That you have sent a message to other people would seem to cancel out the idea that you are the only one in existence, or that you believe you are the only one in existence.

Still, solipsism is an idea (or a delusion, obsession, or some other form of erroneous thinking) that many have played around with.

Best practice: Think about it for a while, then move on to something more useful.

You "seem" (appearances may be deceiving) to be using it as a definite, fixed quality. Hey, if your not -- splendid. It just seemed that way to me. But then, I am not omniscient, relative to god, anyway.

weakness — kudos

"Strong" and "weak" are relative terms. It seems like an error to use it as a definite, fixed feature.

Are you arguing that the motion of small solid bodies in the solar system -- interacting with each other, the planets, and the sun -- are not subject to chance [unpredictable interactions], even while strictly obeying the laws of physics? Or are you proposing that "chance" is the result of inadequately observed causation?

But is it good that chance play such a role? — kudos

Good or not, chance is a factor in life. It just IS. What is bad is ignoring the part that chance events play (positive. indifferent, and negative). Unless one thinks that there is a string of implacable deterministic causation from the Big Bang down to this paragraph, then chance is a given.

Does our weakness make our existence a crude reality, or is it fundamental to our animal nature that we be submissive, fail at things, imperfect in different ways; Is that a core component of who we are or our real nature? — kudos

Weakness, submissiveness, failure, imperfections... fundamental to our animal nature? Not in my book!

We 'compounded beings' are an amalgam of strengths, flaws, failures, successes, wisdom, stupidity, and so on. Put crudely, we are primates with an overly developed frontal cortex (intellect) driven by a limbic system which evolved to assist survival in the jungle. Our emotions are vital, but they are volatile, and powerful. We prize our intellect, but without our wild emotions, what would we ever accomplish? Nothing.

Our "core, or real nature", is contradictory. On the one hand, we can reason; apply logic; develop deep insights; construct models of the world. On the other hand, opposite the deep thinker, we can fall stupidly in love, fly into a rage, commit arson, rape, and bloody murder, and then again, suddenly be as gentle as a kitten.

A core piece of human reality is that we are barely masters of our own houses (our minds).

So, we go through our lives, sometimes lasting more than a century, as a bundle of contradictory desires, wishes, fears, and hopes. That's kind of who we are. Some people, or maybe beneficiaries of chance, go through life at peace with their different parts. Or maybe the clamped a heavy cover on all that and just ignore it. Some people have a stormy relationship with their parts. They aren't at peace with it all, but that doesn't mean they are miserable. Some people like southern California weather -- nice all the time -- and some people like to have the occasional tornado, violent thunderstorm, blizzard, or the perfect autumn day.

Does that help any?

we could compare human actions with the animal who does not choose it's own death, but acts it ou — kudos

What animal is that?

Death by shotgun... seems excessive, but maybe that's just me. — kudos

It is just you. If you lived where there are a lot of bears, and one of them was running your way with you on the menu, you'd be happy to have a shotgun handy. What would you use -- a sling shot? A BB gun? You'd fulfill the bear's desire for "Kudos al Fresco"

You already know about what I am going to say here, but... I'll press ahead. Strengths, weaknesses, talents, skills, abilities, capacities, traits and so on are generally manifested on a continuum, and their locations on a continuum are mixed as well. So a given lion may have above average vision (for a lion), average hearing, lower than average endurance in a sprint, an exquisite sense of smell, and may not be as intelligent as another lion. The same distribution applies to a given wildebeest. So, survival is the result--to at least a significant degree--of luck. If the lion with less endurance happens to be chasing a lame wildebeest with terrific endurance, the lion may go hungry that time.

Among humans, one sometimes meets people who seem to have nothing much going for them (homely, not very smart, not physically gifted, etc.) but who are persistent and manage to keep body and soul together for a long time and die of old age in their own bed. How can that be? As The Preacher in Ecclesiastes put it, "The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong; but time and chance happen to all."

I am here today, writing to you, because on a number of occasions accidents were less damaging than they VERY EASILY could have been; I didn't get AIDS, but I certainly could have, and so on. It wasn't because of caution, immense prudence, or foresight that I am still here. It was LUCK, True enough, most of the time I lived a conventional life; I went to work, did my job, saved my pennies, ate a healthy diet, exercised, didn't do drugs, or smoke and drink too much for too long a period. But I was also a risk taker, and if you take enough risks, eventually one will get nailed. I backed off risk enough to survive.

The squirrels that get run over are not examples of unfitness. They are victims of bad luck. Their species didn't evolve to have an understanding of moving vehicles, so whether they are squashed or not is a matter of luck. Some animals are more adaptable. When one bikes down a street where there are lots of pigeons, the birds don't fly away as one approaches. They hop a few inches to get out of the way. Squirrels aren't equipped to do that. On the other hand, squirrels recover 90% of the walnuts they bury. Pigeons aren't equipped to remember where several hundred walnuts are.

1) Actions that counter animal's individual interest — kudos

One example of this would be bears which discover garbage. A smorgasbord of stuff is suddenly available, most of which isn't healthy for bears as a steady diet, and displaces their normal diet of stuff like berries, fish, grubs, meat, and so on. Bears seem to be sated the same way that people who eat too much garbage feel sated. Fed and feeling full, but deriving too little essential nutrition along with the calories. The bears are likely to become sick. Plus, the garbage-dump bears become a nuisance (they are too dangerous to have around) so can lead to their deaths by shotgun.

2) Success in such as way as its interests or needs could be better satisfied — kudos

I can't think of an example that fits this. What did you have in mind.

3) Individual interest that counters possibility for survival, or sexual selection — kudos

Sometimes "odd couples" form, often involving at least one domesticated animal, but not always. Like a goose and a dog, or a horse and a goat. Aside from companionship and ending up on YouTube, there is no advantage to the animals in the odd couple. They are never going to mate.

Celibate religious are an example of principle 3. It may help an individual's survival (monasteries are usually safe places), but one definitely won't reproduce, if one is faithful to one's vows.

A discontinuity between one animal, Homo sapiens or birds... take your pick, and all other animals is completely insupportable. There are some genes that have been preserved over a billion years, and exist in single cell and vertebrate animals like ourselves.

It's probably safe to say that humans fail to survive in ways very much like other animals. Inattentive animals end up getting run over by automobiles, for instance, whether they be squirrels or people. Disease is a great leveler across the plant and animal kingdoms. So is predation. Humans may be a top predator now, but we have not always been at the top, and when it comes to the competition between pathogens and animals, our superiority (with antibiotics) is a flash in the pan. An unarmed person has no particular advantage in a confrontation with a polar bear or a grizzly. If we can't run fast enough and hide, we stand a good chance of being eaten.

Even oddities like homosexuality show up across species, appearing in mammals and birds, and of course, humans. Male pairs of ducks, for instance, have been observed stealing eggs from other nests in order to have eggs to hatch. Surviving members of geese couples (gay and straight) seem to mourn the loss of their mate. No reason why they wouldn't -- the avian limbic system isn't all that different than ours.

There are areas of evolutionary thinking which get kind of "squishy" -- that is, not on such solid ground. Evolutionary psychology is an example. It seems obvious that evolution has contributed to human psychology as it stands today, but projecting ancient situations which shaped our present psychology is impossible to substantiate. Taking depression as an example, some people imagine situations in our distant past (say, 200,000 years ago) when and where a 'depressive' personality would have been beneficial to individual and group survival. The 'on edge' person would be hyper-alert to threat.

Well maybe, maybe not, and how the hell would we know?

Then too, "depression" as it is tossed about these days can mean all sorts of things.

Steven Pinker proposes that we are less violent today than we were in the stone ages, not because we have evolved into a peaceable species, but because we developed centralized control -- the city state first, then later the larger state, which enforced more cooperative peaceable behavior. Take away centralized control, and maybe we would revert to a more violent norm.

Did evolution play a role in the development of the city state around 5 to 7,000 years ago? Seem like a very late development to pin on Darwin. Grain probably had more to do with it than anything else.

Dogs and humans formed a pretty strong connection around 20,000 years ago. Was that evolution or selective breeding (which is, in a way, fast evolution)? Russian biologists have shown that silver fox (a generally unfriendly species with nice fur) can be bred into a docile dog like animal without its nice fur and wild behavior in the space of a human lifetime (so, 30 to 50 generations of yearly breeding fox). Whether humans or dogs initiated domestication is hard to say. Based on the manipulative abilities of dogs I have known, they probably instigated their domestication. They saw in us a very good deal, available to them at the cost of friendly tail wagging, eye contact, a little snuggling, and the like.

I've been a member of this and its predecessor forum for at least 10 years. There are a lot of people here who accept evolution, because the membership is fairly well educated, and most educated people accept evolution as a set of sound principles. There are also people here who think that the mind is not located in the brain. It would be hard to fit a brainless mind into evolution. There are also a fair number of people here, educated or not, who do not know much about evolution. So no. I don't thing you have discovered a nest of Darwinians.

What is it about Darwin that you find disturbing?

Oh, I didn't know I was a 'die hard Darwinist'. But sure, evolution applies to human beings, as does natural selection and more. There is more because of our capacity for and dependence on language and culture. We inherited our 'capacity' but we created the content by ourselves, though we were likely nudged in various directions by some of those vulnerabilities you alluded to. Like religion. We didn't get religion from biology, but biology seems to have given us the capacity to imagine sky gods vividly enough that our creations could scare us silly.

I have lots of weaknesses: old, arthritic, going blind, gay, overly opinionated, depressed, and so on. I'm not very strong now, though at my best I was a pretty good long-distance cyclist -- not fast but persistent. I swam, jogged, did calisthenics, etc. I've accepted the cards I've been dealt and am more or less, pretty happy. Though, the ice on which I am standing isn't all that thick.

BTW, I like your banana and hammer image.

If we as species and not as individuals did always make the right choice, don't you agree that it would kill us? — kudos

I don't see why it would, but there is zero likelihood of our species always making the right choice -- or even always choosing the lesser of two evils.

"If the ends do not justify the means, what in God's name does?" some famous person said.

Successful people usually have SOMETHING going for them -- quite often a highly successful parent or grandparent. The various children of John D. Rockefeller Sr., Abigail, John III, Nelson, Laurance, Winthrop, and David had their success handed to them on heavy silver platters. I'm not suggesting that any of the children were morons, but it does help having one of the richest men on earth as a parent.

There are people who choose, or accept, their weakness, their vulnerability. Some of them tread the paths leading to holiness -- Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. There are people who accept their low status, for any number of reasons (too complicated a topic for here and now). Some of these people strike one as saintlike, or maybe as freakishly weird, depending. Or maybe ready to be taken to the home for the very very confused.

↪Bitter Crank Let's be realistic though and boil it down to the absolute most weak person. They're not smart, physically fit, they fail at everything they try, no achievements, no social skills; they've effectively 'turned off, tuned out, and dropped out.' Would you then at least say it were fit to call this person weak in a comparable manner to what we deem as animal weakness (which is not by any means rigorously understood)? — kudos

The absolute most weak person is a bit hard to imagine having much of a role of any kind in society.

I'm a bit lost as to what you are aiming for.

In terms of physical strength... sure, one can compare a weak horse to a strong horse in the same way one can compare a weak man to a strong man. Strength is an advantage, weakness isn't. A strong lion will bring down a wildebeest more often than a weak lion.

Considering your clarification...

By weakness I mean the common usage, making the wrong decisions, failing at things, self-destructive behaviour, depression, anxiety, being a nerd, a loser, a freak, and so forth - even disposition towards actions such as being overly generous, trusting, or gullible. — kudos

strength and weakness are not as clearly differentiable among we humans. Is being a computer nerd a strength or a weakness? The handsome, healthy, hot athlete may get to mate more often, but if what is needed at the time is insight into printed circuitry and code, how useful will the hunk be? Fun to fuck but after that... pffft.

There have been a number of discussions here about the evolutionary value of depression. What good is it? Not sure myself, but some people think that "depression" has value to the group because anxious depressed people are sensitive to potentially dangerous situations that the hale and hearty are not. Personally, I haven't found depression to be an advantage, though it might lead to insights that a mentally robust person wouldn't arrive at. And not all insights are equally useful or healthy. Sometimes it is better to not look behind the curtain.

Loners, Freaks, losers, nerds, et al living outside convention as they do a good share of the time, can bring fresh perspectives to the community. Some of our great inventors, authors, artists, musicians, etc. were loners, losers, freaks, nerds, and worse--if you can imagine anything worse. (Most of the greats were more or less socially successful, but not all of them were.)

So, among human society, weakness and strength are not as obvious as they are among animals. Sometimes strength comes from being an alienated, dysfunctional outsider. An outsider will probably have better vision to see society as only an outsider can.

Take Thorsten Veblen, a late 19th century, early 20th century economist and sociologist. Some of his outsider traits enabled him to see the purpose of large, carefully tended lawns: They are conspicuous consumption -- proof that one has a lot of money to maintain a perfectly useless field of grass on which no sheep or cow will ever graze. It is difficult to get such insights into society from the perspective of a socially successful person. To the wealthy-enough homeowner, the large lawn is inherently justifiable, and worth all the work that goes into it.

A weed patch in front of the house, on the other hand, is proof of one's failure in society. Success = nice grass; failure = weeds. I have weeds in my lawn. I agree with Veblen: large chemically dosed lawns are bullshit and ought to be stamped out. Screw the middle class lawn mower.

Maybe we're getting a little hung up on the biology analogy. — kudos

If so, then the misdirection is yours. Starting out with "In natural predator-prey relationships if a predator is so strong a hunter it proliferates and the prey population declines..." is a pretty strong indication of what a reader would think you were getting at. Let me take a minute to vent:

The OP goes in one direction, then after a few entries, the original poster announces "Oh, well that isn't what I meant." Hey, it's the job of a thread creator to get it right from the beginning. (You are one of a number of people who do this,)

In your response, you said "you'd reproduce more just the same as a predator would prey more". Kudos, if you want to talk about human existential questions, morality, and the like, then leave the biological alone (because they misdirect the reader).

You seem to be reaching for a paradox about weakness and strength -- and they are sometimes in paradoxical relationships. The Taoist talks about how a "weak" willow bends in the wind and is not damaged, while the "strong" oak resists the wind and is broken. So, which one is strong and which one is weak? Paradox.

Oh, look: Unenlightened just quoted Lao Tzu--stealing my thunder right out from under me!

Would you say in this sense that weakness is necessary for survival — kudos

"Weakness" and "strength" are too heavily loaded with moral connotations to be very helpful in describing ecological relationships.

What is necessary for survival is a more-or-less sustainable balance between predator/prey animals and plant communities. As @Frank noted, a sustainable balance can be disrupted and various species adapt or become extinct.

Example: The glaciated regions of North America were scraped down to the rocks, then layered over with 'drift'. Over 10-15,000 years, plant and animal communities repopulated the glaciated areas. When Europeans de- and re- populated North America, they brought with them a variety of 'exotic' species which were native to Europe. One of those was the large earth worm, longer and bigger than the earthworms that were native to North America. The exotic earthworms eventually reached the northern forests, where they commenced rapidly chewing up leaf litter at a much higher rate than the native worms did. This is a relatively recent development and it is changing the ecology of the forests. How this will play out in the future is unknown.

It doesn't make sense to oppose one worm as 'weak' and the other as 'strong'. They are both strong--but one is larger than the other and they eat more.

It is clearly not necessary to believe in God in order to be good, because there are people who are good who do not believe in God. Conversely, there are people who believe in God who are not good.

If religion helps people be good, fine and dandy. If it doesn't, try something else.

Those that think so have a lower income, less education, tend to the political right and are older than those who do not. — Banno

So, wisdom does not necessarily grow with age. It seems like conservative religion seeks out and sucks in the disadvantaged (seeking and sucking being active processes). People living in capitalist cultures are subjected to a lot of messages about who they are vis a vis what they consume. Religion is a commodity so naturally some religions are more suitable to X demographic than others. Dignified mainstream Protestantism (Episcopalians, Lutherans), for instance, meet the needs of a richer better educated demographic better than low-brow Baptists. The low-brow Baptists provide iron clad certainty in a world full of ambiguity. Richer, better educated people have greater tolerance for, and more means to clarify ambiguity.

Fundamentalist religion has a natural affinity for conservative / right wing politics, just as liberal religion has a natural affinity for liberal politics.

you were saying it would not attract concern — schopenhauer1

Right. There are and have been people who are/were anti-natalist without using that term, perhaps quite a few, who have never attracted official notice (except in places like Nazi Germany where German reproduction was prioritized). Anti-natalism isn't an organization or a conspiracy. It is a highly pessimistic and individual Weltanschauung.

The pastures in which one grazes matter. There is a huge difference between what results from relying on the PBS News Hour and and on Fox News. There is a huge difference between the politics of very conservative Christians and Muslims and mainstream and secular Christians and Muslims. And so on and so forth.

Philosophy fora are of course not Fox News or even PBS. We who populate the member lists are a scant demographic -- like anarcho-syndicalists, theosophists, and cloistered nuns. 100 years ago, I could have included American vegans as a scant demographic; not now. From a population crisis point of view, if nothing else, one would hope for much more anti-natalism, but that hasn't happened yet.

Perhaps, as environmental conditions worsen for everyone, anti- or non- natalism will be taken up by a significant number of people. Then, if Pew Research and the Gallop Organization are still in business, they might survey people about their anti-natalist views.

It may have, but reading anti-natalist posts on sites like this are not representative of even most subsections of the public, like people generally interested in philosophy.

I don't suppose anti-natalism attracts the kind of concern that QAnon or reactionary Republicans attract, so probably no reputable group like Pew Research or Gallop, et al, have surveyed the public about anti-natalist views.

Voting is the exercise of politics, and granting or denying rights and privileges is equally a political exercise. So, yes, we should respect others' right to vote EVEN IF their politics are the opposite of ours.

An open political system allows widely disparate, even sharply contradictory, political goals. Is anyone required to just "accept and honor" others' political goals which he or she considers degrading, disempowering, and oppressive? Not at all. People in an open society are free to campaign against ideas they do not like.

Someone who wants to limit immigration, deport undocumented, illegal immigrants, ban abortion, ban gay marriage, make it difficult for workers to organize, and make recreational drug use always a felony... is pursuing political goals that some agree with, and others not. They have as much right to pursue these goals as someone else has to resist such goals.

However, if a vote is held, one side is likely to lose. That is unfortunate for that side, but that's politics. Try again next time.

Biden could well still lose. — StreetlightX

Absolutely, he could still lose -- either by getting too few votes in the states with sufficient Electoral College weight, or his victory could be stolen.

Regardless of who wins, the process itself is under attack, as Trump, Republicans, et al practice dirty tricks. For instance, in California (some) Republicans have been putting out phony but very official looking ballot election boxes, presumably with the intent of disposing of ballots of suspected liberal voters. Law enforcement is rounding these up, but such things cause voters to distrust "the system".

Voter fraud is nothing new, of course. The quip "Vote early and vote often" references ballot box stuffing in cities like Chicago (and other cities). Some states have a much cleaner record than others.

I think it matters whether Trump or Biden win -- at least in the short run. In the medium run (say by 2024) another election comes round and some of the bad things that Trump and the Republicans did can be undone. Unfortunately, global warming isn't waiting for a better congress and executive, or for a better SCOTUS either. In the long run (1980 to 2050 and beyond) we are almost certainly screwed whether Biden or Trump wins.

I think those terms are translations from the past. — Gregory

Sure they are. A lot of words were added to English in the 16th and 17th centuries as intellectual types found Middle and Early Modern English inadequate to express what they were thinking. So thousands of words like "alienate" or "charismatic" were coined, based on the store of words in Latin and Greek, secular and ecclesiastical writing, and French (in particular because of its links to Latin and the number of people who--at the time--spoke, read, and wrote French).

The rest of what you say is generally sensible. "People who get bitten by dogs often fear dogs, and fear getting bitten again." may be entirely anecdotal without being any less true.

You have to correlate all the studies ever done on the subject — Gregory

Up to a point, but CORRELATE ALL THE STUDIES EVER DONE seems like a very tall order

Much of psychiatry and psychology is not rigorous for me. So I simply proposed the belief of an ancestors a hypothesis that might yield fruit — Gregory

Well -- it won't get rigorous in the way some sciences have become BECAUSE the kind of experiments that yield rigor are unacceptable from a human rights POV. It's a good thing that Rexulti and lithium are effective for you. I'm not bipolar, but I'm pretty familiar with it. I take a low dose of an antidepressant for chronic depression. We are our own lab rats, not just for psychotropic medications -- but for a lot of medicines.

That medicinal compounds are discovered, patented, tried out on a small group, backed up by a relatively small amount of research, then put on the market is less a problem of science and more (much more) a problem of capitalism. Selling drugs in the US (especially) is just too profitable to screw around with fussy, time consuming research.

I find it annoying when people dismiss psychology out of hand (as it has existed since the late 19th century). Granted, there is a substantial pile of crap in the social sciences but it isn't all garbage.

For instance, the studies of perception, learning, memory, and so on hold up pretty well. Of course personality theories are culturally bound--even individually bound. The Greeks didn't transcend their culture, just as we do not. We can objectively analyze reaction time; it might not be possible for us to objectively analyze "who", "what", and "how" we are as persons. We can try to assay our individual personalities, but when we make the attempt culture, behavior, personal preferences, ego, and so forth crowd their way in and what we would prefer--clarity--becomes cloudy. That is true now, and it has likely always been true.

I note that many of the words you use to explain the four humors...

1) Sanguine: socialiable, extroverted, charismatic, risky
2) Cloleric: goal-oriented, extroverted, short tempered
3) Meloncholic: analytical, detail-oriented, deep feeling, reserved
4) Plegmatic: easy going, quiet, caring

...come out of the modern field of psychology (though some of those words again go back to the Greek -- like "kharisma" (which entered English mid 17th century (in charisma (sense 2)): via ecclesiastical Latin from Greek kharisma, from kharis ‘favor, grace’).

So much for theory. I assume you have experienced a) friendship, b) love, and c) lust. So, restricting yourself to as full an explication of your experience as you can, what was your experience of "romantic love"?

Individually, the three elements all seem 'warranted'; that is, their validity as experiences hold up in retrospect. In my experience, "romantic love" has been pleasant while it lasted, but was "unwarranted" in retrospect because there was often a crash, when idealization (an aspect of romantic love) ran into reality. A good solid love relationship doesn't idealize too much, is realistic, and flexible.

Lust can fizzle out, but it usually doesn't come crashing down. Friendships may cool, but they don't usually crash, either. Love (never to be adequately defined) endures, may wane, may end, but not harshly (usually). Romantic love, in my experience, doesn't hold up over the long run. Someone (in a documentary on gay liberation) defined love as "a combination of lust and trust". Lust and trust have better long range prospects than romantic love.

Lust and idealization seem to be the essence of romantic love.

Would you agree that Marxism was a form of apocalypticism? — frank

The worse fate that Marx predicted was that the Bourgeoisie and Working Class would destroy each other IF they were not able to resolve the question of ownership (of the means of production) in favor of one class or the other.

Marx, of course, was in favor of the conflict resolving in favor of the Working Class, but he didn't guarantee it.

Were one to be living in an advanced industrial society where the conflict between Workers and Capital resulted in mutual destruction, it might well seem like the end of the world, but maybe it would be no worse than the last world war (as if that wasn't altogether bad enough).

There has not been a working class movement in the 20th-21st centuries capable of powerfully battling the capitalists, because the capitalists have so far always had a well-armed government on their side. If this class battle went nuclear, then sure, it would be the apocalypse.

The most intellectually satisfying apocalyptic fiction has involved some deus ex machine (disease or war) which leaves a few people healthy and whole, who given their talents and good intentions, are able to put together a workable small but tenuous fragment of human society. Kunstler's A World Made by Hand quartet fills the bill.

True. It's the psychology of apocalypticism that has me fascinated. Why do people grasp and believe that the situation is much worse than it actually is? — frank

It's possible that religiously based apocalypse scenarios have migrated to the environment. "The Final Judgement" is a powerful concept, and whether it's delivered by a Father Sky God or Mother Earth God doesn't matter all that much. Humans are environmentally guilty (we've been guilty for a long time--wiping out mastodons, saber tooth tigers, Neanderthals, passenger pigeons, etc. The chickens of judgement are coming home to roost.

Then there is selectivity bias; it isn't hard to read widely and deeply and find only negative predictions. There are dozens of confounding biases that we are prone to.

Scattered reports (stuff I pick up in the mainstream press) suggest that the rate of extinctions is picking up; some insect species or another disappears; a rare plant can't be found; specialists haven't seen their favorite creature for years and years. Even if every report of a disappeared (extinct) species were true, it still wouldn't add up to a mass extinction.

Public discourse can jump the gun. Here in Minneapolis, the City Council's stated intention to shift substantial funding from the police department to social services hasn't been acting upon. Still, some people think the police have been totally defunded. I've heard about the mass extinction so often I could easily believe that we were half-way there.

A bad weather day (too hot, too cold, too damp, too dry, too windy, too...) is routinely blamed on global warming, which is almost certainly an error--weather and climate are two different things, but people get confused.

The galaxy turns as it circles the great cosmic toilet bowl. It's just a matter of time.

Wasn't Plato very concerned that subversive music and poetry would disrupt his ideal republic? So, go right ahead and post about music.

Here's a song about the eve of destruction from 1965. When I first heard this song back in that bucolic summer, I thought it was pretty urgent. However, 55 years later we're still on the eve of destruction.

BTW, I listened to Srap's video above; I liked it.

The first thing is to realize that people and societies take diseases quite calmly, — ssu

The Roman Empire recorded a number of severe pandemics and famines which killed off a significant percentage of the population, without it causing a collapse, or even a significant decline. The Black Plague in Europe didn't cause a collapse either.

Of course people would have preferred to miss a particular plague, but disease continually carried off friends and family, so longevity wasn't typical. All of which is NOT to say people were casual about losing parents and children or indifferent to death.

There are probably gradual declines, such as what the Romans experienced in the last century of the Roman Empire. They did notice it -- they were not frogs in the slowly heating kettle -- and they adjusted. The dark ages that followed wasn't all that dark, and the teaching/learning cycle was maintained in various places. There were also technical innovations during the post-Roman medieval period. None the less, most of the Greco-Roman culture was lost over time.

Then there are abrupt collapses, such as happened from ancient wars or maybe the invasion of the mysterious 'sea people' around 1200 B.C.E. While that lowered the final curtain on a number of civilizations, the pieces were picked up fairly quickly - in a few centuries.

Whether and how the elaborately engineered technology of the present could be restarted if it once stopped, I do not know. The operating knowledge wouldn't disappear overnight, but restarting the massive energy system (oil, for instance) would be very difficult. Literacy could certainly be maintained, and we have lots fo books. Books last a long time as long as they don't get wet.

We might not recognize the fall until later -- true enough, Rome gradually subsided as an imperial HQ over time, and there was no headline, "The Roman Empire collapsed yesterday!"

We might be more aware of an ecological collapse, because it will have more immediate, concrete consequences. At least in the beginning of the predicted eco-collapse, we will still be able to monitor conditions on a world-wide basis, and will receive regular feedback on land and ocean harvests, temperatures, ocean rises, storms, death tolls, energy supplies (from whatever source), and so on.

Life in the Roman Empire was complex enough that disruptions in trade or harvests caused large problems many miles away. Life in the present world is far more complex, and we have more ways of monitoring what complex events are happening. What may happen, though, is that our technological systems will fail in a critical way and we will suddenly lose our capacity to monitor world-wide events. Then, civilization collapsed or not, we may be in the dark.

Of course I realise that there have been times of large deaths in former ages but this is the biggest we have known in our lives, and I think it is likely to have the impact of both World Wars. — Jack Cummins

Come now. 2 million have died in this pandemic, so far. It isn't over, but it doesn't look like we will even approach a quarter of the 50 million who died in the 1918 influenza pandemic-- which came, remember, at the conclusion of a world war which killed around 20 million. Neither western culture, nor anyone else's, was rocked to the core by these events. 85 million people died in WWII, and life has continued on--albeit with some major regime changes (China, India, and of course Germany and Japan).

Us old folks are about done with the world, so we aren't going to see many major cultural upheavals in our time remaining -- at least, we hope like hell that we won't. Young people, on the other hand, are doomed to see many major changes, and their children still more. The Ancient Chinese Curse--may you live during interesting times--is your fate.

Which of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse will run you all down--war, famine, plague, or global warming is up for grabs. Take your pick.

Cultural collapse will come when the older generation (whichever generation that is) can not successfully transmit a coherent culture to its children because that culture has been rendered obsolete and irrelevant for the newly existing conditions.

There is a nice science fiction book which illustrates this quite nicely: Earth Abides by George R. Stewart. In this 1949 story, 99.9% of the world's population is dead from a highly infectious, highly lethal infection. The story focuses on a remnant living in Oakland, California. The infection has burnt itself out; the survivors are healthy; there is a cushion of stored food and matériel in stores and warehouses. There are libraries. They survive.

The main character, and narrator of the story, hopes to pass on the culture that existed before the world-killing pandemic struck. He can't! It doesn't work. The children who have been born since the pandemic are not interested in that unknowable past. The narrator comes to understand that the children must, of necessity, live in the present time and can not use the cultural resources of a world that has ceased to exist.

Perhaps in 2100, 2150, or 2200 adults will be wringing their hands over their children's disinterest in the riches of the passed--but now totally irrelevant culture of the late 21st century and before. Why learn proper English when England is disappearing? for what purpose would one learn mathematics, when the task at hand is to find enough to eat? When one can expect to live, on average, say, for 40 years, what is the point of recovering the past?

Maintaining the status quo is a choice. Radical change is imposed.

Revolutions and radical changes come about because existing conditions have created unbearable stress in the system. Something has to give, and once it does, like a bridge subjected to too many stresses, it will collapse -- regardless of what conservatives, liberals, reactionaries, or revolutionaries prefer.

Might conditions get worse? Conditions will almost certainly get worse, no matter what BECAUSE in the long run, things fall apart. Like Keynes said, "in the long run we are all dead."

If you don't want a revolution in which once lovely societies become desperate shit holes, then the best policy is a forward thinking commitment to sustainable (and significant) change. In other words, if you don't want a revolution, then get ahead of the growing stresses and deterioration. Fix the damn bridge now so it doesn't collapse, and start building its replacement.

State governments used to fund radio stations in the US --thinking here of the Wisconsin State Radio Network or university radio (like U of Minnesota, Iowa, South Dakota, Nebraska, and other state universities). The state stations provided the high brow content missing from commercial radio. Highbrow was OK, as long as it wasn't too edgy. Those stations haven't disappeared, for the most part, but they are now more dependent on donations (the fund drives, corporate blurbs, etc.).

What is the title on the Finnish book? At least Americans didn't have to worry about any dirty Marxists manipulating them.

I was going to make a claim for the golden age of television, but then remembered that in the middle of my golden era, Newton Minow proclaimed 1960s television to be "a vast wasteland". God, Minow hadn't seen anything yet. Now the wasteland has been enriched by a giant dung heap. (Minow is still alive - he's 94; I read that he was up to date on how bad commercial media continues to be.)

Still, the vast wasteland and the dung heap have managed to do a great job "educating" the public to fulfill their prime consumption imperative.

I liked that Biden told trump to "shut up". I'd have preferred "drop dead" but that would probably be considered 'inappropriate'. I couldn't stand watching the thing. Trump behaved like the insufferable boor that he is, plus being a lying, thieving, knavish scoundrel and going down hill from there.

It's a great thing that the old guys on the Forum don't 'sound' old at all! I'm 74, your junior. Alas, it will always be that way.

Audience size, revenues, and content are related. The purpose of television, for instance, is to sell audiences to advertisers using the content as bait. On the other hand, there is also a business of selling news. It takes a financial base to support news gathering, editing, and presentation, Even in the non-profit sector, NPR has to have revenue--more than it can get from fund drives (shudder); hence, those blasted "enhanced corporate support acknowledgements". No revenue, no publication. That's why so many newspapers have folded.

In the best operations, the publisher side (financing) is separate from the editor side (news content). Unfortunately, Gresham's Law applies, and bad news operations (like Fox) will drive out excellent news operations. Then there is social media where bad content is often the starting point, and goes downhill from there. How did QAnon spread so far?

You likely know all this, so just preaching to the choir. You doing OK in these days of plague (one kind or another)?

Antony, stay engaged, but give yourself a break. Or a brake, maybe.

One has to step back from excessive exposure to repetitious daily news (doesn't matter from where -- NPR, Fox, BBC, social media, etc.). An occasional review of a good newspaper is sufficient. Either Thoreau or Emerson said that reading a newspaper once a month was enough. Well, maybe twice a month.

Once the exposure to the hammering of competing slogans, chants, clichés, distorted information, too much information, and so on is significantly reduced, you can better decide what you actually think.

It really does take time to sort out the issues we are dealing with, and one doesn't have to agree with every group that thinks THEY are on the side of the angels. BLM? Defund the Police? Too many Catholics on the Supreme Court? Conservatives? Alt-Right? QAnon? (god help us all). A tax-dodging, morally gross, sleazy lying president--well, I find Trump loathsome, but to be honest--he's not the first one, and he won't be the last. Having a senile sort-of liberal president won't be a lot better.

So, reconcile yourself to being alive during a time of social upheaval, very bad economic policy, lots of screwy people and movements becoming media darlings, and worse. You can keep yourself usefully occupied by closely examining what appears to be going on vs. what is actually going on. (Not everything that glitters is gold.)

And welcome to The Philosophy Forum!

Good topic; good questions.

Why is this still present on our lives? — Alejandro

Because we are social animals and this is the way social animals behave. Why would it be otherwise?

Ideas such as women in the workplace become powerhouses of change — Alejandro

You know, women have been in the work place since ancient times without producing any change at all. Men and women peasants worked in the field together--not because women were liberated, but because it took every able-bodied person to produce enough food and fiber. In the industrial revolution, men, women, and children all worked in factories because their pay -- in exchange for producing tremendous value -- was so low. American slavery was equal opportunity: men and women picked cotton all day in the hot sun. Only during rather brief times of great generalized prosperity have many people -- male and female both -- been able to exempt themselves from the workplace (like during the 1950s and 60s).

In addition to socially acceptable ideas and behavior, there are socially acceptable ideas ABOUT socially acceptable behaviors. I'm 74. My mother did not work outside the home (she had to work pretty hard in the home to care for herself, husband, and 7 children. My father worked full time). Many women in the small town I grew up in did not work outside of the home. I still carry around the idea that it is better for women to take care of children and home, rather than working away from home. This is no longer a viable option for any but either very wealthy or very poor women. My ideas are outdated. Many feminists think it quite backwards to admire homemakers. Again there are acceptable ideas and unacceptable ideas about behavior.

When I was a young man in the 1960s, being homosexual was considered a disease, or severe moral flaw, or at the very least, a damned poor adjustment to reality. Of course I grew up with that idea and had to work very hard to change what I thought about my homosexuality. Eventually I came to view homosexuality as normal, desirable, and perfectly acceptable, and so did a lot of other people. That was what the lavender flag of Gay Liberation was about. Eventually quite a few heterosexuals came to agree that we were OK (at least for the time being).