

I don't either really, but take Evangelicals for instance, it's pretty clear that a good many of them want something close to theocracy if not theocracy proper.

http://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/11/2013/04/gsi2-overview-1.png

More than half (51%) of U.S. Muslims polled also believe either that they should have the choice of American or shariah courts, or that they should have their own tribunals to apply shariah. Only 39% of those polled said that Muslims in the U.S. should be subject to American courts. — Center for Security Policy

Yeah, a 'fact" that, y'know, facts speak out against. As in, you are literally 100% wrong about this. Put it this way dude, there are literally more than half a billion Muslims in the world who live, eat, sleep, and breathe in largely secular nation-states. You are half a billion reasons wrong. — StreetlightX

But most of those five hundred million don't support secularism, they would institute theocracy if they had their way. Most religious people want theocracy, the Mussulmans are no different.

Philosophy is an explanation. — woodart

I always took it for more of an exploration of the possibilities and an exercise in rigor and honesty rather than a search for truth.

I'm not saying it doesn't have problems but it does seem like the most simple and straightforward explanation on offer.

All ordinary experience is perfectly compatible with everything being 'supernatural.' There's literally no reason to believe one or the other. — The Great Whatever

I agree that it's compatible but the main objection to ideas like occasionalism or ontological idealism is that they over-explain things and that physicalism is a much more parsimonious explanation. So there is some reason to think physicalism may be the case.

It depends on your prior assumptions. Nothing qualifies as evidence simpliciter — The Great Whatever

Evidence is just anything that can be used to support a proposition. The quality of the evidence is determined by how well it supports the proposition. I guess it seems reasonable to require stronger evidence for propositions which call into question or contradict more accepted and well supported ones, but nothing can really be established on prior assumptions alone, that would just be dogma.

Or because they believe it will hurt them in the next election. Trump has a lot of support on the right.