like Rome, the Pax Americana has finally explicitly devolved from republic to dictatorship — 180 Proof

It couldn't happen to a nicer country. :cry:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2024/may/08/hopeless-and-broken-why-the-worlds-top-climate-scientists-are-in-despair



Written words unfortunately formatted for phone users, or spoken, take your pick.

We are naturally social and rape violates the nature of humans to be social? — Hanover

No, that's not what i said. Chickens are social, and their society generally consists of a dominant cock who kills or chases off other males, and a harem of hens that he pretty much rapes on a daily basis. The hens in turn have a pecking order of dominance and submission. Societies, even human societies are not necessarily "nice". Hence I distinguish social relations based on power and violence from those based on cooperation.
This is not to say that cooperation can survive without any coercion to defend it against exploitation. The subjugation of women, slavery, warfare, and rape, are all social arrangements possible to humans. To resist them we have religion, morals, government, justice systems etc.

'No sequence of words or of logical symbols, however cunningly arranged, can oblige the world to be thus and not so.'

Thus saith the unenlightened.

This is simply a sad fact of life for me, though God can famously speak, and it is so. God's words are infinitely more puissant than mine. He can speak me into existence, allegedly, but I cannot return the favour, and nor can Gödel.

So help me out here. Bob wants to rape and feels it very much a part of his intrinsic nature and he doesn't want to be judged for it. He asks me why it is immoral to rape. What do I tell him?

Am I immoral when I condemn him? Why? — Hanover

The intrinsic nature of a human is to be a social animal. Bob's experience has taught him that there is only one form of sociality which is hierarchy based dominance/submission relations imposed by coercion and violence. He does not understand voluntary cooperation and believes it to be a variant form of manipulation.

It is probably going to be impossible to explain all this to Bob in ten minutes, and you will have to deal with him in the only way he can understand, with physical restraint. Once he is not in a position to dominate and control, then you can perhaps start to model a cooperative and respectful relationship to him. I believe this is called in legal circles "reform". It may not work, because old habits die hard.

I still feel the guilt, but that doesn't mean I'm really sorry or think of myself as not-good or needing-to-be-good. — Moliere

I don't understand, unless you are describing the internal conflict?

"Guilt" becomes a category I can assign to others — Moliere

Yes, Mummy only says "be good for Mummy" when she has assigned 'badness'. In fact you have it backwards; one is told to be good, and thereby learns to assign guilt to oneself. Because if one was good, one would not need to be told. Children are helpless and dependent on people who assign them to be ...

- egocentric predators - until puberty, they will be ostracized by their peers, imprisoned or killed by law enforcement agents. You can't have a society of toddlers in adult bodies - that's a purposeless mob. — Vera Mont

So they have to internalise that identity and fight against themselves to placate those upon whom their life depends.

. Moral certainty is the death of ethical thinking. — Moliere

Tell me more...

But I also dislike guilt, generally speaking. I think it's not so much a feeling of moral knowledge but a conditioned response which is used to control people. — Moliere

"Be good for Mummy!" Here it starts; the helpless dependent child is told to be what they are not.

I resist social control from the identity of the individual; I exert it from the identity of social being, and I feel guilt from an awareness of the contradiction. One cannot demand of the community that it transcend the human condition. One cannot go back to innocence, so the only resolution to the human condition is personal: —transcendent miracle, or sartori. Until then, I remain, frog/horse,

unenlightened.

I would want to distinguish that tradition from the "Christian tradition" per se. — Leontiskos

I would distinguish it as being the meaning of the Fall as told in the Old Testament, and therefore strictly speaking, pre-Christian. But I am no scholar of Judeo-Christian history.

Simply, there is no virtue in being un-fallen - innocence is the natural condition, and virtue arises from the fall along with vice as "knowledge of good and evil" - What philosophers call "moral knowledge". If you don't know good from evil, there is no virtue in doing good and no vice in doing evil, you just do what you do.

(When I were a lad this stuff were taught in school; kids these days don't understand the language and tradition properly in the first place, and then get all superior and dogmatic in their ignorance, mistaking it for virtuous rationality and freedom from superstition.)

Well that's not fair. — Moliere

True. Fair would be that once you have fallen there is no redemption. Without guilt, there can be no virtue.

We have eaten of the apple of self-awareness, and fallen into internal conflict between what we are and what we feel ourselves to be.

To say that man is a social animal expresses this conflict - between the individual animal and the community. I identify myself as this — I am a social animal — and thereby fall into paradox such that any claim to social virtue is the expression of animal individuality. "I am that fool who prides himself on his humility." Or else I am the worse fool who thinks he is already the god-king.

And so we fall into self-improvement, social improvement, and global improvement, as though through our internal conflict we can outthink that nature from which we spring. Yet one does not really have to go all the way to China; in our own Christian tradition, the individual conscience also reigns supreme. If you follow that internal voice, you cannot go wrong. (But on the other hand, you might well get crucified.)

Is the end of life, or the beginning of life for that matter, not a necessary part of life? In that case, the end of life cannot have a different value to to life itself. We who live, can celebrate the end of a life as we can celebrate the beginning. One can yearn for a child that does not yet exist, and one can mourn a child that has died.

But when philosophers ask the wrong question, they get into a muddle, and opposing life and death as though they are separable is the beginning such a muddle.

Those of us that understand that if there is intelligent life on Earth, it is certainly not human, have to face a catastrophe in which all certainties will be lost. There will be no last rites and no decent burial; our copses will rot in the burning cities as they are already doing. We turn on each other because that is what we have been taught, and that is all that is left.

The prospect of AI plugging itself into the electrical energy circuits it builds and maintains in order to reproduce itself is of course the merest projection of human greed onto the inanimate. Why would AI bother?

It has always been something we understood about ourselves, that we were prone to — one has to have something at the centre of one's life, and if it is no a god, then it will be oneself. Unless it is a void ...

A common way that hubris was committed was when a mortal claimed to be better than a god in a particular skill or attribute. Claims like these were rarely left unpunished, and so Arachne, a talented young weaver, was transformed into a spider when she said that her skills exceeded those of the goddess Athena, even though her claim was true. Additional examples include Icarus, Phaethon, Salmoneus, Niobe, Cassiopeia, Tantalus, and Tereus.[12]

The goddess Hybris is described in the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition as having "insolent encroachment upon the rights of others".[13]

These events were not limited to myth, and certain figures in history were considered to have been punished for committing hubris through their arrogance. One such person was king Xerxes as portrayed in Aeschylus's play The Persians, and who allegedly threw chains to bind the Hellespont sea as punishment for daring to destroy his fleet.[citation needed]

What is common in all of these examples is the breaching of limits, as the Greeks believed that the Fates (Μοῖραι) had assigned each being with a particular area of freedom, an area that even the gods could not breach.[14]

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

As for the green movement, you and I and a couple of friends, The Greeks have already told our story too.

Cassandra was a daughter of King Priam and Queen Hecuba of Troy. Her elder brother was Hector, the hero of the Greek-Trojan War. The older and most common versions of the myth state that she was admired by the god Apollo, who sought to win her love by means of the gift of seeing the future. According to Aeschylus, she promised him her favours, but after receiving the gift, she went back on her word. As the enraged Apollo could not revoke a divine power, he added to it the curse that nobody would believe her prophecies. In other sources, such as Hyginus and Pseudo-Apollodorus, Cassandra broke no promise to Apollo, but rather the power of foresight was given to her as an enticement to enter into a romantic engagement, the curse being added only when it failed to produce the result desired by the god.

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

We used to be hunter-gatherers. So, don't grow food. Hunt it instead. — Tarskian

Look forwards, not backwards.

If we do that, we need to get rid of billions of people too. Who volunteers to leave first? Not me. — Tarskian

I will be leaving soon enough. So will you. That is going to happen, and the population will reduce to a sustainable level. Because an unsustainable level is "unsustainable". So your fatuous argument is to exclude the proposed middle of an agrarian society because 'no reason' in favour of a complete collapse to an imagined hunt that neglects the accompanying gathering. Or else the machine paradise...

Teach your brats to cook, to grow food, to work wood and metal. And how to get along with the neighbours, which is by having all these useful skills that can help them stay alive. The machines are no longer your friends.

Any bias towards the truth doesn't readily accept appeals to authority while completely ignoring the counter evidence, which you'll never witness on MeidasTouch or in the prosecution's case. This leads me to remain suspicious of any professed claims towards facts or balance, especially when it comes from the open prison of some European nanny-state. — NOS4A2

You paranoia is not admissible.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/jun/20/landmark-supreme-court-ruling-throws-doubt-on-new-uk-fossil-fuel-projects

tldr: fossil fuel extractor have been claiming their projects are carbon neutral because the product will be used by someone else somewhere else. Someone likened it to tobacco companies saying their product did not cause cancer as long as it was not burned. The law has decided otherwise. A small hurrah!

It is perhaps apposite to say something semi-philosophical about "bias". It is surely the duty of the media, and ordinary mortals not to be even-handed as between truth and falsehood, but to be maximally biased towards the truth. If every true statement is balanced by an equal falsehood, then no communication can happen at all.

The difficulty, of course, is in deciding between competing stories and competing story-tellers. And in this context, the rules of evidence developed by the legal system along with the sceptical methods of science serve as the best models of a pragmatic way of seeking the truth.

And to bring this to a short conclusion directed at the topic in hand, If one looks at the court cases that Trump has been involved in, the general result is that he loses, whenever the actual facts are tested in court. Jury after jury, after grand jury finds against him whenever the rules of evidence are applied, and not the rules of Noddy in Toyland.

Not that justice is inevitable, and wrong decisions are never made, and as soon as I start seeing any real evidence of kangaroos or other marsupials dominating the US legal system, I reserve the right to admit I was mistaken. In the meantime, there is no balance to be found between Fox News and Meidas Touch; the former is a propaganda machine and scandalmonger, and the latter is a politically biased but fact based reporter of the terrible state of the US.

MeidasTouch is correct in pointing out the dangers President Trump poses to democracy, and undeniably effective in spreading that message to its social media followers.

Your link, NOS.

After a lot of stuff about their ad campaign, some maybe-waybes about their fund-raising and stuff. Criticism of the actual content of their reporting:— a big fat zero. I don't have to defend Meidas touch as individuals when the main accusation is ...

But being on the right side of the Trump fight does not make an organization above scrutiny. And when MeidasTouch faced questions about how it used the $5 million donors entrusted it with to beat Trump, its response was straight out of the Trump playbook.

Perhaps Trump could sue them for unauthorised use of his playbook. :razz:

So who is lying? — NOS4A2

Trump is lying, and some people believe his lies because they really want to. People like Trump because they like what he says. I thought you might have had something a bit more interesting, but that's all there is I guess. 4 years a president then 4 and the border problem is still the problem he is going to solve in his second term.

I wasn't expecting people to come out and say, "l love Trump because his a bigot, a racist and a misogynist, and so am I." So I'm not very surprised it didn't happen.

Personally I much rather hear your own original opinions than theirs and the Biden campaigns, but I fear there aren’t any. — NOS4A2

Of course there aren't. I don't have any experience on which to base my opinions, so i have to rely on theirs. My opinion is that Trump is a miserable self-hating person who projects his hatred onto others, and thinks that everyone else is as horrible as he is. But i never met him, so it is based on the horrible things he says in his recorded speeches all the time with no factual support.

In contrast, The meidas people, while they are obviously anti Trump, make much use of court transcripts, reports in Trump supporting media, and so on. They are clearly biased, but they don't lie all the time unlike most of the Trump supporters and Trump himself.

They told me to say.

But I'm so glad you have your independence, and plenty of unbiased sources!

You’ll just say whatever they tell you to. — NOS4A2

Of course I will. The difficulty though is working out who is they and who is we.

I'll just say he's decided he prefers the shark to the electrocution.

How do we find out what is the best way for us? — Janus

The first thing we find out is that the best way for us is not identical with the best way for me.

My question is: why focus specifically on tips? — Relativist

Because you are addressing a service industry workforce, obviously, and that is what you think they will want to hear.

Or does anyone think that Trump is a super generous tipper who wants to help the poor folk?

Some interesting material here for those, like me, who are a bit bemused how Trump is popular at all, etc.

In my mind, what this means is that a good college education is of greater value for becoming open-minded and non-conformist. Then again, some people also take some drugs while at college — Shawn

You may be right, but my experience is not that at all. I learned much at college but almost nothing of any use from the courses. On the contrary all my formal education seemed designed to create the "ideal" conforming angst-ridden robot, that is all governments can cope with.

How can a break from reality bring one closer to reality? — Shawn

I thought that would be clear, sorry. The worst feature of insanity is lack of insight. Most people think that sanity is normality and so they like what the neighbours like, believe what the television tells them, do what the priest tells them, and so on.

To be amenable and flexible is part of sanity when it is a conscious choice, but when it becomes unconscious and rigid conformism, it is a madness of false identification and leads to horrors. Magas, Nazis, cultists, fanatics and zealots of all persuasions all suffer from the loss of reality in favour of ideology. This is sadly the mental condition of normality, that confers on the sufferer a complete confidence in their distorted thinking. Psychodelics in particular serve to break down the identification somewhat - with luck, the cracks that are made in the psycho-ceramic's everyday insane certainty will allow a glimpse of reality to reach the sufferer.

To take the acid test is to made aware of one's insanity; to make a habit of it is the exact same insanity.

There's a reasonable chance that you and I are old. — T Clark

My big sister bought this.

I'd like to add to my OP, that I don't quite understand the 1960's that well. I know it was the counterculture movement; but, I don't understand why it became a fascination with drugs... I mean, it was about peace, love, and political activism; but, why the popularity arose to drugs? — Shawn

Have you seen the movie, Pleasantville? It explains the '60's rather well. There was a desperate need to escape from the American Dream, because it was covering up the American Nightmare of Vietnam and became the prison of suburban convention.

There [Pleasantville],fire does not exist, and firefighters merely rescue cats from trees, and everyone is unaware that anything exists outside of Pleasantville, as all roads circle back into it. David tells Jennifer they must play the show's characters and not disrupt Pleasantville, but she rebelliously goes on a date with Mary Sue's boyfriend, Skip Martin, the most popular boy in school. She has sex with Skip, who is shocked by the experience, which leads to the first bursts of color appearing in town.

Bill Johnson, owner of the malt shop where Bud works, experiences an existential crisis after realizing the repetitive nature of his life. David tries to help him break out of his routine and notices an attraction between Bill and Betty.

As Jennifer influences other teenagers, parts of Pleasantville become colorized, including some of the residents. Books in the library, previously blank, begin to fill with words after David and Jennifer summarize the plot to their classmates. When Jennifer gives a curious Betty an explanation about sex and tells her how to masturbate, Betty has an orgasm that results in her colorization and a fire in a tree outside.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleasantville_(film)

One self medicates because one is in a state of such confinement in one's own mind, and such alienation from reality, that intoxication actually brings one closer to reality for a short while. It is not a new thing, though the particular drugs were new; "In vino, veritas." the Romans used to say. Unfortunately, the conventions of drug-culture and self-indulgence quickly become as grey and confining, (if not more so), as the dreamworld they seek to escape.

Here is a pig singing about it for you.

I'm also not sure it makes sense to talk about the US ever being great. — T Clark

You guys should make like Britain and just incorporate greatness into the name just as you incorporated the unity — "The United States of Great America". It's that easy!

It seems plausible to me that any large Communist regime will inevitably end up in tyranny. Again, that's my "seems to me" opinion, not a solid claimi. — T Clark

It seems plausible to me that any large regime will inevitably end up in tyranny. Again, that's my "seems to me" opinion, not a solid claim.

Revolutions usually happen when the 'government' The Tzar, king, despot, oligarch, and his coterie become completely careless of the ordinary folk. 'Communism' is simply a label adopted by, or imposed upon, recent populist uprisings. 'Democracy' is a label adopted by governments that want to prevent revolutions.

Russia before the revolution was a medieval society of nobles and serfs. The same is true of China. Such a system is destabilised by the industrial revolution, just as the system of slavery became destabilised in America.

The common mistake is to suppose that anything very much is different between one system and another - exceptionalism. There are better and worse governments to suffer under, and generally wealthy governments are more generous to their people, and when there is little growth, they become meaner and meaner. The reality is that no one is going to make America great again for ordinary people.

This is a story about the folks who lived around Trump's Scottish golf course. I wonder, since it is distant from the party politics, if folks might be more open to seeing the rights and wrongs of it? If you can access it that is.

If we accept the observation that we only ever experience Sensory Data; — Treatid

I never experience sensory data. It is a mere abstraction that imagines the smell of coffee to be "the same" as birdsong and "the same" as a bunch of words including "Sensory Data".

But doesn't the fact that specific thoughts arise for a particular individual (and are unique to that conscious individual) indicate the ownership of thoughts? — Heracloitus

Disclaimer: I know little about Buddhism.

There is a point of view, behind the eyes, and a point of hearing between the ears, and there is a sensitive body, that has various instincts for self- preservation. And for a human there is also thought, imagination planning rehearsing dreaming remembering, replaying, recounting.

I don't think Buddhism denies these facts of individuality. But when you speak of consciousness, it seems to me that you are not speaking of any of these things, but rather these are all things that one might be conscious of.

It is as if all the world is a great play that consciousness watches - the life of the hero, told from his point of view. But the performer is always hidden under costume and makeup, and the audience is silent and passive sitting in darkness.

And which is the individual, the performer or the watcher? They seem to be the same, and this implies that one is the whole world: the play, the performer and the audience. Or as it has been very simply put, 'your skin doesn't separate you from the world, it joins you to it.' Or even shorter, J. Krishnamurti said, "You are the world".

Sure they do, but you have to look up from your
phone occasionally and look around and smile at anyone who's looking at you. — Agree-to-Disagree

Nobody ever looks up from a phone, and no one who is on a phone in public is likely to be noticed at all except as an arsehole talking to someone who isn't there like a schizo. The point of being in a public place in this context is to be present to the world, and engaged in an activity, but open to the presence of others. I gave many options apart from a book, and none of them was a phone for good reason.

These days people don't approach others in public I'm afraid. Despite most people desiring to be approached more. — fdrake

Sure they do, but you have to look up from your book occasionally and look around and smile at anyone who's looking at you. If they smile back, you say "I love this book..." and then they want to know what book, and...

Be yourself in a public place. If you are unusual but not creepy you will attract the interest of those who might be interested. It might take more than 5 minutes. Hey look Mum, that guy's reading a book/ feeding the birds,/playing the mandolin/whittling a spoon/doing tai chi. Anything you fancy apart from "searching for a soulmate" That's too creepy and predatory!