Ha, love it. Well the idea of the gonzo approach anyway (that experience sounds brutal, man) — csalisbury

If you liked my brief episode, you will absolutely adore Tearoom Trade by Laud Humphreys. Humprheys was a PhD candidate at a university in St. Louis and wanted to investigate the demographics and roles involved in the gay sex taking place in park-restrooms in the St Louis area--the "tearoom trade". Humphreys didn't engage in sex; he served as "the lookout queen" -- the guy who stood by the door to keep a lookout for park police, and warn the guys who were having sex. He observed sex taking place for quite a few weeks; he also kept track of who drove which cars, and who did what kind of sex. As part of his regular job, he looked up car licenses, obtained identities of the drivers (and tearoom participants). Later in the study, he went to the homes of the identified men and did a market survey of some sort to obtain the demographics he needed.

He put all this together into a great piece of research writing (it's really interesting to read) AND he destroyed all o the raw-identifying data, so at no point could the police or university track down participants.

Tearoom Trade -- 1970 -- (the popular title of his PhD dissertation) is the way sex research of this sort should be done (IMHO). Humphreys was, at the time, a priest (Episcopal) and continued working in the area of sexuality research and counseling. He died in 1988.

I thought it was a great piece of work -- the academic social scientists exploded in outrage. They probably objected to his raising the standards of research above the level most of them cared to achieve.

I agree - having a small group of monetarily motivated survey takers dominating the results is undesirable in terms of obtaining "reliable" and "valid" results. I think there are ways of avoiding the problem. First of all, lots of people will take surveys for free. (I have nothing against you paying the rent by survey servitude.) I do surveys once in a while; they are too boring to do very often.

The problem of unreproducible results occurs in structured situations, too, I gather. Subjects come into a lab; they are identified; they complete some sort of experimental task, and leave. Maybe they return for several sessions. The conditions are controlled. The experiment is approved by institutional review boards and faculty advisors. It's all on the up and up--and the results still unreproducible,

Some kinds of labs do produce good results: tests of color perception, hearing, visual processing, response time, taste and olfactory sensitivity, skin-response, learning, memory, and so forth. Those sorts of experiments should produce reliable, valid, and reproducible results. It's basically bio-measurement.

It's much dicier when researchers are out to find the motivational factors in product purchases, for instance. Maybe an fMRI would be a better research method than surveying 1000 car owners as to why they bought a Ford instead of a Toyota, or pink-23 instead of red-45 lipstick.

Take a look at the art market if you think the social sciences are something of a racket. Art has aspects of major league racketeering about it. I'm not talking about the Louvre, or the Guggenheim. It's the up-and-coming go-getters in the art-biz who are the racketeers.

I've been on both sides--taker of surveys and producer of surveys; people are inherently untrustworthy and unreliable when it comes to taking surveys. Our responses are inflected by the mood of the moment; we want our responses to reflect well on us; we want to be "good survey takers" the same way we want to be "good drivers", "good employees", or "good mates"; wording of a question can throw our responses off. All of this is known by survey producers and administrators.

Our health education group used to administer a survey on gay male sex behavior and condom use at the annual gay pride festival (back in the late 1980s). Our cohort of survey takers was dominated by men who were eager to report their sexual behaviors and who, apparently, like taking surveys alfresco. As a result, our surveys (which were quite long and detailed) showed that the guys were performing all of the expected behaviors and that too many of them reported using condoms consistently. IF all the men taking the survey were both honest and representative of the much larger gay population, then why did we have so many new cases of AIDS in our community?

So, the results were probably not valid or reliable. It was a useful exercise because we got "data" we could use in reports. It reflected well on us, but we fully understood that it was a bit of a self-selecting farce. Still, we wanted to know what exactly gay men were doing in real-life sexual situations.

What was our alternative? Focus groups? 1 on 1 interviews? Hidden cameras and microphones? Participant observation? I was willing to use hidden cameras and mics, but my employer was decidedly not willing (cue the dithering over privacy rights, etc).

My bailiwick was outreach in high risk settings. I decided I would try a behavioral test in a high risk setting (an adult book store's basement cruising and video area). The idea was that I would propose oral sex first, and then see if they were willing to use a condom. Whether they were or not willing, was beside the point, because I didn't plan on giving a blow job in either case. As it happened, the first guy I tried this out on didn't appreciate the bait and switch, and forced me to carry through. He was bigger than me, so... In other settings--like the gay bathhouse--the participant observer approached worked better. The upshot was pretty much what we expected. A significant number of men were not willing to use condoms consistently.

OK, let's go back to invalid surveys.

If a survey for pay was actually studying something other than the stated topic under the guise of asking questions about canned food preferences, like how do people respond to certain words in the various questions, or what word order leads to more or less inconsistencies in responses, the survey could theoretically produce useful information. Usually surveyors want subjects to move right along, and not second guess their answers. So your speedy approach was probably not a problem.

The replication problem falls as much on the nature of the subjects as it does on the experimenters or surveyors. We are a shifty lot.

Just make some dramatic landscaping and transport everything on the Temple Mount and the hill itself to the bottom of the Marianas Trench. — ssu

Your plan involves a lot of loading, unloading, shipping, and dumping debris into the Marianas Trench. Too much trouble. It would be easier to just nuke the Temple Mount, then everyone everywhere could share its alleged holiness. And while we're at it, might as well get rid of several other centers of superstition and nonsense. Everyone can make up their own lists--but let's keep to under 10 nukes in all.

I knew you were a fucking moron but I didn't think you'd be quite so ready to hang your ignorance out for display like a fucking show car. — StreetlightX

Not the quality post one would expect from a moderator.

Do you think Streetlight is a happy person? — Joshs

No.

This person is both genuine and sincere and was referring to the social ecology of the Irsraeli populace. He had thought that going to Jerusalem would be kind of a revelatory pilgrimage, but was disheartened by that the Israelis seemed to be subject to a kind of collective malaise. That's what I assume, anyways. — thewonder

I'm going to go with his probably accurate impression of collective malaise.

There are billions of citizens in various countries subject to a collective malaise. I should add all sorts of qualifications to such a blanket statement, but that would become too convoluted.

I see plenty of examples of some sort of malaise, unrest, dissatisfaction, anxiety, anger, and so on fairly often in the US. My guess is that the largest causes of this malaise are the still-uncertain (but pending none the less) outcomes of pandemics, global warming, destabllizing political behavior, uncertain economic futures, challenges to traditional roles, and so on. These (and more) factors affect both affluent and poor populations, just with different details.

Collective malaise makes sense under the circumstances. The world has been in dire straits before, and I would guess collective malaise was much more common at those times (pandemics, world wars, economic depressions, revolutions, civil wars, etc.)--especially in the absence of outstanding good news. World war was disturbing, but less so for population which were on the side that was winning. A robust economy and the war's end probably helped people deal with the 1918 influenza epidemic.

Does this theory make sense to you from your POV?

very sad — thewonder

It could be the "very sad" comment was directed at the penny-ante squabbling among the Christians over this or that holy sight. Or maybe it was the situation of the Palestinians.

The Kurds are another group that can't seem to get a fair deal from anybody, They, among others.

I'm sure the CIA uses Mossad, just like they use ANY source of information they can get their hands on. Normal behavior for an intelligence agency, I should think.

The US may be Israel's protector, but Israel is also our agent. Having agents in far away places, especially ones that are not only willing, but are successful in putting up with the 'bad neighborhood'. On balance, Israel is certainly not worse, and is probably better than the other people occupying the neighborhood.

Among the neighbors of Israel, which one would you prefer to live in, if Israel wouldn't have you?

You are probably well aware that determining blame, responsibility, guilt, causation, and so on is not always straight-forward. It can be a very complex problem.

Was Donald Trump "guilty", "blame-worthy", or "responsible" for the capitol riot? His role was clearly provocative, without being literally responsible--the way a general may be responsible for a failed defense. Provocation, though, establishes a connection between the provocateur and the agents. While DT didn't lead the charge into the capitol building, he also did nothing (at the critical time) to prevent continued rioting. So yes, he is blame worthy.

The individuals who rioted in the capitol building are likely to be found guilty of illegal acts for which each of them is responsible.

We are both self-responsible agents and can often be swayed to act against our better judgment. There is, after all, a large industry (marketing) bent on swaying our behavior toward buying stuff we do not need or even want. Some people tend to be highly influenced by other people. Others are not.

Israel is historically an occupying power. If you want to go back far enough, Joshua led Israel into the land of Canaan, the Promised Land, which had an incumbent population. A different incumbent population was there when the Zionist movement decided to re-establish Israel. Lots of different powers have occupied the small slice of land in dispute, really since at least 4,000 years ago.

From this POV, there is nothing novel about Israelis taking possession of a little more land. The area they wish to possess for the slightest enlargement of Israel is just not empty, free, and clear.

In the long run of history, one group of people obtaining more space almost always means some other group of people having less space. The Palestinians are, unhappily, on the "less space" side of the equation, and naturally they do not like it.

I suppose Zionists have a version of manifest destiny in mind, like 'everything on the west side of the Jordan River', at least. My guess is that they will eventually have it all, and will gain it by the use of force. Israel has never been hobbled by a "sickly unwillingness to use force". Unfortunately, other nations in the area have been as unhobbled as Israel; they use weren't quite as good at it,

Whether the various states in the region can tolerate Israel's expansion depends on the power of Israel. If Israel remains very powerful, the area's states will tolerate it, but with much resentment.

Brexit was the big mistake, IMHO. The EU isn't a perfect union, of course, but it seemed like the UK was much better off IN than OUT. I certainly can understand the ethnic pride the Scots have, be they Celts or Norse. But ethnic pride isn't enough to maintain their economy.

Their international exports (not counting trade within the UK):

How much North Sea oil can Scotland lay claim to? Aside from fish and fleece, what other products does Scotland produce? (I know jack shit about their economy.)

Maybe the United Kingdom should devolve altogether. Independent England, Wales, Northern Ireland, Scotland. Independent Yorkshire? Independent Cornwall? Or unite Ireland? Fat chance, probably.

Maybe the British Isles should be made a UN Protectorate. Once they ran an empire; now they don't seem to be able to run a fish and chips shop. Or maybe the French should take over again. It improved things quite a bit the last time.

We do have, and likely will have, national identities for quite some time. People are born into specific communities, specific small regions, specific larger areas, in nations. Language, religion, culture, food ways, politics, history, etc. all give us pieces of our identity.

The future of nationalism? Good question. Global warming is as likely to intensify national identity as weaken it. Nations that have sufficient water, food security, and stable populations will want to hold on to those goods for themselves. Nations that are located where the climate is becoming inhospitable, where the ocean is encroaching on the land, where food, water, and stability is lacking there is no advantage in national identity. The goal for people in these areas will be to get somewhere else, and as they make that attempt, their destinations are likely to recoil into national preservation. If the destination nations are swamped by climate refugees, who knows what will happen? Probably not an epidemic of human kindness.

Very interesting! I had not heard of (or had totally forgotten) the British historical link to the SLP - USA. Also hadn't heard about the Fabian - Labour Party link.

The SLP in the United States may have been an effective organization at one time, but it degenerated into bureaucratic in-fighting and ossification (so I have been told). "Effective organization" is a good thing if the cause is good. The New Union Party, the organization I was involved in, may or may not have been effective. At one time I thought it was, but now that just about everyone involved in the organization is dead or has drifted away, I think it was not. It was too staid with a rigid stale style that fell flat with the public.

The Fabians' infiltration and takeover of socialist groups from political parties to union organizations and other institutions and movements on both sides of the Atlantic has enabled corporate interests to maintain their control over economy, politics and other aspects of public life. — Apollodorus

I would need to study up on this before accepting the alleged "infiltration and takeover of socialist groups from political parties to union organizations and other institutions and movements". It doesn't seem like corporate interests have needed help to maintain their control over everything. As somebody said, "the labor movement didn't die of natural causes; it was murdered" -- the assassins being the corporations, congress, and state legislatures. The law in the US is heavily stacked against unions.

I'm pretty sure the BLM movement has been infiltrated by the government--just based on past Federal behavior.

Rugged Individualism is a ruling class friend. By all means! Encourage the masses to be individualists, rugged or not. Individuals should definitely pursue their unique set of interests. The ruling class, or the rich, have class consciousness. Let's not let the masses get infected by the kind of thinking that shows them that they are all in the same sinking boat!

Work? Strive? Persevere? We are all victims of a monstrous hoax!

A major part of keeping the ruling minority class in the position they are, is keeping the majority divided. — Xtrix

Divide and conquer is a piece of it, but probably a small one. The ruling class has other, very robust tools:

Misinformation; relative and absolute poverty; the law (which is more on the side of the rich than it is on the side of the poor); the police (and if need be, armed forced); the obedience training programs of secondary education; the mass media; and so on and so forth.

Divide and conquer would be more important if The People were united enough to pose a threat to the ruling class. I don't see much sign of revolutionary thinking taking over the masses, outside a small circle of friends.

I don't know much about BLM founders, actually. Or the organization itself, either. I could know more, but I haven't read too much about them.

If we go by what Cullors says, their ultimate goal is to replace white people with blacks, men with women and capitalism with communism. So, I think "opportunists" is the correct definition, but I'm less sure about "well-meaning". — Apollodorus

I was just being polite, giving them the benefit of the doubt about their well-meaningless. Their goals, as you state them, sound like some demented political cell. From what I have seen, their demonstrations amount to: A) a very narrow focus on police-on-black death B) a zillion signs and graffiti saying 'black lives matter' and C) marches where demonstrators yell over and over, "say his [her] name, George Floyd" repeat ad nauseam.

The single issue focus has had distorting effects on the discussion of violence and black deaths. Black on black shootings ought to be a far bigger issue within any justice group.

My own Marxist training was in a group branched off from the Socialist Labor Party, started by Daniel D. Leon in 1890 in the United States. SLP held that socialists in a country with democratic machinery (such as the US has) must use that machinery to strengthen unions, elect socialists to public office, educate the pubic, and eventually convert the economy from capitalist to socialist. Fat Chance!

Despite its failures (about as failed as every other socialist party) it was a group of decent people. We all worked quite hard for 20-odd years to educate the public about socialism (mostly here in Minneapolis and St Paul) without any lasting success.

People who want to replace whites with blacks or men with women aren't marxists to start with.

Give me the old-time religion of SNIC, NAACP, CORE, Martin Luther King et al. Of course, they like the socialist leaders of the past are mostly dead now, by one means or another. They were more specifically goal oriented. And maybe it was easier to be more goal oriented them with so many goals to accomplish.

I don't know what, exactly, BLM followers want--they and their various advocates, enthusiasts, marchers, and would-be beneficiaries.

so surely asking “why should I be moral” has its answer embedded in the question itself. — Georgios Bakalis

It does. Just rearrange the words a bit: "I should be moral." Maybe you will be, maybe you will not be, but surely you should be. Never mind "why". Just be as moral as you can manage.

Now all you have to figure out is what being moral means.

BLM leader Patrice Cullors has openly endorsed the policies of Socialist leaders like Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin and Mao Zedong and has described herself and other BLM organisers as “trained Marxists”. — Apollodorus

It is usually unwise to take people's claims at face value. Did you know that I am a "trained Marxist" as well? Sort of. $1 and my training certificate will not get me a cup of coffee from a vending machine. Cullors et al are probably well-meaning opportunists. BLM strikes me as a pretty ineffectual organization, as far as actually making changes.

Hey, you provided a link about ANTIFA accounts. I recently discovered the source of the word "antifa". A WWII German Soldier's recollection of his wartime experience included his capture by the Soviet Army. Soon after their capture, a team of "Antifa" Germans visited the POW camp to talk up communism. "Antifa" was active in Germany during the 1930s. The German soldier-author thought they were probably German soldiers who deserted for a slightly better deal with the Soviets. In the end, they apparently go no such better deal.

I had, up to 2 weeks ago, thought that "antifa" was some sort of 21st century coinage by the left. Nope.

CRT asserts that race-conscious policies need to be pursued to both combat white supremacy and to create more equality of opportunity. — ToothyMaw

There are numerous problems with CRT, and civil-rights advocacy and agitation too:

a) Race-consciousness is presumably at the core of the problem, so I do not see how increasing race consciousness would help.
b) Inequality and inequity is baked into the existing society, and the structure of the existing society will take several decades to change significantly. Adults who are economically and culturally disadvantaged, (and the older they are, the more this is true) are going to stay disadvantaged. They can not rewind their lives any more than anyone else can, to take advantage of circumstances which would have helped them 10, 20, 30, or 40 years ago.
c) Children who are reared in culturally disadvantaged environments are going to suffer from that disadvantage. By the time a new-born is 12, the changes of undoing a disadvantaged cultural background are small. For example, children who grow up in families where they learn a small fraction of the vocabulary that the majority of children learn, who hear a lot of 'command' and 'negative' expression do less well in school from the start, and by 6th grade, by which time learning to read has shifted to reading to learn, they are unable to perform well.

Obtaining "equality of opportunity" (whatever that means) is likely to take 1 or 2 generations, minimum.

One reads stats in publications that say things like "only 1 out of 30 nuclear physicists is African American". Unless there are a few hundred African American nuclear physicists just waiting for their first break, the percentage of AA nuclear physicists isn't going to change soon--no matter what. A post-doc in physics needs at least 30 years, birth to PhD+, with academic success all along the way. A lot of other top professions take similar periods of time. There certainly some AA undergraduates who could become post docs much sooner, but... not a lot.

African Americans (and other minorities) have far less housing and financial equity than middle class whites. Middle class whites have -- as a group -- been accumulating their advantage for around 85 years (since the mid-1930s). The educational attainment of middle-class whites has helped them accumulate even more equity. A relatively poor African American with white-middle-class economic aspirations has a very steep education / cash deficit to overcome.

What is true for poor culturally disadvantaged blacks is largely true for poor culturally disadvantaged whites, too. The white male 25 or 35 year old high school dropout has poor prospects, white or not. Ditto for a Latinx or Asians. Even at 25, it is probably too late (in practical terms) to change him into an upwardly mobile college-educated success story. So... poor whites and poor black are probably going to stay that way for quite some time--under the best of circumstances.

"Is Big Pharma Ethical in Effectively Controlling Medication Affordability by a Nation's Populace?"

Is the Pope a Buddhist?

On the one hand, pharmaceutical corporations have, over the years, developed a lot of drugs which are curative or palliative, and that is good. On the other hand, the small number of major drug producers, coupled with patent law and avid lobbying, enables Big Pharma to keep everyone suspended over a barrel, or maybe over a casket.

It's standard capitalist behavior: Maximize profitability.

The ethical angle casts very dark shade on the business. Companies put much more research effort into drugs for diseases which are controllable, but not curable: high blood pressure, arthritis, mental illness. They also focus on diseases which are more rapidly fatal -- heart disease and cancer in particular. Companies tend to spend little on effective preventative drugs or short-term curable diseases like infections. Why spend a lot on a new approach to an antibiotic which people will take for 2 or 3 weeks when you can make statins or bp meds which people will take for decades?

Cancer is a difficult class of diseases to cure, or even control sometimes. Drugs like monoclonal antibodies are complicated to make, may need to be administered in clinic, and so on. Yes, they are expensive. Some drugs for some diseases may cost around a $1,000,000 a year. Granted, a lot of research went into the new drug that may save patients otherwise without hope, but one suspects that the profit motive had a larger role than the milk of human kindness.

Some of the drugs for PReP--HIV prophylaxis--which make transmission of the virus extremely unlikely, even with discordant (positive and negative) couples, are charged as if the drugs were new. They are not -- they've been in use since the late 1990s. The application is new; the drug is not.

A utilitarian cost/benefit analysis would suggest that the most effort should go into drugs which will prevent the most disease first. Another approach is to ask whether a drug a) extends life significantly, or b) improves the quality of life significantly. Some drugs achieve those ends, some do not.

None of this matters, unless governments gain the upper hand over the health care industry, including Big Pharma.

Another good topic, Jack.


It is less "experience changing us" and much more "experience becoming us". All of our lives are "experience" of various magnitudes, from blips to meteoric impacts. Events don't "change history" -- as if history was intending "Plan A" and then changed to "Plan B".

I can't deny obvious 'tendencies' in history or myself. The history of an economic downturn can be more or less aversive to the people, depending on the government's policy (like, are they Keynesian or not).

In my life (and many others) college changed my life. Without it, I would have been a very different person. But then, so did kindergarten, learning how to ride a bike, 11th and 12th grade English. 12 years of Sunday school, confirmation, church, sex in the park, many nights at gay bars, having hepatitis, breaking a leg, falling in and out of love, good, bad, and indifferent employment, and so on.

We have to figure out what our background pattern was and is to see how experiences alter it. That's true for history in general, or for our own.

There is a downside to desalinization -- even on a fairly small scale: The product of desalinization is very strong brine, which dumped back into the ocean can cause high salinity problems for sea animals, Massive desalinization would produce huge amounts of brine which would have to be pumped away from the shallower coastal waters, and diluted before it was released. This can be done, of course, but I cite it because it is an additional cost, and reckless operators (humans) might well decide that it was just too much trouble.

Have you thought about just how much water one would need to irrigate the border region between the southern edge of the Sahara Desert and the wetter regions of sub-Saharan Africa (to stabilize and roll back some desertification)? Hearing Carl Sagan intoning "Billions and billions of gallons".

The thing about the Amazon forest ... Even IF (very big IF) one could replace the surface area of the Amazon forest with forest some place else, there would still be the huge species loss (already in progress, as a result of steady on-going slash and burn practices).

"Sustainable" must include the environments and habitats on which other species depend. The world isn't ours alone.

but do you see it? — counterpunch

I can imagine it; I do not see any significant moves in the direction of geothermal electrical generation. That isn't your fault, of course.

I was discussing this with a friend over lunch. He asked, "What does anyone mean by "sustainable"? Does it mean 8 billion (and more) people living like Europeans, North Americans, and the Chinese middle class? Does it mean 3 billion electric cars powered by geothermal generation? Is 'sustainable" the same as "survivable" or something better?

Even with all the electricity the world can use, are 8, 10, or 12 billion or more of us sustainable? Is a non-polluting supply of electricity a magic solution to all of the problems of feeding, housing, clothing, educating, and caring for us, our built and natural environment, the natural systems that provide vital services to us? With all the electricity we could want, does it matter if the rain forests are cut down to grow food?

These are rhetorical issue for me, personally. I won't be around to see whatever denouement develops (unless it happens in the next few years). For the younger and or future populations, the answers to these questions are critical.

There's no such thing as "more sustainable." There's sustainable, and there's not sustainable. — counterpunch

You are so strict! But "sustainable" is not an all or nothing term. As for wind, back in the '90s the small town of Worthington (pop. 10,000 with two agricultural - industrial plants, one an alfalfa dryer and pelletizer) was able to meet its power needs with 6 windmills. The southwestern edge of Minnesota happens to be a prime wind region (flat and windy).

I agree, wind can't / won't power the world. Solar comes closer (so I have read). Geothermal - yes.

But @SSU's point is that there has not been, and there is no sufficient / minimally adequate policy planning for future energy production. If there were, we would see radically different government, industry, and consumer behavior. Once one acknowledges the severity of our situation, one can see the world's elites (economic, political, social, etc.) busy doing pretty much nothing.

Go Geo!

Can you define the actual US energy policy since the 70's to the present? — ssu

You didn't ask me, but... Here's the policy. Float the economy on a deep pool of cheap oil.

Available, plentiful, cheap energy to fuel industry and drive the economy. Drill, baby drill. Oil and gas have been our preeminent fuel (with coal for electricity generation plus some heavy industries; by the 70s coal was no longer used much for domestic heating or not at all for rail transportation. Gas is replacing coal for generation). In addition to fueling the economy, oil and gas are the primary feed-stock for plastics, chemicals, and fertilizers.

That coal, oil, and gas -- and many of the associated industries (like cars, chemicals, plastics, etc.--have significant and serious downsides (methane, CO2, acid rain, disease, negative effects on soils, etc) was simply not an issue that was or is brought to the fore in any sustained way.

It has always stood to reason that oil and gas were not--and could not be--inexhaustible. Peak Oil is a concept that's been around for a while. The oil industry knows about peak oil and exhaustibility, of course. Wells run dry. In the mean time, keep sucking it up.

While wind and solar have made some progress, and while there are a few electric vehicles on the road, the future of clean, renewable energy is pretty far off, as far as I can tell.

And electric vehicles are not an answer. There are 1.4 billion cars in the world, 99.9% internal combustion. In what universe does it make sense to replace 1.4 billion gas powered vehicles with another 1.4 billion electric vehicles? Only in the auto industry universe! God forbid that people should use electric trains, trolleys, street cars, light rail, and busses to get around.

Granted, per @counterpunch, geo, wind, and solar energy are all pretty green. I don't see a wholesale commitment to green energy outside of groups like Interfaith Power and Light (a faith-based renewable advocacy group) and smart people like Counterpunch.

When pre-woke, woke, and post-woke? groups speak, they are not speaking truth to power. They (or we) are mostly talking to ourselves. Deep down the elites don't give a rat's ass about liberation, identity, fairness, equality, and so forth among the masses. From the POV of the wealthy and powerful, gay liberation, for instance, was not worth the bad PR of tangoing with a not well liked sexual minority. From that same POV, corporations have to deal with far worse things than "woke" fokes being employed in their firms (like government regulation, taxation, unions, hostile takeovers, business failure...)

The audience of liberatory, activist groups (like gays et al) are mostly themselves--and politicians. It's gays and all the other minority groups who benefit most from their up-lift, liberatory messaging. General Motors doesn't need up-lift. What the hell would they do with it?

If the premise is that the acceptance of Jesus as one's savior is a necessary component for eternal salvation from damnation, then the absence of immediate concern for the person's wellbeing would be of little concern. — Hanover

That's the way it comes off in the mouths of some evangelicals. "You've accepted Jesus as your personal savior; Sweet Jesus, we are done here. Sorry about your starving to death, but you'll soon be with Jesus and that's what matters."

I won't go into the process of how Jesus got from dead itinerate preacher to 1/3 of the Godhead, beyond saying that there is a big gap between Jesus and Christianity from the first. "The Church" was already in its neonatal existence when believers sat down to put the Gospels and Paul's (et al) letters together. The gap between Jesus and the first interpretations of the NT is wider still.

Marx himself wrote that the concept of the rule of law is "obsolete verbal rubbish" — Apollodorus

In the hands of the bourgeoisie, "the rule of law" is a system plundering the resources of society -- labor, natural resources, etc, for their own benefit. As Marx put it, "the state is a committee to organize the affairs of the bourgeoisie."

Yes, it does apply equally well to Socialism or Communists. Stalin and Mao were not what Marx had in mind, in my humble opinion. Both of them have a lot of blood on their hands. For instance, the Ukrainian famine (millions died) was engineered by Stalin to divert wheat from consumption to foreign sales to provide cash for military/industrial development. Mao had a lot of bad ideas.

The established Church policy is to spread Christianity through persuasion, not coercion. — Apollodorus

As well it should. I would still advise incipient missionary to package their persuasion in the form of concern for others' material and emotional needs. "Spiritual" is too liquid or fluid a concept to form the basis of a plan for converting either the natives or the next-door neighbors.

Exactly!

It easier for 20th / 21st century believers (or philosophers) to think about the meaning of loving their neighbors than it is of loving God. God, after all, has no needs to be met, and by any definition has the wherewithal to take care of Himself, Herself, or Itself.

Micah 6:8 provides the Prophetic view: What does God require of us? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God. The New Jerusalem Bible translates "love mercy" as "love tenderly"--nice, I think. Maybe "keeping good company with God" is another way of putting it.

It's always useful to repeat THE WHOLE QUOTE of what Marx said about religion: Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. One could substitute 'anodyne" or "analgesic" for "opium". It spoils the phrase, but it enhances the meaning.

Like many elderly non-believers or agnostics, I know Christianity on a first hand basis as my first "operating system". There is plenty in it that can function in the pejorative meanings of "opium" or "opiate", as well as ameliorative meanings,

This suggests that an essential aspect of Christian love is not as some might assume having an attitude of affection, etc. toward our neighbor or even concern for his material wellbeing, but primarily concern for his or her spiritual salvation. — Apollodorus

No! "spiritual salvation" delivered in the absence of love (agape) or absent concern for the person's wellbeing, results in the missionary position of ramming Jesus down their throat or up their ass, whichever you prefer.

Love (agape, not 'affection') is essential to salvation. See Corinthians, Chapter 13.

Just my not-overly-erudite opinion, but I think quite a bit of "us" is factory pre-installed--don't take offense, Ma, at the factory metaphor. Every other animal seems to have built-in behavior patterns, and I don't see a way that we would NOT have built ins.

polio bacili — god must be atheist

Polio is caused by a virus, not a bacilli. Not much good about it, and it has almost been stamped out. Tapeworms, on the other hand, have one benefit: people who have severe allergies suffer less if they have tapeworms, because the worms suppress the immune reaction--to protect their wormy selves.

Not sure that I would sign up for worm therapy if I had bad allergies.

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People at birth are inherently good.
Chloé Zhao
This is a current meme by the director of the film Nomadland. — Proximate1

It isn't like Ms. Zhao is the first one to have that thought -- the goodness of the new-born has been a topic of much discussion for a long time.

We are so constituted that there probably IS a moral inclination at birth -- not a preference for moral vs. immoral, but rather a brain structure (and species habit) that will lead to people having fear, guilt, and comfort connected to their behavior. How does this work?

Young children depend on caregivers. Caregivers reward good behavior and punish bad behavior (however good and bad are defined, and however you think of reward and punishment). Where are fear, guilt, and comfort situated? In the limbic system. Where is the part of the brain that tries to please caregivers? It's in the frontal cortex. There are (normally) strong neural connections between the two parts. As the child develops, the rules and regulations, fear, guilt, comfort, and joy are internalized. The person will tend to behave morally ever after. Perfect system? No -- good people can manage to do bad things.

The worst outcome for this system is when the connections between the frontal cortex and limbic system fail to develop. The result is a psychopathic person who doesn't feel much guilt or joy, and has no internalized moral code.

Worth noting: while the brain doesn't replace many of its lost neurons, if any, the trillions of connections among the 80 billion neurons are constantly changing.

Another thing, our "being" isn't static; it is intimately involved in our environment. If the replacement brain wasn't able to experience real-time immersion in the environment, "you" or your former brain-system would not be the same.

I think its because self organization is the nature of our universe. — Pop

Basic features like gravity led to the 'self-organized' formation of star systems galaxies, and galaxy groups just as earlier, basic physics led to the formation of atoms. If it wasn't for atoms and molecules self-connecting there would not be any life.

So, I find a lot of credence in your assertion that the universe is self-organizing.

Yeah, in minor evolutionary increments, such as to give the impression of determinism with a small amount of randomness causing variation. — Pop

Our pattern seeing, purpose detecting proclivities seem to lead us to determinism of one sort or another. God intended, the laws of physics required, evolution insists on... But given the vast amount of time that short-lived organisms have had to develop, the deterministic rule might be "If it 'works' it stays."

Good discussion.

In the absence of a brain and nervous system what is causing them to self organize? — Pop

I don't know. DNA, and proximity to same and other cell types seems to be part of how cells organize themselves into tissues and organs. But then, one step back, why did DNA and the cells begin self-organizing in the first place?

C. elegans shows how it is done--hear all about it at OpenWorm from UCLA. I don't think C. elegans has any visual capacity. It is composed of 900-1000 cells (depending on whether it is hermaphrodite (gender fluid?) or male. It's 300+ neurons enable it to behave and even learn a thing or two.

Like I said, I don't know -- but as your link showed, some sort of visual response ability appeared long before there was a central nervous system to which an eye could attach itself. One possibility might be that the first visual capacity in multi-cellular animals may have originated in nerve cells to start with. The critical part of the eye is the retina made up of nerve-receivers. The rest of what is now the eyeball is the camera without the film. So to continue the figure of speech, the "camera" started with film and then added the chassis, lens, etc.

At least the retina, optic nerve, and brain are the same system.

Is the relationship between the ears (the essential sensory part, not the floppy exterior) the same as the brain? Eyes and brain may have a longer lineage than ear and brain--maybe. The bones of the inner ear were once working parts of the jaw. Over a couple of generations they shrank and migrated rearward and found something new to do with themselves. (As told in Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body by Neil Shubin. good book

It seems to me I read that "eyes" were 'invented' in primitive animals as a few cells that could respond to light. Whether they made a difference to the creature by informing a central nervous system of the dawn's early light, or whether they emitted a chemical signal, don't remember.