Sorry; typo - my error, not the computer's. Garbage in, garbage out.

Regarding which, do you know how many college students drop out by distracting themselves with drugs? Too many... — Shawn

I wonder how many of those students don't pay their own tuition fees. I wonder how many distract themselves - whether with recreational drugs (including alcohol) or sports or social activities - because they should not have been there in the first place. Many young people embark on higher education simply because it is expected of them.
And, too, pressure to succeed, to compete, to excel may drive many others to the performance enhancing drugs that have a whole other set of side- and long-term effects.
Some of that dropping out may be due, not to the drug-use but to the initial reason for drug use.

In my mind, what this means is that a good college education is of greater value for becoming open-minded and non-conformist. — Shawn

A good college education would result in open-minded, nonconformist graduates.

Is it just because the want people to accept the fact that there might be robots around soon or is it just that they think people are stupid? — Sir2u

Yes and yes. Probably right on both counts.
Besides, it's a helluva lot easier to make an ad campaign featuring friendly androids and cute household machines than to educate the public about what kinds of automation to expect and how it works.

What sort of matter is the money in your bank account made out of? — NOS4A2

1's and 0's. Nothing. It's a concept.

Wealth is not a fixed pie, I’m afraid. — NOS4A2

The Earth is.

Wealth is accumulated through effort and ingenuity — NOS4A2

Yup. Bull markets shit golden apples for bear markets to eat.

Well, if we learn, we tend to learn from adversity... some maybe we can find something positive somewhere on the way down. — ChatteringMonkey

I'm rooting for the handful of survivors. I imagine a quite different future for their descendants. But that's easy for me to make up; I don't have to go through the interim. Other people, more forward-looking than the average corporate CEO, have been very busy storing up knowledge, seeds and DNA samples for those survivors.

I'm pretty sure the advanced aliens are not coming to rescue us from ourselves. For much of the last century, that's what science fiction writers considered our best hope.

Surely genetics must play some role, if not the occasional cameo. Not to suggest willpower or simple availability of the thing (convenience meets opportunity) isn't a factor, however. — Outlander

Genetics does play a part in the tendency to some kinds of addiction, just as it does in how a particular chemical affects each individual. Additionally, we don't start life on the mythical level playing field; some babies are at a disadvantage long before they hear the word 'willpower'. Lives are lived in very conditions; they contain different proportions of pain, sorrow, fear and revulsion. Some people have more to escape from; some have less to stay grounded for. Some are well enough off to indulge their choice of stress-relief in a competitive arena. Many are just young, curious, reckless and persuadable.

I do think the idea that we are living in the worst possible eras imaginable sells itself to some extend because of certain ecological and social issues we have. — ChatteringMonkey

What, like glaciers and islands disappearing, 50C heat and widespread extinction, while Putin waves his nuclear missiles around like an angry baby with its rattle?

Sorry, I just don’t understand why you wouldn’t want people to be wealthy. — NOS4A2

It's that conservation of matter thingie. Nothing comes from nothing. In order for something to accumulate in one place, it has to be removed from another. In order for one person to have more money, some other person or people must have less money. The way wealth is accumulated is through the exploitation of the environment and the labour of poor people.
If you can't see the exploitation, it's either because you choose not to look, or because it's hidden from your daily gaze by a distance of continents. And of course, as long as you're doing okay, you can have the police protect your sensibilities from all the homeless people in rich countries, and all the slaves in 'developing' countries. If you have ample food, you never need not ask how many hectares of soil were lost to industrial farming or how many people starved to death today. You never have to look at all the dead fish and pelicans after an oil spill or drink the water downstream from a mine, just so you can have all the conveniences served up by the mega-rich owners of those toxic enterprises. You never need to ask where the wealth comes from and how it is obtained.

This is really quite elementary and should not require explanation. I don't decide how much the human economies can grow on a finite planet: the laws of physics do.

I agree.

Stilton and olives with Carr's crackers and DAB dark.

Epiphanies are not supposed to be reproducible. It's hard to accept that you get just the one.

Life isn’t a zero-sum game, thank god, though the fallacy has led us to such injustice in the past. — NOS4A2

Yes, it pretty much is, according to the laws of chemistry but I doubt a deity had anything to do with it.
Are you aware that Greek mythology is neither history nor current actuality, while slavery is both?
Once the Earth's cornucopia has been sucked dry, everybody becomes destitute. Those who are wealthy now will starve to death in their luxury bunkers.

AI would not be able to grasp the thoughts, motivations, and circumstances of 10 people, let alone millions. — NOS4A2

Why should it? People have very few and simple needs and motivations. The circumstances could be made a whole less variable by an AI making sure every human has the necessities of life and no one human hogs 10,000 people's allotment of necessisties. Equity ain't that complicated!

After all, there is nothing wrong with becoming richer and more wealthy. — NOS4A2

J.J. Ward would agree!

If what you're saying is true, then is there any truth to gleaning into one's inner life through a drug? Based on what I am reading, I think these deeply personal experiences, may have significant meaning if not truth. Is this correct? — Shawn

How should I know? They're not my experiences.

I agree; but, I am somewhat hesitant to believe that any government will want its population to start taking drugs to remedy boredom. — Shawn

Brave New World.

Regarding counterfactuals, and the doubt in your mind about these or some of these experiences, why is there so much glamourization of psychedelics? — Shawn

Why is there so much glamouraziation of overpriced cars, film performers, football players and Rocket launchings? People get excited about some really dumb stuff.

It's interesting to note, that nowadays we call the use of drugs as a recreational thing. I suppose this means that the behavior is an outlet... — Shawn

We don't call all drugs recreational. Most drugs are therapeutic (prescribed for specific symptoms of illness) and many are remedial (to correct minor malfunctions, like a headache, upset stomach or allergy). Most psychotropic drugs are also used in the treatment of mental illness; marijuana is medicinal when relieving the side effects of cancer treatment or overcoming some of the lesser anxiety disorders.
They're called recreational when people use them like alcohol, to make themselves feel good.

That was about when I bought a 5-cent chocolate bar and a 10-cent Classic Comic with my weekly allowance. And everything that couldn't run away was being renamed for Winston Churchill.

Dr. Albert Hofmann invented LSD25 in 1938. — Metaphysician Undercover

It didn't seem to do him any harm - lived to 102.
I only tried it twice and didn't particularly enjoy the experience.

Yes. It's even longer and more opaque.

Ivan and Fyodor are standing on street corner. A Lada goes by. Then a Trabant. A Skoda. Then a Lincoln. Fyodor asks, "Which of those cars would you like to drive?" Ivan thinks a minute, then replies, "The Lada, of course." Fyodor says, "I guess you don't know cars." "I know cars," answers Ivan, "I don't know you."

That is, what did our earliest ancestors gain by getting drunk that resulted in their increased survival? — Hanover

It didn't result in increased survival; it resulted in increased enjoyment. Other animals get drunk or high on purpose, too, so the craving may well have preceded sapience.

Having pride in one's work is a feeling which is difficult to qualify. It's what provides one with a sense of belonging, and it really doesn't matter what that work is. — Metaphysician Undercover

Better to have a choice, all the same.
One good thing they did, though: a high quality education for young people with the brains and application. Quite a few made good careers in the west, where they could not have afforded university, all the while ranting against the system that made it possible.
Nothing is pure and simple, is it?

It's a fickle game for the pharmaceutical industry who probably oppose self-medication, — Shawn

Are you kidding?!! How many ads do you see on mainstream tv for over-the-counter remedies for everything from indigestion to allergies to every kind of pain? (Maybe not as many as i do, since they target old people and sponsor the kinds of program old people are likely to watch.) How many emails do you get for detox, vitamins and m.a.l.e enhancement products? The pharmaceuticals love self-diagnosis and medication. And they want in on the cannabis market.

so the government is responding by regulating the use of drugs and not simply legalizing drugs like states did. — Shawn

When legalizing a drug, the government also undertakes to regulate its sales and monitor its safety. So do states that legalized it: they license the distributors, restrict the age at which people can buy it, and how much they're allowed to have.

I mean, I think the mood-alteration is associated, as you say, with anxiety. But, what a strange way to treat anxiety, with dopamine, really? — Shawn

Not so out of-the-box!
In any case, I didn't mean clinical anxiety, for which they would have prescription drugs (for better or worse). I meant feelings of fear, dread, apprehension, insecurity. Coke is supposed to be good for that. Pot lets you relax and see the lighter side. I don't know much about the effects of other street drugs: in the 60's, it was mainly pot - for casual use - and LSD for a special experience.

our federal government legalized recreational cannabis in 2018. There were all kinds of dire predictions about slippery slopes, a surge of drug use and increase in traffic accidents, etc. You know what actually happened? Nothing. People can buy legally what they used to buy illegally, and it's likely better quality.
It brought in a nice revenue from licenses (instead of the money-sink that policing users had been for many years) as well as boosting the legitimate economy. License holders make a decent living as well as paying taxes. Most people take their pot home or to a party and enjoy it in private. If I see somebody driving erratically or weaving as they walk, they're far and away more likely to be drunk than high.

If I was tasked with overthrowing a nation state, or fighting an army, if I could have one condition granted to bestow upon my enemy or targeted population, it would be for them all to be high. — Outlander

I wouldn't be quite so confident. List of psychoactive drugs used by militaries

I'd like to add to my OP, that I don't quite understand the 1960's that well. I know it was the counterculture; but, I don't understand why it became a fascination with drugs... I mean, it was about peace, love, and political activism; but, why the popularity arose to drugs? — Shawn

Because The Establishment made such a huge to-do about forbidding it. And people wanted to explore their subconscious, their creative and spiritual side. To see deeper into the universe, or the void, or the soul... or something. And it was fun.

What's the reason why people want to alter their moods? — Shawn

Most commonly, because they are unhappy or anxious. Most of the unhappy people have good reason to escape the reality in which they live. Most anxious people feel more in control when they change perspective.

If basic human needs for all human beings in a given society can be fulfilled from very little human work, the work being taken over by machines, then what drives the need for further work from those human beings? — Metaphysician Undercover

Personal goals - like the gentleman scientists of the Renaissance and financially independent inventors of the 19th century. A sense of achievement. Contribution to the community. Respect of peers.
The labourers of 'communist' countries had none of those motivations, because they had no real stake in the enterprises that employed them, no voice in management and no share in the income. In spite of that, in spite of the resentment most middle-class people felt, many of them did a conscientious job - even when the new job was a demotion from their previous position (In the early days, the class of one's birth could be a serious handicap to work opportunities. I knew a former history professor who worked on a collective farm and took great pride in his straight furrows. )

There was, indeed, plenty of corruption, nepotism, incompetence, infighting, etc. - as there always is in vertical organizations. There was worker discontent, lack of co-ordination and mismanagement. There was also a good deal of obstruction from the west. Also, far too many resources were poured into military competition - something the booming US could better afford than a nation struggling to rebuild after a devastating war.

People keep comparing communism with democracy, but that's a false comparison. Communism and capitalism are economic models, not political ones. The USSR was nominally democratic in its political structure after its aristocracy had been replaced by a different set of feudal lords.

While the Iron Curtain countries had nationalized industry and agriculture, they still continued to use money as a medium of exchange. More seriously, they had to trade with the west for some commodities. Unless a country is completely self-sufficient in raw materials, infrastructure and technical knowledge, it can't sustain an economic system completely separate from the rest of the world. The US probably could have, but never tried. Russia could not, even with the annexed territories - not even by draining the satellites. And Cuba, which might otherwise have been a valid experiment in communism, never stood a snowball's chance in hell under US embargo.

Capitalism made and deployed the small pox vaccine, — frank

No it didn't! Medical scientists did. They would have worked in exactly the same way if their education had been free and the result of the research were available to everyone on the planet, regardless of means.

Jenner himself worked tirelessly to see the scourge of smallpox eradicated. Although awarded many honours, he never became a rich man. He devoted so much time to vaccination that his business as a country doctor suffered. He would often vaccinate poor people free of charge.

It seems plausible to me that any large Communist regime will inevitably end up in tyranny. Again, that's my "seems to me" opinion, not a solid claimi. — T Clark

I'm inclined to agree. I can't see communism on a large scale at all, unless it evolves naturally through the stages of democratic socialism. And that cannot happen in a monetized economy, because powerful vested interests will do anything to thwart it.

But then, other kinds of political system also fall prey to despotism of one kind or another. Right now, capitalism is blundering its way toward implosion, while democracies are failing at various rates.

Wikipedia says that a very uncertain estimate of deaths caused by Communist regimes is between 60 and 150 million. — T Clark

Let me amend that:
deaths caused by self-styled Communist regimes is between 60 and 150 million. They're dictatorships that gained power under a red flag, on the blood of the working and peasant classes, then systematically eliminated the idealists, the trade unionists, the intellectual and communal leaders of the movement. On the large scale, all popular and populist movements are co-opted by demagogues who then become despots.
If the contents smell like rat droppings, though the label says Caviar, don't eat it!

Is democracy a grand but failed experiment? — Tom Storm

There is no reason a commune can't be governed democratically. I should imagine democracy would actually work very much better in a communist economic arrangement, where people are pretty much equal, than a capitalist one, where a few individuals wield immense political power through their wealth. Might go so far as to say that democracies are failing because of capitalism.

They killed tens, hundreds, of millions of people. — T Clark

Hundreds of thousands killed one another. 'They' just conducted one side and took over when the carnage was done.

Opinion - communism goes against human nature, so it can only be forced on people from above. — T Clark

Of course it can't. But nobody's ever tried to. What passed for a communist regime was a top tier of pigs, a layer of Dobermans and millions of workhorses.

What I mean to say is that if the population of Russia’s working class proved to be inadequate for operating its industries, — EdwardC

They were never given a chance to try.

I would assume more highly educated members of the party would be tasked to this. — EdwardC

Educated? Maybe. The main requirement for managers was loyalty to the regime.

For Russia, communism was a grand; but, failed experiment, according to Google. — Shawn

It was an aborted experiment. For starters, the Russian revolution had been brewing since 1905; what actually set it off was a bunch of women. All of that was erased in Stalin's revised history. He had no intention of attempting the Marxist vision: he was an emperor. The regime made some changes according to the (reasonably conceived but badly implemented) agenda: consolidating farms; nationalizing industries, and some social reforms like free education and health care. But the stratification continued, only with different players in the top three tiers of the hierarchy.

There was a thread on the previous philosophy forum, something to the matter stating that with central managers being coal workers or shoe salesmen, then it wouldn't seem hard to conclude that the whole endeavor would have failed. — Shawn

Nothing like that. The soviets ('governing council'; something like trade unions) already existed and had considerable political influence.
((Shoe salesmen?))

Regarding this, if one day a computer can do the same work central managers can, without any issue about competence, then would communism be not condemned to the ineptitude of Soviet styled central managers? — Shawn

Huh? If a computer can do the work of all the 'managers' of human societies, and that computer recognized humans as worth keeping, it would distribute goods and services far more equitably than any so-called communist regime. The operative word there being IF.

Maybe you just disagree. — EdwardC

I disagree with some of your statements about history, values and 'ethic'. As for the rest, I simply can't decipher what you're trying to say. Maybe simplify the vocabulary for us literalists?

This paragraph, for example, seems to have some major lacunae; I can't parse it:

This entry is intended to highlight a cultural ethic which is communicated through industry and academics, describing also how the government’s functionality during this time period, disengaged and unreachable, allows for said ethic to effect the people, leaving them without significant recourse. — EdwardC

The US government is obviously reachable https://www.usa.gov/agency-index; if not altogether functional. But here, a distinction should be made between the stalemated Congress and the various capable and effective agencies that carry out the nation's daily business. They're not in the ethic business; their job is to distribute welfare cheques, test food and bridges for safety, curtail flooding, supervise the entry ports and hundreds of other essential services, which they mostly do quite well, in spite of politically appointed department heads.

This is not an improvement on the first version.

During any age, there is always an ethos, an ethic by which that age develops its political character and social personality. — EdwardC

Demonstrate it. Or at least describe its manifestation and give examples.

For if there was tyranny would it not be recognized by those who have eradicated it in the past? — EdwardC

There is and it is recognized by some of the descendants of those who have defeated one or another form of it in the past. Tyranny has never been eradicated.

If there was propaganda would it’s application not be investigated by the free in thought? — EdwardC

There is and it is.
Neither of these conditions is new or unique to the present.

At this point, the civic body has undergone malaise, behaving in a way that transfers a state of imposed pacifism onto the general public even if they are invested in political affairs in that its offices are used for only menial tasks. — EdwardC

What pacifism - in a country that has never been without some kind of war for more than 11 years in its short history? Who is currently pacific in the armed-to-teeth USA?

Please try to articulate your theory and ground it in something less vague than discontent with the current pop culture.

What is not exactly what?
Okay, so you're pretty much down to Europe, rather than the whole era. Given the period - say 1000-1300 CE, does that make the definition and/or description of ethos/values/character any clearer? The roots of it any better exposed?

See, my problem here is that you seem to have an interesting theme, possibly an interesting theory, but so far, you presentation of it has been far too nebulous to discuss.

I believe the prevailing value set that runs through a society and even a time in history certainly can be said to have philosophical, ethical, and even mytho-spiritual roots. This is what I’ve come to conclude based primarily on first hand observation and research into anthropology and the arts. — EdwardC

Anything can be said to have roots, but locating the root and identifying the plant are particular tasks that 'an adequate' observer should be able to perform.
Can you define or describe this universal value set for any specific date? For ease of verification, try 1200 CE. Which civilizations shared what values and what were the ethical and mytho-spiritual roots of those values?

During any age, there is always an ethos, an ethic by which that age develops its political character and social personality. — EdwardC

I have a problem with that basic premise .... after which, it gets a little confusing. How long is 'an age'? Two centuries? Five? Wasn't monarchy the standard form of government during the European 'age' of Enlightenment? Don't fascist and communist regimes exist concurrently?

Different continents, different periods, different cultures can be said to have particular characteristics, but I very much doubt there is much commonality in the ethos or political organization of Asia, Europe and North America in 400BCE or 1200CE.
Some things in human behaviour are constant throughout recorded history: social organization, competition, co-operation and inter-national conflict. These basic urges are expressed in changing forms and patterns, according the religious, or militaristic, or technological or economic trend. In the so-called global culture of today, economic forces are the predominant movers of public opinion and attitude - far more so in North America and Asia than elsewhere, and since the USA and China are the major economic entities, they influence every other culture. But there is a lot of other stuff going on in the shadow of commercialism.

I heard a quite clever historian say the other day: After two or three generations of peace, prosperity and personal freedom, the people of a nation begin to believe that this is the norm. The have faith in the permanence of their democratic edifice. In fact, democracy is a fragile thing, in need of constant protection. When people become complacent they are easy prey for the greedy and power-hungry.

Yes! I tested it first on those filmy little vegetable bags in the grocery store, then yesterday on the recycle and garbage bags. Works on all three types of plastic. You have my life-long gratitude.