What do you think of "psycho-somatic" disorders? This starts getting tricky because the delusions can be subtle. — schopenhauer1

I don't know enough about It. From what I have read, people who have a 'psychosomatic condition' really do feel that something is wrong with them--feel, not just think. They can have real pain from a condition that doesn't actually exist. Some of these can be serious -- like unfortunate people who think one of their limbs actually belongs to somebody else. They don't 'recognize it' as their own.

I'm wondering though if there is a connection between the two. Perhaps the compulsion is a maladaptive form of the superstitious tendency in humans. — schopenhauer1

I tend to separate superstitious thinking "Hey, this red shirt is a lucky charm!" from OCD "I HAVE TO count the chairs in my row, or I'll be really uncomfortable." I have a habit, or mild compulsion, to rinse out my glass before I fill it with cold water from the tap. I find a wet glass more appealing. A plastic glass, on the other hand, can't be helped by rinsing it out first. Yuck. It's a non-functional behavior. I used to have more of these, but they have faded away.

If one has OCD, I would suspect that new compulsions will be manufactured out of superstitious ideas -- like the lucky red shirt MUST be worn under various circumstances or something bad will happen.

The sometimes screwy things that go on in our brains (superstition, religious fervor, unreasonable fearfulness or confidence, hallucinations, etc.) could very well be connected -- I just don't know how. The brain is just so damned complicated.

Human cultures were (I am presuming) far more superstitious in previous millennia, and there is a residue that has been preserved into the present time. Some of the residue is preserved by official religious instruction and informal folkways. Some of it is new -- created by accident--Jack got a raise on the day he was wearing a bright red shirt. The shirt had nothing to do with the raise, but Jack associated the two events (quite strongly) and thenceforth thought of the shirt as 'strongly lucky'.

Superstitions are not the same as compulsions. The compulsion to count things isn't superstitious -- it's just slightly crazy. The lucky red shirt isn't crazy -- it's just slightly stupid.

Still, compulsions and superstitions can provide the sense of having control over the world, which tends to be important to us, given that we do not have control over a lot of things. A professor said, "Magic is religion you don't believe in; religion is magic you do believe in." A former priest said. "Nothing fails like prayer." Millions of people believe in the actual effectiveness of prayer (the gods will act) which is magic one believes in. Religious magic is basically superstitious.

So, my take is that many rational, intelligent, educated people feel better when they deploy whatever superstitious magic they believe in. And as luck would have it, things work out well enough often enough to provide support for magical thinking. And when it doesn't, there are other explanations available.

It's a very intriguing figure.

perhaps sex appeal is an art in itself — Lionino

Some people seem to be just naturally saturated with sex appeal, while others can take what they've got and make what they want, or what they think other people want. There is definitely an art to this. There are a few unfortunates who are (to most other people) sexually repellant. Usually this is not something they bear responsibility for. I'm thinking of 2 guys: one was short, had some skeletal / bone problems, very bad teeth, and had a speech impediment. He was a tax accountant. He was reasonably likable, but had zero sex appeal. The other guy was tall and very thin with wild grey hair and a long unkept beard. His nickname was Bicycle Mary -- he rode his bike to the main gay bar in all weather. In addition to looking like a crazy man, his behavior was a little crazy too. Zero sex appeal.

Those were two people out of a thousand.

Tattoos are a popular enhancements. They have come a long way since the days of the classic drunken sailor getting a tattoo he will regret in the morning. Many men are buying tattoos that are artful designs executed with skill (and quite costly). I would prefer people keep their face and neck free of tattooing, but... no accounting for taste.

Vestus virum reddit, the Romans said -- clothes make the man. The well-put-together outfit goes a long way to enhance one's appearance and presence. The guys who show up in black leather and chains are not doing anything different than the guys who show up in Brooks Brothers suits. A jacket and tie can be good bait, just as jeans with holes and a ripped sweatshirt can be.

It's all art, lower case 'a' and quite essential to human interaction.

Body building has a history, of course. 19th century circus acts (strong men lifting very heavy objects) popularized having musculature that was outside the norm. (There were, of course, very strong ag and industrial workers whose physiques were not celebrated.). In the US, Bernarr McFadden promoted "health and fitness". Himself a raw vegetarian, there are something of a "religion" about him.

How defined one's muscles will be depends on type and duration of exercise, amount of sub-cutaneous fat, muscle flexing during posing, and so on. Here's a picture of McFadden as a young mn, already practicing what he preached:

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Bernarr McFadden

Raw vegetables and weight lifting worked for him. He was 87 when he died in 1955.

A lot of men who post pictures of themselves on Tumblr (and elsewhere) look pretty fit, but often their musculature does not appear with sharp definition. It isn't that they haven't done the work -- I suspect they are not starved enough to get very fine resolution of every vein, follicle, muscle, tendon, and bone

I'm not criticizing them -- I'd be grateful to look half as buffed. In the summer of 92 I did a lot of training for a series of 100 mile bike rides. I had the endurance and strength but not much definition. I was too well nourished, for sure.

Most men probably do muscle building for sex appeal. Most of them are not doing it as "art", even if they achieve beauty. Ballet and modern dance performers maintain their bodies for their art -- as do some other artists--musicians for instance.

Let's move on. I just don't like the word "wisdom". I have no problem with the content of "experience, knowledge, and good judgment". You like the word--wisdom--fine. Keep seeking it.

Our collective problem isn't the term, it's how to get the content.

So counting curiosity out... "The world" is not self-explanatory. Life is difficult. Bad things happen to good people. Inexplicable events happen, without warning, and with usually bad (but sometimes good) consequences. We feel a need to explain the inexplicable and to control nature.

Unlearnéd humans have sought explanations to avoid harms. Over the millennia we didn't make a lot of progress in understanding how nature worked. Then within the last several hundred years we discovered more about the world, and devised more theories about how the world actually worked that turned out to be correct.

Vaclav Smils points out that Newton, et al who extracted some solid principles of understanding the world would not understand much about the modern world, even though gravity, for instance, is still a challenge. The 19th century scientists who probed deeper and developed an understanding of electricity and magnetism, chemistry and atomic structure would be very surprised by the modern world, but they would understand a lot about what we are doing now.

We are safer now in a world we understand much better. Vaccines, storm prediction, quake-proof architecture, and so on make us safer. Of course understanding how to suck up an ocean of oil and burn it has huge down-sides--global warming. But at least we understand WHY there is global warming, and we know WHAT we should do, even if BP, Exxon, Ford, GM, Toyota, and Trump et al stand in the way.

Making life better (or more richly interesting) and survival is why we strive to understand the world.

"Philosophia" meant "love of wisdom" to the Greeks. for us it means

the study of the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and existence, especially when considered as an academic discipline.
a particular system of philosophical thought.
plural noun: philosophies
"Schopenhauer’s philosophy"
the study of the theoretical basis of a particular branch of knowledge or experience.
"the philosophy of science"

I have never seen an episode of Family Matters.

A lot of words get abused and take on improper meanings. Take genocide. It is horrible. Take war. It is horrible. War and genocide are different things, even though they are both horrible. So I object to calling Israel's war on Gaza "genocide", especially when the word is tossed around in a facile chant, like "you can't run, you can't hide/we charge you with genocide" chanted at the city council of Helena, Montana. Total bullshit.

"Innocence" and "wisdom" have been abused and over used. It isn't the fault of the word, it's the fault of jabbering.

Yes, I find myself on this "love of wisdom" or "study of reality" site, and often think that many of the arcane posts I read have nothing to do with the price of potatoes--aka, reality. But, carry on, gentlemen.

If you're saying that innocence means, in part, being open to rich and interesting experiences, then we are in full agreement. — kudos

Sorry. I don't think I said, and I didn't mean to say that innocence means being open to rich and interesting experiences.

I don't like the terms innocence and wisdom; they're way too loaded to mean much. And I don't think the boss of innocence leads to the gain of wisdom. Innocence is lost early on. Wisdom comes along a lot later and is the result of being 'refined' in the mills of experience.

You know little children and the "Terrible Twos"? Two year olds can be such a pain. Why is that? Because the cute little innocent child has discovered something that undermines innocence: He has become aware of himself and his measly bit of power. He doesn't have much power at all, but he can wield it; he can now say, "NO" to adults. NO! I won't eat that food. NO! I won't sit on the potty. NO! I won't go to sleep. Just that awareness of self, so essential to development, undermines innocence. And that's just one thing, Learning to talk undermines innocence. Learning to walk and run undermines innocence. All absolutely desirable things!

Innocence is the baby in the cradle. It's a lovely state in some ways, but we don't want to go back to being babies in cradles.

It sounds like the point both BC and yourself are making is that when innocence tends to be insular and not ask questions of itself, it becomes plainly satisfied. That we need to be 'impelled' by something, no?

Isn't that simply a certain content and form of philosophy? What's wrong about living a simple life without worry or anxieties, supposing those questions bring with them those feelings? — kudos

"Innocence" is another word I don't like very much. It is a feature that belongs to children, presumably, but how long are they supposed to be "innocent"? Freud didn't think they were so innocent. Innocence fits puppies and kittens for only a while.

Experience impels us forward into the world. We find rich and interesting details in experience and we want more rich and interesting experiences. Curiosity, you know.

There's nothing wrong at all with living a simple life, if that's possible. But what does "simplicity" mean? In some ways, the simpler the life, the more anxiety and worry. Picture a family living simply on the land. No worries, except for providing shelter, fuel, food, water, clothing, etc from the land, with their labor. The fatal "simplicity" of that life is deceptive.

Picture a more complex life, one with a house, electricity, canned food, clothing, transportation, medical care, a telephone, etc. This more complex life tends to have more protections, more back-up systems, more help when we need it than a very simple life. Yes, complex lifestyles have significant vulnerabilities. What if electricity fails in a storm? What if the wind blows the roof off one's house? The likelihood of surviving these disasters are really pretty good. Having people to help you means complexity.

↪BC BC should I jump off the bridge now or later? — kudos

At your convenience, of course. But what are you trying to say by mentioning a jump off the bridge?

How did you learn what experience, knowledge and good judgement were, and where did you get the idea that they were better than the absence thereof? All solely from yourself? — kudos

"Experience" arises from existence. Once I existed (not my fault -- somebody else did it) experience began and started shaping my existence. The existence of any animal with some sort of central nervous system will be shaped by its experience--learning. If one's species has a big enough CNS it will develop a culture, and action of that culture will be one more type of experience shaping one's existence. There is a human "I" in the process. The "I" becomes conscious of its existence and becomes aware of self, existence, and experience, and begins to direct the process.

I never did get the idea that no experience, no knowledge, and no good judgement were even a thing. People "judge" their experience on the basis of how it affects their existence. "Good judgement" -- however one defines it -- leads to better existence and better experiences than bad judgement. Falling down drunk in the snow and losing one's fingers to frostbite is an example of exercising bad judgement -- drinking too much to manage one's existence.

there's no way for philosophy to exist without experience and knowledge — kudos

There's no way for us to exist without experience and knowledge, never mind philosophy.

There are a lot of dull-normals in the world, and most of them get along quite well without worrying about philosophy and wisdom. They sleep well, get up and go to work, produce the world's needs and wants. They go shopping, play with their children, make love, watch Fox News, drink beer, pay their rent or mortgage, dine at Olive Garden to celebrate important events. They get old and die. Life goes on.

The arch of life for very bright philosophers is not all that different than the lives of dull normals. They might not watch Fox News (preferring the BBC), but they drink beer. They may shop more carefully, or not, and may dine at an out-of-the-way ethnic restaurant preferred by food snobs. They may read more, and think interesting thoughts (or not). Otherwise, their lives are about the same as dull normals. They might very well have less money than dull normals. They might not even have a pot to piss in. They get old and die. Life goes on.

Would you equate these urges and wishes with wisdom? — kudos

No. "Wisdom" isn't a word I use very often. I don't like it. It's a Hallmark greeting card kind of word.

As we age, infancy to senescence, we discover the various costs that our urges and wishes impose on us. I don't regret having inconvenient urges and wishes -- I regret acting on some of them. Wisdom means "the quality of having experience, knowledge, and good judgment". Those are better words to use.

What gave you the idea that it was something worth finding to begin with? — kudos

Well, "having experience, knowledge, and good judgment" allows one to avoid some of the errors we are prone to.

The more reason to think of it as a construction of Western reason. The way you word it sounds like you think it worth less because it's not a notion that has existed forever. — kudos

Well, western reasoning is all I have got. No, I don't think it worth less because it hasn't existed forever. A lot of very good ideas are very recent.

Good question!

I don't know whether "some desires" are "meant" to remain unfulfilled, but we are all better off if "some desires" remain unsatisfied. We don't have a "drive for wisdom" as much as it takes time for individuals to develop it. In my old age, I don't know whether I have developed all that much wisdom or not. Some people seem to find it earlier. Lucky them.

Children have the temporary advantage of not knowing much about the world; their quest to know and understand the world may or may not be successful, but fairly soon human minds become a warehouse of second and third hand goods--some of value, some ready for final recycling. It's dirty work sorting out all this crap.

What we call "innocence" is short lived. Kittens and puppies, figuratively. Literally, kittens and puppies grow up to be killer cats and wolves. Children lose their temporary innocence-advantage pretty quickly. Urges and wishes, kindly and not, start arising fairly soon.

Social historians tell us that "childhood and adolescence" is a very recent view of childhood. As far as we can tell, ancient people on up to the recent times thought of children as miniature adults--not especially innocent and capable of economic contribution.

Some businesses are unethical by their very nature: loan sharking; phone / internet fraud; manufacturing products with known serious deficiencies (toys with lead paint); toxic food products. Some businesses tolerate unethical behavior by staff. The unethical behavior can harm co-workers, customers, etc. Some businesses cheat their employees by withholding part or all of their wages. Some businesses discriminate against customers and employees (various types of discriminatory behavior).

The most pervasive fraud perpetrated is the basic labor contract whereby the worker receives a small fraction of the value of the goods he or she produces. Apple Corporation had profits of 97 billion dollars last year. The workers who produced the various products and services that Apple sells receive none of the profits. They receive a wage which amounts to substantially less than all the goods and services they produce. The people who shared 97 billion dollars of net profit did not produce anything at all.

Your typical capitalist does not see anything unethical about this system. Because the fraud is the foundation of wealth, so they have deep interests in NOT seeing capitalism as theft (Proudhon: "property is theft". Balzac: "Under every great fortune lies a swindle")

Whether the work environment is ethical or not is a worthwhile question, but it would be helpful if you set up the discussion with a little more content.

On the one hand, we are not "forced" to take any given job at any wage in any environment; on the other hand, if we do not work for a wage, we will not eat. Capitalism is a system of wage slavery -- per Karl Marx -- and we are a) in the large exploited group; b) in the small exploiter group; or c) scrounging for survival.

On the other hand, we join together in large enterprises to produce the means for a complex society -- everything from picking beans to drawing cartoons for the New Yorker.

The work environment ranges between sometimes really great to much more often really awful, but only through worker solidarity and agitation can work be "fair".

One difference between animal intelligence and computers is that young animals -- puppies and people -- initiate inquiry into the world around them. Animal intelligence reaches out on its own. another difference: A computer (AI) has to be given instructions to acquire information--which they do not convert into experience. They can discover that it is 110ºF in the shade but they can not "feel" the heat. Animals experience the world through their bodies. They can tell that it is hot, and unpleasant. Computers can not do that.

Animal intelligence isn't separate from the bodies which contains it. Computers may have a chassis, may have millions of components, but there is no experience, no body to have experience,

This animal intelligence that is writing now can not tell whether some of the people who bring. up computers and AI are in favor of, or against, granting computers "thought". Some of them seem to long for a thinking machine. It strikes me as a little like wanting one's puppets to come alive.

There is something 'Hopperish' in his selection of topics. A difference though is that the colors in Hoppers paintings tend to use fairly saturated colors. The second one you posted, for instance.

The photograph I posted was by Dean West at Saatchi Art. Here's another Dean West photo; this one reminds me of David Hockney (painter) based on the subject matter and colors.

Palm Springs # 2, 2015 [LAST ONE] Artist Proof 2 of 296 W x 60 H x 0.1 D inDean West

Saatchi is asking $90,750 for the pool photo.

OK, should there be a shadow to the right of the station? But the suitcase and cowboy shadow seem consistent with the bench shadow, the lamp shadow hanging on the left side of the station. and so on. The man in the window seems more like an added image--he's too close to the window glass and too short. Also, I see that the station belongs to the Grand Trunk line. Don't know much about the GT.

The photo certainly seems composed (not a snap shot) and perhaps manipulated. I still like it, particularly the grey/beige/slightly green palate.

Marlboro cowboy gone to seed... He doesn't appear to be old enough to be a seedy Marlboro cowboy, though I see what you are talking about. The cigarette mascots tended to be mature men with deeply weathered faces, from years of riding, roping, and smoking. He is lanky, though, like a cowboy ought to be. Do cowboys travel with luggage? No saddle bags?

Apparently Grand Trunk is not a double rail system out west. Side tracks are used to allow for passing trains.

When I saw this image on Tumblr, my first thought was 'very realistic painting". The fineness of the detail quickly persuaded me otherwise. Still, it seems a very 'painterly' photograph. It also is a bit difficult to place in time -- the station looks like something from the early 20th century, give or take a couple of decades, but the man, the suitcases, and the transmission poles in the background look much more recent. There is a Petersburg station in western Canada on the CP or CN railroad.

It's a very nice composition.

Preaching is hard work. You have to keep coming up with startling new interpretations of texts that has been chewed over for 2000 to 3000 years. The people expect their pastor/rabbi/priest to have original ideas. When I wrote a paper for a Shakespeare class the professor said we were not expected to come up with new ideas about Richard III -- there weren't any. Just prove whatever case we were trying to make. Shakespeare has been chewed on for only 400 years.

It's good to have posts in church; they enable the bored to doze during the sermon, unobserved.

Communion occurs twice: once in the service, a second time during coffee. If Jesus had been Lutheran, coffee would be the transubstantiating liquid, pie the flesh. Serving hot coffee and pie during communion would be more complicated than bread and wine.

Because God is merciful, we use a pipe organ and sing proper hymns. Why does 'hymn' have a silent 'n'? Many churches, even Lutherans, employ the abomination of "praise bands" which distinguish themselves mostly by being way too loud.

Our prayer list needs to be purged, but you know, bad optics.

it would be surprising, if anyone would admit that he's talking rubbish himself — Pez

We should probably have a Truth and Reconciliation category for people to confess that they have been talking rubbish! Welcome to The Philosophy Forum, by the way.

I've not had much success studying philosophy. Back in the '60s, philosophy wasn't on the curriculum of the state college I attended. 15 years after graduating, I tried some basic courses through extension at the University and found them awful. I share the blame with Philosophy. Academic philosophy just is not my cup of tea.

I'm an old man now, and have spent the last 15 years in the big open pit mine, scraping out good ore to fill in the holes that my undergraduate education left. The history and sociology of cities has been a productive vein. So has the history of technology; trying to understand our several ecological crises has been useful. The Roman Empire and the Medieval period in Europe is always fruitful. There is so much good scholarship out there!

Revisiting books I should have read as an English major is useful too, but I've gotten better results from nonfiction. I am currently reading Zola's Au Bonheur des Dames, The Ladies Paradise, set in a mid-19th century Parisian department store. It's fiction in translation and it opens a window on the development of retail consumer culture. Its history is longer than I thought it was.

I have nothing to offer on Kant or Hegel, Plato or Aquinas.

Something to do with a den of thieves.

There is much to recommend parish churches. I belong to a Lutheran church. I wasn't raised Lutheran, but its liturgy is meaningful and they are located across the street. The congregation used to be very large with many youth activities and programs for adult members. The sanctuary can hold about 250 - 300 people; Sunday services usually are about 125. When I joined 13 years ago, it was mostly old people (including me). Now we have a much younger congregation, have enough children to have Sunday school and (small) confirmation classes.



The church was built in 1949 for a large German Lutheran congregation belonging to the Missouri Synod. In those years they needed that much space. In the mid 1980s the Missouri Synod was split by a fundamentalist take over. Many of the Missouri Synod congregations voted to leave, as did this congregation. The vote was a 49% 51% vote in favor of leaving. Upon losing the vote, half of the congregation left.

Churches are, generally, on the decline but losing 1/2 of the congregation was bad news. It took about 20 years to recover. There are still a handful of members who have been belonged for roughly 75 years

The church was designed by Ellen Saarinen, a Finnish architect. It's a National Historic Landmark--partly because of who designed it, and partly because it broke the 'American Gothic' mold for new church buildings. It's mid-century modern--not a common style for church buildings then or later.

Eero Saarinen Elliel's son, designed the educational wing added in 1962. It includes classrooms, a huge church kitchen, dining rooms, and a full sized gymnasium. He also designed the TWA Terminal in NYC (now a hotel), Dulles Airport, and the St. Louis Arch.

here's a picture of the Luther Lounge in the Eero Saarinen wing:



Less famous, more modest churches can become the congregation's master; this one cracks the whip. The one very good thing about being a national landmark is that it enables us to apply for grants to help pay for repointing and replacing brickwork, reroofing, replacing worn out boilers, fixing damage from heavy rain, and so on. If it wasn't for the grants, the congregation would have been bankrupted.

Or it might have been run through a parish church compressor - a handy machine for reducing small, disorderly charming churches to standard sized gravel. Shards of stained glass can be set in mortar on the tops of stone walls to deter migratory populations.

Just joking. The parish church compressor was mentioned in an odd funny book published back in the '70s, The Universal Daisy Spacer. It included a plastic device to aid individuals in planting daisies precisely 2.73 inches apart. The objective of the author was to achieve an orderly world--or else.

once the organization was solidly established, it required an enormous, far-reaching administrative structure - communications, banking, supervision of the monastic orders, educational facilities, construction projects.... — Vera Mont

True enough, but Holy Mother Church didn't become a holy big business until the medieval period -- say, around 800 to 1000 a.d. In the last centuries of the western Roman Empire (ending in 476), and for a few centuries after that, the church was a relatively small organization. As Roman/Medieval Historian Peter Heather points out, if you walked around Europe in 700, you would see some Romanesque cathedrals here and there (not big gothic ones) and little else in the way of church buildings. The church didn't deeply penetrate European societies until around 800 - 1000. Around that time, the church created parishes and lots of parish churches were built--some of them are still around.

This isn't to say that missionary work wasn't going on -- it was. And the church established footholds all over the place -- but wasn't able to expand those footholds until later.

The Roman church started out with the structure of the empire -- very top down and bureaucratic. That was the gift of Constantine and his successors.

(I don't say christianize, since Christ seems to have been pushed farther and farther from the center of The One True Faith as it gained power — Vera Mont

It's a major contradiction: Jesus the poor itinerate preacher who said "blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth" was answered by the worldly church: "It's not the earth the meek inherit, it's the dirt!" It was OK for kitchen monks and nuns to be meek, but that lifestyle generally didn't appeal to popes and archbishops who thought of themselves as Roman nobles.

This contradiction is reconstructed in just about every church in the US, where the church building eventually becomes the tail that wags the dog. Most churches are real estate operations, whether they want to be or not. The building becomes the biggest line item in the budget. Don't get me wrong -- I love a nicely maintained charming old church. But charming old churches are a bottomless pit of maintenance expenses. .

There is a church in Minneapolis that was torn down to make way for a freeway. The Minneapolis Lutheran Synod created in its place the 'church without walls' which now serves a large public housing and Somali community. It's about the only such operation that I have heard of. It rents an office, but the pastor's work is mostly in the public housing buildings. It's a model I would like to see more of.

I’m an atheist because I don’t see any evidence for any of the religions. — an-salad

Fine by me if you don't see any evidence.

I'm religious; I'm not spiritual. I respect religion more than I believe it. Religions are among humanity's great creations.

I might believe in God, but not the God whose program involves micromanaging the universe. The God I might believe in is omnipresent, but not omni-engaged. His eye may be on the sparrow (as the song goes) but if a hawk eats the sparrow God may notice but does not punish the hawk.

Perhaps God is the Primum Mobile and part of the Universe. Perhaps not. I wasn't there at the beginning, so I'm guessing.

Did Jesus once walk the streets of Jerusalem? @javi2541997 believes Jesus literally existed. I'm inclined to agree, though like the London Underground riders, we must "MIND THE GAP" when reading the Gospels. Jesus wasn't around to help edit his biography which was written by authors who did not know him personally and did not have access to his phone, his tax forms, his diaries, his trial records, his birth certificate, or back issues of the Jerusalem Post.

Whether the personal testimony that they did have in their hands was reliable, God only knows.

There is nothing bad about religion that isn't bad about believers. Whatever is good in religion is good in believers. As Kant put it, nothing straight was ever built with the crooked timber of mankind.

be decent to one another. — Vera Mont

Sure.

It's an enormous PR success. It was promulgated and sold in Roman format, under the auspices of a mighty empire with some pretty canny administrators. They had the missionaries, the architects and enforcers to cobble every pagan sect into some semblance of the Christian faith. — Vera Mont

By the time the Empire, in the person of Constantine in 312, sort of got interested in Jesus the church had been in business for a while. The general policy of the Empire was to tolerate pagan sects as long as people continued to worship the official gods. Jews and Christians were not very good at this dual role. They received some static, but nothing like a vicious pogrom.

The church may or may not have christianized the Empire, but more significantly, the Empire certainly imperially bureaucratized the church.

I personally don't put a whole lot of stock into the concept of 'the past', and most (but not all) of my discussion kind of assumes the concept is meaningless. — noAxioms

“The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there,” wrote L.P. Hartley in his 1953 novel “The Go-Between.” How we understand the past and how we come to terms with our own memories, is an unpaid debt that all humans share.

“The past is never dead. It's not even past.” - William Faulkner

I do not know with any certainty how long "the present" is. A second? A nanosecond? A minute? A vanishing moment between the untouchable past and the expected--but not guaranteed--future? The past seems more certain -- at least 13+ billion years worth. It sometimes seems like the present is an ever-vanishing moment; at other times the present seems stabile.

I do not understand how the past can be meaningless. You have a past; if you did not, you would not be speculating about time travel, or anything else. You have been a member of TPF for 8 years worth of the past. Your past isn't meaningless. You -- we -- are connected to the past by links on a chain stretching back to the beginning of the universe. Our basic body plan (vertebrate) appeared about 518 million years ago. The book Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body by Neil Shubin explains our physical connection to the past.

But carry on.

I was joking. I do not believe time travel is possible -- though it is a fertile topic of science fiction.

On a more theoretical level, the past can not be altered. Remembered? Yes. Misremembered? Yes -- that's the usual experience. Reinterpreted? Yes. Denied? Some try. Longed for? Yes, usually that's a mistake--the good old days were terrible. Visited? No.

I look at the past as a crystal -- the atoms in the crystal stay organized the way they are and the universe remains intact. Time's arrow does not turn around and go wherever we might want it to go. We may not like the present, but we've already screwed things up in the past, and we would screw it up again--because we are not merely fallible, we are dead ringers for making big mistakes.

God, who some conceive as omnipresent -- present in the past, present, and future and everywhere all at once -- has not, according to our founding fictions. seen fit to do over any part of the past.

The important question here is cost and the likelihood of prompt and complete refunds if time travel doesn't deliver on the promised delights of the Roman Baths, the thrill of watching T Rexes mate, or the satisfaction of shooting J. W. Booth on his way to the Ford Theater on the evening of April 14, 1865. Or is time travel strictly caveat emptor?

Exactly! "Under capitalism, everything is reduced to the cash nexus." Karl Marx

It's still true; maybe even more so now.

The article you refer to includes book stalls as "culture" but maybe it's just another shop? — Benkei

Yes. Book sellers are, after all, engaged in business. They are not unique 'culture agents'. None the less, one may be very fond of the shops. Business, after all, is as much a part of Parisian culture as the Louvre.

A book store sells "cultural goods" in the same way a record store, an art store, or a haute couture store does. Presumably Parisians who peruse the various specialist book stalls and buy a book every now and then are consuming culture. Presumably people who peruse the pages of Amazon.com and buy a book (new or used) every now and then are also consuming culture.

I have never been to Paris and so have no experience of book stall culture. Their temporary closure was "for security" at the up-coming Olympic events. The Olympics are both culture and business -- probably more business than culture.

There is the idea that 'family' is a naturally happy arrangement. I suppose in many cases it is, though 'happiness' in human affairs tends to be fleeting. A happy family today might be an unhappy family tomorrow.

I agree with your take on practice making perfection.

Hey, here's another one: True or False? This was quoted in an article about keeping the Parisian booksellers in place during the Olympics. Why book stalls on the street would pose a threat to security is beyond me.

"Anything that degrades culture shortens the paths that lead to servitude." Albert Camus

Bowling Alone was developed from his 1995 essay entitled "Bowling Alone: America's Declining Social Capital". Putnam surveys the decline of social capital in the United States since 1950.

Apparently Robert Putnam found enough decline in social capital over 1950 and 1995 to justify the seminal essay. Those are years some are likely to now reference as "the good old days" before the personal computer, the internet, smart phones, social media, apps for everything, etc. became ubiquitous. New technology and new media have, no doubt, exacerbated isolation and solitary activity, but the process began before either their existence or ubiquity.

If we can't blame social media, cell phones, dating apps, etc. for declining sociability, then what contributed to the decline of "social capital"?

Some candidates:

Television. It has most often been viewed at home; it's less social than watching a film in a theater or any kind of live performance. Per Marshal McLuhan, it's the media not the content.

Suburbia. A very large share of suburbs were created de novo after WWII. "Actual, interpersonal community" might or might not develop from the process of peopling the settlement through real estate sales. Many women who were not working found suburbia a lonely place, a population of lonely people. IF men did not establish community at work, they commuted home to a lonely town/

Work. There are a variety of workplace 'styles': some of them highly competitive and hierarchical; some of them highly exploitative; some of them extremely boring; some of them egalitarian; some more interesting than others. Over time (from the early 70s forward) wages and benefits began to stagnate then decline, eventually requiring workers to put in more hours at work. Maintaining a family's lifestyle might require a second member of the family to begin working as well. More work = less time and energy for social activity.

Automobiles. Cars enabled some degree of personal liberation. A car provided private transportation free of supervision or observation. This function may have become invisible by its ubiquity. Having a car provides numerous individual benefits. A car can enable one to reach destinations for social activity, but the trip itself is often alone. The more time one spends traveling in a car (commuting, for instance) the more one is forced to spend time alone.

Geographical and social mobility. Americans tend to move fairly often -- maybe a few blocks away or a few miles from one's last home. Or maybe 2,000 miles away, from Des Moines to Los Angeles or St. Louis to New York. Mobility often breaks up social networks, while at the same time creating new social networks -- or not.

When the personal computer, Internet, cell and then smart phone, and social media arrived, they offered a simulacrum of social life. it is often much more "social-like" than "actually social". And, of course, it's all pretty much dependent on advertising dollars which yields high incomes for owners and investors.

What to do? Join a bowling league. The local Eagles Club has a couple hours of dancing every nigh, tango to polka. Go to church (for the society). Talk to your neighbors whenever there is an opportunity; create opportunities. Talk to at least one person while grocery shopping -- some brief friendly chat. Participate in groups engaged in activities you find interesting. Find someone to have lunch or dinner with once a week. Engage.

Or, do unto others before they do it to you.

Yes.

As does deliberately misinforming the public, or at the very least presenting a situation to the public in a biased way. — Vera Mont

Two instances come to mind. The Gulf of Tonkin "incident" in 1964 may have been faked, but it justified the expansion of military action in Vietnam. Another, certainly faked, justification for war was Iraq's alleged purchase of "yellow cake" uranium from Niger for nuclear bomb work by Iraq. This provided one more excuse to invade Iraq.

During the war in Vietnam there was opposition early on -- initially quite small. By 1969 the opposition was very large. 500,000 people turned out for the Washington, D. C. anti-war demonstration in November of 1969. I was one of them. Across the country there were marches and mobilizations against the war involving millions of people registering their dissent from national policy.

The net result on the Nixon administration was minimal. The war went on and was even expanded. Those opposed to the war remained opposed but demonstrations proved insufficient to change administration policy.

The anti-war movement wasn't without effect, however. It did change the way a large number of people thought about war, the government, and national priorities. The majority were not persuaded.

The long series of civil rights demonstrations running from the 1950s into the 1970s achieved more concrete results and legislative change. Congress and legislatures enacted piecemeal changes which over time significantly reduced the immorality of racial discrimination. "Significantly reduced" but did not eliminate.

So, people sometimes find ways to publicly rebuke their governments and distance themselves from complicity. But complicity, responsibility, and guilt are difficult to avoid in complex society. For example, one might be in favor of equal rights and opportunity for blacks, but live in a long-segregated white suburb.

I don't have time to answer all messages — LFranc

IF you don't have time to reply to your responders then don't bother to start a thread. You don't have to respond immediately -- hours later is fine,

There are circles of widening responsibility for an elected leaders actions, but the leaders and initiators of crimes are most responsible and responsible first. John F. Kennedy (President 1960-1963) is responsible for the planned (and ill-conceived) invasion of Cuba. He didn't hatch this plan by himself -- there were a few dozen people near the top of the government who were involved.

I bear no responsibility for what Kennedy did. I was 16 at the time; but I would not have been responsible had I been older. Richard Nixon (President 1969-1974) didn't start the war in Viet Nam, but he did continue and expand it. Nixon had many supporters among the populace, as well as opponents. I was opposed. The invasion of Cuba was secretive. The war in Vietnam was public. Many people voted for Nixon (twice), supported his policies, and so on. Supporters bore some small responsibility for Nixon's actions.

One thing to remember here is that the public is not CONSULTED in any meaningful way about planned military or other actions that may or may not be criminal. The lack of consultation or ability to intervene in top administration activities severely limits responsibility.

Donald Trump, may he rot in hell, might not pay his bills but that doesn't make the bills disappear.