Individuals and corporations who have the resources to manage their reputations and images generally seek out of court settlements. They may or may not be guilty, they may or may not have been falsely accused. The thing they want most is for the subject and the uproar to go away. Out of court settlements usually do make uproars and subjects go away, because in exchange for the cash, accusers agree to cease and desist--aka, shut up about it.

For similar reasons many accused plea bargain; they get charged with manslaughter instead of murder, and the state saves quite a bit of money on a potentially very expensive trial. Prosecutors are less likely to plea bargain in cases of egregious murder, (like serial murders, especially gruesome first degree murders--trials that the public is willing to pay for).

Example: 27 odd years ago, 11 year old Jacob Wetterling disappeared -- presumably kidnapped -- from his home in St. Joseph, Minnesota. There was a long, intense, and massive search for evidence. There were clues, but nothing certain. This fall, a man confessed, led the police to where the body was buried, and the identity was confirmed. Case closed. There was no trial. The perpetrator, Danny Heinrich 53, was already in federal custody for child pornography charges. Why was the kidnapping and murder charge plea bargained down to lesser charges?

a. The Wetterling family did not want to endure a trial.
b. If Heinrich had been accused, there might not have been sufficient evidence to convict without his cooperation.
c. The bargaining closed the case (good for the family and the community) and was unnecessary: Heinrich will remain in prison for the rest of his life.

People sometimes plead guilty to lesser charges even if they are not guilty because they want to avoid a trial and they want to get out of police custody. If the penalty is small (like for shoplifting) the fine may be viewed as the least worst outcome.

Bill Clinton. That in itself, getting such a man in the White House again, that is a bigger crime than anything Trump has ever done with regards to sexuality. — Agustino

So, Bill Clinton needs a roof over his head -- the white house is as good a roof as any.

if she wins, the culture of the US will be altered for quite a long time, in a direction that's not going to be good at all. — Agustino

Calm down. Cultures are changing all the time. The course of history is being changed by the minute. Hillary can neither usher in Utopia or usher it out. (This applies to a Trump presidency too.)

Perhaps a Clinton + Clinton administration will change things, and whether this is good or not depends on who you are. A more liberal court, and one that stays liberal for a while, is the worst outcome that Clinton could produce. Unless there is a plague among the conservative justices sitting there now, there isn't anything dramatic she can do. Same for Trump.

What is it that a more liberal court could do that would affect YOU materially?

Clearly not, under your argument — TheWillowOfDarkness

Correct. "More meaningful/less meaningful, all the same" is definitely not my schtick.

Some people know more and have greater insights into the meaning of texts, events, behaviors, music, art, and so on than others do. I think there is a contest of meaning. Some people win it, and some people lose it--ignominiously.

With respect to the text you have written out, there are innumerable meanings, interpretations and intentions, some of which are the authors, others which are not. All are just as meaningful as the other — TheWillowOfDarkness

The text is from “Four Saints in Three Acts”, libretto by Gertrude Stein, score by Virgil Thomson. "The piece was originally presented by The Friends and Enemies of Modern Music in 1934, opening in Hartford, Connecticut, and then moving to Broadway where, surprisingly, it was a big hit, running for sixty performances."

I've read the libretto, heard an early (1940s) recording, and seen the opera on stage. I find it moderately pleasant, but after a while it becomes extremely tedious. Both Gertrude and Virgil both use repetition with a vengeance. I have no idea what pigeons are doing on the grass, alas, alas.

I like James Thurber's approach to pigeons much better. POMO would please Stein, it would not please Thurber.

"From where I am sitting now I can look out the window and see a pigeon being a pigeon on the roof of the Harvard Club. No other thing can be less what it is not than a pigeon can, and Miss Stein, of all people, should understand that simple fact. Behind the pigeon I am looking at, a blank wall of tired gray bricks is stolidly trying to sleep off oblivion; underneath the pigeon the cloistered windows of the Harvard Club are staring in horrified bewilderment at something they have seen across the street. The pigeon is just there on the roof being a pigeon, having been, and being, a pigeon and, what is more, always going to be, too. Nothing could be simpler than that. If you read that sentence aloud you will instantly see what I mean. It is a simple description of a pigeon on a roof. It is only with an effort that I am conscious of the pigeon, but I am acutely aware of a great sulky red iron pipe that is creeping up the side of the building intent on sneaking up on a slightly tipsy chimney which is shouting its head off."

James Thurber

The point of contention is entirely to do with the way post-modernism eliminates the single narrative from which we all spring. — TheWillowOfDarkness

How could there even be a single narrative (from which we all spring)?

no discourse is less meaningful than another. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Whether discourses are more meaningful, or less meaningful, than others is a horse a-piece. It's a distinction without a difference.

Meaning is within the text or discourse itself, rather than being granted by the world outside of it. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Right, so...

7. Read the following text and find the meaning within the text, the whole text, and nothing but the text. No outside world may be consulted. Your opinion of what meaning is within the text may not be offered as a meaning. (15 points)

Pigeons on the grass alas.
Pigeons on the grass alas.
Short longer grass short longer longer shorter yellow grass. Pigeons
large pigeons on the shorter longer yellow grass alas pigeons on the
grass.
If they were not pigeons what were they.
If they were not pigeons on the grass alas what were they. He had
heard of a third and he asked about it it was a magpie in the sky.
If a magpie in the sky on the sky can not cry if the pigeon on the
grass alas can alas and to pass the pigeon on the grass alas and the
magpie in the sky on the sky and to try and to try alas on the
grass alas the pigeon on the grass the pigeon on the grass and alas.
They might be very well they might be very well very well they might
be.
Let Lucy Lily Lily Lucy Lucy let Lucy Lucy Lily Lily Lily Lily
Lily let Lily Lucy Lucy let Lily. Let Lucy Lily.

8. Explain why your discourse in answer to Question 7 is less meaningful than another. (10 points)

9. If you successfully explained in question 8 why your discourse in question 7 was less meaningful than another, please explain why you didn't submit a more meaningful narrative. Do you think we're running a degree mill here? (10 points.)

scientism — anonymous66

white privilege — csalisbury

narrativize — Moliere

Oh oh, they are all exhibiting POMO vocabulary and concerns. Call the cops.

...will you be able to resist the urge to find the nearest car, pop open the hood, and start chugging sulfuric liquid — Thorongil

Yes, but hybrid cars don't use that kind of battery. They use lithium ion or nickel oxide hydroxide batteries. What's an environmentally-sensitive POMO-poisoned person to do? Chewing on lithium will just even out my mood. On the other hand, if I sit on a pile of the disastrous Galaxy Note 7 cell phones, they will eventually burst into flames of burning lithium and plastic.

Obviously I'm not expecting an answer to each question, those are just examples to illustrate that people can suffer psychological damage from all sorts of things, — zookeeper

Right.

Whether a deeply beloved partner who is terminally ill dies on April 25 or June 2nd isn't going to make a huge difference in the amount of pain the survivor experiences. If the same partner opts for assisted suicide of one sort or another in late March or early April, it might increase or decrease the pain of the survivor. Not much difference, especially compared to the beloved partner not being sick and dying in the first place. The survivor's suffering begins with the unexpected terminal diagnosis: "3 months, maybe 6--not longer than that."

Chronic mental illness which can go on for decades and never ends in suicide is extremely painful for the partner and family--chronically distressing, more than acutely painful.

Friends moving away to distant cities to pursue their worthy goals can be a cause of considerable pain. Getting fired can be devastating (or a relief, depending). Being part of a company bankruptcy layoff, even if it is nothing personal, can be very hard on people.

Many decisions that people make for their own good, for the good of this group and not that group, to comply with the law, and so on and so forth produce waves of unintended but certain suffering -- and nothing can be done about it -- "that's just life!" as they say.

If you are contemplating pesticide, it would be best to bot use aggressively otto-correcting softcore to write your finial massage to the wold. Where once the correcting software consented itself with pointing out possibly misspilled verbs, it now just goes ahead and substitutes what it thought you must have meat.

For beat results I recommence you use a peace of paper sand a pencil.

Clarice and I knew each other for 40 odd years; we met at work. Clarice was a lively but not especially happy person. She was an Angry Woman. She was a nurse. Angry People, men or women, may have a sharp sense of social justice, but it is also the case that we Angry People are quite often also 'just plain screwed up', to use the technical term and to speak for myself.

In middle age Clarice's physical health went steadily down hill; obesity, arthritis, skin cancer, and so on, as did her mental health. Eventually she became unable to walk (only very short distances) and care for herself properly. Finally she developed an abominable cancer and decided she would not seek treatment for it.

Her reasoning on this was clear enough: Life had become unbearable; she didn't have any acceptable means of suicide by a swifter method. It was too late for her to jump off a bridge or out of a window (she couldn't manage it). She was collecting pills but a visiting nurse confiscated them (whether what she had would have worked, don't know). She was aware of other methods but found them repellant.

Her chosen method allowed her to involve others in her suffering. It allowed her ample time to contemplate her imminent passing (for 2 years, it turned out). There wasn't any sweet resolution at the end. Her final words to some gathered friends were more likely sarcasm than affirmation.

I think Clarice's decision was as rational as it could be, given her history. Had she been able to resolve her core grievances, she might have rationally chosen otherwise, but she wasn't able to do that. (She did try very seriously, but wasn't successful.)

If chronic suffering justifies a suicide, acute short-term suffering certainly does not. Teenagers do not, can not, have good, rational reasons for killing, or attempting to kill, themselves. The acute embarrassment of economic failure in one's middle years isn't rational justification either. I can understand the pain of loss-of-status, but it just doesn't merit killing one's self.

The single rational reason, from my point of view, is reaching an unresolvable dead end of misery after one has lived much of one's expected life. Still, many people endure through such ending episodes with grace, so it isn't at all inevitable.

There is some very confused thinking on the left with respect to religion. The stronger influence of relativism hobbles some leftists in discriminating between "good religion" and "bad religion". Wahhabism, ISIS, Boko Haram, et al are "bad religion". These leftists are sometimes as unable to tell good and bad religion apart where Christianity is concerned. A hateful, literalist fundamentalist and a Catholic bioethicist are indistinguishable to them. No wonder they can't tell the difference between poisonous strains of Islam from benevolent strains.

Many leftists are very secular, and have never had any kind of religious training or experience. (Contrary factoid: Joseph Stalin was educated by the Jesuits and they seem to have done him no good, whatsoever.) They don't have much of a POV to even begin sorting out good and bad religion.

Secular, anti-religious leftists have no experience with the process of accommodating very old strands of a religion that on the face of it seem utterly alien to us. The story of Abraham and Isaac is to modern ears an appalling story. Of course; it is appalling, but ancient and modern believers look beyond the preparation for a ritual killing and burning of one's own child; in it they found/find a key element of their faith in Abraham's obedience.

All religious people do this. Islamic and Christian lunatics do it in reverse: They fasten upon the appalling teaching and elevate (and sometimes exaggerate) it to literal code: It says x, y, and z, then that is exactly what you have to do -- exactly x, y, and z -- no wishy-washy interpretation. Burn the witch. Kill the Jews. Stone the adulterous woman, and so on ad nauseum.

I've been in the foyer too. I think security identified me as someone who probably wasn't a resident of the floors above -- they started following me around. It is a fine looking sky scraping building, but then Trump didn't design it, Adrian Smith did. Smith has done a number of big international projects (like the Burj tower).

How much Trump had to do with the design, don't know. I would be very surprised if he had much at all to do with it. The tastes of the people who buy architect's services is often very at odds with the much more refined tastes of the designer. I doubt if most rich people could come up with a good building design if their lives depended on it. It isn't that they are untalented, it's just that most of them have pedestrian, bourgeois sensibilities suitable for the business world--that's how they got rich (if they didn't inherit it) and that's why they hire inspired architects.

Yes, it's a phallic object. It's taller than it's wide. Virtually all tall buildings are phallic. They can't help it. The pentagon isn't phallic. Buckingham Palace isn't phallic. Tiananmen Square isn't phallic.

What do you mean, "That is precisely the problem in Saudi Arabia"? Is there a functioning Christian church in Saudi Arabia? I'm pretty sure that the Moslem authorities in Saudi Arabia wouldn't permit two men to marry if their lives (the clergy) depended on it.

There is great reason to be concerned about civil liberties in Saudi Arabia -- whether two men can marry is the least of a saudi citizen's concern. Isn't just being gay illegal there?

Please note this sentence in the article to which you referred me:

"But the church is also registered as a for-profit business and city officials said that means the owners must comply with state and federal regulations."

I haven't the vaguest idea why this church is registered as a for-profit business -- most irregular. However, if it is so registered, then as such it would have to deliver up a wedding service.

As you no doubt know, no one--priest, pastor, minister, rabbi, boat captain, airline pilot, or Chief Justice--is required to marry anybody. When a denomination, such as the Lutheran Church decides that it will allow gay marriages to be performed by clergy, that doesn't mean that any Lutheran pastor is required to perform a gay marriage.

The reverse, though, is not true. If the General Conference of the Methodist Church decides it will not allow gay marriages, then Methodist pastors may not perform the ceremony, whatever their personal wishes are.

Whether civil officials (like, justices of the peace, county clerks, etc.) can refuse to marry a couple with a license, I don't know.

Yes, we do make up our own narratives, but we don't compose in a vacuum. We all have to piece together some sort of explanation for our being here, and the world working the way it seems to work. We start doing this as young children, and as we mature we absorb a great deal from the culture in which we are submerged. As we age out of childhood, we integrate more and more complex information. "Intellectual minded people" (and by this I do not mean just academic types) keep working on their 'narratives' throughout their lives.

Speaking of Freud and Jung... Jung is a bit too rococo for my taste. Freud's seminal theories have not all held water equally well for my money, but some of them have. The psychodynamics of the Id, Ego, and Superego and Eros as the wellspring of behavior, both in crude and sublimated form, became part of my narrative.

My college work was mercifully before the plague of POst-MOdernism swept over the campuses. It's way too slippery an approach to the world. I was born long before PC became a thing, but the culture of my small midwestern town had plenty of pre-PC equivalents--words not to be spoken, actions not to be taken, thoughts not to be had. I was an obedient child, but the stiffness of the rules rankled. Maybe that is why I dislike political correctness.

Our more or less stable narratives, the ones that we live with as adults, are a jumble of rational and irrational contradictory stuff. they might not be clean and orderly, but they only have to work well enough.

Just well enough? Why set the bar so low? Because we experience the world haphazardly, or serendipitously if you like, and the various oddball things that happen to us are (and should be) incorporated into our personal narratives.

I am fairly sure the electorate will do the right thing and reject Donald Trump. If we elect him, then do you have any contacts in Canada who could put me up for maybe 8 years? "Oh, yoo hoo, Wosret? You've been bragging about that big house and your copious income." Montreal or Toronto would be nice; I've been to Winnipeg and it's just a colder Minneapolis. Vancouver costs too much. Yellow Knife is too remote. I could practice my French in Montreal.

The fact that he has gotten thus far is an indictment of American society. — Wayfarer

More like an indictment of the current state of the Republican Party, which is hardly all of American society. There were somewhat better Republican candidates, though none of them were A+, and Trump accumulated more national delegate votes than the other candidates, and that settled it.

The vitriol directed at Hillary Clinton is misogynism and more. Republicans hate Obama and Hillary Clinton with about equal passion, it seems like. She has become the symbol for all the perceived insults to American prestige in places like Libya, Syria, Iraq, etc. The super hawks had their feathers badly ruffled by the Iran agreement on nuclear weapons. The hawks probably wanted an attack on Iran's bomb-hardened labs and were disappointed The missing emails smell like subterfuge -- and probably were.

Bernie Sanders might have been a more effective candidate, a better person, and a greater challenge to Trump. Alas, vote counts determined the outcome in the Democratic Party too. Sanders came close, but close doesn't count.

We have a winner-take-all system; a proportional system might be better. Far off fat chance that will happen.

You know, people criticize America (Americans among the critics) for a low voter turnout. In some ways, low voter turn out is not all bad. The negative spin is that non-voters don't care, are too lazy, are too stupid, etc. I don't believe it. A positive spin is that a large number of the nonvoters have rejected the political system of electing candidates who don't represent the rank and file of the people. Trump is not a friend of the common man, and neither is Hillary Clinton. Neither was George Bush; in some ways, Bill Clinton wasn't either; neither was Bush I and his wretched predecessor, Ronald Reagan. And so on. Go back before... 1952 say, and there were a lot more decisions made in "smoke filled rooms" by power brokers.

Of course by looking at their views on a wide variety of topics and policies, and deciding how those views measure up to your own expectations.

Laws that would significantly simplify divorce procedures would likely appeal to liberals more than conservatives, but both might see benefits applying to people across the board. Perhaps increasing the per-child deduction on the 1040 tax form would appeal to conservatives more than liberals, but again -- both groups could see advantages.

It wasn't back in the Pleistocene epoch when conservatives and liberals were able to find common ground to govern effectively. The problem became serious during Bush II and has gotten worse over the following 16 years.

But now when we get to something like adultery - liberals suddenly are like "Oh but we have to respect their individual choices!". Conservatives have a wider sense of what is included in morality and civic life - something that liberals lack. For liberals, it's all about let everyone do as they wish provided they don't harm others - of course we will exclude such harms as committing adultery, etc. — Agustino

I rarely use the term "straw man" but your depiction of liberals calls for the term.

First, serious liberals have a wide sense of what is included in morality and civic life. Liberals and conservativesI may not agree on the positions taken--but that is another matter. [In the many posts on adultery we have made, I can't remember anybody saying "Adultery is a good thing, and everybody ought to do it as often as possible." The differences in opinion concerned how much scorn and manure should be heaped on the heads of adulterers. Preferring less scorn and manure might be more typical of the liberal, and it is just as morally sensitive and civic minded as some conservatives' desire to see them severely punished.]

Serious liberals would expect citizens to participate in civic life perhaps more than conservatives. Liberals' morality covers the same territory as conservatives: Liars, thieves, knaves, and scoundrels are as little liked by liberals as conservatives. Liberals are not against free enterprise, capitalism, wealth, and so on -- they share these values with conservatives. Far-Left-Beyond-Liberals like me dream about workers losing their chains and gaining a world--not liberals, and of course not conservatives.

There are extremists who liberals and conservatives can not accept. People who view the federal government as their enemy are far afield of both liberal and conservative thinking as they can get. How large the government should be is a bone of contention; the government as evil enemy isn't.

Indeed, one of the frustrations of radicals like me is viewing the squabbling in congress and seeing no substantive grounds for differences. Control of the House, Senate, and White House is worth the parties time to fight over, but ideologically there is little difference in the parties who represent "liberal" and "conservative" positions.

It's probably the case that party leaders are scarcely concerned with ideology: they are all about power apart from ideology. I don't think either serious conservatives or serious liberals think that is a good thing. Party members, party nominated representatives, and the parties themselves should hold and pursue a fairly clear ideology. Then the electorate can decide whether they want a disestablishmentarian in office, or whether they want vigorous social benefit programs.

The election of 1964, where the Republicans had to sort out Rockefeller (relatively socially liberal) from Goldwater (very socially conservative) Republicans, and Democrats had a social benefit planner, was an exceptionally clear election. 2008 was a clear election too -- an idealistic black candidate vs. an old white experienced politician and war hero (who was heavily burdened with a laughably nitwit running mate).

It isn't your fault, Erik, that terms like "conservative", "liberal", "socialist" et al have become debased over the last 50 years (and longer, likely). Unfortunately I can not suggest any good alternatives that would be readily accepted. I am afraid you will have to be handed over to the authorities and charged as a Secular Humanist.

• The idea that schooling is of vital importance in shaping the opinions of the young, and should be understood as much more than mere preparation for a career inspired by money making.
• The idea that the good of the community takes precedence over individual freedom.
• The individual is sacred. The community is sacred. The environment is sacred.
• The idea that life - especially human life - is sacred,
• The view that we are stewards of the planet rather than masters who can recklessly appropriate it in order to satisfy our desires.

Perhaps you have elevated to sacredness a bit too much. Privileging the good of the community over the individual conflicts with the sacredness of the individual. If the individual, human life, the community, and the environment are all sacred, how does one prioritize? If we are stewards and not masters of the earth, then perhaps humanity is not quite sacred. (Besides which, earth has other stewards, like Nature, whose final decision on human beings hasn't been revealed.) If we are stewards of the earth, we are doing a bad job of it.

I agree with Mongrel that your platform makes you much more of a liberal than it does a conservative, at least in the common parlance of the day. And I agree 100% with your education plank and the essential importance of the individual plank. Does that make me a conservative?

Would you be willing to remove human beings from their pedestal of sacred preeminence to one species among many others, who also have a claim on existence? Would you be willing to say that the good of the human community has to be compatible with the good of other plant and animal communities? (We can't live as a human community without a healthy community of varied species.) Would you be willing to demote human beings from "steward of the environment" to a "a stupid species that is screwing up the environment"?

Individual vs. Community is a difficult problem, since we can't really exist as individuals without the community, yet communities often destroy individuals.

Cheers Bitter Crank, you've given me meaningful questions with which to refine my general despair. — Welkin Rogue

You're entirely welcome. Anytime you need a heavy foot on your head when you are about to go under, just give me a call.

I don't know where you live or what the employment situation is like, but generally speaking, take some comfort in your having plenty of company in your situation. Your difficulties are largely not of your own making. And bear in mind, a lot of women also got degrees that haven't automatically paid off well, either.

Are there any 'alternate careers' you can investigate? In the US there is "Americorps" which used to be called VISTA, decades ago. I was in Volunteers In Service To America for 2 years, back in 1968-1970 -- it was terrific experience though it offered a meager stipend to live on. It helped me get good jobs, because it was excellent experience.

Stress on the job... My last job (which drove me into retirement) was in a professional capacity, but it was with the sickest, craziest non-profit social service program I have ever seen. It was awful. So was a low-level administrative job at the University, which just about drove me mad--literally. It was all complicated detail, which I had not yet admitted to myself that I just can't manage, anymore (or ever, maybe).

Cleaning? There are two retired people at the church across the street who volunteer time to do cleaning. There's me with a masters degree in education and a woman who has a masters degree in theology and management experience. Both of us like doing this work because it is nicely concrete work, no ambiguity, and very little detail. Plus, it's greatly appreciated.

Some college educated people have started house-cleaning businesses--they do the work. I tried it when I was much younger and discovered I found it too humiliating.

Good luck. Remember to call me in your darkest hour.

What in your experience is the overall tendency towards stable/steady long-term relationships amongst gays? I had read that it was pretty low. — Wayfarer

I don't have any statistics at hand (they exist, however). Yes, I would say the rate of successful long term relationships is sort of low. Why?

I can't speak for gay communities on the coasts, to where a lot of gay men move, but in mid-continent cities like Minneapolis the size of the active gay community is not all that large--it never has been. So the number of potential partners is not huge. A fair number of gay men are loners. It isn't that they are anti-social, it's just that they are not prepared for the negotiation, flexibility, patience, endurance, and forbearance that any long relationship requires. Alcohol and drug use, as well as health issues (AIDS among them) decrease the readiness of some people to enter into a close relationship.

There are now quite a few non-alcoholic/non-drug venues where gay men can meet each other, everything from gay sports groups to coffee shops to gay churches. But sober people don't automatically make good partners.

Maybe most important, the culture of the gay male community hasn't traditionally valued monogamy. Some couples have managed occasional sexual relationships on the side, and some haven't.

A lot of gay men, at least, haven't looked far enough forward to grasp that being old and isolated is not a good deal. Single men, whether they are straight or gay, don't do as well in measures of health and longevity as women do, and the men who do well over time stay connected with other people, whether in sexual relationships, friendships, or working relationships.

to maintain the heteronormative tradition — TheWillowOfDarkness

There is a good reason for the "heteronormative tradition": men and women can not conceive without each other, and they succeed best in a stable married relationship. Gay men, particularly, have no particular reason to imitate the valuable social structure which facilitates conceiving and rearing children. If "Gay men don't have time to do their own ironing!", as one lively gay guy observed about my ironing board, they certainly don't have time to raise children.

I'm not especially in favor of gay men adopting children; lesbians either. It isn't that two guys can't raise a child. Single fathers have done it; single mothers have done it. Call me old fashioned, but I think there is good reason to think that the vast majority of children who are heterosexual benefit the most from being raised within an at least reasonably happy heterosexually coupled home. And heterosexuals conveniently produce an adequate supply of homosexuals. Just keep production at around 2.8-3% exclusively gay children, on up to 10% more-or-less-gay-at-least-some-of-the-time children.

Gay men who want to conquer heteronormative territory give up an essentially male life style which has value in itself to gay men, as well as to society as a whole. It isn't as if there aren't enough people in the world, just in terms of quantity, that we need more ways of producing them.

The point you make about people being discriminated against 'on account of who they are' - that is what I am saying has been the basis of the way the debate has been shaped and why it is so embedded in 'identity politics' - it is because behaviors have been redefined as cultural identity.

Of course, to say that will be regarded as the absolutely worst kind of homophobia. I am attempting a critical analysis here, but what I'm saying is terribly non-PC and I know that. But, it's a debate about political correctness, surely this issue is central to it. — Wayfarer

This old gay guy has always thought that "marriage" exclusively applied to heterosexual couples. I remember how gay right advocacy developed from the very early 1970s on into the 80s, 90s, and to the present. The radical position of early gay liberationists did not support anything beyond voluntary committed gay relationships, if that, even. Some gay-leftists thought monogamy deplorably bourgeois. (Jack Baker and Michael McConnell did apply for and received a marriage license in Minnesota in 1970 -- something of a slight of hand -- and were "married". A court promptly dismissed the license and the coupling. Baker and McConnell are still together.)

By the early 1980s, a strong assimilationist influence emerged. The new view deplored all that loose screwing around; it was not respectable, it was scandalous, and we all needed to just cool it -- at least stop frightening the horses and shocking middle class people. Then AIDS came along, which provided heavy armaments for the argument that all us gays needed to shape up. (Of course, what we needed to do was practice effective harm reduction in sex, not engage in matrimony.)

When the multi-drug cocktails turned AIDS into a difficult but manageable disease and ended the rolling tragedy, gays became more accepted. As legal protections were more widely established, gay rights advocates needed fresh frontiers to maintain their positions within the gay community. (People don't really try to work themselves out of a job.) Marriage was the next obvious target for the advocacy enterprise. Progress was fairly rapid, and gay marriage was accepted here and there, and rejected by this and that state, setting up the SCOTUS decision.

"Marriage" never applied to any relationship except heterosexual unions overseen by the church or the courts. Fine by me.

the question you should be asking yourself is how good is your memory. — wuliheron

The more you remember, the more you will wish you could forget.

I'm retired after 40 years on the job. I'm 70. When I was 25 I desperately needed employment guidance that I didn't get. Hope you'll be luckier.

First, the bad news:

I'm very lost. ...have been working dead-end jobs since. I had this fantasy that it didn't matter what I did to make money as long as I could pursue my interests in my spare time. But the work is so soul-destroying and exhausting (labouring, factory work, stacking shelves, working checkouts) that I'm finding it increasingly difficult to sustain enthusiasm for life. — Welkin Rogue

That was my theory too. Get a job, any odd job will do, earn enough to make ends meet, live cheaply and live a fascinating and vibrant life between 5:00 p.m. and 7:00 a.m.

It didn't work.

Low quality white collar work, in my opinion, is much more soul sucking and mind deadening than blue collar work. I generally stuck with the white collar crap. The blue collar jobs I had were better. They weren't enriching, but I didn't feel dead at the end of the day, either.

I worked in a quite a few different places; some of them were doing good, important work -- but short term employees generally are not hired for any sort of interesting work.

The two best places I worked were opportunities to begin new human service programs with relatively little supervision. The first was working with failing students at a Catholic college, the second (about 10 years later) was doing safe-sex outreach and HIV

health education in the gay community.

My first job sort of fit my college training, the second was a total non-match. I majored in English Lit, so I could readily work with students on critical verbal skills. The second job -- promoting the use of condoms, safer sex, clean needles, and the like in a sex-positive way had ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with English Lit. It was my own sexual life-experiences that qualified me for the job. That and other work experiences. I spent 17 years altogether in these two jobs.

The remaining 23 years in the work force were spent doing full-time permanent work for non-profits in a variety of functions or short-term temporary work. Sometimes the work was tolerable, and the people were usually reasonably pleasant, but since I hated detailed paper work, I'd get totally bogged down.

At 5:00 you're beat, used up, spent, fried... whatever phrase you like. You'd like to do something interesting and useful, but... it's night time. Time to relax, have a few beers, see a movie, spend some time with friends. Go to bed.

Then there is the issue of self-esteem and the regard in which others hold you. Oh, you're working temp at a factory -- what good did your philosophy degree do you then? What is wrong with you?

Who do you discuss philosophy with at 10:00 at night?

Now, the good news:

I'm 25, graduated in philosophy with honors a couple of years ago... — Welkin Rogue

You are young and smart. You have skills. You even have some experience now, doing those boring jobs. Time to take a fresh look at what you can do.

Maybe you've been through all this already. Maybe you're sick of it. But take some time to think about the kinds of work you would find interesting -- whether it fits your college degree or not. What kind of work do you hate? Not so much white or blue collar, but whether you have to attend to detail or deal with generalities; are you a big picture person or a little picture person?

Separate task: Make a list of your real skills. A degree in philosophy is not a skill. Reading a text and analyzing it for inconsistencies, contradictions, or influences is a real skill. Persistence and the ability to apply yourself are valuable characteristics. You degree proves you have that. What were your favorite classes and why did you like them? Can you write well? (compose, not can you weald a pencil)

What sort of person would you like to be in 5 or 10 years? Of course you will still be you, but what kind of income will you need to wear the kind of clothes you want to wear, or live in the kind of house you want for a roof over your head? If you have a clear picture of what you want for yourself in the future, what will it take to get there?

What if what you want to be in 10 years isn't attainable: What's second in your list of objectives. If you want to teach, can you teach? Are you good at teaching? Can you sell otherwise uninterested students on the reason they should be interested in philosophy? or anything else...

Do you like working with people? (It's not a sin to not like working with people). Do you find plants, animals, and machines better company than other homo sapiens? What does your answer tell you about what sort of work to move toward and what to avoid?

Who do you know who might help you find information about jobs, and/or a job opening? Personal contacts are the source of a lot of information about job openings. Who could you get to know who might know about probable job openings?

Look at mainstream women's fashions over the past few decades and see how closely they tend to emulate first ladies. The atmosphere of society reflects the attitudes of the leadership. Kennedy's optimism rubbed off on the 1960's. Nixons dark pessimism rubbed off on the 1970's. The arrogance and greed of the 1980's can be traced to Reagan. Even today's progressive liberalism can be traced to the Obamas. — swstephe

This is another watershed issue: To the right are the Great Man of History lobbyists who can see in their rear view mirrors that John F. Kennedy was the font of 1960s optimism, and that Jackie Kennedy single-handedly invented the pill box hat and A line dress. To the left are the Zeitgeist lobbyists who see in their rear view mirrors all sorts of factors bubbling up and interacting.

I liked Jack Kennedy, Jacqueline, Robert, Ted, et al. They all did some good (and not so good) things. The wave of optimism began under Eisenhower, and Ike wasn't responsible for it. Millions of people coming out of the war years had gotten married, had gone to college, and had started buying homes in the suburbs. Compared to the depression of the 1930s, the 1950s were grand.

By 1960 some of the old rigidities had already started to crack and crumble. Kennedy was able to express that optimism because he was young, handsome, and upbeat. Getting assassinated burnished his image but it ended his ability to change the culture. The fairly old, earthy, and practical Lyndon Baines Johnson was the one who carried through from 1963 to 1968 with the Great Society reforms like Medicare and Medicaid (and the war in Vietnam). Of course the post WWiI baby boom was optimistic. Young people usually are.

There areinner directed persons and other directed persons. It's a fundamental difference in approach to one's life. Inner directed people need much less social interaction; other directed people need much more. What one does with one's social interaction, or its absence, is another matter.

And the big problem is that they WISH they had it - that's a problem. They desire something immoral - that's a sign of cultural degradation, that we need to do something about. — Agustino

That people wish they could have sex with a desired but unavailable partner is not THE problem. Wishing is just a characteristic of the human being. If wishes were horses the peasants would ride. Unfortunately for the peasants, wishing doesn't yield transportation so they have to walk, and wishing for a role in the hay doesn't doesn't result in sex. Talking about grabbing pussy isn't the same thing as actually grabbing pussy. Speech does not equal action.

This is a watershed issue: Wishes = sin vs. Actions = sin. I hold with actions -- not the model I was taught as a child. I found that model to be, basically, crazy-making. It's more effective, but not necessarily easier, to manage one's behavior.

10 percent of married people — Bitter Crank

Up that to 40-50% by most surveys for today's world. — Agustino

Please site a legitimate research source here. Popular media publish lots of surveys on sexual behavior, but many of them have the very significant bias of voluntary participation, and no check on whether what they say is likely to be inflated. A voluntary, anonymous survey can be an opportunity for folks to flaunt behaviors and attitudes they wish they had, but in fact do not, just as income surveys that are anonymous and voluntary tend to inflate wealth.

Maybe this type of sexual deviance is less prone to censure amongst upper crust society. I don't run in those circles and so may be naive about what takes place in their marriages, which, to stereotype, are probably grounded in wealth and other fickle things. — Erik

The highest moral standards, since they set the tone for everyone else. If the President cheats on his wife/husband, it will encourage little Joe and Jenny to do the same - that's terrible - regardless of how discrete it is - in fact the more discrete, the worse. It's preferable that he be not discrete if he does it at all, so that the public can take attitude against it. — Agustino

I just don't get invited to upper crust soirees and cocktail parties either, so I don't know from personal experience what goes on up there. But surely CLASS is a significant issue here.

The relationship between the upper crust and the bottom crust is complicated. Rich men can access or create sexual opportunities for themselves, and defend themselves against consequences much more effectively than working class "little Joe and Jenny". On the other hand, men like Trump have more to lose, and these days are more likely to be featured in media reports.

Accurate knowledge is also a factor: “Men want to think women don’t cheat, and women want men to think they don’t cheat, and therefore the sexes have been playing a little psychological game with each other.” a General Social Survey researcher noted.

[1]

The most consistent data on infidelity come from the General Social Survey (GSS), sponsored by the National Science Foundation and based at the University of Chicago, which has used a national representative sample to track the opinions and social behaviors of Americans since 1972. The survey data show that in any given year, about 10 percent of married people — 12 percent of men and 7 percent of women — say they have had sex outside their marriage.


Unfortunately, the GSS did not begin it's work back in the 1920s, so it's data is all post the 1960s sexual revolution.

How the upper crust influences the bottom crust is fairly uncertain. Presidents, Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Clinton all had the makings of politically debilitating sex scandals, but in the case of FDR, Ike, and JFK, the press didn't publish what it knew. If people didn't know that JFK had a voracious sexual appetite, it couldn't affect their judgement. (Of course the Kennedy family had a huge impact on the popular culture outside the area of executive philandering.)

If Donald Trump should get elected, then impeachment proceedings should begin immediately after his swearing in ceremony. His impeachable high crimes and misdemeanors relate to his extreme obtuseness, his imbecility, his crooked business dealings, tax avoidance, and general intelligence-insulting utterances.

I don't think your definition is really adequate. If one's views are in fact superior then it is entirely right to be so convinced. It isn't egotistical to be correct. It can't be wrong to be right, only to believe you are when you are not. — Barry Etheridge

It wasn't my definition, it was the dictionaries. — intrapersona

If that's what the dictionary says, then the dictionary is an ass.***

***
"If the law supposes that," said Mr. Bumble, squeezing his hat emphatically, "the law is an ass — an idiot.”

― Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist

Get real, Andrew. Both Labor and Greens are claiming that the debate held for a plebiscite will cause 'mental harm' to 'LGBTI people' and 'maybe even suicides'. — Wayfarer

I just don't believe that public debate, even if it is raucous or bitter, causes mental harm to the people who are the prospective beneficiaries of the debate. They might not like it, but that's just their tough luck.

There is, however, an outstanding good reason for not submitting questions of liberty and rights to the people as a whole: The people as a whole tend to be much more socially conservative than prospective beneficiaries of initiatives and referenda. This isn't at all surprising. The majority of citizens don't have the problems of minorities--gays, blacks, the mentally ill, and so on. Referenda aiming to extend legal protections to a particular group tend to be voted down. Not always, but frequently.

The bars to legal gay marriage were removed mostly by courts and legislators. This makes sense: judges are generally (but not always) independent of public opinion. It's easier to persuade legislators who number in the low hundreds than to convince citizens who number in the millions. Plus there is always the mechanical problems of this kind of voting.

The Equal Rights Amendment to the US constitution, giving equal rights to women, was introduced into Congress in 1923. Congress passed the ERA in 1972, and in 1982 the period of state ratification ended with 35 states ratifying, where 38 were needed. All of the states that declined ratification were in the old confederacy (except Illinois, Nevada, Utah, and Arizona).

Too bad you don't still have that empire of far flung colonies to which you could export your waste people.

Now you're stuck with "The wretched refuse of your teeming shore, Your tired, your poor, your tempest tossed huddled masses yearning to own real estate!" They are just going to keep driving up prices. Is it too late to retract Australia's and India's independence?

Maybe "political correctness" is the secular equivalent of "cheap grace". Cheap grace doesn't cost anything. It's available to anyone who cares to learn the argot and recite it, and pretend. Costly grace (the real deal) requires substantial, possibly total, sacrifice. Cheap and costly grace are both available, one more conveniently than the other, and in a passing glance you might not notice the difference.

Political correctness is, like cheap grace, inexpensive--free, quite often. One can use the most sensitive language about oppressed and disadvantaged people without having to spend so much as a penny on them.

If we aren't willing to be financially inconvenienced much (if at all) it may be because our heart is not really into costly political correctness. I understand that black people have been systematically exploited and excluded from prosperity for centuries, but in fact I'm not willing to give up anything on their behalf.

What I recognize as unjust puts me into the category of politically correctness, but the amount of my own money I'm willing to spend on helping the oppressed puts me into the category of cheap grace.

I suspect that this is true for most (all?) of us.

Important to remember that the word 'Hell' is an artifact of translation. Hell is actually a pagan concept from the goddess Hel who rules the Norse 'underworld'. The word 'gehenna' does not imply a physical 'hell' and is not interpreted as such for many centuries. Augustine, for example, could never have believed in the existence of Hell since evil has no reality but is the absence or diminishment of good. It is more accurate to see the cursed as being in the same boat as Adam and Eve, simply banished from Eden. They are both literally and figuratively 'the leftovers' exactly what you'd expect to find in 'gehenna' the landfill site of Jerusalem. — Barry Etheridge

Right, I totally agree with your statement here. But this, "The whole Sermon on Mount is best interpreted as a stand-up routine", doesn't mesh very well with your insightful statement about hell.

Don't you think it is likely that the Sermon on the Mount was never delivered as such. Don't NT scholars think that it was a compilation of Jesus's teachings? Joke? If it was, one would have to have been there to read the speaker and the audience together; you'd need to scan the smirks, smiles, knowing nods, noddings off, frowns, cackles, etc. Jesus was capable of the artful dodge when pushed ("Render to Caesar what is Caesar's...), don't know much about his joke-telling abilities.

People are, indeed, entitled to use entitlements, or benefit from benefit programs if they need them. Lots of conservative Americans (Hanover is getting more so as he gets older) just assume anybody collecting on a public benefit a) doesn't need it; b) is cheating in order to get it; or c) is too lazy to do without it. Public benefits = waste, fraud, and abuse.

My guess is that Brother Hanover Himself probably is a happy beneficiary of the federal tax deduction for mortgage payments. He might also be the beneficiary of other tax deductions, like maybe a deduction for his home office, and the like. Tax deductions are just public benefits by another name.

Thanks for wishing me luck. — Sapientia

You are welcome. Unfortunately, wishing you luck is the most I can do.

I've had a couple of jobs where I could walk to work. That is a vastly preferable arrangement to even being able to ride a bike to work (even if the weather is tolerable). One winter I biked back and forth about 10 miles between a job that ended about 10 in the evening; the rides were peacefully quiet with little traffic, but some days were pretty cold, and that was a mild winter. One generates a lot of heat biking, but not that much.

I understand. Solitude and enough room to cook, read, play games, have company over, sleep, and such are essentials. Is solitude or company more important? It's a coin toss.

I moved a lot over the years after college; I was restless. Finally in 1995 we bought a house (our first, we were in our 50s). It was nice at last to be rid of the problems of the shared spaces of apartment buildings. True, I have to mow the lawn, clean the eaves troughs out twice a year, keep the raspberries under control, shovel snow off the walks, etc. but all that is good exercise for an old folk. Plus I have been destroying my lawn with raspberry bushes, service berry, phlox (perennial flowers), day lilies, milk weed, and any other moderately attractive weed, so there is less and less lawn to mow.

I hope that my next move is to the cemetery, with no intervening stop at a nursing home.

Living with family... for most of my semi-senile-siblings, living with them would probably speed up the trip to the cemetery considerably. Me or them, maybe both.

↪tom I have a free standing offer to teach anyone how to use a dictionary and search engine.

http://phys.org/news/2014-01-discovery-quantum-vibrations-microtubules-corroborates.html — wuliheron

3 problems:

-I don't know enough about what you know to be confident that what you say is true. This is not your fault--it's just a fact.

-Electrical waves in the brain have to be generated somewhere, and it is nice to know where those somewheres are. Whether it is a "quantum vibration" or not, and what that means in the context of consciousness is not a quick dictionary / Google search away.

Sentences like

The brain has turned out to possess a scalar analog architecture which displays no loyalty whatsoever to classical causal logic and every inclination to rely upon quantum mechanics instead for greater efficiency which can't be interpreted as classical. — wuliheron

and

... proteins which... rely upon ringing like a bell in order to expedite folding faster and, thus, displaying their particle-wave duality. — wuliheron

are just not readily comprehended or integrated into a sensible conclusion--by me. I might be too stupid to understand it, and I might be the only person here who doesn't get it, but I doubt it. Quantum physics isn't my field, and neither is quantum microtubular generation of consciousness.

I have been around long to enough to know scientists are perfectly capable of merrily babbling away about their favorite ideas without being well grounded. Proper scientific terminology can be turned into a jabberwocky.

None of this is your fault. Where deficiency enters in is when the person making a case fails to find language that connects with the audience.