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.

23
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.

All sorts of common matter which have old names ("water" is an Old English / Dutch / German word; air, on the other hand, is derived from Greek 'aer' / Latin 'aer' / French 'air'). Starting a couple of centuries ago, water and air can be described chemically. The air we breathe is mostly N; O is a much smaller portion. Every breath you take includes neon, helium, krypton, xenon, water vapor, carbon dioxide, and argon -- plus whatever crap has been lofted into the air.

Talking about gases like xenon, argon and carbon dioxide is a different conversation than talking about the air, the wind, the breeze, the sky, or various other nouns having to do with "air".

Posts, conversations, dialogues, discourses, and discussions are not the same thing either. Nobody holds a discourse over the fence with their neighbor--unless they are inordinately pretentious.

Your post about the difference between water and H2O is somewhere between opening a delightful discussion and opening a can of worms that's been in the hot sun.

200 years of capitalist progress has outpaced Malthus' pessimistic prophesies thus far, via the application of technology — counterpunch

Thomas Malthus has been dead since 1834. Dead as a doornail. His famous book was written in 1798. Why is his old book your favorite touchstone for failed theories? Do you fault him for not thinking of everything that would happen in the future that might undermine his theory?

and can continue to do so. — counterpunch

And here's your famous idea that may very well become invalidated by unseen developments. Have a little sympathy for old Tom Malthus.

My theory is that there are already too many people, whether they are well-fed or not, and I do not look forward to their being 10 or 12 billion of us.

300 years down the line, civilisation powered by limitless clean energy might achieve some sort of post material equality! There are worse problems one could have! — counterpunch

This is the flip side of Malthus, the post scarcity society. It may be as vanishing has his proposal.

"Too-cheap-to-meter" low to no carbon energy that you expect to get from hot rocks is a fine idea. But if it is so feasible, how come capitalists have not bored down a ways, installed the necessary equipment, and started generating low-to-no-carbon energy which will cost them little and which they can sell for as much as they can get (like they do with everything else)?

Following Christian theology (interpreting--or misinterpreting--Old Testament) we were created innocent but we listened to the snake in the Garden, disobeyed orders, and have thus been cursed with Original Sin ever since. That's one way we are not good.

A later text from Isaiah says "All we, like sheep, have gone astray,
each of us has turned to our own way."

Even if we were not cursed with original sin, we are a moral error-prone lot, and like stupid sheep, we wander off into the weeds and sin, especially if the weeds are high enough so others can't see what we are up to.

Following the non-theological approaches of Darwin and Freud, we descended from apes and have the emotional features of our nearest non-human relative, Pan troglodytes, aka, the chimpanzee. We have the emotional drives of the chimp hitched to greatly enhanced intellectual power with which we carry out our red-hot urges with a vengeance. That gets us into all sorts of trouble again and again and again and again...

We try to be good, and sometimes we are. If we are phlegmatic and lethargic (like, dull and lazy) we probably will behave acceptably well most of the time. Ambitious energetic go-getters run larger risks of behaving badly, because they inevitably find that somebody is in their fucking way.

I came across an essay in AEON you might (or might not) find interesting --

"The fall of the Roman Empire wasn’t a tragedy for civilisation. It was a lucky break for humanity as a whole" the lead says. Here's a relevant quote:

Yet brute force alone would have taken Europe only so far. Useful knowledge also played a vital role. There was no hope of transforming industry and medicine without dramatic advances in science and engineering. That posed a serious challenge: what if new insights and ways of doing things clashed with hallowed tradition or religious doctrine? Innovators had to be able to follow the evidence wherever it led, regardless of how many toes they stepped on in the process. That turned out to be a hard slog in Europe, as incumbents of all stripes – from priests to censors – were determined to defend their turf. However, it was even harder elsewhere. China’s imperial court sponsored the arts and sciences, but only as it saw fit. Caged in a huge empire, dissenters had nowhere else to go. In India and the Middle East, foreign-conquest regimes such as the Mughals and the Ottomans relied on the support of conservative religious authorities to shore up their legitimacy.

Europe’s pluralism provided much-needed space for disruptive innovation. As the powerful jostled for position, they favoured those whom others persecuted. The princes of Saxony shielded the heretic Martin Luther from their own emperor. John Calvin found refuge in Switzerland. Galileo and his ally Tommaso Campanella managed to play off different parties against each other. Paracelsus, Comenius, René Descartes, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and Voltaire headline a veritable who’s who of refugee scholars and thinkers.

Over time, the creation of safe spaces for critical enquiry and experimentation allowed scientists to establish strict standards that cut through the usual thicket of political influence, theological vision and aesthetic preference: the principle that only empirical evidence counts. In addition, intense competition among rulers, merchants and colonisers fed an insatiable appetite for new techniques and gadgets. Thus, while gunpowder, the floating compass and printing were all invented in distant China, they were eagerly embraced and applied by Europeans vying for control over territory, trade and minds.

My guess is that public sex and nudity would be a lot less entertaining were it to become so common as to be unremarkable. When sex in the park is illegal, its criminal status gives it an extra frisson.

Sublimation of our libidinous drives is one of civilization's major inventions. Because we are not allowed to give free rein to physical urges, we channel that energy into productive activity -- work, in other words.

So free sex, drugs, and rock and roll would probably require a post-scarcity society. Don't quite know how to achieve that, especially without repressing many millions of carnal drives.

If so many are so charitable, why does this man have a shack and rice in the first place? — Lif3r

Why, indeed? Because we are not that charitable. Billions are not overly enthusiastic about changing their lifestyles to save the planet, never mind the people tied to railroad tracks.

In the real world, the way the deal works is pretty much the way you set it up, except that a) I and the man with the bag of cash are a long ways from the guy tied to the railroad track; b) the guy on the track is definitely going to get run over; and c) I'm definitely not getting the cash.

Within the moral system to which many subscribe, exchanging any amount of money to prevent arbitrary killing is unacceptable. Promising to later distribute the money in beneficence is merely covering an immoral act with rose petals. Within that same moral system, there is an obligation to assist others in need. Exactly how far one should go isn't specified (should one impoverish one's self?). Many people do, actually, attempt to fulfill this obligation.

Speaking of people about to be liquidated for cash, here's a song about their salvation in the person of the tall, thin, long, lean, lanky. slow-walkin, slow-talkin fellow named Jones.

A more complex scenario would be more interesting and challenging.

In Situation Ethics [1966], Joseph Fletcher poses this situation: an unattractive man asks an attractive woman whether she would have sex with him for $1,000,000. She would. How about $500,000? She would. $100,000? Yes. $50,000? Yes. and so on. Finally he offers $25.

She says: "$25! What kind of woman do you think I am?"
He says: "Madam; we've already determined what kind of woman you are; we're just haggling over the price"

Your situation asks how much one of us would require to let a stranger die on the railroad track? $100,000,000? Think of all the good I could with $100,000,000. $10,000,000? Yes, $100,000? Probably.

"Would you let he man tied to the railroad track die for $100?"

"Hey, What kind of cold-blooded killer do you think I am?"
"We've already determined the kind of killer you are; we're just haggling over the price."

Accepting the money would be an act of murder because we understand the consequences of accepting the money. You are quite correct that cash is valued over life every day in a wide variety of circumstances (though usually not as obvious as when someone is tied to the proverbial railroad track). Or more to the point, a life is valued below the amount of cash on offer. "Improving this product (at an up-front cost of $2,000,000) will save 100 lives (at $20,000 per) over 5 years. We will not be able to pay the expected dividend, however, if we spend $2,000,000 on improvements.

The improvement plan is shelved.

Hey, I have not been a go-along get-along kind of guy. All sorts of things bother me; there are many opinions I find objectionable; I regularly encounter people who are really irritating in ever so many ways. There are numerous people who I would just as soon didn't exist (near me, anyway).

"How I feel" is one thing. No, I do not feel good when someone tells me that they hate me, insults me, or tells me that I am worthless, etc. Who would? But if one lives in a world with other people, one has to separate out how one feels from how one thinks and what one judges to be proper action.

The chain of: words ----> feeling bad ----> acting in response ----> repeat is nothing but trouble, both for the individual and for groups.

Can you live peacefully next to someone who tells you don't deserve to exist? — baker

Of course I can live peaceably next door to someone who thinks I should not exist (there are such people, actually) and they can live peaceably next door to me. We will both probably make some effort to stay out of each other's way. No comradely beers in the yard for us!

I don't think a person can become a victim of another's thoughts. Even if the racist imagined murdering the other, the so-called victim would be completely unaware, let alone injured by it. — NOS4A2

Agree.

No, the scenario in the OP specifies that the racist clearly verbalizes their racist stance toward the target — baker

So?

In highly privileged, sheltered workshops like super-liberal private colleges it is apparently possible to physically injure others by putting words to paper or uttering them in speech (especially if the receivers are fragile literalists). Bah! Humbug! to all of that. Hearing or reading objectionable opinions will not so much as move a hair on one's head.

Never mind thought experiments. People hold all sorts of highly disreputable ideas.

What should be done about it? Nothing. No doxxing, no cancelling, no marches around the block objecting to the offenders ideas. In other words, don't escalate a disreputable, objectionable OPINIONS into an even more disruptive, divisive behavior (on their part or yours).

I am not against demonstrations, heated debates, and so on. There are plenty of ACTIONS that are disreputable and objectionable which can and should be resisted.

So you wanna do eugenics? Do you think you're wise enough to decide who should and should not breed? — counterpunch

Seems like you jumped to the conclusion that Javi was talking about eugenics. How did you conclude that? Does "selective antinatalism" = eugenics?

I guess people who are irresponsible with their own lives shouldn't have the right of breed not only Kids but animals. Having kid is a serious issue that not all the people are ready or capable to do it so. — javi2541997

I think a good case can be made that some people should not have children, and this is a matter that affects both men and women. People whose lives are self-destructive (such as having multiple addictions) will be unable to deliver, care for, and support a healthy child.

The species as a whole (soon to be 8 billion) is too numerous, and couples (4 billion couples, about) should strive for no more than 2.1 children -- at most, preferably fewer. 2.1 is the maximum rate for declining populations.

It is moral to ask that people whose lives render them unable to care for their children to not have them. It is moral to prevent pregnancy for women who are unable to make reproductive decisions owing to severe mental disability. The morality of preventing conception for women whose lives are very disordered, but are capable of making reproductive decisions is much more difficult.

Forced treatment for addiction and mental illness anguishes civil libertarians; requiring consent for any treatment may be an over reaction.

Back to the species as a whole: If we do not find some way for controlling fertility on a global scale, then nature will find a solution for us, and we won't like it.