I think most of our thinking occurs in our subconscious without our conscious awareness. In fact, trying to remain conscious of figuring out a problem is more apt to prevent us from becoming aware of the solution. We are better off to go for a drive or sleep on a problem and let our minds work without our conscious control. Of course, if it is understanding quantum physics that we desire, we must be devoted to a study math and science before we can have a quantum physics thought, but our sleep time is as important to our learning as our wake time, and allowing children plenty of physical activity while at school, would also improve their ability to learn.

This is perhaps the most important explanation of our thinking at this time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjVQJdIrDJ0

What is your idea of how to judge truth? My idea of judging truth is to use the scientific method. I also try to remain aware that I should never be too sure of what I think I know. I am afraid those who think they can know absolute truth are absolutely dangerous.

Liberal education taught people how to think, not what to think. Unless we learn how to think abstractly, we don't. Nothing is wrong with anything said in the Bible when it is understood abstractly. However, a lot is wrong with the Bible when it is understood concretely. I want to stress, we need education in the higher order thinking skills if we are to use our brains most effectively for the better of mankind and all life on earth. Relying on a god to take care of us is a big mistake, however, understanding how God works (science) is pretty important.

I think in a democracy our faith is supposed to be a faith in humans, however, with this faith is an understanding of the importance of education that enhances the human good, and that is not education for a technological society with unknown values.

It is also a concept of equality that does not mean being same, for we are as different as the gods, but the sun shines equally on all of us, so we aim for equal opportunity to fulfill our individual potential and make our best contribution to the whole. This is not compatible with the hierarchy of authority of religions and the notion that some are closer to god than others, or that a god has a chosen few.

You opened the door for that comment by inferring a goal should be to develop our own faith. Humanism and faith in humans is preferable to some of us.

How about the story of Adam and Eve should be interpreted abstractly as should all the parables be interpreted abstractly.

Interpreting the Bible literally is very problematic! Yes, we should wash our hands before eating and demons do not possess us unless you want to be abstract about those demons meaning fear and anger, not literally supernatural beings of evil.

I accept the "thumbs up" from Terrapin Station and pass the "thumbs up" on to Lif3r. It takes courage to expose ourselves and you obviously did so to pass what you learned on to us. That is a very generous act.

I think we have some agreement that hurting others is not okay. I think the world would be a better place if we shared family values and drew the line at not doing things that hurt our families. What we are doing stops being moral when it hurts others.

Failure to be a good parent harms the child and this harm is passed on for generations.

This is definitely something I agree with you on. There should be far more common sense in the criminal justice system. The objective should be to make everyone's lives better, and that's not done by taking a draconian, "technically correct" approach to criminal justice. — Terrapin Station

Can we start a movement and do something about our barbaric criminal justice system?!

in a Micheal Moore show, "Where to Invade Next" is a prison with 4 unarmed guards whose purpose is to make people's lives better so they can return to society truly corrected.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KeAZho8TKo

We treat stray animals better than humans in prison and we even imprison people with mental disorders and then abuse them terribly. Where to Invade Next also has a video from one of our prisons and this is a terrible national shame. No way are people who do things the way do them in the US, international leaders that lift the human potential. When it comes to being good human beings, the US might not have much to defend? Smoking pot is not as bad as our prison system. There is no moral superiority in some of our social agreements.

The bottom line for me is moral is a matter of cause and effect, and we should be held responsible for the effect of our words and deeds. That means being responsible for pursuing knowledge so our judgment is the best it can be. Only recently have we become so dependent on formal education provided by colleges, and this dependency on colleges has distorted our understanding our what is important about a democracy and being human.

About making it illegal to have children if one can not support them, that is a different subject and I have a lot to say about that but not in this thread. :grin: Just compared to doing pot, what is worse. Doing the pot or not supporting a child and the parent who needs to care for the child?

The brain chemistry though true, alcohol is the same way and worse it is a poison literally... somebody is fucking wrong here. Either alcohol be illegal or marijuana be legal... It contradicts itself any other way... and I am on the premise of unlimited rights not less. — Drek

I am in favor of what you said, however, I would add taxing all substances including sugar to cover the harm done by the substances. Use the taxes to cover medical cost and pay for support groups and rehabilitation, and when families are harmed, to help them recover as well.

Prisons are expensive and waste away a person's life and this also hurts everyone who cares about the person in prison, including the children. That is just barbaric. It is not justice that will make life better.

Gambling should also be taxed to for treating those who become addicted and helping families that are hurt.

Tax wood products to replant trees and so on. Making money needs to come with responsibility and taxing a product or service to resolve a problem caused by using a product or service is responsible.

[

Well, if as you say ignorance is exculpatory, then for the ignorant, there is no crime, yes? — tim wood

What a wonderful philosophical question. I can think of few things worse than bringing a child into this world without being prepared to care for the child and we have not made that a crime. Maybe we should?

There is one law, that is the law of nature, and if we make good choices the consequences will be good, but if we make bad choices the consequences will be bad. Our laws are supposed to comply with the laws of nature, and the laws that do comply with the laws of nature get good results and the laws that don't comply with the laws of nature get bad results. Our reaction to pot has lead to a lot of bad, and I would hate for anyone in my family to go to prison because of pot. Our laws regarding pot, seem to be what we should stand against.

I know alcohol is extremely destructive and causes much suffering, so does meth, but I am not sure marijuana is that bad. We obey the laws when feel empowered to make them and change them. However, at this time we feel disenfranchised and do not respect our laws as we once may have. For sure our laws did not attempt to control our lives as much as they do now. And I am very suspicious about the reasons for making pot illegal.

Well educated people enjoying the benefits of society have a better chance of making good decisions than ignorant people with nothing to loose. Perhaps it would be better to spend money on education and human welfare than on prisons?

Why does anyone want to use pot? What is the harm? Is there a good alternative?

Sure, but the judge didn't allow as to ignorance of the law (maybe some did); the law was applied, and an amnesty given. And there seems to be a movement back to the wisdom of wise judges. Mandatory sentencing had its day (although I do not think it's dead, yet), and was seen and is seen as being essentially racist and misogynistic. The president and state governors in my opinion should commute the sentences of most if not all of the women, especially the African-American women, sentenced under mandatory sentencing guidelines to long, hard time for relatively minor, or very minor, drug offenses. Obama did some, Trump, I think one. Trump could do a lot more, and to his credit if he does.... — tim wood

Ignorance of the law cannot be allowed or forbidden by a judge. It just is. From there the ignorance is something to take into consideration before punishing the offender, or not. It is a matter of the degree of the wrong. To break a law because of ignorance of the law, is not the same as intentionally breaking the law.

But I don't think people with educations focused on technology are aware of the difference? It seems to me people educated for technology are pretty black and white. It is right or it is wrong. Trump must stick with right or wrong thinking because that is the level of thinking of his supporters. His followers want a strong man (very narrow-minded), not someone like Obama.

There are problems with waiting until the pain gets our attention.

Diabetes is known as the silent disease because we can have it for a long time before having symptoms. A lot of damage is done without us knowing it. Same with smoking. Logic is about becoming informed before I have pain and avoiding that which causes pain. Not doing so is ignorance.

It would be really nice if we took the destruction of our earth more seriously. Thinking only of ourselves and passing the problems on to future generations when the pain is too great to deny, is not being responsible. Government should not be irresponsible management of the future.

For sure we live in a society obsessed by being technically correct and I believe this is a serious threat to our liberty. In the past, we cared more about the spirit of the law, and said tyranny is going by the letter of the law. I won't argue that we are not highly concerned about technical correctness today. However, in the past there was room for a judge to say, we will overlook your violation this time, but if it happens again, you will be punished for the infraction and this one too. We relied on the wisdom of judges and didn't make the state the authority over punishments. A wise person isn't wise if s/he does not take ignorance of law into consideration.

This is not the only time in history that a society became overly concerned with technological correctness. I question if this concern for technological is a good thing?

Logic, especially formal logic, is hard in the same way that mathematics is hard. It takes a certain kind of intellect to be comfortable with it right out of the gate.

I think that the best way to initially approach it is slowly, in small chunks. You can't read a formal logic text as if it was a novel. Read a subsection of a chapter. Over and over if necessary until you can really see and feel comfortable with what it's doing. Then move on to the next bit.

Another thing to try is perhaps reading one of the less technical books on philosophical logic first. (Many philosophical logic books concentrate on non-classical logics or otherwise assume that readers are already thoroughly familiar with propositional and predicate logic. They probably aren't the best choice for beginners.) Find a book that discusses logic in prose rather than symbolism, inquiring into what logic is and some of the questions and problems that arise regarding it. That way you can get your mind around what the symbolism is meant to accomplish before you actually attack the symbolism with proofs, derivations and whatnot.

Something like this perhaps (you can decide for yourself what you like):

https://www.amazon.com/Philosophical-Logic-Introduction-Sybil-Wolfram/dp/0415023181 — yazata

Those are words of wisdom. And I am motivated to give your words of wisdom a try.

I totally agree with you about the process of learning logic being unbearable. Let us make the learning interactive. We like communicating with each other, right? Let us bring the pleasure of sharing our humanness with each other into our desire to learn logic.

What is your reason for wanting to learn logic? I want an organized mind, so my thinking is habitually logical and not habitually controlled by my emotions. I want to be on my own authority on truth and right and wrong, rather than have my thinking controlled by others.

No. Nothing - or maybe next to nothing - is universally accepted, and this is certainly no exception. What you're talking about is not an uncommon opinion, but not an opinion that is shared by everyone. These opinions can be contagious, but unless you've experienced it yourself, you can never know what it's like to the full extent, and sometimes that experience can turn out to be different in ways than what you might expect or have been lead to believe. — S

universal truths? People do drugs, including alcohol, because they want to alter their consciousness. When our consciousness is altered, there is a risk of poor judgment. Is there any time or place in the universe when this is not true?

We should tax sugars because they are habit forming and can be very harmful to humans when too much is consumed. I would be delighted if there were no alcohol but that is unlikely, so the next best thing is taxing it enough to pay for all the damage caused by alcohol. It is interesting to see what we have done regarding laws and smoking. I used to smoke at least a pack a day in the comfort of my home, or any place where I wanted to smoke. Now I can't even smoke in my home because I am a renter and would be evicted if I smoked anywhere on the property. I think this is excessive. If I were still smoking the new laws would impinge on my freedom too much.

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.