Ragtime was very popular in the Black community where it originated, but it also became popular among middle-class whites. Why? How? — BC

How could it not become popular?! It is energetic and lifts a person's spirits. The total opposite of Jim Crow.

Thank you for mentioning things like the availability of sheet music and pianos. Immediately, I thought of my grandmother. It was obvious in her day that a respectable young lady knew how to play the piano. She gave my sister and me piano lessons. I had no idea how important that was to her but I can see that today.

I googled for more information about the availability of pianos, and the explanation came with mention of the social status in a growing middle class and what the piano had to do with that. The growing middle class and increased availability of sheet music and pianos were the result of developing technology. Which pushes me to ask, when did typewriters become essential, and demand for typewriters and people trained to use them skyrocketed with the First World War.

I am moved to tears, and I am not sure why. Perhaps because I am experiencing a strong connection with my grandmother and her generation. And my head is screaming for a philosophical thought that can bring my experience back in line with a philosophical forum. Can you help me? What am I experiencing? It goes with notions of god and man. That is a reality bigger than myself, and being a part of that bigger reality. We are all in the river of time.

That river can be represented with both music and art. Sorry, folks, you can take me out and shoot me, but I have to use AI to make this post much richer than what I can do without it, and my emotional experience at the moment demands I ride this wave. Question, forces behind ragtime music. AI says.

The creation and popularity of ragtime music resulted from the fusion of African American folk rhythms with European classical traditions, amplified by the social and economic conditions of post-Civil War America. Key drivers included the rise of a Black middle class, technological advancements in music distribution, and the vibrant culture of saloons, theaters, and dance halls.

Louis Moreau Gottschalk would begin this transfusion, right?

AI agrees Louis Moreau Gottschalk blended culturally different music. A look at all the different sources of music makes the social scene look like a very active beehive. Not the slow and isolated progress that has been my opinion of reality. Like if I were smarter, I would create an interactive map of time and earth space. Where is it happening and why?

This is a little far from raising children, but if we did so with a bigger picture of reality, would that change how we raise them? For example, if we are moving into a period of extreme weather, might we want to prepare our young for this? A man is presenting awesome historical explanations on the internet. He said we have had very long periods of extreme climate change that almost led to our extinction. What if we should prepare our young for that? Ignoring what is happening does not seem intelligent to me. We send our children to church to save their souls, but how about preparing them to deal with a water shortage using science instead of mythology, and thinking the earth has always been as God created it, and nothing of importance changes.

And making radical changes would likley result in millions dying but that is okay because it will benefit future generations. You know what I mean when I say we need to be cautious.

Imagine the hardship and suffering it would cause to ban people from using fuel, or switching to vegan diets. The best we can do is attack the problems we foresee from multiple angles. We are already doing so in many sectors and huge strides have been made already in terms of how we manage farming. In the near future we probably won't need farmland as hydroponic will have moved on a lot.

The only real threat I am concerned about is AGI, but I am not entirely sure that can/will happen anytime soon. Hard to say. If it does that has far more potential to ruin our lives as well as improve it dramatically.

I am not overly concerned about the future of humanity tbh. Someone needs to be and it looks like you are so that is enough for me. — I like sushi

I wish everyone knew much more about geology than they do. AL fails to give an adequate explanation of what oil has to do with banking, but at least knowing what it has to say would be helpful. You might Google 'what oil has to do with banking' then get back to me. We need to figure the cost of war into the cost of oil. Taxpayers are paying the real cost of oil even if they don't drive. The division of the rich and the poor is unjust, considering what our tax dollars are paying for and what we get in return.

I think high schools should make Youngquist's books about geology mandatory reading. We can not stop the suffering by ignoring our reality and shifting your responsibility to make sane decisions to others, is not being responsible.

Where are we going to get the water for hydroponic farming? What do you know of our supply of water? Google, areas in the US that have water shortages. If you want nightmares, check the NASA map of groundwater in the US. We get food from Mexico. Check out its underground water supply. We are living on borrowed time, and our populations are increasing while our supply of water is decreasing.

Now check out what oil has to do with farming. You can stick your head in the sand, but that will not come out well. I don't think anything is more important to our decision-making than geology. All I can do is make people aware of what they need to know.

This is a little far from raising children, but if we did so with a bigger picture of reality, would that change how we raise them? — Athena

No so far from the matter of raising children.

Children can grow up to be open to the always-changing world, to new music ("All music was once new"), new art, new science, new technology, and so on, while also being open to the past. I have no idea of how, exactly, parents should go about that other than to be open themselves both to the ever changing present and the past. And they should do that with as much taste and selectivity as they can manage. New fashion might be hideous, and some new technology might be insidious. We don't have to rush out and buy it.

I don't think anything is more important to our decision-making than geology. — Athena

Well, geology IS the bedrock of reality, so, yes.

Iran is currently in a water crisis -- not enough to go around. The SW United States is headed toward the same crisis. Johannesburg, South Africa came very close to zero water in the very recent past. The Oglala Aquifer laying under much of the Great Plains is being depleted. The Colorado River is heavily over-subscribed, and its reservoirs may never recover (at least in time to make a difference).

The Greens, Environmentalists, Vegetarians, and Vegans want us to quit oil altogether, right now. I used to think that too. But we can't. James Howard Kunstler's book Too Much Magic argues against technological optimism: Oil and coal are the root cause of global warming. They are also the root of global prosperity. That's where we are, for better or worse. All sorts of whiz-bang solutions are offered, but the fact is: we are stuck with oil. We have passed "peak oil" but that doesn't mean we will run out tomorrow. It will take about as long to run out as we have been using petroleum -- so another 100 years, roughly.

We can't quit using oil because it is too deeply integrated into our technology ("just one word: PLASTICS" was said to The Graduate), our chemical supply, our transportation--electric cars not withstanding, our pharmaceuticals, agriculture, our clothing (polyester, nylon), and everything else. Water mains and gas lines are now made out of plastic.

It is so critical a substance that if we abruptly stopped using carbon fuels to save the climate, the world's economies would crash -- and that crash would cost many lives all over the world, from starvation, from loss of electricity--wind and solar not withstanding, from lack of water, lack of transportation, lack of work and income, and on and on.

Unfortunately--and it really is unfortunate--the consumption of carbon fuels is not declining much.

Is there nothing to be done? Of course there is. We could build a lot more wind and solar farms, everywhere. Nuclear power is available. We could shift away from individual auto use. There are about 1 billion cars on the road in the world. The individual car/driver was never sustainable, and for large areas of the industrialized world it wasn't necessary, either. We could all get a lot more frugal in our energy use.

But there are 8.1 billion people to convince. Fat chance of doing that! Fat chance of getting the US Government (DT et al) on board environmental salvation.

Speaking of geology, we are in the Anthropocene epoch, where industrial substances are not only altering the global climate, but laying down industrial substances in new geologic layers.

That was beautiful, and I will make this reply simple.

A child born today could be alive 100 years from now.

Children can grow up to be open to the always-changing world, to new music ("All music was once new"), new art, new science, new technology, and so on, while also being open to the past. I have no idea of how, exactly, parents should go about that other than to be open themselves both to the ever changing present and the past. And they should do that with as much taste and selectivity as they can manage. New fashion might be hideous, and some new technology might be insidious. We don't have to rush out and buy it. — BC

What if all this crashes in only 100 years? Will our young be prepared to figure out how to survive? We would be far past peak oil if it were not for fracking. If we can't stop using oil, how will people stop using oil one hundred years from now?

According to Youngquist, Rome fell because it exhausted its source of gold. Constantine moved the capital to Rome because that was where the best supply of gold was, and that gold was not shared with the whole of Rome. I am trying to figure out how to discuss things philosophically. Are we as intelligent as we think we are? Or are we all stooges living in denial and about to lose it all?

Once again, I am desperate for more information, and in desperation, I turn to Al because at the moment I can do no right. Maintaining this discussion outside the bounds of philosophy is also wrong. AI puts this back into the philosophy bag.

To ask what happens philosophically if people cannot handle reality is to explore some of the most fundamental questions in human thought. Philosophers have addressed this topic for millennia, from Plato’s metaphor of the cave to modern existentialism and nihilism. The different responses offered reveal a core tension between humanity's desire for meaning and the universe's apparent indifference.

What if all this crashes in only 100 years? Will our young be prepared to figure out how to survive? — Athena

"All this" will crash. The young of 2125 won't be grappling with an oil shortage. In 100 years heat will be the biggest problem -- heat; previously unseen climate and weather patterns; drinking water shortages; insufficient food production; maintenance of critical aging infrastructure. In 100 years it is likely that intolerable heat will prevail in many parts of the world, including parts the United States. Specifically, it will be too hot and too humid to carry out agricultural labor. Disease pattern changes are already under way. We can expect that malaria, West Nile virus, chikungunya. Lyme disease, zika virus, and more will become endemic in much of the US (because of heat and the spread of ticks and mosquitos and the diseases they carry).

End of the world? Not quite. But it is likely to be a world with fewer people, fewer resources, fewer comforts, and very big problems. Let us hope that there we don't have nuclear warfare to add to the future's problems.

People who can will adapt and life will go on.

People who could not adapt through no fault of their own will have departed this world.

I am selfishly glad that I am an old man in 2025, and will have departed this world long before things get much worse. Who is to blame? Let's keep it simple and just blame everybody since the Industrial Revolution. Our generation's government and corporate leaders are doubly culpable for knowing that coal, oil, and natural gas cause climate change and not doing something about it. Let them be hanged twice.

The next several generations will join the class of climate criminals if they do not act. The Angry Children of 2125 will have no shortage of responsible and guilty parties at which to shake their fists!

And in Texas, the grade school textbooks do not mention the problem, and because they buy so many textbooks, they are written to please the people in power. Other states buy books made for Texas, but they may be modified to fit the different state standards. That is unethical.

In 1920 a newspaper warned "Given our known oil supply and rate of consumption, we are headed for economic disaster and possibly war." There is no excuse for our ignorance. Carter was right about avoiding war by reducing our consumption of oil, and Reagan was a liar when he said we have all the oil we need, because that depended on a military a presence in the Middle East. Technology extended our time to use oil. A technology that depends on a lie and ignorance is unforgivable, and it was the media's duty to keep us informed. We might delay the collapse of our economy but we can not prevent it, while at the same time we are destroying our planet.

We need honesty and we need to act on what we know. We must not let the discussion stop at ignoring the problem because change would hurt.

We need honesty and we need to act on what we know. We must not let the discussion stop at ignoring the problem because change would hurt. — Athena

HEAR! HEAR!

you can take me out and shoot me, but I have to use AI to make this post much richer than what I can do without it — Athena

Which AI are you using? Are you using the summary labeled as AI which Google provides to a query? For quick checks, it generally delivers acceptable answers--at least, they are as good as Google query results, which are sometimes not good, but usually are at least acceptable.

I generally don't use CHATGPT, or other AIs--not for any great reason; I just don't find it that entertaining.

AI is a tool; so is Google. Of course it's there to make money, now or in the near future, but that's no surprise. I think the problem the Management here has with AI is people substituting AI output for their own thinking, their own composition. I'm against people doing that because it's only by actually doing their own thinking and their own research and their own writing that they will get better at it.

You are not substituting AI output for your own thinking, which you have clearly been doing for a long time. So pick up the tools that help you gather information. Any tool, be it a pencil and note cards or Ai.

Let them be hanged twice. — BC

No!
Punish only up to the extent of the law. Anything beyond that is vindictiveness. Vindictiveness and wisdom cannot co-exist in you simultaneously.

Wisdom tells me that the second hanging is a formality, since the hangees will no longer be 'present'.

On the other hand, I'll own up to a certain amount of vindictiveness toward responsible agents who wrecked the climate and caused billions of deaths.

Plagiarizing someone else's writing is wrong. I grew up with that rule and have strong feelings about the wrong. However, as I sit out here all alone with my thoughts, it is wonderful to find I am not totally alone, but AI knows what I am talking about and more! Unlike some replies, AI leads me to learning more about the subject I am writing about. It's a wonderful experience for me.

I don't always agree with Google AI, and that is annoying. How dare they say something that is wrong. I don't want people believing something that is wrong. I don't think AI has emotional intelligence and that can be a threat. Some of us do not want to be ruled by a king, nor AI.

I'm not worried about you plagiarizing anything! I think we are both in the same age group--aged and high functioning. We are in a position for a late harvest of a lifetime of thinking, doing, living. A few weeks ago one of my sisters (more aged than I and not doing quite so well) were discussing the 20th century history of Israel. I was reciting the history of the pre-and-post WWI changes in the Middle East, the Balfour declaration, and so on. She accused me of reading this off the computer. No, it's something that I had finally learned well enough to draw from memory.

You have batches of material like that too, material you have learned well and can spool off in a post. It's a great thing to have, a working memory that is full. (I'm not bragging -- I can't remember what the weather was like here last month. Did I take my pills this morning? What did I spend the 20 bucks on that was in my wallet? Etc.). I wish I had learned more in college Geology 101; we had a wonderful teacher. The one thing I remember vividly is his description of plate tectonics which was still a relatively new discovery. I remember some stories in the 6th grade Weekly Reader about the International Geophysical Year, 1956. One of the stories was about the sea floor spreading out from big cracks--a key piece of continental drift. As for the different types of rocks we were taught, not much remains. Plagioclase feldspar? the name stuck but the description didn't.

Wisdom tells me that the second hanging is a formality, since the hangees will no longer be 'present'.

On the other hand, I'll own up to a certain amount of vindictiveness toward responsible agents who wrecked the climate and caused billions of deaths. — BC

As you were.

Punish only up to the extent of the law. Anything beyond that is vindictiveness. Vindictiveness and wisdom cannot co-exist in you simultaneously. — L'éléphant

Thanks for calling me out on that.

Sadly, "the extent of the law" may include capital punishment. I am against capital punishment for two reasons: #1, in the United States, at least, justice has been perverted in a significant number of convictions, including those of capital cases. The wrongfully convicted are sometimes exonerated by the hard work of a few justice groups. It's bad enough if someone spends 20 years in prison for a wrongful conviction. A wrongful execution is beyond appeal.

#2, execution is an unseemly activity for the state to engage in. Prison is punishment enough -- for life if need be, but in most cases, not that long. Now, I don't like the way states run their prisons either. People can become better in prison, no worse, but that takes a commitment to betterment. We don't have that, by and large. I don't like states running gambling operations, either, or if they so chose, any of the traditional rackets.

So, "they can hang twice" is a rhetorical flourish, not an action plan. Besides, I probably won't be around in 10 years, never mind 100. There is some comfort in getting closer to the end.

Sadly, "the extent of the law" may include capital punishment. I am against capital punishment for two reasons: #1, in the United States, at least, justice has been perverted in a significant number of convictions, including those of capital cases. The wrongfully convicted are sometimes exonerated by the hard work of a few justice groups. It's bad enough if someone spends 20 years in prison for a wrongful conviction. A wrongful execution is beyond appeal. — BC

There is room for improvement in the justice system and it is constantly being evaluated, reviewed, analyzed. But to say that capital punishment shouldn't be part of the system because the justice system is not perfect is similar to saying we will not give every and each individual what they deserved because we don't have a perfect system. Desert is the main focus of punishment. In a philosophical argument, desert is a way of acknowledging a person as a moral agent.
Let me ask you, if capital punishment shouldn't be one of the choices of punishment because of an 'imperfect system', then why incarcerate criminals at all, as in life sentence, or twenty years in prison? Life sentence and capital punishments are both punishments based on desert. If you say we don't have a perfect system, then you should apply your objection to all types of punishment, not just capital punishment.
I wouldn't want to see someone incarcerated for twenty years if they don't deserved it.
Heck, I don't want to see anyone spend one year in jail at all.

#2, execution is an unseemly activity for the state to engage in. — BC

Oh really? Execution is an unseemly activity for the state to engage in? Who should deliver the execution then? The federal government? The City government?
What's missing in your point is that the State is made up of everybody -- including the voters. The state is made up of moral agents who decided that a capital punishment is an appropriate punishment for a given crime.

By "state" I mean either a federal state (US GOV) or a subunit (Florida, North Dakota). I live in a state, Minnesota, that abandoned the death penalty in 1911. Apparently there had been a badly botched execution which resulted in a voter demand to drop the death penalty. Botched execution have become a thing, again, evidently.

But to say that capital punishment shouldn't be part of the system because the justice system is not perfect... — L'éléphant

I am not holding out for "perfection". What I say is that the justice system (particularly on the state level in certain states) is bad enough that irrevocable sentences (execution) should not be ordered. Evidently, some states are much worse than others when it comes to police and prosecutorial misbehavior and incompetence. Exoneration can only benefit the living.

Even if the Justice system were to be perfect, I am still against capital punishment. I do not believe it has the power to dissuade someone from committing a capital crime, because #1 murders are often committed in the heat of the moment when regard to consequences is low. #2 reason is that in our system, for better or worse, execution often occurs long after sentence is passed. This greatly dilutes any theoretical benefit of prevention.

"The State" of course is an abstraction and can't execute a fly. Executions are carried out by individuals working for the state. It is unseemly for the state to ask employees to carry out what are cold blooded murders. The employees may feel OK about it -- I don't actually know -- but the execution is definitely cold-blooded murder, by definition.

Minnesota has had several exoneration cases, recently, which freed men who had been in jail for up to 20 years. There is a tipping point -- varying by individual -- when the last exoneration becomes too many to put up with. I have not reached that point for imprisonment.

I don't think I am being sentimental about capital punishment. People die every day in unwholesome, perverse situations, killed by -- for lack of a better term -- deluded self-centered assholes. It makes me angry that these kinds of death occur, but society seems to be OK with it, as long as it isn't in their part of town. So far, in 78 years, I haven't personally known anyone shot down on the street.

I don't approve of capital punishment, along with an assortment of other things. I have no plans to personally do anything radical to stop it, like self-immolation on the steps of the prison.

Even if the Justice system were to be perfect, I am still against capital punishment. I do not believe it has the power to dissuade someone from committing a capital crime, — BC

The main purpose of any punishment is desert.

That is your pov.

That is your pov. — BC

The philosophical justification for punishment desert. I did not invent this.

Of course you didn't invent it. I'm familiar with the principle even if I don't like the application.

Even if the Justice system were to be perfect, I am still against capital punishment. I do not believe it has the power to dissuade someone from committing a capital crime, — BC

When I engaged with criminals, it seemed evident that the reason they did bad was that they did not know how to do better. Especially one young person broke my heart when he explained he was glad to be sent into the correctional system because he wanted to know how to do better, and he felt wronged when he learned our correctional system stopped at punishing.

To have a just correction system, we need knowledge of our nature and the importance of liberal education. Understanding human nature does not come from the Bible, despite what Christians believe.
I think the best information I came across came from a Bahi woman in Canada. She realized that just punishing children is not helpful unless they are taught what is right. She created virtue cards for teaching virtues and wrote a book to go with the cards.

To have a just correction system, we need knowledge of our nature and the importance of liberal education. Understanding human nature does not come from the Bible, despite what Christians believe. — Athena

I'll say AMEN to that.

I have been reading a history of Amsterdam, a place that invented and applied the term "liberal" back in the 16th century, and which has had a continuing influence on the city. Their liberal ideals were to become a significant element in western culture.

A benefit of living in the US is knowing that different tribes had different cultures. The training for Apache warriors began at birth with harsh rearing that assured they would be strong and aggressive. Hopi mothers were more protective and nurturing, as their goal was cooperation and harmony. These differences in child rearing can be seen around the world.