Oh, and the Fed just dumped $1.5 trillion into the stockmarket to keep it afloat. But... it's crazy to think you could ever afford a proper health care system. :chin: — Baden

Oh yeah. Maybe we will change our minds about that. :lol:

What is the rule about politics in this forum? I like the way Joe Biden keeps referring to the importance of paying attention to science and pointing out the problem of ignoring it.

↪Baden We'll probably have to take your country down the toilet with us. — frank

:lol: Yes, but when properly treated, shit makes good manure and can grow wonderful vegetables.

How does one reconcile the positive impression Capitalism and free market economy has with the ease with which such an economic system collapses? Isn't a good economy one that's resistant or even immune to downturns from within or without? — TheMadFool

:love: I am so loving this discussion! You guys are great!

Hitler gave German prosperity when all industrial economies had collapsed. Many believed fascism is the answer to economic collapse and the US adopted fascism. With that said, I hope you all remain cool and don't freak out on me. We need to be analytical about this not hysterical.

Universal income is just one check in a larger picture. Basically a "cradle to the grave" social welfare system that pays your rent for a small home, gives you unemployment benefits that you can live and has universal free health care does have positive and negative aspects. First, you don't have beggars on the streets. Or at least, the beggars aren't citizens of your country. You do have a safety network and you won't find yourself living out of your car or on the street. You have also lower crime rates. Criminals really want to be criminals, hardly anybody is forced to crime.

All those are great things. But there are really negative things too. The biggest problem is this kind of system can alienate people from the society. It really spreads apathy and low self esteem. Think about it. Imagine growing up in a family that were both of your parents haven't actually worked in their lives and your grandparents haven't worked either. It is really difficult then for you to educate yourself and get that job. And if the job is working at McDonalds or as a cleaner, you'll notice that actually you won't have much more money to spend than before when being unemployed, only now you have to spend a lot of time in work. The stay home and play with your X-box, surf in the social media or hangout with your other unemployed friends is a "real" option. And when people all around you are unemployed, you get accustomed to it. Many will opt for that. Usually people look for jobs only so long, but once your too old, don't have that great CV, your done.

Would I take a society with the welfare option to one without it even if it has negative consequences? Yes, but then my society works and there's not much corruption. How the system works in reality and not just on paper is very important also. — ssu

Reality check. Who provides that housing? We have just gone through a housing crisis and the fat cats bought up the housing dirt cheap and have sent the cost of housing sky high. Homelessness increases when the economy gets better because the cost of living increases. In many places there is no longer available land and cities are forced to shift from single-unit housing to multiunit housing. From experience, we know bad housing planning can lead to hell for those who have to live in it. Giving people an income does not exactly resolve the housing problem.

As for criminals, yes, that is my concern about not having structured lives. Yes, :love: I am very concerned about people being alienated! Oh YES, apathy and on self-esteem! YOU REALLY HIT THE NAIL ON THE HEAD. :cheer:

Has everyone seen or read Brave New World? Our best efforts for Utopia tend to lead to hell. But, :grin: with what we know now, we might do better?

It only makes sense if you eliminate all other entitlement benefits. At least, economically.

As to whether people will become lazy or apathetic is irrelevant really. As if some Protestant work ethic were an all good or categorical imperative. — Shawn

:love: Okay love we have to talk about that Protestant work ethic. It isn't just the work ethic. :lol: It can be a real pain in the ass if the husband is home all day. :gasp: I suppose I should get serious, but really, It might not be good if our days are unstructured and we have too much time on our hands. On the other hand, when I was in high school and the dinosaurs still walked the earth, a teacher warned us we should start planning for a time when technology made it unnecessary for us to work. Please, don't tell me jobs have increased. Living wage jobs have not increased for those who are not specialized in high tech and that technology has removed jobs. We no longer have a labor-intense economy but we continue to function as though we need human labor.

We used to tax the land when incomes depended on owning land. Taxing people's income is relatively new and even when we started doing this, most working people didn't pay taxes. Not until after WWII did just about everyone have to pay income taxes. If we go back to taxing the source of income, that means taxing the technology that has replaced human labor. Does that sound right?

If we figure out how to have a low labor-intense economy, I think we still need to consider how we will structure our lives.

I am surprised the unemployment level is that low.

Hum, it has been a long time since anyone has mentioned Universal Basic Income. What do you have to say about that? I don't think I am in favor of it. Perhaps that is because I do not know enough about it. But it is my observation that we need our lives to be organized and if we could eat for free some of us would become very unorganized and unmotivated to do anything more than act on our urges at the moment and I do not think that leads to enjoying life.

I'd hesitate to see women's socialisation structually and men's individually. If you express negative feelings as a guy, you're a failure - that was a trope, and is still a trope to some extent. To the extent that rationality was treated as an exclusively male property, affect was treated as an exclusively female one. The restrictions cut both ways.

For men, success on those terms is a waking death and a volatile end for others.

Now, gender archetypes which were updated by the inclusion of women in the workplace have permeated to widespread cultural acceptance without undermining the expected choice of rationality over affect for men. In that time, relatively little has changed in our social expectations of success and the conditions which give rise to a full life are not available to all as is constantly promised. The game is rigged. And the only way * to process the worst excesses of this consistent with the gender norms we're living through the death of for men is the false strength and blunted catharsis that comes from anger.

Men are still warped by norms of emotional restriction and a striving for a kind of "success" born from these zombified social expectations. This condition of disconnection, from self and society, yields dissatisfaction and alienation. Then, absent any socially acceptable means of processing it besides rage *; *; it gets channeled into reactionary narratives. Yielding so effected men to resort to racist terrorism, mysogenous harrassment, or a retreat from social life entirely. Unless they get lucky and manage to step through the looking glass and bodge onwards.

And we blame ourselves for all that because we're supposed to be strong and better than it. — fdrake

Do you know why a woman must stay a virgin until she is married? Because it has been males who own and control the property. If we study people in cultures where women have always owned the property or it is communally owned, the reality you describe is different. I think we need awareness of other cultures before we can determine human nature.

Those who work to improve economies around the world for humanitarian reasons, favor loaning start-up business money to women because the women will spend it on the children. That does not tend to be the case if the money goes to men. :rofl: My X had a car, jeep, motorcycles, and a boat, before I got a washing machine. He earned the money so it was his to spend, right. It was a neighbor who gave me her wringer washing machine that I could use in the back yard. But women don't really work, right? They are as children who stay home and do what the want all day and what they do isn't as important as what I men do. :wink:

And may I say, when we entered women's liberation we thought of it as liberating men as well. I try to acknowledge men have been treated very badly in our culture. Autocratic industry has manifested a very ugly reality where union people had to risk getting their heads bashed in to get better wages and better working conditions. Our autocratic industry was supported by an autocratic religion and defended by an autocratic military and when our schools stopped education for democracy that left nothing to resist the autocratic take over of what is supposed to be our democracy. That may not belong in this thread, but yeah, men haven't been treated so well so I am not in favor of kicking them.

If you want my personal opinion, philosophy has experienced a fundamental shift as of lately. It seems to me that women have populated the field much more extensively than at any point in the history of philosophy due to liberal colleges. People like Peterson kind of are a dying relic and countermovement to that sentiment; but, aren't taken as seriously as in the past. Good times! — Shawn

You make me cry for joy. Now if we all can just keep our economies going through these hard times, we might wake up to a New Age, a time of peace, high tech. and the end of tyranny. :heart:

https://www.google.com/search?q=youtube+dawning+of+the+age+of+aquarius&rlz=1C1CHKZ_enUS481US483&oq=youtube+dawning+o&aqs=chrome.0.0j69i57j0l5j69i64.15175j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

I think it’s not just an initial impetus, though - if we keep in mind the reasons why we care about the question, then I think we’re less likely to be ‘carried away with emotions’. It’s not so much arguing from logic instead of from feeling, but rather arguing from logic whilst feeling the way we do. We can’t avoid this affective information - we need to adjust for it instead. To do that we need emotional intelligence: an awareness of how internal affect impacts on how we subjectively conceptualise reality, including the value structures we employ.

But, perhaps more importantly, we need to be aware of the potential for subjective value structures and emotions to be impacting on how this same reality is conceptualised by those with whom we’re arguing. It’s commonplace for those who have ‘put aside’ (ie. ignored) their emotions in an argument to expect others to do the same. So when our positions differ, we’re often unaware of the value structures that motivate that difference, and the discussion eventually deteriorates as a result of ignorance, isolation and exclusion. — Possibility

I love what you have said! Emotional Intelligence is so important to us. It was a male who wrote the book, and it was my father who gave everyone in the family a copy of it, as though it were a bible we must all read. But he did so because of his success as a man, left his life void of satisfy relationships that did not depend on his.

Whoo, I am going to get "sexist". :gasp: We used to be homemakers and the caregivers, and we did it all without pay because that is what a good woman did. I am not arguing for going back to that, but for looking at the value of being such a woman and the whole of society valuing her for being such a woman. My father was an essential NASA engineer when we sent Apollo to the moon. I think that pretty well fits the image of male success. But he was a very lonely man in away because he totally lacked emotional intelligence and the ability to have satisfying personal relationships. Until recently the good wife totally supported such a man, so the socialization for past sexism was passed on generation after generation, and have the old books that tell a woman how she should ask nothing of her husband and totally support his professional success so he can best support the family. I don't mean to blame anyone, but be honest about our past and the present.

If we had not come from such a misogynist past but had always honored women would our history and understanding of human nature be different? Would we be prepared for war but not to protect everyone's health? If women were not in government today, would we be getting more unemployment pay and a kicker check? Franklin Roosevelt listened to his wife. Do we think Trump listens to his wife? Women swoon over Trump so I want to be clear about how we created an unpleasant reality, and that I am not blaming anyone. But I would point an accusing finger to misogynistic religion.

As for being banned.
— Athena
In discussions like in this forum, we can observe how emotions are sometimes running high and feel the temperature of the debate. That often makes it more entertaining, which isn’t bad, but when it doesn’t connect back to logic and are just bursts of personal emotions it’s impossible to keep a serious debate going and that’s and understandable reason why some users might get banned. — Congau

There is a thread for discussing banning, so I do not want to do it here. However, I want to move from what I just said, the post above this one, to the subject of this thread. Since education for technology, we have become excessively sure of ourselves, masculine and militant, and no one is holding back because there is a lady in the room. I think our feminity played a very important role in society. Women have gained a stronger voice and political power, but we are no longer curbing the male instinct.

AND YOU ALL GIVE YOURSELVES A BIG HAND :cheer: YOU ARE HANDLING THIS DISCUSSION MUCH MUCH BETTER THAN PEOPLE IN OTHER FORUMS. The first couple of posts were discouraging but after that, you all have been amazing. :grin:

Wholistic logic can be quantified to some measure using linear logic. Even though it is extremely hard to quantify feelings, it is technically possible.

Extremely complex systems (such as wholistic logic) can be sampled (such as the sampling rate used to digitize sound so that it can be put on a compact disc for music) and have equations applied using mathematical subjects like linear equations.

In some ways wholistic logic has similarities to post-modernism.

The point i'm trying to make is its hard to argue who is right with wholistic logic. One could almost say once someone embraces wholistic logic, why not just discuss wholistic logic with only people who believe strongly (strongly) in it. Or you can evangelize people to it.

All decisions people make are based on alot of information or a little bit of information but never a complete set of information, so the winners of history are not always the people who were the most rational.

Its one of those things, "only time will tell" — christian2017

What leaps out at me is "The point i'm trying to make is its hard to argue who is right with wholistic logic" Yes :party: Exactly! And how might a society that thinks that way be different from the one we have? I have an old logic book that explains why we should never be too sure of ourselves, and since education for technology, we are very sure of ourselves and could not possibly be more divided! Something as gone terribly wrong. I could be wrong but this wrongness seems very male and militant and that is why I question the good of the feminine and the problem of making it taboo.

I think, despite the law of large numbers, one can say that there is something about the differences between feminist ethics, and morally obligated theories like Nietzsche (to a lesser degree, although almost exclusive to males) or Kantian ethics.

I am a personal subscriber to A Different Voice by Gilligan or ethics of care by Noddings. There's obviously a bias in the field of philosophy towards male dominated ethical theories in my view, which is unfortunate, given that women roam the interwebs also. — Shawn

Thank you for sharing that observation. That is exactly what I hoped would be the subject of this thread.

Our concept of reality has been shaped by male philosophers. Socrates, Aristotle, Cicero shaped our reality differently from the way Nistzche and Hegel have shaped our reality. And female philosophers and females with political power are new. How might history have gone differently and how might our understanding of humans be different if women had also been treated as equals to men?

Women probably think differently from men, on one level and on average. They are likely to have different concerns about what is relevant and important in daily life – on average. But this shouldn’t matter when doing philosophy, and if it does, we should make and effort to minimize its importance. — Congau

The title of the thread invites everyone to think about how history may have gone differently if women always the powerful voices they have today. Would we have had the same violent history and conclude that we war because it is our nature to war? How might history have gone differently if women had always been respected and could have become as well known philosophers as Socrates or an elected representative?

They say women are more emotional. Well, men have emotions too, but that’s the part of our being we should put aside when constructing logical arguments, isn’t it? We shouldn’t be swayed by our emotions to jump to conclusions that just feel right. — Congau

Without question men who feel so strongly about something they are willing to risk their lives for it, such as those who lead the American Revolution, are emotional. However, these men did not put much consideration of women and children in the Constitution as, Abigail Adams, asked her husband to do. Using the Constitution to protect the women's rights, was like using it to protect the unalienable rights to people held as slaves. That is important to this discussion.

Introducing a new topic by articulating how it links to the current one generally makes for a good post. I'm sure that you've noticed that staying strictly on topic doesn't happen very much here, even within the focused exegesis of reading groups. I believe it's partly a combinatoric problem; there's too many divergent ways of taking something as an obvious consequence of something else. Absent strong constraints on seeing what is relevant to a topic, discussion regarding it tends to slide into tangents and tangents on tangents. — fdrake

Yes, I have noticed in this forum a topic can easily slide into a related one. There also appears to be many females here.

I wouldn't call this male or female, it seems to happen regardless of circumstance. You maybe see it as male, though, in that move where discourse itself is seen as following male archetypes and standards. — fdrake

I now regret giving up the book explaining how written language made cultures more male dominant. Especially in the west that favors linear logic over wholistic logic. This male dominance is intensified with education for technology and specialization and "expertise". Before this education, we educated for well rounded individual growth and avoided being narrow-minded. The Conceptual Method of education preparing the young to be independent thinkers and the Behaviorist Method teaching them to react like we train dogs to react to commands.

Despite all the differences in perspective, differences in what people find obvious, and differences in what people find relevant, I believe that when people discuss in good faith, they partake in the same norms of expression and rationality; even if there's no common ground, people speaking in good faith are still disputing the same terrain (usually). — "

Not exactly so. In the past women were less apt to organize their thinking with formal rules, such as the rules of thinking essential to science, a college education, business, and legal transactions. The difference in their thinking was called domestic thinking and it went with strong emotional reactions involving the care of others. The point is, there are different modes of thinking and different ways of experiencing life dependent on our roles in society. My granddaughter appears to have the mothering instinct of a cuckoo bird. The cuckoo bird lays its eggs in other birds' nest and leaves the adopted parents to feed and raise their offspring. While one of her coworkers stopped coming to work because the work is so high risk they can not risk being with their children. Of course, this difference is about how they were raised and their understanding of social expectations. Our use of language and emotional reactions are not hard-wired as is so for other animals.

fdrake — "

"]First thing - we're an open access internet forum, we can't selectively recruit. About as good as we can do is invite speakers. Those events are few and far between, big thinkers are too busy to waste their time educating us plebs on their minutia; or responding to our long winded essay posts and convoluted questions takes up time they don't have.

I don't really understand why you frame what you desire in the quote as a departure from normal discourse on here. Posts constantly talk about language and thought, people behave as if they have a blueprint for sorting out all the world's problems a lot - people with contrasting blueprints get frustrated with each other. This is business as usual for talk beyond gossip.
[/quote]

That is a good distinction between formal mental patterns and informal. Gossiping is not a formal mental pattern! Of course in a philosophy forum, people are discussing language and thought, but very few of them have the education for the discussions, so the posts are informal, not formal. And an argument may have nothing to do with the logic of a post, but be focused on attacking the stupid person who made the stupid post. Being formal or informal serves different functions and this not good or bad, it is human and we need all of it.

Big picture talk is also usually extremely reactive, responsive to continually updating meat space events. When the meat space events change, the sites of tension which will be discussed between people's blue prints or big pictures change without (usually) changing their perspective. I mean, I have a bunch of thoughts about how things should be done and see things in that light, and essentially that means I have 2 conversations repeatedly on here and don't talk about much else. The events change, the perspective doesn't. I'm guessing your big picture talk is in the same ball park, how long have you been expressing frustration with what you see as male norms of discourse, saying the same thing in different scenarios? — "

How long have been addressing gender issues and education issues and the ramifications of the change in education? About 30 years I believe. However, I am even more enthusiastic since learning of
Daniel Kahneman and his explanations of Thinking, Fast and Slow Also in my later years I am experiencing a sensation of enlightenment when suddenly I understand the meaning of things. That is so different from knowing facts and not the meaning of them. I think we can life experiences that radically change our consciousness.

Anyway, the chances of forum big picture talk turning into a world historical event of ideological rupture are slim to none. Framing things with that goal in mind is... noble, but extremely silly. "Everything needs to change! We need to be talking about how everything needs to change. No, not in that way... The purpose of the obscure hobby forum should be to increase the likelihood of a world historic shift in consciousness." — fdrake

You must not know the history of our democracy. You could not say that and know the list of books that have changed history. But you should know we have experienced major changes and those changes were lead by people who wanted the changes.

Well, so long as you have moderators and admins, a forum is not going to be a democracy. If you don't have moderators, you currently end up with 4chan. I believe this is preferable.

One thing that works to propagate exploratory styles is trying to stick with them when talking with someone, mod action to enforce exploratory styles which does not change or strongly restrict the open access nature of the site seems impossible to me.

Why in heaven's name would a forum with leaders and rules not be a democracy? :gasp: Wow, we are in very serious trouble if people think democracy is an unregulated free for all. That is another important subject and it deserves its own thread.

Women probably think differently from men, on one level and on average. They are likely to have different concerns about what is relevant and important in daily life – on average. But this shouldn’t matter when doing philosophy, and if it does, we should make and effort to minimize its importance.

They say women are more emotional. Well, men have emotions too, but that’s the part of our being we should put aside when constructing logical arguments, isn’t it? We shouldn’t be swayed by our emotions to jump to conclusions that just feel right.

Also, when trying to understand another person’s argument, it’s unfair to refer to that person’s psychology, life situation and gender to explain where the arguments are coming from. Treating people fairly means taking what they say seriously and don’t dismiss it as psychologically biased. However, that also means taking yourself seriously and don’t tell yourself that you are only saying what you are saying because you are a woman.

I have been banned enough times to know that it is a risk to go against male control of forums
— Athena
Are you really saying you have been thrown out because you are a woman? Whether that is true or not you’ll have to prove that the rules that caused your expulsion were unfair or that you didn’t really break the rules. Only then can you claim that there was sexism involved. — Congau

If a woman has value or not, is a value judgment, and we come from a very ugly misogynistic past. Not all of humanity, but certainly the Christian West with its roots Athens and Rome. Jews were misogynistic and the idea of a deity being born to a woman was absolutely revolting to many. The God of Abraham created without a female force. Misogynistic thinking does not value how a woman thinks and does not include her in decisions made by men. :lol: We have not had the vote for that long, and :gasp: horrors, now women are even serving as representatives and have a real voice in government. :wink: I have to point out this follows a growing rejection of Christianity and men being the head of the house.

:lol: Women are emotional and men are not. There is some truth to the statement for biological reasons, but isn't it annoying when a man believes this and denies his emotions while beating his "emotional" wife. Oh dear, that is a nasty can of worms.

"Also, when trying to understand another person’s argument, it’s unfair to refer to that person’s psychology, life situation and gender to explain where the arguments are coming from."

:lol: Do you think. That is a powerful and cruel effort to dominate and it brings the men together to silence women. We definitely see it in our politics today, right? However, women also join in on this, as the attacks against me in this thread demonstrate. Over the years none have attacked me more viciously than women who are reacting to the misogyny we live with and they are not realizing how important feminity is to societies that are not Military-Industrial Complexes. Destroying the value of being feminine does not improve our social order.

As for being banned. :lol: There have been very few women in the forums, and on occasion, I was the only woman. Women can be so annoying you know. I think that has something to do with a female being the symbol of liberty since ancient times.

Again, this is a value perspective. What mattered to women in this sense were the relationships, the potentiality, rather than the actuality. So interaction with another tribe would rarely have been seen by women as a ‘bad’ thing. It was the men who were threatened, who seem focused on protecting the status quo at all cost. It was the value they attribute to ignorance, isolation and exclusion that saw them killed in tribal conflicts - and this continues to be the case today. Fortunately, we’ve come to realise that not all men are as fearful and ignorant as history has often portrayed them, just as women are not ‘simply taken’ as much as they are often portrayed. — Possibility

Well, this discussion has greatly improved over yesterday.

....and the "children" often being external invaders. Women tend to have strong instincts to provide, but very low instincts to protect the tribe. No wonder, as throughout human history, it was males who were and are killed in tribal conflicts. Women are simply taken, and become part of the victorious tribe. Which from a biological point of view makes no difference to them. And this is ingrained in our species throughout our existance. To claim that that has suddenly changed in the last few decades is simply denial of reality. — Nobeernolife

Making people slaves was an advancement over killing everyone. Not all invaders took slaves and this made resistance against them absolute because the only choice was to fight and have a chance of living or die. But before we became so brutish, I think it was grandmothers who gave their tribes the organization they needed to evolve into civilizations. Science has suggested we survived and the Neanderthal did not because our social organization gave us a survival advantage.

Well, it's a good thing then that I was careful to talk about degrees of behavior that happen on average and not about any strict distinctions. — Artemis

That is a great statement! :cheer:

I read your post and wondered what you did to get yourself banned in those other forums and wondered what excitement we might now have in store.

I see two questions here: (1) Do men and women think differently, and (2) can men and women get along even if they do think differently. I think the answer to #1 is more difficult to answer because it requires a break down of how the different sexes think and it necessarily requires some degree of stereotyping, as if all men think one way and all women think another. I think #2 is clearly that they can, largely because they do in very many contexts, including our humble abode. — Hanover

Actually it is best to turn to science. We look different because our hormones are different. As our gentiles are the same at first and develop differently so are our brains the same and developed differently. However, the development of our brains is directed by how we use them, unlike our gentiles that are what they are. :lol: Using a penis does not make it larger, but using our brains increases the growth of the neurons that are used.

That is just the beginning of understanding our differences but it is very important because our brain structure and hormones are at the heart of our differences and this why we should not attack homosexuals. Nature loves variety and there is a lot of human variety.

Thank you so much for considering science is important to our understanding.

As for us getting along, of course we can get along. Our difference is a wonderful thing and I think those who have attacked me, hate women. They are jumping up and down like chimps in a rainstorm insisting women should be like men. Imagine if our hands were exactly the same instead of mirrored manifestations. We could not enjoy the use of them nearly so much. I think we can get along much, much better if we do appreciate our differences. I am working for a New Age where we value the feminine as much as the masculine and I invite everyone to imagine how history might have been different if all cultures were as the cultures that valued women as much as men.

We are all equal under the sun, but as the Greek gods and goddesses were all different, so are we. I very much like Jean Shinoda Bolen, M.D. books "Goddesses in EveryWoman" and "Gods in Everyman".
The US carried the three aspects of Athena, Goddess of Liberty and Justice and the Defense of those who stand for liberty and justice. As Liberty, she is our Statue of Liberty holding a book because our liberty depends on being knowledgable. She was common in courtrooms as the Lady Justice holding a scale because justice is a balance of wisdom and compassion. And in a mural at the Capitol Building, she is the Spirit of America, brandishing the Sword of Justice.

I think our culture has lost a lot by loosing the meaning of these icons and it amuses me that what is most important to us is represented by female figures. Perhaps we should wonder why?

Bolen's books explain the archetypes of men and women. Our archetypes can change over our lifetimes. And of course, there is the mythology of Gia the earth mother goddess. I know people mean well by ignoring the feminine power, but I don't think the ignorance benefits us.

No one has to read what I have to say, and if the replies are not respectful I will not read them.

Male and female brains are “wired” differently, to use that old cliche.

“Male brains are structured to facilitate connectivity between perception and coordinated action, whereas female brains are designed to facilitate communication between analytical and intuitive processing modes”.

https://www.pnas.org/content/111/2/823

Given that it makes sense that both genders should cooperate with one another rather than dominate. It’s why the emancipation of women is so important to the development of a society. — NOS4A2

There is hope! Thank you so much for turning to science. We need a lot more of that. And thank you for suggesting it is okay for me to be a woman and to rely on a man to do what men do best. I really have no desire to give up being a woman, nor to compete with men. I do believe working together can bring out the best in both of us and manifest a better future. Imagine children growing up in homes where mothers and fathers love each other and enjoy working together for the good of the family.

I think you're bang on that "going online to have an argument about something abstract" is something that men are more socialised to accept, seek out and revel in. We unfortunately don't keep collaborative and exploratory discussions going long on here, and it's very hard to keep oneself exploratory and collaborative when someone is going to come along and treat it like a fight anyway.

The topic of raising the bar for post quality comes up sometimes, as does lowering the bar for moderating people getting combative. I think we usually err on the side of inaction for a few reasons, (1) it would make many posters unable to contribute and (2) policing the urge to show someone that they are wrong on the internet on an internet forum devoted to arguing about weird shit seems fruitless.

But I do regret that the aggregate effect of this inaction is that we aren't cultivating an environment where exploratory discussions are more common. Always open to suggestions. — fdrake

Aaliyah! Just as I was giving up any hope of this discussion being what I was hoping for, you come along and give me hope.

I can totally appreciate not keeping collaborative and exploratory discussions going for long because they are exhausting! The thinking requires a lot of energy. Unlike the reactionary, kneejerk fighting than is common.

I have deep concerns about judgments of raising the bar because whose standards would rule? That is a large part of the problem I want to discuss. I am thinking the male standard leads to very narrow thinking? The requirement of staying on topic prevents anyone from considering the bigger picture, and it is my concern this keeps us in a constant state of conflict, heading towards war, and prevents the expansion of consciousness that could lead to peaceful resolutions.

As you said" we aren't cultivating an environment where exploratory discussions are more common".

Suggestion- find more people who can handle this discussion. Talk about language and how we think. Talk about consciousness and how to expand consciousness. Talk about the importance of this discussion to our future and a New Age with such a different consciousness the people of the future can not relate to our barbaric past.

End women's liberation that does not liberate women but makes being feminine taboo and forces us all to conform to the male standard. An evil plot that does not make men any better than they have been. :lol:

It is possible, though I don't know that there is good evidence to support it. All thinking individuals have already been socialised to an extent, so it's almost impossible to figure out how they'd think without their socialisation. — Echarmion

It took me a couple of posts to get no one seems to appreciate matriarchy is female domination, female leadership, and there are some really good things about matriarchies.

One proof that females think differently is the skyrocketing number of bills passed to take care of children.

Anthropology is one science that studies animals and humans to get at what is natural, and also anthropology does cross-cultural studies. I don't know what the name of the field that studies hormones but that certainly should be taken into consideration in a study of human behavior and gender differences.

When I did a college paper about middle-age women, I came across a study of language and social positioning. That study really got my attention because I could so relate to being a domestic woman struggling to do college work that is very male-dominated! My chauvinistic professor rejected my research on women that was done by women and was not the abstracts. He only accepted papers that were less than 10 years old and in the abstracts. He was perhaps the most ignorant of all my professors. On the last day of class, some older women who audited the class delicately ranked him over the coals for his ignorance of how to help older women. I don't think there is a good understanding of the importance of women's work nor of the language differences, and I am loosing hope of this thread helping me develop my thoughts.

What almost happened in the US, electing a woman to the presidency? In matriarchies, women rule, right.

I think such generalizations as "female mind" / "male mind" are not very useful. Individuals think. Assuming an individual thinks a certain way because of their sex is foolish, and sexist.

The mirroring of human societies to animal societies is something I steer away from, unless one desires to be an animal rather than a human. I desire the opposite.

When answering the question "who should dominate?", perhaps the question that first needs to be answered is, why should anyone ever be dominated in the first place? — Tzeentch

:kiss: Yes, I am sexist and you assume that is wrong? Why? What if it is based on science and an appreciation of yin and yang? Sure under pressure women can behave like men, but is that desired?

Oh my, if you want to ignore anthropology and related sciences, we are in trouble. I don't know how any good can come out this.

Why should there be a leader and submission to the leadership? Because I ship, an industry or a nation without strong leadership is in big trouble. With that said, it is extremely important to know the qualities of good leadership and avoid mistaking a tyrant for good leadership. Tyrants who appeal to the masses can lead to thousands of people dying because of the ignorance and ego of the tyrant. Democracy is supposed to prevent that from happening, while assuring strong leadership, but it can not prevent that unless the masses are well educated, and the culture supports democracy, not Wrestlemania mentality. This is really tricky!

:snicker: Whoops

This post didn't come out right.

I would answer that in the affirmative but I don't think any moderator would agree with that.

I am sure there are better words for what I want to say. That is why I started this thread. It is not so much about what is said as it is about how it is interpreted. I think men and women interpret things differently or organize their thinking differently.

Moderators are prone to see a challenge to their authority, rather than an effort to be understood. I think many times disagreements are about interpretations. Such as trying to help a nation eradicate a disease when the people we are trying to help distrust us and think it is our intent to sterilize them or harm them. Mods who use guns in their avatars see bad guys to shoot down because that is what they are looking for. A teacher will have a different interpretation.

What rules a man emotion or reason? If reason, how do the people of a society get their reasoning?

- ↪Athena

I have absolutely no idea. This seems to me to be an empirical question; so I'm not sure that I can comment on it.
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What are the circumstances that shaped Hobbes' consciousness?

- ↪Athena

You will have to expand on this question. What do you mean by 'consciousness'? Consciousness of what?

Yes, Hobbes says an authority is the only way to suspend the war of all against all.
He is also a Monarchist who dismisses forms of the Republic that would presume to provide such authority as is needed to stop that war.
The two ideas are obviously intertwined but are not identical.
Unless you agree with Hobbes on the matter.
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- ↪Valentinus

This is an accurate description of Hobbes' view, but I'm trying to ascertain whether the example he provides really serves to establish this conclusion. — Alvin Capello

Well for sure anthropology does not support Hobbes's opinion that authority over the people is the only way to maintain a civil culture. Culture is the determining factor, not a hierarchy of authority. It appears to me that Hobbes's opinion was based on Christian mythology.

Hobbes's consciousness was shaped by the Christian cultures he experienced in Britain and France and not by living in India or China or among tribes in North America, as all our different consciousnesses are shaped by what we personally experience. Some of our individual consciousness is private and some is shared, some of it is in our subconscious and some of it we are aware of. Philosophy demands that we think about what we think and that improves our awareness of ourselves and others, but our consciousness is different depending on where we grow up and what we experience in a culture and at that time in history. We can not think and have the consciousness of people 200 years ago.

Anonim, you might find more agreement with Hinduism than God of Abraham religions.

Hindu cosmological view
Many Hindu philosophies mention that the creation is cyclic. According to the Upanishads, the universe and the Earth, along with humans and other creatures, undergo repeated cycles (pralaya) of creation and destruction.
Hindu views on evolution - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Hindu_views_on_evolution — Wikipedia

To me people aren't born evil. Circumstances make them evil. If the circumstances are not appropriate for them to be good. They will be bad most likely. If you are fair, if you say that you are fair and tell people to be fair, you would prepare a fair exam for everyone. If you create a tree and tell a human not to eat that trees fruit. That person will eat it. And if you are fair you won't fire him from heaven and send him to world. And punish all humanity because of a man that ate a fruit. — Anonim

Quite clearly that is about being human, not a god. I think science agrees with you about circumstances making us good or evil, not the fact that we are born human and the first humans displeased a god. It is highly unlikely there was ever a Garden of Eden where a god walked with humans. This is to say, the God of Abraham religions advance a false notion of being human. I am confident that our nature is the result of evolution and all our decisions would be better if they were based on science instead of mythology.

What chains us is our needs and wants in the first place which is rooted in being born in the first place. — schopenhauer1

Wanting a faster and more powerful computer or car or a larger and more elegant home has what to do with being born? Is it our birth or what we are born into?

That's surely true, but the distinction between anarchy as chaos is not salient to the issue at hand. I'm just wondering whether Hobbes' example might not lead to an unintended conclusion for him. — Alvin Capello

What are the circumstances that shaped Hobbes' consciousness?

Thus, it would seem to me that Hobbes has not managed to escape the specter of anarchism. Indeed, what he has done is provided yet another reason why we should want to be anarchists. — Alvin Capello

What rules a man emotion or reason? If reason, how do the people of a society get their reasoning?

A koan is meant to make you unmeasurable. I feel like everyone is turning from the East and moving to Greece lately on this forum :( — Gregory

Why are you unhappy about that?

The mainstream media has painstakingly created an amazing system of propaganda where nothing is ever looked at critically, with nuance, or for very long, just constant noise from which the important messages can be imprinted on people's brains (from sponsors and elite centers of power); that Trump is easily able to manipulate to his benefit as the system is optimized to provide a platform for elites (which Trump qualifies as part of the club) and is designed above all to serve the interests of brands, which Trump is. Within this incoherent noise, it's impossible to make simultaneously the points "yes, China committed an international crime by covering up a potential pandemic; yes, Trump committed a treasonous offense in diminishing the US's capacity to meet a pandemic, "defend the fatherland", for corrupt motivations of filling the government with compliant sycophants and also a treasonous offense of ignoring the intelligence once it was available in order to protect a foreign entity, the stock market, from harm (however shortsighted that attempt was); yes, Trump is trying to tap into that frothy fountain of irrational racism to distract his base from looking at Trump's actions and words during this situation; yes, China has been committing international crimes by tolerating trade in endangered species, which may or may not be tied to this pandemic; yes, the leaders of Europe are simply clueless duffusses (who also could have acted when Trump was not acting, and could have invested in pandemic prevention when Trump was cutting, and could have put economic pressure on communist China to not undermine the entire capitalist system ... like, almost as if they want to own all the means of production, outflank shortsighted greedy capitalists pigs and, like, almost hold the world for ransom in some sort of neo-colonialist inversion or something, like, almost as if) when those European bureaucrats aren't corrupt, which is often, but luckily a whole bunch of our European leaders are just spineless idiots and can be corralled into doing something not so stupid every once and a while." — boethius

The book "Empire of Illusion" by Chris Hedges begins with an explanation of the Wrestlemania mentality and comparing it to our political reality. Does everyone know Trump took part in Wrestlemania?
What kind of civilization would want a man like that to represent them around the world as their president?

I ask that question because I think we are in this mess because we have educated for this since the 1958 National Defense Education Act. The US has used the same playbook that put Hitler in power.

That preparation for a fascist mentality includes campaigning technics used by the NAZI and leading to the corruption of our media and politics.

David S. Broder's book "Democracy Derailed- Initiative Campaigns and the Power of Money" helps us to understand the money media problem. We seemed to have no immunity to being emotionally manipulated.

And those who respond to every problem with prayer instead of reality, are a serious part of the problem created by education for technology that left moral training to the church. A huge mistake!

Interesting questions. Without knowledge there is no logic for even logic is learned. We are born only with the potential for learning.

To mind one's own business is the basic lemma in ruling your own confines, which is the prime function in a functioning society. It is only within those confines that we have the emphatic ability to actually care for each other. If you are not interested in my business you should simply not mind it, lest you cannot care for what it might entail and will thus loose providence on your own power. I did. I care. I will not argue for your sake but I will happily teach you anything on the subject of divinity if you present to me humility before it. — Eleonora

okay, I see.

It is not apples and oranges. The God of Abraham is the same God in all three religions. He is a jealous, revengeful, fearsome and punishing God. The Bible is salted with statements like this

Nahum 1:2 ESV / 26 helpful votes Helpful Not Helpful
The Lord is a jealous and avenging God; the Lord is avenging and wrathful; the Lord takes vengeance on his adversaries and keeps wrath for his enemies.

So what if the Quaran might say the same thing slightly differently. That does not equal worshiping a different God. I stress the point because back in the day that is how people thought. What made us different was Hellenism.

Did you tell me to mind my own business?

Our insecurity, tribal natures and reliance on law. — Gnostic Christian Bishop

We take being civilized for granted and that is a big mistake. I hope we learn better because if our economy crashes before we understand what makes us civil, the consequences could be very ugly.

God did not become a loving God until our bellies were full. The tribe can be predatory and even cannibals. The tribe can own slaves and treat them like subhumans. I don't think we can count on our tribal nature to make us civil. For sure it is not insecurity and laws that make us civil. Look at what happened in Germany and Japan, and ancient China or the Aztecs.