Why then is there this trend to say "no comment" when silence would've achieved the same thing? — TheMadFool

It wouldn't. One has to make one's silence heard, in order to distinguish one's silence from one's absence.

Replying "no comment" signals that you actually heard the question and considered it. If you remained silent, this could also be simply due to not having heard the question to begin with.

I am assuming that, empirically and socially, the actions of a person that are directed by a genuine belief must be measurably different from those of a person promulgating a false belief. Presumably things like long-term consistency, cogency of presentation, tendency to evoke comprehension in others. I am assuming that "the truth will out" in some sense, or more precisely, "the false will out," and reveal its own falsity. It is an hypothesis.

If you are dissimulating, you are intentionally mis-communicating. If you are practicing authenticity, then the possibility of understanding is greatest. That would have significance for coordinated group planning and action, for example. — Pantagruel

Take, for example, Christians and their professed belief in the Ten Commandments, or their professed belief in "love thy neighbor". How would you go about measuring, assessing any of that, based on their words and actions?

But it's not socially unacceptable to be attracted to someone of a different race. — Metaphysician Undercover

Where???
Where I live, it's quite unacceptable, it earns one a stigma.

Many though, would argue that it is morally unacceptable to be attracted to someone solely by their visual appearance.

Eh? Who are those "many"?
Pfft. Looks matter. A lot.

Morality involves adapting your personal taste, desires, inclinations, and attractions, to socially accepted standards. — Metaphysician Undercover

Which would make sense in a monoculture, but not in most modern culturally and racially diverse societies.

If one feels attracted to an elf or a mermaid, is one racist ...

Personally, I assume there are manifestations of genuine belief that distinguish it from fake belief. That's what the bit you quoted suggests. Authenticity, credibility, efficacy, communicability, comprehensibility. — Pantagruel

I don't see how this works in practice.
I don't see how one could see through a person's strategizing and cunning.

Ah, putting hopes in the "final solution".

I live in a traditionally Catholic country. Catholics officially abhor suicide. And yet traditionally, people typically had an oleander plant at their house, and esp. at the local church. Oleander is not native to these places, and it has to be moved indoors for the winter, it's too cold for it outside.
Mind you, oleander is highly toxic, fatally. At first glance, death by oleandrin poisoning looks like a heart attack.
But apparently, people here have had a tradition of keeping a means for suicide and murder ready. It's not a topic open for public discussion. Perhaps it has made their lives easier, having the means for the final solution so readily at hand, by making the choice absolutely clear, each and every day.

As for the nexus between god and morality, all I can say is morality necessarily had to precede god for it didn't we wouldn't have gotten to the point where we gave the matter of god any serious thought. — TheMadFool

This is interesting! Can you say more about it?

Very good insights here. Do people who believe in the Protestant Work Ethic, really sustain this thinking throughout their work life? At no point does the good Protestant worker go, "God I really don't care today to do this"? — schopenhauer1

People who grew up with the PWE probably also have a deeply ingrained contempt for idleness and failure. So I don't think they are likely to engage in thoughts of idleness or the justification of it.

Also can one be in what is considered really "necessary" line of industry (a doctor for example) and still find it to be unfulfilling to do the work?

The idea that work should be "fulfilling" seems to be rather new, a relatively modern invention.
I gather that in earlier times, people didn't look to work as something "fulfilling" or "unfulfilling".

Is the Prot. Work Ethic just a way to get certain people to not think about the existence itself?

That's a good one! As far as the religious component goes, I'm not so sure. This:

In the good old days, religion provided an anodyne for this discomfort. It provided meaning for people's lives. — Bitter Crank

I don't believe this, not at all, at least not as far as the ordinary, illiterate masses are concerned. For the ordinary person, religion/religiosity is an externally imposed chore, a ritual, a keeping up of appearances, not something they would actually take to heart or with the help of which they would make sense of the world.

Zapffe observed that all humans have the ability to access the truth that we don't need to do anything at all, that we know our existential dilemma.. — schopenhauer1

It is also true that we cannot not do something. One way or another, as long as one lives, one will do something, even if it means rocking back and forth in a chair.

The question isn't whether to do or not to do, it's what to do and what not to do.

isn't the PWE just another trope to get people to limit their thoughts. to anchor them so that they don't run into an existential meltdown?

Sure, it can be a useful heuristic, provided one has internalized it early enough in life.

True.. but how can this topic be elevated from these practical reasons to be seen as actually a political choice? By having the child, you are promoting the fact that someone else needs to experience life, and that they should engage with the soci-economic-cultural superstructure. This idea though seems so remote to certain mindsets. Why do you suppose some people cannot think in these more abstract terms? I guess socio-economic status and environment have a lot to do with it. If one isn't exposed to philosophical thinking, one doesn't engage with it naturally.. — schopenhauer1

Well, it suffices to be a barren young married woman or an aging spinster, and one is thrown into the matter at the deep end.

What interests me too is molding this social mindset in becoming a compliant worker for an entity. We can't but NOT do this if we need to survive as we humans do (by social effort), yet just as the OP states, here we are KNOWING and EVALUATING dislike for this effort WHILE we do it. What an insane world. Have you ever read Peter Zapffe? He talks about how we have an "over abundance of consciousness" that provides us more evaluative reflective capacities than is needed for an animal to survive. This meta-evaluation gives us that much more to grapple with. We don't just "do". We don't just go from garbage can to garbage can looking for food, and finding shade under a tree like a racoon. We KNOW we are doing something and can say, "Ah shit, not this X task again...". Why!?

The Early Buddhists would probably reply to this that human life is a "mixed bag".

Yes, it is the forgetting that is the mystery here. What does one do once it is exposed? I am advocating for communities of catharsis, of commiseration.. What does it mean for the superstructure itself? Of work? Of needing to survive? Of still having to live life knowing these ideas? — schopenhauer1

(This is also in reply to several other questions and points by you:)
The matter appears to be so complex that only a massive and complex superstructure on the level of religion can handle it. Such as, for example, Buddhism in traditionally Buddhist countries. There, there exists a socially accepted (and even respected!) option of ordaining as a monk (or, to a lesser extent, nun) and exiting the usual business of life.

But without such a massive and complex superstructure, AN seems to be doomed to failure.

What if this is the mistake, thinking that ad populum/ad baculum is "just political"?
— baker

Can you explain? I just mean that people think because the majority thinks it, it must be the right course of action. The political consequence is that the YAYs win out by default by voting with their procreation.

It's something I've been wondering about for a while. I think philosophy is a kind of la-la land, advocating for principles of reasoning that usually just don't work IRL with real people. In general, people don't give a rat's ass about "critical thinking". The argument from power is the strongest one.

I'd like to believe this isn't the final word on this, but I'm afraid it is.

Exactly. There is a correspondence between the quality of belief and the quality of the presentation (enactment) of the belief. — Pantagruel

But how can we know what a person truly believes?
If we ask them point blank, how can we be sure they won't lie or otherwise give a deceptive answer?

We somehow need to account for strategizing and cunning, on the level of verbal expressions and on the level of actions.

Fiktionalitätskompetenz (roughly translated as "fictionality competence") is what one needs in order to interact with art wisely.

The question assumes that people must justify themselves to other people.
This is an assumption based on moral realism. One might as well cut the crap and declare supremacy.

That could useful if I were talking about how hardship is overcome but I'm not. — Tom Storm

That's too bad.

The fact is, we as humans can evaluate something as negative while we are doing those things. — schopenhauer1

We can, but this doesn't already mean we do or that we will.

This isn't limited to having children, it's much more general: from career planning to retirement planning, in failing to prevent a bad habit from forming, in making poor choices in terms of romantic or business partners, ...

Rather, I am framing the usual view of life as a political view, not just a life choice or a preference or a lifestyle choice. To have children is to squarely believe life to be worth continuing and expanding, and perpetuating. — schopenhauer1

No, it's more complex than that.
In first-world countries, about a half of all pregnancies is unplanned, and about a half of all pregnancies is aborted. So that doesn't look very pronatalist.
Secondly, if you talk to parents in more detail, they will possibly have misgivings about having children at all, but they would not say so right away or in public.
Further, many people have children for some practical reason: to have someone who will look after them when they're old, to produce workers who will help them with their business, to gain social influence over other people. Some are more insidious: to collect child support or welfare, for a woman to prevent her boyfriend from abandoning her. So people who have children for such practical reasons don't believe in pronatalism per se, but in their practical reasons, even if those people are nominally pronatalists.

All in all, I have the impression that people are generally ambivalent about having children, but will rarely admit to this ambivalence in public.

It seems to me that by the time people realize they shouldn't have children or not that many children, it's too late, because they've already produced them.
And it's generally not considered a nice thing to tell your child, regardless of their age, that you wish you didn't have them.

I think many pronatalists are also defending their past bad choices, rationalizing them, so as to make it easier to live with them. This can explain their vitriol toward antinatalists.

If politics is about how to get large groups of people to do things, if we compare the antinatalist to the procreationist sympathizer, the antinatalist does not force anything on anyone, the procreationist sympathizer does. — schopenhauer1

The procreationist sympathizer probably feels otherwise, feels that the antinatalist is forcing on them their view.

If you like the whole "project" of the socio-cultural-economic enterprise of human existence, why must then others be pressed into this?

Because it's a big project that requires the cooperation of many many people.

Ad populum doesn't mean anything here to me as justification just that might makes right. Again, that is just political then. — schopenhauer1

What if this is the mistake, thinking that ad populum/ad baculum is "just political"?

Have you seen The Truman Show?
— baker

Yes, but what is the tie in? — schopenhauer1

So there is this character Truman who is living on a set of a tv show -- except that he's the only one who doesn't know it, he thinks he's living in the real world. Millions of people are watching this show. Then, he begins to discover that something isn't quite right, like when a reflector falls from the sky, or people keep moving in predictable patterns. And he pursues this, he wants to figure out what's gong on. And the tv viewers are cheering him on, rooting for him, they are thoroughly enthusiastic. Then he escapes the set. The tv audiences go crazy, they are sooooo happy for him. Go Truman! Then their elation wanes, in a matter of minutes. And then they forget about him. Completely. Switch to another channel. A character they have followed for years, and they forget about him in seconds, and move on to other things.

You said:

I want to understand the origins of this group-think, deconstruct it, show it bare for what it is, and expose the harmful political assumptions of perpetuating this package. — schopenhauer1

And I'm thinking that your doing the above, "showing it bare for what it is, and expose the harmful political assumptions of perpetuating this package" would go over like Truman's discovery of the real world and departing the fictional one: your deconstruction of group-think, your showing it bare for what it is, your exposing of harmful political assumptions of perpetuating that package would likely be met at first with elation, enthusiasm, that "Yes! This is the truth!" -- and then forgotten about it.

Baker, I'm assuming you're jesting, right? — Tom Storm

Most certainly not. You keep missing my point.

My point is that hardship will be easier to overcome if the person is prepared for it. And that without such a preparation in advance, a person is less likely to overcome hardship.

Can you relate to that?

*sigh*

Jeez, Baker - the point I made has nothing to do about chronology. — Tom Storm

Indeed, which is where your mistake is.

was born in the experiences of the concentration camp.

Frankl didn't go into the camp unprepared. He didn't invent logotherapy from scratch while he was in the camp.

It's used in so many ways and has some application in helping people recover from substance use and anxiety.

Yes, such is its intention, but I'm pointing out its major shortcoming: it "works" only for people who already believe it.

Yes, within the context of any system, it is up to the individual to save themselves, but if you were designing a system, — synthesis

But you're not designing a system. You don't get to. Nor do you want to.

you want to avoid giving power to groups because that means individuals are going to be screwed...BIG time.

So? They should just work diligently, duh.

Although the older atheists I have known got there despite being disowned and shunned by their working class communities and families. — Tom Storm

These are the people I'm interested in. How did they make it in life?
If they were the proverbial trees with weak roots when they had to face the storm, how did the weather it?

Err... what order? I was simply saying that Logotherapy was developed with this in mind. I was not trying to classify it in any context other than the obvious. — Tom Storm

Sure. My point is, it's backwards, which makes it useless. It can be useful only if one learns it before one falls on hard times.

But I think it would be safe to bet that of the many millions of atheists who have lived, millions of them have done just this. — Tom Storm

And I'm pretty sure that most of them were not thrown in at the deep end, but instead didn't have many hardships when growing up, or their parents taught them resilience, or both.

A truly inspiring individual would be somenone who didn't have those perks, but who still made it in life.

I want to understand the origins of this group-think, deconstruct it, show it bare for what it is, and expose the harmful political assumptions of perpetuating this package. — schopenhauer1

And then what? You think the world will change?

Have you seen The Truman Show?

Millions of people have done this with no problems. — Tom Storm

Really? And you have empirical data to back this up?

Therapist Dr Victor Frankl devised Logotherapy as a consequence of his time in a concentration camp (he wanted to understand why some people survived and others did not) and his ideas are far more relevant that what we can offer. — Tom Storm

No, that's not the right chronological order.

Logotherapy is based on an existential analysis[6] focusing on Kierkegaard's will to meaning as opposed to Alfred Adler's Nietzschean doctrine of will to power or Freud's will to pleasure. Rather than power or pleasure, logotherapy is founded upon the belief that striving to find meaning in life is the primary, most powerful motivating and driving force in humans.[2] A short introduction to this system is given in Frankl's most famous book, Man's Search for Meaning, in which he outlines how his theories helped him to survive his Holocaust experience and how that experience further developed and reinforced his theories.

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

It's fair to say that Frankl was "prepared" for the concentration camps. He already studied existential problems prior to being incarcerated. He wasn't "thrown in at the deep end", he already knew how to swim.

Which is why his theory is of little use to someone who has fallen on hard times before they were even able to develop some kind of resilient theory of life.

What would be relevant is the outlook developed by someone who was thrown in at the proverbial deep end and who didn't yet know how to swim, but who learnd to swim anyway. On their own.
I'm still looking for such a person.

Like the saying goes -- A tree with strong roots can hope to withstand a harsh storm, but it can scarcely hope to grow them once the storm is already on the horizon.

What is casting pearls before swine but being suspiciously thirsty? — norm

"Casting pearls before swine" -- that's a way to keep up the appearance of one's worthiness and the worthiness of one's ideas. Because if (some) other people are demoted to swine, then one's ideas, however lowly they might be, instantly look more elevated, pearly ...

That's the problem. It's only the elite in corporations and government saving themselves. How about everybody else? — synthesis

Why should that be a problem?? To you?? You advocate that everyone should save themselves, and if they can't, that's their fucking problem. There you go! The big fish eat the little fish, that's how the big fish survive.
Obviously, the solution is to become a big fish. And if someone doesn't become a big fish, that's just their fucking problem!

In life, you do the best you can, help others where you can, and then you die. It's just the way it is. — synthesis

You're not saying anything. Other than perhaps airing your own despondency and justifying/rationalizing the status quo.

What are you proposing? You say you don't want to control people, yet there are specific things, such as minimizing government and corporations that you do want. IOW, you do want to control people.

People need to save themselves? Yes, what else?

You're not saying anything. The current situation with BIG government and corporations is precisely and simply what some people saving themselves looks like.

You're merely defending the status quo.

A person comfortable in their spirituality (as opposed to their religion) does not need to proselytize or harangue others to prove the strength of their faith. — Tom Storm

People don't necessarily proselytize to "prove the strength of their faith".
Some do it "to share the joy with others".
Some others do it out of a sense of entitlement to do so.
Some do it out of a sense of superiority over others.

In fact, it's what religion/spirituality is all about: a sense of superiority over others, a sense of entitlement over others.
All of one's religious/spiritual knowledge is in vain if one doesn't think it somehow makes him better than other people.

I think the hallmark fo a secure faith is the lack of proselytizing. — Tom Storm

Why??

this forum is an approximation to a Salon — Banno

More like a saloon, at least at times. :p

In any case, I don't think you're entirely correct about these being somehow more elitist traditions. The Cathars were beggars and rejected material wealth. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Elitism doesn't necessarily have to do with wealth and worldly power.

For example, in traditionally Buddhists countries, monks are considered the elite, even though they lead materially very simple lives (or at least, they should, on principle).

One year into the pandemic, it's safe to say that science & technology have saved us. — TaySan

Eh? What on earth makes you think this pandemic and its reverberations are over??

Because — khaled

And why can't a solipsist be a realist? after all, the thought that the external world has independent existence is just a thought, and solipsists accept the existence of thoughts.
— sime

I just don't know what to say... — Banno

I think of some concepts parallel to solipsism: epistemic egoism, epistemic narcissism, epistemic authoritarianism.
Narcissists, egoists, and authoritarians can be realists, they can believe that there is a world apart from their person, they just don't care about it, or they see themselves as categorically superior to it. So, for practical intents and purposes, they might as well be solipsists.

Your plan for the betterment of the world isn't based on compassion for people, nor on compassion for planet Earth.

It's looks more like an attempt to find a justification for plain old Social Darwinism, but with an exception clause for you in particular:
"Other people are free to fight and die like the vermin they are, as long as I'm not one of them."

But you're forgetting it's not up to you to decide whether you're one of them or not.

I can't (nor do I desire to) control anybody else. — synthesis

But you clearly do have that desire, when you talk about minimizing the government and the corporations.

I'm pointing out where the minimizing of government leads to. Which you clearly don't care about.

The only solution I have is for my own life. I can't (nor do I desire to) control anybody else. — synthesis

Oh, you put it like this, making it about (not) controling others.
You have a solution for your own life, and the others can just go to hell, those rats and vermin, right?


And I don't live in Canada. When I talk about the freedom to be oppressed by a rich and powerful neighbor, I mean this literally, my current neighbors, just a few meters away from me.

Just more reasons to learn to cook. Without a timer. :p