An observation that may be amusing, or alarming, or both, to some of you...

In the last few days I’ve witnessed a fellow driving a medium-sized pickup going up the road, revving his engine and looking out the window to see who’s watching. In it’s bed he has stationed two flags: one confederate, the other advertising a certain sentiment in these bold white words:

FUCK
BIDEN

@TheHedoMinimalist.

when my mom asked if I was at the library, she was just asking about my location — TheHedoMinimalist

That is THE question, O Hedomenos! The “just” you inserted in the above statement signifies that your mom was simply curious where you were, had no ulterior motive. Doesn’t motive mean everything when it comes to human actions either verbal or physical?

But when we ask someone where they are, isn’t it true that there is always SOME or other motive or reason, however innocent it may be? Otherwise, why would we ask it? Sometimes we ask someone where they are when we already know the answer. Let me offer you some examples to illustrate some of the many possibilities...

I call “where are you?” to a man whom I seek, but who is trying to hide from me; but I know where he is, because I see his shadow cast upon the ground. My motive in this case is to make him believe I don’t know where he is...

I’m talking to someone on the phone and I ask them where they are, because I hear certain noises in the background that are either strange or familiar, and, in the former case, my curiosity is aroused because either I am alarmed—maybe worried about their safety, or just mystified— and in the latter, because I want them to confirm or deny my assumption about their location.

In the above examples, the motive for the question was based on sensory data; but, more often, it is based on a suspicion, or a prejudice, or a fear in the soul of the one asking it about things that can only be discerned by a vigilant soul...

When the father of the boy who inadvertently “went” to the carnival asked him whether he had gone there, he did so out of suspicion based on either fear or knowledge of the boy’s character—unless, perhaps, he smelled popcorn or cotton-candy on the child...

When your mom asked where you were when you were fooling around with the woman at the library, what was her motive? Yes: on the face of it, she was just asking about your location; but, as I’ve pointed out before, there is a question about the right she had to inquire about your location, and you admitted that she didn’t have that right, for you said it would have been more honest of you to question it.

So much depends on the details, O Hedomenos, of which you have supplied the barest information. When you got that call from your mom, were you in the midst of your sexual adventure, and had to interrupt it in order to take the call? After you had taken the call, did you put your finger to your lips to let your lover know to be quiet, while you talked to your mother?

You know your mom a lot better than we do: When she asked where you were, did you immediately think, “Mom suspects I’m up to no good”, or did you think rather, “Mom’s just concerned about my well-being, as any mom would be”?

Which is it, O Hedomenos? Doesn’t the honesty of the answer you gave, that you were at the library, depend upon this question?

@god must be atheist. Not all moralists are simply “control-freaks”. The ancient ones whose writings have survived were almost always moralizing—not to the many—but to a few.

For example, Seneca’s Moral Letters were written for a very narrow audience, specifically, for a young Roman knight named Lucilius whom he hoped make his friend, and Jesus wasn’t really preaching his morality to the ppl in general, but rather to his few disciples, and, of course, potential disciples.

America is a very commercial society, and one becoming ever so much so as time goes on. What, after all, are “jobs and the economy” about, or “it’s the economy, stupid”?

Some ppl only learned who Picasso was when they read a news article that told of one of his paintings selling for a record umpteen-million dollars. Culture becomes important when it generates money. I doubt they ever learned who Diogenes was.

That’s why Trump was elected in the first place: independent voters decided he would be better at providing them the comforts and securities they wanted...just because of his wealthy persona.

What does this have to do with the OP? Everything. What a ppl values is what guides it. When money guides it, it does so at the expense (no pun intended) of everything else. That includes morality. If the porn industry generates enough money it is viewed as heroic (Larry Flynt), or respectable (Hugh Hefner). And the music industry gets a free ride too for the same reason.

When we become a ppl that values money above all else, we sacrifice everything else for it...including our freedom...not to mention our morals. Then we are at the mercy of those few who have the money and use it to control the government. We are not a democracy. We are an oligarchy.

@TheHedoMinimalist.

Honesty is mostly about telling the truth as you understand it. — TheHedoMinimalist

I would argue that honesty is not just telling the truth, but acting, in any way, consonant with it. You can do certain things (or fail to do them), take certain actions that are honest or dishonest, without ever uttering a word.

For example, if your mom asks you, as she’s leaving the house, to sweep the floors, and while she’s gone you sweep all the dirt under the rugs, you have already been dishonest without ever saying, “I swept the floors”. Indeed, she would have no reason to ask you whether you swept them: she can see whether they are clean or not...unless she fears you may have acted dishonestly. In which case she might suspect you might have swept the dirt under the rugs, and therefore surreptitiously check underneath them.

On the other hand, if you collect the dirt you have swept from the floors and throw it in the trash, then you have acted honestly... without saying a word.

Sometimes someone tries to correct an earlier dishonest action by performing an honest one. Consider the man who steals his neighbor’s possession one day, then, after a bout of bad conscience later that night, surreptitiously places it at his doorstep, and steals away unseen, the next morning. What are we to think of him? Did he correct his dishonesty by performing that apparently honest act? or was confession to his neighbor of the transgression necessary, in addition, for complete absolution from the theft? In other words, was it enough for him to have returned the pilfered property, or did he need to let his neighbor know that it was HE who stole it?

It all depends, O Hedomenos. If he believes his neighbor to be a forgiving sort, then he might confess to him; if, on the other hand, he knows him to be unforgiving, then he would be inclined to hide the fact that it was he who stole and then returned his property. In this case, the thief becomes the honest man, and the one stolen from becomes the dishonest one: dishonest, because he was unforgiving...

But then one might argue that a thief is subject to his victim’s judgement: he might expect forgiveness from God or his conscience, but, having confessed to his crime, he ought to expect whatever punishment might be meted out by his victim.

But I cannot agree with that statement of your’s, O Hedomenos: surely dishonesty is the antonym, that is, the opposite, of honesty. Why, it is so by definition, My Child, is it not?

@TheHedoMinimalist. Since you have taken the day off, O Hedomenos, from our discussion, I have decided to post further ruminations of mine concerning honesty and dishonesty.

Consider this scenario: a certain man forbids his son to go to the carnival, which has set up in town for the weekend, because he fears he will be seduced by certain unsavory side-shows, so the boy goes downtown instead that Friday evening. While walking along Main St. he witnesses a man snatch an old lady’s purse and take off running, so he chases him...

They run for a considerable distance, and the boy is gaining on the thief until he suddenly realizes they have entered the carnival grounds, and hesitates, remembering his dad’s injunction, and in that moment of uncertainty the purse-snatcher disappears among the myriad of booths and hawksters and becomes concealed by the thick press of ppl. Stricken by a sense of guilt, his efforts in vain, the boy retreats home.

When he enters the house he finds his dad sitting in his recliner, watching tv, and says, “Daddy, you won’t believe what happened tonight!” His dad turns off the tv, takes a hard look at the boy, and asks, “Have you been to the carnival, where I told you not to go?”...

What should his reply be? It depends: if he knows his dad to be a reasonable man, and a just enforcer of his own edicts, he might reply, “Yes daddy, I went to the carnival, but not intentionally”, knowing the man would be willing to hear his son out, and approve of his behavior after hearing the whole story...

If instead he knows him to be a harsh punisher, one not known to hear you out, someone who tends only to see the literal truth and nothing else, then he might lie; might say, trembling, “No, I didn’t go to the carnival”, hoping no one who knew him and saw him there might report back to his dad. If his dad then asked, “Well, what happened then?” he might reply that he saw a man snatch a lady’s purse on Main Street and took chase, only to loose track of him...in the woods...

But we’re not through with a thorough analysis of this situation: we must inquire into the boy’s integrity. Suppose he have a reputation for deceit? Then it’s like the boy who cried “Wolf!” It’s hard to believe him even though it’s true. Suppose he had sneaked off to the carnival the year before and been involved in some scandalous side-show incident that compromised his family’s integrity in the eyes of the community? In that case his dad might justly doubt the veracity of his son’s story. Everything depends, in this scenario, on the reputations and characters of the ppl involved, not just on what actually happened.

Finally, in your story about being at the library, the same sort of things apply: does a mom have the right to ask her son where he is? It might be an “innocent” question, meaning, as they say, she has no “dog in the fight”, that is, she’s just curious, unsuspecting. Sometimes we misinterpret such innocent questions to be the beginning of an interrogation, and we always so misinterpret because we feel some guilt about our behavior...

...on the other hand, your mom might have been concerned about the wholesomeness of what you were up to, in which case the question, which I have already raised, occurs of whether she has right, because at 20 years of age you had reached majority, to inquire into that...

...and much depends upon whether you were still living at her house at the time. Even though you were at the library when the affair took place, nevertheless one may reasonably assume that what happens at the local library—unlike what happens in Vegas—might come back home to haunt Mom one day. If you weren’t living at home then, nevertheless: if you were close by, maybe next door even, maybe just in the community where you were raised, and your behavior might cast aspersions on her family and reputation, does she have the right to inquire, because of those facts, into your whereabouts and activities?

Just some thoughts and scenarios for you to consider, O Hedomenos. Btw, I drink more than twice the number of beers you do, and my girlfriend turns 88 later this year; and she’s a wonderful girlfriend...in every way imaginable.

@"TheHedoMinimalist. I must confess, O Hedomenos, that our discussion about honesty and dishonesty has caused me to spend a lot of time thinking about them. That is why my response has been tardy. First of all, let me get obvious things out of the way:

Well, the “literal” definition of dishonesty is usually understood as telling false information when you know that the information is false. It’s doesn’t extent to a refusal to tell true information. So, that’s my understanding of dishonesty. — TheHedoMinimalist

I cannot agree with this. Obvious examples appear before my mind: if a stranger asks you whether your dog is friendly and you tell him, “Well, he licks my face first thing when I come home from work, and he loves my wife and kids”, and he reaches down to pet the loving beast and gets his hand bitten, were you not dishonest by failing to reveal to him that your dog hates strangers?

But what if you didn’t know he hates strangers? What if this is the first person he’s ever bitten? You wouldn’t know that until he bit someone. In that case, you were not being dishonest. So, in this scenario, your honesty or dishonesty depends upon your knowledge.

Now let’s consider the telling of “true information”, as opposed to withholding it. A good example is you telling your mom you were “at the library”... but this was not “the whole truth”. The truth was you were having an affair with a woman old enough to be your mother, a thing scandalous in her eyes, but not in yours, nor in the law’s. She was trying to meddle in your business unjustly, for, at 20 years of age, you were of majority, were no longer under your parents’ control, and had the right to do whatever you pleased, so you told a literal truth that would mislead her into thinking you were reading a novel rather than living one...

...and you claimed you were not being dishonest, not because you were actually at the library, but because you weren’t required to tell everything you knew in order to remain honest.

Now let’s consider this scenario: your mom calls you and asks where you are and, instead of answering, “I’m at the library”, you instead answer, “Why are you asking me that question, Mama? Do you think I would frequent a disreputable establishment, as well as you raised me to discern wholesome from unwholesome places? Do you fear I am heading down the road to perfidy despite the excellent upbringing you gave me to avoid it?” Do you think this answer would have been more or less honest than the one you actually gave?

It depends on whether you believe your mama actually raised you that way. But if you don’t think she did, but you think she believes she did...

...it gets really messy and complicated real quick, O Hedomenos: honesty seems to depend not only on the integrity of the one displaying it, but also on the one to whom it is displayed. In an ideal world, where all are honorable and just, it would be simple: just tell the whole truth. But because we are all imperfect we must hide things from one another, tell lies that look like truths, dissimulate and prevaricate, sometimes tell the honest truth when that is hurtful...

...about ten years ago or so I became alienated from my family over a squabble that developed over my care for our parents. My sister and I have since then become reconciled, but not me and my older brother, with whom she has maintained a relationship. She told me recently that he told her he wouldn’t have ever been attracted to me as a friend; that his only affinity with me was due to the fact that we were brothers...

...now, I don’t doubt that what she said is true, but I wonder: should she have told me that? aren’t siblings tied by the bond of family only, not by friendship? After all, my older brother would not call his wife of 50 years his “friend”, for they don’t get along that well. But because he lives with her he must remain amicable...

...and because he doesn’t share a household with me, he can, though we are brothers, reject me because we can’t be friends.

Plato was the tortoise, Thrasymachus the hare:

Who won the race? “Thrasymachus!”, do you dare?

@TheHedoMinimalist. I don’t think, O Hedomenos, you read my last post closely (or dispassionately?) enough:

My mama did not realize that sometimes it is best to be dishonest. Clearly, it was best that she tell a lie and deceive her friend in order to not hurt her feelings. — Todd Martin

So, when you say,

I think it’s also kinda silly that we would think that telling lies as a means of withholding information that the person to whom we lie doesn’t really deserve to know in the first place is bad in any way”,

it is obvious that I agree with you. I don’t think it was bad that Mama had me tell Shelby she was in the shower, and I don’t think it was bad that you told your mama you were at the library. Your alibi was better than my mama’s, because you didn’t have to move, or do anything else, for it to be literally true.

Our difference is, I think, in our conception of what dishonesty is. You think my mama, and you, were not being dishonest in telling your tales, and I think the reason you believe that is because of the pejorative connotation of the word “dishonesty”: dishonesty must be bad. I, on the other hand, believe that dishonesty is sometimes good. The difference between our “intuitions” on the subject might be illustrated by this statement:

“I kinda feel like you are confusing dishonesty with a lack of perfect honesty. — TheHedoMinimalist

What if we were to substitute, in the above quote, “not telling the whole truth” for “dishonesty”, and “telling the whole truth” for “perfect honesty”? What we would have is, “I kinda feel like you are confusing not telling the whole truth with a lack of telling the whole truth”, which is a tautology, isn’t it? This means that, in your estimation, honesty is not equivalent to “telling the whole truth”, whereas, in mine, it is. For example, when you told your mama you were at the library, you believed you were not being perfectly honest, but justifiably so ( and I agree with you), but I think you were being justifiably dishonest.

Our difference of opinion is, therefore, not due to different intuitions, but rather definitions: I identify honesty with the telling of the “whole” truth, while you identify it with what I would call telling the “convenient” truth. Therefore, my gripe with Mama is not that she told Shelby she was in the shower, for I think she ought to have lied to her in order not to offend her. But you defend her as having not been dishonest, because she told the literal truth, and you defend your statement to your own mama, that you were at the library, on the grounds, not that it was the literal truth, but because,

I just find it unusual to think that I must tell someone every one of my secrets that may pertain to their question in some manner just to maintain honesty. — TheHedoMinimalist

Which is it, O Hedomenos: were you honest in your response to your mom because you were literally “at the library”? or were you honest because,

A person doesn’t have to tell you everything that you need to know in order to remain honest. — TheHedoMinimalist

?

And, btw, I think you meant to say “...that you WANT to know...”, for, if you withhold information from someone they NEED to know, that becomes morally problematic, doesn’t it?



I hope I have straightened out our dialogue in a more philosophical path, more in the direction you wish it to head. I didn’t want to respond to the other things you said for fear of distracting you from our intellectual discussion, but I will add this one tidbit: you and I share an apparent affinity with older women. I have had several relationships with different women throughout my life, and most of them have been older than me, a few much older: my current girlfriend is almost 30 yrs older than I am, and I have been with her more than eight years.

@TheHedoMinimalist. Well, you certainly surprised me there, O Hedomenos; I never suspected you would think that my mom was being honest in that scenario, but since you say you do, I feel compelled to analyze the situation...

You claim that my mom was not dishonest, because she really was in the shower, and therefore what she said, “I’m in the shower”, was not false, and so you consider this one bald fact sufficient to prove her honesty. But there are other facts implicit to this scenario that have greater weight when considering her honesty or dishonesty. One of these is that she obviously, for some reason (it happened too long ago for me to remember now) did not wish to speak to her friend. How do we know this? Because she refused the phone when I handed it to her.

Another is that she didn’t want to hurt Shelby’s feelings. How do we know this? Because, had she accepted the call, and been honest, she would have told her she didn’t want to speak with her, which, obviously, would have hurt her feelings, Shelby being her friend. Of course, she could have accepted the call, and said to her something like, “I can’t talk right now Shelby, I’ve got to run to the store before it closes”, or, “...my cake is getting over-done if I don’t pull it out of the oven”, or, “...I’m already way late to meet Aunt Julie. Can I call you back later?”

But it takes quick thinking to realize that it’s almost time for the store to close, and Shelby could have gone there to see if Mama really went; or might have said, “Go ahead and get your cake out, I’ll wait”; or called Julie later and asked her where she and my mama went that day, etc...but ppl generally do not know how plausible or implausible it is that someone is taking a shower, and once you begin talking to someone, they can ask some uncomfortable questions...especially if you initiated the conversation with a lie.

Notice I said “taking” a shower, not “in the” shower: the genius of Mama’s plot was in the difference b/w taking a shower and being in one. If she had said, “tell her I’m taking a shower”, then I would have discovered Mama naked under a shower of water, soaping it up and all. As it was, since she said “in” the shower, and “shower” stand in for “shower-stall”, all she had to do was walk in fully clothed and BE there, no water flowing, in order to orchestrate her air-tight alibi.

My mama did not realize that sometimes it is best to be dishonest. Clearly, it was best that she tell a lie and deceive her friend in order to not hurt her feelings. But Mama wanted more than she deserved: she wanted to both not hurt her friend’s feelings and also not be dishonest...and she didn’t fool me, but she fooled her friend, herself, and ultra-literalists like you, who believe that the letter of the truth is it’s spirit.

So, O Hedomenos, where in my analysis have I gone astray? Is there anything I said about it that was not implicit in my story? Have I misrepresented anything? Do you still believe that the literal truth is the whole truth? Would you like me to give further examples as evidence that it isn’t?

I think you believe I can do so...but I don’t believe you will be persuaded: for I think you have decided that the way you see the world is the way it really is...or, at least, the way you think it ought to be. I don’t think you believe that anyone could convince you that the way you see the world is wrong, and you are smart enough to propose objection to anyone who might offer objection to it, by dissimulation.

...I see you as a sad young man who doesn’t realize he is sad; who has lacked the human connections in his life that would tie him to other ppl, that would make him realize that he might live for someone other than himself; that might give his life some significance other than coziness, comfortableness, and living on Raman Noodles and bland turkey sandwiches that he claims are more hedonistic than the cuisine of ancient emperors.

That’s my honest opinion, O Hedomenos. If I haven’t offended you, please answer the question whose answer I most looked forward to: what were the traumatic experiences of your life that didn’t involve physical pain?

When Caesar learned he would never conquer as much of the world as had Alexander, he wept like a child.

@TheHedoMinimalist. O Hedomenos, you are right: instead of accusing you of being dishonest, I should first have pointed out to you the discrepancy in your statements and asked you for a clarification. Please accept my apology.

Nevertheless, in your description of my accusation, you seem to me to have asked a quite philosophical question: does the dishonest person necessarily know he is being dishonest? You answered it in the affirmative, as definition; but it gave me pause, and I wonder to myself if there are any examples of dishonest ppl who don’t realize they are being dishonest...

I was once at my mama’s house when the phone rang. It was her friend Shelby. I answered it, and Shelby asked , “is your mom there?” to which I replied, “yes”, and handed the phone to Mama and said, “it’s Shelby”, but she refused it, and whispered, “tell her I’m in the shower”; so, feeling uncomfortable that I must tell a lie, but yielding to my mama’s command in her own house, I told Shelby that Mama was in the shower...

...a couple minutes later, having hung up with Shelby, I went looking for Mama: “Mama, where are you?” I called. “In here!” came her reply. Following her voice, I entered the master-bathroom to find Mama: she stood, fully clothed (thank God), inside the shower stall!

Now, obviously, Mama had been dishonest; but did she realize it? Had she realized it, would she have ever retreated to the shower stall? She thought by doing so she would be telling the truth, and she DID tell the literal truth. But, clearly, the LITERAL truth is not THE TRUTH, a thing my mama didn’t understand or appreciate.

Segue to your evidence of blue-balls and phantom limbs: yes, ppl obviously experience physical pain in very individual ways...but is this the whole truth about pain? Is the traumatic pain you suffered as a “child” being slammed to the ground over and over by a “grown adult” not similar to how my mother was “in the shower” when Shelby called?

Finally, I would like you to, if you are willing, tell me about the other things you have been traumatized by other than physical pain in other incidences that you haven’t mentioned.

@"TheHedoMinimalist O Hedomenos, it hurts me deeply to discover that you are not being truthful with me. How can we two discover the truth together when you are not willing to be truthful?

How can you believe in the objective truth about anything if you don’t assume it has a common nature?
— Todd Martin

What do you mean by common nature in this context? I thought we were understanding common nature in discussion as just a short way of saying common human nature regarding how we experience physical pain. — TheHedoMinimalist

Remember saying that? Now let me remind you of what you initially said, the statement I was responding to:

So, is it not possible that you just experience pain differently from the way that I experience pain? I don’t see why it’s so implausible to think that people have vastly different ways of experiencing pain. Rather, I find any sort of universalism about human nature and the way humans experience things to be highly implausible as I think people just experience the world in vastly different ways. — TheHedoMinimalist

Notice that, initially, you didn’t say “...universalism about PAIN...”, but rather, “ANY SORT of universalism about HUMAN NATURE, and the ways humans experience THINGS to be highly implausible, as I think people just experience the WORLD in vastly different ways”. Now, had I said that, bright man as you obviously are, wouldn’t you have jumped all over it, accusing me of having made a generalization that I then tried to make look like a statement about something very specific?

I think your initial statement, that you believe there is no universal human nature or experience in anything, is the one you truly believe, or at least want to believe; and I think you backtracked from it and pretended you were only talking about pain when confronted with the absurdity of your belief.

So which do you assert now? that you were talking about all human experience, or only the experience of physical pain?

@TheHedoMinimalist. You recently stated,

It matters not only how hard the thing that hits you is but also how hard it is trying to hit you. — TheHedoMinimalist

You then say,

doors aren’t trying to hurt you and so they aren’t going to be as efficient at doing so. — TheHedoMinimalist

There are two elements involved here: the harmful capacity of a physical object, like a door (and you admit that solid wood is more formidable, in a mere physical sense, than even a “big muscular guy”), and the hurtful intent of a violent person, and your explanation as to why the latter is to be feared more than the former is because his intention leads to greater “efficiency” at hurting you, and you experience greater pain because, since he intends to hurt you, he is more efficient than a motiveless door would be at inflicting pain.

But this, I assume, doesn’t apply to your circumcisor, for he, I presume, had no intention of hurting you. You said, of your circumcision, that it was as traumatic as your beating, yet the two men had inherently different motives, so how do you reconcile your theory of intentionally inflicted pain with that? Or do you think your circumcisor was sadistic?

Since you have admitted the element of intention into our discussion about the trauma of pain, let me give you some examples of that sort of trauma that involved no physical pain whatsoever...yet long-lasting trauma...

You and your long-time best friend, one to whom you have cleaved throughout many years enjoying together the joys and adversities of two lives lived inseparably, get caught up in a heated argument, over something probably forgettable and trivial, and he takes a swing at you and misses: had he connected, you might have suffered a black eye or broken nose, etc; since he didn’t, is the pain to your soul any less because of that? Will you just forget that your best friend tried to clock you, because he caused you no intense physical pain?

Your wife, whom you love and adore, serves you your customary evening beverage, and at the first taste you detect something different and wrong, so you surreptitiously save it and take it to a chemistry lab, only to have it come back positive for antifreeze. Are you heartened that you did not drink down the draught? Of course you are! But is the trauma any less because you didn’t?

@TheHedoMinimalist. How can you believe in the objective truth about anything if you don’t assume it has a common nature? Does a mathematician think some numbers can be added or subtracted or multiplied or divided, etc, but others not? Does a physicist think some bodies fall at 32 ft/sec2 but others don’t? If you are to be objective as a “scientist of man”, how else can you proceed unless you assume he has a common nature? Otherwise you’re studying, not types of things, but only separate individual entities that have nothing in common. Does that seem like science to you?

I’m arguing that the common truth to be discovered is the truth of there not being any universal human nature. I believe in objective truth but I don’t believe in universal human nature. I don’t see why the existence of objective truth would entail the existence of universal human nature. — TheHedoMinimalist

But, Honey, you have given no proof of your argument other than your own subjective (not objective) experience. You say human experience is necessarily subjective, but have given no objective proof that this is so, and you dodge my question of why two ppl would want to seek the truth about anything together when, as you assert, not as an argument, but as an axiom, that there is nothing they have in common other than their separate unique individual experiences...which might, or might not (as ours hasn’t come together) mesh, depending on chance.

You seem to me to have this attitude: “This is my experience as a human being; I would like for someone to validate it. That would make me feel as though I am not alone in the world”...but all those who may have sympathized with you are mute, and the only one who has stuck with you is me, I, who profoundly disagree with you.

And I tell you now: I will stick with you to the bitter (or sweetest) end. As long as you respond to me, so will I to you, and I will never give up in attempting to show you the weaknesses of your arguments...in case that somehow benefit you, and your responses somehow benefit me.

@dazed. A man devoted to physical pleasures will necessarily suffer with age, as the body deteriorates more quickly and more certainly than the mind. A young man who cultivates his mind as well as his body, who enjoys philosophy as well as athletics, once he has grown so old that the latter begin to disappoint him, is heartened by the knowledge that he may apply himself to the more important affairs: of his soul; for his philosophy has already taught him that the pleasures and concerns of his body are ephemeral and negligible compared to those of his soul.

It is unfortunate that you are a man of neither arts nor letters...I remember watching the last concert Vladimir Horowitz played. He had returned to his native land after a long period of exile, now well into his 80s. The hall was packed, young boys “hanging from the rafters” to get a view. As he played a Mozart sonata, the camera panned to a Russian civil servant of some sort sitting erect in the audience, all dressed up in his uniform, his eyes closed, face composed; but a single tear running down his cheek...

...Vladimir died a few weeks later...of old age.

@TheHedoMinimalist. Here are two excerpts from your speech that seem to me to be inherently contradictory. I will quote and compare them:

I want to talk to someone who sees this conversation as an opportunity for 2 people to discover the truth together. — TheHedoMinimalist

I find any sort of universalism about human nature and the way humans experience things to be highly implausible as I think people just experience the world in vastly different ways. — TheHedoMinimalist

If there is no universal human nature, and no common human experience, how can two different human beings discover any common truth together concerning either their natures or experiences? Indeed, what motivation would two ppl believing that even have, to seek truth together? In that optic, there is only my truth and your truth, and there is nothing to guarantee that they share any resemblance.

...and yet it is obvious, sine multis exempliis meis, that human beings share a common both nature and experience.

Your sentiment, that you want to converse with someone with whom you might discover the truth, smacks more of Socrates as portrayed by Plato than of modern philosophy, which, nurtured on Nietzsche, tends to place separate unbridgeable cultures on a higher pedestal than the universalist old-school philosophy and science. Nietzsche’s separate cultures ultimately became our separate individuals...all unique and peculiarly “creative”, incomparable with anyone else...all great rewards for the ego of the common man suffering under the heavy burden of his obscurity, giving a boost to his flagging self-confidence...

...but there was a cost. As one member of this site recently stated, nothing is truly free, and the cost we pay for choosing culture/individualism over philosophy/science is that there then becomes no intellectual common ground on which to share our experiences.

What reason or motive do you have to be open to my argument that your pain is memorable not because of its pure intensity, but because it was the result of a grown man beating up on a defenseless small child? For as you say, ppl just experience the world in vastly different ways, and that’s that...but then to say you hoped that you and I could discover the truth about it together?? Well, your first premise pretty much puts an end to that, O, Hedomenos, doesn’t it?

Yet I offered evidence from your own words to illustrate my point: that your trauma was due to more than mere intensity of physical pain. You said,

You seem to be listing very mild forms of pain in comparison to my scenario of being beaten by a grown man as a child. — TheHedoMinimalist

What do “grown man” and “child” have to do with intensity of physical pain? By using those terms you prejudice the reader: he imagines a powerful brute having his way with a defenseless weakling, and the effect on the reader is not one of excruciating pain (though that too may be involved), but rather of stronger taking advantage of weaker in order to vent his animus. THAT, O Hedomenos, is the context of the pain you keep denying exists, though you have given it to us in your very words.

As far as your late circumcision goes, you have not focused on that nearly to the extent you have on being bashed on the ground by an overpowering brute. Yet the lateness of it, at 9 years of age, when most boys receive it, like I did, soon after birth, says much. I doubt you would agree with this, but I think any medical procedure done in “the nether regions” of the body on a sentient being must be more traumatic than if performed most anywhere else. Why? Because those parts of the body are most private...

...I had a beautiful 4th-grade teacher. She began having health problems, and the male (of course, in that day) doctor wanted to examine her breasts, to which, out of modesty, she refused; a year later she was dead from breast cancer.

@Valentinus.

if you are preoccupied about when you will leave it, you have already left it. — Valentinus

THAT...is a very wise statement.

@TheHedoMinimalist. O Hedomenos, when you say,

You seem to be listing very mild forms of pain in comparison to my scenario of being beaten by a grown man as a child. Trust me, it caused me much more pain than stubbing my toe would. It might partially be because I was still a child with a fragile child’s body and that would also increase the pain involved. — TheHedoMinimalist

.

a couple of things stand out to me: firstly, if we are to judge the intensity of pain objectively, wouldn’t we do so by observing the reaction to it by the one experiencing it? For example, if I stub my toe on something (and who hasn’t done so?) and either utter nothing or at most cry, “ouch!”, and continue on as though nothing happened, you would assume that the pain was rather mild. But if I instead double over (and to whom has this never occurred?) and cry, “oh, oh, oh!” over and over and curse and moan for a good while before I can right myself and do anything else, wouldn’t you assume the pain was excruciating? And we don’t even need to be objective in the matter, because EVERYONE has experienced the excruciating pain of severely stubbing a little toe and being doubled over, momentarily, in great pain...which, thank god, soon eases off, though I doubt within just 15 seconds. So when you say that the examples of pain I listed are “very mild” in comparison to what you experienced, I just can’t believe that, at least judging pain by mere intensity.

Secondly, the rhetoric you use to describe your painful experience is revealing to me, for the words you use to contrast your unique pain with my pedestrian examples are, that it was inflicted by “a grown man” on “a child”. A grown man is indeed much stronger than a child and can therefore inflict great pain on him...but a door jamb is more solid than a grown man, and can inflict great pain on my toe also. What’s the difference then? The only difference is that the grown man might have done differently, while the door had no choice.

The real reason the experience of being slammed to the ground was traumatic to you is not because it was painful to your body—that pain only lasted 15 seconds—but because it was painful to your soul, and THAT pain has lasted all your life; and until you realize this, you will continue to misattribute the trauma to mere physical pain, and you will fail to realize that physical pain is always context-dependent; that is, on how it touched your soul.

In your search for an excuse as to why the pain was so traumatic, you offer the theory that it was because your youthful body was so “fragile”...but everybody knows that a child’s bones are more supple and pliant than an adult’s; and, besides, you don’t say any bones were even broken.

The real reason this event of your childhood has lived on in your memory is because a soul in a stronger body lost its temper, and took it out on a weaker one unjustly. You even give excuses for the perpetrator, saying you were being a “brat”, and that this justified his actions; then you give excuses for your trauma, saying it was the result of the experience of mere physical pain!

If any of my words have cast the shadow of a doubt in your mind about the etiology of your trauma, then let me know, and I will continue to attempt to persuade you; otherwise, I will leave off, and consider my efforts to have been in vain.

@dazed.

As of late, I see my body starting to show its signs of deterioration more, my scoliosis has worsened, I seem to have developed hemmrhoids, I can;t run like I used to, I don't sleep longer than 6 hours straight much anymore, etc etc — dazed

I’m much older than you and have had three hemorrhoids for 15 years. They’ve never gotten any worse, just occasional discomfort and red spots on the toilet tissue; nothing to start planning the end of my life about.

I haven’t been able to run for 20 years, due to a work injury and the onset of arthritis in a knee...but my mind runs off all the time into vistas opened up by the books I have read and am reading, and the thoughts I have nourished by them concerning what’s going on in the world and my own life.

I never sleep longer than 6 hrs either, but, when I wake up I betake myself to some enjoyable, profitable activity, or just lie in the darkness contemplating my most recent dream, or my life in general, or some peculiar problem I’m dealing with.

In fine, I’d say your physical problems are unworthy of thoughts-of-death. I don’t know about scoliosis, for I don’t experience that physically. All I would say is that we all experience a scoliosis (warping) of the soul, and that that is what we should be most concerned about, whatever our physical state or age.

You don’t have to win the lottery to live an enjoyable life. If you know how to work on cars, you can get work anywhere. I’m a handyman, and it is hard to avoid all the appeals from friends and family to do this or that for them...

Live your dream, before you die. I’ve always wanted to travel the country. You dont have to have a bunch of money or a fancy car. It’s taken me thirty years of philosophical study to realize this: all you need are your soul and two legs to walk on to go whithersoever you will.

@TheHedoMinimalist. O Hedomenos...

The “badness” of pain is VERY “context-dependent”. You say there is no difference b/w a doctor touching your genitals, and a pervert doing the same? Their separate motives make no difference, because the pain is the same?...

...are you not heartened to be with a doctor to whom you have gone to relieve yourself of some malady of your privates, and if a little pain is involved, don’t you endure it, trusting that it is for your better health? A needle stuck in your arm is painful, right? But isn’t the thought of being safe from a deadly disease worth a little painful prick? On the other hand, do you entrust your health to a pervert? What if his perversion is delight in cutting boys’ balls off? How would you know unless yours went missing?

You say, when you got slammed on your back as a child, that “the pain was just unbearable for those 15 seconds”, and that that is why it “haunts you to this day”. This just doesn’t make sense. Either the pain lasted a lot longer than that, days or weeks or months (in which case your fear makes more sense), or you’re making a mountain out of a mole-hill. Who in their right mind fears 15 seconds of pain more than an eternity of death? “Fifteen seconds of unbearable pain” is a contradiction in terms, for nothing is unbearable that lasts only fifteen seconds, for it’s over after fifteen seconds, and then you no longer have to bear it.

Do you have this same reaction when you stub your toe over a chair-leg, or receive a paper-cut on your finger, or bang your knee against a door-edge? For everyday life offers plenty of opportunity to experience momentary excruciating pain. But we don’t fear it; for, though it be excruciating, we know from past experience that it is merely temporary. If you are so sensitive to pain, you must live day-to-day in fear of even these most common sorts; what kind of life is that, fearing to move about a room, or lift a hot coffee-pot, or handle a piece of paper?

well, I think luck plays a pretty big role in determining who ends up being remembered and who gets forgotten. For example, the composer Bach didn’t become popular until 200 years after his death. Mozart was also not super popular while he was alive and his music had to be revived long after his death. In contrast, a composer like Wagner was really famous during his lifetime but became a mere footnote in the history of classical music. Jacob Collier has a sizable following today and he might be regarded as being better than Mozart 300 years from now because you never know. These opinions about who is a greater composer are often dependent on the opinions of an establishment of posh music critics. — TheHedoMinimalist

Have you considered exactly why Mozart’s music was not popular in his day, yet was revived, or why Wagner became a footnote, despite his popularity? Is it wise to judge the quality of something by its popularity, to take a poll? Is the majority of everyone’s opinion the proper standard of judgement?...

... the reason Mozart’s music lasted was because his peers, not the general population, considered him worthy: Beethoven had his piano concertos to study as models for his own; Schubert thought his music the finest available, and Tchaikovsky called Mozart “the Jesus Christ” of music. Should we follow the experts’ opinion on this, or rather the people’s, with whom he fell out of favor?

@TheHedoMinimalist. Well, I never feared death in that last story, O Hedomenos, the one where I impaled my wrist on the woody stalk; but, since you ask, yes: I feared death on at least two other occasions, when I was a child, and the fear hinged on death by obstruction...

Once, when I was a boy, I became rather constipated; for what reason I cannot tell. The next morning, before I was to go to school, I went to the bathroom, and, attempting to defecate, found that it just wouldn’t come out...or, it certainly wasn’t going to come out easily, as it always had before then. I was afraid to force it; because, for some reason, I thought that if I forced it, and it only came part ways out, that I would somehow perish.

I told my mama I had an “upset stomach”, and she kept me home from school and, because she thought I meant I had diarrhea, gave me something to stop me up!...you can imagine the pickle I was in now (or the pickle that was in me!). At any rate, by the end of that excruciating day, the misunderstanding was cleared up, I received a much needed enema, and the world, and my colon, were restored to order.

The second obstructionist drama has two acts. The first act opens with me and my twin brother seated with our cousin Craig on Uncle Ivory’s couch, watching TV. I was drinking something that had large cubes of ice in it, and as I sucked on one of those cubes it got somehow sucked down my throat and lodged in my windpipe.

I sprang immediately up off the couch, pointing to my throat and trying to say, “I have a piece of ice in my throat!”...which, of course, was unintelligible to them in my state: my brother thought I was trying to imitate Donald Duck. After several seconds of repeating myself and trying to cough up the foreign object, the next thing I remember is watching the ice cube slide along the linoleum floor. My brother says Uncle Ivory slapped me on the back, which seems very plausible and which I cannot deny, though I never felt the slap.

Soon afterwards Craig and I and my brother were playing with toys on the carpeted steps as though no one had almost died. The only after-effect was a soreness in my larynx, which was gone within a day or two... but this scene in the drama was just prolegomenon for the one that would occur a few years later...

...in the final scene, my older sister has taken me to the movie theater to see an R-rated movie (she must have snuck me in somehow). The movie was one from the early 70s whose title I have long since forgotten. There were a lot of dirty words spoken in it that I had never heard and didn’t understand (though she did, and laughed at them in the way that ppl do who pretend they are morally outraged but delight in the scandalous nature of it).

In the movie, two men are cutting logs next to a lake when one of the logs falls on one of them and pins him in the shallows. His head is above the water, but the tide is rising, and as it does, his head gets pushed down further and further toward the surface of the water as the log rolls, and it is clear to both that it will soon be under water...

Once his head is under, his friend begins delivering him mouth-to-mouth inhalations of oxygen... until they both are overcome by the comical nature of two men kissing under water, and the friend laughs out his next delivery in bubbles, and his pinned buddy expires, and his friend grieves and vainly attempts to pull him up, crying out to the universe...

It was many days before I got over this. The thought of expiring from obstruction of the breathing passage, by H2O either frozen or liquid, was unendurable...so I gradually learned to just not think about it. I eventually became an excellent swimmer, and I have never felt any compunction sucking on ice since, nor on a lozenge or candy. These are the sorts of trauma you’re supposed to suffer as a child and then move on from, get over with.

@TheHedoMinimalist. I don’t know, O Hedomenos. You say some surprising things, for example, that you would have preferred 15 seconds of sexual rather than physical abuse...

...when I was a young man, a sexual predator enticed me into a secret location and attempted to force himself on me. A struggle ensued, and during the struggle my shirt was torn, I endured scrapes on my back and knees, and had the tip of an ink pin (he tried to trick me into thinking he wielded a knife) driven into the midst of my palm. I felt like I was fighting for my life, and when I had escaped I felt violated, even though he had failed to achieve his goal.

My psychological trauma lasted for a few weeks or months. I had a few bad dreams...then I got over it. Now it is just an old memory, something that happened when I was young. I never think about it. Images from it never enter my mind uninvited.

Of course, if he HAD overpowered me and had had his way with me, then things would, I’m sure, have been very different for me; or, if he had REALLY wielded a knife, instead of an ink pen. I have no good idea anymore just how long the struggle lasted: maybe it was 30 seconds, or a minute; maybe it was only 15 seconds.

At any rate, the pain from my wounds was absolutely unremarkable; the pain to my soul more substantial, but not eternal...

...many years later, I was in a bad relationship with a woman. She tried to shut the door on me and lock me out of the apartment. In a fit of rage I struck at the door with my left hand to try to keep the door from closing, and, because I was enraged, mistakenly struck the glass instead of the wood...

...blood was everywhere. When I extracted my hand and saw the two bloody chasms the jagged edges of the broken pane had carved into my wrist, I glanced up at my girlfriend: her face was frozen in horror. My first thought was, “FINALLY! This is over (meaning our relationship: it had taken such a catastrophe to end it for good)”...

...but then, immediately afterwards, all that concerned me was the preservation of my life, for I thought I was bleeding to death (though no blood was spurting out like a geyser, the tale tale sign of a ruptured artery). I cried for her to call 911, which she did, and then cried for her to find a rope or belt to tourniquet my arm, which she did...

I passed out from fear before the ambulance ever got there; I passed out from pain later on lying on the ER bed when a couple of doctors-in-training started messing in (examining) the wounds. But before I lost consciousness I remember crying out, “I don’t want to die!”...when I awoke, I saw the faces of two or three nurses smiling at me, the ones who had rushed in to elevate me and raise my blood-pressure, and I felt silly and ashamed that I thought I was going to die!

One tendon was severed, and stitched back together, and though I have occasionally felt unusual pain and weakness in my left hand, nevertheless I can say that it has not prevented me from performing any of the tasks of daily life that I need it for; especially piano and guitar. And two tattoos, the natural kind as opposed to the unnatural, the sort added for some sort of ostentation or self-advertisement, streak down my left arm to remind me of the heedlessness of anger.

Nor do I hold in my mind the trauma of that pain and relive it. I have experienced similar pain since then: a third scar was added a few years ago when, weed-eating a grassy embankment, I slipped and fell and empaled my left wrist on a sharp woody stalk. This time I was less fearful. All I could see was the butt end of the wood protruding from my wrist, so, thinking it a small thing, I took a pair of pliers and tried to extricate it myself...but it broke off, and I realized I must go to the ER...

...once there, I watched the doctor, after he stuck me with several anesthetizing needles, pull out tiny pieces of wood. He kept digging deeper. At one point he grabbed something that wouldn’t come out, and I , who was watching this the whole time, exclaimed, “Are you sure you have hold of a piece of wood?”...for I was afraid he was gonna yank a tendon or ligament outta me. At this point he removed the forceps and exclaimed, “I think I got it all”, stitched up my wound and sent me home...

...but he hadn’t got it all, for, within a couple days red streaks were running up my left arm and I had to go back to the ER. They saw something in the ultra-scan, scheduled a surgery, and this different doctor put me under and cut out a piece of woody stalk that was imbedded in my wrist that was more than an inch long!...

Now I have three tattoos running down my left wrist: two due to anger, one, to folly: for, had I worn proper shoes that day I weed-ate the bank, I never would have slipped and fell and impaled my wrist on a sharp woody stalk.

As for the moral to my stories, I haven’t the time now, at this late hour, to dwell therein. Read them and tell me your impression. One thing I’m sure of: the fear of pain and death is far greater than its actualization.

@TheHedoMinimalist. O Hedomenos, I haven’t much time tonight to respond to all that you said, so I will only respond to what seems most remarkable: that you would, after so many years, consider it noteworthy that you suffered 15 seconds of physical abuse as a child, and were traumatized by that, simply from the physical pain. The physical pain could not have lasted more than a few minutes, hours or days. Consider all the countless children that have endured such abuse constantly, almost every day of their childhood, and what trauma that must have permanently afflicted on their souls!...don’t you feel a bit like you are exaggerating things when you publicly state that you were physically abused as a child?

Having said that, I recall that my oldest brother held a grudge against our mother into his adulthood because she slapped him in the face in front of our grandma, uncles and aunts, and cousins: he, a small boy, found a long gray hair in his food, and held it up for all to see, and proclaimed, “there’s a hair in my food!” at which point Mama’s hand came down forcefully on his tender cheek: “Don’t you ever say that again!” she admonished him. It wasn't the sting on his cheek that he never forgot; it was rather the sting of injustice: this was probably a thing he had either never experienced (a hair in his food), or had never been reprimanded for, at home.

At any rate, as I said, my brother did not hold his grudge because of the physical pain—how can physical pain that is soon gone last in the memory of a child?—but rather because of the sting of injustice. So I suspect your 15 seconds of pain as a child must have been etched in your memory for some reason other than that it was physically painful (?)

As far as your assumptions about my musical experience go, I can tell you I am an amateur piano/guitar player; I read music and have studied harmony and voice-leading. On piano I play Mozart, Bach, Schubert, my own compositions, and my own arrangements of Baptist hymns; on guitar I play old Elton John and John Denver and Pink Floyd and Carly Simon, etc. I wish there was a way we could share our compositions/performances, for I would like to read and play what you have written.

But it is late, and I must go...

@TheHedoMinimalist. Let me clear up a couple misunderstandings first: when I said, “

I realized there were vistas of musical experience that had been hidden from me...not purposefully, but by a general denigration in the culture of classical things. — Todd Martin

, I should have rather said, to remove ambiguity, “...by a general denigration of classical things in the (present) culture”.

Secondly, when I said,

Most other ppl, especially women, consider the “romantic drama” surrounding sexual intercourse to be justified, and I imagine this is something you have either already, or soon will, experience yourself. — Todd Martin

, I didn’t mean that you would experience it in your soul, as a felt desire or emotion; just that you would experience it from the women you get involved with, drawing from my many relationships with them over my lifetime. I don’t presume to know anything more about you than you tell me. Of course, like everybody, I make judgements about ppl from what they tell me about themselves.

I took your advice, and I looked Collier up on YouTube and listened/watched, so now we are even: we have both heard/experienced Mozart and Collier. What do you think my impression was; I, this random guy on the internet who, actually, is not so random now, since I to you, like you to me, have shared particular, even sometimes intimate, details of each others’ lives? Before you read further, turn away from the computer screen and imagine, knowing what you do of my aesthetics, what I’m going to say about Mr. Collier’s music, and only then proceed to my next paragraph...

...he is nothing more than a fancy pop-star and musical stuntman. The gulf b/w him and a Mozart or Beethoven or Brahms is so deep and unfathomable that no comparison can be made. I heard nothing in his music that was not predicated on Western harmony, and everything else I heard was just showmanship. The only thing I might say to his credit is that he is the Big Mac we see in the advertisement rather than the one we hold in our hands.

You are wrong about the diet of the ancients: they had excellent sauces and spices, drawn straight from the garden, both aristocrat and plebs, and the former had blocks of ice drawn down from the snowy mountaintops to cool their perishables. And to think that the pleasure they either experienced or hoped for from their sexual conquests suffered from lack of hygiene is to fail to appreciate that there is nothing better in bed, for a good ole southern boy, than a skanky redneck whore.

But let me ask you this, O Hedomenos: what effect do you think your physical abuse as a child had on the way that you perceive the world now?

@TheHedoMinimalist. I’m not sure why you fear debilitating pain in your later years so much, unless there’s something I don’t know about your present physical condition that would explain it. I’m a late-middle-aged man, and the pains I endure are typical of my age: arthritis in my knee requiring a brace, a pesky hernia causing occasional back pain, a tooth sensitive to hot and cold liquids, etc, but certainly nothing I would rather die than suffer.

I generally agree with your description of how Mozart’s music was appreciated/exploited in his own day. Yes, musicians of that time were dependent on kings and archbishops for their appointments, who sometimes suppressed or attempted to influence the character of the music produced. The same thing was operative concerning ancient literature, e.g. the obeisance to Caesar Augustus paid by Vergil and Ovid; but that didn’t compromise the greatness of their works. The truly great artists of antiquity knew both how to appease their bosses, and consummate their geniuses.

It strikes me as strange that you praise folk music as being “the McDonald’s” of music in olden times.
Didn’t you, in an earlier post, say one of the benefits of our day was being able to eat better than any emperor ever did? Surely you weren’t thinking of a Big Mac when you said that!...or were you???

As far as Mr. Collier is concerned, I frankly have neither the time nor inclination to look his music up and listen to it. Dave Brubeck was wonderful, and stirred my adolescent soul...but so did Elton John and Pink Floyd, and later on a few other pop/rock artists of that day. But once I was introduced to Mousorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, and Berlioz’s Symphony Fantastique, I realized there were vistas of musical experience that had been hidden from me...not purposefully, but by a general denigration in the culture of classical things.

I know musical appreciation is a very subjective thing. All I can say—and this doesn’t help our discussion—is, let’s see whose name is remembered a hundred years from now: that of Jacob Collier, or that of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The latter’s name has certainly outlasted all the names of all the “McDonald’s” folk musicians of his own day.

But a couple of the things you praise about the former’s music strike me as emanating from democratic prejudice. One is that you say that he writes music using notes and scales that have never been used before. Novelty is one of the hallmarks of democratic taste. Whatever is most emergent and new, contrary to what ever came before, is praised prima facie, at the expense of true skill and accomplishment.

Similar to this is the assertion that his music appeals to all cultures, not just the stultified Western one of a Mozart. O Hedomenos: what is more modern and ultra-democratic than all things multi-cultural? especially if they aren’t derived from the traditionally dominant one?

But I like Herodotus’ method better: he compared the different cultures of his day, not under the assumption that they were equally good in all things, but rather to find what was best in each. It is not novelty or equality that should guide us in our tastes, but rather the good.

You apparently live a life very independent of binding attachments to other ppl, apparently even to ppl of your own family, but the vast majority of other ppl don’t live this way. Most other ppl, especially women, consider the “romantic drama” surrounding sexual intercourse to be justified, and I imagine this is something you have either already, or soon will, experience yourself. Consider all the cultures of mankind past and present: do you find any that don’t consider sex more than just having fun, experiencing a thrill? Then, as a multi-culturalist yourself, you might learn something from that fact.

Much of the thrill of a sexual encounter in the good ole days was due to the fact that it was prohibited and forbidden. Now that all is laid bare and everything is permitted, what do we find? gay couples legally married, and bickering just as much as straight ones did, and still do...

...I imagine that your sexual conquest and pleasure, the girl old enough to be your mom, either coaxed you into a ho-hum regular not-as-exciting sexual routine, or pressured you to become more committed. Either way, what you sought was lost.

@TheHedoMinimalist. O Hedomenos, that was a personal affront to me, that you set the preferred end of your life at an age, 55, younger than my present years! You are obviously yet a rather young man, and I doubt the sincerity of your sentiment: I would like to know how you feel when you turn 54.

Your other sentiment, that you like modernity because it allows us to live “comfortable, cozy and pleasant lives” actually seems more that of an older than younger man. When men are young, their bodies and souls are full of vigor, and they are more willing to undergo physical hardship for some higher purpose. You, however, seem to be content to live the life of a tomcat, sunning yourself and taking naps on the porch all day, getting fed Friskies for breakfast, lunch and supper, taken to the vet for ringworm, etc...but at least when the tomcat prowls at night, he is willing to fight off his rivals, risking wounds and scars, to get the feline in heat he desires so greatly...though she sport hairs under her arms!

As far as Mozart is concerned, there are three sorts of ppl that are attracted to him out of the general population: the most obvious are the white-hairs who commonly go to classical concerts because that is the music that they were steeped in as youngsters (that group may have already died out); another is the younger sort, wealthy and upwardly mobile, who take an interest out of vanity and ostentation; the last is the mothers who think their infants will become smarter if they hear his music regularly...

...but there are very very few who listen to his music now simply because it stirs their soul, regardless of how many listen to his music on YouTube, and there are no new Mozarts, or Schuberts, or Beethovens, or Brahmses being produced in our day. They have all been replaced by jazz and rock and hip-hip and rap in the popular consciousness...which is an opprobrium less of classical music than it is of the modern soul.

As far as what you call “collectivist” positions of power are concerned, the head of a family or state, sure: they often used, and still use, their power to mistreat those they oversee, and limit the freedom of those in their charge unjustly. But is the bald fact that a power can be abused reason to eliminate it entirely? Don’t such powers often also conduce to greater good? Do not the traditional marriage vows, “for better or worse”, take account not just of misfortune, but also of the frailty of the paterfamilias, his proneness to error, of the fact that he is a mere mortal?

When divorce becomes easy, when a man and woman who have formally pledged to devote their lives to each other decide that they might be happier going separate ways, and split up, what do their children learn from this to guide them in their adult lives? They learn that there is no unbreakable bond between human beings, and that, with whomsoever they should form a bond with in their own lives, be it a wife or husband, mother or father, brother or sister, priest or friend, that bond has no fetters, is a will-o-the wisp.

We may decide to discard every position of power that can be abused—let’s just make sure we’re not throwing the baby out with the bath water.

@synthesis. You seem to be waffling, Mr. Composition (for that is the meaning of your Greek nickname; but your spirit is contrary to your name: for you want to separate, not combine ppl, at least in the workplace), in that you originally said ppl ought to work for themselves, but lately asserted that that is impossible; and indeed my description of the cabinet-maker shows that it is indeed impossible. But I will move on from here...

Something else you said earlier in this thread I would like to bring back to your attention: that nothing is free.

Consider a man who buys a table from a carpenter at market value: the latter gets compensated for his materials and utilities, for the cost of his helper, etc, and receives a profit commensurate with the value of his skill to help pay for his cost of living.

Now for one of many possible reasons—maybe he had to move to a smaller apartment in which the table wouldn’t fit; maybe he inherited a better table and had no room for the one he bought; maybe his wife didn’t like it and told him to get rid of it—the man who bought the table sets it out beside the street in front of his house and puts a “for free” sign on it, and I, who need a table, come along and see it, load it onto the back of my pickup and take it home.

Now, just whose labor was stolen here? The carpenter was fully compensated by the market; the buyer did what he would with his own property and I,...how can you say I got nothing for free?

@TheHedoMinimalist. I didn’t recognize that there were so many, like myself, critics of modernity in this forum. Most of the thinkers and philosophies espoused here seem to me to be very modern, ppl and ideas I am unfamiliar with...and, frankly, have little interest in.

Whatever the case may be, it seems to me that those who approve of modern life, as you do, do so on the same ground: the benefits of science and technology to the improvement of man’s physical well-being; as though merely living longer and in better health were the keys to human bliss.

According to this optic, one might say,”Oh Mozart! If only he had lived in this day, when modern medicine prolongs lives, so that he could produce so many more masterpieces!”...but modernity has not only extinguished the aristocratic taste that he exemplified in his music: it has also turned our taste away from any real appreciation of it. Not only this, but Mozart, who died at the age of 35, accomplished far more than any present musician will ever accomplish, should he live to the age of 100.

Genius aside, let’s consider the everyday lives of everyday ppl like you and me: what modernity promotes is individualism, the notion that each human being is a separate entity with peculiar rights, not necessarily attached to anything other than his or her own selfish self; and this leads to divorce, and alienation from family and friends, and the unsatisfactory compromises that result, and the addiction to alcohol and drugs that is required to cope with it, etc, etc...

Neither living long nor being healthy is a guarantee of true life, that is, the life of the soul.

@synthesis. I’m not sure what you mean by the statement that, in your economic system, everybody would work for themselves.

Doesn’t an employee work for himself inasmuch as he expects a wage which will cover his living expenses? But you exclude him from your economic system, and the only possible reason that you do is because the work he does does not DIRECTLY benefit him. To take the example of the cabinet-maker’s helper, it is not HIS cabinet he helps to install, but someone else’s. Indeed, the cabinet-maker himself is not working for himself, for it is not HE needs a cabinet, but rather his client.

Therefore, In the economic system you propose, each individual would work directly to supply himself all his needs, dependent on no one else to either supply them or help him acquire them: I would grow or shoot my own food, dip my drinking water from a spring-house, build a hut from sticks and thatch (there would be no calls to “raise high the roof-beams, carpenters!”), stitch together my own buckskin suit, etc...

This sort of economic system would certainly hold a lot of self-satisfaction, and encourage individual enterprise...

...but it would also be very, very lonely...not to mention primitive.

@synthesis. You mentioned in the OP, that an example of the person who attempts to get more profit than his labor is worth, is he who takes another as an employee; for, as the case almost always is, the employer pays his employee less than he himself takes from the profit of the company.

In the trades, such an employee is often a “helper”, ie, someone of inferior skill whose extra hands either assist the craftsman by performing menial low-skill services that the latter would rather not spend time or energy on, or is necessary, inasmuch as some things cannot be accomplished by means of only two hands, eg, moving an object too big or heavy for one person to move.

But why should one of inferior skill profit the same as one of superior skill? Shouldn’t greater skill be rewarded by greater profit?

As for the “necessary” employee, the one without which the craftsman would be unable to perform his service, should he be rewarded equally to the craftsman because, without him, the latter would be unable to perform his service at all? Or should we rather reward him less because he is merely necessary, not integral to the enterprise? In other words, it is easy to find a man who can lift the other end of a heavy cabinet; hard to find one who can make the cabinet.

Then there is the craftsman who decides to become a businessman; instead of building cabinets himself, he hires other cabinet-makers to build them for him. Of course, he keeps more of the profit than he pays them individually. Does this seem fair to you? What are his reasons for profiting more than the men or women who do the actual work?

Well, it is not as though our cabinet-maker-turned-businessman does nothing. He relieves the cabinet-makers of a lot of the business of cabinet-making that is not germane to the craft: he advertises for customers; he meets with them and figures out exactly what they want; he measures the job, orders the wood and screws, schedules the work, takes responsibility for errors, both financially and reputationally, etc, etc. One might almost say that he is the servant of his employees; and I would wager, when his employees see him this way, that they do not begrudge him his greater wealth, especially if he does not boast about it, or use it immoderately and ostentatiously.

If instead we take an oath to the credo that a human being should be rewarded according to the amount of work he put into something, regardless of the character of that work...well, we will deal with that if you should take that oath.

@Jack Cummins. What you described in your response to my last post (sorry: I don’t know how to “copy and paste” a quote, if that’s the term. I’m very new to the internet) is “reading the Bible as literature”, that is, as just another (great) book, to be dissected and analyzed and interpreted into something that becomes less harmful, less dominant in our thought.

But that is not the way it’s authors and the traditional readers looked at it. They saw it as “The Book”, literally, “The Bible”, THE roadmap to their lives; and though some few more enlightened souls realized that it was fantastical to believe God made the world in seven days, or that man was seduced by eating a forbidden apple, or that the sun can stand still, etc, they still believed in the god who could summon such divine metaphors from mere mortal authors made of clay.

As for the vast majority of Israel, they DID believe in the literalness of what they read...or, more likely, what they heard, since letters are the achievement of the minority intelligent enough to learn them (as can be seen clearly in this forum), and, that vast majority will always adhere to “the letter and the word” of their native religion.

Mixing various religious principles or ideas drawn from disparate faiths in order to brew an amalgamation that reconciles science and religion is a Chimera; for the two are like the Hatfields and McCoys: intrinsically at odds with each other.

But I can understand why you want to reconcile them, Jack, for that is your temperament; and you are willing to bend your thought away from what seems intellectually more reasonable if only you could somehow bring together in peace all the warring factions in this world...

...I think you would have made a fine politician; not the worse kind, but the better.

@Darkneos. It is not I projecting design, Darkney, but YOU. Remember? You’re the one that said, “Organisms that fit the mold survive and reproduce while the rest die”. Now you’re saying there is no mold. I never used the word “mold”.

That’s why I asked you all those questions about the “mold”. Do you retract your original statement? Did you misspeak?

As for your contention that the adaptability of mutations is governed by pure chance, let me suggest that you are confusing two very different things: the value of the mutation to the organism’s survival, and the likelihood that it will appear.

Consider the coronavirus: like any organism, it’s genes undergo a wide variety of mutations over time, and these mutations are equally likely to appear in any one example of that organism at any time. In this way, all mutations are equal and subject to “a role of the dice”...

But some of these mutations, which all have an equal chance of occurring, turn out to allow the virus more tenaciously to attach to the host cells, which in turn allows it to invade them more easily and quickly and in larger numbers, etc. These are the more successful “variants” we have been hearing about, which will undoubtably plague mankind for many many years to come. Their success, as opposed to their chance of occurring, is not due to chance, but to the peculiar way they fit the host, to the “mold” nature has set that they fill.

I would suspect that something like this is rather what is taught in Evolution 101.

As far as your sentiment, that “Much of our lives is based on chance and not really our own efforts”, I would agree with you. Chance plays a major role in the world, intermixed with design to a greater or lesser degree in all affairs. Sometimes it is purer, sometimes not so obviously pure. An example of the former is when a disabled aircraft crashes into your house and destroys it, and kills you and your entire family; but even that is not bereft of design: how close did you live beneath a major channel for commercial air-travel for example?

I and my twin brother were once getting soundly beat by our older brother, noted for his jocular sort of wisdom, in a billiards match, sometimes by seemingly miraculous circus shots he was making. We both told him at the same time: “you’re just lucky.” His reply? “Luck is just skill looking for an opportunity.”

Is belief in God innate?

Most certainly and obviously. Religious fervor is just as strong today, after thousands of years of science, as it was in the most ancient of times.

Atheism is the child of philosophy, and that’s why the philosophers were persecuted; for the far greater part of mankind will always “cling to their religion”, and attempt to silence anyone who dares question it.

I say atheism is the child of philosophy because it was the natural philosophers who first revealed, that certain seemingly unexplainable phenomena, like an eclipse, were indeed not the result of divine wrath, or a portent of god, as men had always thought, but were in fact only the result of the regular, and therefore calculable, movements of the heavenly bodies. Such discoveries are dangerous for those who discover them and come to believe in them, for they tend to erode the basis of religious belief among the many, who are either unable or unwilling to accept them.

The ancient scientists therefore, having become aware of this danger, began to dissimulate, to put up a front of religious piety to the ppl (cf Socrates’ daemon), and write esoterically, that is, in a way that revealed the truth to perceptive readers, while concealing it from those who were intolerant.

But the moderns, in a bold conspiratorial move that the ancients never dared conceive of, remade politics to be permissive of scientific and philosophical novelties, to the end of protecting their own skin, while allowing them to pursue their science and philosophy. This is why we can have openly avowed (in liberal democracies) and state sanctioned (in Marxist regimes) atheists in our day.

But the old order is far from dead. Regimes based on allegiance to an autocrat or king sanctioned by God are experiencing new life, and threatening the legitimacy of the most liberal democracies around the world and across the globe...

...yes, religion is innate to mankind...but so is science! and the solutions to the problem of how to reconcile these two natural enemies have all failed. Might we then conclude, contrary to the American spirit, that there are some problems that have no solution?

@Darkneos. Oh Dark one, I appreciate you saying that the organisms which survive are the ones that fit the mold.

Now, from your analogy of promotions to human positions, I would assume that you consider Nature or God to have the same fickleness as a CEO when making decisions, and that the mold the latter make is of the same sort that the former does, id est, according to the random will of the boss...but does that seem true? that Nature/God possess the inconstancy and capriciousness of some human CEO?

I am just an ordinary guy living a very ordinary life. But when I sit on my front porch and watch the buzzards circle high in the air above me, I wonder at the confluence of nature that resulted in this reality: that beings came to be in this world that were able to overcome the effect of gravity in this way; that they were endowed with the ability to spot carcasses thence far below, and swoop down to get their sustenance from them; that there exist other such scavengers in water and soil; that man was born to imitate them through artificial means, etc...

...but I digress...

You say adaptable mutations are just lucky, but you admit that there is a “mold” into which they fit. Is this mold by pure chance also? If so, was it made by God or Nature...or does that matter?

As far as experts go in the game of pinball, since you believe success in it is due to pure chance, let me ask you: would you be willing to wager $100 that you could beat a pinball champion in a head-to-head contest?

Why cannot it be true that the purpose of nature works THROUGH evolution?

Too much emphasis is placed on the randomness of evolution by ppl who only look at mutation in genes. Yes, that mutation is indeed random, but the mutations that are accepted...are they merely random? No, they must be adaptable; and then we come to the question of what is adaptability, and we must allow that it means something like, “what fits in to the scheme of the universe”.

It’s like if someone said, “pinball is a game of pure chance, for there is no way to know how the ball will return to the paddle, at what angle or speed. The player just pushes the button by reflex, and hopes it sends the ball into places where big scores can be racked up.” But there are, in fact, “pinball wizards”, who correspond to our evolutionary adaptability, able to choose the random things that fit into the scheme of the game.

If there were no hierarchy among genetic mutations, ie some better, some worse than others; in other words, if all mutations were equally adaptable, then the universe would be filled with amorphous monstrosities!...nor would there be pinball wizards.

@Olivier5. Well, Mr. Olivier, that was an amusing simile to describe me, and if I may suggest, you seem to be like some or other sort of bird too, inasmuch as something has gotten into your craw!

I will speak again now, though I suspect you have already walked away, never to return. I beseech you: remind me of the “plot”, the “big picture”, that you obviously can see and I have lost sight of.

For if I recall correctly, this all started when I questioned your reason for disapproving of sex-change operations. First you said it was because of pure squeamishness; then you eventually conceded that it was because it is against either God or nature. But then you backed away from that, and said it was because you thought it might diminish sexual pleasure...

If I am a chicken running around with it’s head cut off, then you must be a chameleon!

But, in case I am wrong, and you are willing to pursue our discussion further, let me propose to you a definition of what a medical procedure is, as opposed to a non-medical one, for your approval or disapproval: a medical procedure is one which makes the body better, while a non-medical one is one which makes it either worse, or no better. May we agree to this?

@GLEN willows. Looking back over these pages I saw where you posted that you believed neither in God, nor in any transcendent Nature that dictates to us our has determined our purpose as human beings...yet you profess a belief in the evolutionary process. Obviously, that process, in your opinion, must be totally random. Am I correct in surmising this?

In pondering the purpose of life, don’t we need to make a distinction b/w MERE life, like that of the other animals who, though they have a simulacrum of the soul, pretty much just live for living’s sake, to fill their bellies regularly and procreate the species?

Doesn’t a human life imply that it exist for the sake of something higher than that? That human life is subservient to a goal qualitatively different, and more exalted, than that of the lower species of existence and life?

Some may say that it doesn’t, that it’s purpose cannot be determined by any objective nature, but rather only by its own individual will. If so, what is the evidence for that? For I only see a clear teleology to human lives: that they be led, ultimately, like lemmings to the brink of a cliff, into the various discussions on The Philosophy Forum!