One of the most sensible and effective ways to do this would be by example though. Can we really do away with people we look up to and if we can what effect would this have?

I guess we’ll have to wait for their reply.

I think they may be asking more than saying. As in what kind of ‘model’ person should liberal people look to for inspiration? What kind of values are they to view as worthwhile?

Eg. To be married and have children, to be an independent woman, to be transgender and of some ethnic minority? Who are the guardians that should be admired when there is more and more attempts to literally rewrite history out of pure ignorance driven by nothing more than a political agenda to ‘appear’ to be doing ‘the right thing’.

Maybe that is kind of the point being made? That is the impression I have anyway. I think it is an interesting perspective to view the extremities of liberal views today to be engrossed in the removal of ‘role models’ be they currently living or long dead.

Manipulation and misinformation are ubiquitous across all political colours (in public circles likely more so due to wilful ignorance).

His question was hidden but it is fairly clear.

He proposed the idea that today ‘liberalism’ is about ‘getting rid of role models’.

Ironically ‘pluralism’ means many different things and has bee used in almost stark opposition to itself by various different philosophers :D I think the version I liked was espoused by I. Berlin? Who are you referring to when you say ‘pluralism’? Who was the main man when you were schooled?

Please dro- a few names if you can and maybe I will spot the one I found most intriguing. Thanks :)

This is actually false. There are plenty of accounts of people ‘going to hell’ then when they recover from their ‘brain death’ they try and turn their life around.

In physical terms I believe it is ‘just’ DMT being released in the brain somehow - triggered by extreme stress maybe. In such states something very significant happens. I have had a certain ‘state’ and it is very much a transformative experience and sadly something that cannot be put into words.

I think in this century we may make some headway into understanding and harnessing the potential benefits of such experiences. There is already more and more studies into psychedelics after decades and decades of irrational dogma and fearmongering.

My point was that is was not a definition of liberalism at all because ‘liberal’ views are still a loosely defined set of rules. I see it as closer to a definition of any human society (even if they ‘handle’ conflicts via genocide or forcing an exodus).

Liberalism does not own the idea of handling conflict at all. It is just a loose set of ideas that can be applied to address human conflict (which is as inevitable as death itself) and conservatism is another loose set of ideas that can be applied to address human conflict, as is fascism or anarchism.

I personally believe that any system looking to eradicate human conflict will essential cause untold destruction to the point where if it continued human society would effectively disappear (be this via evolutionary adaptation or complete annihilation).

We are currently nowhere near having any kind of testable hypothesis for a multiverse. As a scientific idea it is one that may or may not be true and whether or not it is true it may or may not be useful to us.

I remember reading several years ago that hypothetically if we used all the nuclear weapons on Earth it was possible to open up a wormhole large enough to fit a spacecraft in … the major difference with that compared to the ‘multiverse’ is that we could actually test this and get a result.

There are numerous bizarre ideas from physicists because they are basically paid to think outside the box for a living. The ideas we ‘accept’ now are no less weirder (ie. Quantum stuff).

There are a few cases where patients have been declared ‘Brain Dead’ then made a full recovery. Whether they were actually brain dead, or it was a mistake by the hospital, is pretty darn hard to determine.

The is an extraordinary thing so maybe what we class as brain dead is not really the same as someone being dead. I do not see how anyone has the authority to state that no one declared brain dead recovers when this has actually happened.

One goal in "liberal" societies is to manage conflict. Better that than stoking conflict. A lot of what people call "political correctness" are just blandishments aimed at conflict reduction, and the illusion--if not the fact--that since we are all equal, there is no need for conflict. — Bitter Crank

That is a true extreme liberal idea planted in there ;P We are most certainly NOT all equal :D

All societies handle conflict. That is probably a damn good definition of what a ‘society’ is … a group of peoples with various opinions and views that actively handle conflicts within their body and at their borders.

Undoubtedly the term ‘liberal’ has gone through various revamping movements and will likely keep shifting around. A libertine is liberal, yet it is a different sort of liberal that many would shun. Just like any label it can be spun one way or another to suit those wishing to twist their point home without having to navigate through a rational argument.

My impression is that in the US ‘liberal’ (in terms of politicians) basically means slightly right of centre to anyone from Europe.

There is an interesting point in here. I think there is something too the idea of people wanting to do away with ‘role models’ and such.

Is this primarily a ‘liberal’ view. I would say it is likely more extreme ‘leftism’ and that is simply due to a stronger dissatisfaction with ‘tradition’ at large. That said, I do not see this as the primary force of any mainstream leftist agenda.

The whole ‘left versus right’ thing is overall a pull between the status quo versus change. In the US my impression is that the governing bodies are all to the right side of the spectrum (compared to anything in Europe) so maybe this has produced more hard leaning leftist views coming to the fore in the US?

(Note: just speculating as I have never visited the US and only have secondhand sources and commentators who have voiced something along these lines).

I would not call the royals (or other equivalents) as being ‘role models’. They are more or less icons of an idea. The idea that there can be someone to look up to and that this is true for everyone at all levels of society. Stephen Fry has commented that there is something intrinsically humbling about the tradition of the Prime Minister having to mean the head of the monarchy every week to state their intentions for the country. The monarch does have power but they never ever use it politically and act as a kind of living icon that the true leader of the country must bow before and humble themselves (something good for any leader imo).

One thing I think has been a large item in my generation is the decline of marriage. I myself from a young age found the whole thing silly and pointless. I viewed it as a sign of insecurity when people wished to find a bride/groom. I still think such a single-minded attitude to life is weird BUT I have no real issue with marriage as it is just a celebration of a loving relationship and for various legal reasons can be practical too. Another major change in my generation is people choosing not to have children. This is apparently a common feature of any civilisation that has wealth. The birthrate goes down as living standards go up. For me personally I find the repugnance some people express at the idea of having children as repugnant as they do at having children … this puzzles me a lot. Even when I didn’t want to have children I never shunned the idea or winced in disgust at the idea. I think there is something inherently wrong with people who find the idea of having children to be repugnant but have I have ill views of those that simply choose not to.

Has anyone else experienced this view on the increase? The visible facial expression of disgust at the thought of being a parent? I wonder how much of this is due to extreme feminism actively seeking to besmirch would-be-mothers and calling them ‘anti-feminist’ because they wish to raise children rather than pursue a career.

I guess this current social complication is not a massive surprise given that women in the workplace is a relatively recent thing and differing societies around the world are muddling through this change as bets they can.

I have pretty much declared something quite similar and went into depth on this subject elsewhere. I came at it from the perspective of the ‘Hypothetical’.

My point in that thread (many years ago) was that we seem to abstain from responsibility in favour of cold rationalisation. To reduce a difficult question to a logical one, in many cases, to refuse to take direct responsibility.

The example I gave of this was the Trolley Problem where some people would side with calculating the numbers and justifying their potential action based on this. The flip side is people flat out refusing to answer any Hypothetical viewing the whole exercise as fruitless. The former resists emotional input in favour of a cold and detached mathematical view whilst the latter resists any form of response eager to resist any ill thoughts that may occur during a serious contemplation of the Hypothetical.

(See first couple of threads I made since joining).

What I mean is that thinking of the ethical aspects of philosophy, as consequences in real life, is important. It runs alongside understanding of ideas as explanations for the nature of causation and processes. — Jack Cummins

I will attempt to translate the above.

What I mean is that ethics is important. It runs alongside our general rational understanding of the world.

To which my response would be … demonstrate this to me please. If my translation is off you need to try again. ‘Ethical aspects of philosophy’ IS ethics. There is no need to then add on ‘consequences in real life’ because ethics is precisely about this.

I guess that thinking about the impact of ideas and philosophy is part of the same process as evaluating truth of ideas rationally, as the ethical dimension. — Jack Cummins

That one.

This sentence looks like word salad to me. I think you have not found then correct words to ask your question or that you are using these words in a very ambiguous way.

Yes.

Not much more to add. Sorry.

I’ve met numerous people who have a degree and cannot write a paragraph. Writing, like reading, is an extremely difficult skill to master. For some reason too many people think education stops once you leave school without realising that ‘schooling’ is simply the first step on the never ending road of learning to teach yourself.

Maybe your brother’s point was that you talk and talk and end up saying ‘nonsense’ as you put it. In that respect I would be inclined to agree that the ‘humanities’ (or at least vast sections of it) are often counterproductive in academia … I guess if some fruit still drops from the ‘humanities’ though it is a worthy field.

An example of exasperation would be someone reading your first sentence there and just automatically switching off. Start simple and then build up to more condensed sentences.

Note: My own writing style is not exacting concise! :D

My personal ‘belief’ here is that we are all already dead (just like everyone else before and after us) and that we are all ‘immortal’ too.

In short, I am not entirely convinced that the human perspective has that much meaning. That our appreciation of space-time is facile, yet it is an intrinsic element of our grounding as ‘existing’ entities … whatever that means! :D

Maybe there is some comfort in this, but really it is not much of a comfort at all stating that we are effectively too ignorant to know or acknowledge anything of ‘consequence’ … as ‘consequence’ is no more than a temporal shortsightedness.

I often say to people “think about all the people around you right now, about all the people around the world … they are ALL going to die.” Have that thought to yourself right now in the privation of your head. Is it ‘scary,’ ’liberating,’ ‘threatening,’ ‘confusing’ or something else entirely. Either way it is true, and usually you will experience a bizarre transition through several different attitudes that I find kind of interesting.

It is a different way of thinking about truth' from the quest for validity and accuracy of knowledge, which is often valued as the measure by which philosophy is measured. — Jack Cummins

No it isn’t. Philosophising about philosophy is still philosophy. Evaluating some proposed body of ‘philosophical work’ can be done from multiple parallel perspectives (artistically, historically, scientific, psychologically, etc.,.) often, if not always, in some admixture of these lenses of focus.

The horizon always appears as a flat, one-dimensional line but the closer you edge towards it you become aware of the reality … the ‘line’ is as broad as your entire world. Nevertheless we require some form of delineation and a place to anchor ourselves or everythinf is just one big grey and formless mush.

Nietzsche became a drooling potato. He didn’t commit suicide.

How people say they will react is usually quite different from how they would react. Generally speaking if someone’s worldview (axis mundi/weltanshauung) is X it will remain X even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. The reason being the human mind can only become so stressed.

I haven’t looked at the articles at all and probably won’t. Not a topic that interests me massively tbh

I can answer this easily enough. It would depend on the mechanism of Astrology and the scientific mindset.

Some scientists deny any suggestion of a causal effect if there is no known connection. Others are more willing to accept some ‘effect at a distance’ without knowing the actual mechanism at work. Xtrix, by my judgement, may fall a little more towards the requirement of some mechanism being explicable than I do … such differences are useful though and opposing stances help reveals more reliable approaches.

For me if I shake do X and Y happens far more often than not I will continue to do X if Y is what I want. I would still be curious about how X produces Y, and question if it really did do anything, but it would not really matter that much.

To state that scientists have been wrong all of the time is blatantly false. Newton was not ‘wrong’ just because Einstein came along with more accurate equations.

That said I completely understand that in regard to the history of the Earth ‘outside’ influences could be a bigger influence than previously thought. The best data we have (from numerous sources) does strongly point to human impact being highly influential in regards to climate change (a very, very basic understand of greenhouse gases shows this). And again … That said, there is undoubtedly more to climate change than we know about given that such cycles cover vast periods of time … and again, that said we can still make some pretty darn good models that have had good predictive accuracy. The weather is VERY hard to predict yet the seasons are VERY easy to predict.

Either way the human race will not die out due to climate change anytime soon (as in for thousands and thousand of years), yet we could effectively end civilisation by the end of the century by various other means. Perhaps ‘humanity’ will cease and we will just become more cyborg-like? Who knows? One thing for sure is we struggle with mass communication; we are mostly mad as a bag of badgers; struggle to manage information and crap at long term planning & prioritising. On the flip side we are often stubborn and highly adaptable.

If we were mostly sane we would basically be superhuman. Sadly perhaps 0.01% of people are ‘sane any any given moment though :D

I know enough to know that prominent neuroscientists today have stated that in their youth they were told to steer clear of research into ‘consciousness’ because it was regarded as too ‘fringe’ and would possibly end their careers. I also know that many scientists ‘play the game’. Meaning they will contrive experiments around a popular demand/theme in order to get funding if they can shoehorn in a way of getting the data out for something they need - often happens for military research.

Bjorn Lomborg is a somewhat questionable source. Check your sources out thoroughly, question them, hold onto doubt and try to destroy your heroes at every given opportunity.

Again, this ties back into the poor ability of humans to manage information and communicate amongst the noise and hyperbole.

Just to add, water can be boiled multiple times in a single day whereas the changes to the climate are on a slightly more grander scale ;)

Maybe you should read what I said before stating I didn’t say it?

Climate scientists have been studying the climate. Did you think I believed they have been developing hairstyles? Do you think I believe that current climate change is not primarily being caused by human actions? Do you think that I believe humans have had no impact on the climate … point being what you think I think is irrelevant. I was addressing the OP which states Climate Change as the biggest human problem and that I do not think that is the case at all. The biggest problem is more or less people as generally lacking the ability to communicate and discuss in a calm and civil manner rather than tarring and feathering anyone who appears deluded, evil or wrong.

Now my question to you. What have hairdressers been doing for the past century? :D

Jesus didn’t write the Bible did he? If he existed he might have been a good teacher and someone to look up to. All I know is the Bible is a piece of political propaganda written after his death and edited/censored to serve an institution rather than as a moral compass for humanity.

Evidence: The gospels were selected from a much larger corpus of work.

No it is not. To question the possible effects of a changing climate is reasonable. Like I said, a great many so-called ‘Climate Deniers’ are simply questioning nutcases at the other end of the scale who talk about human extinction. The kind of folks pushing for all kinds of policies that result in destructions of environments and poverty.

Why is that so hard to grasp? I am not saying there are not people who outright deny the human effect on climate change but THEY are quite ignorant. Questioning the impact our actions will have and have had is not denial.

Understand?

Having reasons is a burden. It means we choose to do something and we think it leads to various consequences for doing so. It isn’t just an impulse that drives us with absolutely no awareness. — schopenhauer1

Yes.

Climate Change is normal. The impact of humans on the climate is also a factor.

Ironically it is likely those that push for ‘greener’ living, at the expense of everything else, that will magnify the potential damage to human civlization.

Examples of such stupidity are those against GM foods and genetically modified livestock (the knock-on effect is not great) and the idea that ‘nuclear power’ is somehow ‘dangerous’ and wind and solar are viable alternatives. When countries shut down nuclear power stations whilst simultaneously espousing views on climate change regarding carbon emissions … frankly it is baffling and either due to wilful stupidity, ignorance, political self-promotion and/or a combination of these factors with numerous other pieces of nonsense thrown in.

Hysteria and knee-jerk reactions made by governments, and pushed by people who have little to no understanding or training in a broad range of fields and related fields, are the biggest problem humanity face. Note: This extends into free speech and various other areas that have made mass communications such a hotbed over the last few decades.

In short, how we communicate is the biggest problem we face and it has always been the biggest problem for humanity and will remain so as long as we are human.

You can generally see if a problem is a genuine one when the problem encapsulates the multiple potential solutions in various other seemingly unrelated areas.

A great number of people are framed as ‘Climate Change Deniers’ when in fact they do not deny that the climate is changing, nor that humans have an effect on the climate, but they do question the extent of the impact humans have. This is a reasonable position to have. Those that completely deny any hint of Climate Change and how humans impact the climate are simply ignorant to basic science.

I think we are entering the umpteenth utterance of ‘everyone is going to starve’ or ‘there are too many people,’ yet again these dire warning of human civilisation collapsing have never come about. This is not to say there is not danger, only that in today’s world any such perceived ‘crisis’ is magnified tenfold by the carpet bombing of public minds via various media resources espousing all kinds of unverified nonsense as conclusive evidence. My hope is that the younger generations coming into future political prominence will be wiser to the world of sensationalism, hysteria and advertising to the extent that they can calm the storm enough to think independently.

Philosophy is classed as part of the humanities. Hence, ‘Arts’ rather than ‘Science’ … yet Social Sciences are not always classed as ‘Science’ … demarcations are just demarcations. Anthropology is another subject area that straddles both the Arts and the Sciences.

I think maybe he meant this more along the lines of ‘they are currently not exactly at their peak’. I think that is a reasonable point to espouse, but it is not so easy to gauge this.

The same has been said of Science before now. Then someone comes along and shakes it all up. I think it is a fair comment that the social sciences and/or humanities are overdue some form of paradigm shift or general ‘shake up’.

I believe Husserl was onto something regarding how psychology has shifted more towards being a ‘science’ (in the physical sense) and away from the ‘psyche’ sense of psychology.

Another problem here is that these areas may very well be changing right now we just cannot see it due to proximity. Maybe in a few decades we’ll look back and state ‘that was the time of resurgence and change in those fields’. In the here and now it looks stagnant and that is probably because we’re reforming/rediscovering/rethinking long held views and tearing them apart as best we can?

And some linguists are happy to refer to ‘language’ in a broader sense than others. Those that study animal communication are quite happy to refer to ‘language’ as something animals possess (just clearly not in the common use of the term in colloquial speech).

Well, the term ‘truth’ is essentially an emotionally charged concept. All concepts are moe or less emotionally charged. Our sense of ‘reality’ and/or ‘truth’ is not usually something to can wrestle with as it is our keystone. Such is called (in Jungian speak) our Axis Mundi or in more philosophical jargon our Weltanschauung.

In the terms you use I would simply ask what kind of characters ‘Intellect,’ ‘Logic,’ ‘Truth,’ and ‘Emotion’ might be and how they would relate and interact with each other in the stage in your head?

When thinking about this keep in mind that infants have strong emotional interest when watching abstract shapes move around. For example they will watch a Square moving towards a Circle and hitting it repeatedly. They are seeing the Square ‘attack’ the Circle. This is a well documented phenomenon of how human’s interpret abstract objects interacting. We see an ‘emotional act’ playing out where ever we can. This is long before we learn to speak.

I am not entirely sure what you will think of this …

I am very much interested in anthropology and the role ‘religion’ has played in cultural development (not merely conventional modern ideas of religions - as in organisations). I have come to regard ‘mythos’ as the basis of human communication.

I have reason to believe that verbal communication was developed after play acting forms of communication and that even today humans are pretty much geared to explaining the world by ‘acting out’ it is just that verbal ‘language’ (spoken, written and/or signed) has come to dominate human ‘thought’ (note: ‘thinking’ is not necessarily something that involved ‘words’).

I also have fairly solid grounds to state that human beings understand the world, first and foremost, as an ‘emotional landscape’. On top of this our disposition to ‘emotional interaction’ (with each other or the world in general) plays into how we learn and communicate ideas. Memory is essential for passing on information and various mnemonic techniques work so, so well due to using emotions as prompts to recall information - ideas laden with extreme emotionally charged contents are more readily remembered.

I should pause here as the most difficult problem I have here is that I am using words to explain something that is absent of verbal baggage and underlies our very being. This is not me stating that ‘language’ is or is not innate, just that at some point in our evolution we developed a broader tenporal understanding of the world, and ‘langauge’ (as we commonly refer to it), sprung forth and readily attached itself to our underlying ‘mythos’ (which is an intersubjective beast being both ‘subjective’ and yet clearly ‘objective’ as can be evidenced by looking at common markers across various traditions and our growing appreciation of fundamental human traits).

Any thoughts on that semi-ramble?

This looks like it could be one thread I could really get my teeth into.

First off … I want to try and figure out what definitions and explanations you have of the term ‘myth’? By this I am asking for different possible uses of the term and any nuances you add to personalise this term.

My take is that each and every individual has a personal ‘mythos’ over which - and from which - we build up our representation of the world allowing us to navigate it. In another line of thought I view the use of ‘myth’ in teaching and education as fundamental to human development that has been somewhat overshadowed by the written form.

Anyway, will read this thread more carefully later and see if I can pick anything out that will help us engage more on this topic.

‘What’ not ‘Which’.

Not really. Child marriage was pretty much ‘traditional’ and this has been pretty much removed due to laws for ‘consenting adults’. If anything I can sooner imagine the required age for marriage being moved up rather than down. Either way it is just a number and I’m sure many marry when they are still emotionally immature and irresponsible. Polygamy is common enough already (albeit mostly beyond western cultures).