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,

Sorry you missed the big meeting where all of this was decided. Your gold plated invitation and all-expense-paid ultra-luxury hotel reservation must have been lost in the mail.

Relatively few major decisions about economies are made by governments. Most economic decisions in the capitalist sphere are made by investors (the stock markets), corporate boards, private capital, investment banks, very rich individuals, and the like. The Federal Reserve (in the US) makes big decisions, but the Fed is only a quasi-government organization. It's mostly a creature of the banking industry with a mandate to maintain liquidity and keep inflation around 2% and the official unemployment rate as low as possible.

So, millions of large investors vote semi-second by semi-second on all sorts of economic questions. One question they have voted on is whether to invest in geothermal power. Again and again, big money has shied away from that -- and other -- unfamiliar or risky kinds of projects. In most places, nuclear power has gotten a cold shoulder from investors as a result of 3 Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima.

Investors are a nervous lot -- bent on buying low, selling high, and maximizing profits. Nervous and a bit fickle. They live their lives with at least one eye on the market's ticker tape. They are mostly risk averse.

"Hey, everyone. Invest in International Magmatron! We'll drill into mostly quiet volcanos in the Pacific Northwest and power up Washington, Oregon, and British Columbia. It's your can't-lose opportunity to get in on the ground floor of this futuristic thermorama."

Investors read the prospectus and got clammy hands, hyperventilated, and required medical attention.

In the meantime, there is the big multi-trillion dollar petrochemical industry that is in place, predictable, and cranking out billions of dollars in profits. Well, sure... it's wrecking the planet, but it IS very profitable, and everybody likes profits. The planet might die in a century but our Dynamo Energy Fund could go broke in 15 minutes, if we're not careful. We just hate going broke!

S0, Karl, that's how decisions about magma energy, and many other worthwhile projects are made. It's not nice, I hate it, but that is, unfortunately, the way the system works.

They don't seem that devoted — karl stone

No, they don't. Not in Washington, nor in most capitols.

It isn't that they are so much opposed to geo-thermal as they are opposed to risking their economies, as currently operated. This is not a mistaken danger. A sudden switch away from fossil fuels to any other system could not be done overnight, and the transition is more likely to be wrenching and wrecking rather than smooth and pleasant--whether the destination is geothermal, hydrogen, photovoltaic, wind, or hydro.

Yes, global warming is going to be maximally wrenching and wrecking, so much so that we (collectively, everybody) are well advised to take the risks involved in dramatic change, now.

PoMo didn't invent relativism, of course, but to whatever extent relativism is a feature of PoMo, I find it useful. Different groups of people hold different moral systems, and to negotiate working arrangements, one must practice flexible diplomacy. Never mind settling disputes between Hindus and Moslems. One own siblings can present chasms of difference.

One need not abandon the standards that reliably guide one's own behavior to negotiate with others whose standards are quite different. Still, under the friction of interacting with both congenial and uncongenial people, one's own certainties may be weakened. For instance, uncongenial Christians and uncongenial religious people in general had a part to play in my distancing myself from religion. The less stake I have in theism, the easier it is to deal with theists.

Then too, I think everyone is a relativist whenever it is convenient. We may be against war, for instance, until our favorite ox is gored. Ukraine's ox excused arm sales that were not enthused about when the destination was Syria and other places.

If anything is permissible — Banno

If anything is permissible, then God is dead? per Jack Karamazov's brother, Ivan.

Optimistic perhaps, but I see no magical thinking in these proposals — karl stone

The 'magic' isn't in the basic technology. There's no 'magic' in the physics and chemistry of using hydrogen instead of hydrocarbons. The 'magic' lies in the human part of the equation, in supposing that the truly massive investment in fossil fuels can or will be switched to an equally massive investment in hydrogen or geothermal (magma) in a relatively short period of time. Oil companies have sunk petawads of money in drilling holes in the ocean to suck up toxic sludge; it takes a lot of magic to suppose that the whole fossil fuel industry and its millions of investors and billions of consumers can or will switch to anything else in the near future.

My reading of the global warming situation is that time will run out before we can make sufficient adaptation (like using hydrogen, reducing population, sequestering CO2, etc.). "Time running out" means that the heat gains will begin to unravel the economic fabric of the world's economies. Without robust economies, we're pretty much dead in the water.

Major industrial or technological changes take time to implement, usually 40 years, +/-. In the 75 years since it's arrival, nuclear fission has has not been fully implemented. The infrastructure for ever higher volume data transmission through the Internet is still being implemented, never mind fully developed. Computers, in all their various and sundry forms are still being developed and integrated, and that's around 75 years.

If it takes 50-60 years to implement hydrogen, along with geothermal, we are out to 2070-80, by which time the chickens of global warming will be home and roosting. There is absolutely no guarantee that we will convert to hydrogen. Supposing that we will have done so is where the magic comes in.

Demographers have said the 2100 population will be around 11 billion. Gaining 3 billion people, coping (or not coping) with at least a 2ºC global temperature rise, and the consequent increasing competition for food, water, and livable environment looks to me more like an end game than anything else.

Look, I hope we get our collective acts together to solve our various big problems. It just doesn't seem like we are going to be successful or quick enough.

"Magical thinking" is from Kunstler's book, "Too Much Magic". Kunstler and Smil both warn us away from solutions which require 'magic' of some sort to work. Replacing petroleum with hydrogen is an example. Hydrogen is a far, far less dense energy source than oil, and it takes energy to get it. If transported, it has to be liquified and kept under cold pressure until it is fairly close to the end user, This can be done, BUT it can not be done without using considerable energy apart from the energy in the hydrogen gas.

Capturing tidal energy is possible, but claiming that it will be a significant source of energy requires a bit of hocus locus, because (as far as I know) tidal energy research is in an early stage. Announcing that in 40 years, everyone will use public transit sounds like a good idea, but it is just more magic if one can not explain how that happy event is going to be brought about.

Fusion is another piece of magical thinking, The magic isn't in the fusion; the magic is in the prediction that it will work, will work well, and will be on line within a few years.

The most magical piece of thinking is that without coal and oil, we will go on our merry way, living as we have been living--plastics and all--just using different sources of energy.

In his "world made by hand" novels, Kunstler illustrates what life would be like after an abrupt break with our energy past. Life goes on, but it is far more difficult. Whether the break is abrupt or more gradual, we should stop thinking about doing things like magically replacing 1 billion gas powered cars with 1 billion electrical cars. (There are about 1 bn cars on the world's roads now,).

I nunc intellegite.

Quomodo stultus pertinax sapiens efficitur?

oops, too obscure.

But surely you've heard of "glittering generalities"? "A glittering generality or glowing generality is an emotionally appealing phrase so closely associated with highly valued concepts and beliefs that it carries conviction without supporting information or reason."

between dying like a dog and living like a king. — Agent Smith

That's a scriptural generality: "Anyone who is among the living has hope —even a live dog is better off than a dead lion!" Ecclesiastes 9:4

Are "glittering generalities" a) better than b) worse than c) about the same as sweeping generalities?

Sola dosis facit venenum. — Agent Smith

Congratulations. You are the first person to post this Latin phrase.

I have a pessimistic, fatalistic streak, I suppose. I am more confident of pessimistic predictions than optimistic ones. Maybe it's genetic. Some people seem to be born optimists. At 75 it's too late to rewire my brain, neural plasticity not withstanding, You, on the other hand, seem to be very optimistic, so go for it!

I'm not in the battery business, and I'm neither a physicist o chemist. My guess is that a lot of midnight oil is being burned on the problem. It just seems to be very difficult to corral electrons and stuff them into boxes. Then there are problems with heat, chemical stability of the storage media over the long run, not to mention cost $$$.

Still, if you compare a run of the mill D cell with the battery in your cell phone... there was some real progress. Maybe there is an undiscovered exotic molecule out there that will absorb and release electric energy really really well.

Eventually (in a few billions of trillion years) all this will be stopped due to heat entropy, but hey. — god must be atheist

We won't have to wait for a flat-out frosted cosmos to (paradoxical phrased) cook our goose. Long before the last erg of heat is given up, the sun will have expanded to envelop the earth within itself. The planet will survive as a cinder.

Long before the sun fries us, it is likely, under the best of circumstances, that we will have run our evolutionary course into the ground.

Long before we have run ourselves into oblivion, we may have spoiled the earth to a degree that we will have all died off.

Not to leave a disasteroid crashing into earth off the list.

Magma seems like a fine source of energy to me, at least where it is accessible. The Pacific Ocean is surrounded by a ring of volcanic activity related to continental subduction and ocean floor spreading, I'm not sure where it is, and is not, accessible. I suppose there are limits o how deep a access pipe can go.

So, drill baby drill.

(1800s - 1900s), — Agent Smith

In 1960 the world population was 3 billion. At that time, there was, already, some concern about CO2 among expert circles, and there was concern about population. Yes, we could have done more 60 years ago, assuming that the 3 billion free-agent humans were willing to forego what they thought was material progress, what they thought was the right thing to do.

We are not good at planning for long-term consequences. Young people tend not to think usefully about what it will be like when they are old, even though old age is only a few decades away. Once they are around 50, old age becomes a more cogent concern. People alive in 2022 can not usually think very usefully about 2050 or 2060, never mind 2100. It's too distant. 2030 is close enough to worry about,

Were we skilled at predicting and planning for events 50 to 100 years out, we would conduct our collective affairs differently. But we are not.

We certainly could slow down the rate at which we produce and consume, allowing nature to catch up on carbon renewal. Unfortunately, even if we did that, global warming would continue for a considerable period of time.

The idea of slowing down production and consumption sounds good, until we consider the severe consequences awaiting. Slamming the brakes on production/consumption will bring about a world-wide depression of great severity. The world's economy simply can not turn on a dime.

There are many ideas like yours which directly address the problem (say, let's all live like it was 1890). The problem is that radical shifts in production / consumption will cause the sort of horrendous catastrophe in the short term that global warming will produce in the slightly longer term,

What does this mean? I think it means we're screwed. It's like this: if you are in the way of an oncoming disaster -- flood, forest fire, category 6 hurricane, a dozen tornadoes, poisonous toads falling from the sky-- whatever, it's too late to do anything about it. You must either flee or perish, maybe perish even I you do flee.

Of course we should keep working diligently towards solutions, but keeping it in mind somewhere between our ears, that there is no magic solution where everything turns out just perfectly.

I like Vaclav Smil's book -- How the World Really Works: The Science Behind How We Got Here and Where We're Going 2022. For example, he shows how much energy it takes to manufacture a windmill and turbine, for instance, how much energy it will capture, and how long it will last (on average). It isn't that windmills are a bad idea, they just don't provide carbon free energy. Or a nice red greenhouse grown tomato has about 5 tablespoons of diesel fuel embedded in it, figuring all the inputs and distribution. Nothing wrong with hothouse tomatoes; they are just not carbon free.

Smils is a physicist, now retired from the University of Manitoba, and doesn't come down hard on either side of the global warming debate. Rather he shows what is physically possible, what is physically unlikely, and what can not work at all. He's an exceptionally clear writer, very accessible.

"[It is] reassuring to read an author so impervious to rhetorical fashion and so eager to champion uncertainty. . . Smil’s book is at its essence a plea for agnosticism, and, believe it or not, humility — the rarest earth metal of all. His most valuable declarations concern the impossibility of acting with perfect foresight. Living with uncertainty, after all, “remains the essence of the human condition.” Even under the most optimistic scenario, the future will not resemble the past. "—The New York Times"

We are up against time. Yes, we will transition to fossil free energy eventually, because we will have used it all up--if industrial civilization lasts long enough. As Vaclav Smils explains clearly, we will have to use a lot of fossil fuels to manufacture solar, wind, and nuclear power. Once we have it all in place, we will have to replace it ever so often, because stuff wears out.

new lead — Bird-Up

Never mind lead; what about lithium, indium, lanthanum, cerium, cobalt, neodymium, samarium, europium, terbium, and dysprosium? Rare earths are critical for 'green' energy and related applications. It isn't that rare earths are necessarily rare. It's just that they don't usually appear in concentrations that make them easy to obtain.

WELCOME to TPF.

Planning is the critical piece missing from the recycling process. Manufacturers must plan for the products entire lifespan. Don't make cars, refrigerators, or computers out of material that can not be recycled. Plan for their eventual retrieval and reprocessing. Don't make trillions of single use objects without establishing the means for their collection and reprocessing (water bottles, paper envelopes, or diapers). Individual efforts are part of the solution, but without industrial planning, we will get what we have got: a large percentage of readily recyclable materials being wasted / lost, and a lot of non-recyclable materials accumulating -- somewhere.

I'm not a chemist, but I understand that some plastics can be made from biomatter. But plastics come in a huge range of molecular structures with all sorts of extreme performance characteristics. Can you make Teflon out of ore oil?

I'm an old man, and I like plastic, just like everybody else does. Great stuff. But people lived full, meaningful, interesting lives before plastic. For instance, people used to keep food in their refrigerators in glass containers. Worked fine, until you dropped it. Very few people died as a result.

NO! We should definitely stop producing, consuming, and disposing of stuff the way we do. It's just that when you look around, there are megatons of stuff that are not going to get recycled.

All well and good about the sources of post modernism. What about too much magic expected of magma?

The US is no more violent, has no more mental illnesses, and has no more crime than other developed countries. And even excluding the US, the same pattern emerges; the more guns there are the more mass shootings there are. Which is fucking obvious. — Michael

Indeed.

The numbers of deaths caused by gun fire will very likely remain high because there is a surfeit of hand guns, rifles, and assault weapons. GUNS=DEATH.

As for the mental health of Americans, I would think that we are no crazier than people in other countries. At least, most of the people I have met in my life have seemed perfectly sane, even if they held insane political and religious views. I live in one of the states with the lowest rate of gun deaths (less than 10 per 100,000) and a liberal political culture (MN). Maybe if I lived in Mississippi I would think differently.

How much violence occurs in one's vicinity depends on where you live in the US. This map shows the distribution:



"Mass murder by gunfire" accounts for a slim fraction of gun deaths, 38 or 513 out of 19,384 murders carried out one-by-one in 2020, depending. ("Mass murder" is not clearly defined. It might be 20 at one go, or it might be 3, depending on the definition. Of course, it's crazy that we even have a statistic for mass murder, however vaguely defined.)

I like to cite the case of the Bath School massacre perpetrated by Andrew Kehoe on May 18, 1927, in Bath Township, Michigan, under the category "Nothing New Under the Sun." 38 elementary schoolchildren and 6 adults were killed, and at least 58 other people were injured after dynamite placed in the school was detonated. Kehoe, the 55-year-old school board treasurer, was angered by increased taxes and his defeat in the April 5, 1926, election for township clerk.

Prior to his timed explosives detonating at the Bath Consolidated School building, Kehoe had murdered his wife, Nellie Price Kehoe, and firebombed his farm. Arriving at the site of the school explosion, Kehoe died when he detonated explosives in his truck.

Was Kehoe insane? He was certainly obsessed -- the dynamiting of the school required considerable planning preparation. Apparently losing this election was intolerable (See Trump, 2020).

Afflicting the comfortable and comforting the afflicted was NEVER a function of the press or media. That honorable and thankless task belongs to gadflies***. The 'media' have always served the interests of their owners, whether they were crude money grubbers or refined money grubbers.

***a fly that bites livestock, especially a horsefly, warble fly, or botfly.
an annoying person, especially one who provokes others into action by criticism.
"always a gadfly, he attacked intellectual orthodoxies"

That said, the press and the media have also managed to be a useful source of information, ranging from low quality to high quality, despite themselves.

feck — ZzzoneiroCosm

Congratulations! You are the first person at TPF to use "feck" properly. (It has appeared several other times as a euphemism or local slang substitute for "fuck"). The usual manifestation of feck is in "feckless".

According to Google Ngram, "feckless" appears in print now more than ever before. That more human efforts are being branded as feckless than in previous decades and centuries strikes me as altogether meet, right, and salutary.

we need shit done and we need people to follow dictates of organizations to do the shit — schopenhauer1

A hymn to shit getting done by The Fugs Gospel Choir:

(gospel sound)
River of shit
River of shit
Flow on, flow on, river of shit
Right from my toes
On up to my nose
Flow on, flow on, river of shit

(transition to Rock)
I've been swimming In this river of shit
More than 20 years, and I'm getting tired of it
Don't like swimming, hope it'll soon run dry
Got to go on swimming, cause I don't want to die

(spoken with gospel sound in background):
Who dealt this mess, anyway?
Yea, it's an old card player's term
But sometimes you can use the old switcheroo and it can be applied to ...
Frontal politics
What I mean is ...
Who was it that set up a system
Supposedly democratic system
Where you end up always voting for the lesser of two evils?
I mean, Was George Washington the lesser of two evils?
Sometimes I wonder ...
You got some guy that says
"For God sake, we've got to stop having violence in this country."
While he's spending 16,000 dollars a second snuffing gooks

(gospel sound musical ending)
A wiiiiiiiiiiiiide, big brown river, yea, bringing health, wealth, and prosperity to every man, women, and child

Go here to hear it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svPDzNO6GQk

"What would communism look like" is an old debate. In any case, it will be up to the people to decide. Presumably, the people will not decide on a dictatorship a la Stalin, Mao, Castro, et al. I don't know what it will look like.

I still don't think you have an alienated worker if he thinks he's not — Hanover

People harbor all sorts of delusions. On the other hand, waking up every day thinking that one is the victim of systematic dispossession and extortion is generally not good for one's mental health. The exploited have to find ways to get through the day without going berserk.

Whether we live in the Soviet Union, Mao's China, Castro's Cuba, or today's USA, one has to find a way to live in the world -- and people do. People manage to get through the day -- and actually enjoy life despite Marx.

I think Marx was correct that capitalism exploits workers: it alienates them from their work and from the goods and services they produce. At the same time, I must acknowledge that your observation about people who do not think they are alienated (in Marx's sense) reflects reality for many. Capitalists and workers have negotiated back and forth to reach a tolerable middle ground. Not for everybody, but for many.

schopenhauer1's antinatalist logic is valid. Life sucks, and having children perpetuates life's suckiness. I agree that life sucks, but not so much that no body should have more children. Similarly, I agree that many people do not seem to be alienated from their work, their product--whatever that is, be it nuts and bolts or legal services.

"Managing to get through one's day without going berserk" is not an endorsement of the existing system. Workers' vision becomes much clearer when they experience the harsh side of capitalism, the side where there is no negotiation towards a tolerable middle ground. It is also the case that capitalism works very hard to portray itself positively. The positive portrait is the one hanging in most Americans' living room.