Tens of millions of people had their jobs outsourced over the past decades and nobody cared...until Trump came along. — synthesis

I think that is a critical point. I'm not sure Trump cared either but he said he did. No one had heard that before.

Never thought a lie detector would solve a fundamental metaphysical conundrum

:up:

) Rationalizing one's existence is arduous and painful, and there are no unequivocal answers - only uncomfortable, and affirming ones. — Aryamoy Mitra

I wouldn't accept that it is painful or arduous. I wouldn't accept that there are only uncomfortable or affirming ones. Plenty of ideas are simply there without particular value. And sometimes the value only emerges with time.

Rationalizing one's existence, can only be undertaken with a finite set of constraints (time, mainly) - rendering that one can't philosophize endlessly, before convening on a decision. — Aryamoy Mitra

Sure, so? Are you simply trying to say that getting to the bottom of things is impossible with a time limit so at some point you have to act? I agree that time is limited and that action is preferable over analysis paralysis.

3) That a decision or appraisal emerges, after some length of time, is what accords all meaning to the exercise (to commence with). — Aryamoy Mitra

Not sure what you mean by this. Do you mean that actions decided upon give the exercise its meaning? If so that's not particularly surprising.


Is all this because you are anxious not to fuck up in life and mean to ponder all proposed steps before taking them?

I am personally not a fan of analysis and it seems to be a particular trap of the fearful. When things go wrong you will know. You often know before they go wrong. Just get on with it and you will find in action all that you need. Mistakes are a part of life and often the best part. There are happy accidents and there are mistakes you learn from. Reflection occasionally is useful but don't over do it. If you have mental health issues or problematic substance misuse then counselling or a support group will be a better path.

I know that some people think Leonard Cohen is music to commit suicide to. — Jack Cummins

I have never understood that. I can't think of an artist more life affirming than him. I don't generally accept a dark versus light view of music. It either is enjoyable or it is not. If I had to listen to U2 or Elton John, say, self-harm might be an option...

I can't relate to classical music at all — Jack Cummins

I can't relate to pop music and never listened to the music of my youth (mid 1970's and 1980's). I generally find rock to be aesthetically unpleasant (but I do know the Doors and Tom Waits and Leonard Cohen, Nick Cave) I prefer Muddy Waters, Howling Wolf, Little Walter. Mainly I listen to classical - Mahler, Bruckner, Beethoven, Schoenberg, Bach, Shostakovich.

The result will prove to us if they know that they exist. — Down The Rabbit Hole

It will only establish that they think they exist. How do they know it is them doing the thinking?

Essentially you are saying you want to create the suffering subject so that they can be the hero of enduring that suffering. — schopenhauer1

I have no problem with the creation of suffering as you describe it.

Anti-natalists are just mass murderers who don't like to see blood.

It took me almost a decade, after dozens of starts, to read through the first section to the end. Thirty-one pages. — 180 Proof

Glad to hear this. I tried several times and gave up. My mum (from Amsterdam) was an admirer of Spinoza and I felt like I should give him a go. But she died and so did my interest. I am very poorly equiped for complex philosophical prose - partly temperament/partly an unassailable belief that none of it matters anyway. I enjoy George Elliot much more than any philosopher I've attempted. Although oddly I have a fondness for Richard Rorty...

think there are a lot of reasons not to have children that are all compelling.

For example:
The Holocaist ( one of my main reasons for not having children if not the top reason).
The Transatlantic slave trade. Slavery.
9/11.
The Rwandan genocide
Multiple scelrosis (my older brother had primary progressive MS and died recently 2019 in his late 40's completely paralysed unable to eat, drink or talk after 25 years of illness)
Anxiety, depression, suicide and autism. (all my own experince.)
Cancer and HIV
ISIS Homophobia
Gendercide/misogyny/the oppression and persecution of women.
Two world wars.
and I could go on. — Andrew4Handel

The worst scenario is that people have children to validate themselves. — Andrew4Handel

That's an inadequate response from where I am sitting.

I know or have known survivors of the Holocaust; sex slavery; Rawanda; MS; Islamic fundamentalism; World War One and Two; Cancer and many more terrible scenarios.

Each survivor I've known was pleased to be alive and thankful for being born. My own father spent a couple of years in a Nazi camp. He found the experience an aphrodisiac for living. He considered himself (for good reasons) lucky to be alive and never looked back.

Personality is a key issue. Some people are crushed by a simple office job. Some people are empowered if they survive a concentration camp. Humans are extraordinary and we can never assume the outcome.

:ok:

Not at all. "I don't feel like things are different" is a terrible way to evaluate your society's loss of freedom. I'm old enough to remember when the left fought for free speech. Now the left is against free speech. — fishfry

I think it all went to shit when Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus and shut down the press, arrested editors and banned journalists during the Civil War.

If lie detectors become more accurate, this should do the job? — Down The Rabbit Hole

You can be wrong about things but believe them to be true. A lie detector can only determine if you think you are right.

At what point did that which I call “me” appear? — Present awareness

It was 3.43 am on February 27th 1990.

Perhaps attach this to a posts about the rise of Hitler. If you put it here people may think you are a misinformed paranoiac.

I'm not experiencing any coercion or repression here in Australia. But some people who don't like responding to a public health emergency may consider it so. I have been listening to people talk of the coming collapse of the West for over 40 years. Best selling socialist author Jack London was lecturing on the immanent collapse in 1905. It's always just around the corner. And no doubt, as it must for all systems, the end will come some time.

I am not wishing to come to any firm conclusions, but just have so many questions about where we are going with information and the whole issue of social control. As far as I see, there are many different possibilities, but I am just wary of what may happen. — Jack Cummins

People have been festering about this question for decades. It's only been the last years with our beloved technologies that surveillance has become so easy for corporations and govt. How you feel about this depends on your political affiliations and on how paranoid you are. I am not all that concerned about COVID restrictions.

Carry on. I am getting out; I had my say. — god must be atheist

:ok:

So which of those is/ are the major one/ones? — god must be atheist

Any of those. I hear what you are saying about 'major" but I don't think it needs a genius to throw out the symptoms they keep hearing about - surely they are major ones...

But are people getting more ignorant? Who the hell can tell?

Errr.... no. Whilst this is true it misses the salient point that the following symptoms have been hysterically conveyed to the population for a year.

Could almost write a song based on the chorus of: fever, body ache, dry cough, fatigue, chills, headache, sore throat, loss of appetite, ...

:cheer:

:ok: I think the ready eruption of conspiracy theories is one of the many shadow sides of religion and totally see Q-Anon fitting into the cadences of apocalyptic traditions of Christianity. It's also not far off the witch-trials and the satanic cult moral panic of the 1980's. I have not looked at The AntiChrist but I did enjoy Kazantzakis' The Last Temptation of Christ for an intimate and complex Gnostic account of JC. The fan fiction based on Jesus Christ is pretty interesting.

IMO, this is our current meta-religion (democracy with individual rights.) — T H E

Yes. Of course folk like Nietzsche and sophisticated Christians like David Bentley Hart would argue that those individual rights are simply the ghostly shadows of Christianity playing out, are not founded on anything solid, and are doomed to fail.

We have ideas like individual rights, the common good, democracy, etc. I'm not saying this is perfect, but I don't think humans need God or gods to have communities. I think we both live in secular societies (I imagine rightly or wrongly that Australia is more like the US than any other nation that comes to mind.) — T H E

Yep. Unlike America, God is almost totally absent from Australian cultural life. There are small pockets of 'faith' within conservative politics. But the idea may be metastasising in the national psyche (to use Gore Vidal's expression).

It's not like historical religion produced a culture that was morally superior. There is no golden era of religious moral virtue we can point to in the West.

What's going to happen if people let go of God? Will they collapse into nihilism? — T H E

Assuming belief in God doesn't lead to a form of moral nihilism of its own.

It’s perfectly true that Biblical religions originated in the ‘childhood of humanity’ and are full of ‘bronze-age tropes’. But they can be re-intepreted, there are layers of meaning. That is what hermeneutics are for. Rather than just written off. — Wayfarer

I certainly hope this is possible and will happen. I remain a non-believer but it would make me sleep easier at night knowing that Abrahamic religions can be rehabilitated. I don't recognise the notion of God as it simply doesn't resonate with me. But if people need it, I have no problem as long as they are not using bronze age tropes to influence politics and legislation. If all believers were like David Bentley Hart (they might be a little smug) but they would be close to secular humanism in matters of social and economic policy.

I used to like goats.

There are many people who hold firmly to an empirical(?) standpoint. In a discussion with them, their opinion of what is true/right is based on facts. — New2K2

Of course, but how does this relate to your question about reality being subjective?

If all (perception and understanding of) reality is subjective then the burden of proof is not on the claimant but on the disagreer" — New2K2

Shouldn't that be -If all (perception and understanding of) reality is subjective then the burden of proof is no longer relevant?

Broad brushstrokes. It was a far more emotional incident and I don't feel comfortable saying much more than that.

You surely remember that account of their fateful last conversation, the final break between the two? — Wayfarer

Someone who worked with Jung for 25 years was very close to my family and I heard this story in much greater detail from someone who heard if directly from Jung.

Because he was not reductionist in the sense Freud was. — Wayfarer

I guess Jung is an expansionist.

This is so redolent with irony that it's hard to know where to start. But a good start might be the fact that Freud's 'scientific' theories came to be almost universally rejected within a couple of generations of his passing. — Wayfarer

No question and I'm not sure many take Freud's theories seriously except Freudian psychoanalysts. My hermeneutics of suspicion say there is a great deal of money in witchdoctory. I used this incorrect appellation in the same sense that E Fuller Torrey did in his book Witchdoctors and Psychiatrists.

Figures. Have you read about hermeneutics of suspicion? They're both given as examples of it — Wayfarer

I can't see why Jung wouldn't be included in this too. I guess his are the hermeneutics of faith.

I understand that, I was asking Banno why not.

But he did credit Nietzsche with exceptional self-knowledge ('more penetrating knowledge of himself than any man who ever lived or was likely to live'). — T H E

I think Freud saw himself in this tradition and along with the influence of Schopenhauer and Goethe probably fancied himself as a poet and literary critic as much as a scientist. My understanding of Freud's works (which I have only perused in English) are they are written in an exceptionally beautiful literary prose style.

I read Answer to Job a long time ago and remember being quite impressed by it. — T H E

Jung, likes to take accepted ideas and twist them. It's a nice touch bringing us an idea of God who also has an evil dimension. This certainly explains The Book of Job's devious Yahweh in a way no orthodox theologian ever could. The fourth face of God is not so much 'evil' as Mafia Boss, but I get Jung's point. But fun as this is, it always struck me that Jung was doing a bit of fan fiction with the Old Testament rather than uncovering something. It strikes me as embroidery rather than analysis.

Reality is not subjective. Anymore than democracy is green. — Banno

What kind of category mistake is 'reality is subjective?'

We believe we see politicians do certain things, and hear them say certain things, but then we discover they did, and said, something entirely different. Some of them are really good at it, and charge a lot of money to see their act. Should we applaud, or re-elect? — Don Wade

I see this same phenomenon in the activities of doctors, lawyers, builders, architects, police... I think it is a broad based human characteristic. Politicians are slightly more obvious examples because they are in the media, everyone wants something from them and everyone is trying to show them up.

I'm an atheist myself, so I'm not complaining about that. I'm just speculating that the philosophy I like tends to be so personal and entwined with heroic self-image partially because of that. — T H E

Thank you for that explanation. I relate to much of it and agree for the most part. However, over the years I have found most philosophy laborious and unpleasant to read and, as an atheist, I didn't really see any need for examining any given thinker's subjectivist rantings just because it had made it into the pantheon - endorsed by some, negated by others. Who can tell what is important? I can't. So I have tended to focus on the quotidian and tried to make that as rewarding as possible. What fascinates me on this site are the choices people make and why.

Tom Storm he was a psychoanalyst — The Opposite

I thought he was a wizard, like Freud.