There is way of excluding others, quietly, through quiet signs. — csalisbury

Indeed, tribal markings. There is a way of talking, a subtlety of response that is the admission ticket to the club of the Namby-Pambies.

It seems to me (caveat: no studies conducted, or even consulted) that pro or anti immigration views usually correspond less to income than to social security. For those who have it, its often invisible, taken for granted. — csalisbury

Well social security is one way of putting it. But I think it is clearer if one calls it colonialism. 'Let the world become a great big melting pot, and We will prevail.'

What the citizenship does is take away my individual identity, making me a member of the tribe. — Metaphysician Undercover

I wonder what you mean by this? Identity always does this - subsumes the individual to a group - I am a doctor, or I am a melancholic - or whatever. And curiously, unique identifiers are the worst of the lot for it, one is reduced to a number.

How about looking at it from the standpoint of an individual in a community. — TheMadFool

Again, I wonder at this. Where else do you think anyone might be looking from? Someone seems to have told you that society is made of individuals the way a house is made of bricks, Whereas the reality is that an individual is made of social relations. Even Crusoe without Man Friday is embedded in his social roots both physically by the tools and supplies he brings with him, and way of life that he does his best to reproduce out of his own being, of house and field, furniture, hearth bed, domestic beast, etc.

Morality is a tool of identity. — frank

Of course. "they saw they were naked (identity), and were ashamed (morality)." Identity makes morality possible, and morality gives identity significance beyond 'mere facticity'.

____________________________________________________________________________________


Within the tribe of forum members, I have identified my intended audience and myself as "Namby-Pambies". We are the neo-colonialists, that stand in judgement over cultures, ranking them, paradoxically, according to their conformity to our cultural norm of cultural relativity. Our global culture of conformity to this doctrine of cultural relativity is exemplified by our 'tolerance' of the intolerant Sentinelese, our respect and support for indigenous cultures, and our willingness, through our education (which is the inverse of enculturation, and leads out of the collective identity to a critical self-reflection) to stand in judgement from an abstract individuality that is indeed God-like in conception, our own origins in our own society.

"This is Hell, nor am I out of it." - Mephistopheles.

Jews
— andrewk
Zionism
— frank
Well, that certainly didn't take long. — Bitter Crank

identity

politics — op

It didn't have far to go.

Take a break, chaps, watch a movie.

I agree, the problem is far wider. It is not just a matter of cultural identity, because there is also the matter of land ownership thrown into the mix. — Metaphysician Undercover

That's a very interesting aspect, but I'd like to shine a light from a different angle. Suppose one says,"I belong to the tribe, and the tribe belongs to the land." This is a very different inverse form of identification from one who identifies as a 'land owner'. The sovereignty of the individual over his tribe and environment is a very modern fantasy, although in a sense identity has always ranged from complete subsumption into Nature, the drop in the ocean, to the Almighty alienated Solipsist God.

There's the Paradox: nativism gives a premise to racism (and xenophobia), yet is also the cornerstone of any ethnical or cultural identity. — ssu

Well yes. In fact I can further generalise it: identity is always divisive. The cohesion that makes a group is sucked from the other that it excludes.

The illogical attitudes basically comes from hypocrisy, that we want to be far more good and benevolent than we are and get tangled up in our so righteous reasoning. — ssu

Well I don't know about you, but I also want to be less illogical and hypocritical, so I need a moral reasoning that does not get tangled. My problem is that the reasoning is already tangled, and that gives hypocrisy a place to stand, where arguments can go in all directions.

From what the writer says, it sounds like that is not happening, and language skills are just being used as a cloak for racism. — andrewk

Right, I think this expresses the beginning of my argument very nicely. But there is a follow-up challenge. What is the difference between a sheep, and a wolf in sheep's clothing? An answer has to avoid essentialism, and your 'just' is doing all the work for you. It's not just a cloak for racism, it's that and also a legitimate nativism.

I just won the lottery - and became a genius.

A true measure of intelligence is to take a moment's critical consideration of one's speculations before inflicting them on the world.

It's a cigar, I think, or a Shakespeare play.

Ok, I'm not sure what this is all about, but it looks anti-Trump so it must be (a) true, and (b) significant.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/trump-domestic-abuse-sexual-assault-definition-womens-rights-justice-department-a8744546.html?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook&fbclid=IwAR2H9-vIcGBlNpXiRwldDSgoAY8GzGCo297rNrBPZQvj2LEIuact0_jdj-A#Echobox=1548350752

Oh ... unenlightened ... referring to your post about 20 pages back! Language doesn’t need “sound”. And “pointing out” doesn’t need vision either ;) — I like sushi

On the one hand I am not going to disagree with you, and on the other I am not going to search back to find out why that is an apparent inconsistency on my part. Instead I will assume that such an obvious comment is only inconsistent with an uncharitably literal reading of whatever I said, or else that i was having a senior moment that no one else was so disrespectful as to mention to me. :joke:

It seems to me that there is a vast difference between friends and traders. In trade, there are rules and legitimate expectations, that the coin I offer is genuine, for example, and that what is offered by each becomes possessed by the other in exchange.

There are no rules, rights or duties to friendship; there is no 'deal' artful or artless, and consequently, there is no possession. One cannot have a friend, but only be one. And what one cannot possess, one cannot be wrongly deprived of. Friendship cannot be traded, cannot be earned, cannot be deserved, cannot have strings attached; it is free, or it is fake.

So the only legitimate concern one can have is whether one's own friendship is real or fake; friendship in the world is like the scent of a rose - an undeserved privilege that is freely bestowed and cannot be kept.

I've struggled with my own vindictive nature for a long time now, — AuroraBeckingsway

Relax, dude, let the vindictiveness out, don't hold back like that. Sassy teenage girls are lovely things and once you get past their brittle nervousness, they are eager to please and eager to prove their love by sacrifice. It seems premature to be done so quickly - a vindictiveness turned in upon itself. Well, whatever gets you through the night, my love.

God, I have so had it with individuals. Most of them cannot even wire up a mains plug, let alone build a nuclear generator.

Some local colour - the taste of the zeitgeist -

A third Cambridge philosopher Virginia Woolf was acquainted with has become the object of much attention and analysis. She did not read Ludwig Wittgenstein, though he read her. Even if she had not met him, Virginia would have known of Wittgenstein from Leonard, from Keynes, and particularly from her nephew Julian Bell, and Julian’s satirical poem “An Epistle on the Subject of the Ethical and Aesthetic Beliefs of Herr Ludwig Wittgenstein (Doctor of Philosophy)”. Despite the distance between Wittgenstein’s misogyny and Virginia Woolf’s feminism, one could speculate on the applicability of some of Wittgenstein’s ideas in both his earlier and later thought to her fiction — his later conception of philosophy as description rather than explanation, for example. It is an idea he applied to aesthetics and criticism and is useful for an account of the philosophers Virginia Woolf knew.

http://letourcritique.u-paris10.fr/index.php/letourcritique/article/view/27/html

Doing my best to remain silent so's not to remove all doubt, but thought y'all might like some dimensional confusion. Why read, when you can play?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lX5eCfRSCKY

Nice illustration there that one of the attractions of punishment is the justification of righteous anger, and general moral superiority, and the projection of negativity.

But it may well be the automatic spam filter that you are shouting at.
Or it may equally be that intemperate nature of the above post was also a feature of the one that may have been deleted.

Cameron told obvious lies by which he further sabotaged any residual credibility he brought to the Remain cause. — karl stone

did nothing to counter the egregious lies and racist propaganda of the Leave campaign. — karl stone

Karl, you're not making a great case here. Leave won by lying; but remain deliberately lost by lying.

What am Insaving and why? The materialist conception seems to be the social reality. Charity is just one part of it if that’s what you’re referring to. But that is a symptom and not part of the structure. — schopenhauer1

Schop, I cannot go much further, alas; I am not a Christian, or any kind of expert here, but charity as do-good-ery is the opposite of what I am talking about.

It's all a question of motivation. I might be charitable in order to feel superior, powerful, or to impress others, or to conform, or because Guru un tells me it will make me happy, and in any such case, and many other variants, it is all about me. And as long as it's all about me, it's the endless round of dissatisfaction and suffering you describe.

What is this something? Usually it is society's need for production, — schopenhauer1

That's a tediously modern, materialist answer to your question, and I agree it is inadequate and simply false. Plato's way out of the cave is through contemplation of the form of the good, and there are Buddhist and Christian responses that you are well enough aware of, that cannot be so facilely dismissed. I think there is a common thread, which is 'love' that answers your question. I would guess that the Christian response - of a salvation that is not a choice, and does not have its origin in the self, would most fully answer your complaint.

What does one do when one is born but doesn't want to do what is required of being alive? — schopenhauer1

Honestly, I would like to say something helpful, but if you are up shit creek and refuse to paddle, then you will remain up shit creek. There is only one thing that will lift the curse, which is to think one kind thought. Until then you are trapped indefinitely in wanting and wanting not.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5z2R5LKh3g

Well I found something of a connection that makes your conspiracy theory a bit more likely...

2012. https://www.constructionnews.co.uk/jcb-boss-sir-anthony-bamford-named-in-cash-for-cameron-scandal/8628352.article

2019. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jan/24/jcb-paid-boris-johnson-10000-three-days-before-speech?CMP=fb_gu&fbclid=IwAR0I6CGObVxEOWvnFCOQN1q-Z8dUWrdiIYzutOkT0KOv3vjOUpwaZHoyff8

The same fellow supporting remain and leave champions is a bit suspicious...

There ought to be a name for such arguments - 'hasty materialisation', or something.
What has infinite growth potential is human desire. 'The economy' is not a pile of stuff that is running out, indeed very little that was on the planet has left it. On the contrary, limitation of resources increases their value. If gold was as common as sand, it would have negligible value, so the economy grows as resources shrink. Most of the economy of today is accounted for by things that had no existence at all 100 years ago; they have novelty value, rather than survival value.

I will just mention that I might have given my children my own surname, but I didn't. They might have taken their mother's surname, but they didn't. They each have their own unique surname. You might not think it sensible, but it is true. And since it is true in this case, it might have been true of Nixon's parents, and Nixon might have had another name.

I think we're so much on the same page that I won't quibble.

brexit will disadvantage the very people fooled into voting for it the most - to protect a sovereignty that has been protected at their expense, creating the very discontent upon which the Leave campaign preyed, — karl stone

This, conspiracy or mere tragedy, is the heart of the matter. And here is the connection with the US. Who knew til the shutdown that middle class Americans were just one pay check away from penury and food banks? And their 'take back control' hero was Trump!

Wouldn't you say though that the real problem is that the game of monopoly has reached its end, the winners have taken all, and the game is over.

do you have any more than circumstantial evidence for it? — karl stone

No.

Well I could probably muster some evidence that the EU is not responsible for the woes it is credited with, because - well it just isn't a monolith by design, but a common bureaucracy controlled by the negotiations and agreements between nations. The democratic deficit is put there to restrict its power, not to augment it. If you look at what the UK has accepted, and what it has rejected, I think you will find support for it being the UK government's concern to protect its financial powers more than its industrial; Hull can die as long as London thrives is UK policy, not EU.

So, you're saying that a man with a first class degree in philosophy, politics and economics from Oxford University genuinely believed — karl stone

Not at all. I'm saying that a man with a first class degree in philosophy politics and economics has no beliefs, no principles and no morals. I'm saying that neither Cameron or May give a fig about anything but their own position and their own power and status.

I'm saying Cameron wanted a referendum because he was losing support to Ukip, not because he had an opinion about the EU. I'm saying that hatred of the EU has been manufactured over years to divert attention from the real causes of the social degradation that has been taking place. We got a bad deal over fishing, because the people negotiating for us cared more about banking and insurance, and for them fish was a price worth paying. The British government has presided over regional decline, and impoverishment, and blamed it on the EU and Johnny foreigner. They really don't care about in or out, deal or no deal, because their world is tucked away on the Cayman Islands and won't be affected.

Yes, plenty. — karl stone

It would be a violation of my prime directive to defend Cameron, but there's very little here to distinguish Cameron the machiavellian conspirator from Cameron the amoral advocate-whatever's-convenient smug incompetent.

I do have a general principle, Occam's blunt penknife, that states that other things being equal, a cock-up is a better theory than a conspiracy - and a cock up a pig is certainly not evidence of cunning planning ability.

Cameron lost on purpose for Remain — karl stone

Your claim makes more sense than most conspiracy theories; do you have any more than circumstantial evidence for it?

Are you honest enough — praxis

Good question. Everyone needs a dedicated fact check site, like this:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/trump-claims-database/?utm_term=.e0d278da29e2

I'm referring back to this.

This, I think, is what the Tractatus is doing. — me

Obviously, this picture is distorted and impossible. But the distortion and impossibility accurately depicts what philosophy is always trying to do, which is to encompass the world in thought. It does this by self-reference: A man is looking at a picture in a gallery that as you follow it turns out to be a picture of the same man looking at the same picture in the same gallery. 'Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one can make a picture'. 'The observer is the observed.' Escher is often concerned with the limits of depiction, with how two dimensions can try to represent three, but never quite makes it into the third dimension.

I defer to Project Fear for economic fore casts, but nevertheless, as part of basic economic theory, open free-trading democracies always prevail.

Brexit was nothing to do with money. — Inis

And the EU is the largest free trade block...

But it's not about money and all those fish... its about taking back control from those faceless bureaucrats and giving it to a bunch of incompetent mendacious sleeze-bags proper representatives of the people in Westminster, who cannot even agree amongst themselves how to run their own parliament, never mind the country, because if we don't want to be run by a bunch of toffs and tossers from Eton and Oxford, We can just vote them out. Any time, really, and we will, quite soon, it's easy, we just haven't got around to it yet... but compared to leaving the EU, it'll be a doddle, especially with all that extra power we're giving them - I mean ourselves...

Moderators are imperfect. Sometimes they miss things, and by the time they catch up, there is an interesting conversation. Sometimes, they have phases of cracking down on some behaviour that has been let slide.

The main reason for this is that you are not paying them enough. If you paid them like bankers, judges, and politicians, they would be perfect in every way. In the meantime, if you follow the guidelines, you won't go far wrong, and even if sometimes someone gets away with not following them, that does not entitle you to do the same.

Less than 8% of UK GDP depends on selling goods to EU, according to the EU Commission.
— Inis

That's a lovely cherry. Where did you pick it? — S

It's a petty small figure isn't it. Definitely cherry rather than pineapple. Perhaps it reflects the fact that a lot of The UK GDP is for local consumption. I think this indicates that the peasants still have far too much money to spend.

Otherwise, you're left with saying that every primitive culture engages in the first step of the scientific method every time they observe something. — Hanover

No. I'm left with saying that every primitive culture knows that shit smells and doesn't need the scientific method to do so. Even Sap's cat knows it.

So what could actually prevent a no-deal Brexit on 29 March? Here are all the options:

1. If the deal is ratified – approved – by the UK Parliament and the European Parliament without conditions or amendments. In this case, Brexit under the terms negotiated by Mrs May proceeds.

2. If the deal is ratified by the UK Parliament with conditions or amendments. These would then need to be agreed with the European Council, consented to by the European Parliament, and the Council of the European Union will need to conclude the deal acting by qualified majority. It is questionable whether there is time for this, so this option may need to be combined with 3(a) below.

3. If the UK and the EU27 agree to delay the date that the UK leaves the EU, while one of the following takes place: a) Further negotiations on the Withdrawal Agreement or the Framework for the Future Relationship; b) A general election; c) A second referendum.

4. The UK rescinding its notification under Article 50 and remaining in the EU.

https://inews.co.uk/opinion/comment/can-mps-actually-stop-a-no-deal-brexit-from-happening/

I just can't see Parliament getting its head far enough out of its arse to manage any of this. I think 2 would require 3 for definite, and 3a has been ruled out by the EU. 1 would require a climb-down of huge proportions that seems very unlikely -115 MPs changing their minds.

The chances of settling on a referendum seem small at the moment, a general election might be more attractive, but it's hard to see how it can be arrived at.

4. Is simple enough to be doable, but since the whole thing is about the mismatch between politicians and electorate MPs will be much frit.

So I conclude that No deal is the most likely result because politicians are weak, irresponsible and incompetent.

As if defining a question can be done without knowledge, as if information and resources are not knowledge...

If I was being hardline about it, I would say that all knowledge comes exclusively from observation, and science as method is not in the business of accumulating knowledge but of organising it.

I might be a bit old fashioned, but in my day the first step in the scientific method was observation, and that was the the way to discover the truth of things.

Hysterical claptrap. — Inis

A knock down argument as always.

This is the best Brexit diagnosis I've seen. The right historical context, the usual suspects identified.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/17/opinion/sunday/brexit-ireland-empire.html?fbclid=IwAR2sgBKxor3h21jsmofR6fnFF4RcMyMPY8neibY5MITliUbf6mKOYxsZLOk