Rigid thinking, along the lines that if I do not have absolute control, I have no freedom at all, is mistaken.

To the contrary, operating a brain is like riding a bike, one learns to both steer and balance by the same manipulation of the handlebars. The inherent instability of thought - its propensity to veer off in unexpected directions is the very feature that allows control by awareness. Mathematical rigidity must be laboriously imposed by much practice and training along with constant vigilance and a blackboard and chalk.
As the old witch spells have it, one cannot not think about a black cat to order, but panic not, you will stop thinking about it soon enough.

Maybe my small European brain can't fathom the profundity of combatting racism by making people's skin color and race their defining features. — Tzeentch

Yes, I think that must be right; your small brain cannot fathom that to address racism is not racist. You are by no means alone.

I imagine you can follow through the implications of the question. It comes from a book about Heidegger's Being and Time. — tim wood

You don't seem willing to entertain a social analysis, and at the same time seem reluctant to actually say what you mean. *shrug*

I suppose my point is that social approaches to mental health need not be conspiracy theories. — Leontiskos

It's an example. What it illustrates is that one's social condition and thereby one's psychological condition can be - as David Smail puts it - strongly affected by events beyond the individual's event horizon. One tends to take things like job loss to be personal failings rather than socio-economic adjustments or as you choose to call them 'conspiracy theories.'

One might ask the medical modellers, for example, why there seems at the moment to be something of a plague of paranoia and conspiracy theories. It's hard to see how 'chemicals in the brain' can be infectious (apart from prions of course).

I invite consideration of that "between." — tim wood

I'm willing to consider, but where do you want me to consider redirecting?

a more nuanced take. — Leontiskos

It's a hypothetical example - nuance is to be avoided in making the distinction between the personal psychological analysis and the social relations analysis. One can of course make use of both in the real world.

presuppose that something is wrong, then attempts to find a fit in wrongness in the DSM-V. Finding it, then treats according to the finding and according to the theory-of-the-day about the finding. — tim wood

There is definitely something wrong, that's not in dispute. The medical model is that there is something wrong with the patient; the social model is that there is something wrong between the person and their environment.
An example, Mr X goes to the doctor suffering from depression. says he hasn't been depressed before but the last year he's feeling down unmotivated. He used to be a skilled steel worker but he got laid off two years ago and hasn't been able to find a job. He feels useless, the house is about to be repossessed, his wife has left him. The social diagnosis is that he is suffering from a worldwide recession engineered by financial interests he has zero knowledge of, and what he needs is a new government. The doctor gives him sympathy and some happy pills.

Spoken like a true kool-aid drinker. Question: as you've worked with psychiatrists, you must know what they do: what, exactly, do psychiatrists do? If I pay for the services of a psychiatrist, what, mainly, can I expect to get? — tim wood

You get, in most circumstances, "the medical model". This consists of a history, interpreted by the expert to form a diagnosis, followed by a recommendation of treatment.

The medical model is what this thread is questioning, and suggesting be replaced with a sociological model, such that mental distress arises from a person's relationships, to the environment and particularly to significant others and various 'authorities'. One of those relationships is that between the person and the psychiatrist. One can look at the power relations involved and consider what about the relationship might tend to confirm or disconfirm the person's feelings of distress - of, for random example, persecution.

Generally we tend to focus more on the negatives in fellow humans than on the positives. — I like sushi

Is this not the natural consequence of having a generally positive attitude? I assume everyone is amenable, cooperative and kind, and so it is remarkable when someone is unpleasant, and that is noteworthy, or newsworthy. I don't mention or even notice that every slice of bread is delicious and satisfying, but the odd mouldy crust gets my attention.

This is how I go on here; mostly i assume posters are friendly and want to arrive at the truth and a better understanding together, and when there are accusations and unpleasant comments, they stand out as something that has to be thought about in an entirely different way. What is this person trying to do, here? Have I upset them?

Failing to find any plausible contrast, we realize that the modifier 'directly' doesn't do any work here: it is meaningless. — SophistiCat

This sounds right to me, and reduces contrast theory to the principle of a Venn diagram. a word has meaning by making a distinction between what it refers to and everything else, with the distinction drawn as a line between them.

We can know what a unicorn is - a magical horse like creature with a single horn on its head - even though we know there are no unicorns. but when we want t make useful functional distinctions, between forms of seeing and such, there has to be something on each side of the line for the classification to function. To say all seeing is direct, or all seeing is indirect does not draw a line in the world of seeing at all. The distinction does not function in the world of seeing unless it divides seeing into contrasting segments:- I see directly what is in front of me, and indirectly via the rear view mirror or via a camera or other apparatus —. and then we can argue whether spectacles, rose tinted or not, are to count as an apparatus or not.

That you ask this question suggests that you think some sum of money can compensate for centuries of total exploitation.
— unenlightened

First off, no, I don't believe that, and second, should we not try to compensate people at all even if it isn't nearly enough? Do you think that no reparations is the same thing as some reparations? — ToothyMaw

No, we should not. It is offensive to suggest that it can be done. And can we maybe address the case of mixed race folk both paying and receiving reparations presumably in some amount proportional to their ethnic origins?

If this were true, then why are the majority of people of color in favor of reparations? — ToothyMaw

People tend to favour getting something for nothing. But a better remedy would be a proper education of the history of white racism, and white people taking the responsibility for that and behaving differently. That you ask this question suggests that you think some sum of money can compensate for centuries of total exploitation. There is not enough money in the world, even if every white person were bankrupted, and all their assets sold off.

The damage of the slave trade and colonisation is irreparable. Reparations are for white people's benefit, to assuage their guilt; they cannot conceivably compensate for or repair what has happened.

Consider Mrs un. Her father was an Afro-Caribbean descendant of slaves, her mother a white
woman from a slate-mining town whose ancestors were exploited by the local land-owning family who also had slaves working on a plantation in the Caribbean. Mrs un might have to pay reparations to herself. She might have to resent herself for noticing. It's maddening, literally maddening.

I am, but with my own articles of faith.

To herd or control apes you have to commit violence against them, or proceed with the threat thereof. — NOS4A2

Such articles of faith are what you use to control people. It doesn't work in every case, but it works on average, and not even a threat is required.

An authority must monopolize violence and use violence in order to institute “non-violence”. — NOS4A2

Yes. Pax Romana.

speech is not violence — NOS4A2

A sheepdog gone rogue can herd a flock of sheep over a cliff without touching them.

I guess, but it is the UK that is falling apart. Public services are on the brink of collapse. The gov is at the point where they are arresting people for social media posts, which is authoritarian, but also stupid because the prisons are too full. A shithole. — NOS4A2

Yes indeed, the UK is ahead of the pack as usual. That is one of the ways I can foretell your future. But I love authoritarianism in the service of peace and non-violence.

What does this have to do with the topic at hand? — Leontiskos

This is the topic at hand, and it is addressed to christians.

Suppose you came to believe that Jesus was just a man. How would you proceed? What would you do? Make a choice and explain why. — Art48

You seem to be obsessed with mormons for some reason; I haven't said anything about them. You seem to want to police who can address the topic, otherwise there is no reason to endlessly discuss the boundaries of what a christian is.

As a one time protestant who came to believe that Jesus was just a man, my answer has been that it made little or no difference to the truth of what Jesus taught about how to live. I do not generally call myself a christian because it would confuse people like you, who expect supernatural belief in all religion.

As to mormons, i think they consider themselves christian, and I can see that you do not, and I couldn't give a flying fuck either way.

You would agree that the less aid you receive and the more you manage to sustain yourself independently, the more self-sufficient you are, right? Even if you are not totally self-sufficient? — ToothyMaw

Sure. If you don't use the roads, or the shops, or the internet, or oil products, or imports, etc, you can come close to self-sufficiency (neglecting your total dependence on the environment).

If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe. — Karl Sagan

Panic not chaps, your country is fucked whoever wins, because you are all insane. But go down smiling would be my preference.

human population has roughly been growing exponentially since the neolithic (as far as we can tell), but might peak in our time. — jorndoe

Sure it has. Exponential growth is what happens to populations until a constraint or limit halts it. As long as there were new worlds to conquer, new environments to exploit, new technologies to use, new resources of energy, new more intensive farming methods, human exponential growth has continued - give or take a few hiccups - plagues, famines and so on. But the human population on Earth has exceeded the ability of the environment to sustain it: 'might' is not the term; human population will start to crash this century, as cartoon idiot like, we destroy the environment we depend on.

But let's say I have a friend who is a sense-data proponent. He says that his terminology is perfectly meaningful. There are direct experiences (mental and physical sensations, feelings, thoughts) and indirect experiences of the outer world (sights, smells) that come to us through 'sense-data'. He says this contrast between direct and indirect makes those words perfectly valid and useful. I don't agree with him. But I still feel I'm losing the argument. — cherryorchard

Your friend, in claiming direct access to 'internal' events and only indirect access to 'external' events seems to me to fall into the abyss of solipsism. One cannot dispute with a solipsist, because one cannot access his world. The sense data of an argument are mere unpersuasive sensations. You cannot lose (or win) the argument because you cannot even have the argument. At best all, you can do is provoke sensations in the other. And these purely internal sensations are precisely those 'beetles in boxes' that drop out of the conversation, because they are irredeemably private; and language is shared.

I'm not sure what you mean, as you give no date or reference.

If you mean the invention of artificial fertiliser, then the 1900s seems very late date. Natural fertilisers were in use from Roman times and before.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_fertilizer

But agricultural industrialisation began alongside the industrialisation of production with horse drawn machines. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jethro_Tull_(agriculturist)

Still overvalued by about $19.50. Who buys these shit sandwiches?

I commend to you the writing of David Smail, and particularly his book "The Origins of Unhappiness".

Meanwhile, I will take issue with this.

Most people are quite sane and therefore very capable and totally self-sufficient. — Abdul

Most people are pretty fucked up and miserable, and no one at all is self sufficient. Just in order to communicate this message to you, for example, I require a whole army of assistants to nurse my infant self, teach me to read and write, put food on the table and a roof over my head and construct a communications network and this electronic device on which I am typing. None of this would I be remotely capable of doing on my own. Not to mention your own self that has been the provocation of my current thoughts.

Self-sufficiency is a dangerous fantasy, that is widely promoted, with false corollary that to fail to be (in the imagination) self sufficient is an illness and a loss of contact with reality.

Well, now time passed and now it seems
Everybody’s having them dreams
Everybody sees themselves
Walkin’ around with no one else
Half of the people can be part right all of the time
Some of the people can be all right part of the time
But all of the people can’t be all right all of the time
I think Abraham Lincoln said that
“I’ll let you be in my dreams if I can be in yours”
I said that

Talkin’ World War III Blues
WRITTEN BY: BOB DYLAN

Guy's a poet, so what d'you expect. Me, I'm more realistic. I'm keeping stum because there's no one left to talk to. I might sing some of the old songs though, now and then.

And here is some bad news for Democrats: turns out refutal is a word.

https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/refutal

Everyone who holds things believes they are true, and if "Christianity" is to mean anything at all then it must exclude some stories. The level of inclusivity that many desire is simply not compatible with sensible speech. — Leontiskos

And I hold that Christianity purports to be an universal religion. What it excludes is hatred, Some folks have not heard the Good News, others have not Yet accepted it, but none are excluded.

That's an argument, but it's not a good one. — Leontiskos

Then don't make that argument, and don't accuse me of making it.

Your last sentence seems to represent a copyrighted interpretation, no? — Leontiskos

No I am reciting a creed, not The creed. We can discuss, as long as you do not have exclusive rights to the truth.

But isn't it the case that many people, even most, sacrifice every day for others - even some at crucifixion level intensity? — tim wood

That's a lovely thought, and I do not want to deny it. Then yes, as our current pope said to a small boy who was afraid that his unbelieving dead father was in hell, there are many Christians, and many of the best of them do not know it of themselves. But God sees our heart. Well he didn't say that, but he gave comfort to the child in that sort of vein.

We know a song about that.

Don't know why I never thought about it this way. Well put — flannel jesus

Thanks. I wouldn't call myself a Christian, but I appreciate the story, and hate it when people wilfully distort the meaning or claim the copyright on interpretation. We are surely all God's people, and none are excluded - that's the story.

But what exactly did Jesus do that makes him his own class of one - and membership so difficult? — tim wood

I'm so glad you asked me, because not many people know this. He didn't just carry his cross up the hill, when he got to the top, he was nailed there to it and left until dead. The difficulty for followers though is that he did it for others, whereas followers tend to do it for their own salvation, to the extent that they make any sacrifice at all.

This is not an argument. It is an emotional appeal for inclusivity. — Leontiskos

It's not an argument indeed. It is a piece of history; the plain fact of the matter is that the term "Christian" has always been disputed from its inception and such identity labels nearly always are disputed.
No true philosopher would be unaware of this, or claim to possess the truth of the matter. :wink:

Mormons think they will ontologically become an independent "God." Christians think it is blasphemy to say such a thing. But no biggie, right? No significant difference there. :groan: — Leontiskos

"Christians" have been accusing each other of blasphemy, setting each other beyond the pale as apostates, heretics, heathens, or whatever, from before the time when the Bible as we know it was compiled; the texts to be included and those to be exiled to the Apocrypha were part of that conflict. Whatever consensus of belief has come to be accepted by you or anyone else about what constitutes a Christian has been arrived at through debate and conflict that has rejected more inclusive positions.

Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me." — Matthew 16:24

Thus speaks the man who ought to know, and according to His standard, there are very very few Christians or have ever been; nor is belief the criterion.

I find it odd that one can be pro-life on moral grounds, but against free school meals, child support and so on. As though a woman does not have the right to control the resources of her body, but no one has any comparable duties with their financial resources. Makes no sense to me.

But my original point was that the attack on Walz's treatment of his son, and the accusation of violence, like the attack on his son earlier, was a lie being perpetuated on these pages without refutal; and the contempt shown for the disabled seems too often to go along with the supposed "pro-life" stance, which more usually turns out to be a parallel contempt for women, than a real valuing of all life.

Imagine JD Vance doing this. — NOS4A2

Imagine JD sharing a platform with his non-verbal son, and having the presence of mind and care to pull that son aside when he was about to walk into a teleprompter screen?

I can't imagine JD being open and honest and caring at all. I can't imagine him wanting to show his mixed race family off to the maga racists anyway. But they better get used to a lot more disabled kids of all sorts as abortion becomes more rare.

Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells.

Close to half of the population will live through a harrowing court case, called "divorce". — Tarskian

I have lived through a divorce in the UK. It consisted of signing some papers and if I remember perhaps swearing an affidavit or something. There was no court appearance, and in general, the legal aspect was the least harrowing part of the separation.

Start with bullshit, and conclude with self-justification. This thread should have been put out our collective misery already.

The Great Replacement (French: grand remplacement), also known as replacement theory or great replacement theory,[1][2][3] is a white nationalist[4] far-right conspiracy theory[3][5][6][7] espoused by French author Renaud Camus. The original theory states that, with the complicity or cooperation of "replacist" elites,[a][5][8] the ethnic French and white European populations at large are being demographically and culturally replaced by non-white peoples—especially from Muslim-majority countries—through mass migration, demographic growth and a drop in the birth rate of white Europeans.[5][9][10] Since then, similar claims have been advanced in other national contexts, notably in the United States.[11] Mainstream scholars have dismissed these claims of a conspiracy of "replacist" elites as rooted in a misunderstanding of demographic statistics and premised upon an unscientific, racist worldview.[12][13][14] According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, the Great Replacement "has been widely ridiculed for its blatant absurdity."[3]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Replacement

Two clicks worth for you.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_atheism

But no true Scotsman would reveal what lies beneath his kilt,

Here’s a thought experiment for Christians. — Art48

I'm not a Christian, except by cultural heritage. But moving on...

...that Christianity is false. Suppose you came to believe that Jesus was just a man. — Art48

These are two very different questions. but let me ask you, are you "just a man"?

I assume that Jesus was just a man, but most men are not still thought about two millennia later so that "just" is having to work rather hard and looks a bit suspect. Hitler too was 'just a man'.

Nazism is false; Christianity is not. Do you want to even think about or discuss what it means to love your enemies or die for another's sins? And can such things be "false"?

I have costal real estate to sell — Mikie

Sell it now! Next year it might be territorial waters, or at least uninsurable.