I also don't base anything re my political or social philosophy on any of that information — Terrapin Station

No? But I bet your political and social philosophy is informed, none the less. Knowing how many billions of dollars are spent on extra pairs of shoes or pet peripherals (not food, but all the other stuff) or entertainment-oriented magazines isn't the basis for a philosophy, but it could be the basis for understanding that many nations have enough extra money floating around to solve some of their problems, IF they wished to.

I readily agree that we don't, for the most part, have a handle on what's what and what's not. I did the quiz yesterday and did quite well, though was embarrassed by missing a question on wealth distribution which I grouse about a lot. (I wasn't far off, though.)

Is it a problem? Yes. Will anything be done about it? Probably not. Why not? Because most people are not, and are not going to be even midlevel devision makers, and it doesn't matter what they know or don't know. The power elite isn't dedicated to the task of democratizing power, and hence, democratizing knowledge. Fifty years ago, insightful observers of the educational scene concluded that one of the primary functions of the educational establishment was to regulate the labor pool. Classroom teachers, of course, didn't think that's what they were doing, and probably principals didn't either. But school (the last 2 or 3 years of high school and undergraduate college) do delay more or fewer students from going directly into the labor pool, and it helps direct them to the right area of the labor pool.

Teaching geography in its various forms--maps, economic facts, demographics, etc., is a piece of the cure. So is teaching history -- local, national, and international history. The solution is not difficult IF it is deemed worthwhile. As it happens, it has not been deemed worthwhile.

Watched clocks never boil — wuliheron

Good. I like that. Simple and a nice turn of phrase. Did you make that up or did you steal it from somewhere. (Artists steal everything, somebody famous said.)

Authenticity is when any distinctions between our hearts and brains,
No longer matter anymore because harmony neither acts nor reasons;
Knowing without knowing the only thing we can know is but nothing,
Being incapable of ever straying far from the path lost and all alone! — wuliheron

"Knowing without knowing the only thing we can know is but nothing," I can't decide whether there is more than meets the eye in this line, or less. Maybe this quatrain could be tightened up a bit.

Most of your lines are end-punctuated; you don't seem to use multiple clauses that can form a stanza. Is this a virtue or a defect, do you think? Speaking of stanzas... perhaps more breaks in the block of text would be useful. For instance:

For us to be all that we can be each heart must first be free!
For us to be all we can be each must free their loving hearts!

Set your heart free, and it will reward the favor many times!
Set your heart free if you want, to experience actual freedom! — wuliheron

These four lines break into two related two-line stanzas quite nicely.

Any reputation is like a fire that can be arduous to rebuild! — wuliheron

This thought is a bit murky... once it goes out, it is difficult to gather the fuel and get it going again? True, though. "In America, there are no second acts." somebody said. Other times, other places, people's reputations are extinguished and they rise again -- not from the ashes, they rise someplace else, fresh territory. There are second, third, fourth, and fifth acts. Were I to go back to age 21, and have to endure the bits and pieces of my history as I lived it through the next 50 years, uff. Very unpleasant thought.

In general, your poems reflect much more 'exuberance' and almost a revelatory drive. At least, this seems quite unlike the Wuliheron I remember from the old forum.

Your poems have something of stream-of-consciousness looseness about them. Do you go back and edit them, or is it more "What I have written, I have written--period'?

That would be annoying. Some PR firm is probably working with them on establishing a "more definite identity". I hate these kinds of things. The Minneapolis Institute of Art recently decided to call itself "Mia" - pronounced "me ah". Totally loathsome. Another huge annoyance, even though I don't have to deal with it often: instead of "Champaign-Urbana", THE U of Illinois has reversed the order of the two names given for its location. Urbana Champaign? Why?

Can you elaborate a bit on this? I don't quite get it.

For the lazy: stoning to death is the punishment.
— Emptyheady

I think you reveal yourself here as an amateur Islamic scholar, unaware of the subtleties, nuances and rules of abrogation in that deeply complex religion. Allow me to educate you:

While stoning to death is AN accepted method of killing gays (Quran 7: 80-84, 15:72, 27:58, 29:40), it is not the ONLY method.

Gays can also be killed by throwing them off roofs, THEN stoning them if they are not already dead. OR they can be burnt at the stake. — tom

Glad we got that cleared up.

@emptyheady

I used to know actual leftists, but most of us have died, gone into dormancy for the duration, or aren't dead yet.

The leftists I knew disdained the religions equally: Hindu, Christian, Moslem, Buddhist, Jewish, New Age, liberal, conservative. All opium.

For such leftists as still call themselves that, and progressives (whatever that is) perhaps the problem is their relativist views. Few of them have much religious conviction or knowledge, the lack of which may leave them feeling slightly guilty and unequipped to assess their own or others' religions. Progressives are also afflicted by the soup du jour approach: Who is not being adequately cherished today?

There is also what Bertrand Russel warned about: the alleged superior virtue of the oppressed. It doesn't exist. The oppressed are just as likely to be morally contemptible as anybody else. Being oppressed doesn't make people good. Oppression just puts the sons of bitches at a disadvantage. How much sympathy are the disadvantaged sons of bitches worth?

Are all Moslems bad? No. Is Islam all good? No. Did Islam accrete and hold onto some primitive tribal content that they would do well to get rid of? Yes. Is Islam given to greater extreme views than Christianity or Hinduism? Maybe not, but most religionists are capable of going off the deep end. Is Christianity any better than Islam? To the extent that it has overcome it's witch-burning queer stoning scarlet letter branding tendencies, yes--it is. Enlightened Christianity or Islam are still opiates.

Fundamentalist Moslems, Hindus, Christians, etc. are all a plague. Conservative religionists are a drag. Moderate, wishy-washy believers are just smoking lukewarm dope.

What the heck is going on in the UK anyway? — jorndoe

The same thing that is going on everywhere...

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

William Butler Yeats

There's a void at the heart of things — mcdoodle

You think you have a void at the heart of things? Just wait! Once the Void Elect takes office you'll see a black hole enlarging from it's starting point at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

he was very smooth and believable — anonymous66

Snakes usually are.

The only good Orc is a dead Orc.

Sample scenario — jorndoe

I don't want to be guilt-tripped into doing "good" that I might greatly regret, or might be the last thing I ever do.

Am I capable of anything about the bad things I witness?
If I am capable, what are the actions that might take?
If there are options, how do I decide which action to take?]
Which actions will be effective, yet will not place me in the way of unmanageable harm?
Are there likely delayed consequences of taking effective action which does not cause immediate harm to me?

We can process these considerations pretty quickly.

Fist fight between two large men? Knife fight? Gun fight? = leave it alone. I'm not big enough, strong enough, don't know what the fight is about, don't know how drunk the two guys are, don't want to get punched out by interfering.

Neighbor's house being robbed. = call the police, observe, do not interfere.

Children being beaten. = call the police, verbally interfere, test the situation as to physical intervention (who's doing the beating? possibly armed? possibly crazy? likelihood of encountering adult or child later?)

Person injured in car accident, no one else around. Call the police and or ambulance, verbally inquire about condition, do not physically intervene (possibility of causing more injury); provide first aid if possible (if one has materials needed--at least apply tourniquet to bleeding limb); watch for fire potential, in which case, intervene if possible. (My understanding is that in some states there is a duty to respond and be free of liability).

Someone being robbed: call police, do not intervene unless one can deliver unquestionably superior force (in other words, don't start a defense one can't finish). Observe.

I don't know whether you would call these responses adequate, but like I said, I don't plan on rushing in and playing hero for a day and ending up getting beaten to a pulp or dead.

That's not how it really is. — Mongrel

But that IS how it really is in the reality check fictional work. Do you need a support group to process your feelings about this? Besides, what about all the fathers, sons, and brothers who were killed by the hell-spawn? No feelings about them? Not even a teensy bit of sympathy? Is there no end to the usual and customary PC nettles--even for the (marginalized/stigmatized) Orcs?

When do you want to schedule sensitivity training for hell-spawned diversity?

bring me a soda — Real Gone Cat

Your use of "soda" rather than "pop" or "coke" probably places you either in the northeast US, St. Louis area, or southwest US. You could be in eastern Wisconsin, which is also the western limit of Inland Northern pronunciation, which has it's roots in the northeast region.

http://www.popvssoda.com

Yikes, I must seem like the worst fan-boy. It probably sounds like I live in my parents basement surrounded by posters of dragons. "Mom, bring me a soda. I'm busy talking to my internet friends." — Real Gone Cat

So, how old are you now and how old were you when you first read the trilogy? I'm 70, and first read the Tolkien trilogy (and The Hobbit) (plus the Silmarillion, and some other bits and pieces).when I was around 30. Over the years I've re-read the trilogy...I don't know, 10 times, at least. I also read Lewis' 3 novels (and some of his non-fantasy books). Tolkien is clearly the better fantasist. As I recollect, (after 35 years) Lewis' stories didn't catch fire the way great books do. There are very good chapters in Lewis's works, but not great books. (I only read the Lion, the Witch, and The Wardrobe, but I didn't like it.)

Your case for Sam being the hero is very well supported. It gives me pause about putting Frodo forward as the hero.

As far as symbolism goes, Sam represents the working-class man who began to assert himself as WWI and WWII brought the old class system in England to an end. Suddenly merit and enterprise were more important than who your parents might be. (Remember, Frodo is upper class as far as the Shire is concerned. And Frodo's time is coming to an end.) — Real Gone Cat

Sam is, as you note, working class, Frodo upper class, and the industrialism and empire which had sustained the ruling class of Britain was reaching its end. Coal, for instance, had been a huge contributor to Britain's trade surplus, and the volume of exported coal was huge. The minors had been trying for years to alleviate their wretched lot, and gain sustained power. WWII left Britain pretty much spent. (Of course, the ruling classes didn't disappear, and neither did the working classes, on up to the present 15 minutes.)

I took sam to be a very loyal servant, really devoted to Frodo. Clearly, his affection and commitment went above and beyond. Frodo couldn't shake Sam, even when he tried to give him the slip.

So, I'll give way here, and change my runner up hero from Aragorn to Sam. You are right: Sam's role was critical from beginning to end, and particularly in the last hours of the tale, Sam saved the day. But still... Frodo put up an extraordinarily valiant effort to succeed in destroying the Ring, while carrying damnation around his neck and paying a steep price for his physical and psychy's wounds. The poisoned blade wound of a Nazgûl, Shelob's sting, and the baleful influence of the Ring. Sam, Hobbits, and Man inherited the world that Gandalf, Aragorn, Elrond, Galadriel, and the Elves had preserved and defended.

Where do you put the Dwarves in all of this? And Gollum?

Must be time to dump some irresponsibly absurd video clip on this enlightening discussion.

Every state of mind to way of thinking can be traced back to the unwillingness to accept the inevitable decay of ourselves. — eddiedean

I think it is a mistake to take one thing, death anxiety for instance, as the root of all our thoughts and behavior. Certainly, worrying about death is a factor in what we do, but it is just one of several.

Some people (atheist, christian, hindu, moslem, martyrs, saints, communist, nazi, etc.) value The Great Cause (whatever that is) over their own lives. They locate all that is good in the cause, and all that is good is clearly more important than everything else, including their own lives. (I don't believe that, myself, but some people do.)

It takes a group to make a "fanatic hero". Everyone in the group is jumping up and down with excitement about the great cause, the great jihad, the great war, the maximum leader, the great prophet, the great god, "the great this, that, and the other". We get carried away with the enthusiasm of the crowd, the mob.

Fanatics of all kinds are at least somewhat crazy, a little insane.

The Zombies (1965) are a bit more convincing. Their picked their name prior to the zombie apocalypse obsession.

Oh mother tell your children
Not to do what I have done
Spend your lives in sin and misery
In the House of the Rising Sun

These children in 1960s jackets and ties singing about their life of sin and misery in the house of the rising sun...

Likely story. Love the song. Love the Animals.

I'm all for gaining some more objectivity to negate moral relativism. — Gooseone

I find myself sounding like I support moral relativism, which I don't like, and can't seem to avoid. "Respect for individuality" or "individuals have a right to free expression of their personality", "Individuals have a right to reach their own conclusions about..." and so on. Western democracies pay more than lip service to these positions on the proper respect due individuals, (but sometimes they are not at all enthusiastic about some individuals who are just plain annoying). There are a number of regimes around the world who do not give a rat's ass about respecting individuals, and there are some regimes (really big ones) that not very long ago shot people for being too individualistic.

Were I a loyal member of the repressive regimes, I would probably think it quite proper to suppress individuality. I recognize that, it is a relativistic POV, and I don't like that. I recognize that many people find homosexuality wrong, perverse, intrinsically disordered, and so on, and in a pluralistic society, we are expected to grant respect to the individuals holding these views. I think they are dead wrong, however.

We seem to be fine with objective values as long as our moral objectivities are consistent with western democratic values (which I vastly prefer to repressive, oppressive regimes). But other people's moral objectivities are often considered immoral by us, and visa versa.

In other words, we all tend to be relativists. Maybe we should just admit we are relativists, like our own values better than theirs, we're right, they're wrong, fuck them, and be done with it.

I must be terrible at recognizing symbolism - I have never seen Catholicism in Tolkien's work — Real Gone Cat

I can't think of anything peculiarly "Catholic" in Lord of the Rings, but I'm not Catholic, so maybe I'm missing something obvious.

Tolkien drew upon a lot of resources with which he would have been familiar to give his plot texture, interest, color, profundity, the tragic and the comic, and so on, many of which were pagan.

Who is the Hero of LOTR?

Just as a fun side-bar, who do you think is the "true" hero of LotR? — Real Gone Cat

I haven't read Tolkien's letters, so I have only the text to go on. I would choose Frodo as the hero, for the reasons that Frodo:

Was an ordinary person--very strong, good, honest, etc. but was no super-hobbit.
Did not seek out the ring.
Did not perform selfish, evil acts with the ring while he possessed it
Found the ring very burdensome
Did not have any supernatural powers (such as simultaneously existing in Middle Earth and the Undying Lands at the same time, or lived an extremely long time, if not forever, or had magical powers like the wizards.
Suffered grievously for the role he fulfilled

Sam was cut from the same extra fine cloth as Frodo, and while he bore the ring briefly, he didn't sacrifice as much.

Aragorn, Tom Bombadil, Elrond, Galadriel, various of the Elves, Ents, hobbits and Rohirrim, various Men of the West associated with Minas Tirith, dwarves, etc. -- all had their significant virtues. But some couldn't be heroes because they had supernatural powers: Tom, Elrond, Galadriel, or elves.

I would rate Aragorn (Strider) as the first runner-up hero. Arwen merits a special mention, since she gave up immortality to stay in Middle Earth with Aragorn, whom she married.

But it is Frodo who bore the wounds inflicted by, or on behalf of the Ring. Bilbo also suffered, but more with advanced Ring-associated befuddlement, rather than agony.

Frodo is the Christ figure, willing to sacrifice himself to take away the undying threat to Middle Earth. Even if he stumbled at the last moment and claimed the ring, (shortly to lose it when Gollum bit off his ring-bearing finger and then fell into the Crack of Doom.

who decides if something is ethical or not — verbena

Hospitals and research universities employ ethicists and panels of experts to assess the ethics of various procedures. The various institutions of society (religious, secular, political, academic, etc.) also engage in ethic-definition.

We may not reach a society-wide consensus on what is or is not ethical. In which case, we have lots of disputes, laws, punishments, disobeying laws, and so on. Whether destroying embryos is ethical or not is not settled.

An embryo produced by stimulating an adult cell into becoming a pluripotent stem cell is too 'manmade' to be considered the same as an embryo produced by the usual sperm/egg method. So, I would consider it ethical to use or destroy the embryo, as needed. Should organ tissue be generated and grow into liver, that too could ethically be used or not, either way.

If an adult-cell-derived embryo is implanted in a womb, begins to develop into a normal fetus, (I don't think this has been done for humans yet, or yet reliably) then it, as a prospective person, could not be aborted, except under ethical rules (like, after 24 weeks of gestation). I also don't like the idea of aborting otherwise healthy fetuses for the purposes of obtaining tissue for whatever purpose.

The whole business of cloning and genetic engineering of humans is unsettled ethical territory, too.

Morality only has to do with intention, or desire. Desiring good makes us good. Desiring bad makes us bad. Outcomes can be preferable or not. — Maximus

Jesus said if you hated your brother, you were already a murderer. He placed quite a bit of stock in our intentions. Eventually I came to doubt intention-defined morality. What we do is more important than what we intend--and this is the basis of the final judgement described in Matthew: "I was hungry and you fed me, I was naked and you clothed me..."

I have no way of assessing your intentions, since I can rely only on your version of what you intended. What you did, however, is observable. So if you do good actions, (however we define good) you have done moral actions. If you do nothing in the face of need, or if you perform bad actions (however we define bad) then you have done done nothing or you have done immoral actions.

You and I can worry about our own intentions, but as a basis of morality, it doesn't work that well.

to say he's mentally ill seems very strange to me — Agustino

I don't think Donald Trump is mentally ill. The word "Unbalanced" had that connotation. One can have too much ambition without being mentally ill. Nobody has the 'perfect balance' of all traits. Slightly psychopathic administraitors can be very effective, thoroughly and widely hated, but still be "mentally healthy". Indeed, they function all too well.

Trump has a crude streak, he's narcissistic, he's extremely ambitious, he's a successful business operator, he's probably slightly psychopathic, he's no more of a liar, thief, knave, and scoundrel than most other politicians or corporate heads are at the start or become, and most likely would fit into the 'normal' range on the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (a psychiatric diagnostic test). He's not mentally ill, as far as I can tell.

He's a loose cannon in a dangerous field of other loose cannons. His reach has exceeded his grasp of statesmanship. As pundits have said, he's restocking the swamp much more than draining it. He's nothing but trouble, and he can be all of these negative things without being mentally ill.

'I' would not, for instance, regard psychopathy as a mental strength yet seeing they appear to make great captains of industry, what do I know? — Gooseone

Just a cautionary note... Out and out psychopaths do not make great captains of industry. It's a suite of talents, one of which might be some psychopathic characteristics that makes them effective. A touch of megalomania helps some people too. More than a touch, and you have a an unbalanced personality (like some presidents-elect).

We can get away with saying "the world is meaningless" but not "human life is meaningless". Our celestial ball spins about its radiant star according to all sorts of physical and chemical rules, one of which is NOT "must have meaning". Our lives, on the other hand, are inherently meaningful. and must have meaning, because we are by nature "meaning makers".

We are meaning makers because we speak complex languages and wield complex culture, all of which is about meaning. Our lives can no more be "meaningless" than lifeless planets and stars can be "meaningful".

I hesitate to say that all life is meaningful because much of the glorious life which we inhabit follows physical and chemical rules, like the planet itself. We can make plastic pine trees meaningful to us, but we can't make plastic pine trees meaningful to each other.

The amazing thing about us meaning makers is that we are the long-evolving outcomes of species who were not meaning makers. Meaning makers are a very recent phenomena in the very long history of our world. How long we have been making meaning is how long we have had language and culture, and 'how long' is... 125,000 years? 250,000 years? 500,000 years? 1,000,000 years? Don't know, but at some point...

So, people who say that their lives are meaningless are wrong. They may loathe their lives and wish to put an end to them forthwith, but they can't escape meaning. Meaning just goes with the territory of being human.

I always had difficulty taking work seriously -- except for the first two or three years at three or four good professional jobs. So much of it either seemed from the start, or came to seem, like some sort of grand scam. I worked in non-profits; "the bottom line" is a bit different than the bottom line of for-profits. I was, I am, capable of industrious, high quality output, but I do need to feel highly motivated. Cash has never been a sufficient incentive. I have always needed a good reason to work hard.

The difference between non-profits and for profits is simple enough: In a capitalist society like much of the world, one does business to make money. Most of the money accrues to the owners, not the laborers of course. What do you think business is--some sort of welfare operation? All of the various non-profit operations -- everything from fundraisers for elite art museums to social work among bottom-of-the-barrel prostitutes is designed to aid in the functioning, maintenance, and reproduction of society as it exists, not as it might, should, or could exist.

We work because we have to, and people have to be paid to work -- no pay, no work. If you find a job about which you can say "that works for me!" good. If you don't have that kind of job, don't bother trying to make a silk purse out of the sow's ear you have. It's a pig's ear, it's not silk, it's not even polyester, and it's basically ugly.

Degreed, dressed in a suit (or not), we're still fucking peasants, pretty much, like John Lennon sang.

Worry about retirement as much as it makes sense to worry about it. Enjoy life while you are still young enough to do interesting things. You might not live long enough to retire; you may not be healthy when you retire; you might be dead before, or shortly after you retire; you probably won't be fit, handsome or beautiful, and in demand when you reach 65 or 70, so live now.

If you want to make a ruckus, make it now. If you want to be a prophet, a poet, or a painter, better do it now. Live cheaply, save your pennies.

John Lennon - Working Class Hero

As soon as you're born they make you feel small
By giving you no time instead of it all
Till the pain is so big you feel nothing at all
A working class hero is something to be
A working class hero is something to be

They hurt you at home and they hit you at school
They hate you if you're clever and they despise a fool
Till you're so fucking crazy you can't follow their rules
A working class hero is something to be
A working class hero is something to be

When they've tortured and scared you for twenty-odd years
Then they expect you to pick a career
When you can't really function you're so full of fear
A working class hero is something to be
A working class hero is something to be

Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV
And you think you're so clever and classless and free
But you're still fucking peasants as far as I can see
A working class hero is something to be
A working class hero is something to be

There's room at the top they're telling you still
But first you must learn how to smile as you kill
If you want to be like the folks on the hill

A working class hero is something to be
A working class hero is something to be
If you want to be a hero well just follow me
If you want to be a hero well just follow me

This 1969 song seems very apropos.

To be compassionate and caring towards them. That's difficult for the great men simply because of the hatred, fear and jealousy the average and normal exert towards the great. — Agustino

Alarm bells ring, but don't ask for whom the bell tolls; (it tolls for thee).

You are bleary-eyed but you are FORCED with a familiar decision- get out of bed or lay there... I supposed you COULD lay there until you get bed sores, shit your bed, and die of starvation, dehydration, and infection, but most likely you CHOOSE the decision to get up. — schopenhauer1

Fortunately, life goes on because you don't need to make choices at all these junctures of various bodily functions. You are a body, and your body won't put up with your decision to lay there in a pile of shit, wet cold mattress, while your are chilled, stinking, a-hungering, a-thirsting, and a-rotting from infection--unless you in your body is afflicted with terminal dementia.

Your body likes being warm, dry, fed, watered, and pain free. It will get you out of bed. Plus your mama deeply programmed you during potty training. Once successfully trained, we urinate and defecate in our beds and clothing only when something goes haywire, and we generally feel pretty bad about it.

It isn't your conscious mind that sustains your life: it is your body doing its thing as a body that keeps you alive. (conscious mind and somatic function are all part of the same body system--no dualism here.)

That said, there was a guy in my home town, Freddie Dewitt, who was quite smart, fairly well off, and and apparently not crazy. Freddie was middle aged when I saw him walking around town (back in the 50s). Freddie never washed, never changed clothes, never repaired his boots. His clothes were black and stiff with dirt and grease. His truck was a ramshackle contraption. He owned a number of buildings in the village's "downtown" and was a bad landlord. He never did anything to maintain, let alone improve, his buildings. He did eat and drink, though, and apparently used a toilet (outhouse, probably) of some sort. He looked and smelled repulsive.

Mr. DeWitt hadn't always been like this. As a young person he did well in the 1 room school he attended. An Aunt remembered his being very smart in school. He got married and starting farming. Things didn't work out maritally, I heard. When his wife told him she was divorcing him and expected a share of the farm, he threw a shovel full of manure in her face and said that was all the farm she was going to get.

So, did Freddie choose to become a repulsive pariah, the village idiot, in a small down, or did he fail at being a human being, ending up as a miserable wretch not by his own doing?

or always have more important things to do — Sir2u

Like crawl into caves and make paintings on the wall, or carve statuettes, or invent plaid textiles, or teach old dogs new tricks, sneak away to have sex with that cute girl (she's such a neanderthal), and other such damn wastes of time.

As Schopenhauer said, a man can do as he wills but he cannot will what he wills. — darthbarracuda

So, who wills what, then, if not the man? We will what we want, even when it is what we don't want. It just isn't a rational process. It's a paradox.

Willing desire one doesn't "want" (like, "I ferociously crave that man, and I know he is going to lead to nothing but trouble -- but I want him anyway, RIGHT NOW!" is only a problem for the model of man who is overly rational. For the normally rational, embodied man the experience of willing his wants even when he doesn't want what he currently craves is perfectly normal, if annoying.

The non-existent man who has an overly rational model doesn't have a robust body capable of generating desires one doesn't want. Jane is on a diet, she is having some success, and is proud of it. She's looking forward to a slimmer Jane. Suddenly she is struck by a ravenous longing for chocolate ice cream, cookies, and lavishly buttered popcorn--successively, all during the same evening. Jane desires to stay on her diet and become svelte, but she wills the journey of sin and debauchery to the store where she buys premium chocolate ice cream; big, thick chewy chocolate chip cookies; butter, and popcorn.

4,000 calories later, sated, she no longer craves these things and is beset by waves of remorse. So, who willed this act of gluttony if not Jane? No one else, of course. Her body (blood sugar levels, memories, limbic system, an ad she couldn't avoid for the new Hagen Daz deep dark chocolate ice cream with added lard) combined to overwhelm her rational mind. Jane is her body. Her body doesn't have an independent existence apart from Jane, or belong to somebody else. Jane, and everybody else, is capable of willing desires they do not want.

We will what we will, even if we don't consciously and rationally choose to do so--which is why Freud said "We are not masters of our own house".

A copper nugget (a natural lump of unalloyed metal) can be hammered into any number of shapes. Is the particular the nugget, the nail, or the knife that is the hammered out nugget?

Molten metal (man-made) can be cast then rolled, hammered, annealed, beaten, cut, etc. What is the essence of a railroad spike? It's spikiness, or it's iron bar form, or it's molten metal form, or maybe its un-smelted ore form? Is the essence of iron a generality that can be transformed into any particularity one wants? If you melt the spike and make a cup out of it, which essence does it have?

Doesn't transformation present a problem for determining 'essence' of some kinds of objects? What is the essence of a river (which we never step into the same one twice)?

This is what makes desires manipulative, then: they instill a sense of dissatisfaction that a person did not previously have, and force the person to extend effort to relieve this dissatisfaction. — darthbarracuda

Does a desire have some sort of independent existence in my brain in such a way that a desire can manipulate me? It seems like desires are the wishes of the individual. The individual motivates, drives, tortures, whips himself by devising desires whose satisfaction is not in easy reach, or in reach at all.

Why are we discontented? Why do we desire more than we have, or different than we have? We can learn to cool off our discontents, lessen our desires. We can learn to be content. I'm not suggesting that we should, just that we can.

That we know we can do these things (lessen desire) ought to take the sting out of our auto-manufactured desires. I don't know precisely what the beginning of desire is. Perhaps it is rooted in hunger (not literal hunger for food). Perhaps it is rooted in fear -- a fear of insufficiency. Perhaps it is rooted in the capacity to imagine -- whether the imagined thing is worth having or not. There are other possibilities.

At any rate, desires aren't manipulating us. It's the self working on itself. Maybe it all comes from not enough love. And by the time we grasp that, we've gone a long way chasing our tails down the highway.

I certainly agree that people who rely on social media's algorithm sifted "news" or "feeds" are trapped in an echo chamber. AT least if one reads newspapers (paper or on-line), one's eye might possibly stray across the page and stumble upon an article that presents unexpected information. My guess is that the majority of people (70-80%?) prefer the "push" approach to content, rather than having to "pull" content one's self. I prefer the pushed information of the NYT to reading wire service content, which requires all pull and no push. News, for me, should be "news". Surprise me!

There are, of course, other ways of filtering. Some people listen only to gospel radio, mostly read inspirational material, spend a lot of time in church, and socialize mostly with church people. They are in a pretty effective echo chamber of their own design.

I'm not quite clear about how social media algorithms function. Do they scan the output of thousands of content producers, and serve up only the material that fits either the completed checklist of preferences, or what matches the pattern of their searches and web travels: the amount of time they spend on various kinds of web sites, the kind of items selected for download, who their friends are, what their record of 'likes' is, and so on?

Personally, I would think that a record of actual internet use would be a better measure of their interests than a checklist, even if the checklist were detailed.

Of course, a lot of what is 'looked at' (porn, for instance) usually isn't news and won't guide content selection directly (it could, indirectly). Shopping online at Macy's or Bloomingdales doesn't tell an algorithm much about news, either, but if someone buys a $10.000 watch, that would indicate something to an alert algorithm, one would think. (Like this person might be interested in the falling prices of luxury watches -- a story I saw in the WSJ today. (Is $10,000 a reduced price in that market?) Maybe that person should be served stories about off-shore tax shelters.

We are embodied (born) with some essential features, which will unfold if we are lucky. If we are unlucky we'll die in the cradle and that will be that. If we grow up and mature, our existence becomes our essence. Existence precedes essence. No existence, no essence.

The details of our existence -- our bodies, our experiences, our nurture, our nature (genetic endowment), our parents, our peers, our teachers, our fortunes and misfortunes, become our essence. Nature and nurture combine to simultaneously make us so alike that we can perceive a "human essence", but at the same time so different that we can't miss our individuality.

Is 'essence' individual or group? Is essence a pool into which we all are submerged? Or is one person's essence unlike all others?

Well my point was this...
In theory traditional news media was not biased by design even if it becomes somewhat biased in practice. — m-theory

Are you sure about that?

I don't know a lot about the history of journalism, but it seems to me that "the news" started out as the editor's naturally biased thoughts on the events of the day (18th century). The very few "content producers" (as we call it) felt free to say whatever was on their mind, barring statements that might ignite a riot which could wreck their printing press.

In the 19th century "the news" and "content production" became industrialized, and a lot of people were out scouting up content to fill column inches. Competition between papers was vigorous, and the reading public was wooed with the kind of stories that would keep the coins klinking into the coffers and consequently, keep the owners happy. Again, anything short of a riot or a slander suit, or governmental wrath.

The 19th century segued into the 20th with journalism still being pretty raw. A much larger reading public, competition, and a certain mount of ruling class "taste making" reigned in the excesses, and journalism became a profession. By mid-20th century (and on to the present) we have had the slimy tabloid papers on the sleazy side, and the big daily publishers on the 'taste and dignity' side.

Taste and Dignity, unfortunately, do not rule out bias. It's just that the bias is more disguised, more camouflaged than in the past. The systematic way issues are framed, for instance, can disguise a large bias. For instance, in the 1980s the New York Times would not publish the obituaries of gay men that referenced bonded relationships -- words like 'spouse' or 'partner' were edited out. The bias of the Times was that gay men didn't have deep relationships. (They eventually did an about-face, but not without a minor riot on their doorstep.)

Take population movements: It's an unvarnished fact that people move from place to place, and sometimes a lot of people move at the same time. One newspaper will frame this as a humanitarian challenge; another paper will frame it as a cultural crisis; a third paper will frame it as economic opportunity; a fourth paper will frame it as an invasion. They are all talking about the same thing, and are likely to cite the same data.

They are all biased, and all conceal their bias in the way they frame the story. All of these frames are more and less valid.

The closest we can get to the facts is to recognize and accept another fact, and that is "news purveyors" can not be bias free. I can't, you can't, and neither can the New York Times be bias free.

I think it was in 2006 that I suggested making it possible to sue politicians and newspapers for stating incorrect facts. — Benkei

What you are proposing is a frontal attack on life as we know it! Why, if politicians and newspapers could be sued for stating merely incorrect facts (let alone more devious constructions) the courts would be backlogged into the next century.

The definitions allow the classification of all possible conditions of the mind as either being mental illness or being mental strength — Agustino