:lol: It was my intention to sign out an hour ago, and I worry that I post things that others may not approve of, or I say too much. I think it is very important to respect you and that you started this thread so the thread should be as you want it. But the responses to this thread have been so stimulating and enlightening and I spin out of control.

Every day I come to this forum, I leave feeling like my brain is overloaded and about to shut down. If I have time, I take a nap when I leave because the mental work consumes so much of my energy, and I am very thankful I am not distracted by child care or a job. This is what gets me out of bed in the morning and puts a smile on my face and love in my heart. The people who post here are special people and you all give me hope. :heart: :flower:

That may be true. But what qualifies one persons' actions as "an effort to discover truth" and another persons' actions as something other than that? Just saying "this is an effort to discover truth" isn't sufficient. If it is a genuine effort to discover truth, then if fulfills some standards of rational discourse or deliberation. Habermas cites the condition of being open to persuasion by good arguments, for example. — Pantagruel

Excellent, the condition of being open to persuasion! This begins with knowing how much we do not know and never being absolutely sure of ourselves. Wisdom begins with "I don't know". Because of education for technology, as Zeus feared, we have become technologically smart, but we no longer turn to the gods and we have lost our wisdom.

My biggest problem with religion is people believing they can know God's truth and will. This problem is made worse by replacing liberal education with education for technology and that brings us to a president like Hitler and reactionary politics that have destroyed "being open to persuasion". This will destroy our democracy if the problem is not corrected before those of us who remember our democracy in a different time, have all died, and no one is left with the memory of our past democracy manifested through liberal education and when congress was much more open to persuasion.

Love :heart: , it is not my truth versus your truth. Democracy is an imitation of the gods who argued until they had a consensus on the best reasoning. Democracy is rule by reason, not authority over the people. Democracy is not control by the people who know God's truth and will. :grimace: Like the gods it is for us to reason until we have a consensus on the best reasoning, and it is our duty to speak up when we disagree with that reasoning and try to persuade others to accept our better reasoning. That is why democracy is an ongoing process, not a set of laws written by a God, and then rule by the leaders God gives us with all that there is for us to do, is to obey.

:grimace: Christianity and the Military Industrial Complex go well together, and we defended our democracy against that in two world wars, and then imitated our enemy if every significant way. Sorry for ranting but we are should not be competing against each other like Jews, Muslims, and Christians, Catholics or Protestants, atheists and Christians in a war against each other to determine truth. We discover truth by working together. :heart: :flower:

Our environment is fundamental to what we think. I am working with Joseph Campbell here. Around the world, snakes are part of people's myths. However, there is an island without snakes and the eel has to take the place of snakes.

The notion of demons comes from the east where mirages are common and around the time of Jesus this eastern understanding of demons and good and evil is popular in Rome and becomes part of Christian consciousness.

From the home of Mongols, the Mongolian Plateau, life is harsh and it is not a good place for gardening so life is wrapped around hunting and when Genghis Khan leaves the Mongolian Plateau he does not have a consciousness of agriculture. He destroys cities and kills everyone, so the land returns to nature and is good for gracing horses. Then a man in China who writes joins Genghis Khan and writes his history. The man from China has an agrarian consciousness and teaches Genghis Khan to harvest the cities instead of destroying them.

As Genghis Khan dominated wherever he went, he thought the notion of a god who cares about people was ridiculous. He had a notion of a sky god but as he saw the sky god it just assume kill pathetic humans as to tolerate their existence. Clearly, if we survived or not it was a matter of our will and skill, not the will of a god who didn't care about humans any more than the gods of Olympus did. It was the goddess of grain who the Greeks depended on because she made the grains grow. It took a while to invent a story of a male god creating humans, and that story seems to have begun with Sumerians and a story of a goddess creating humans of mud to help the river stay in its banks, and not flood and kill the goddess's plants.

Joseph would say we think the same when our environment is the same and it is interesting to me how the fearsome god of the Bible who ruled during the middle ages, became the loving and forgiving God we have today. Modern man, with a full belly, are so sure they have the right Christian thinking and they seem to think the way they understand God is the way Christians have always understood God.

The effort to discover truth can never be silly and pointless. It is the purpose of birds to fly, horses to run, and man to think.

God is asleep in rocks and minerals, waking in plants and animals, to know self in man. "The Phenomenon of Man" Teilhard de Chardin

:grin:

Are we sure of what we think we know?

"Let us, for a moment, consider a scenario. Let us assume the galaxy to be an immense organism possessing order and consciousness of a magnitude transcending the threshold of the human imagination. Like a faint body, it consists of a complex of member star systems each coordinated by the galactic core, Hunab Ku. Cycling energy/information in clockwise and counter-clockwise directions simultaneously, the dense pulsing galactic heart emits a continuous series of signals, called by ourselves radio emissions. In actuality these radio emissions correspond to a matrix of resonance- a vast galactic field of intelligent energy whose primary on-off pulsation provides the basis for four universal wave functions; a transmitting or informational function; a radiative, or electromagnetic function; an attractive or gravitational function, and a receptive or psychoactive function." "The Mayan Factor"

Now, what if the Bible described God in those terms?

Thought affects matter and matter affects thought every moment. The event is undeniable. Just because we can't explain is itself no reason to doubt. Since every known force exhibits some form of conservation and reciprocality, thought can only be affected by matter to the exact extent that it affects matter. You get nothing for free. Not even freedom. — Pantagruel

Still chewing on what you said and our notion of reality. :grin: A trinity? Mind, body, life?

When Aristotle broached the question of whether intuitive knowledge was innate or learned, he decided that it must be a combination of both. Relative to my description above, this allows that the conscious thinking mind, still has some sway over the power coming from the unconscious base, so that the conscious mind might influence one's intuitions. I believe it is necessary to maintain this aspect in the model of intuitive knowledge to account for the means by which the cultural consciousness gains control over the intuitive. That is where we find ourselves within society, our cultural training is in fact an exercise of conscious control over our innate and instinctual tendency, the intuitions. That is how relativism takes hold, and it is why the Kantian model cannot be accurate. — Metaphysician Undercover

I think genetically transferred knowledge plays a role in intuition.

Memory: How We Know Things We Never Learned ...blogs.scientificamerican.com › guest-blog › genetic-me...
Jan 28, 2015 — Genetic memory, simply put, is complex abilities and actual sophisticated knowledge inherited along with other more typical and commonly ...

The PBS show "Finding Your Roots" does genetic studies and sometimes finds the person who is the subject of the show is like a previous relative. The inclination to write or to be a social reformer or play the piano seems to be passed on genetically.

I believe years of study or contemplation can also lead to intuition. We are not going to think like Einstein without doing the homework, but if we do the homework and the contemplation, one day, the answer to our question will pop into our consciousness. This is likely to happen in a dream when our conscious, controlling mind is not in control.

I especially like your explanation of culture and conscious and unconscious thinking and nurturing our ability to think outside of the box. I love Jose Arguelles's explanation of "The Mayan Factor" but also find it incomprehensible because that culture is totally foreign to me. I can not really think the thoughts of which he speaks. I am aware that my present cultural notions prevent me from thinking differently. But I am open-minded enough to do better the folks in science forms who are so rigidly culturally controlled they can not think outside the box and can be hostile in defending what they think they know.

That moves me to what you said and our present cultural problems with change and political fighting and racism that leads to killing or religious fanaticism that can also lead to killing. We can be so trapped in our beliefs that we slaves to them. This can be a good thing or a really awful thing.

Human beings are thought wrapped up in a meat blanket.
— Pantagruel

If this were me, I'd eat myself. Then where would I be? — Metaphysician Undercover

We are spiritual beings having a human experience?

We are what we eat. This morning a listened to a lecture about ancient Greeks and the importance of sacrificing bulls. It seems back in the day everyone sacrificed bulls and the rationale was the meat of the animal carried its characteristics and we can gain those characteristics by eating the meat. We all want to be strong as a bull right? However, we can carry this thinking through to cannibalism and eat our dead relatives or our enemies depending on how we think this through.

However, in modern societies, you should not be thinking of this at all. :lol: I was once in a less sophisticated forum for a very short time because I mentioned cannibalism and there was an instant
and unquestioned rejection of the person who would do such an awful thing. That was kind of like hitting a hornets' nest with a stick. But we can see here a philosophical question of what substance carries the essence of our being? Is it carried in our meat? In our brain? In something else?

thought can only be affected by matter to the exact extent that it affects matter. — Pantagruel

That does not make sense to me. :chin: It seems to me thought is affected by thought?

I have been thinking about this thread and the notion of nonmaterial reality. Thoughts are not material reality. Feelings are not material reality. Our spirit is a matter of how we feel and it is not material reality but strongly affects us.

Approaching this supposed collective unconscious is a difficult task, because it is conceptual, and we can flip it around to approach from one side or the inverse, finding its weakness which allows one to penetrate, annihilate and reject. — Metaphysician Undercover

An anthropologist Edward T. Hall wrote of cultural consciousness and unconsciousness. He said, in our culture thinking about cannibalism is taboo and such thoughts are relegated to our subconscious. Some forums do not tolerate mysticism and I think we know there is more but we can not talk about it in some groups.

Absolutely. We need to be working towards an "inclusive materialism" if anything. Our science should aspire to expand its horizons. Popper's ideas about "metaphysical research programs" would be an example — Pantagruel

Do you mean research like this?

So any chunk of matter can also occupy two places at once. Physicists call this phenomenon "quantum superposition," and for decades, they have demonstrated it using small particles. But in recent years, physicists have scaled up their experiments, demonstrating quantum superposition using larger and larger particles.Oct 6, 2019

2,000 Atoms Exist in Two Places at Once in Unprecedented ... — Rafi Letzter

and this...

Can thoughts affect matter? - Quorawww.quora.com › Can-thoughts-affect-matter
Oct 3, 2015 — Can the pattern of matter we call thoughts affect matter? Yes. This is the difference of walking the walk and not just talking the talk, or more precise thinking the ... — Connor Duke

I agree. And the "truth" of scientific materialism propaganda is a prime example. Humans are no more than machines and are expendable. Thankfully, there is resistance to this way of viewing life, mostly coming from religious quarters since both are fighting for the same turf. — MondoR

I perfer philosophy to religion. I like the Greek approach to achieving human excellence and I think what Confucius says about achieving human excellence has value. I have also enjoyed the Hindu explanation. But I do not like the Biblical focus on sin and evil, demons, and Satan. With Christianity, one can never know if it is Satan causing a problem or God punishing us that is the problem, rather than it all being a matter of cause and effect and the consequence of what we think, say, and do.

That said, the Bible does have wisdom and analogies that explain things in a poetic way, better than can be explained in factual statements. I want to stress the important difference between interpreting the Bible literally or abstractly. A literal interpretation of the Bible is problematic.

Unfortunately, education can also be co-opted and then it becomes propaganda. Are you confident that the education to received has not been coopted? Is this the place to find truths? — MondoR

:scream: That is what happened! The 1958 National Defense Education Act, changed the purpose of education and those who are in control of it. Now our republic is as perverted as the republic of Germany that lead to Hitler and this is so because the US adopted the German model of bureaucracy that shifts power and authority away from the individual to the state, and we adopted the German model of education that goes with the bureaucratic change. If the population were aware of what happened and why it happened and how it happened, there is a chance we could save our democracy and make it even better than it was. Only when our democracy is defended in the classroom is it defended, and that is NOT education for a technology society with unknown values!

PS to clarify, the Act replaced our liberal education (starting with the first day of school) with education for technology for industrial and military purpose. As military leaders took over Rome, so have they taken over the US, and even if we threw every weapon in the ocean we would still be an industrial-military complex, not the democracy with liberty we defended in two world wars.


t.

I don't think so. Storytelling is extremely better suited to refining our moral truths than any future Grand Theory of Everything. One must choose the right tool for the job. Also, it's all mythos really. We construct narratives to make sense of the world. Science is just a lot more constrained insofar as it has to fit data and make predictions. — Kenosha Kid

I love Jack's threads! Not only does he inspire thinking, but the forum members participate so well. And Kenosha, your explanation of the need for different tools is perfect.

Yes, storytelling is essential to civilizations! Joseph Campbell explained the importance of mythology is to transition the young into the kind of adults favored by the social group.

For nearly two hundred years the US used education to transmit a culture essential to liberty and democracy, but stopped doing that in 1958 and now we are in a serious mess! We are at each other's throats and I am not sure our democracy is going to survive this.

Why did we stop transmitting a culture essential to liberty? Well, like Homer's stories of gods, the Greek and US cultures depended on mythology. For national defense reasons we stopped transmitting our culture and began preparing the young for a technological society with unknown values. The mythology had to go because, well, really did Washington really cut down the cherry tree, and did Lincoln walk a mile to return to a penny to someone? Technology is about the right or wrong way to do something, the right or wrong answers and it can not tolerate those silly stories. A technological society is a military-industrial complex, not exactly a liberal democracy that can tolerate what someone else believes. Oh if someone wants to be a complete flake, that is the person's choice. Marginalize that person, let him/her have freedom, but keep him/her out of the regime.

When the US destroyed its national heroes, it destroyed its culture. This is not just a change in education and how people learn to think, but it is an important change in bureaucratic power over the people as well. Instead of prepared our young for independent thinking, and transitioning them to adults, the young have been prepared for groupthink, and instead of being independent thinkers trusting in their own maturing authority, they seek leaders and find them in social media, and boy or boy are we in a mess!

It is a myth that our democracy comes out of Christianity. It does not! The thinking essential to our liberty and democracy came out of Athens and was further developed in Roman, but Athens and Roman both became ensnared in military might and their cultures died. The old books that no one reads, can hold the memory but they can not manifest liberty and democracy. God's love might be nice, but what we need is an appreciation of scientific truth and tolerance of each other. We need the Spirit of America. We need our mythology. Christianity is no better for democracy than Islam is and we should not be going to town with our rifles ready to shoot down those who oppose us because this is not God's battle, it is a human disaster that needs to be corrected with education that transmits the culture essential to liberty and democracy.

Science may have the strongest claim to truth...but, the scientific worldview also has to integrate into the overall project of humanity, viz, supply stable normative values around which social and cultural projects can be successfully co-ordinated and operationalized. And it is here that the scientific worldview is failing miserably.

We need to keep scientific validity but somehow also restore normative justifications and legitimations. — Pantagruel

Here is where the wisdom Jack Cummins demonstrates, comes in to play.

Education for technology is not education for science! The ancients developed a lot of technology but they had no idea why what they knew worked. For whatever reason, the Greeks got a bee in their bonnet and they had to know exactly why is something so. The Greeks were exploring universal truths and developing linear logic and theories. Eastern logic is cyclical, not linear, and leads to mysticism instead of technology. :joke: I think this train of thought leads to insanity but I will attempt to make sense of it.

The eastern ancient civilizations had the technology and perhaps it was the development of mystical thinking that pulled them off course? Like Zorcasterism began as a religion leading to wisdom but got all tangled up with superstition and became self-destructive. I think this is common when the thoughts of great thinkers become familiar to the masses because the masses become believers rather than thinkers. The Greeks for undetermined reasons took a different path. They rejected superstition and looked for natural causes. That is the path to science.

The important thing to understand is morality is a matter of cause and effect. If something is destructive it is immoral. We can use science to know cause and effect but it is philosophy and democracy that gives us a path to a consensus on the best reasoning. The miracle of democracy should not be overlooked!!! Democracy and liberty are dependent on education- everyone thinking things through and therefore rule by reason, rather than mysticism and authority over the people. :joke: :love: :chin: Yeap, I have gone over the edge. I hope someone can make sense of what I have said. :worry:

I am sorry but I do believe determining creation stories are not factually true is as simple as that. Not only is it simple but ignorance is a terrible thing leading to serious problems such as wars and people spreading a deadly disease because they base their decisions on their religion instead of science. Not since the civil war in the US has the population been so divided by their understanding of God's truth.

The saving grace for religion is abstract thinking but we stopped educating for that. I don't think Hebrews understood their stories concretely as Christians do today. Those stories are just stories carried on to get a point across but not to be understood literally. :gasp: An abstract understanding of demons is worries and fears and resentments that trouble us. A literal understanding of demons is superstition and comes into the God of Abraham religion a little late and from the east. Education for technology has favored literal interpretations resulting in Christianity becoming quite a serious problem.

↪Athena What IS energy. Math and physics only deals with equivalencies (=). They can never say what it IS. Only WE can say who we ARE. — MondoR

The hard problem of matter calls for non-structural properties, and consciousness is the one phenomenon we know that might meet this need. Consciousness is full of qualitative properties, from the redness of red and the discomfort of hunger to the phenomenology of thought. Such experiences, or “qualia,” may have internal structure, but there is more to them than structure. We know something about what conscious experiences are like in and of themselves, not just how they function and relate to other properties.
http://nautil.us/issue/47/consciousness/is-matter-conscious — Nautilus

E=mc^2 ... Anyway, the question is incoherent, or is begged, since any "where" (or when) - spacetime - is inseparable from "matter ... energy". To be is to "vibrate, move, change" à la dao. — 180 Proof

:rofl: excuse, please. Youtube has many more interesting explanations and I like this one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vn4J8RcMGrM

And "energy" - vibration, motion, transformation - is not "materialistic"? — 180 Proof

Matter vibrates, moves, changes, but what is energy and where does it come from?

Doesn't light carry the memory of the stars as they were millions of years ago. Who's to say that memory dies when the body can no longer function.

Yes. Death and rebirth is a manner to start afresh, like a new game of chess. We do not forget what were have learned, but we can start again to see how well we learned and how much more we can learn. The Universe is constantly playing the game of creating and learning, just like a game of chess. — MondoR

I love the way you said that.

Has anyone here read Jose Arguelles's "The Mayan Factor"? Does anyone know of the Great Cycle as 13 Baktun Synchronation Beam and the Harmonic Convergence? The Mayans may have had a better understanding reality than we do?

I never mentioned my contemplation of reincarnation to anyone at the time because I was in a Catholic family and school, with set views, mainly of resurrection at the end of the world. I would have been told off for thinking nonsense, and it is likely that readers of this site may accuse me of talking nonsense too. — Jack Cummins

I have a very old book about logic and it clearly states we should never be too sure about what we think we know. A wise person maintains doubt. I have a big problem with religious people who think they can know God's truth and that anyone who does not agree with them is wrong. I once read, when we think we know God, we know God not. The Bible says God is beyond our comprehension and the religious folks keep making their notion of God comprehensible, rather than remain open-minded. From there, things can get really bad as some people are willing to kill for their notion of God to be the only one.

Some have argued Jesus spoke of reincarnation and I believe knowledge of Buddha improves our knowledge of Jesus because I believe Jesus's thinking was more oriental than western and culturally we are separated from oriental thinking.

Roman was very materialistic and the result is flipping the Egyptian trinity of being spiritual beings, into a trinity of God. The Egyptian trinity is more like we are spiritual beings having a human experience. One part dies with the body, one part goes on to be judged and may entire the good life or not, and always the third part returns to the source. The trinity of God denies our spirituality but has to impose a notion of souls? In Christianity, the trinity is God, Son, and Holy Ghost. I really do not comprehend Christian thinking, because to me the religion is dependent on believing in supernatural beings, but Christians see themselves as opposed to superstition. That is a little nuts to me. A new word had to be invented for the Romans to accept the trinity of God. Greeks had a word for the trinity but not Romans and for many years Christians warred against each other over the issue if Jesus was the son of God or God Himself.

Anyway back to reincarnation. Jesus made a statement about my father has many rooms and we enter and leave those rooms. That can be taken as a reference to reincarnation. There was a time when Buddhism and Catholicism came close to combining. The difference between eastern spiritism and western materialism with supernatural beings pasted on, holds the beliefs apart.

Same thing that happens when an orchestra (e.g. a brain) stops playing and its members (e.g. neurons) irreversibly-irreparably disband, namely the music (e.g. consciousness) simply ceases. — 180 Proof

That is very materialistic when reality is all about energy.

'all things as infinite.' — Jack Cummins

My goodness, this thread is trigging so many memories that I have not thought about for a long time. I am having a delightful time. I am also thinking I should write this stuff down because I want to be aware of some memories and I can not trust my brain to be aware of fading memories.

I had a few spontaneous transcendental experiences many years ago that strongly impacted what I believe about life. One such experience was to have no identity of my own but to think I am one with the fence, one with the field, one with the convict in prison, etc.... one with the universe. As you said, that experience gives me reason to believe you are right to refer to those who said our brains function to filter out information.

My suspicion is that life is cyclical, and the microcosmic resembles the macrocosmic. We sleep, dream, and wake up, consciousness being a continuum of memory. The bigger sleep, death and birth, will be similar. What science calls genetics, would be a continuum of memory from previous life/death cycles. Basically, I believe the Universe is symmetrical in all respects. Clues to the macro can be found in observing the micro. This is what Daoists do. Interestingly, Hamlet's soliloquy alludes to this idea. I think that if we pass on with good memories, we will enjoy a nice deep sleep. The concept of Karma adopts a similar point of view. — MondoR

You triggered my memory of reading about genetic memory. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/genetic-memory-how-we-know-things-we-never-learned/

I think I may have a memory of past incarnations? Not much and the one just before this one seems the most complete. I am not the only person who seems to live with a memory of a previous life. I have contemplated this for a while and decided in order to have new lives, we must forget the past one. I would not want to repeat my present life but would love it if somehow I were born again and retained the knowledge I gain from intentional studying. This totally brings into question who am I if I come to life as different people with different life experiences and possibly retain some memory of each lifetime without being the same personality as the one before? Sort of like we are sitting in a theater and watching one movie after another. We experience each movie but do not end with each movie. :brow:

To be or not to be?

I am amused by the religious notion of god and love as this also goes with wanting to maintain the separation of ego, rather them being one with god.

I am totally undecided about the afterlife thing. I watched shows done by men who claim to communicate with those who have crossed over. I think what these men did is very convincing about there being life after death and that we retain our egos and relationships. But I would not bet my life on our egos surviving our deaths. I have also experienced what appeared to be communications from those who have crossed over, adding to my belief that it is possible. I think statement is the most reasonable. We do not have enough information to believe this or that.

Yes, the Adam Smith quote comes from that time in history when international laws were not well established. A positive effect of piracy was uniting merchants in favor of laws and mutual protection against pirates. A main reason for early migration to the New Land was to get away from the king's and the landlords' control of economic activity. The natural right being to actualize one's potential instead of being held under the authority of the church, kings, and landlords.

As for the hate speech, we can begin with the universal do unto others as you would have them do to you, and don't do unto others as you would not have them do to you. Hate speech is going to cause trouble, so it is just wrong, and because it is wrong, it is not right. We can not tolerate wrongs because of the damage they do.

Our laws might not be absolute but I believe cause and effect are consistent, which focuses me on Cicero. I love his explanation that no prayers, animal sacrifices, or rituals are going to change the consequences of our actions. Man-made laws may be ignorant of natural laws and for this reason, we must have freedom of speech to correct faulty reasoning.

Perhaps you could tell me more about parallel universes as a possibility beyond the mortality of the physical body. — Jack Cummins

This would possibly require a notion of neutrinos holding a record of our existence because it seems to assume there is an "I' that can be aware. If there is an "I" there must be matter that contains the "I".

↪Jack Cummins Like a sugar cube in tea, it dissolves, and rather quickly. The trick, it seems to me, lies in not minding too much the dissolution. After all, one may ask what there isn't, after, and be hard pressed to answer. Consciousness? And what exactly is that when it's not at home? — tim wood

That sounds reasonable to me and that would make us with one with the universe minus our egos that keep us separate.

I agree with you but stopping with an agreement kills the thread. It kind of depends on how we understand the law. Not all laws are written and it could be interesting to put Cicero's words in a Bible.:grin:

“For there is but one essential justice which cements society, and one law which establishes this justice. This law is right reason, which is the true rule of all commandments and prohibitions. Whoever neglects this law, whether written or unwritten, is necessarily unjust and wicked.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero, On the Laws

“God's law is 'right reason.' When perfectly understood it is called 'wisdom.' When applied by government in regulating human relations it is called 'justice.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

Hate speech does not lead to justice, does it? Hate speech is harmful is it not? That which is harmful is immoral and must not be tolerated or the whole nation falls into immorality. This is a higher law based on right reason. On the other hand, our freedom to reason is different from hate speech, isn't it? In the book "Thinking, Fast and Slow" Daniel Kahneman, differentiates an automatic reaction from thinking. This makes freedom to reason different from saying anything we want to say.

Adam Smith is working with Cicero's understanding of law and justice. In the quote he is speaking of the British attempted to control trading, protecting a few with exclusive trading rights from the many wanting to engage in trading. He is holding an idea of natural law and justice that is right reasoning but not the written law.

"Thirdly, the hope of evading such taxes by smuggling gives frequent occasion to the forfeitures and other penalties, which entirely ruin the smuggler; a person who, though no doubt highly blameable for violating the laws of his country, is frequently incapable of violating those of natural justice, and would have been in every respect, an excellent citizen." Adam Smith

So am I. But those rights exist only to the extent they arise from the law. Even if they do, I think it's clear enough that other people, if not the government, would gladly trample on your rights or mine if they saw fit to do so, particularly if they felt their rights were threatened in some self-serving manner. Their rights may not be restricted; if they conflict with those of others, why should those rights be considered superior to their rights? What standard is to be applied when rights conflict, apart from a legal standard? If there is a standard to be applied in that case it must be one based on something other than the rights themselves, which indicates that a theory of morality based on supposed natural or inherent rights is lacking. — Ciceronianus the White

China is arresting people who say things China's leadership does not want to be said. So a government does not have to protect freedom of speech, or does it? There are universal laws and man laws. Is denying people the right to speak going to make things better or worse?

Prussian military order is a few establish the policy and then they can all be killed, but the policy is still in force.
— Athena

But the cause is still those few who established the policies. I think we should move away from blaming things like society or policies, and towards the people who create/perpetuate them. If the point of ascribing blame is to create change, then the focus should be narrow. Society encompasses many things, some good, some bad, but when we blame society as a whole the good seems to be overlooked, or overshadowed by whatever we’re railing against to be changed. We don’t want the entire society to change (at least not usually), we want particular parts of it to change that are created/ spurred on by particular people. It’s those people that need to change, not some abstract notion of society. — Pinprick

I spoke of how a society can be organized. Individuals do not have power when it is Prussian military bureaucracy organizing the society. We fought two world wars against that because it is not compatible with the past US concept of individuality and democracy. Then the US imitated German education and bureaucracy and became what it defended its democracy against. We could also consider China that is very controlling of individuals and made an art of manipulating the behavior of individuals. Those are totally different ways of controlling people. The Prussian method can lead to brutishness. The Chinese method can lead to very decile people.

Effectively that is what we have but the parts of a computer are organic. The parts are humans following policy and who expect everyone to follow policy.
— Athena

But there is still no need to be complicit in a system you feel is corrupt. Following orders aren’t the only option you have. And no, you’re very unlikely to have the power to change or influence much beyond your personal inner circle, but that’s precisely how change takes place over time. It just takes a lot of people, and a lot of time being the change they wish to see in the world, to paraphrase Gandhi. [1quote]

Is there a way to use the internet and avoid all the corruption? In the beginning of the web we retained control but we have totally lost it and nothing is being done about that. Changing education seems impossible when everyone is convinced we have excellent education and can not see what it has to do with becoming a police state. If a person has the money and power of Bill Gates people will turn to this person for advise, but being one rebellious individual does not seem to be working so well for me.

And the very powerful media people are not being responsible people, but total prostitutes doing whatever it takes to accumulate wealth.
— Athena

Perfect! This is a good example of what I mean. Holding particular people responsible, rather than just “the media.”

But until we return to liberal education, the people will not have the awareness nor the power to set things right.

And that could well be what is meant, in which case the duties nature imposes on us become purely negative--we should not infringe on someone else's right to property, right to free speech, right to life, etc. — Ciceronianus the White

I saw a show last night that makes me think I should concede to you and say any ideas of rights and duties are man-made. We can realize them and live by them, but nature does not force us to do either. We can remain brutish and treat each other very badly and survive. I think I was arguing out of my bias, not totally fact-based. However, I am extremely thankful that I live in a society where at least half the people believe we have rights.

But if we assume we have duties I don't see them as negatives. The virtues are positives. Hopefully, we have people who have the courage to stand up for what they believe is right. We may have the duty to be honest and we might see leadership that lies to us as very dangerous. Our liberty is the right to decide what is the right thing and only highly moral people can have liberty. Oh dear, I am back in the argument that we have to get it right if things are going to be good. But nature will let us get away with being brutish.

↪Brett Just trying to help the guy in the improbable case he is actually not just promoting and actually interested in discussion since the topic isn't completely useless... foolish hope, I guess.

Probably should stop replying since the potential promoter seems to no longer be active and we shouldn't make his promotion more visible. — Qmeri

I have empathy for anyone who wants us to read a book so it can be discussed. Complex concepts are not easily put in simple posts and it can be futile to discuss some things when others do not have an adequate background for understanding.

↪Ciceronianus the White I've always understood it as reciprocity. If you believe you have a right and wish to have that respected, you have a dirty to respect another's same right. My right to property implies a duty to respect yours, if I don't I can't expect you to respect mine and the system collapses. — Benkei

"Reciprocity" is a good word.

Above is the mention of the word "virtues" and in the past, we thought "virtues" is a synonym for "strength". If we perform the duty we are strengthened in virtue.

Then I must have misunderstood. You seemed to be saying duties derive from rights. I don't think they do, unless "duties" consist solely of the duty not to infringe on the rights of others — Ciceronianus the White

I will quote from an explanation of Confucius.

"A character disciplined by ren (love) is the ideal in morality and goal of education. How do we attain this goal? In the Analects Confusius provided a very clear answer: the transformational process leading to the realization of ren is the practice of li. The English translation of li has been "rites," "ritual," "proprieties," "ceremonies," "courtesy," "good manners," "politeness." and so on."

I am calling all of the above "duties". To be transitioned to a higher form of human we must perform our duties, the same as we must nourish our bodies with food and water, exercise and sleep. Failure to do so is to remain as a base human, always experiencing need and unpleasantness, lack of love. It does not stop at not hurting others, because it is about how we develop ourselves and experience life.

I disagree. Ancient Western thinkers--I mean Greeks and Romans--felt that what was appropriate according to natural law could be determined in part from the fact that we're social animals. It's our nature to live in communities. It's a view which is, I think, foreign to the view that we're by nature individuals, each with inalienable rights; in effect, antisocial animals. The individual is of primary importance and is to be protected from the community (and government) according to the modern conception of human rights. There are no obligations to be considerate, or kind, or noble, or honorable towards others, or even to be honest. One need only forego violating their rights. — Ciceronianus the White

:grimace: What you said is true and is why I make my arguments! The Greeks held that the purpose of birds is to fly, horses run, and humans think, right? The polis is natural to humans, and during this pandemic that should be obvious to everyone. We hate isolation! Some of us also hate overcrowding and living in a multiple story apartment is not my idea of a good life. But most of us would choose the apartment over too much isolation. My X kept the family isolated and I thought I was going to loose my mind. That was before computers and the internet and I feel so sorry for all the pioneer women who lived on farms miles from others and lucky if they could go to church once a week. So we think and we need each other.

I would say, we also need all those values of which you spoke and the Greeks strived for human excellence. I think humanity is far better off when the culture promotes those values and motivates people to be the best they can be. This is truly the point of democracy. It is the dream of the enlightenment that we lift ourselves out of the dirt and do a little better than beings made of mud and born in sin.

Our liberty is the right to decide the right thing, not the right to say or do anything we please with no more self-control than a 3-year-old.

If I was violent, and there was a place where violence was not punished (or rarely/lightly punished), I would prefer to be there. So would everyone else like me.
— Pinprick — BitconnectCarlos

Good then become a police officer or a guard in a prison. The military is also an option.

Now that you mention it, I recall someone saying, "it's society's fault" and I'm not sure whether fae meant it in a way that you seem to be implying to wit that society is some kind of an individual entity like a person is, capable of causally potent intentions and actions independent of, and sometimes contrary to, its individual members, viz. us. — TheMadFool

Individual power and authority is like a grain of sand, society is the beach and waves.

An interesting fact that's germane to the issue herein is that societies and groups in general appear to be more rational than individuals and by that I mean to point out a truth that's hard to miss viz. unity is a better choice than division under almost all circumstances our world has to offer.

The US is no longer the democracy it once was. In 1958 the National Defense Education Act, ending transmitting a culture base on Greek and Roman classes, and began preparing the young for a technological society with unknown values. Bush and Bush jr. were thrilled to be in charge of the New World Order and that came from Germany. It was not the American Dream the came out of the Enlightenment. This individual does not have much independent power but is prepared for life by society.

Framed in this context, it's easy to see that a claim like "it's society's fault" makes sense only in the case of society applying a negative selection pressure on certain individual predelictions and that in turn causing negative pyschological effects down the line that manifests in myriad ways at the individual level.

My books on the history of education explain education can serve different purposes. Since primitive times the young have been prepared for membership in the tribe-all the way to citizenship in the nation. The society may be more mystical than technological. Those based on religion may make the development of secular/scientific thinking near impossible. I think our education for technology has been dehumanizing, and it advanced military technology not the humanistic goals of the Enlightenment.

At the heart of the relationship between individuals and the societies is the push and pull between rationality and our passions. The former analyzes the passions, selects and nurtures those that benefit everyone and the latter simply does what it does and, most importantly, sometimes puts individuals in a position to reject, defy, go against, the interests of society and that lays the the foundation for attitudes and realities captured by the statement "it's society's fault". Intriiguingly and ironically, there seem to be occasions (played out in courts, committees, tribunals, etc.) on which the reverse accusation, "it's the individual's fault", is made by society.

We come into life blank slates and society fills us with thoughts. Each country having its own culture, and each culture having its own consciousness and unconsciousness. We are mostly unaware of how our cultures and subcultures impact our lives. Few of us will be conscious enough to master our lives and even fewer will impact the cultures in which we live in. Many will be rejected and marginalized and totally ineffective.

↪Pinprick Yes, but also...we enter cultures. And we come without culture. And some cultures probably suit us better than others, each having strengths and weaknesses. Culture is the mixed batch compromise of people who have gone before us, filtered through POWER. That is the goals and ideas that the powerful want most people to have. And that also may cause us problems. — Coben

I think the US is in a culture war. Trump and Biden are very different leaders and the nation is almost evenly divided on which leader the people want. And the very powerful media people are not being responsible people, but total prostitutes doing whatever it takes to accumulate wealth.

I've always understood it as reciprocity. If you believe you have a right and wish to have that respected, you have a dirty to respect another's same right. My right to property implies a duty to respect yours, if I don't I can't expect you to respect mine and the system collapses.
— Benkei — Ciceronianus the White

I find it hard to find the right words to explain how that works, but you made the point I am trying to make. "Reciprocity" is a good word.

In reading old textbooks, I think there was a time when that concept came through education. Old textbooks taught consideration of others. One flat out says, a rich person may not be happy in a way to make someone with less feel good about what s/he has and ware of others. Money doesn't always make people happy. And it explained a rich person has an obligation to share as the farmer shares a surplus of food. That sharing is giving back a small portion of what one has received and hopefully, there is some intrinsic happiness in sharing.

An old health book said when someone comes to your home, you should focus on making that person comfortable and when you visit someone, you should focus on getting along with the people in that home. That is always being considerate of others, and not putting oneself first. We built a culture on virtues that seem to be forgotten in the present as education dropped interest in the humanities and focused on technology and competitiveness.