"We are a nation of laws." I've heard this said by various pontificating politicians who want to emphasize how civilized we are, or something.

Having laws on the books in itself is not all that significant. Lots of acreage around the world is covered by laws on the books that are both ignored and not enforced. You'd want body guards for an evening stroll, never mind a trip to the bank to deposit cash.

Unobserved and unenforced laws are dead letters. Citizens' adherence to the law and enforcement of infractions is what makes a society "a nation of laws". Law functions as a framework for managing everyone's behavior. There is often a big space between the wording of the law and its enforcement.
For something that is supposed to be clear, the law seems to require a lot of interpretation.

Many prefer that the people be law abiding, thereby minimizing the need for enforcement. The people also interpret the law on their own...

Psychopathic traits, limited enough to allow for normal function in society, enable persons--like high-level managers--to make decisions that make good sense for the company, like laying off 3000 employees on Christmas Eve to meet year-end targets.

People with normal personalities would find this sort of decision extremely difficult or impossible to make.

Psychopathic traits are, in general, undesirable. Only if you think the company's year end profit picture is more important that the lives of 3000 employees could one find it a virtue. Some people do...

The ability to act without crippling guilt can be helpful and healthier. It might be better for everybody concerned if a someone has a brief and inconsequential hookup with someone at a convention, without being tied up in knots of guilt. An inconsequential affair might kill off the primary relationship if it were confessed. One doesn't have to be a psychopath to let what happened in Las Vegas STAY in Las Vegas. One does have to have some moral flexibility, however.

I see a very unnatural state. For example, I see a drive to force almost against our will different segments of society, different groups, different biologies, different backgrounds, together in a way which, compared to a historical sense, seems very forced, engineered, calculated, planned and ultimately is unnatural in that historical sense. — JohnLocke

Whether natural or unnatural, several forces are at work. First, population growth. When I was a boy, the population was 2.5 billion (1950); 70 years later, it is about 7.8 billion. Never mind whether 7.8B is too many, 5 billion extra people means more interaction with other people, desired or not. Second, global warming. As the climate heats up, more and more people will find themselves in areas where adequate food and fresh water are going to be harder to obtain. These people will be heading towards more livable locations. Third, trade. More people, more transportation, more production and consumption, etc. brings people together, if not for decades, at least often for shorter periods of time.

Fourth, relief programs. Minneapolis has a large Hmong and Somali population. Did the various refugee groups look over maps and decide that a cold northern hemisphere city was the best place in the world to live? Probably not. But part of the mission of Lutheran Social Services is refugee resettlement -- a mission for which they get paid on contract. There are also quite a few Vietnamese, Karin (Christian refugees from Burma), and some others. I'm not complaining, but there are ways and means for these people being here instead of Rome or Rotterdam. Migration, legal or not, is a fifth cause, driven by poverty or by horrible governments.

My guess is that there are no social engineers pulling levers behind the curtain (cue the Wizard of Oz) reshuffling population.

There have been many population shifts in the US. Between 1914 and 1950 many blacks fled the south for (hoped for) better lives in northern cities. Waves of European migrants rolled west across the continent. Imagine how the Aboriginal populations felt about "forcing societies together".

I grew up in the rural midwest, where population is still more thinly spread than New England, S. California, Florida or much of Europe. I have lived in much denser cities with more diverse people than Minneapolis. Density and diversity make for livelier social scenes. But I like the social distancing of frosty upper midwesterners. I feel your discomfort with too many people. It will get worse, inevitably.

They were there, now they are here. Get used to it.

Arguing against trans-ism today is like arguing against gay rights in the 1970s or against BLM last summer. Trans proponents grant across-the-board consistency and validity to those who claim they can transition from one sex to another sex, man to woman, woman to man. Trans-dissenters are automatically classed as bigots, transphobic, stupid, etc.

I too have known a few transsexuals, going back to the 1970s--maybe... a dozen altogether. They were extremely varied, ranging from a secular Jewish woman who wanted to be an orthodox man to an alcoholic vet who decided in middle age to become a woman. They were all rational people, no more deluded in their thinking than the average successful citizens--meaning, there was room for at least substantial delusion.

Note to @Benkei regarding "delusion": The majority of American workers believe that with hard work and a bright idea they will become rich. They are deluded in this belief. Donald Trump, and 40,000,000 American conservatives think that the 2020 election was "stolen". This is a delusion.

Americans believe--and say quite often to children--that "you can be anything you want to be. You could be president of the United States." The odds are absurdly small of any child becoming president; the odds are against people trying to be whatever they want to be--ESPECIALLY if they are starting out with no money, a mediocre education, no models, no connections, no nothing. They are deluded.

So it is that parents bring forward 3 and 4 year olds who have decided they want to be girls instating of the boys they are, or visa versa, and demanding treatment. Delusion.

There is room in mass society for people to dress, act, work, and live as if they were the opposite of their biological sex. It seems to make this very small minority of people happier once they figure out how to pull off this act (it doesn't come naturally -- one has to learn it). I do not object to these people finding happiness by changing their costumes.

What I do object to is argument that persons can change their sex. They cannot. No matter how any hormones and surgical procedures are employed, one remains XX or XY -- like it or not.

I'm homosexual. I knew I was different, that I found boys much more interesting than girls from an early age on, though I did not have the vocabulary to say so. Of course, I had no idea in the late 1940s or early 1950s what was involved in having a homosexual life style, or that other people like myself even existed. I would guess that many transsexuals experience something similar at an early age.

Had my parents identified me as homosexual and then facilitated my development as a homosexual from kindergarten onwards, I think I'd have thought myself pretty poorly raised. As poorly raised if they had dragged me to a child psychiatrist to cure me of homosexuality before first grade. Young children have too much plasticity for parents to become too involved in their sexual identity, A mother encouraging her very young son in wearing girls clothes to school is behaving in ways that borders on indecency. Young children need to work through these issues over time, slowly, on their own.

First off – the term “ad hominem” refers to an argument. An insult is an insult, not an ad hominem attack. This is the most common misuse of the concept. “@Bitter Crank, you’re a midwestern hayseed,” is an insult, no matter how true it may be. It is not an ad hominem argument. That doesn’t mean that insults are appropriate in a philosophical discussion. I guess if I were to say “Bitter Crank, your argument is bullshit because you’re a midwestern hayseed who doesn’t understand anything,” that would be an ad hominem argument — T Clark

But Clark, all those statements are true! I WANT to be a smart East Coast urban sophisticate, but what with oat chaff in my hair, and bullshit between my ears, it's too difficult to pull it off. I've never been accused of being suave. I've never started a trend. Nothing I said went viral. I'm a non-influencer incarnate and incognito.

St. Thomas Aquinas was celebrating mass on the feast of St. Nicholas in 1273 and had a revelation. He said, " All that I have written appears to be as so much straw after the things that have been revealed to me". He stopped writing, leaving the Summa Theoogicae unfinished.

I have it much easier than St. Thomas. I didn't have to write the Summa Theoogicae, only to discover that I had been turning out theological pulp fiction. I've been consistently turning out silage ever since I learned how to write. There will be no inconvenient revelations.

Santa and Pegasus do not have a material existence but they do exist as symbols [characters in popular culture for Santa, a character in classical culture for Pegasus]. Othello in a play and an opera; Mimi in an opera; Al Parker in gay porn films [a role played by a man not named Al Parker]; Bartleby the scrivener in a story by Herman Melville who generally preferred not to do whatever was asked of him--all these characters have an existence in our culture and in our minds. That is why we can talk about them.

Not having a material existence is no bar to existence for immaterial beings. The Holy Spirit does not have a material existence. Dead authors whose books we read do not now have a material existence. People have no problem speaking to the Holy Spirit and referencing what Karl Marx or Hammurabi said. The latter, Hammurabi, wrote a code of laws which he claimed to have received from Shamash, the Babylonian god of justice. Shamash doesn't have much of an existence these days, because the culture in which he once existed is long, long gone. He probably hasn't had a message in his inbox for 3,000 years. But we can still name him, and I suppose under an odd set of circumstances, he could become a hot cultural item again.

If language is use, then we give life to immaterial things (like the Holy Spirit or the milk of human kindness, and a zillion other things), so that "they exist".

Most of the time we do not have any difficulty maintaining the line (in our heads) between material beings (like your cleaning lady), perpetually immaterial beings like Santa Claus, and immaterial beings who were once actual warm bodies -- like Henry VIII or Cleopatra. Sometimes we trip over the categories.

The nick though explains it. I still think binge eating cheese is a good way to get out of depression. — Shawn

Does it make a difference what kind of cheese? Roquefort or Velveeta, une telle merde, sacre bleu!

Many people who report depression also report low self-esteem. Perfection, in whatever effort they make, is not achieved, further driving perfectionist drives and further lowering one's sense of effective executive agency. It's a vicious cycle. I'm not sure whether depression is the cause of this cycle or the result, but they seem to go together for many people.

Depression might have genetic causes, but maybe not. It might have environmental causes (i.e., other people) but maybe not. Not only do we not know precisely what causes depression, we also may not know whether it is, or is not actual depression.

There things make us feel bad: loneliness; prolonged anger (expressed or not); fear; hunger and fatigue; serious debt; too many frustrations and interferences; too much alcohol and recreational drugs (sometimes prescribed drugs can cause depression); physical pain; chronic illness; lack of sleep; a failure to fulfill perfection. (Perfectionism is the opposite side of low self-esteem.)

What some "depressed people" need is a reorganized life, not an antidepressant. Their problems are overwhelming.

I don't think 'individualism' per se is related to depression, but certainly an insistence on solving all of one's problems alone is a guarantee of more problems.

All that said, there are other people who experience depression without any sort of obvious cause.

she just kept writing repetitive posts, and not taking on board anyone else's point of view at all — Jack Cummins

Why, that NEVER happens here! I'm shocked--shocked!--to hear such a thing.

Corporations will tear into genetic experiments they think will produce profitable profits. They will probably be as concerned about adverse consequences as the petroleum and coal industries were/are about global warming.

Ban in Boston, condemn in Cleveland, and banish from Baltimore as you will, but I thought his discussions with me were OK.

Advertisement is not a force, though. It cannot push people to this or that outcome, whether good or bad. It cannot create anything, let alone demand or waste or an impact someone’s health. — NOS4A2

True enough, but only in the short run; It's not an irresistible force. In the long run, advertising can shape what people desire, what they think they need, what they like. Steady pressure applied over time.

There are differences between commodity production and consumer production. If your company makes electric switches, a catalog of products is all you need. If other manufacturers find your switches to be cost effective and reliable, nothing more needs to be done. Advertising is part of the overhead of consumer production. It is quite counter-productive to make a new consumer product without planning for its promotion.

To a large extent, advertising is the program. The drama you like to watch, the magazine or newspaper you like to read, the social media you check every 30 seconds, the porn--all that is the bait.

Newspapers were sustained by advertising. It was advertisers' shift to the internet that killed off many newspapers. Content costs money, whether it is news, high quality science and dramatic material, or soap operas. Where is the cost of production going to come from? It's either advertising or frequent pledge drives and government grants. Take your pick.

There is, apparently, a debate among economists about whether or not advertising is worth its costs to sellers. When you confront a laundry detergent display, which product do you buy? Do you go on price alone, the packaging, the brand, or your last experience with the product? If you just want a cheap, reasonably effective soap, advertising won't sway you much. Most people, though, are influenced by product packaging and advertising. Brands and reputation matter.

Maybe laundry soap isn't your thing. What about shoes, clothing, and electronic items? Autos? Bikes? Music? How are people's strong preferences formed? Most people are looking for more than mere functionality.

Advertising a holiday sale is one thing; building up a taste for a certain kind of product (Nike instead of an off-brand; Toyota vs. Ford; Apple vs. Acer...)

Can a male be turned into a female? How? — Andrew4Handel

IMHO, a male cannot be turned into a female (likewise, a female cannot be changed into a male). What can be done is a change of clothing, hair style, makeup, gait, and so on. Prescribed hormones can do what hormone disorders can do -- give men breasts and women mustaches. A surgeon can slice away unwanted giblets or can fashion wanted ones.

The upshot? The man is still a man. The woman is still a woman. Can they pass? They can, if they are good at it, Going back centuries, some men have passed as women and some women have passed as men. Were the fakes to be examined with a little care, their real sex would be discovered.

The Soviet Union, Italian Fascism, and German/Japanese ethnic-based fascism are all kind of totalizing ideas of history that was a culmination of the 19th century ideas in political-social theory. — schopenhauer1

I agree that the Three Fascisms were totalizing systems as was the USSR. Stalin was bad news all round--ruthless, dictatorial, paranoid, etc. but that doesn't make the USSR fascist. Fascism is not the clearest ideology. There are differences among the three. A brutal state doesn't have to be fascist, but fascist states tend to brutal. Do you count Francisco Franco as a fascist?

No, I don't think we can lay the blame for Fascism, whether in Germany, Italy, Spain, Japan, or anywhere else on the Enlightenment's doorstep. Marxism is a different matter. It seems to me that fascism is a rejection of enlightenment values. What does "authoritarian and racialized ultranationalism, characterized by dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition, and strong regimentation of society and of the economy" have to do with the enlightenment?

I think it'd be a mistake to ignore the extend to which Hitler's ideology motivated the course of the war. Resources were but one part of the equation. — Echarmion

Yes, Nazi ideology, built on top of resentments over WWI, the Versailles treaty, and a decade of weak government and economic problems during the Weimar Republic drove German policy from the early 1930s.

Germany had a number of critical resources (land, coal, iron ore, industrial know-how) but 20th century technology required a lot of materiél that it didn't have--various metals, rubber, petroleum, and so on. If it was going to feed itself and a large military, it needed more food production. (A good share of German agriculture was not very efficient or was conducted on heavy wet soils.). If it were to be independent of imported food, it would need more agricultural land.

It is open to question whether Germany ever had the resources to win the war it attempted. Take population: in 1939, there were 12,000,000 German men between the ages of 15 and 34. A large portion of these were already in the military. Granted, some soldiers would come from acquired lands, but the pool had definite limits. By the end of the war, children were being pressed into service.

Suppose the USSR had collapsed, or at least retreated east of the Ural Mts; world peace a la Deutschland uber alles would not have been the instant result. Generals in both Japan and Germany warned their leaders about the untapped military power of the United States. The USSR had resources east of the Ural range, and (presumably) an intact and effective government. .

Still, had the USSR collapsed or retreated, it would have been exceedingly bad news for the rest of the world.

A day-by-day account doesn't appeal to me, but if you like it, great. Will it cover both the war in Asia as well as the war in Europe? The World War -- Part I and Part II (1914 to 1945) was a huge watershed; nothing was left untouched.

American men when they turn 55 turn into either a World War II nut or a Civil War nut — Maw

I didn't become interested in WWII until I was about 70. For the last decade or so I've been reading to fill in the large holes which high school and college left. There are many good books, television, film--even radio programs which cover the war.

The Thames Television program The World at War, must have been made in either the late '60s or 1970s; it was a many-episode history of documentary film and narration. I say it in 1980, about. Very good program.

Because world war is a watershed with endless political, financial, military, social, technical... consequences, there is no end to the topics and angles that can be pursued. It's a really rich area for study, which the war in the Crimea or the Franco-German war isn't, by comparison.

Next, anyone with half a brain would also know in advance that nothing in the real world would be accomplished by such a thread, given that world leaders probably aren't reading this forum in search of our advice. — Foghorn

Sir: (I'm presuming) You do not understand the function of threads such as the "Israel killing Civilians in Gaza and the West Bank". "Philosophical discussion is the nominal function; the real function is quite different. The Philosophy Forum, and especially its non-participant readers, is composed of many thousands of testosterone-fueled right wing / left wing cisgendered males who, for lack of this noble outlet, would pour into the streets. Arson, rape, and bloody murder would ensue. There are also low-T old gay codgers like me who no longer riot, rape, and pillage but are perfectly capable of mixing a decent molotov cocktail (vodka or gin, as preferred) for the front line men. This is not to mention all of the politically correct, gender-fluid, non-binary thems, thoses, and its who are perpetually pissed off with nature who will throw their delicate carcasses against the hard bronzed statues of the patriarchy.

Without The Philosophy Forum, and publications like the NYT, NPR, PBS, et al to contain this bubbling cauldron of controversy, bloodbaths would be a daily event. That might be a good thing were there adequate ideological oversight and guidance by the Central Committee, but alas there is not.

NPR does do that a lot. So does the New York Times and some other publications. Too often the background reporting consists of interviews with advocacy groups--people with a major stake in depicting this, that, or another problem as a terrible tragedy. I understand how that works. Unfortunately, the advocate's views may be heavily slanted without being factually wrong. So, there is a large crowd of people who want to come into the US camped on our border. That is true enough. Cue the crying child, the distressed mother. I'm sure they are not happy. The NPR or NYT news stories do not mention that we are not obligated to let all (or any) of them into the country, and we didn't ask them to make a long trip north through Mexico for nothing,

Yes, it's sad that people drown in the Mediterranean trying to get to Europe. Yes, it is sad that they paid to get smuggled into southern Italy in a leaky boat. Yes, it is sad that they traveled a long way to get to Europe only to end up getting fished out of the sea and taken back to Libya--if they were lucky. But fleeing every bad place for the promised land won't be the solution. Can't be the solution.

But all one gets in these stories is the same weepy narrative.

global warming, nuclear war, drug resistant super infections, ecological collapse, overpopulation, solar flares, asteroid impacts, AI overlords... — Benj96

All that and more!

There are solutions to our problems at hand, but we ourselves--our inability to plan and act together for the long-run (a century ahead, at least)--doesn't have a solution.

Take drug-resistant infections--a topic that hasn't received as much doom-scrolling attention as it deserves. When penicillin and the other new antibiotics entered productions, alert researchers were aware of the problem of resistance. Billions of us used antibiotics like aspirin, taking them for sore throats for which they were not needed, or for viral infections for which they were generally irrelevant.

In 2021 doctors in the US still receive demands from patients for antibiotics that aren't going to help their ailments. In less regulated markets antibiotics are over-the-counter. Even where care was taken, in the treatment of gonorrhea for example, penicillin gradually lost its effectiveness. Other antibiotics were substituted. There are now multi-drug resistant strains of Neisseria gonorrhoeae, a tough well-traveled hard-working organism. On the other hand, Treponema pallidum, which causes syphilis (a more dangerous infection than gonorrhea, is still very susceptible to ordinary penicillin after 75 years of use.

Drug companies do not find antibiotics as profitable area for research as drugs for chronic diseases. Get an infection, take a pill for 2 weeks, and that sale is over. Get depressed and then hooked on antidepressants and you have a customer for decades. Or high blood pressure, high cholesterol, over-eating, arthritis, and so forth. Very real problems that deserve good treatment and will result in sales for years on end.

As a consequence of decisions at Bayer, Pfizer, Johnson and Johnson, GSK, et al, there are no new antibiotics in the research and production pipeline. That's entirely owing to short-sightedness. If the drug companies don't want to do it, then the government must.

Unfortunately, there is no drug for short-sightedness.

Your existence on TPF is probably doomed.

Good luck with that, BC. That will be hard even here. — ssu

Yes, indeed. @Hanover's definition applies to governmental behavior. I'd add application to employer behavior. The balance between the prerogatives of government and employers vs. personal freedom is a point on the scales that will be hard to agree upon, even among people who are philosophically similar. I want more personal freedom, of course, but I desire more limitation of the predations of private agents than @NOS4A2 would accept. Limiting the power of employers requires cooperation from government. Workers can form powerful labor unions, but labor unions can be frustrated by law--as they have been by both federal and state law. So... whose fleece is going to get shaved?

"Favoring or enforcing strict obedience to authority, especially that of the government, at the expense of personal freedom." — Hanover

Governments are often enough the purveyors of authoritarian enforcement, but I would include employers as a category. The workplace is where most people have to negotiate authority and the power to compel compliance. Employers can't jail employees but they have the very great leverage of wage withdrawal--firing. Depending on one's circumstance, the rate of unemployment, the condition of the economy, and so on losing a job can range from inconvenient to catastrophic.



I am arguing to include employers as agents who can and do enforce strict obedience to their authority. In a different thread I'd argue that workers need more power to resist employers.

I voted yes, but the entire government apparatus, corporate establishment, and social patterns is by no means uniformly authoritarian. Further, it is not a straight-forward authoritarianism of the sort that Franco or Pinochet, Hitler, Tojo, Stalin, Mussolini, et al exhibited. The people who attempted to disrupt Congress and state legislatures strike me as authoritarians, even if their affect was more anarchistic. Police are generally authoritarian in the US, more so in some states than others; more so in some cities than others. Business management is often authoritarian. Twisted social service agencies can be authoritarian too.

Example: I once attended a training on a therapeutic technique that was to be used in the agency. We were told at the beginning that we were expected to accept the technique as presented without question or doubt. I became persona non gratis by announcing that I was not inclined to believe things just because somebody told me to. Oops. Bad move. Nearly got fired for saying that. It wasn't the technique per se that I refused to swallow--it was the requirement to "accept it or else".

Authoritarianism has more than one definition. Like fascism or anarchism, socialism or democracy, there needs to be an agreed definition. For me, authoritarianism is characterized by punitive responses to resistance or disagreement; willingness to employ violence (under some circumstances); rigidity; non-negotiable policies; unwillingness to be questioned publicly; indifference to harm caused by authoritarian actions.

And yet those systems created something that would have been labeled very intelligent if we had created it. — Foghorn

That's the miracle in it! Following the Big Bang, the particles formed into atoms and molecules, made stars that later on exploded, creating still more and heavier elements in a cloud of dust that congealed into this celestial ball, billions of years after which we came along. I don't know why or how the universe pulled off the trick of turning mud into vigorous single-celled life, or single celled life into primates with a penchant for proclaiming their preeminence, but it did.

We are not under-rating the universe if we say it isn't intelligent. The universe is sublime [inspiring awe because of beauty, grandeur, and transcendent immensity]. The universe encompasses everything, from the farthest flung galaxy right down to our posts on The Philosophy Forum.

It doesn't require our assistance.

wouldn't we have to presume that we who judge levels of intelligence are more intelligent than the reality which created "our" intelligence? — Foghorn

The natural systems that brought about our reality were not, in my opinion, intelligent. Inordinately complex, absolutely. We rate our intelligence as great--which it is in our system of rating intelligence. We don't have any third-party observers to offer comparative ratings, so we may be quite mistaken.

The evolutionary proof of fitness is long term survival and as exemplars of intelligence, we do not have a long record. We have made advances but these were separated by long plateaus. The Stone Age lasted a long time. So did our life as hunter-gatherers--200,000 years, to pick a round number. Settled urban life is very recent (10-12,000 years ago) and the harvest of technology is still coming in.

There are serious flaws in our intelligence. For one big thing, We are not at all skilled at long-term thinking, planning, and management. By "long-term" I mean 100 years out. We are having great difficulty planning for carbon reduction (and a worse climate crisis) at midcentury, only 29 years away. Planning, and managing practice, for 69 years out (2100) is pretty feeble. Thinking, planning, and managing for the 22nd century is hard to even imagine.

In a worst case scenario, the climate crisis of our own making may be the end of our intelligence. I hope not, but success can not be a foregone conclusion.

In reality there is much less intelligence than one would hope for.

Which way is better? — Wheatley

We have to learn it ourselves -- whether somebody teaches us or whether we use trial and error. The thing is, whatever we learn, we have to fold it into our repertoire by processing the information. It can't just be "poured in". If it could, then languages, math, or milking a cow could be known by anyone with no effort.

A teacher presents information; maybe makes it interesting; maybe threatens a pop quiz on the next chapter tomorrow. But you have to read it and incorporate it into your structure of knowledge. Trial and error works too, at least for many procedures (if we survive our errors). The results of our T & E efforts also have to be integrated into what we already know how to do.

suppose you’re right. In many ways I think this is why the escapism of media and literature plays such a large part in our lives. Distraction from the disenfranchising aspects of every day social life and lack of true freedom. If anything the human mind and imagination is the most free thing we’ve got - there is little restriction in the non physical/ hypothetical. — Benj96

Your are right on target. There is this very extensive discourse aimed at convincing us that we are free. We are free, for example, to buy whatever we like and can pay for: See Amazon.con . We can freely move--pull up stakes in Maine and try Arizona. There are all sorts of things we can do without much restriction which creates the impression of great freedom, while at the same time foreclosing options that might yield greater long-run freedom.

While we are pretty much free to quit any job we dislike, we are definitely not free to organize our fellow workers for better working terms and a greater share of the profits they produce. The law is stacked against workers organizing, as is the combined weight of Capital. At various times, political deviance has been severely repressed. Even the expression of political deviance had been sanctioned at times. Deviant sexual behavior is much less policed now, but that is a recent development. Well, one can multiply the many examples of ways in which we are explicitly or implicitly not free.

Helping the implicit and explicit restrictions on freedom, there is the escapist literature you named, everything from Downton Abbey to The Simpsons--two of my favorites. One thinks of the Superman comics of one's youth -- a powerful person capable of slicing through all limitations. Some prefer Jane Austin; others prefer hard core porn, but we all want to escape.

It's a conundrum: being sort of free and sort of enslaved at the same time. I'm on the side of those who want to cut through the confusion to reveal what is arbitrary restriction of freedom (repression of workers' organizing, workers' exploitation) and what is natural restriction (individual limitations, social necessities like working to produce food, clothing, shelter, and escapist literature). I'm on the side of those who want to reduce arbitrary restrictions on freedom for workers who are 95%+ of the world's population.

I think of ethics as more secular and morals more religious. I can ethically have consensual sex with another man where I may not be able to do so morally (it's a sin). Times change: A good many sexual morals have been adapted to secular practice and ethics in the last century.

Society in many ways is not the fosterer of individual freedom but rather convention (agreement), law, order, policy and regulation and ultimately control of a population.
Many of these things are of course beneficial to the vast majority - such as law and order and the general peace and security that comes with that. — Benj96

Has the individual ever been free? We've been living in ever-growing communities for the last 12,000 years, but even as hunter-gatherers individuals were not "free". Social animals like us can't be entirely free and independent agents. We are obligated by our various needs to maintain tight social relationships.

Obligated social beings as we are, we still have drives which conflicts with society. We have all sorts of needs and (especially) desires which may not be satisfied, sufficiently or at all. That is the bind we are all in, and always have been in.

There are various ways one can find relief. One can rise in society and gain more executive agency. People with more power and money have more options. One can also find social roles which involve less conventional social engagement. Loners, mavericks, and rebels specialize in social opposition. This route involves significant material sacrifices, usually, but can bring the reward of individual executive agency and interesting options,

One can also adapt to society, which is what most people do. Well-adjusted people fit society and society fits them. They may be better or worse off than others, but they are reasonably content, reasonably successful, reasonably happy. This is the lot of most people in the world.

The defining characteristic of capitalism is the contract made between a private citizen who owns a place of production with another private citizen to exchange labour for a wage. — Judaka

Less than a contractual relationship [and many workers do not have 'contracts' per se] the defining characteristic of capitalism is the accumulation of profit at the expense of the workers who produce all wealth in the first place.

Capitalist ethics? Bah! Humbug!

That interpersonal relationships within capitalist workplaces can be pleasant doesn't change the nature of exploitation of the workers by the company owners. Many capitalists are also "honest" people who behave "ethically" all the while exploiting for the purpose of getting richer.

That was a very nice sentence to read.

the theory rests on the observation that from the torrent of information processed by the brain, only a meagre trickle makes it through to consciousness; and crucially that includes information about the processing itself.

For which we can be exceedingly grateful. Imagine being aware of everything the CNS was doing. You'd have no time to look at porn! Or consider the 'enteric nervous system' the CNS sub-system that runs the digestive tract. Would you really want to be cognizant of the flow of data from your bowels? Mercifully, the enteric nervous system operates without regularly updating the conscious , or even the unconscious mind, of what it is doing down there. When it does send a news flash to the conscious brain, it's almost always bad news, like your bowels are about to explode; get ready.

I don't get this impression we have of lizard brains being primitive. We are the lizards that survived the extinction level event 65 million years ago. — TheMadFool

The survivors of the Yucatan Impact are birds, not humans, We descend from mammals that lived at the same time as the dinosaurs and survived the catastrophe.

We do have a "reptile brain", so called because it is similar to the brain of reptiles. It's the cerebellum and brain stem. It's a vital control center of physical functions like breathing. It is in control of our innate and automatic self-preserving behavior patterns, which ensure our survival and that of our species.

You might like to know that your inner ear structures are an adaptation of the back part of the fish jaw that shrank in size and somehow (don't ask me) was used to fashion your inner ear as we developed into a different group within the larger phylum of vertebrates--chordata (animals with backbones). Chordata is divided into five common classes: fish, amphibians, reptiles, mammals and birds. To read more about this (and related matters) see YOUR INNER FISH by Neil Shubin. Fun read, I thought.

"Wisdom" and "wise" may be the sort of word that seems to be meaningful but is very difficult to qualify or quantify, and is, in general, non-inferential. Expertise, knowledge, and experience are much more measurable. Wisdom not so much.

Learning from one's mistakes, knowing one's limitations, understanding motivation, knowing what one doesn't know (and having an inkling as to what one won't know in the future), wide-ranging "common sense" all takes time to accumulate, and some people accumulate it a lot faster than others. As a consequence, there are "wise" 35 year olds and 70 year old idiots.

Wisdom is a word I almost never use. It's just too vague, subjective.

Hmmm, haven't looked at a National Geographic in decades. No. The idea that poor people can be happy comes from experience -- my own experience and observation, and others' observations. I am distinguishing "poor" from "immiserate"--lacking food, shelter, water, etc. The immiserate are not happy.

I personally do not know anyone who believes that. Everyone I know is either rich, striving to get rich, or bemoaning not being rich. — baker

You need to get a new circle of friends, associates, acquaintances--maybe new relatives.

"Rich" and "poor" are relative terms, of course, but I understand what you mean by "rich". I don't think it is an exclusively American phenomena, but Americans may be more deluded than some others that they CAN get rich by hard work. 'They' are not grouped together in the '1%' for nothing. The decidedly rich are a very small group--less than 1% of the population.

Ross Perot would call it a giant sucking sound... — James Riley

Goodness gracious! Almost 30 years since Ross got his charts out and cited that 'giant sucking sound' from 'South of the Border, Down Mexico Way'. About which he was at least partly correct: There are so many giant sucking sounds, one can be forgiven for not naming all of them.

There are substantial overhead costs to delivering welfare benefits, just as there are substantial overhead costs in delivering health care, paid for by private insurers. How much is spent to relieve poverty per se is a bit difficult to prize out of budgets. Should the cost of Medicaid be folded into the cost of single payer health care or the cost of UBI?

In 2010 Minnesota spent $20,000 per person in poverty. Nationally, however, the amount spent was just $11,000. Similarly in 2018, Minnesota spent $30,000 per person in poverty. Nationally, the average was just $17,000. — American Experiment

Minnesota is between Massachusetts and Rhode Island in spending--we are #5. Fine by me; my source for these statistics (American Experiment) lamented that so much was being spent [WASTED!]. Then there is the issue of state funds, federal funds, and NGO programs. Determining amounts spent for what becomes complicated quickly.