What does this have to do with the topic at hand? I was trying to engage with you about the topic you were discussing on this thread.

You guys are really going to let the CCP and WHO slide on this, aren’t you? On January 15th the WHO said there was no evidence of human-to-human infection. Months later you’re huddled in your house avoiding your community. The pangs of dissonance must be extraordinary. — NOS4A2

@frank @StreetlightX

I must agree here. Although China finally did what they needed by isolation measures (new cases are being contained it seems), the officials at the local level were the ones suppressing the information and/or only selecting partial information (only those who had direct contact with the animal market were to be considered counted). They also did not want to tell Beijing what was going on at first, often blocking doctors at hospitals from proclaiming an possible emergency (i.e. the information had to be leaked to get to the wider public). Based on an article I have linked below, this could be cultural, as it seems the bearer of bad news is often shunned for giving the bad news I guess. Also, it is function of totalitarian bureaucratic systems to suppress bad news from the public. Chernobyl comes to mind in this regard. It took so long, and so much information for the government to finally do something about it. Now, this doesn't discount the fact that OTHER countries that are non-communist may also deceive and suppress data about catastrophes and war causalities and the like, it is just pointing out this does have a precedent in communist/totalitarian ones.

Two major downfalls that enabled this in Chinese government were 1) the inability to follow their own infectious disease emergency measures (that were supposed to have been put in place and constantly reiterated since in the Sars epidemic), and 2) shutting down all exotic trade market places. No wild bats, exotic animals, or otherwise caught from the wild, put in cages on top of each other, cooked on the spot, etc. It just has to go.

Here are two good articles on it if anyone gives a shit:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/20/opinion/sunday/coronavirus-china-cause.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/29/world/asia/coronavirus-china.html

That said, China has been the most dogged after their initial bungling to contain it within their own country, so other countries should look at what they are doing and have done. Unrelated, but we should also look at what Korea did.

Selected readings from Schopenhauer's Religion: A Dialogue
Philalethes. But isn't it every bit as shallow and unjust to demand that there shall be no other system of metaphysics but this one, cut out as it is to suit the requirements and comprehension of the masses? that its doctrine shall be the limit of human speculation, the standard of all thought, so that the metaphysics of the few, the emancipated, as you call them, must be devoted only to confirming, strengthening, and explaining the metaphysics of the masses? that the highest powers of human intelligence shall remain unused and undeveloped, even be nipped in the bud, in order that their activity may not thwart the popular metaphysics? And isn't this just the very claim which religion sets up? Isn't it a little too much to have tolerance and delicate forbearance preached by what is intolerance and cruelty itself? Think of the heretical tribunals, inquisitions, religious wars, crusades, Socrates' cup of poison, Bruno's and Vanini's death in the flames! Is all this to-day quite a thing of the past? How can genuine philosophical effort, sincere search after truth, the noblest calling of the noblest men, be let and hindered more completely than by a conventional system of metaphysics enjoying a State monopoly, the principles of which are impressed into every head in earliest youth, so earnestly, so deeply, and so firmly, that, unless the mind is miraculously elastic, they remain indelible. In this way the groundwork of all healthy reason is once for all deranged; that is to say, the capacity for original thought and unbiased judgment, which is weak enough in itself, is, in regard to those subjects to which it might be applied, for ever paralyzed and ruined.

.............
Philalethes. A respect which will finally rest upon the principle that the end sanctifies the means. I don't feel in favor of a compromise on a basis like that. Religion may be an excellent means of training the perverse, obtuse and ill-disposed members of the biped race: in the eyes of the friend of truth every fraud, even though it be a pious one, is to be condemned. A system of deception, a pack of lies, would be a strange means of inculcating virtue. The flag to which I have taken the oath is truth; I shall remain faithful to it everywhere, and whether I succeed or not, I shall fight for light and truth! If I see religion on the wrong side—

............
Philalethes. It would be all right if religion were only at liberty to be true in a merely allegorical sense. But its contention is that it is downright true in the proper sense of the word. Herein lies the deception, and it is here that the friend of truth must take up a hostile position.

.............
When, for instance, at the beginning of this century, those inroads of French robbers under the leadership of Bonaparte, and the enormous efforts necessary for driving them out and punishing them, had brought about a temporary neglect of science and consequently a certain decline in the general increase of knowledge, the Church immediately began to raise her head again and Faith began to show fresh signs of life; which, to be sure, in keeping with the times, was partly poetical in its nature. On the other hand, in the more than thirty years of peace which followed, leisure and prosperity furthered the building up of science and the spread of knowledge in an extraordinary degree: the consequence of which is what I have indicated, the dissolution and threatened fall of religion. Perhaps the time is approaching which has so often been prophesied, when religion will take her departure from European humanity, like a nurse which the child has outgrown: the child will now be given over to the instructions of a tutor. For there is no doubt that religious doctrines which are founded merely on authority, miracles and revelations, are only suited to the childhood of humanity. Everyone will admit that a race, the past duration of which on the earth all accounts, physical and historical, agree in placing at not more than some hundred times the life of a man of sixty, is as yet only in its first childhood.

...................
There's so many good quips about religion here: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Religion:_A_Dialogue

But here is his main point I think from World as Will and Representation:

Thus the will to live appears just as much in suicide (Siva) as in the satisfaction of self-preservation (Vishnu) and in the sensual pleasure of procreation (Brahma). This is the inner meaning of the unity of the Trimurtis, which is embodied in its entirety in every human being, though in time it raises now one, now another, of its three heads. Suicide stands in the same relation to the denial of the will as the individual thing does to the Idea. The suicide denies only the individual, not the species. We have already seen that as life is always assured to the will to live, and as sorrow is inseparable from life, suicide, the wilful destruction of the single phenomenal existence, is a vain and foolish act; for the thing-in-itself remains unaffected by it, even as the rainbow endures however fast the drops which support it for the moment may change. But, more than this, it is also the masterpiece of Maya, as the most

In this sense, then, the old philosophical doctrine of the freedom of the will, which has constantly been con tested and constantly maintained, is not without ground, and the dogma of the Church of the work of grace and the new birth is not without meaning and significance. But we now unexpectedly see both united in one, and we can also now understand in what sense the excellent Malebranche could say, " La liberte" est un mystcre," and was right. For precisely what the Christian mystics call the work of grace and the new birth, is for us the single direct expression of the freedom of the will. It only appears if the will, having attained to a knowledge of its own real nature, receives from this a quieter, by means of which the motives are deprived of their effect, which belongs to the province of another kind of know ledge, the objects of which are merely phenomena.

Now because, as we have seen, that self-suppression of the will proceeds from knowledge, and all knowledge is involuntary, that denial of will also, that entrance into freedom, cannot be forcibly attained to by intention or design, but proceeds from the inmost relation of knowing and volition in the man, and therefore comes suddenly, as if spontaneously from without. This is why the Church has called it the work of grace; and that it still regards it as independent of the acceptance of grace corresponds to the fact that the effect of the quieter is finally a free act of will. And because, in consequence of such a work of grace, the whole nature of man is changed and reversed from its foundation, so that he no longer wills anything of all that he previously willed so intensely, so that it is as if a new man actually took the place of the old, the Church has called this conse quence of the work of grace the new birth. For what it calls the natural man, to which it denies all capacity for good, is just the will to live, which must be denied if deliverance from an existence such as ours is to be attained. Behind our existence lies something else, which is only accessible to us if we have shaken off this world.

Having regard, not to the individuals according to the principle of sufficient reason, but to the Idea of man in its unity, Christian theology symbolises nature, the asser tion of the will to live in Adam, whose sin, inherited by us, i.e., our unity with him in the Idea, which is repre sented in time by the bond of procreation, makes us all partakers of suffering and eternal death. On the other hand, it symbolises grace, the denial of the will, salvation, in the incarnate God, who, as free from all sin, that is,

I have here introduced these dogmas of Christian theology, which in themselves are foreign to philosophy, merely for the purpose of showing that the ethical doc trine which proceeds from our whole investigation, and is in complete agreement and connection with all its parts, although new and unprecedented in its expression, is by no means so in its real nature, but fully agrees with the Christian dogmas properly so called, and indeed, as regards its essence, was contained and present in them. It also agrees quite as accurately with the doc trines and ethical teachings of the sacred books of India, which in their turn are presented in quite different forms. At the same time the calling to mind of the dogmas of the Christian Church serves to explain and illustrate

Certainly, however, the world does not exhibit itself to the knowledge of the individual as such, developed for the service of the will, as it finally reveals itself to the inquirer as the objectivity of the one and only will to live, which he himself is. But the sight of the uncultured individual is clouded, as the Hindus say, by the veil of Maya,. He sees not the thing-in-itself but the phenomenon in time and space, the principium indim- duationis, and in the other forms of the principle of sufficient reason. And in this form of his limited know ledge he sees not the inner nature of things, which is one, but its phenomena as separated, disunited, innumer able, very different, and indeed opposed. For to him pleasure appears as one thing and pain as quite another thing: one man as a tormentor and a murderer, another as a martyr and a victim; wickedness as one tiling and evil as another. He sees one man live in joy, abund ance, and pleasure, and even at his door another die miserably of want and cold. Then he asks, Where is the retribution? And he himself, in the vehement pressure of will which is his origin and his nature, seizes upon the pleasures and enjoyments of life, firmly

and this notwithstanding the fact that the Hindu nation has been broken up into so many parts. A religion which demands the greatest sacrifices, and which has yet remained so long in prac tice in a nation that embraces so many millions of persons, cannot be an arbitrarily invented superstition, but must have its foundation in the nature of man. But besides this, if we read the life of a Christian penitent or saint, and also that of a Hindu saint, we cannot sufficiently wonder at the harmony we find between them, In the case of such radically different dogmas, customs, and circumstances, the inward life and effort of both is the same. And the same harmony prevails in the maxims prescribed for both of them. For example, Tauler speaks of the absolute poverty which one ought to seek, and which consists in giving away and divesting oneself completely of everything from which one might draw comfort or worldly pleasure, clearly because all this constantly affords new nourish ment to the will

we must banish the dark impression oi that nothing ness which we discern behind all virtue and holiness as their final goal, and which we fear as children fear the dark; we must not even evade it like the Indians, through myths and meaningless words, such as reabsorption in Brahma or the Nirvana of the Buddhists. Kather do we freely acknowledge that what remains after the entire abolition of will is for all those who are still full of will certainly nothing; but, conversely, to those in whom the will has turned and has denied itself, this our world, which is so real, with all its suns and milky-ways is nothing

My conclusion:

First, Schopenhauer hated religion as an institution and for its frivolities of gods, goddesses, folklore, traditions, and doctrines. He was very much someone who wanted what he saw as the truth of certain ideas buried in the religion to be manifest itself, as pure philosophy (like the one he was writing) and not veiled in various stories and myths to be digested or reinterpreted and perverted. Basically, taking all this in, I see in Schopenhauer an interesting survey of aspects of Western and Eastern religions. His conclusion is that to diminish the power of Will, one must deny it. He saw in religions like Hinduism and Buddhism mostly, the advocacy of this, and thus commended these aspects. He liked the veil of maya and such. Grace seemed a proper concept as well, not in terms of grace from salvation with Jesus or anything, or a godhead, but grace as some aspect of seeing things as they truly are and then turning from the world. The way of "piercing the veil" (like nirvana), is some sort of revelatory thing, not obtained quite through knowledge directly I guess. Or that's maybe how I interpret his use of grace here.

So it is basically the life-denying aspects of religion he saw as conveying truths about how one can diminish the very thing for what he saw as the root cause of suffering, which was Will. To diminish it would be the ultimate "salvation" in a way. To embrace it in any way, and so brazenly like Nietzsche would be outright folly for Schopenhauer as just another attempt of one's will to try to embrace that which is causing the suffering in the first place.

I think in our culture now, "acceptance of that which one can't change" is the norm. Schopenhauer represents something a bit foreign to our understanding as it is an ultimate rebellion against accepting the fate of suffering through our will-to-live which characterizes our daily lives.

If Schopenhauer rejects the Judeo-Christian God, then, in good faith, how can he subscribe to the "saintly" Judeo-Christian system of values? If you reject a God, then you're obligated to reject that God's values, aren't you? — charles ferraro

Rejecting A (Judeo-Christian God) does not entail B (reject certain values). Schopenhauer thought that the kernel of truth or essence of the religions was in fact leading towards truth, it is just that these saintly "insights" were draped in what he thought to be needless theological and mystical ornamentations. Much of Schopenhauer's ideas are better represented in Eastern ideas of moksha and nirvana anyways, not Western. Gnosticism and Neoplatonism might also have some parallels. However, it had nothing to do with a teleological godhead who is directing, commanding, etc.

Nietzsche's Ubermensch is his own idea of a saint. Someone who is somehow individualized to absurdity. Yet, the "ubermensch" is just another human, embodied. We are social creatures, with the same needs of survival, maintenance, boredom. our striving, blind wills continue to thrash about in the everyday struggles for again, survival, maintenance, and fleeing boredom (anything that one can occupy or "hook" the mind with so it does not turn in on itself). One cannot escape their circumstances through ecstatic individualism either. One is what one is, an embodied beings with needs and wants that are mediated through one's personality and environment.

Suffering is not "enacted"? upon individual wills by someone or something, suffering is inherent in, an integral characteristic of, individual wills, their very essence or nature. — charles ferraro

That's what I meant, but this is immaterial to the argument I presented. I understand that even when I wrote it but I let it go because I wasn't trying to be exacting in Schop's metaphysics, though we can get into that if you want. Via the Sufficient of Principle of Sufficient Reason, Will becomes "will-to-live" in a specific subjective point of view. It is mediated by time, space, causality (hence Representation), whose flip-side is (Will).

he quietude, or quiescent? is an ascetic means, or practice, that would enable the individual to commit a non-physical suicide. — charles ferraro

The quietude, or quiescent? is an ascetic means, or practice, that would enable the individual to commit a non-physical suicide. — charles ferraro

Yep, that's what I was trying to convey. More term-mongering but has the rhetoric of disagreement. But yes, this is what I meant.

Regardless of who comes before or who comes after, he who personally loves life and vigorously wills life is definitely a healthy specimen over the sickly specimen who personally hates life and wills, instead of life, the advent of nothingness (emotional and psychological suicide). Nietzsche was recommending physiological health and strength over physiological sickness, weakness, and retrogressive degeneracy. — charles ferraro

That almost sounds like 19th century quackery "retrogressive degeneracy". Throw in "hysterical" in there too while you're (he's) at it. Who determines what is a "healthy specimen"? If you mean physiologically doesn't have health issues, what makes that any better than anything else, besides mere utilitarian issues of it is more painful? But surely Nietzsche wasn't just reiterating common man pain/pleasure as his ethics? So where is his justification outside of that besides that he thought he was Zarathustra? At least Schopenhauer's idea of detachment, nothingness, and quieting of the Will, had a metaphysics behind it that led to that conclusion. Whether you agree with the metaphysics or not, A leads to Z here. It isn't just merely stated and ya know, "Thus spoke Zarathustra!" makes it the correct view.

I guess you can say the "Eternal Return" is something like a metaphysics (if he believed it really) for Nietzsche. However, it still doesn't seem apparent that embracing life is a logical conclusion from that. How about each lived life is quietly dissipated over and over again? But this we cannot prove either way. We know that birth is a physiological thing, and identity is wrapped in an individual. The idea then is simply a thought-experiment at best.

Schopenhauer's philosophy is, essentially, an unhealthy rebellion against life itself in favor of death, nothingness, and non-being, while, by contrast, Nietzsche values and vigorously affirms and accepts life with all of its concomitant sufferings, trials, and hardships. Nietzsche espoused nothing unwittingly, he knew exactly what he stood for and why he stood for it! — charles ferraro

Interesting, but I think this fails based on what I said previously. Just showing the contrast between the two doesn't give weight to Nietzsche's ideas. As I stated, Nietzsche's ideas, his "Death of God" is actually just rehashed old hat. Whether or not the Church or "life-denying religions" (the "herd" in his terminology) really stated as such, the common man has always been to embrace life, procreate, create more people, enculturate them to strive in a society, etc. etc. Schopenhauer's ideas in contrast, represent the ultimate rebellion against that. Nietzsche was trying to square the circle, and try to go beyond Schopenhauer (he should have just named his book Beyond Schopenhauer), but he couldn't.

Instead, asserted Nietzsche, he should have encouraged strong, superior humans to actively and deliberately embrace the will-to-live, as being synonymous with their own nature, and to give it conscious direction. Thus, claimed Nietzsche, would Schopenhauer's will-to-live be transformed into humanity's conscious, deliberate will-to-power. The will-to-power is, according to Nietzsche, a universal drive, found in all of humanity. It prompts the slave who dreams of a heaven from which he hopes to behold his master in hell no less than it prompts the master. Both resentment and brutality are expressions of it. As Nietzsche proclaimed: "This world is the Will-to-Power -- and nothing else! And you yourselves, too, are this Will-to-Power -- and nothing else!" — charles ferraro

Schopenhauer's prime concern was the suffering enacted upon the individual wills of humans. The quietude was meant to quiescent the Will and eliminate it for the individual. Nietzsche is not a step forward just because he came after Schopenhauer. Nor is his idea of embracing the will-to-live (Will-to-Power) a better recommendation. Rather Nietzsche unwittingly, in his recommendation to embrace the Will, was actually recommending the status quo (to give in to will's dictates). Schopenhauer's philosophy becomes the true rebellion against ALL (Will), and Nietzsche is just another choice into ACCEPTING the will.

Thus, by extending and correcting Schopenhauer's thought, Nietzsche created the atheism of the extreme political right -- an atheism that he thought would ultimately require the creation of a new inspirational goal and a new, neo-aristocratic value system for select Europeans. — charles ferraro

Nietzsche, the original Ayn Rand :lol:.

This does work to a degree, but the greed of those who dwell near the top of the pyramid poisons the whole system eventually. This results in exploitative practices and systems and social norms designed to hold the people at the bottom (below that privelidged top layer) down and to remain subservient. This is followed by the development of decadence in the privelidged resulting in absurdities and arrogance from fools drunk on power and privelidge. — Punshhh

Any system (such as any political economic system) requiring survival, maintenance, and entertainment to be sustained and through enculturating more people into its ideology is already corrupt. You don't have to go any further. The goals of society are a repetitive absurdity (survival, maintenance, entertainment). The means of society's reproduction is through reproducing more people who will suffer and are used to keep it going. The best way to rebel against the system is to stop having children and stop thinking there is a better system, or even a way-of-life that is best. No, all of it is exposing new people to suffering and exploitation of the very system that they will need to sustain them. Just stop all systems in one generation..stop having kids.None of it needs to continue.. When people think of the economy in such utilitarian terms, I just think of how people are just points of data to be manipulated to keep the whole thing going. "A high tide raises all boats" is a laughable farce. Let us voluntarily give up this system that entraps all and tells them its for THEIR benefit. Let's come together to dissolve all future wants and needs by simply not having more people. You may be fooled into thinking your job is fun, useful, good, enriching..but its not. That is part of the whole f'rkn enculturated tall tale. Buy it. Drink the Kool-Aid, keep making more people to run the system and be data points and fooling them into thinking that they are being enriched by it.

I'm not content to smolder in the face of capitalism. how do we use this fuck you energy in a way that isnt a forum fuck you? I mean this. People are really coming together now. How to use it? — csalisbury

What is the end goal of coming together? The ancient Israelites more-or-less adopted Mosaic Law (probably cobbled together from older oral traditions and some possible writings into a five book written Torah), when they reconstructed Judaism during Second Temple period under Ezra-Nehemiah leadership. What is the equivalent here? What is the Kumbaya aim? World peace? Better health care system? More social safety nets? Better environmental protections? The world acknowledging the absurdity of life ala Schopenhauer or Cioran (oh wait, that's my own pet project :lol: )?

Right, a capitalists definition of well-being. What is that exactly? — praxis

More ability to spend on goods and services. Health throws a wrench in their equation.. Somehow the American style of employer-based health care (otherwise you're screwed unless you're so poor as to possibly be eligible for Medicaid), is considered more efficient than a single-payer system.

Well-being is not self-sacrificial, nor is it apparently an incentive that is ever in place in a capitalist society. — praxis

No, a capitalist would just say that profits bring well-being to all who participate and contribute to its growth. A rising tide lifts all boats and all that.

So the subtext here is profits are not just more important than death. Profits are death, a truth of capitalism and imperialism that the pandemic displays in all its horror." — StreetlightX

You hit the nail with corporate/business culture. People are often deemed less important than the bottom line. Yet, it is the people who consume and contribute to the bottom line.

Worth also mentioning that millions of Italian factory workers are still going to work, having been deemed 'essenential services' despite being entirely unnecessary, hence the call going on over there, for a general strike: — StreetlightX

I actually agree with you, and them. But what this brings up is the whole point of the economic system. The "neoliberal" philosophy would say that profits, even for the very wealthy raises all boats (if we are assuming non-corrupt actors). Thus profits are the key to success for everyone, even (apparently?) in the midst of a pandemic.

So I guess, are you proposing that there is a balance between profit and non-profit incentives, or are you saying that profit should never even be in the equation? Damn the system, we need to be incentivized somewhere else.. Well if you say by love, and community, and respect for each other, great.. but I'd like to see that in practice.. Notice, people only use these ideals of self-sacrifice in times of crisis NOT in times of prosperity. Thus, it would seem these more "noble" incentives are only truly in place when there is perceived to be a major crisis, but not as typical modus operendi.

Further, the neoliberals would just say that the profits drive the ability to have things like ventilators in the first place. The self-sacrifice is a microcosm for how all this technology that we use in this crisis was created.. Limiting growth of profit-incentives/business culture would limit the ability to have all this technology that we now rely on in the crisis (and can maybe afford to use by government command when absolutely needed)..They would say for technology and prosperity to continue, it would need to keep moving forward, engines moving.

Please note, I personally do not have these sentiments, but giving the devil's advocate view here.

Well we already know people start asking that question more when their basic physical needs no longer need much effort to take care of. I am suggesting that entertainment has eased this crisis, and a whole chunk of entertainment options has been removed...so how will people react? — ZhouBoTong

I believe the same thing that allows us to choose not to have kids (for example), causes us to be unsatisfied just swimming around the bowl...although I do largely agree, there isn't really more to life than that. — ZhouBoTong

Yes, my point is maybe people will start realizing that there is really not much we are doing except trying to survive, maintain our comfort levels (cleaning, temperature adjustments, doing laundry, etc.), and then getting our brains "hooked" on something (I call it entertainment, but anything falls under entertainment such as religion, Netflix, board games, video games, reading, studying up on a topic you're interested in, taking care of a pet, tinkering with that old car, exercising for pleasure, knitting, thinking of a new business, inventing, etc. etc. etc.).

The existential crisis comes in when the brain is "unhooked", it doesn't have something that makes the time go by unto the next day. This is where "Existence" (with a capital E) is "felt". It is a profound boredom with EVERYTHING. This is akin to "the absurd" discussed so often. It is like walking past a house full of drama and yelling from the family inside.. It seems so trivial, yet it is very important to them. But it isn't in the grand scheme of Existence. We are all filling up our time and when we go long stretches with not much to make the time go by faster, THAT is what we should really capture as the essence of existence. THAT is what we should realize life is. It is simply surviving, maintaining (not getting sick, or getting better from illness falls under that), and entertainment, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat. This is absurd, yet we throw more people into the world to experience this anyways.

And I worry about how people will begin to act when their emotional needs are neglected. — ZhouBoTong

They'll start going into existential crisis and say "What's the point of anything?". A fish in a bowl swims around, eats, swims a bit more, checks out the castle, swims, swims through the plant, etc.

After all, going against emergency powers legislation isn't smart. — ssu

I agree on all this, but it can be happening. Remember, the scenario is can't be more than 10, so technically the manager is not breaking the rules.

I'm not nuts about the parameters you set up for this...they seem contrived. But I see "the spirit" of what you are after...and I agree. The ethical thing for every employer to do...is to follow the spirit of any laws enacted...rather than be rigid. — Frank Apisa

There are real world scenarios where this is playing out.

My wife simply went in and asked her boss what the "contingency plans" were for the shop...and after he beat around the bush for a while...she went for the jugular. "I'm a few months away from 65," she said. — Frank Apisa

That's what I am talking about here. Employees would have to speak up vocally or possibly be put in unnecessary harm's way.

Two...I work a few days a week as a starter at a golf course. Golf courses are hardly essential...but much better they stay open. Old people need exercise...and golf often is the only exercise some get. I have to move golf carts in and out...and the steering wheels are a problem...but with gloves and sanitizer spray, it should work out okay. We are opening late (not until early April) so the may be consiidering a full closure. It is a county course...and almost the entire non-essential country operation is totally down. — Frank Apisa

I can see having open spaces open with limited sharing of clubs, etc.

Three...I've got a GREAT picture of our three cats doing social distancing but I just do not know how to post a picture from my computer. I have the picture at Flickr, but it is too goddam small. — Frank Apisa

Nice. Maybe it will become a meme.

But I do not think we can blame the employer here unless he himself infects others with the virus. — NOS4A2

So the managers have no responsibilities of health protections during a well-known pandemic to its employees?

Rather, wouldn't it be unethical for an employee to go into a crowded workplace with an infectious virus? — NOS4A2

Yes, but most times, ,people don't even know they have the virus before they get symptoms, or may be asymptomatic and spread it. This is also well known.

I don't think his decisions are necessarily unethical, but they do place a higher burden of responsibility on the employees to protect themselves. — NOS4A2

This I disagree with. The employees cannot police each other's own social distancing practices. However, the manager can prevent in one fell swoop everyone's own practices from affecting the whole group itself. He can combat potential risk at a higher level.

But the employer has overhead: office space, equipment, and other costs. So I can understand why he'd want his employees to work there.

The risk is higher I suppose, but I think the employer is within his ethical boundaries by the fact that requiring his employees to come to work doesn't necessarily lead to their infection. — NOS4A2

It doesn't necessarily lead to their infection, but the employer knows that there is a higher risk of contracting the infection by being in the physical presence of others. Why wouldn't that be taken as more important than overhead and such? Is health less important than overhead? Also, what responsibility does the manager have to the greater society? Presumably, less physical space with others would be less chance for others to contract and spread the virus to society at large- including to people who are most vulnerable to the disease.

ethical or not would be in reference to any risk incurred by the employees. We could decide on using some sort of deontological system, but legislative decisions seem to be more consequentialist, plus consequentialist arguments seem to make more sense to the masses and thus using said system in our discussion will make our discussion the most informative and discernible. I will bring up some deontological points later if requested, but for now I'll just stick with a consequential view. — WatchingRook

Not all government law is consequentialist. In many countries, there are a list of rights that are to be respected. Presumably that is deontological. But I agree in this case, the ethics seems to revolve around consequences.

Since it is comprised of human beings who are at least potentially rational this is really a given but I feel it should be mentioned, since anything not capable of ethical consideration can't be held to a moral standard. — WatchingRook

True, though, I guess you can make an argument from negligence. Let's say the management only got news from really skeptical sources about the contagiousness or deadliness of the virus. Their decisions were not out of full knowledge, but out of their limited sources. However, this one seems like a real stretch to justify being that almost all news seems to be swayed by the arguments for stay in place. However, there are holdouts, opinions, and ideas from those who don't see the problem. To them, it may be the media overhyping.. or for them it's a political, not really real.

Like many people in this situation we don't know how great the risk is of contraction, all we know is that no one currently working shows symptoms of being ill/infected. — WatchingRook

I find this one interesting, as the guidelines also stipulate that the place should be cleared out if anyone is suspected to have symptoms. Being how easily someone can get these symptoms, it just takes one worker to be possibly infected to make the go-to-work policy go bye bye. Why would anyone take the risk if they don't have to and be ahead of the curve?

But, let's make it MORE interesting.. Let us say some of the workers have partners who were exposed (the don't HAVE) the virus. What should the manager do with THAT information?

. Employees can't leave without incurring some significant personal risk. Since it is hard to get employment at least in the current environment, becoming unemployed would mean a loss of income and a threat to someone's livelihood since they would not be able to meet personal expenses. It could be argued that this is not realistic since people could "tighten their belts" so to speak, but having to move out of wherever one currently lives would incur a yet higher risk of transmission so we shall regard losing one's current living situation as a non-option. — WatchingRook

Yes, which is why this is a dilemma for the employee and not something easy to get out of.

Since we don't know that everyone in the facility is healthy, we can't rightfully assume that there is no risk, so to make employees work in high-transmission conditions would be to force them to incur some risk, which would make it unethical. This fact derives from the arbitrariness of having to work on-location, since the initial discussion assumes that the job could be done at home. The risk here is different from any other risk assumption expected of employees since in professions of high risk employers must try to offset the risks of the job not only with pay, but also with safety measures. Since the risk here is strictly human contact, that itself is forcing employees to assume a risk which for assumption 5 they are not able to avoid. — WatchingRook

I agree with this assessment.

Of course, the objection could be made that since are rational beings they should make the decision of whether to work for a company making them assume such risks at all, but this consideration becomes moot on consideration of assumption 5. — WatchingRook

Agreed.

Darn, I'm surprised this isn't getting any attention being this is probably one of the most relevant topics, if you are from a country implementing social distancing...

@frank@Frank Apisa@ssu@ArguingWAristotleTiff@Hanover@Punshhh?

Chill out. I meant to say the decision to value that value IS an ethics. There's way better ways to express your frustration.

Ethics are subjective values, and as such, they are not useful for an argument. If you want to say "It saves lives, or has a better chance to save lives", that's a good value, and has nothing to do with ethics, does it now. — god must be atheist

Um, dude, valuing something that has a better chance to save lives IS a value.

If you can't reason, you ought not to fight for it. But you reasoned it well. You don't need ethics. Just present your reasons. — god must be atheist

What are reasons without values behind them in terms of how people act towards each other?

I dont understand the conundrum. — DingoJones

Some people would say they are not being unethical. They aren't breaking any rules.

There. If you want to make a decision on ethics, go ahead, but don't hold anyone else to it, because one person's ethic is another person's evil. — god must be atheist

Right, but in this case, one person's ethics might lead to people under them getting sick. I think the big things that stick out here are:

1) The work can be done remotely. It is not a service job or something that needs a physical presence. In this case, it is the employer's perceived ideas on productivity and/or some intangible value to physically being in the office that is overriding the possible consequences towards health or society-at-large.

2) If there are 9 people, that is awfully close to 10 but not 10. Somehow the number itself seems a bit arbitrary to the principle behind the guidelines itself which is trying to limit social contact.

3) Finally, is there a difference in ethics between personal and business decisions? For example, in this case, social distancing would be relied on by the the employees themselves outside of work. What if everyone's tolerance for social distancing is different? People make individual choices, but at a business level, decisions are made on behalf of groups of people. The manager now has to take into account the safety of a group of people all making individual decisions and coming back to a common area. The manager can stop the common area part, even if they can't control individual decisions.

Anyway, arent you essentially asking if the guidelines that are in place are ethical? In your example the guidelines are all being followed, so its only if you think that those guidelines are ethically inadequate that there would be an ethical breech. — DingoJones

I actually don't see it that way. They may be technically following the guidelines, but they are breaking the spirit of the intent. In other words, this is a non-essential business that can work remotely. Also, this is pertaining to ethics. Is it ethical to enable people to work in close quarters (or closer quarters than they would) when almost all medical and government advice to the public is to work remotely if you can?

Im confused, what does this have to do with Anti-natalism? — DingoJones

Go away troll.

Perhaps what I don’t understand is the language being used. I cannot see how deciding not to have children is to prevent them from being born, just like I cannot see how deciding not to assemble a gun is preventing yourself from committing murder. — NOS4A2

In potentialities, it is proper to think in terms of a few things:
1) what you intend to do as a deliberative agent 2) The means to do it . I used the gun example as, it is not an actual gun yet (just like a human isn't an actual one until certain things happen), because

1) The man intended to use the gun to do something with it 2) He had the means to do it.

This being the case, anywhere in the sequence of the man making the gun to intend to kill the victim can be fair game to "prevent" the outcome from happening. If the man had no intent nor the means, then it would be correct that "prevent" would not really be a necessary part of the language being used, as there is "nothing" to prevent.

Like this case, many people have the intent and means to do create new people who will suffer (in the antinatalist view at least). Educating people that they can prevent future people by not having them is thus perfectly in the realm of sense in terms of how language is used. Even accidental deaths by guns is analogous.

A person who decides not to have children is not performing an action called “preventing”, and he certainly isn’t performing such an action on any objects called “people”. He is not stopping people from being born as if he was standing in their way or performing abortions. He isn’t preventing their suffering as if feeding them or mending their wounds. The action called “preventing” is performed, and the objects called “people” exist, only in his imagination. — NOS4A2

I have addressed this above, as I see this being not a real argument for how we live our lives everyday. We train people for outcomes that don't exist yet everyday. The actual entity doesn't have to exist, just the means by which that entity is produced. Is it a very real possibility of happening? If yes, then indeed we can prevent that possibility. I shouldn't even have to spill this many words to explain this to you.

Just like it is impossible to obtain consent from a potential human, it is also impossible to perform any other act towards him and for the same reasons—no such being exists. For this reason it is impossible to act morally towards beings that do not nor will never exist. Instead the antinatalist is imagining beings, imagining their suffering, and directing his moral faculties and moral behavior inwards, ultimately towards himself. So I have trouble seeing the argument as anything more than a sort of affectation. — NOS4A2

Again, the intent and means, a possibility has a high potential of happening. If that possibility is a new human, then indeed you can talk about performing an act to prevent something that does not exist. For example, if you knew that at the exact time of birth, the baby would be severely harm, would you consider the future child then? You knew this was a very high probability too. I'm sorry but this argument is not great, it's not revealing, it isn't even how we ordinarily think of future outcomes. You want to try to make the antinatalist seem out of touch, like they are fighting windmills or something.

To be fair to you, you are far more well-read on the arguments than I and you’ve probably heard this all before, but I think the absence of any beings is a problem for many moral arguments for antinatalism. The antinatalist should limit the moral case to protecting the environment or to affecting beings that already exist. — NOS4A2

It really isn't a problem at all for moral arguments. To say that something "will exist" if such and such actions take place is not some crazy philosophical notion. Antinatalists are considering that humans can exist if you make the conditions to happen so. Don't make those conditions happen for x, y, z reasons. It's that simple. You can try to stretch the sophistry to make it not that, or to make it crazy, but it's not and we talk in future possibilities and likelihoods all the time.

The purpose is simply wrapped up in procreation. People want other people to live a certain way-of-life. Go to work, entertain, maintain their environment. This creates suffering for those who are born, and creates opportunities to what? Deal with.. deal with. All this for the idea of what? Simply because more people somehow "need" to be perpetuated to live a way-of-life. For what? Simply because more people somehow "need" to be perpetuated to live a way-of-life. For what? Simply because more people somehow "need" to be perpetuated to live a way-of-life. Is that not a satisfying answer? It isn't for me either. We should stop thinking that we somehow "need" to perpetuate more people into a way-of-life.

You aren't created in a vacuum. You were created in a society. You may not think that you perpetuate it. That you are being used. But you do and are. Society needs more people and we convince each other that it is "happiness" that we are somehow bestowing by creating a new life to perpetuate the situation. Rather, it is using them by creating a situation of suffering for them on their behalf..by thinking that they should live a way-of-life, as they certainly will (lest they die or kill themselves). The teleology you ask about is that of perpetuating a way-of-life. You can rebel and stop the cycle of being used for this.

haven't actually read the book, the principle was summarized for me. Against The Grain, by James C. Scott posits that 10 or 12 thousand years ago sedentary agriculture was not an attractive option for successful hunter/gatherers. Rather, hunter/gatherers were coaxed, seduced, or coerced into agriculture by proto-state actors who wanted to harness the energy of people--their capacity to work and to reproduce--for purposes of accumulating power. — Bitter Crank

Agriculture wasn't the beginning of society, of course. The hunter-gatherers were/are as much society as the Upper East Siders of Manhattan. But the kind of society which came to dominate much of the world was settled, urban-rural, agriculture-based states. — Bitter Crank

Interesting thesis. I see society using birth itself as harnessing the energy of people- their capacity to work and to reproduce. In a way procreating is being complicit in the accumulation of power, if that is what it is. The parents want their children to be enculturated into society. They want their children to (generally) work, consume, do the ways-of-living that they themselves are used to. Kind of like when navies used to "press" hapless victims into working ships.. that is what having a child does. It presses yet another life, creates a new victim, to DEAL WITH an maneuver society, and generally experience suffering of every and all kinds.

I have difficulty with it for a few reasons. One, it’s not analogous. Two, creating a child is in no way similar to assembling a gun. Three, creating life is the opposite of taking a life. — NOS4A2

If those are your objections then, yes you would not get the point of the analogy, but then you sort of do in your next sentence, so I won't even address this since you sort of address it there.

But as for your argument, I do agree that if and when those parts come together a person will be affected. At that point we are able to apply ethics and morals to them. — NOS4A2

So if we know the outcome of the gun getting put together, and we know the outcome of the parts of the person coming together, you should understand why you can talk about preventing people from being born.

This is wrong. I am trying to be objective. My own desires are irrelevant . — SonOfAGun

I think I know what you are trying to say... So you are saying the only course of action to prevent overpopulation is eventually to instill government control and not making a value statement. You may be right there, but I guess I'm getting at if that is morally the "right" thing for government to be involved with.

See here's the thing, government population control measures just show you how much people are a commodity for society.. They are numbers to be culled and enculturated or not. This actually goes right into my ideas that society itself is an ideology. People are "pressed" into life/society and enculturated on various levels in order to maintain the current situation or to mitigate past situations. People should not be used as such.

My position is that there are many reasons why one wouldn’t want to have children, but I do not think it needs to be spun into a moral principle towards “potential beings”, which are not beings at all. I think ethics should pertain towards beings. — NOS4A2

With this repetition of your initial objection, you do seem to have difficulty with the analogy. The analogy applies here because the gun being created will directly affect another person, even though in that particular moment, the gun is not created yet (to affect another person).

At the same token, if someone has a potential to exist (all the parts to do this and know how is there), then certainly, when those parts come together, a person will be affected.

I agree but sometimes the principle itself makes the consequence not worth it. We have a completely different idea of things..

With your model you are saying: Life is worth procreating and living as long as the world is not populated.

With mine it is: Life is not worth procreating and certainly not worth making others deal with it on their behalf. No amount of procreation would be acceptable in that case.

So this is where our paths cross. The project for you is living in certain boundaries, mine is to prevent suffering for a next generation.

https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/IND/india/birth-rate

Yah I don, see it happening man. you go ask the people in India, Africa, and china how well education solves the birthrate problem. — SonOfAGun

It's actually proven..look at any statistic, that the more women are educated, the less likely they are to have a lot of children. Look at any birth rate of countries that have been more educated over time. India is a great example actually.

The statistician seem to agree with me, as they are projecting that the world populations will reach 15 billion at around 2100 AD. — SonOfAGun

But here's the thing.. I DON'T think most births today are accidental in modern societies. It can be drastically reduced, but people PREFER/WANT to have children. There is where the ideological debate can lie. As for accidents, that's just a matter of education and behavioral changes. If it was purely accidental, that population would be way down.

So again, How is your moral hand waving going to change this? — SonOfAGun

Forcing people to stop forcing others, is totalitarian. For example, vegans very well may be in the right. We are harming animals for no reason..However, to force people to stop is too strong a measure. Being something seen on the fringe, it is going to be one person at a time, or maybe as a media campaign, but not as a mandated thing. Most of these personal biological decisions, even if I am strongly against them, should not be government mandated.

One may literally choose not to have children yet still be carried over that threshold by their sexual drive. This is simply nothing more than word games. Yes human beings do not have an "innate need for CHILDREN" but they still have a sex drive that gets them their all the same. — SonOfAGun

Okay, now you are getting a bit better. No, it is not about wording. We were explicitly talking about procreation, not sex. While I agree sex is pleasurable, physical affection feels nice, and certain cultural (and perhaps biological) triggers enable us to be attracted to certain people, we can nevertheless choose to prevent that from leading to birth. We can even prevent sex itself even if we like it too. However, I will agree, reckless abandonment to what feels good could lead to these consequences (accidental births), it is not like other animals who cannot deliberate. We can still decide that making a life that suffers is worse off than the joy of one's own particular moment. Because we are such flexible animals we can do that. The structures are already in place to allow it for Western/modern societies- birth control, etc.

Sure, but no ethical behavior or principle can be held towards potential people by the simple fact that they do not exist, just like a man cannot kill with a potential gun. — NOS4A2

But the man would kill, if the gun was made and he has a very realistic chance of doing that because he has all the parts and know how. So, the potential victim doesn't matter because the gun isn't made yet?

If you know he intends to kill with it, yes. — NOS4A2

Cool. My point. A person (gun) doesn't have to exist. It isn't completely analogous, the only point was to prove that the actual person in question doesn't have to exist, just the potential.