Nope. Most (not all) places, each law has its reason. A layering of reasons, actually. A citizen of such a place has an implied duty to know those reasons (i.e., ignorance is usually not exculpatory). That is, most law is particular with respect to what it controls. If you break a law for your own reasons, you haven't really broken it, you've just been stupidly ignorant. On the other hand, if you choose to break the law for reasons that seem good and sufficient to you, then the question, do you know all the reasons? If not, back to stupid ignorance. Breaking the law for some over-riding principal is serious business. In effect you're not merely violating some rule, but breaking law itself.

Call it a failure to reconcile purpose and intent with consequence. But get that right and you may have grounds.... — tim wood

I will disagree with the notion that ignorance of the law is not a good defense because we move around a lot and when we are new to the community, we have not had time to learn the customs of that community. However, the saying ignorance of the law is not a good defense, applies to unquestionable rules of human decency. You don't rape your neighbor's wife or kill someone for a loaf of bread because everywhere this is a violation of human decency. However, when in Rome one should do as the Romans do. That is to say, a newbie may be forgiven for violating a custom, but not rules of human decency.

When it comes to rules of human decency and an ideal world Cicero said this

Cicero wrote the following in De re publica (On the Republic):

"There is a true law, right reason, agreeable to nature, known to all men, constant and eternal, which calls to duty by its precepts, deters from evil by its prohibition. This law cannot be departed from without guilt. Nor is there one law at Rome and another at Athens, one thing now and another afterward; but the same law, unchanging and eternal, binds all races of man and all times." — wikapedia

He goes on to tell us, no amount of prayers, or sacrifice of animals, or burning of candles will change the consequences of our words and deeds. The consequences will follow the laws of nature, no matter what our god thinks of us. There is no pleasing a god and getting out of trouble. What happens is a result of our own words and deeds.

Laws about smoking pot are more a matter of custom than a law of nature. Getting stoned and driving or operating machinery is violating a law of nature because it does impair our judgment and we should not be driving and operating machinery when we are stoned. But if you are kicking back and have no responsibilities at the moment, I don't think mother nature cares if you get stoned. The moral would be don't get stoned when have responsibilities demanding your attention, but if this is your downtime, you can use it as you choose.

Bitter Crank
6.9k
↪Michael ↪frank ↪tim wood Richard Nixon was impeached for "obstruction of justice, abuse of power, and contempt of Congress" while Bill Clinton was impeached for "perjury and obstruction of justice".

You all may not have been around for the Watergate hearings, but the proceedings were broadcast (for weeks on end) and the process of evidence gathering was extensive. By the time Nixon resigned, the case against had been very well built.

Operatives in Nixon's Committee to Reelect the President (aka CREEP) burglarized the Democratic National Committee offices in the Watergate hotel. What followed was an elaborate cover-up, proving again that covering up a relatively minor crime can self-inflate into a major disaster. Another thing that has been proved is that once investigators start digging, remarkable finds can be brought to the surface.

I think we can count on sufficient evidence being available to impeach President Trump. What will be needed for impeachment is the ability of the House Democrats to successfully carry out the proceedings, so well that the Senate would be compelled to try and convict. I wouldn't hold my breath. — Bitter Crank

Great post Bitter Crank. I am so glad you are posting!

Shutting down the government is not a violation of his oath?

"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." — tim wood

A man who destroys our democracy is surely in violation of an oath to defend it.

I think it was a huge mistake to drop history in favor of technology because now we do not have the perspective that history can give us. The concept of a tyrant is very old and I will argue Trump is a tyrant. The kind of tyrant that we must keep out of the presidency if our democracy is going to be preserved and that it is imperative that we impeach Trump. It is men like him who made the power of impeachment necessary. This perspective comes from history and knowing what happened when men like him help power.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/tyrant
Tyrant, Greek tyrannos, a cruel and oppressive ruler or, in ancient Greece, a ruler who seized power unconstitutionally or inherited such power. In the 10th and 9th centuries BCE, monarchy was the usual form of government in the Greek states. The aristocratic regimes that replaced monarchy were by the 7th century BCE themselves unpopular. Thus, the opportunity arose for ambitious men to seize power in the name of the oppressed. — Britannica

His nature as a tyrant was obvious in his TV shows. Fitting the definition of someone who takes power illegitimately was obvious during the campaigning when he avoided the debates with other candidates and put on his own circus.

Part of the problem was media corruption.

How Media Giants Are Profiting from Donald Trump's Ascent - Fortune
fortune.com › Entertainment › Election 2016
Mar 21, 2016 - Media giants have benefitted from the Trump ascent and the presidential circus. ... Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. ... There has been much debate over the media's relationship with Donald Trump. ... news media is not the culprit for Trump's ascent and that networks like his own are simply ... — Fortune

I find the explanation that this person is popular with the discontents who want to overthrow the establishment a serious warning sign. Hitler and the Nazi party also came to power by appealing to the discontents. For years before elections the Nazi's were a canvasing rural neighborhoods finding out what made people the most angry. Then they rented halls and inticed people to come with entertainment, and gave them a lecture using the gathered information about what made them angry and promising to resolve all these problems. Trump came to power the same way, catering to the same discontents, and if the liberals do not see the threat to our democracy they are naive. Not only did he follow the strategy Hitler used but once he got in office he began eliminating everyone who disagrees with him, and finally, like Hitler, he used his power to shut down our government to force our democracy to do something that the majority do not want done. This is a clear abuse of power and a threat to our democracy and I can not understand there being doubt of this.

Repeatedly in history the discontents have risen and slaughter the intellectuals. Not just in communist China but in Rome and France. We have taken our democracy for granted with this is a mistake. Only when it is defended in the classroom is it defended and we stopped doing that in favor of education for the Military Industrial Complex that sells arms to the likes of the Prince of Saudia Arabia, not because it is the right thing to do, but it is good for the profits and employees of the industry. Our democracy was hijacked long ago. It is just a question of will we gain awareness and take the necessary action soon enough?

I am not in favor of liberty without education in good moral judgment.

Drugs can enslave people and when they become addicted they loose control of their lives and can unintentionally hurt others. That is why they are controlled or illegal.

If a potentially harmful substance is made legal it absolutely should be taxed to cover the problems that can result from the substance.

With freedoms, there must be responsibilities. We seem to be at a time in history when people want freedom but not responsibility?

Okay, my error. I am now seeing the connection with the Hitler takeover of Germany and the intolerance of homosexuals.

Really, and how did Hitler come to power and what did he do when he got in the seat of power? If you can not answer those questions then your opinion is not based on facts.

Hitler the autocrat

After taking power, Hitler and the Nazis turned Germany into a dictatorship. Time and again, they used legal means to give their actions a semblance of legality. Step by step, Hitler managed to erode democracy until it was just a hollow facade. Things did not end there, though. During the twelve years that the Third Reich existed, Hitler continued to strengthen his hold on the country.
https://www.annefrank.org/en/anne-frank/go-in-depth/germany-1933-democracy-dictatorship/ — annefrank

I think I misread the intention of your post. But would like homosexual concerns to be a different thread.

↪tim wood What crime is he committing? — frank

The same crime Hitler commented when he took control of Germany and shut down its democratic government.

Surely Trump got his knowledge of running a nation from Hitler. I am blown away that his hijacking of the presidency is not recognized as the ancient meaning of a tyrant, and that his shutting down of our democratic government is being tolerated! :gasp:

I am glad in are pondering the notion that children need good parents. They also need good educations and until 1917 education was all about citizenship, not about preparing the young to be products for industry. Vocational training was added in 1917. At the 1917 National Education Association Conference, Sara Fahey a teacher of English, speaks of how we educate the children knowing their immigrant parents will learn from them how to become good American citizens. At this time education rested on Thomas Jefferson's ideas of the education we must have to be a strong and united Republic.

Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence that we have the right to pursue happiness. This did not mean going out for ice cream or smoking pot or whatever else we might do for a moment of fun. Jefferson's understanding of happiness was based on Greek philosophy and the notion that our happiness rests on knowledge and so does our moral judgment. And he was speaking with knowledge of Christian governments that suppressed knowledge and established a hierarchy of authority over the people. Effectively education for technology suppresses the essential knowledge because it is not the education we must have to understand what knowledge has to do with our liberty and happiness and feeling empowered to have meaningful lives, instead of feeling powerless and worthless.

While education was changed in 1917 it continued to transmit our culture for liberty and self-government until 1958. I think our focus needs to be on how we prepare our young for life through public education, and why it is the right thing to give them breakfast and lunch and medical care.

Leaving people on the streets to die, hoping this will prevent them from reproducing, cannot accomplish as much as the right education preparing children for citizenship can accomplish.

In my old age, I am very strongly opposed to the idea that one does not need to consider anyone but one's self. I have seen what addiction or habitual use of pot does to families and children and it is not a pleasant reality. It is an ugly reality that gets passed on generation after generation. Addicted people become the center of a lot of painful drama involving many people. It is not as simple as being an individuals decision to do as s/he pleases. I think we have experienced far too much self-indulgence and a sad of lack of a concept of family, social and political duties. The moral is addictive substances can lead to a lot of avoidable human pain and suffering for generations and we need to stop denying that.

However, pot is likely one of the best medicines nature has given us and hemp has many good purposes. We need to be more rational about growing and using marijuana.

lack a meaningful life? — Wallows

I suspect for many, pot is about not having a sense of having a meaningful life. But I should talk? :gasp: I am addicted to coffee. I like feeling alert and driven to accomplish something. Especially not in my later years, life seems very short I don't want to loosing time feeling like a zombie. My struggle is to feel full of energy and not like I want to take a nap. :lol:

Moral, coffee is a better stimulant than pot. :lol:

If these two are required for objective morality to exist, and they do seem to be required for it, then as long as there is one human or sentient animal suffering or going to suffer, it makes no moral difference to help others. — Atheer

The cancer cell is not separate from the body that carries it, nor are individuals separate from the whole. The cancer cell is not equal to the whole body, nor is the individual equal to the whole. In both examples what is important is the health of the whole. Our moral objective needs to be the health of the whole. It makes a moral difference that we consider the whole and think of poverty like a cancerous cell that needs to be eliminated.

Education is perhaps the best way to eliminate poverty but this is not education for technology preparing the young to be products for industry. A liberal education is for free people who carry the responsibility of governing themselves, the whole. Free radicals that lead to cancer need to be eliminated.

That's not even comparable. Assume there's direct control over what TeleSur puts out and what the Venezuelan government demands of them. Great, now how is that at all comparable to governments having near unhindered success at making private entities hide or remove content they don't like based on political reasons (e.g. revealing government corruption and malpractice)? It isn't comparable. You're comparing suspicions you have about one entity reporting a certain way, with a certain slant, and on the other hand engaging in censorship and widespread PR for the government. — MindForged

In 1958 Eisenhower made new connections with the media and research facilities, and education for technology replace liberal education at all grade levels. This education leads to dependency on the experts/authority.

When Reagan took offices, all research on poverty disappears from the abstracts and in its place is research on welfare fraud. Such a change in research leaves no question that research is biased. In a short time, the media is flooded with stories of welfare fraud and the war against poverty became a war on those living in poverty. At the height of a long recession caused by OPEC embargoing oil to the US domestic budgets were slashed and we began pouring money into military spending.

That is when our efforts to take military control of the Mideast got serious, and it brings us the Bush and the invasion of Iraq. There could not be a more glaring example of the devastation of our free press than this. There was no investigative reporting, only reliance on "authority" and for the first time the US began a war against a nation that was not mobilized for war against the US. This was not good for our international reputation. It could be argued our military actions in the Mideast lead to 9/11- the attack not on US citizens but against the Military Industrial Complex. It was not Iraq involved in 9/11 but Saudi Arabia and the US remains on friendly terms with Saudi Arabia and gladly sells it arms.

I think we have strong reasons for being concerned about what 1958 has to do with what is happening today. We have serious reasons for being concerned about what happened to the control of the news we get. We can start with Reagon lied to us about not needing foreign oil, and why we escalated our military position in the Mideast. In the 20tys a newspaper article warned us, "Given our known supply of oil and rate of consumption, we are head for economic disaster and possibly war". We need to understand that as Roman's needed to understand their economic crashes and economic growth was about exhausting gold mines and finding new ones and the need to secure resources with military force and the taxes to pay for the bureaucrats and military that kept everything going. The same beast is now running the US only it is oil, not gold mines feeding the beast. Self-government demands understanding our reality and understanding our reality demands a media that believes it is the duty of media to keep us well informed, not cover the political nominees or party or industrial interest that pays the most of media coverage. We do not have the media a democracy must have, because we stopped educating for that.

I do workshops for people with diabetes and I also volunteer at a homeless shelter. I hardly think life is better for the homeless people in the US, except they are getting more food than they once did.

The new research found that the average homeless person has a life expectancy of 47, compared to 77 for the rest of the population: a startling difference of 30 years. The life expectancy for women was even lower, at just 43 years.Dec 21, 2011
Homeless die 30 years younger than average - NHS
https://www.nhs.uk/news/lifestyle-and.../homeless-die-30-years-younger-than-average/ — nhs

Even for those who have housing, the health of low-income people is not that good.

People with Lower Incomes Report Poorer
Health and Have a Higher Risk of Disease
Poor adults are almost five times as likely to report being in fair or poor health as adults with family
incomes at or above 400 percent of the federal poverty level, or FPL, (in 2014, the FPL was $23,850 for
a family of four) (figure 1), and they are more than three times as likely to have activity limitations due to
chronic illness.5
Low-income American adults also have higher rates of heart disease, diabetes, stroke, and
other chronic disorders than wealthier Americans (table 1).
https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/publication/49116/2000178-How-are-Income-and-Wealth-Linked-to-Health-and-Longevity.pdf — Urban

I am one of those poor people because I was disabled, so we might want to understand what real health problems and disabilities have to do with being a low-income person. The cause of poverty can be a health problem, or poverty can be the cause of a health problem. However, my life is extremely better than it would have been 100 years ago thanks to medical care, government assistance, and education. I am far above those people who do not qualify for assistance but for one reason or another can not compete for jobs or housing.

A moral is a matter of cause and effect. Our laws are supposed to be a matter of nature and cause and effect. This link will affect our understanding of the morality of keeping pot illegal. According to this link, the decision to make pot illegal is based on false beliefs and racism. That makes the law immoral and it is our responsibility to take action to change immoral laws.

https://www.history.com/news/why-the-u-s-made-marijuana-illegal

Today, 29 states and Washington, D.C., have legalized medical marijuana, and 8 states plus D.C. have legalized it for recreational use. It’s illegality at the national level has created tension between the federal and state governments. However, growing consensus around the issue suggests that legalization—or rather, re-legalization—could be in America’s future. — History

Here is a link for keeping pot illegal.

https://www.rivermendhealth.com/resources/marijuana-legalization-led-use-addiction-illegal-market-continues-thrive/

I am not sure I can agree with that argument because my grandchildren have consumed a lot of pot since Oregon made it legal but when they wanted jobs that require drug testing, they quit using pot and no one is aware of any addiction problems. That is, they did not experience physical distress. I do not believe it is addiction unless one's body has a bad reaction to not having the addictive substance.

However, I am concerned for younger people, pot could interfere with maturation. Video games might also interfere with maturation? When we do something to avoid negative feelings that does not resolve the cause of the negative feelings, we can become dependent on any substance- pot, carbs, sugar, or behavior- isolation, reading, playing computer games that changes how we feel. This would be a negative habit, not exactly an addiction that can lead to death.

Because pot has been linked to improving bone strength, I wish we would go beyond making it legal to making it a medicine that a doctor can prescribe and our medical insurance would pay. We are half way there and this really stupid! We can pay a doctor $100 to prescribe us pot, but this is not one of the doctors our medical insurance will pay and even though the pot is used for a medical purpose, the insurance doesn't pay for it, but medical insurance pays for some really, really awful drugs and the one given to make our bones stronger can destroy our bones. How many legal drugs do we have that can destroy our livers or kidneys? We are still in the dark ages when it comes to sane medical care.

Early mythologies other than God of Abraham mythologies, were strong in developing social order through marriage. In the stories of Aphrodite is the story of Pygmalion and how the village women insisted he must get married and Aphrodite was called in to the resolve the matter. This same concern comes in other cultures and some of the cultures would force marriage because this is just the way to have social order. Family order being totally different from military order and the New World Order is secular and military order. I want to be very clear about this. Family order is old world order and the New World Order is military order applied to citizens.

It is when our consciousness fully adopts the New World Order that the issue of marriage becomes contested. In a technological society with merit hiring, a family can be any combination of people that agree to be family. The meaning of family and its relationship to our social position has been completely shattered. This might not be a good thing?

And the notion of marrying for love? That is still a strange idea in some countries. Love did not play a large role in most marriages. In the pioneer days, females were married off at age 14. When we must live by hunting and growing our food, it is hard to feed many people. The female is the less valued in a harsh reality where the strength of males is more important, and no parents want to be stuck with a pregnant daughter. On the other hand, older men want someone to sew, clean, garden, and cook for them and it was acceptable for them hit the young woman if she was not doing her chores. Problem solved. Except some of these women were very upset by the big stink made over slavery when the they were treated so bad, being a wife is not seen as slavery. What a lie. She did become a man's property and she was not protected through religion nor legally. I have known some of these women. They are dead now. They did not gain their freedom until their husbands died and boy were they resentful of the reality they lived before we had plenty of jobs for women and government assistance. To be clear, marriage was a legal contract that assured a man would have the services we expect women to perform, and it assured the women and children would have financial support. This might not have been a good either? But knowing our past makes the gays' fighting for the right to marry humorous. I am sure they want legal protections, but when I think of marriage, I of think of the negatives, and I am not as romantic I was when I was young.

The growing masses that rent and move around a lot, and those who have no place to settle in the evening, are destructive social harmony that is dependent on developed relationships and social ties. I think our industrial society is now like a tree that is dying? Our focus on money surely has been a focus on developing the human good, but that has turned sour. Now we have a focus on money, the bottom is the dollar, but this is disconnected from the social good meaning all people.

In the Age of Enlightenment, the discussion was how to make life better for everyone. I think we need to get back to that discussion.

Yes, there's a great deal of ignorance in this respect, currently. But I think it's true nonetheless, as even those who are ignorant ascribe what was obtained from ancient Greece and Rome to Christianity and other sources which borrowed them or assimilated them, often without attribution. Regardless, Greece and Rome are the sources. — Ciceronianus the White

Ah yes, but here is the distortion. Much has been Christianized so we understand the beast as supernatural and therefore something to ignore. But the beast is what Rome became when military powers took control of Rome and destroyed the much older cultural controls that made Rome great. If we understood the beast as a military force that consumed Rome then we would understand the Military Industrial Complex and the huge changes in the US as the power of the beast. We would see the shift from individual wealth and power to state wealth and power and we would know this will come to no good and this is not the US democracy we defended in two world wars.

We have a tyrant for a president for goodness sake we are so disconnected from our past, we think this is something new and just about democrats and republicans fighting for power, or perhaps we think God has allowed Satan control of earth and as the Christian Romans thought they were in the last days, so do good Christians today think we are in the last days. Without history, we are not seeing the chain of cause and effect that we are caught up in and without better reasoning, we can not resolve the problems.

What was not Christianized was Americanized and uneducated Americans think they invented everything. Once again cutting them off from the wisdom and culture of the past and leaving them with a distorted understanding of reality. Add education for technology to this and we get the idea that technology is some of some kind of a god that will resolve all our problems and if we rely on the experts we will have power and glory. Yes, so did the Romans have power and glory, but the power and glory of the beast is not what raised the human potential in the days of Rome, nor in the present.

What raised the human potential came out of philosophy, and science came out of that philosophy. Together science and philosophy raised the human potential and the military cannot defend our democracy. Only education can defend our democracy and create the conditions for resolving our problems. The Military Industrial Complex is destroying us as we educate our children to serve the Military Industrial Complex and pour all our resources into it. We drop million dollar bombs and leave our people without medical care and poorly educated.

And so we all come to the same conclusion eventually. We enjoy the journey but the destination is disappointing. Or maybe we haven't reached the destination yet.

The only constant theme there seems to be is that our minds restrict us in terms of our knowledge of the universe. If only we could become more.

I know I will have left a lot of points left undiscussed doing this, but I really can't keep this up. I am leaving for a trip soon and won't be able to use the internet while I'm gone, and the scope of our discussion seems to have reached critical mass. Someday we will pick this up again, but for now, I have to say farewell. — TogetherTurtle

:love: We did become more but then we changed the purpose of education, and we are destroying our human potential. We must understand education must be teaching the young how to think, not want to think. Education for technology is preparing the young to serve the beast. I know that is a biblical term that may turn people off, but just because something is written in the bible, it doesn't make it wrong.

Rome became the beast when military powers took control of Rome. The military got control of Rome because of economic causes. The cause doesn't matter so much as understanding the nature of the beast. Mythology and religion attempt to control with culture and this empowers everyone. When a nation shifts from cultural control to military control, the beast becomes the power over the people. The purpose and power of the beast totally different than when it is mythology and religion organizing society.

DOES ANYONE ELSE REALIZE WHEN EVERYONE IS WORKING FOR A PAYCHECK AND IS OVERLOADED WITH BY A WORK SCHEDULE AND FAMILY RESPONSIBILITIES, THAT DOES NOT LEAVE PEOPLE FREE TO DO THE DISCUSSING AND THINKING THAT IS VITAL TO OUR LIBERTY AND DEMOCRACY! OUR GOAL TO EMPLOY ALL ADULTS IS DESTRUCTIVE OUR HIGHER HUMAN POTENTIAL. Like Rome our military forces are superior, but our human potential that can only be realized through philosophy and our government are as weak as Rome in the last days. This a serious moral problem.

At least for now social security won't be affected: — Terrapin Station

Thanks. I was not overly concerned because I know when things get bad enough, they will turn around and I really want things to turn around. But oh my goodness when will people believe things are bad enough to throw out the tyrant who is abusing his power?

The place to protect our freedom of speech and democracy is in the classroom. Trump is acting like a tyrant and even if we will continue to get our Social Security checks, our government is obviously too weak to fend off the take over a tyrant. We must return to liberal education and training the young for good moral judgment and understanding what that has to do with our liberty and democracy.

I know it's going to seem like I'm just trying to be disagreeable :grin: but I strongly disagree with comments in this vein. (Re being disagreeable, I simply have a lot of views that are not the "normal" views.)

What makes anything "about" something is how the individual in question is thinking about it. When we're talking about something that a lot of people are doing, it's not going to be the case for anything that everyone is thinking about it the same way. The only way we can know what something is about to an individual is to ask them. They may not give us an honest answer, but we can't know better than they do whether their answer is honest.

So re people wanting a border wall, for example, there are probably tons of different motivations there--it's just going to depend on who we ask.

Re the highrise comment, that's not "living with nature" if we're making the distinction man-made/versus not man-made. But then no construction is living with nature in that sense (and anything we do wouldn't be nature in that sense, since we'd be making our activities the demarcation criteria). — Terrapin Station

About the wall, there seem to be two sides. Those who are afraid of the stranger and those who are not. I don't think the details of individual differences matter. Trump is speaking to one side when he tells us how threatening the strangers are. He speaks to their fear and what we see is their anger.

I have a neighbor who is severely depressed about Trump shutting down the government to get funding for a wall that many of us do not want. She is very afraid she will not get her Social Security and will become homeless. None of us dependent on Social Security would be happy campers if that happened.
This does remind me of the fall of Rome. The invasion of the barbarians and rapid change in government personnel and no one trusting anyone else. I never thought we would see the day when a President of the US acted like a tyrant, but even the way he came to office fits the ancient definition of a tyrant. Like Roman citizens lost control of everything and one tyrant after another took control until the secular government was too weak leaving only the church to hold things together.

It is no longer reason holding us together and ruling over what happens. It is institutionalized tyrants and corruption, and our freedom of speech which is vital to something different is perhaps the most corrupted part of the mess we are in. What individuals think does not matter when we are running on emotions and mostly fear. A tyrant to takes advantage of our fear of strangers can control the mob. And one who can shut down our government is beyond democratic control. We are in serious trouble. Trump could not do what he is doing if so many humans were not so fearful of strangers. And after our reaction to the fall of communism and its wall, how can we take pride in building a wall to keep people out? We are not strong again. We are chicken little running out of control. This is a we problem not individual problems.

They still are. We've been trying to be what they were, or what we think they were, since the 5th century. — Ciceronianus the White

How could that possibly be? In the US they are ignorant of their heritage. They think Christians gave us democracy :lol: They do not know what the pagans had to do with the Enlightenment, nor what the Enlightenment has to do with democracy.

Education in the US used to transmit a culture with its roots in Greek and Roman classics but since 1958 it has educated for a technological society with unknown values, and there ain't much culture left. :rofl: In the US the meanings of the important words are so distorted this isn't even close to the culture we inherited.

Terrapin Station
5.5k
Do you agree it is natural to experience fear of the unknown?
— Athena

Everything that anyone does or experiences is natural in my view. So yes, it's natural to experience fear of the unknown. There are people who experience that.

The stranger is unknown and this can result in fear, right?
— Athena

Sure.

Under what conditions is this not true?
— Athena

Since it's a statement about possibilities, I think it would be difficult to say conditions under which it wouldn't be true. That doesn't imply that strangers DO result in fear. It's just true that they can. It depends on the people involved, the exact circumstances, etc. — Terrapin Station

I already replied to your post but walked away and thought about it. The reason I am being so bloody picky about how we understand our nature and fear is because I watched a video of Bill Moyer talking about our violence. Someone pointed out, what looks like a lot of anger is actually fear. Now these are macho young men raging and beating the stranger or fight with that other gang, and hell would freeze over before they admitted their behavior is about fear. We need to recognize our fear and think about it. Are we creating a world we want to live in when we build a wall to keep others out and ignore the danger that some people are forced to live with? Is a man screaming at us at these people are criminals and rapist, telling us all we need to know about building a wall to keep people out? How can we throw stones at the Russians for the wall they built and be proud of ourselves for building one? What are we really feeling and how much reasoning can we do?

And for sure, life in a highrise apartment is not living with nature.

Ouch,that thinking is the problem today! And we come to this by leaving moral training to the church and leaving the masses to believe they have God's truth, although they disagree with each other about what that truth is. This is nuts and it will destroy us.
— Athena

What is the difference between the masses thinking they have the truth of God and disagreeing on exactly what that is, and scientists thinking they have the truth of logic and disagreeing on exactly what that is? As you said-
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Hey, that question is too easy. It is impossible to have any evidence of a God creating the first man and woman. While the theory of evolution is based on evidence. When religious people argue the meaning of what is in the bible their arguments are logical but not scientific. There is no evidence to collect and no experiments to do. Although religious arguments can logical there is no evidence.
-Athena
___________________________________________________________________________________
quote=turtle
So, to restate what I said before, Religion is almost certainly wrong and I agree with that, but I don't think we should be so hasty to adopt the next great thing in entirety and ignore the dead ends that can leave us with. (String theory, unexplained phenomena, the 99% of the universe we have never seen or explored) Doesn't logical thinking kind of backfire when what we came to logically turns out to be a paradox? In other words, a logical solution could not possibly solve some questions we ask, therefore logical thinking may be very powerful, but not powerful enough to explain everything and certainly doesn't always provide absolutes. I agree with you to an extent that logic and reason are the best we have at the moment in terms of explaining our world, but people may have very different things to say about logic and reason in the future and may think of us as just as ignorant as we think of those dark age peasants.
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Religious thinking is also logical. But it is not evidence. I know some people think pointing at what is said in the bible is giving evidence, but by the science standard, holy books are reliable evidence. Holy books are mythology.

My point was we are not absolutely sure of anything and we should stop arguing with the belief that we can be absolutely sure of what we think we know. Our science truths are based on evidence, but it seems evident to us things are solid and it is all energy. That is pretty strange, isn't it.
-Athena
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Speaking of the dark ages, saying that Rome adopting Christianity was the cause would be a bit of a stretch. Generally, the position historians take is one that follows this line of thinking, "Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, weak men create hard times". Many factors went into the collapse of Rome, and I think most would attribute it to size and corruption (that was present in the government of Rome far before Christ was even born) as well as enemies on the borders seeing opportunities. Even so, it was probably more complex than that. One of the world's most powerful empires ever doesn't fall for just one reason.
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Rome in the west fell because it exhausted its supply of gold and there is nothing they could do to resolve that problem. But that alone is not what lead to Dark Ages. It was the Christians and no one else who turned out the lights. They very intentionally destroyed the papan temples and turn their backs on the accumulated knowledge that is math and science-based. Those pagan temples were places of learning math and learning about the universe. Somehow we have got to get this into our present consciousness. Christians are still standing in the way of science and causing us problems and science we replace liberal education with education for technology and left moral training to the church the problem is much worse.
-Athena
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quote=turtle
I think the majority of human societies throughout all of history have been militaristic.
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The old world order was ordered by family order. The Military Industrial Complex or New World Order is ordered by Prussian military order applied to citizens. The Prussians lived for a love of war. The people in the US lived for a love of God and this is because of the Enlightenment. :grimace: This is all paradoxical and I need a stronger cup of coffee to work through it. I greatly appreciate you backing me into the corner and forcing me to think how to change how people think of this. And for those wars, you write as though you think this is human nature. Raiding parties are human nature. Modern warfare is not human nature.
-Athena
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Quote+turtle
Say what you will about the enlightenment and how those European nations started to slowly encourage thought, but they still had wars and still forcefully took control of lesser off nations as colonies as late as the world wars. Even now, lots of businesses have factories and plantations in poor areas of the world that used to be colonies used for those things anyway, and they pay very little and rule with an iron fist. As for America, I think that Native Americans and Mexicans who lived in the Southwest and colonists from other European powers would disagree in your thought about America being more pacifist than militarist. Manifest Destiny is sort of just militaristic conquest said politely so people don't feel bad for stealing land. Of course, I don't believe in absolutes, especially morally, so I don't have a position on whether that was right or wrong, but I think I can classify it as militaristic.
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All evidence is that the US demobilized after every war and did not maintain the war industries and stand ready for war. Now Manifest Destiny is another matter. May I point out that is a religious problem? Paradox. The world was certainly made worse with a religion the claims there is only one god and this god has favorite people and tells people to kill every man, woman, and child so "God's people" can have the land. But as I said before raiding parties and modern warfare are two different things. We need to raise awareness of the difference. We need to remember it was extremely hard to drag the US into the world wars. If you want to discuss, we need to create a thread for that. What you said of Russian plowing over the US, needs to go in another thread.
-Athena
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quote=turtle
Democracy - a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives.
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We do not have a democratic form of government. We have a republic. The political power of this republic has steadily increased and is now so controlled by industry and military interest, we are far from the democracy we defended in two world wars. And that democracy was a social order that was defended in the classroom. That democracy is no longer defended.
-Athena
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Quote=turtle
Liberty - the state of being free within society from oppressive restrictions imposed by authority on one's way of life, behavior, or political views.

These are copy and paste definitions. I know that definitions are kind of shaky on things like this but I suppose whatever people say it is the most is a good place to start.
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Only highly moral people can have liberty. Anarchy is not tolerable and if it is not suppressed with strong laws and law enforcers, it must be kept at bay with education. There are two ways to have social order. Authority over the people or culture. We stopped usingeducation to transmit that culture and that leaves on authority over the people.
-Athena
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Democracy seems to be rule by the people in some capacity. I think we can both agree that the people of any nation (and the human mind itself) are very easily deceived. The average person does not decide who they want to be president or what laws to pass on just reason, and sometimes no reason at all. When people go to vote, a lot of complex reactions are happening in their brain and I'd be willing to bet most of them have something to do with emotion. A people can value reason all they want, but unless they modify their own brains in order to only see reason, they will also have emotions and that will skew the result. Personally, I'm not against genetic modification of any kind, but I don't think artists would be very happy about you removing their children's emotions.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Yes, we are in a real mess because democracy is protected by literacy in Greek and Roman classics, and we must be prepared for good judgment (liberal education) and Christianity stands in the way of that. Now it is also the Military Industrial Compex standing in the way of the education essential to good moral judgment and democracy.
-Athena
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Liberty seems to have very little to do with rules, especially those by reason. Liberty seems to be the opposite of rules in a sense. If you live by reason, that is totally fine, but telling people what to think is inherently authoritarian, even if you're "right". (Right in quotation marks because we have both already established that speaking that absolute is troubling.) It is also just as authoritarian even if what is right changes with what the evidence is, If anything, that would be more authoritarian because you are then not only telling outsiders what to think but also forcibly changing what your own people think.
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:lol: Yes we have mass ignorance. Our liberty goes with science. Moral is a matter of cause and effect.
-Athena
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never had any intention of being cruel. I just wish to have a pleasant discussion about life with strangers on the internet. I have to say that most of your points have been interesting if not flawed (Just like everyone else's, including mine I'm sure.) and I do look forward to further discussion on this. If someone is actually belittling you, I can't do anything to stop it, but I would like to treat you as an equal if not a superior. (I saw in another post of yours that you used to live in Hollywood in the 50's. You have obviously had a lot more life experience than a lot of people here and are a very important asset in a discussion.) So if you take anything away from this, just know that at least I am not deliberately trying to deny things you hold as truths, but challenge them just as you should mine and just as everyone else should to everyone else in the most respectful manner possible. — TogetherTurtle

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I absolutely love the discussion and very much appreciate what you are saying. It is my inadequacy that is the problem. I have been doing this for years and still, struggle to answer questions.

Someone who shared his knowledge of Qabala in a forum many years ago, explained without discussion people do not gain understanding. We have to talk and discuss liberty and democracy daily and this must be a constant part of our lives, just as Christianity is a constant part of life for Christians. Our Forefathers were Masons and they were discussing liberty and democracy or reading about it daily. WE, THAT IS THE HUGE POPULATION OF THE US, ARE NOT DISCUSSING OUR LIBERTY AND DEMOCRACY. We can copy and paste, but what do know of the meaning?

I would not say strangers cause us fear but we are programmed to be on guard when our paths cross the path of a stranger. This would include job interviews, public speaking, or walking through a new neighborhood, especially if the neighborhood is populated by people who are noticeably different. The fear is a sign of intelligence and we are programmed by nature to experienced it.

If we are really sure of ourselves and confident we can handle whatever happens, we will be less fearful. Good social skills could reduce our fears. A belief that a God is protecting us can reduce our fears. Being logical can increase or decrease our fears, depending on the reality of the situation. Special military training can override our natural impulses. In public speaking if we think of the feeling as excitement gearing us to do our best, instead of fear, we can trick ourselves into feeling safe and very alert. :grin:

That sounds very interesting. What is a virtual realm? What if a person had a shitty job and wanted to explore other jobs?

I am not understanding your reasoning. Do you agree it is natural to experience fear of the unknown? The stranger is unknown and this can result in fear, right? Under what conditions is this not true?

"Hell if I know. From personal experience, I can tell you that at least where I live, Atheistic ideas and institutions have never really held power. The only reason I ever learned about the concept was a book about the Bill of Rights I read when I was in 5th grade. I grew up around people who thought I was a freak for not believing in God, and for a time I thought that they shouldn't be able to speak their mind because they didn't think rationally, but as I got older I questioned rationality itself. How can we be sure we are correct when our brains forget things and make up new things all the time? It is my belief now at least that a fundamental part of the human experience is not knowing the truth. I find it hard to think that I am above my friends and neighbors and family when I don't even know if I'm right after all.

As for a Military Industrial Complex, maybe. We have been militaristic almost as long as we've been religious, so it would be hard for me to say without looking into it more."
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We can never be absolutely sure we are correct.

Democracy is an imitation of the Greek gods who argued with each other until there was agreement on the best reasoning. And we all know, after everything is settled, someone gets a new insight or our situation changes and we have to start the reasoning process all over again. That is what makes democracy different from religion. Religions are not self-correcting. Democracy is self-correcting.

Our good manners is based on the fact that we can not be absolutely sure we are correct. Being like a 10 year child who can only deal with absolutes is not a desirable trait for adults. We have to live with paradox and opposing rights (this is right and so is that right, but we have choose) and other difficult choices. I used to wish I had a magic ball that would tell me my best choice. :lol: Our reality is not as black and white as education for technology can lead us to believe.

NO, We WERE NOT MILITARIST! :cry: I am overwhelmed by the challenge I face in these forums. The Enlightenment springs out of a lot stupid warring in Christian Europe and a determination to have rule by reason, rather than rule by the reasoning of few men who think life is nothing more than power struggles and their personal purpose in life is to have the most power.

Democracy is rule by reason. Liberty is about living with rule by reason. The US was known for standing against war. It demilitarized after every war. Not until Eisenhower and the Korean war did the US determine to maintain military power. When we geared up for the second world war, we ranked 17th in military might, below small countries. Our American revolution was in part a rebellion against paying taxes for England's military might. US tax payers were strongly against having a large military and paying for it. That they think the power and glory of our military might has always been part of our national pride, is like Jesus putting on an uniform and leading us into war. And damn, but if the Christian Right does not love our presidents who take us to war in the name of God. SOMETHING HAS GONE REALLY WRONG!

The same thing happened to Germany and for the same reasons. Hitler's New World Order and Bush's New World Order are the same. This is the gift of Prussian military bureaucracy applied to citizens and education for the Military Industrial Complex. We lived for the love of God and the Prussians lived for a love of war. We are all Christians you know, but can you picture Jesus dressed like Ceasar?

↪Athena I believe that free speech is important, but some people just don't. A lot of the time people see progress as a straight line, and never consider at all that there could be some truth in different ways. At the end of the day, even though I don't believe in God, I can't say that he isn't real any more certainly than a devout person can say that he is. Free speech and expression help to reach the end that is a society where all views are at least given a platform, but in practice, people use those rights to deplatform their rivals and that sort of defeats the purpose of free speech. It's a tricky situation, but also a problem worth solving.

As for the power of Christianity, as far as I was aware it has been a huge part of American and western culture for hundreds of years. I may be mistaken, but it seems like up until 1958 schools did teach morals, but they were Christian morals, which kind of defeats the purpose of mentioning how they stopped teaching them in an argument against Christians themselves. I would imagine that a lot of moral positions you hold are also ones the church held, (The Ten Commandments and such. Of course maybe not all of those, but for the western world they seem to be the starting point for most senses of morality.) and those were probably taught in schools. Of course, some things the Bible says (Like stoning homosexuals and women being traded almost as property) are certainly bad, (at least today) and I don't disagree with that. So overall, I don't think everything religion teaches is good, or accurate, but they are certainly a useful institution that has had power for a long time and is worth keeping around if for nothing else as a sort of "devil's advocate" (ironically) for an increasingly Atheistic society.

I think my position is something close to pacifism in a political and moral way. There is no universal answer key telling us what is right or wrong, true or false, so hurting others emotionally or physically for holding a view is a risky venture at best. (Of course, I assume you don't do those things, but some people certainly do.) So I don't think the church should be the primary source for moral teachings to the general populace, but I don't think secular organizations in schools should be either. Isn't the most egalitarian way to give both a platform and let the people decide from there? What about the other organizations that have strong moral views? I don't see why they are any more right or wrong than the two mentioned before, so they should have platforms to discuss too. Ideally, society would be governed (at least in the context of morality) by the majority group out of all of those, or by none at all, each acting as sort of guiding hand to those who wish to learn their ways and then apply those.

. — TogetherTurtle

Freedom of speech- arguing with each other about what is true and right is vital. What is essential about this is understanding there are rules of logic that must be followed. Just spewing off at the mouth is not protected freedom of speech. A President of the US refusing to speak with a leader of another country is violating the principle of freedom of speech. The purpose of freedom of speech is rule by reason. It is not power plays carried on by a couple of jerks who unfortunately have positions of power. I will repeat the important points. Democracy is rule by reason and this very different from dictatorships or monarchies that are the rule of humans over humans. Freedom of speech is essential to rule by reason and it must comply with rules of logic.

Religion- religion violates the rules of logic, therefore it violates good moral judgment and rule by reason. Sure religions carry some morals, but it does not prepare anyone for good moral judgment. The story of the Little Red Hen or the Empires New Clothes and most fables from many lands transmit morals. Jesus spoke in parables to transmit moral concepts and this is no different from telling fables. Mythology is about preparing the young to be adults in the communities. While all of this helps us be better humans, it is not truth as science is truth. Believing one has the word of God is nuts and it causes a lot of problems! A lot of problems- from ignorance that leads to people dying of disease, to wars with all sides believing a god is on their side.

A huge part of our problem is spell check thinking, technological thinking instead of philosophical thinking. There is truth, and spell check insist I write "the" truth, not of truth. There is a serious and important difference between thinking of truth versus "the" truth. Education for technology along with leaving moral training to the church and people who think they know God's truth is killing our democracy and liberty.

Education for democracy, liberty and good moral judgment is education in logic and increasingly complex concepts. I repeat, education for good moral judgment is education in logic and knowledge. It was Socrates' goal to expand our conscience- con means coming out of and science means knowledge.

"There is no universal answer key telling us what is right or wrong, true or false,"

"I don't think secular organizations in schools should be either."

Ouch,that thinking is the problem today! And we come to this by leaving moral training to the church and leaving the masses to believe they have God's truth, although they disagree with each other about what that truth is. This is nuts and it will destroy us.

What about logic and social agreements? Please, we are reduced to running around like a bunch of monkeys or pack of wolves without logic and the ability to make social agreements based on reason. Religion with its notion of having God's truth has us really messed up! No one has God's truth in a book written by men. There is only human reasoning and a human concept of truth. Understanding our reality gives us a better reality than the reality that monkeys and wolves have. We came from living like animals, and only recently got out of ignorance and poverty, and today's reasoning would destroy our wonderful achievement. Because of human nature, reasoning and accumulated knowledge(math and science) the ability to have social agreements, we have had a few hundreds of amazing progress. Christianity almost wiped this progress out of human memory when it got control in Rome. Truly history is not a straight line of progress. Christianity threw us into the Dark Ages, and we might return to that because of ending education for good moral judgment and leaving moral training to the church. We are destroying what we have achieved with ideas like the selfish gene and freedom to say or do anything we please. The reason for morals is to avoid that destruction. Morals are logical reasoning.

:heart: :flower:

You make my heart sing with joy because I absolutely love conundrums. Your post makes me feel like a child in a toy store free to play with anything I want.

I operate with a notion that I have duties to humanity, my country, and my family. Oh, and I am also working on my life after death by learning as much as I can. I don't want to sit next to the great people of history and be totally ignorant. :yikes: That would be embarrassing.

If we are in the resurrection it is our duty to learn as we can and work through all the decisions we need to make for all of us. :lol: That is to say I have some pretty good fantasies and a sense of purpose.

Did I have to have children? To fulfill myself as a woman I did have to have children. Would I do it again? Not in this lifetime! Do I regret that I had children? Well, maybe because I can agree with your point of view and our future is not looking good. But there is a chance that all may come out well and taking that chance is kind of like betting a horse race. I am not talking about truth, but an attitude and a feeling, and if we can make this come out good, wouldn't that be wonderful? Could there be a better heaven than one that is this interesting?

There was a time many years ago when I didn't like life and I contemplated suicide a lot. I couldn't kill myself and leave people to hurt, so I had to kill them too, and then I had to kill all the people who would hurt if I killed those people. I realized the circle of people I would have to kill just got bigger and bigger, so I had to give the idea up. Okay, if I couldn't kill myself, then what? Obviously, I had to do whatever I could do to make life better.

A cartoon really helped me turn myself around. It was a picture of a man standing at the complaint desk in heaven and the caption read, "I don't like life. Do you have anything better to offer?"

Hell or Hades is a place we must all go to have a sense of meaning. But we must never go to Hades without the help of the gods, because it is so easy to get lost in Hades. To be lost in Hades is to be depressed or maybe even psychotic. I love Greek mythology. Our lack of a shared mythology today is problematic. Now we each have to invent our won mythology. For sure we can create our own hells and get lost in them. But perhaps we should keep in mind- it isn't all about us. It is also about everyone we know and everyone they know and the circle just keeps getting bigger.

Can we please with begin with the science of our nature? From birth, we are programmed to recognize sameness and differences. Research determined at birth the baby can distinguish between the parent's language and a foreign language. I believe we need to be aware of this programming and from there develop our concepts of truth.

Obviously, culture has a lot to do with our ability to trust others and I that is why I am making my arguments. We had a culture that encouraged trusting each other and we are rapidly destroying our past reality of privacy and trust. In the 1950s I lived in Hollywood, California and we did not lock our doors and we did not live in fear. Today I wouldn't even drive through Hollywood without locking my car doors and there is no way I would attempt to live there. Hollywood is a hell hole compared to when we could ride a trolley to the beach. Trust is not just about how fearful or courage we are. It is also about the world around us.

I distinctly choose to be with people my own age, because I share values with these people, and life experiences that make it easier for us to understand each other, It is more pleasant for me to engage with people like me. Here sameness means feeling comfortable and it requires less energy. I would love to travel around the world and experience people of different cultures, and I eagerly engage with people from other countries. I love differences but in my day to day life, I want what is familiar and comfortable.

I have said it is important to respect everyone, but trust is something that must be earned. A good con person will appear to be like me, knowing that will lead to me being trusting. It is just our nature. However, today it is foolish to be trusting without knowing the other. Brand name companies have shot themselves in the foot by having their products made in China and then marketing a product that is far inferior to the standard we expected from these companies. And then there are the jerks who tried to run on the good name of Windows, who scammed us. When the bottom line is money, morality can go down the toilet, and today we have created a very untrusting reality. The rip off artist in foreign countries have increased our distrust of strangers. The management company that took over the apartments where I live has caused people to move out because they can not be trusted for anything but gorging more and more money from us. In the long run, people who have made money the bottom line will pay for that. Perhaps our whole nation will pay for that as we come to believe no one can be trusted. This is very destructive to even very large and powerful nations.

Freedom of speech is one of our most important freedoms and we need to protect it even when someone is saying something we do not like. It is the principle that must be protected, and I will say only when get rid of religion will we return to the principles of democracy. Because religion is relying on the will of a God and democracy is relying on rule by reason.

Only highly moral people can have liberty, and it is reason that brings us to highest morality, not religion. But we have lost this reasoning because in 1958 we dropped education for good moral judgment and left moral training to the church. Now we are in a real mess and our most threatening enemy is ourselves.

In 1917 teachers were very proud of what their education for democracy had to do with the increasing powers of the unions. Farmers had granges so they could also have shared benefits. Parents had far more control of education than government, through personal contact with the schools and PTA and socializing with each other and going to town hall meetings.

The power of Christianity was manifested out of the strength of its organiation. Secular organizations have tended to be weak and without education for democracy, they are being disseminated. It was a terrible decision to end education for good moral judgment and leave moral training to the church. Our liberty and democracy are being destroyed as the Military Industrial Complex is swallowing up the rather weak secular orgainzation we had. (I am testing this bold statement. If you think me wrong please say so.) Bottom line is democracy needs unions or better yet, replace autocratic industry with the democratic model.

I think what you said is excellent and I want to add to this the importance of liberty and an organization that empowers the people, democracy.

Liberty is not the freedom to do anything we please, but the freedom to determine for ourselves what is right and wrong. This goes with an understanding of morals as a matter of cause and effect, and it requires training for logic. It is not basing our decisions on our feelings but on reason.

Freedom does not imply good moral judgment. Freedom is doing whatever we feel like doing at the moment and it can be disastrous. I think we are in moral crisis because we think about freedom and not our responsibility to use our freedom wisely.

Empowering people who run on emotion and false beliefs is not a real good idea. On the other hand tyranny is an even worse idea, no matter how well-intentioned the tyrant is. The problem with tyrants is not if they have good or bad intentions, but human judgement is better when everyone participates in the decision making. The collective mind is superior to the mind of a few. But here things can get a little dicey. An emotionally driven mob, surely is not to be desired! Steps must be taken for the mass to have both power and good reasoning.

Two reasons for having liberty and democracy are-

1, the collective mind holds more information
2. people obey the laws when they believe they hold the responsibility for those laws. When it is their laws, they want to protect them. When they feel responsible for the laws, they take steps to change laws when they believe they need changing.

This is totally different from religion with rules given by a God and demanding only obedience of the people, not reasoning. Mans' laws are changeable. God's laws are not changeable. At least not until God sends us a new prophet who can correct the misunderstanding of what the last prophet said. :lol: In short the Christian bible does not give us a good explanation of democracy. It talks a lot about being obedient and not thinking too much and then we elect presidents who do not think too much but we hope will do the will of God. This is difficult because Christians have so much control of our country and the religion is not good for liberty and democracy. Obviously, we can not have rule by reason when Christians dominate. That leads to destroying liberty and democracy especially when public education stops preparing the young for liberty and democracy.

One more thing, judging human nature that has been denominated by believers in the God of Abrahman is like Fraud's belief that women envy men's penises. The truth is distorted by cultural exclusion, and not knowing of humans outside the culture. Religions give us a biased point of view.

What is the problem with knowing it is our nature to be on guard when in the presence of a stranger? I thought understanding human nature was always a good thing. What is the problem with that?

Not your personal goal but the goal of the individual deciding to be social or to be a hermit. There are valid reasons for either choice.

There is a delightful story of hell. There are two rooms. In each room the people are dressed nicely and they are sitting at a large table that is filled with delicious foods. In one room the people are enjoying themselves and the other they are not. In both rooms people's arms had been made stiff so no one could feed him/her self. In the room of happy people, they were feeding each other. In the room of unhappy, they were complaining and screaming angrily and not helping each other enjoy the banquet. The moral is, it is as you make it. Happiness isn't out there but in your head. You can be angry because you don't have what you want, or you can be grateful for what you do have.

Or another way of looking at this, is back to the question of the goal. I thought to be fulfilled as a woman, I had to have children. To have children, I had to be married to a man who would support me and the children. This choice to be a fulfilled woman was a choice to depend on someone else and put my family first. A good woman puts others first and cares for everyone in the family and community simply because this is what a good woman does. Before deciding to be a mother, I considered being a nun and that too would be a choice to serve others and depend on others for my needs. I may have preferred that choice, but I do not believe the Christian mythology and I did not know of a Buddhist nunnery at the time.

What must the individual do to fulfill one's self-image? How does this define the relationships with others? I have a video of a man who spent his life as a hermit in Alaska. That was very fulfilling to him.
Given the choice I made, I am happiest when I get a call from time to time to help someone in the family and when I think what I am doing is making a difference in a child's life. I would love to make a difference in the world with my writing and I am thrilled with all the people attempting to make the same difference I want to make. I feel very tied to humanity from the very beginning to the end but this includes a lot of time to myself which is vital to me being any good to anyone else.

In any society there has to be a system for exchanging goods and services. Markets are an ancient institution, whereas capitalism is a relatively recent system (last few hundred years). Socialism is also a recent development, more recent than capitalism. The essence of capitalism is not buying and selling; people have been doing that for several thousand years. Capitalism is a legal system creating corporations directed by boards of directors, selling shares, and existing to maximize profits for the shareholders. A market where a seller exchanges wool for lumber doesn't have to involve any of the essential capitalists features. A market (Target, Amazon) can be a capitalist corporation, but it doesn't need to be. — Bitter Crank

GOOD JOB! I love the way to cleaned up the popular misunderstanding. :up:

I think that people tend to be irrational about privacy issues. Part of that is the degree to which people estimate that anyone is going to really be interested in their private lives.

Feeling safe is fine, but if that involves an aversion to difference, or if it involves people being hypersensitive and rather neurotic, then we have serious problems.

Re trusting each other, that's important in close relationships, of course, but I think it's just as important that we don't automatically trust others, especially not what they say. We put far too much weight on utterances/speech acts in general in my opinion.

I'm not at all a fan of etiquette or "good manners" for their own sake. I want people to be existentially authentic and to be able to accept difference.

I'm very pro-difference, pro everyone letting their freak flag fly, and pro being cool with others letting their freak flags fly, no matter how different they may be from your own, no matter how much you wouldn't choose the same things for yourself.

And respect needs to be earned.

What solves social problems is being cool with difference. Being laissez-faire. Not wanting to control others. I'm extremely against all types of social pressure in the direction of conformity. — Terrapin Station

Feeling safe will always involve an aversion to a difference, or a curiosity because we are primates. It is instinctive to detect sameness or difference. It is instinctive to need to know if this movement or object is a threat to us or not. We can overcome our fears by becoming familiar with the movement or object. That is having enough information to know the cause of the movement or what the object is and can do.

Our fear of the stranger is fundamental to our survival. Let us appreciate that and be respectful of it. Then we can make better judgments based on awareness of our survival need to know and that fear is our friend. Feeling bad about ourselves because we fear something or someone will not help. Apply reason, not blind prejudiced judgment.

Trusting each other is essential to commerce and the economy. Trump's power plays are crippling to the trust essential to good commerce and economic growth. I wish his playing board remained his private affair and had not become a public affair affecting international politics and economies. He is like the bully who brings the ball to the game and drives everyone home by insisting everyone play by his rules. Trust is very important to commerce and economics.

Can you follow the logic of respecting all people because we do so for the sake of being respectful? What happens when we respect another? What happens when we disrespect someone. Might we want one result and not the other? The Greeks understood moral as knowing universal law, (knowledge of how the universe works) and good manners. Practicing good manners for their own sake is vital to manifesting a better reality and avoiding so many of our human problems. Now it doesn't matter if the other has a different sexual orientation or is a different race or ethnicity. There is one rule that applies to all equally. :smile: We are equal and different. The world is a better place when we follow the rule and problems arise when we do not. Do you agree with that logic?

What is the benefit of being pro differences? I am sure there are some benefits but too much of a good thing is not good. What you say of being pro differences leads me to think of being on a small life raft in the middle of an ocean and having no idea which way to paddle to have a chance of surviving. Promoting differences and holding that respect has to be earned do not go together. That would be finding fault with someone who does not meet your idea of a person who earns respect, and that is not promoting differences.

What is being cool with differences if it is not being respectful? Telling me you think respect needs to be earned, does not go with "I'm extremely against all types of social pressure in the direction of conformity." Please check your logic.

I think we need to be careful with our words. Money is not a spirit. Our spirit can be generous or greedy, it can feel safe and bold or afraid and powerless, but money is money. Money has no feeling and cannot be spirit.

A lot happened in 1958. The Military Industrial Complex was embedded in our government. We replaced liberal education with education for technology. This meant the end of education for good moral judgment and transmitting the culture that is vital to empowering the people and liberty. The social, economic and political ramifications of this change are huge.

Yes, the fact that I am not a Christian resolved the problem. He is very sure he does not want to consider having a serious relationship with a non-Christian. :lol: I have to laugh because in this thread we are considering robots and perfect mates.

Personally, I have a preference for a mate who has the same background in the classics and science that I have. For the two men, I had breakfast with, this intellectual focus is lacking in feeling and spontaneity. I was working extra hard to be sociable with these men. I thought their Christian bias made them insensitive. :lol: We, that is all of us, are divided between thinking a president should be a thinking person like Obama or a spontaneous person like Bush or Trump. Christians want to trust in God and the other side wants to trust in education and the perfectibility of man. Then we have those who are sure computers and robots are best. :lol: I am not willing to give up my planet to the computers and robots, nor do I desire to wake up every day with a Christian.