I am sometimes curious as to what goes on on pedophile forums, for instance, but that's just not the sort of thing I want in my browser history — Arkady

I understand. Actually, I'd be surprised if there even was such a thing as a pedophile forum, these days.

One of the areas I would like to research as part of gay history is the North American Man Boy Love Association. I have zero interest in pedophilia, but there was a strain of pedophilia in the gay community, and it was an extremely divisive political issue back in the 1970s, early 1980s. Whether the principals of the organization are still alive, don't know. But as you say, digging this stuff up even if for academic purposes leaves a trail.

There was a three way fight among the lesbian-feminists, gay men, and gay pedophiles. The LFs didn't have much affection for gay men to start with, and suspected we were all GPs. Most of the gay men, whatever else they liked, couldn't stand the LFs. The GPs found company in some groups of GM, and were shunned in others.

the elephant in the room — Arkady

certainly includes radical islam, but I think the elephant also includes Christian and Hindu conservatives too. A plague comes from all their houses because religions define what is moral and immoral for a lot of people, and conservative religions have a fairly long list of immoralities, which include homosexuality, transsexuality, feminism, and so on.

In the mid-1970s it was the fundamentalist Christians who were preaching against gays in the U.S. Granted, they weren't proposing the lethality which ISIS 'justice' hands out, but they were bitterly opposed to gay rights. A lot of those conservatives are still around, and many of them are still very opposed. My knowledge of Hindu haters is sketchier, but they are capable of fairly violent actions too. In East Africa, for instance, some Christian groups are calling for the death penalty for being, and acting on, one's gay sexuality.

So while I loathe radical islam, I also loathe other traditions which in their conservative mode resemble radical islam all too much.

I don't know that Omar Mateen was a madman. So far I have heard that he was volatile and violent (that according to his ex-wife). Even if he suffered from mental illness (a madman) that alone (without more detail) would not fully account for his behavior.

I am inclined to disagree with the viewpoint of the New York Times, and some Gay Community political types who expressed sweeping conclusions about what the attack meant. I don't see a war on queers here. (That is not to say that in several parts of the world there isn't a great deal of overt hostility toward gays.) What I see is a one-man attack that was probably inspired by both personal feelings and by propaganda he watched on line.

I was just about too late for bulletin boards, and was definitely too late from on-line dating and Grindr. The trouble with Tinder and Grindr is that the scope for deception is wide. Many a hunter have excitedly followed the screen prompts and arrived at the right location to find that the delicious hunk or fair damsel they were expecting is actually a decade or two older, quite a few pounds heavier, and less socially sophisticated than they had been led to believe.

There might have been young thugs in the park, trolls in the adult book store, and several old fat guys at the baths -- but it was all quite clear from the get go. Its the WYSIWYG interface. (And quite often, mind you, real honest to goodness hunks were on the scene, and available!)

I am all for the hastening of the non-West to become more Westernized and more technological as soon as possible, so we can all be on the same page to understand Philosophical Pessimism and antinatalism. — schopenhauer1

Right. As soon as an African mother has a pot to piss in, she starts reading Schopenhauer, wondering why she bothers to have children, and doesn't just get it over with by using her machete to chop off her own head.

It depends on which country is up for consideration. Congo? Kenya? Namibia? Mozambique?

Africa is a very, very large continent; too big to be written off; practically too big to make generalizations over.

There is good reason to be pessimistic about almost any area of the world; there are some reasons to be optimistic too. There is much more investment in Africa countries now than there was 10, 20, 30 years ago. That's good. Africa has mineral resources which are being exploited, sometimes to the benefit of very few, sometimes to wider benefit. It has reasonably productive land, it's population is not overwhelming large, and it has a moderate climate, more or less. With investment comes economic expansion which allows a larger number of people to improve their lives.

There is a difference in opportunities and problems between urban Africa and rural Africa. Nairobi's problems are not the same as rural Uganda's on the other side of Lake Victoria. Both types of problems are entirely as remediable as North and South America's problems, Europe's problems, and Asia's problems.

Africa is no more plague-ridden than SE Asia, India, or South America. Yes, there is malaria, which sickens and reduces the productivity of a lot of people, but malaria is an endemic disease in lots of places. Ebola pops up every now and then. Africa has AIDS. But then AIDS is pretty much everywhere. South America has the zika virus, but soon everybody else will too and there might be an epidemic of defective-brained children being born from Rio to Mumbai.

Development is usually assisted -- has been for a long time, everywhere. Money flows in along with expertise, things start changing, problems get solved, people do better. We don't want to be Pollyanna-ish about it, of course. People in rural Africa, disconnected from cities, will probably benefit later than people living in urban centers.

Some cities, like Nairobi, have huge slums -- largely resulting from the familiar rural to urban migration of people. But then, lots of cities in the developed world have some pretty bad places as well.

Had I come to this same discussion 20 years ago I would have found your position consistent with both my experience and philosophical view. Life seemed much more unsatisfactory then (not just for a few weeks; more like a couple of decades). Life seemed to be composed more of ruthless exploitation, hindrances, bastards, etc. I very much exposed to an acid rain.

It isn't that I now think that life is constantly sunny and sweet. I don't. I'm well aware that even if I feel more optimistic and positive, life hasn't changed for everybody else. There is still exploitation by ruthless bastards lurking around every corner, hindrances of all kinds, disease, suffering, and steady acid rain (so to speak) is still falling. I can't supply a full explanation of why life seems less malignant now than in the past.

Our larger social / political / economic system (not just in the USA, but in most of the world) is deeply corrupted and exploitative. Disease, destitution, disorder, and dying are as rampant now as ever.

I didn't will a change in feeling and thinking from "life is barely tolerable" to "life is OK, maybe even good" though I find the change is a relief. It just happened. Maybe the cold, wet rain and dark clouds will return. Don't know.

My local environment since WW2 has been turned over to mainly wheat production, in a cycle that involves the utter dependancy on heavy machinery for deep ploughing and the use of chemical fertilisers, pesticides and herbicides. — Hogrider

It's the same in the midwestern part of the United States -- well, most parts of the US. Corn (maize), wheat, soybeans. On some fields, the energy input required exceeds the energy output per acre. Cheap fuel has made this possible, that and government support.

Topsoil run off is relatively easy to control (minimum tillage, abandoning fields that are too steep, contour and terrace formation, etc). Not that we are doing a good job, but we do uno how. Worse is the runoff of pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers. There is a large and growing dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico from eutrofication (loss of dissolved oxygen) as a result.

Corporate farming pursues short term goals; fuck the future.

BTW, animals aren't required to return the nutrients of plants to the soil. Yes, animal shit is a very good fertilizer, but green manure (raw vegetation) works well too. That's partly the idea of minimum tillage -- leave the chaff on the field where it falls; don't plow the field; plant through the vegetative mat.

Hilly areas are well suited to grazing because such ground should absolutely not be plowed, and cattle do enrich the soil without adding chemicals. They just chew, digest, shit, and produce milk and meat. Raising cattle in feed lots served by huge grain fields is a less ecological solution. There are many hilly areas in the country (UK, too) where bovine grazing shouldn't cause too many problems. Sheep and goats are short grazers -- biting off plants close to the ground. Pigs are totally incompatible with grazing land -- their rooting around destroys pasturage and leads to erosion. Goats have the narrow advantage of eating a wider variety of plants -- things that cows won't gladly eat.

What I am in favor of is reducing the quantity of meat and milk products consumed. Modest consumption of meat and fresh milk is sustainable.

I'm glad you can speak for most people. — schopenhauer1

As well you should be. :)

Look, is it any different claiming enough authority to say that life is generally good, than saying life entails too much suffering to justify bringing a life into the world?

Why do you object to me doing that?

I've learned to take your trash-talking on antinatalism in stride... — schopenhauer1

A wise policy.

Suicide ideation in this case does not mean that people are actually thinking of putting the knife to their wrist and taking a warm bath — schopenhauer1

I understand that suicide here is a "gesture" not a concrete plan to end it all. That's what makes it romantic. Were it a serious plan with an on-hand method and a timetable, it would be a psychiatric matter rather than a dramatic move.

...but rather the abstract notion that you have power over your very existence. — schopenhauer1

This is where I have difficulty, and this is the bin out of which all the trash talking emanates.

IF one believes that one gains (or acknowledges) power over one's very existence by the assertive philosophical gesture, THEN the affirming gesture that life is good, worth living, and good exceeds ill is as powerful a claim on one's fate as the gesture of suicide.

Asserting that "life is good" has the added advantage of easing the burden of living (and yes, at times life is a burden -- work, for instance, or prison, or illness, or war, or...). If life is viewed as a river of shit` and one might as well drown in it, it makes for a rather dreary passage.

I don't think we are entirely masters of our "fate". The assertion that one gains control over fate with the suicidal gesture is as deficient a force as the gesture that life is always a bed of rose petals. That is to say, it may be marginally helpful to the individual, and no more than that. Much of what happens in life happens with utter indifference to our wills.

In real life many people will not resort to suicidal gestures. Like some victims of the Nazi death camps, many will cling tenaciously to life, no matter what. It isn't that suicide is against their religion or some such excuse. They just don't think in terms of suicide. (And here I am holding nothing against the Nazi victims who did choose to leap onto the electrified fence or easily provoke a guard into shooting them.)

Most people endure and proclaim their endurance as their will without asserting that life is not a long suffering. They know full well that life entails suffering. But they (at least think they) are on top, not on the bottom.

What I don't know about these pessimists (including Cioran) is whether or not they actually did view suicide as a legitimate option for themselves. Were they suicidal? Were they just barely living? I suspect not. I suspect they derived a certain amount of pleasure from life. — darthbarracuda

Look: People who are suicidal and just barely living, don't write books about it. They are beyond caring whether the book gets written or not.

Your suspicion is precisely correct: they did derive a certain amount of pleasure--not only from life, but also from writing a book about suicide and the misery of existence -- a misery they, themselves, did not feel. Else, they wouldn't have got the damn book written.

David Benatar is a professor of philosophy and head of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Cape Town. Does that sound like somebody who has been just barely living? Similarly, Cioran was too productive and long lived to take his extreme pessimism too much to heart. His New York Times obituary reads like most NYT's obituaries: another quite successful person who made a significant mark in literary circles...

The source of his world view, he said in an interview published in 1994, was severe insomnia that began plaguing him as a youth and led him to give up his faith in philosophy after years of studying it.

I am much, much, much more impressed by people like Dorothy Day who worked a life time in very squalid conditions but whose writings are full of bright and realistic optimism, than people who occupy academic sinecures and write books about how squalid life is.

In what psychodynamic system is suicidal ideation more of a coping mechanism? — Bitter Crank

Short answer: a lot of them. Not a healthy coping mechanism, mind you, but a coping mechanism. — csalisbury

It's not so much that one is going to commit suicide, but that one can commit suicide that may be a sort of consolation. — schopenhauer1

I was definitely thinking of healthy psychodynamic systems. I will grant the possibility of suicide serving as a relief valve in extremis. "If it gets worse, I can..."; "I'll endure until Friday, and then... and such.

There is a Romantic literary notion of suicide, and a philosophical notion too, but I don't consider romantic moping about in the ruins as any sort of a psychodynamic system. Theories of personality certainly include suicidal ideation (and acts), but not as a normal strategy for persons.

Theories of personality assume the development of individual psychology from infancy forward, including inheritance and environment, experience, learning, physical disease, and so forth. The life on which the child embarks normally goes on until accident or disease brings it to an end--for at least "three score years and ten" as the Psalmist put it.

Suicide generally figures as a consequence of disease--the mind gone haywire. People suffering from mental illness don't turn to suicide in the sense of "deciding to end suffering"; rather, suicidal thinking is part and parcel of the illness itself. In severe mental illness, hallucinations urge suicidal acts.

Antinatalism, at least as it has appeared in on-line discussion forums, seems more like an adolescent game than a serious philosophical position (though some people are serious about it). To me it begs the sarcastic question of "why don't you commit suicide if being born was that bad?" I don't think antinatalism leads to suicidal ideation, unless one were otherwise heading in that direction.

Of all the sources of consolation one can find, suicide seems like one of the flimsiest.

Thus, it's the ideation of suicide that becomes more of a coping mechanism, not the actual suicide. — schopenhauer1

In what psychodynamic system is suicidal ideation more of a coping mechanism?

Tripe.

The problem is "value" has to be "cashed out". There is no Platonic cashing out of value. It has to be valuable to someone. — schopenhauer1

What? No Platonic bank? I've been robbed!

Cashing out the value of life is a fine example of bourgeois thinking.

Two things (at least) save our human lives from not being worth starting and not being worth continuing, should we suffer the indignity of being born:

First, "all creation" so to speak is part of the universe. This fact doesn't grant meaningful existence to creatures whether they can conceptualize meaning or not, but it does place every creature (and thing) into a larger context. I don't know whether the universe intended life, but it happened, and we are all tied together in a web of connection, whether we like it or not. And some don't like it.

Second, some creatures can institute meaning for themselves. It is possible to decide that life was not worth starting and not worth continuing, and thus blow one's brains to smithereens at one's earliest convenience. Most people opt for the institution of meaning that gives their birth, life, and death value, meaning, and purpose. The universe does not provide this service -- we have to do it, or it doesn't happen.

(Granted, individuals don't start from scratch in their meaning-making. There are various meaning packages one can buy; their purchase is either mandatory or optional. Either way, templates are available.)

However one approaches the problem of meaning, life is going to be a mixed bag.

What if you lose your memory? Are you no longer valuable? — darthbarracuda

A life does not lose value because one loses one's memory.

Henry Gustave Molaison, 1926-2008, was a young man who lost his capacity to form new permanent memories as a result of a drastic experimental brain operation to control very severe seizures.

Without episodic memories (memory of discrete events in life) or semantic memories, general knowledge of the world, including the meanings of newly encountered words), or declarative memory—the ability that allows you consciously to retrieve past happenings and facts learned in the past, Molaison had no new permanent memories for most of his life. He could, however, remember his life (up till his early 20s) before the surgery.

Molaison became an extremely valuable subject, and through study of his condition, a great deal was learned about memory. People who suffer from dementia do not lose value, because of their shared experiences with other people, before and after dementia.

But something like cancer is not. If you survive, you went through a tremendous amount of turmoil and doubt. If you didn't survive, well...you didn't survive. What part of cancer enriches a person's life? What good part of cancer is not just placed upon it in a post-hoc manner? — darthbarracuda

People do not desire to have cancer, true enough. But we are all going to die, sooner or later, from one cause or another. The difference between cancer and a sudden fatal stroke or heart attack is that one has time to recollect, complete some tasks in life, to say farewell, to share one's dying with one's loved ones.

Before 1996, when AIDS became manageable if not curable, quite a few people claimed it as an important and valuable experience. They had time to embrace their mortality, recollect, complete tasks, etc. Further, this was sometimes a collective experience. People with AIDS often knew each other, formed support groups, received services together, etc. Very bad experience, but meaningful.

In one sense, a life is valuable from the very beginning and does not become more valuable by the achievements of the person. In another sense, a life becomes more valuable on the basis of the person's achievements. So, a 2 year old has accumulated more "value" than a 1 year old. A 30 year old is more valuable than a 20 year old, and 69 year olds like myself are priceless.

These "values" aren't monetary. Value here is a measurement of accumulated experience. Each day of life adds to the sum total of one's experiences. A bad experience (like having a burning marshmallow stuck to one's fingers) enriches one's life despite the pain. Good food is better than bad food (you read it here first) but bad food is better than no food (usually. There are times I've thought nothing would have been better than, say, toxic chow mein).

Example. It was only the Japanese government that bombed Pearl Harbour; consequence Horoshima, Nagasaki. It was only the madman Hitler that annexed the Sudetenland , consequence: Dresden, and partition of Germany — Hogrider

Well, Japan and Germany did a good deal more than attack Pearl Harbor and annex the Sudetenland, obviously. Eventually they had much of Asia, the western Pacific, Europe, the North Atlantic, and more by the balls. They killed, and caused to be killed, an awful lot of people. Hitler's Reich planned to dominate the world for a thousand years. Had things gone somewhat differently, they might have had the chance.

That's why they were partitioned and denazified (to the extent that actually happened).

Ask yourself what has the US government done in the last 100 years to justify the consequence of 9/11 — Hogrider

The United States became the tallest hog at the trough -- that's what we did. We became the most noticeable target of people dissatisfied by the failures of their own governments and who resented all the stuff we had. We succeeded the British as the world manager (they in the role of imperial rule, us in the role of top cop and richest resident).

Then too, political lunacy played a role. Maybe we can blame Saudi Arabia's repressive conservative rule and export of a reactionary version of Islam (Wahhabi). The 9/11 attackers were pursuing reactionary goals--even if their methods were remarkably up to date. The people in the Twin Towers did not deserve to be killed. They were innocent of causing whatever grievance the attackers were pursuing.

I don't think governments actually hold "the people" of another country responsible for the extremely disapproved actions of their government. IF, after Pearl Harbor, the US government could have executed very focused but severe reprisals only on the leaders of the military and the leaders of the non-military components of government and commerce, we would have. IF after the invasion of Poland, England and France could have performed an excision of the top 1,000 Nazis, from Hitler on down, they would have.

Unfortunately, such focused attacks are never possible. It isn't that the targets can't be named; rather, it's that they can't all be put in the crosshairs of a rifle and shot at once, thus eliminating the responsible parties.

Our first attacks on Japan were against military targets. We attacked large ships, airplanes, and fortified locations. Did this involve killing people who were not directly (or even indirectly) responsible> Yes, it did. Sailors, airplane pilots, and soldiers execute policy, they don't make it. Further, they do what they are told or face severe punishment themselves. Their presence in the military is only sometimes 100% voluntary. Usually one is coaxed rather urgently, or one is coerced into the military.

Only when attacking purely military targets failed to achieve any movement toward surrender did we begin deliberately attacking civilian population (such as the firebombing of Tokyo or Dresden.

Hitler's policy was not the same. When his forces attacked Poland and the Soviet Union, they went out of their way to kill civilian populations, and not just Jews. Hitler considered slavic people inferior, and intended to get rid of most of them. One thing German invading forces in Poland and in the USSR did was to immediately kill any identifiable civilian, military, or intellectual elite. (Their focus on officialdom here doesn't redeem one iota of guilt on many other counts.)

"Governments rule by the consent of the people" is REAL in the same way that "the Social Contract" is real. The people are seldom offered the opportunity to give or withhold consent to or from the government very often, and there is no written social contract. Both of these are abstractions. Consent Of The Ruled and The Social Contract are ways of describing massive aggregations of behavior. People usually pay their taxes and register for the draft when so ordered. Most people don't just kill people who accidentally step on their toes on the bus. Most people obey most traffic laws most of the time, and when they don't it is often owing to inattention. Why do we do this? Because we are taught as children to obey rules, cooperate with each other, and allow minor insults (like stepping on my sore toe) to pass without violence.

Society works through the millions of people training children to behave well in very local contexts (like, home, day care, kindergarten, primary school). Parents prefer children who behave well. It just makes life easier. Most of that behaving well carries over into adulthood. Then we call it the consent of the governed and the social contract.

Austin Minnesota — Bitter Crank

Austin is a small town - maybe...25,000, if that. It's a one-company town--Hormel.

One does not see many (any?) explicitly left/labor murals in a large city (like MPLS) much lest a small burg like Austin. One does see small flames of discontent in graffiti. In the toilet of the Riverside Cafe there was, once, this (I saw it with my own eyes. Didn't have a camera back then):

Someone had written: "I am a pimple on the boss's ass."
Someone else had added: "Your task: become a running sore."

I would like to see more in that spirit.

This mural was painted on the exterior wall of the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Union hall, local P9, Austin Minnesota, 1986. Mike Alewitz was the artist. The banner reads "If blood be the price of your cursed wealth, good God we have paid in full." I can't remember whether the mural was painted with the assistance of strikers, or not.

It was painted on behalf of the militant strikers in P9. The reference to cost in blood is especially appropriate. Meat packing is inherently dangerous, especially in massive, assembly-line, company-controlled plants where the speed of the line is too fast and production requirements are too high. At the time of the strike, the injury rate in the plant was 100% -- every worker could expect (on average) a significant injury at least once a year. Today the ununionized plant has a higher rate of injuries than it did in 1985.

If you happen to be in Austin, MN (maybe to tour the Hormel slaughterhouse and meat products factory) do stop by and have a look. You won't see much. Soon after the mural was completed, it was attacked by power washers and steel brushes. The UFCW (and maybe Hormel) weren't about to let this sort of subversive, transgressive, slap in their face just sit there. It reminds one of Rockefeller's destruction of one of Diego Rivera's murals in Rockefeller Center, which included the likeness of Lenin.

The strike, like the mural, was lost. Hormel 10, workers 0. Strike breaking by companies is bad enough, but strike-wrecking by the national union bureaucrats is even worse.

He's a self absorbed megalomaniac populist. — Hanover

It could very well be that being a self-absorbed megalomaniac is a requirement to run for the highest public office in the US. This is certainly true of Hilary Clinton too, and might even! be true of Bernie. To some extent, it's true for everyone who wants a job where they are going to be, or must be, the center of attention.

At the low end of the megalomania spectrum, pastors of store-front salvation missions have a little capsule of self-absorbing megalomania in their washed-in-the-blood-of-the-Lamb hearts. Being the maximum leader of the free world [sic] requires deep, bed-rock-anchored self-confidence. Most of us lack sufficient self-confidence, self-absorption, self-aggrandizement, and certainty needed to run for dog catcher, let alone what the President has to have, especially while simultaneously being the leader of the free world [sic] and being the favorite target of every dissatisfied person in the country, if not the world.

It's unavoidable because being a two-bit preacher or El Presidente requires merely differing degrees of self-promotion, self-assertion, self-confidence. Trump also has experience in the entertainment biz where self-promotion is the very essence of the trade. (Clinton hasn't reached the mountain peaks of that field, yet anyway.) All this might be even more true for Clinton, since as a woman she has had to assert and promote herself even more ferociously than the average male presidential candidate has had to do.

Trump or Clinton will be different presidents, even if they share megalomania. One still has to make a choice, Trump, Clinton, or somebody else.

In a drive to suppress graffiti on utility boxes that are located next to sidewalks and bikeways, local telecom and electric companies have offered some of its boxes as art-surfaces. It is pleasant to encounter the utility-box-canvases.

It is, in a way, surprising that more property owners don't offer up their beige concrete block walls facing empty lots and thousands of passersby to local artists. There are benefits to having art on one's exteriors: locals psychologically invest in the building; taggers generally do not deface the walls; it's good PR; it enhances the neighborhood, and may increase the real estate value of the building.

"Disruptive" can be annoying and irritating. Street art should, after all, still be art and not just garish paint slapped on an otherwise unoccupied surface. Bad paint jobs aren't much better than inelegant graffiti (IMHO). Disruptive also can not be programmed. If Walmart, for instance, got involved in approving the street art to be applied to its dreary exteriors, it certainly would not be disruptive.

There are walls that beg for art, for an image. The two oldest gay bars in the Minneapolis both have walls facing their parking lots in neighborhoods where "sponsored disruptive art" would be welcomed. The Happy Hour's two floor wall facing a parking lot is a utility-grade tan brick wall dating back to the 1930s. It's the kind of wall that the builder probably assumed would not be visible for the next 80 years. It's a perfect wall for a black and white vintage gay image. In 1970 it would have been flat out disruptive on all sorts of levels and would not, therefore, have happened. In 2016 this sort of image would be visually disruptive, but socially acceptable.

The 19 Bar (its address on 15th Street) is a small concrete block affair in what used to be the heart of Minneapolis's pretty much vanished "gay ghetto", such as it was. It's been painted; it looks better than it used to, but it was painted to not-disrupt-in-any-way.

Schmitt Music Company building in Minneapolis (this mural has been disruptive for at least 40 years old now.) The image is a passage from a Ravel's Gaspard de la Nuit.

The laws are enacted and formulated by the will of the people, and with their implicit consent. In this sense everyone is responsible for the actions of their government. — Hogrider

"In principle" governments rule by the consent of the people. "In principle" laws are enacted by the will of the people. In practice governments rule through a combination of consent and coercion. In practice the relationship between law making and election becomes somewhat tenuous.

"The people" are very rarely asked to consent to the rule of a government, and when it appears that the people wish to rid themselves of their ruling government (the whole apparatus, not just the party currently in the executive mansion and legislature), the government almost always steps in to prevent the will of the people from taking effect.

I'm not suggesting that the relationship between the people and the government is all tyranny all the time. It is the case that governments rule by the consent of the most powerful groups within society, or to put it more bluntly, governments are composed of the most powerful groups.

Soviet Union and Russia, People's Republic of China, United States, Sweden, France, Israel, UK, Uganda, Burma, Peru, et al are ruled by and for the most powerful groups within the country. Affairs could be arranged on a different basis, but...

The act of torture requires the complicity of a torturer, and the cold blooded execution of this punishment turns that person into a monster, and requires a monster to complete. — Hogrider

Exactly.

In this way the law, and by extension, the entire population is made a criminal by such actions. — Hogrider

Official torture makes criminals of more than just the torturer holding the cattle prod, but criminality doesn't flow backward to the entire population. If it does, everybody is guilty and nobody is responsible. Better to leave it at "some people are guilty, and some people are responsible".

Organisms are systems. Higher organisms are more complicated systems.

Maintaining homeostasis (involving hunger, thirst, oxygen saturation, sleep, excretion, etc.) may involve "pleasure" but mostly it results in relief or deficit reduction. Beyond biological homeostasis (a system) are more systems: personal, cultural, interpersonal, etc. moving on to multi-systemic interactions. Life is very complicated.

Reducing life's multi-systemic interactions to ONE thing almost always results in distorted concepts. The fact that works against ONE cause is that all the sub-systems in a multi-systemic world are always operating at changing volumes. A multi-degreed friend (BA, MDIV, MSW) took early retirement and has decided to become a bicycle mechanic. It's a new, quite different, aspiration for this high-achieving fellow.

Self-esteem is, absolutely, a component of the multi-systemic human existence; but so is cognitive harmony, confidence, strong emotions (love, hate, rage, jealousy, etc), striving, and so on. Fear of death? At times, sure. But everybody thinks that teenagers consider themselves immortal, and old people are quite often ready to die. Very sick younger people also get on friendlier terms with death.

The complexity of multi-systemic existence doesn't rule out readily detectible patterns. Self-esteem is visible as a clear factor. We want to feel good about ourselves (which doesn't mean we are successful, of course.) We want outward manifestations of achievement: nice stuff. That doesn't mean we will get it, or that it will be "nice enough" to impress lots of people. We spend some time striving to get goodies, such as we can obtain, whether it is good for us or not.

"whether it is good for us or not" brings up another facet of multi-systemic existence: contradictory behavior. Sometimes we deliberately do things that run counter to what would seem to be the obviously appropriate behavior.

It seems like this all boils down to a search for pleasure (and the concomitant avoidance of discomfort)). Much of life is spent maintaining homeostasis: balancing our basal condition and experiencing neither pleasure nor discomfort.

I'm definitely not knocking pleasure as a powerful motivator. Pleasure like all desirable commodities, is perpetually in short supply. We may be acting to gain pleasure, but it is never a sure-fire thing. A good share of the time we do not get pleasure at all and instead get heaps of cold, wet discomfort.

Self-esteem, executive agency, praise, positive interactions, etc. -- all these things are pleasurable. It feels good to see one's person as accomplished and complement. It feels good to hear people say nice things--praise, congratulations, etc. And, you know, it isn't just us. One doesn't have to reward one's dog with a hunk of meat. Intangible verbal praise, pats, and strokes have the same effect. Dog's like praise. It makes them feel good. They will work for "good dog". (I don't know, they might have some idea what "good dog" means, but mostly it's the tone, the body language. That isn't to say a dog will misinterpret the hunk of meat or (more likely) piece of milk bone or something. They entirely understand reward.)

Pleasure may be sort of elemental -- it's an all-purpose good feeling. If "pleasure is a unitary feeling" there are many and diverse ways to get to pleasure. Sex, winning at cards, finding $10 on the street, somebody telling you that you look very handsome, a perfect peach, a fine beer, etc. etc. There are lots of ways to get to pleasure, but let's face it, not that many things are trying to make us feel good. Like I said, pleasures are hard to get.

The Dangling Conversation

It’s a still-life watercolor
Of a now late afternoon
As the sun shines through the curtain lace
And shadows wash the room
And we sit and drink our coffee
Couched in our indifference
Like shells upon the shore
You can hear the ocean roar
In the dangling conversation
And the superficial sighs
The borders of our lives

And you read your Emily Dickinson
And I my Robert Frost
And we note our places with bookmarkers
That measure what we’ve lost
Like a poem poorly written
We are verses out of rhythm
Couplets out of rhyme
In syncopated time
And the dangling conversation
And the superficial sighs
Are the borders of our lives

Yes,we speak of thing that matter
With words that must be said
“Can analysis be worthwhile?”
“Is the theatre really dead?”
And how the room is softly faded
And I only kiss your shadow
I cannot feel your hand
You’re a stranger now unto me
Lost in the dangling conversation
And the superficial sighs
In the borders of our lives

Simon & Garfunkel

Who, the text you invited us to read is nearly 15,000 words long -- a fairly long text to read without some certain benefit. I did read about 20% of it, and found nothing to which I strenuously objected. It seems sensible.

A better approach (in a forum) is for you to put forward something which is striking to you, defend it, or attack it, and let people respond accordingly.

For instance, "executive agency" is an important concept discussed in the part I read. He doesn't use that term, but it's what he is talking about in the part I read. Some people value executive agency higher than others. I'm not happy if I have none, and other people are quite content to just do as they are told. What's makes for the difference in people?

And when was I not polite to you?

I do not goad well. — YIOSTHEOY

That, of course, is not my problem. I goad well. YOU, on the other hand, do not move like the other cattle. You clearly march to a different drummer. You are an independent thinker.

I merely wish to benefit from your lovely, energetic, frequent, sometimes obtuse posts.

Better?

Love you, honey,


Bitter

In addition to torture being ineffective, inhumane, immoral, and inefficient, there is also the corrupting effect. In order for ONE person to be tortured, paid employees of one's government must perform, oversee, approve of, pay for, and authorize the torture. Maybe 10 people will be engaged in the action of torturing just 1 person. Approving of and authorizing torture moves one's country out of the "does not torture" column into the "does torture" column. It's not good company.

Decisions have to be made about how much suffering to inflict, for how long, and on what part of the body. the process of deciding such matters is in itself dehumanizing. Just as setting up teams of mass murderers is a bad idea, it is a bad idea to set up torture squads. Eventually they come home, and they (and others) have to live with the sequelae of their former work.

You've read GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL by Jared Diamond, no doubt. He lays a good foundation for the success of Europe, white people. It begins in the Middle East (and China). The Middle East and China both began agriculture, and had a large East / West axis along which to expand. Crops that grew in one area would grow in whatever area they moved -- East, or West. Africa and North America didn't have that advantage. A crop which worked well in northern South America or Central Africa wouldn't do well in southern South America or Northern Africa. So, movement of advantageous technologies (like domesticated grain) was limited to people who could move east and west -- Europeans and the Chinese.

Along with the East / West axis came a more or less temperate climate which was pretty much the same along the axis. Western Hemisphere aboriginals settled successively incompatible climate zones from Alaska to Patagonia.

Maize was grown throughout the Western Hemisphere (domesticated in Southern Mexico) but it too a long time to adapt it to the northern plains of North America. And, as every corn farmer in the northern plains knows, the weather can still change a good crop into no crop overnight. Grain that grew in the fertile crescent grew in Greece, Italy, Romania, Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Germany, France, England (long before those places had those names).

When Europe domesticated cattle, particularly, they probably were exposed to cow-borne diseases and became somewhat resistant -- like pox diseases and perhaps measles. It isn't that they were immune, but they were resistant. The Western Hemisphere populations were sitting ducks for smallpox -- they had not encountered the disease before. Disease may have wiped out half or more of the North/South American aboriginal population.

The third factor (for both China and Europe) is that workable metals and domesticatable traction animals (horses, camels, some bovine animals like water buffalo) were available. Africa, the Western Hemisphere, Australia, and SE Asia did not have any traction animals available. Without a traction animal, (a horse) wheels don't seem to occur.

The Americas had llamas and buffalo. Llamas aren't built for pulling, and buffalo are adamantly opposed to that kind of cooperation.

Geography, horses, wheels, germs, grain, etc. gave China and Europe advantages. Of course, China and Europe were a long ways apart, so they didn't clash a lot until later on.

Europe ascended because it happened to havre developmental advantages. Africa, North and South America, Australia, SE Asia didn't. That isn't to say, of course, that the people living in those undeveloped places were so much as a hair inferior. They were/are/will be equal to everyone else. they just didn't get the same cards dealt to them.

Europe also developed more technological edges--the "Guns," part of the title. The Chinese could have developed guns (they invented "gun" powder) but they didn't. Europeans noticed that if you put the gunpowder in a tight space it made a bigger bang. If you put it in the end of a pipe, and put a little lead ball in the pipe, the little lead ball would go right through somebody standing in the way when you lit the powder. Very interesting...

Arabs, Semites, are Caucasian. But in the dry-lands they settled on (more dry than wet, anyway) their location was generally not an agricultural or industrial advantage. This isn't to overlook Nineva, Ur, Persia, Egypt, Babylon, Anatolia, Tyre and Sidon, etc. "Civilization" started among Middle Eastern peoples -- but not in the Arabian Peninsula or the Egyptian desert--it was just too dry too much of the time.

I'm gay and I never had a wife to start with, so I didn't have the opportunity to begin beating her. Beating wives and kicking dogs are unwholesome practices.

Fallacies are not a good thing, I agree, but calling "loaded questions" fallacies is a categorical error. Loading questions is a rhetorical device intended to provoke, stimulate, amuse, and the like--as it did in your case.

I would have thought a more balanced title such as "what are the pro's and con's of ..." would be more appropriate. — YIOSTHEOY

Could be, and might have been more effective as well.

What do you think the pros and cons of white privilege are?

Blame? I'm just trying to goad you into a discussion about medical ethics.

I put "loaded questions" into their titles for two reasons:

1. To attract interesting responses where more prosaic titles might not
2. Because lots of questions are, in fact, "loaded".

Of course not. Nobody asked you to administer criminal justice.

But... people with criminal records and people doing important work both end up in accidents, bombings, fires, crashes, etc. In this example, you know that one person is a convicted rapist, the other is doing very important research. It is quite possible that in real life a doctor might know something about two patients that would make triage a more ethically freighted decision.

You are being asked to apply your ethics to a possibly difficult choice. Medicine rather often presents us with difficult ethical choices. Life, in general, does that every now and then.

I would agree that Erdogan is trying to weasel Turkey's way into the EU, one way or another. I don't think Turkey, as it stands today, is sufficiently in sync with EU policy to be admitted, and Erdogan himself is one of the things most out of sync. On the other hand, Turkey have sheltered a lot of people. The Greeks have too. Many of the refugees (like from Somalia) have crossed many borders to get to Greece. Greece just happens to be a frontline European state.

I don't think Europe needs to accept all or any of these people as permanent residents bound for citizenship, sight unseen, backgrounds unchecked. Temporary shelter is something else; something they can do. Sheltering camps might be kind of bleak, but that is a hell of a lot better than getting bombed and shot at.

My main objection to offering permanent residency and eventual citizenship is that quite a few countries in Europe do not have enough jobs to employ many of the people who are citizens now. The US is in similar shape with respect to Mexico and South America. Our actual unemployment level is considerably higher than the official level, and we should resolve the problem of say 10,000,000 unemployed / unemployable American citizens before giving a path to citizenship (or anything, really) to the 10,000,000 immigrants who are here illegally.

Changes in the world economy make it unlikely that real full-employment will return. It may never return (because of robotics, automation, new technologies, etc). Europe, The US, China, India, Brazil, and other large countries need to figure out what will be done with the large amount of wealth that is produced while not employing a large group of people. The super rich and their trillions of dollars are going to have to be reckoned with.

Solve that problem, then figure out how millions of future refugees will be incorporated into other economies. (It is solvable; but perhaps not within the business-as-usual model.)

And you didn't address the issue of your viewpoint's deficiencies.

And what makes you think I "play" Lucifer?

If you were doing triage, and one person had a 40% chance of surviving, but was developing a critically needed new antibiotic, and the other person had a 60% chance of surviving, but was a 3 times convicted rapist, which one would you spend the most time trying to save?