In recent decades, media, including movies, series, and magazines, have driven unattainable archetypes of masculinity and femininity. — Benkei

Hasn't this been the case for at least a century? The primary difference being how those 'archetypes' are distributed to target audiences?

We live in a world increasingly defined by individualism, where traditional societal units such as family, community, and religion have significantly weakened. This vacuum leaves people seeking identity and validation in narrower, more fragmented categories: gender, sexuality, political affiliation, or other micro-identities. While individualism seduces us with promises of freedom and self-definition, it often breeds insecurity in a world stripped of clear anchors. — Benkei

I don't know about vacuums. Isn't another way to frame this that there are just a lot more possibilities and more ways to be mainstream today? I doubt that community or family or religion are much weaker today than they were 40-50 years ago. They've been in transition a long, long time. If anything, back in the late 70's we thought religion would be gone from society by now and, if anything, it seems to be having a revival.

Community and family? Traditional forms may well have atrophied but other forms have developed - same sex parent families, for instance. I see a lot of additional inclusion in the country I live in - input from First Nations people, lived experience informing social policy in the areas of migrant communities, homelessness, mental illness, etc. There seem to be as many improvements as disappointments.

:up:

What reason do you have for assuming that we can ever know the ultimate truth about reality? — RussellA

Yes. But I wonder also whether the quest to identify the 'really real' might not just be a secular replacement for god.

It is a commonplace, legitimate, and useful metaphysical position that an objective reality doesn't exist. From that point of view, there is no ultimate truth about reality. — T Clark

I have sympathy for this frame. The notion of reality is a human construct and seems to be tied to our sense making capacities. While I agree that there are realities about certain matters - temperature, facts, dates, places, the fact that I am typing - these are all contingent. Once we try find the ultimate reality above and beyond the contingent, we are probably just chasing our tails.

Does every generation finally get to the point where they don't recognize the world anymore? — frank

I would think so. I remember my grandmother saying that culture no longer made sense to her—she was a fundamentalist Christian born in the 1890s. The moon landing and the hippie movement shook her reality. In the 1980s, my father made a similar observation during the time of glasnost. Now, I find myself telling young colleagues that I no longer have a clear understanding of where I stand on culture or politics, and I hope they can make sense of it all. I suspect this feeling of disconnection is one of the defining phenomena of modernity.

I guess my ultimate frustration is that sometimes it seems like science and religion are essentially talking about the same thing/process, but then get hung up on the specific details. — MrLiminal

It would really help if you gave a recent example and stepped it through.

You mention getting 'hung up on details'. The devil is in the details. Isn't it the case that often what is most important is not the problem we are trying to solve, but the way we approach it? Method and approach are everything. For instance, I watched someone die of cancer because they believed that prayer and god would heal them. They refused to accept medical treatment.

And that said, I am not convinced that religion and science are talking about the same thing. You would need to provide examples. I have a close friend who is a Catholic Priest, in his view religion is about higher consciousness and connection to the transcendent, while science is to get work done in the physical world. He sees both as critical but separate. Perhaps along the lines of the Nonoverlapping Magisteria (NOMA), introduced by Stephen Jay Gould.

In combination with the song I had on, I was somehow deeply moved by this seemingly simple, urban view before me.

"Beautiful.", was the first word that came to my mind then. However, what I had felt and seen seemed much more profound than just one word, which I would say only captured/described but a fraction of this moment. — Prometheus2

Sounds like you had an emotional reaction. I have felt that way about peeling paint on a mental fence when lit by a setting sun. Does it mean anything more than the experience you had?

The significant question about beauty is whether it is a transcendental or not - does it reflect fundamental properties of being, e.g., truth, goodness and beauty? Do they reflect in some way a divine reality? Do you think beauty is something that transcends contingent human experience and says something deeper about reality?



I prefer that Picasso to many more sentimental paintings others might readily call beautiful. I struggle with the notion of art as beauty. I generally think the best art has vitality and a visceral impact. Beauty (as I see it) generally seems soft and cloying.

What frustrates me is the way science and religion so often approach similar truths but refuse to work together because of their ideological differences. — MrLiminal

Is this the core of your argument? What is the nature of your frustration here? Just because two approaches attend to the same matters does not mean that they need to be integrated. Fascism and democratic socialism might consider the question of immigration (or for that matter, government). Does this mean they can or should work together?

Why not take us through a specific example in more detail so we can understand how you see this working in practice. Dot points might be best.

Some random reactions. Atheism only refers to a disbelief in one thing. Gods. Some atheists believe in ghosts, astrology or even Bigfoot. Additionally, an atheist need not say there is no god. Many atheists, like me, simply look upon god as a concept that doesn't seem coherent or useful. Arguments are moot. Whether one believes in god may function more like sexual orientation - you can't help what you are attracted to. Although many of us use post hoc arguments to justify our position and in a world which often privileges faith, atheists can find they need to defend their disbelief.

to a person who has “experienced” a ghost, they have experienced magic. And because I also cannot explain it, I can only assume that my only somewhat informed explanation is correct, when it may in fact not be. — MrLiminal

Not necessarily. Some people see unexplained phenomenon and do not come to any conclusions about what they saw. The 'ghost' part is a post hoc label we don't need to use. This is the most interesting thing about supernatural claims. Are they nothing more than linguistic crutches (a sketchy heuristic) for phenomena we can't yet explain, rooted in our fear of admitting uncertainty?

From what I understand most religions tend to have, as a central tenet, a figure (or figures) that exist outside of the laws of the world we live in ie. God creating the world supernaturally, an angel speaking through a donkey, etc. This, by scientific standards, is simply not logical — Outlander

I think many people have in mind a cartoon version of god - the bearded sky wizard who magically creates stuff. But if you consider more sophisticated theology, such as that of Paul Tillich, then god is not a person, but the ground of being. God transcends the subject-object divide and is the foundation of all experience. God doesn't magically create the world we live in, God is the ultimate reality that makes all being possible. This sounds mystical and ambiguous and is much less easy to understand and, perhaps, harder to dismiss than the cartoon god. And can easily mesh with some of the speculative quantum physics mysticism that has excited so many science nerds.

Ok. It's just that the words 'personal transformation' sound a bit more serious than just amusing oneself.

but I do believe in the possibility of personal transformation, as in altered states of consciousness — Janus

Perhaps an aside, but I am curious. To what end? What is the point of the personal transformation you are thinking of - where does it lead?

Then you're obviously conversant with the data, which (as far as my contribution to this thread is concerned) can be summed up thusly: — LuckyR

No, the data is not generally relevant to the practice of suicide intervention. It's also understood that the data on suicide isn't accurate. Deaths by suicide are often misclassified and underreported.

It's true that for many people suicidal ideation appears to be situational and may be crudely described as temporary. But most people I've seen in this space seem to have persistent triggers over a given year for many years. In other words, the temporary is recurrent. Birthdays, anniversaries, Christmas, etc are regular triggers for some.

But even where suicidality is temporary, this doesn't generally assist the person experiencing the emotional pain. The reality is that at the time people feel a chronic emptiness and/or hopelessness. To tell someone that this is temporary and they will feel better later may be experienced as unhelpful or irrelevant. People sometimes try to use this approach in counselling and the results are somewhat haphazard.

It reminds me a bit of Gnosticism. Gnostics had secret knowledge only the initiated can understand fully. — schopenhauer1

Yes. However it seems to me this principle seems to operate in almost any arcane 'knowledge' area, whether it's Platonists, Scientologists or QAnon.

Is there just one example of good evidence amongst the thousands of claims and tall tales that the UFO brigade have generated? I notice you haven't gone down the Bob Lazar rabbit hole as yet. :wink:

:up:

But some people think the disclosure will prove all the skeptics wrong. It'll happen soon by X date, with X person. — schopenhauer1

Yes, to me it has the same rhythms as the second coming. The alien rapture is nigh - we can read all the signs….

If it's harmless, let them have it. — schopenhauer1

If. I guess there’s the potential that such beliefs may lead to harmful practices, like those of cults and religions. For now it seems the the greatest harm is fleecing people at conferences and via merchandise.

As to grinding, chronic issues, those become the "norm" over time and don't independently tip the scales to "not worth living". — LuckyR

I have spent 35 years working with people who have experiences of complex trauma and abuse, some were tortured in prisons overseas, some were, as children, sexually abused by care givers in horrific ways. Many people who undergo such things never recover, their brains seem to be rewired by the trauma. The high levels of substance misuse and suicide for this cohort are indicative. The assumption to date is that in some cases counselling or medication can assist recovery. But recovery eludes many people who wrestle with trauma for years and some, understandably, give up.

Clinical depression is notorious for it's roller-coaster trajectory of ups and downs, that is how you're feeling is likely temporary. — LuckyR

I have read two suicide notes in the past ten years from people who used precisely your term, e.g., 'I can't cope with the roller coaster ride any more.' It's hardly temporary if it's a continuous cycle. The experience of this is exhausting and every time you seem to be feeling better, you are conscious that just around the corner is another crash.

I think Steven Greenstreet pretty much hit the nail that there is a group of UFO aficionados who essentially cross-reference each other. I don't think all of them are necessarily lying, but rather embellishing or falsely attributing unknowingly. — schopenhauer1

I think this is the correct assessment. I followed Greenstreet fairly closely a few years ago when I was bored.

I think the UFO/alien folks are looking for meaning beyond the mundane. It also gives a sort of hope- that something bigger than humans is out there and that their beliefs would be vindicated all along. — schopenhauer1

Agree. There's a religious element to this wherein people see a kind of transcendence from everyday humanity, a way of re-enchanting the world via a kind of techno-spiritual movement. And I've noticed that once committed to this thinking, it is almost impossible to shake people, even with evidence. It becomes a faith-based system that is impervious to outsiders, who are either 'idiots' or part of the system's duplicity.

Hence my observation that the argument against suicide is: it's a permanent solution to a TEMPORARY problem. — LuckyR

Not always. Don't forget people who have degenerative illnesses who would prefer to die than continue to experience suffering. Also people who have experienced traumatic events (prolonged sexual abuse, etc). The memories and pain - the PTSD may never go away either. Suicide may feel like the only method to gain permanent relief.

:up: Bad syntax on my part - I meant often amongst those who contemplate suicide. Of course we'll never know how many alleged 'accidental' deaths - crashes, accidents, overdoses, etc, are attributable to suicide, or how many people have suicidal thoughts at points in life without taking action. 13.2 million Americans are thought to have suicidal thoughts in a given year and it is the leading cause of death amongst young people aged 15 to 29, so it is not uncommon.

Thanks. That makes sense.

I think it's often the case that people find that there are fewer reasons for living than there are reasons for dying. Sometimes those people choose suicide. It's a common enough phenomenon and there might be many reasons for it. It's been interesting to read people's responses to your OP. What are the least helpful answers here?

For fun's sake, let's say it's all true. The government has aliens and alien technology and have for years. If they were to disclose this, what would be the best way to do this understanding social psychology? — schopenhauer1

The issue for me is the term "the Government" what does that really mean? Does this suggest a single, monolithic, united and coherent group who has consistently acted in unison to maintain such a secret? Or are we saying a secret body which keeps secrets - attached to government, but not really part of governing? The mind boggles.

To me it is like the term 'they'. It's always 'they' who lie to us or do bad things to us. 'They' don't want us to know the truth. 'They' are making money out of it. 'They' are responsibly for disinformation, etc, etc.

That said, this would a massive story if true and I would imagine there would be a risk of unrestrained anger, panic and scapegoating. Not sure there would be a good or entirely safe way to reveal this.

Nicely put. I remember Neil deGrasse Tyson talking about what it might be like for an advanced alien to talk to us. It might be a lot like when we talk to a chimp.

You've heard of Fermi's Paradox? "If intelligent life is plentiful in the universe, then where is everybody? We should have been visited." — BC

Never thought that one a particularly useful paradox. If aliens have sufficiently advanced technology to get here from Christ knows how many light years away, and defy laws of physics as we know them, then I would also conclude they might have capacity to visit without us being aware of their presence. The big surprise really would be huge silver saucers in the sky - more likely to be the Russians. :razz:

Sure but I was referring to government officials not people in general.

Cool. I may make some more useful comments under that pervious explanation later.

So in a way, you can make a matrix like this:

The institutional distributor of information matters for the public (Is the info coming from a "legitimate" institution like government agencies, or is it coming from your Uncle Joe).

Sources matter for the information gatherers: (Is the info coming from "legitimate" credible witnesses and accounts, or from bad actors?

Evidence matters for information gatherers and the public (Is the info first hand accounts, are they recorded, do we have any physical artifacts? Have they been analyzed for material compos ition, biologics, and comparative design? — schopenhauer1

Sure - there's many ways to do a risk matrix.

I imagine that the main concern (if true) would be are they the product of a foreign power or a homegrown terrorist? One can ignore one or two eye witnesses but not so easily a plethora of accounts. I wouldn't think aliens is the first idea people go to, unless they already happen to think aliens are a given.

UAP does not entail aliens; the concern is that a foreign government might be using technology beyond ours. — Relativist

Yep.

My sense is perhaps this: In the current world of risk management and security, and risk mitigation matrixes, committees and organizations investigate any number of odd things because if they don't they may be seen as neglectful. And there's alwasy the quesion, what if, by not investigating, they miss something critical?

Yes, so you are attributing it to psychological phenomena, something like mass hysteria or public psychosis. — schopenhauer1

No, I am saying this is a candidate explanation. I don't have a firm grasp on what is happening, who is seeing what and what is real and what is media driven and what may be viral hysteria.

What should the public think of it? — schopenhauer1

Well, for my money, until we actually have something demonstrated to us, we really should suspend our judgement on this 'phenomenon'.

[

I am more than willing to change my mind if someone gives me good reasons to. — Bob Ross

That's what people say, of course. But somehow no one ever provides good reasons, right? :razz:

Let’s parse this argument. You are saying:

P1: If moral facts exist then societies could not turn to killing people indiscriminately.
P2: Societies have turned to killing people indiscriminately.
C: Therefore, moral facts do not exist. — Bob Ross

That would be a bad argument and I apologize for lazy wording. I was aiming for a quip. I guess my point was an observation not an argument. Why is it that no matter what the moral system or moral facts people are convinced of at any given time, the killing continues. Could it be that morality is chimerical?

Sam Harris just blanketly asserts that wellbeing is objectively good: his approach to metaethics is to avoid it….. — Bob Ross

Well yes, as I say he has decided, not without precedent, that wellbeing should be the foundation of morality because harm to wellbeing appears to be a good indicator of what is bad.

Many times that is the case, but don’t you agree that it is possible for a human to completely go against their nature qua animal in accordance with only reasons they have for it? — Bob Ross

Not sure. How would we demonstrate when this happens?

What do you mean by “essentialism”? — Bob Ross

I take this to mean that there are essential characteristics of what it is to be human. For instance, that gender is unchanging that humans can be defined by traits like the ones you noted.

What you are describing here and with Harris’ “approach”, which is really a form of moral anti-realism, is that subject’s set out for themselves, cognitively or conatively, ends for themselves which are subjective (or non-objective to be exact); and somehow because of this there are no objective goods—just hypothetical goods. Viz., a hypothetical good for basketball would be, under this view, something like “if you want to be good at basketball, then you need to practice it” or “if we want to have fun, then let’s invent a game called basketball”; but, importantly, the examples I gave are NOT convertible to hypotheticals. “Lebron is a good basketball player” is not convertible to a hypothetical: it is a categorical statement which is normative, because it speaks of goodness which is about what ought to be. E.g., the good farmer is not hypothetically good at farming. — Bob Ross

I'm not sure I understand this argument very well. Might be me or the wording used. If you can keep it simpler and briefer it might assist.

I forget, are you borrowing from Aristotle's notion of teleology here? The purpose/functioning of a thing?

If basketball is about skill and winning, then Lebron is a good basketball player (I don't know who this is but I can make inferences)? You believe human life can be assessed similarly and has a telos? We can agree as to what constitutes good - based on teleological grounds, which you believe are objective?

Why is the fascination with UFOs back? — schopenhauer1

Not sure but I expect it has a lot to do with people's fear and expectations about the future - AI, technology, politics, etc. I think Jung saw UFO's as an emerging mythology triggered by present day concerns. But media primes us for this stuff and websites abound with conspiracies attached to this narrative. US writer and psychologist David J. Halperin seems to argue they are fear of death and that UFO's preoccupy us when our ontological safety is threatened.

I wondered about that, but this article says religious people are less likely to believe in UFOs than are atheists. — Hanover

I've known quite a number of atheists who believe in UFO's, ghosts and Bigfoot too. We tend to forget that atheism only refers to disbelief in one thing.

Interesting question. Our Liberal party has been a Tory party. The name an accident of history. Our Liberals are more aligned with and sympathetic to US Republicans.

Perhaps Fraser? It was astonishing how much he improved after he left office. — Banno

Yes... I noted also that Fraser thought Hawke/Keating were too 'right-wing' and pro-business when they floated the dollar and deregulated the labour market and let treasury call the shots.

So the issue is, Federally, how much damage are they doing to themselves, if any? Or is the brand name now irrelevant? — Banno

I'm not a close follower of politics but I suspect the game is changing. It's not that the brand name is irrelevant, perhaps it's more a case of how brands function - there may be more mobility in what they can align with. But only if the public buy it. And I guess Dutton thought he would try something new in the hope it would resonate? How else to understand it?

And how long until they hand whatever reactors they succeed in building over to Gina Rinehart? — Banno

If she were smart she could almost be Musk to Dutton's Trump...

:up:

Did you see this?

History doesn’t corroborate your position: rather, it tends to function as a tendency towards flourishing for an in-group. There have been tons of societies that do not generally care about the suffering of other people outside of their own group. — Bob Ross

I think history may have demonstrated that moral facts don't exist and societies can turn to killing people indiscriminately fairly quickly. Particularity those cultures run by those who think they own the truth.

Anyway - let's move on to the next part since we aren't going to agree on truth and facts.

And thanks again for engaging with such thorough responses.

In relation to your example about stealing

What we can see here, is that we have a form of moral objectivism which is a form of moral relativism; whereof each objective good is relativistic to some teleological structure such that what is good is fundamentally about what best suits and sizes up to the teleology of it. — Bob Ross

Agree. And I have already alluded to this approach myself that we can set a goal and reach this objectively, but the goal itself is subjective. This is how Sam Harris seems to arrive at wellbeing as a moral foundation.

We see here that this view inherently admits of evolutionary teleology, which is a hot take these days, so let me speak a few words on that real quick. The idea that biology supplies us with teleology has lost all credence nowadays, but it is easily recoverable by understanding that we behave as if it does provide a telos. — Bob Ross

As you suggest this is a contested idea and I have no way of determining whether you are correct about this.

Back to the good human. In order to understand what a good human is, we must understand (1) the nature, teleologically, of a human and (2) how a human can behave so as to align themselves with it. There is a ton I could say here but to be brief, human’s have rational capacities with a sufficiently free will (that can will in strict accordance to reason—to cognition—over conative dispositions); and this marks them out, traditionally, as persons. A person—viz., a being which has a rational nature—must size up properly to what a rational nature is designed to do. Some of which are the intellectual virtues like the pursuit of truth, pursuit of knowledge, being open-minded, being intellectual curious, being impartial, being objective, etc. The one important right now, for your question about stealing, is Justice. — Bob Ross

I find this paragraph riddled with assumptions I am either skeptical about or cannot accept as true. I see no good reasons to endorse essentialist accounts of human behavior, so the notion of a teleological human nature is contentious and unsubstantiated.

I believe our use of reason is directed and shaped by affective responses, with reason often serving as a post hoc justification for emotional responses. I tend to hold that reason follows emotion, so what is often described as a 'rational nature' is better understood as rationalization rather than an innate rationality. I don't accept that the qualities you have listed here (pursuit of truth or knowledge or impartiality) are anything more than contingent factors shaped by culture and language, and I don't think we are likely to arrive at an agreement about what such values would look like in practice. I also think several levels of expertise would be needed to assess the contents of this paragraph in full.

I do thank you for clarifying where you are coming from and I respect the amount of thought and effort you have put into this. You seem to really crave certainty. I tend to be more appreciative of uncertainty. I suspect our dispositions are responsible for where we land.

I don't think it is worth us taking any more time on this (for now) since we do not share enough presuppositions to continue and we are bound to stick to our guns no matter what the other person says.

I don't think we've had a Liberal Party in Australia in some years. Old school conservatives and 'wets' were overtaken by radical free marketeers and culture war wankers. And conversely, the Labor Party tries to appeal to business and prosperous white collar people, while tradies increasingly see themselves as small business owners and Liberal voters, who often resent welfare spending. The electorate also seems to have changed. And who'd be a politician these days anyway? Most people instantly hate you, or think you're a lying, narcissistic hypocrite.

It's aliens. Late in the year 2025, Donald Trump, through manifest incompetence, started a nuclear war that destroyed much of the earth. Aliens have arrived to try to set about some solutions in order to change history and avoid the conflict.

Of course, the Buddha was writing prior to ideas of Nietzsche and Jung, which throw absolutism of good, evil and ethics open. — Jack Cummins

Of course the person known as Buddha did not write and never directly contributed anything to what we know today as Buddhism. The writings came centuries after he died. Oral accounts did until then. How do we even know what Buddha may or may not have really said?

Because it enables us to enact what is actually good; and anyone who doesn’t want to enact what is good must be either evil, ignorant, or a lunatic. Don’t you agree? — Bob Ross

No. I don't think things are as simple as this. But it tells me a lot about why this model appeals to you. You appear to be an absolutist.

So, then, if we by-at-large hate the jews; then we would be correct to extinguish them under your view. It’s the same glaring issue over and over again. — Bob Ross

Curious that you miss the point over and over again. It's this.

We are not isolated nomads, indifferent to the fates of others. Just consider what it is to be a person. We are all invoked in webs of affinity and webs of sympathy and acquaintance. We are connected to others. We don’t (generally) want others to suffer. We are a social species. We support behaviors which support such human dispositions. — Tom Storm

I have consistently argued that morality functions pragmatically and aims to provide a safe, predictable community that minimizes suffering. The fact that you keep arguing that I might just as well advocate anti-social or violent behaviour is absurd.

Your argument is similar to those religious apologists who maintain that if there wasn't a god there would be no morality and people would steal and lie and murder all over because only god can guarantee morality. Looks like you have just substituted god for the abstraction, truth.

Can we explore an example of a moral truth? What objective truth underpins the notion that stealing is wrong?

:cool:

I've seen a few photos but nothing particularly clear.