By "ancient" I mean Paleolithic -- of the Stone Age, hunter-gatherers; very small scattered groupings of people. In conventional terms, the "ancient world" begins with Sumer or Egypt, very early writing, early use of metal (copper). By that time, " those in charge of organizing and coordinating religious activities were in a position where they can easily manipulate people for personal gain" as you say.

There is no evidence of organized religion, or organized civil society, before around 8,000 years ago when the first cities were built, after early agriculture developed. There are cave paintings of unknown meanings, and a few carvings of what we suppose are fertility figures from around 20,000 years ago. Before that, the most we have is almost nothing.

You might like the book AGAINST THE GRAIN, A deep history of the earliest states 2017 by James C. Scott. He argues that people were coaxed into agricultural labor and early village life by a nascent elite that saw opportunity in settled society to cultivate their own power and wealth. Religion would certainly have played a role in this scheme (if it is true).

The urge or need to create sacred activities might be a feature of our evolution and are still seen in individual non-communal private acts.

I'm just proposing an explanation in the spirit of Ockham' Razor. — enqramot

Occam liked nice efficient explanations, but he also liked explanations that accounted for reality.

The world's religions have very deep roots, going back to very ancient times. Any contemporary religious operation may seem (and actually be) corrupt, but I think it is safe to say that religions didn't begin as a scam.

Humans need some kind of explanation for the world they live in. They need some way to give meaning to their existence, replete with joys and sorrows. If rationality is plentiful, we use rationality, If poetry, myth making, story telling, and ritual are plentiful, that's what we use.

The roots of religion began in pre-rational very ancient milieus. Rationality would come, but not yet. Tree gods, river gods, animal spirits, mountain spirits, and so on likely came first. Sky gods, earth gods, storm gods, fertility gods, and so on came later, but didn't replace the earlier worship.

We are very familiar with sky gods: Zeus, for instance, and his various relatives. Christianity descended from the monotheism of the Jewish sky god.

The sky gods tended to be strongly associated with the power elite of the society in which they were worshipped--more so than animal spirits and tree gods. Think of the Roman state and its official pantheon. Eventually, the humble Jesus was adapted to the needs of the Empire, and the Church and Empire became fellow travelers. Bad business.

So, may I suggest you really look at the roots of religion, rather than this year's crops of wormy produce.

Absolutely -- waiting-for-death is not a suitable approach for people who are not old yet -- whatever one thinks of as "old" for themselves. My approach isn't "resignation from the game" altogether, because I, of course, don't know how long I may live yet. I still "engage".

Good point. The drop in crime that began in the late 1980s was (at least in part) a result of R vs. W. The unwanted children who were not born did not become problem youth.

Excellent! Do it immediately. This would, of course, require all the necessary actors having enough balls to do it. 2 & 3 will require a few more progressives in the Senate. Memo to progressive voters: You'd better vote. It would help to have a batch of the paleoconservative troglodytes subject to post-natal abortions.

The Universe doesn't hand out meaningfulness. It just is, and we are part of it. Though considerable effort over time I have come to the conclusion that life is meaningless, but that isn't a terrible thing, It means that we can provide a measure of meaning in our own lives--by doing meaningful, as Banno said.

We are here for a short time; some as little as 15 minutes, others as many as 115 years. As we age and get smarter, there is less time left to exist. Time is shorter. At 75, I figure the end of my life is maybe just around this or the next corner.

I'm happier now than I have ever been. I'm busy, I'm reading a lot of history. I listen to great music on the radio and internet. There's the small house and weedy lawn to look after.

Death, like an over-flowing stream
Sweeps us away; our life is but a dream,
an empty tale, a morning flower
cut down and withered in an hour.

Do older people have a harder time dealing with heat? Just wondering. — Tate

In general, yes. We don't respond as quickly to sudden changes in temperature as younger people. Medicines and medical conditions may make it more difficult for agéd bodies to lose heat. Cognitive decline can interfere with an individual's taking care of themselves, so that they may not be able to execute a cooling strategy.

A fan in a hot apartment won't cool a person very much. If humidity and temperature are high enough, (90º - 95º F, with very high humidity) sweating no longer works as a cooling mechanism and heat stroke and death may follow. (This is true for everyone, not just old people)

Yes, people have gotten along without air conditioning in very hot conditions. This is especially true where temperatures are high while humidity is low. Sweating in hot - arid environments works quite well. Urban environments present extra problems. Apartment buildings without AC can turn into solar ovens, and the surrounding paved environment aggravates the problem.

Minnesota had a severe hot drought in the summer of 1988. During some nights the temperature remained in the upper 90s. Because of the drought, the hot air was very dry and thus the heat was much more tolerable. I was doing street outreach in Minneapolis at that time, and spent a lot of time on bicycle, without suffering. The nights, on the other hand, were wonderful -- warm, dry, bug free, clear skies. It was hell for agriculture but great for some of us.

During the 2003 heatwave in Europe, nearly 70,000 people died from heat, many of them elderly Many of the elderly's families were away on vacation, and no one was doing wellness checks on the old folks. Most of the dead lived in apartments without AC. American cities have also seen spikes in heat related deaths.

The solution isn't to put AC in every apartment. Most heat-waves are of relatively short duration. Rather, the solution is to make sure vulnerable people have a way of getting to cooling centers so their core temperatures don't reach fatal levels.

I'm probably not as ancient as your old woman, but when I was growing up (memories from the early 1950s) we did not have air conditioning or even window fans. We were not wretched from heat. Maybe it wasn't as hot back then. There were lots of shade trees in the small town.

We went swimming in a meandering stream which was shared by cattle. Not very clean. We didn't get sick.

Humans don't have to eat everyday — Tate

They don't have to eat every day, but I bet we have preferred to eat every day for a very long time.

No doubt about it, though, most people in the industrialized world are eating too much of the wrong kind of food. A supermarket is a smorgasbord of not very healthy food. Why? Because food manufacturers are not public health agencies. Besides, a lot of people like the crap that is on offer. The crap also comes in interesting novel forms which people also like. There are one or two items of crap that I like to eat--crunchy, chewy, salty, spicy, greasy, sweet creations from the laboratories of Conagra and Multifoods. Carrots and cabbage are healthier than Doritos and Hagen Daz, but one can stand only so much whole grain, NGO, organic, high-fructose-free minimally processed whole earth clunky goodness. .

Imagine thinking that American fascism is the work of "a few bad actors" and not a deliberate, systemic outcome of tens of millions of Americans who simply like fascism and despise women. This is not "a few bad actors". This is who and what the US is, and it will only continue to get worse. — Streetlight

The anti-abortion agitation began in earnest when Roe vs. Wade was passed, 50 years ago. It was primarily conservative Roman Catholic for at least 30 years, but then came to include very conservative Protestants. (Conservative catholics and conservative protestants have more politics in common than liberals and conservatives within dominations.)

I'm never quite sure where conservatism fades into fascism, but rolling back abortion is another significant retrograde movement.

The anti-abortion movement has demonstrated exemplary consistent persistence--not doubt with the help of conservative Catholic hierarchy. It has been implacable.

The Court isn't finished with its agenda. Barring an outbreak of plague on the bench during liberal presidencies, we can expect to see other rulings overturned. It is quite possible that the legality of homosexual activity and gay marriage (at the federal level) will be repealed. Rulings in favor of the environment (over commerce) are also likely to be overturned. And more.

A core of conservatives have never reconciled themselves with New Deal programs, and if social security is offensive (they would like to privatize it) not much else is safe. (And it isn't just the SCOTUS we have to worry about.)

when I'm creating a work, I'm not examining — Noble Dust

The 'flow' of creativity is best not interrupted.

As well you should. That most of Greek and Roman literature has been lost is the judgement of classics scholars, not mine.

What we do have is a much larger body of what we call art, what they called craft - sculpture, friezes, mosaics, painting (Pompeii, for instance). The dining room wall decoration from a Pompeii house is likely to end up in an art museum, but we'd likely agree -- this is craft, not art. It's decor, like wallpaper. It is thought that Greco-Roman sculpture was painted--shocking! What? The Winged Victory of Samothrace a painted lady! Much of what survives are copies--very good copies, but still.

As far as the unexamined life goes, our good fortune is that Hogarth found the lives of louts worth examining in pencil and paint.
'

What are your thoughts on the Woody Guthrie video? — Clarky

Guthrie sang the homespun virtues of the common folk. "He captured the heart of hard economic times and war while struggling with poverty and personal demons." He wasn't famous for his voice not in the way that Pete Seeger was. Malvina Reynolds wrote some memorable songs -- among them "Little Boxes" Her voice is even less attractive than Woody Guthrie. Reynolds was a PhD in English / Communist / protest song composer / wife / mother.

One of her songs was used for a charming Kodak commercial back in the 60s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKOPwEk6m4w

Expert artists and connoisseurs are not the only or the primary audiences for most art. — Clarky

Quite so. But they have expert music teachers (for musical performance).

Technically perfect art without vision and feeling are sterile. — Clarky

I'm not sure what "technically perfect art" looks or sounds like. Or that perfection leads to blind sterility. Here's a demo of Isaac Stern teaching students in China (1979) how to get vision and feeling from their violins.

To make good art, you have to have an experience worth conveying. — Clarky

The unexamined life isn't worth painting.

Skeptical — Clarky

For what it's worth, Collingwood was a philosopher as well as a practicing historian and archeologist. Skeptical or not, I think what he says is worth listening to. — Clarky

Quite so. It's not Collinwood's fault that the Greeks and Romans used media that rotted in dampness instead of baked clay tablets. Our civilization's output will vanish in the entropy of magnetic storage, as well as from our libraries turning into fungal farms. Who will save a fragment of our thought? The Mall of America's hulking big boxiness will remain, but without the great art it inspired (he said sarcastically).

Good thread!

It takes a lot of practice, practice, practice to get to Carnegie Hall--to perfect one's artistic performance to a level where expert musicians and connoisseurs will say, "Well done!" What is true for music is true for other arts; no great novel is a first draft; no great painting is the first sketch; one's home videos will never make it to Cannes or the Oscars.

A professional pianist commented that Haydn's piano scores are more polished than Mozart's. Of course: Haydn had tenure in the Esterhazy court; Mozart had to get out and hustle to maintain an income stream. Plus, Haydn died at 77; Mozart died at 35. I'd be hard pressed to say which one made a bigger splash.

In the first place, there is talent. I could practice till doomsday and would not be asked to perform on so much as a kazoo.

I hear about "fast fashion" (fast turnaround clothing design); It's not haute couture, not that I know much about that either, other than a lot of it looks like ready-made trash. Art might help fashion, but fashion doesn't help art so much.

As for this Collinwood ("the best known neglected thinker of our time"), I tend to be suspicious of statements like "The Greeks and Romans had no conception of what we call art as something different from craft." Perhaps, but what the Greeks valued as "craft" was pretty damn great. Collingwood is to classics the very opposite of what I am to quantum mechanics [zero] but still, there are not many extended texts from the classical era. Generalizations tend to be supported on slim pillars. Besides, we go round and round trying to decide what we will call art.

Thanks for the Animal House snippet.

Mine was a zinger. Your response was just sour grapes.

Focus on my argument — Bartricks

Reading your arguments, such as they are, entails suffering we do not deserve.

But you just made a fact-based argument for AN, no? — schopenhauer1

Yes. In response to Bartricks response to my post.

I am supposing that unpleasant pain is a fact of life, not a personal judgement. The innocence of children (as a matter of Grace) and infants not deserving punishment is a personal judgement -- one to which I have no objection. As I said, I don't believe people (many at least) become antinatalist on the basis of logic. This being the kind of place it is, logic assumes a bigger role than it actually has in matters of belief.

One can toss logic into the air till the cows come home (at milking time, late afternoon - early evening), but chances are strong that whatever one believes, logic didn't lead one to it. Are apples better than oranges? Logic doesn't help.

Who is being tedious?


I am not against antinatalism. From a practical POV, it would help our environmental problems a great deal if far fewer people had been born in decades past. But arguing the merits of antinatalism is a bit like arguing the merits of homosexuality. One IS a homosexual or one is not. Logic has nothing to do with it. One IS an antinatalist or one is not. I do not believe people embrace antinatalism because of compelling argument. They embrace antinatalism because of compelling experience.

The logic of antinatalism has to begin with some assertion that life is too unsatisfactory to bring more people into the world. Yes, I do think that life is unsatisfactory in many ways, which a personal judgement. "Too unsatisfactory to bear children" is a also a personal judgement call and the logic follows from there.

Shouldn't logic begin with a fact rather than a personal judgement? Unpleasant Pain is a necessary part of life. Existence means painful unpleasant experiences. Not bearing children prevents more humans from painful unpleasant experiences.

What is more compelling: One's nightmare experiences in childhood and adolescence that led one to decide to not parent a child, or a logical argument?

To procreate is to create an innocent person. They haven't done anything yet. So they're innocent. — Bartricks

You are simply declaring that a procreated person is "innocent"; perhaps, perhaps not. One does not need to be a Christian (or of any religion) to recognize the possibility that a procreated person may be capable of great wrong-doing, even if they do not actually wreak havoc.

An innocent person deserves to come to no harm. Thus any harm - any harm whatever - that this person comes to, is undeserved. — Bartricks

You are again declaring that the innocent procreated person deserves no harm. This hinges on your definition of innocence (which is a kind of religious concept, as well as a legal concept). "No harm whatsoever" is a sweeping generalization.

Furthermore, an innocent person positively deserves a happy life. — Bartricks

How do you (or anyone else) know what a happy life is, and why the arbitrarily defined innocent person deserves it?

It is wrong, then, to create an innocent person — Bartricks

I think you began with "It is wrong, then, to create an innocent person" and then built the support.

There is no outside agent that defines innocence, or what a person--innocent or otherwise--deserves. There is no agency that guarantees a happy life to anyone. All of which makes your new approach unsuccessful.

The world is, in fact, a fairly harsh arrangement which guarantees a certain amount of pretty rough experience (for all creatures, great and small), while at the same time allowing for a measure of delight. Antinatalism comes down to one preferring to not have children for various reasons, from personal inconvenience (children are inconvenient) to an imbalance of suffering and delight -- like the universe had ever suggested one would get a a fair share.

Logic can't solve the problem.

LSD, Psilocybin, Mescaline, Cannabis. MDMA; all have yielded insight — Janus

Philosophical insights are a fine thing, but did the drugs help you get laid as often as and by whomever you wanted? If not, perhaps they provided a satisfactory substitute?

When Churchill stayed at the White House for a long conference with Roosevelt, the staff was given a schedule to provide his preferred drinks from morning to night. I don't know whether he qualified as an alcoholic. I don't care if he was. Some people can be productive and drink. Count me out of that group; 2 beers and I become jolly and sociable. 2 more, a bit sloshed; 2 more and I fall off the bar stool.

The guys in MAD MEN and everyone on Apple TV's FOR ALL MANKIND drink a lot--beer, of course, but many shots of bourbon, whisky, vodka, etc. They drink a lot without falling off the bar stool. The astronauts also smoked a lot -- how they maintained fitness is beyond me.

Freud was said to be a regular cocaine user. — Jackson

In the 1880s some thought it a miracle drug -- something that would give one an extra big bounce in one's step. It was legal to use. Wasn't he addicted to an opioid as well? He had cancer of the jaw for which he had 30 surgeries, suffered from excruciating pain, and from which he died. He smoked a lot of cigars. Would that addicts could all be as productive as Freud!

a frame of mind which is conducive to insight — hypericin

- Recreational drugs, including gin and tonic, may produce a frame of wind which is "conducive to insight" but so might other things.

- Religious rituals that are part of your personal culture (as opposed to grabbing any old ritual).
- Great art (drama, film, music...) might lead one to new and significant insights.
- Falling in love (deeply -- more that a passing infatuation. Nothing wrong with passing infatuations, but... they pass too soon.
- Great sex? Probably. At the very least, insight into what makes great sex great.
- Intense positive interaction with other people.
- Thinking, for sure. Reading and writing help one think.

Unfortunately, all the things that have produced insights have also produced heaps of straw.

The world's allowable number of deep insights is fixed. So, if you have never had so much as a feeble lightbulb moment, rejoice and be exceeding glad. Your doltish brain has granted a brighter bulb the opportunity to have one or several insights, for the good of mankind.

I did not remember the project name: it's the Jesus Seminar. Thanks to @wayfarer

Whether you "could debauch and murder through life and get to an eternal paradise via deathbed conversion" is not something one can attribute to Jesus. This is more the approach of a corrupt bureaucracy (aka holy mother church).

There are, indeed, so many points on which one can / should wonder about the veracity of the gospels. After all, the gospel writers were separated from the time and place of Jesus' life by many years and many miles. I assume there was somebody named Jesus, but was he really JESUS or was he a character imagined into existence?

You've heard of the Jesus Project? A group of scholars sifted through the gospels trying to nail down what, with certainty, could be attributed to Jesus. There wasn't a lot left when they finished. It isn't that they found the Sermon on the Mount of little value; it was just that there was little there that would connect it specifically to one particular man.

The Church needed foundational documents, and it produced them. Did Jesus say to Peter, "On this rock I will found my church"? I wasn't there, so I don't know. BUT if he didn't, it was inspired writing on some editor's part to put those words in Jesus' mouth. Peter, Paul, and the other disciples were long dead, so who would complain?

The seeds of what became Christianity were first scattered among the Jews by a Jew -- Jesus Christ. We are told that Jesus preached, healed, and performed miracles. Apparently his brief active ministry (just 3 years) was quite compelling. Jesus died at the hands of the Romans by crucifixion. We are told that he was resurrected from the dead.

What began as a small circle of friends who knew Jesus grew and came to include people who had only heard about Jesus through the efforts of his disciples and Paul. The number of people who believed that Jesus was a prophet/savior/Son of God was at first very small. There was for the first decades no specific formal beliefs, no institution to speak of, no formalized ritual, no scripture.

Apparently the people who were first attracted to Jesus found his story very compelling. These first Christians are the people you should (if you could) ask "Why did you become a Christian?"

Eventually the church developed beyond the Jewish community and became large and well enough established that it began to need staff, organization, formalized ritual, specific beliefs, and scripture (foundational documents). By a century after Jesus' death, these elements were coming into being. The Christian Church became another among many competing religions. A major break came their way in 312 when the Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity and decreed it the official religion.

After Constantine, Christians didn't merely compete with other religions, they worked towards shutting them down, closing their temples, and demanding conversion. So, a lot of people converted because it was the safest course to follow.

Guanyun, where your question becomes cogent again is over the long history of Christianity when individuals have decided to leave their pagan beliefs behind and become Christian. There may be advantages available to converts, but apparently previously uninformed people still find the story of Jesus compelling.

You can ask the same question about Karl Marx: It's not surprising that many people in China think Karl Marx is very important. What is VERY surprising is that some Americans read Marx (who is very unpopular in the USA) and decide that he is right. Apparently they find his narrative compelling. The same can be said for people who adopt a belief that is very different than what they had previously believed. The new belief gives their life new meaning, more meaning.

Another answer to your question, why, is that when and where Christianity became the cultural norm, there was virtually no alternative to being Christianity. One was born into it. No decision was necessary.

It isn't clear to me how deep human morality is, a good share of the time, never mind morality among non-humans.

Some animals are capable of making judgements about fairness and can decide to work cooperatively with another of its kind for mutual benefit. These are examples of animal morality observed and filmed in labs.

A dog, for instance, who has been cooperating with an experimenter, will cease and disease if it observes another dog getting rewards for the same behavior for which it is not getting rewarded. It's pretty clear: the dog being unfairly ignored stops cooperating.

Primates who had been cooperating with other primates and an experimenter, will quickly stop cooperating if they see some primates getting better quality rewards than they received. For instance, if two primates get apple slices as rewards, and two other primates get slices of cucumbers, the cucumber primates will abruptly stop cooperating.

Primates will spontaneously cooperate to get a mutual benefit (they both get apple slices). Dogs have been observed cooperating on some task in order to get a mutual reward.

What these experiments reveal is that animals can recognize fairness/unfairness, and in some cases judge the quality o the reward. They can also recognize how to cooperate in some task in order to get something desirable (like a food reward).

My take on human behavior is that what we do is possible because other animals (in our evolutionary lineage) have made ever more complex behaviors possible. Perhaps we were subject to an evolutionary leap, but the ground still had to be prepared for that leap -- be it the way we see, hear, feel, think, or decide to complain to the management.

I lack a theologian’s understanding of heaven and hell.

So what? — Art48

Your lack of theological understanding (unsubtle thick-headed, never a nuance thinking) might be of zero importance. It depends.

What is most important: Being a believer? Are you happy with what you believe? Are you a doer? Do you perform what you believe--eg, do you follow the plainly spoken teachings of Jesus?

If you somehow manage to follow the plainly spoken teachings of Jesus, my guess is that Jesus doesn't care what you believe. On the other hand, if you do not follow Jesus' teachings, it also doesn't matter what you believe.

The way I look at it, our job is here on earth. We can be good, bad, or indifferent and who gets into heaven or hell is above our pay grade. Some people seem more concerned about who they can consign to hell than who than can encourage into heaven.

I have found some theologians to be a delight; others to be a bore. It seems to me the best, most useful theologians help us shift our thinking from narrow doctrine to broader, more humane thought. Harvey Cox, a leftist Baptist, is one of my favorites.

The People, the folk, add the homely touch to religion -- like the idea that their dog (cat, parrot, gerbil, ...) will be happy to see them when they get to heaven. There's nothing in the religious record that suggests dogs are going to be in heaven in any way, shape, manner, or form, but some people find it a comforting idea. At least one Hound ended up in Hell, so that is a possibility people should think about. Nasty dogs deserve a spell in hell along with their nasty owners. Just my opinion.

The more doctrine I throw overboard the better I feel.

@karl stone When I read the Communist Manifesto, I don't find any inspiration or justification for the gulags, purges, mass executions, genocides, etc. that arose under the banner of Marxist Leninist rule. Still, it happened. Very similar events occurred in the Chinese iteration of Marxism.

In Russian, Chinese, and other totalitarian regimes the model followed was the centuries long despotism of the preceding regimes, and the character of the people who led the respective revolutions. There is not too much that is admirable in Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Fidel, et al.

Because it was buried in its own little grave of the bureaucratized, stale, moldy Socialist Labor Party (SLP) and capitalist repression, the democratic model of American socialism faded into oblivion. De Leon, Debs, and others held that democratic processes (union organizing, political campaigning, education, voting, legislation, etc.) were the route that should be pursued to socialism. It was tried in the early 20th century.

Did it succeed? No, obviously. Why not? It was repressed the same way that unions were repressed: long campaigns of negative propaganda, laws blocking organizing activity, covert infiltration and disruption, and so forth. The democratic model remains, however, and option where democratic life occurs. Socialist prospects in the United States? Poor to DOA.

Good OP and thread.

The red brick school house use to be in charge of shaping citizen / worker behavior and thinking. In that role, schools did a fairly decent job of producing literate, numerate workers who fulfilled the social expectations. A Marxist Classics prof at the U of Minnesota thought that the reason public education has been degraded is because capitalists had found better tools to shape consumer/worker behavior: Mass Media and the PR manipulators.

Advertising got underway in the 1920s, actively encouraging consumers to acquire stuff, (Your average householder back then, and later, lived in a small house with minimal closet and storage space. Ordinary people used to own a lot less 'stuff' so they didn't need lots of storage.

Democracy has always been a some-time thing: Here, there, now, then, this issue, that issue. But the public has mostly NOT been left to make policy without pretty heavy guidance from the elite, in one form or another.

Sauce Béarnaise über alles.

The problem with writing engineering solutions on toilet walls is that the bandwidth is so narrow, and you have to get into the right toilets in the first place. The best toilets in the various towers of power scattered around the world are generally locked. These days one is very lucky to find a toilet for ordinary purposes that isn't locked or permanently closed. Then people are arrested for urinating in alley ways.

You have fought a good fight, though you may not have finished your course, yet, you have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for you a crown of righteousness.

Of course, you don't want to just fight the good fight, you want to succeed -- to see good results. But you stand-in a long lie of people who have 'fought the good fight" and didn't see success in their time.

Question: Are you banging on in the right places? TPF is a good place to bat around ideas, but as a starting point for industrial change, it's a terrible place to bang on about anything,

I can sort of understand why you think I've been dodging your question about "how do I know that". OK: I'm speculating. But it's speculation based on experience about how decisions get made. There is a lot of human thinking and behavior that is just not very rational. People in groups have even more problems making decisions rationally. Then there are the problems of implementation--another can of worms.

Samuel Johnson said, "Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully." That lots of people know we are facing an existential threat hasn't done the trick of concentrating our minds. Yet anyway; hopefully soon.

Look at this shit: — karl stone

Stupid, idiotic proposals are made and actions taken that defy human reason. As H. L. Mencken said (allegedly) "No one ever went broke underestimating human intelligence."

How do you know this?

You didn't answer. I prodded you - this isn't a rhetorical question. — karl stone

It is as good as a rhetorical question, and it depends on various factors. You know that.

Read enough history and sociology and you will see patterns in how decisions get made.

You shut up.

How much hypocrisy can one maintain without being rotten to the core? Everyone is a hypocrite to some degree (excepting thee and me, of course), so are they rotten just in spots?

How to distinguish between rotting and fermenting? She's rotting into slime; I'm fermenting into wine.

Boris should resign post haste.

Karl, I've agreed several times that geothermal (magma) is a good idea. I'm convinced.

What I have been laying out is an explanation for why the rest of the world hasn't gotten their act together and started working on it. People do not do a lot of things they should and could do, whether that is giving up tobacco, exercising more, avoiding war, or demanding magma wells NOW.

addicted to carbon! This is the reason why we're unable to effect a transition, smooth/bumpy, from fossil fuels to (say) electricity. — Agent Smith

Wrong. I've explained over and over how to transition from fossil fuels — karl stone

Agent Smith was not rejecting geothermal; he was offering a suggestion as to why it hadn't happened.

There might be an argument against geothermal, but I am neither a geologist nor a heat transfer engineer. I haven't, and I can't offer any technical objection.

it's the dumbest thing you've ever written — karl stone

I beg to differ. I've written dumber things.

Yes, the government does do some R&D investment. Out of the US Federal budget of 2.3 Trillion Dollars, 106 Million Dollars was allocated to the Geothermal Office. What they do, actually, I don't know. Clearly Congress is not excited about geothermal. They devoted 250 Million Dollars to nuclear energy, not a huge vote of confidence either.

The members of the House and Senate also live their lives with one eye on the markets, and the other eye on on Bureau of Labor statistics, Treasury reports, Government Budget Office reports, and polling survey results. The thought of millions of redundant workers in the petrochemical sector or a collapse of the trillions of dollars petrochemical industry horrifies them, as well it should.

One of the points of which I have been trying to convince you is that a transformation of the energy sector (particularly concerning fossil fuels) cannot occur without severe dislocations in the world economy. Economic dislocation, collapse, destruction, etc. isn't merely inconvenient -- it will be fatal to a lot of people whose livelihoods disappear.

Supposing that we can just switch from a trillion dollar fossil fuel system to geo and hydrogen is a non-starter. It can be done, but it will take time--not a couple of years, not even a couple of decades. more like 50 years to get it all put together.

Your ideas are good, but they are not improved by monomania.

frack with one hand and carbon tax with the other; how could such obviously contradictory policies be enacted, and be accepted by lawmakers, scientists, protest groups, businesses and individuals. — karl stone

Capitalism, as Karl Marx pointed out, is chock full of contradictions.

You don't have to be a Marxist to see that. Humans, with rare exceptions, are the very model of modern, major, contradictions. Cue Gilbert and Sullivan.

Groups of "lawmakers, scientists, protest groups, businesses and individuals" have disparate interests, within the group and between the groups. Not just one or two disparate interests, but numerous disparate interests.

That's why preserving the plant's ecosystem is only partly a technical problem. It's largely a human behavior problem, and an obstacle that human behavior has so far not been very successful at solving,