Can you ease my pain? — Shawn

Either opiates or ibuprofen, depending on how bad your pain is.

Bernie would make a better VP than I would. I humbly accept the nomination for POTUS.

Oh, so you're in favor of rape. Got it. — Xtrix

And what are you doing to lift the level? Not much. Get it.

They don't care. It's psychopathy at this point in the DNC. — Shawn

No, I don't think it is psychopathology. I loathe Trump; I dislike Biden. BUT, by and large, both parties and both candidates are rational servants of the class to whom they are indebted. Neither Trump or Biden is going to piss off the capitalist elite by doing anything rashly destructive to their interests.

Third party? I wish there was a third party of strength and substance. It would have to be very large and very effective indeed to push out both the democrats and republicans, and we don't have a parliamentary system, so winning some seats doesn't help much.

Not only are we stuck in a possibly long lasting pandemic, we're stuck in a global climate crisis and we have the misfortune of being born into mature and hegemonic, maybe late stage capitalism. Being late stage capitalism doesn't mean they'll be going anywhere soon. We are stuck, we are fucked. Short of the revolution or Econo-eco-politico-socio-religio-etcio collapse, nothings going to change

I think we can all relate to stories relative to human beings not being able to express their sexual dissatisfactions with their partners. — 3017amen

Yes, and that's why @ttjordy was wondering how open one's discussions should be.

Couples, however they define themselves, definitely do better by communicating what is important to the relationship. Many don't. Or, they bottle up dissatisfactions until it becomes anger then rage and finally they blow up, and a bad time is had all round. And blow-ups usually don't help. (Of course it isn't just sexual issues that follow this course.). Blow-ups involve too many guided missiles and not nearly enough negotiation. It can be hard for the two people to recover.

I've not always been as communicative as I should have been. I don't really know why -- At times I just wanted to get into my shell and stay there. I'm kind of a loner, sort of introverted. The racket between my ears was about all I could manage sometimes.

BTW, I think Freud gets short shrift these days. True enough, not all of his ideas were successful, and Freud was better than some 'Freudian' practitioners. The various schools of psychotherapy that were spawned (everything from Behaviorism to Orgone Boxes) enriched the field greatly and in other cases added a great deal of bullshit to the soil. Wilhelm Reich had some excellent observations in social psychology, particularly about the psychology of fascism, if I remember correctly,, but his theory that one could accumulate psychic energy in his Orgone Box falls into the bullshit category. Too bad. It would be nice if one could.

Why do people have affairs? — 3017amen

I don't think people have affairs for one reason only. Successful monogamy requires self and social discipline -- and in many instances, both of those disciplines are weak. One may not feel much guilt for having affairs and/or the social sanctions for having affairs are not very consequential. Still, we know that morally disciplined, guilt prone people living in rigidly moralistic societies still have affairs. There are both positive and negative motivations for affairs. An affair does not prove that the primary relationship is unsuccessful.

I didn't include biological motivations. I don't think philandering birds are motivated by sexual boredom, and while human behavior may be driven by biological drives, we usually don't think in biological terms when evaluating our own behavior, Husbands are unlikely to explain an affair by saying that he was optimizing his chances of having surviving offspring. He'd be laughed out of court.

a) for variety in sexual and emotional experiences - positive motivation
b) opportunity (suddenly, bedding a casual partner became possible and convenient) - positive motivation
c) boredom with long-term relationship - negative motivation
d) ego-boost (hey, I can still attract others) - positive motivation
e) vindictiveness (punishing a permanent partner) - negative motivation
f) feelings of worthlessness (I'll prove that I am bad) - negative motivation
g) nostalgia (for the days when one was free and available) - either positive or negative motivation

Being intimate means sharing personal, deep maybe dark details — ttjordy

Sure, but if you have a large collection of dark details (whatever that might be) one should save those details for a time when the relationship is mature. Dumping dark details on the unprepared might cause them to bolt for the door.

Yes, I've know people who mulch dark thoughts, dark feelings, etc. A sampling of dark shadows is OK, but if you have a lot to unload, pay somebody to listen.

Politics is public, sex is private — jamalrob

I heard the pubic was political.

"Measures to flatten the curve might have an effect, but a lockdown only pushes the severe cases into the future —it will not prevent them..."

Because he has a crystal ball and knows we won't get a vaccine in time? — Baden

It seems like one of the basic ideas of the lockdown program is that it will both flatten the curve, and push severe cases into the not distant future. Pushing some cases into the future allows the always limited health care system to handle the flattened curve now. As the resources of the health care system are expanded, more future cases -- severe and not so bad -- can be managed. There's no guarantee that this will work indefinitely, but it seems to be working in many states. Yes, the number of cases is growing; yes the number of hospitalizations is growing; yes the number of cases in ICU is growing. It's all growing, but it remains manageable within the constraints of always-limited resources. So far.

Lockdown logic didn't work so well in New York City, where there are about 175,000 cases, about 44,000 hospitalized, 14,000 confirmed Covid-19 deaths, and an additional 5,400 deaths presumed to be from Covid-19. (I rounded off the numbers) Moreover, a very high proportion of the cases in the rest of the country appear to have resulted from the New York City ground zero (using genetic similarities in the virus found elsewhere). A few people from Indiana went to New York City and picked up the virus and brought it back to Indianapolis--early on.

NYC instituted its lockdown on March 20--waaaay too late. It isn't that they didn't care. I suspect that the virus was present in NYC--and lots of other places--before March and February. Probably it arrived in January, or maybe even December. While it is highly contagious, we know that few people promptly drop dead from Covid 19--or even get very sick. That feature allows the virus to spread, undetected.

By the time the cases started showing up, the virus had already built up a good sized base of cases.

My personal guess (based on various casting of auspices like analyzing the guts of freshly slaughtered lambs), looking into my crystal balls (I use 105, averaging the results) and utilizing the Cover-19 Tarot deck, is that the virus won't be going away anytime soon, that the people will suffer for quite time from infections and a very bad economic situation, and that Donald Trump will be dumped in November. I want Donald to take many more risks with infection -- whatever he can manage, like licking the White House door knobs, visiting Covid-19 ICU wards and inhaling deeply every time one of the poor folk coughs, and whatever else he can do.

I'm 73; It took a long time to get to the point where I could be open about sex. I'm pretty open, given the right audience. Your grandmother's birthday might not be the best time and place to discuss your sexual self. On the other hand, you grandmother might like to discuss hers.

When the sex topic is very specific and personal, I tend towards the clinical approach. Clinical talk makes it easier for me than using the vernacular. So, like a lot of gay men, I like to talk about gay sexuality. OLD JOKE: It used to be that homosexuality was the love that dare not speak its name. Now it won't shut up."

Did Finland install its generous social safety early on? My guess is that it did. The US did not. Social Security was not a universal program to start out. Farm labor, maids and servants was left out in order to deny SS to blacks (per the southern block of senators). There were no medical benefits (for 30 years, not until the mid '60s). Unemployment has always been as niggardly and as hard to get as a state wanted to make it. Disability insurance has in various times and places been difficult to qualify for.

The American social safety net was hard won and not overly generous, but it has nonetheless long since been integrated in people's long-range plans.

I'm 83...I won't see it. But I have been an advocate for the UBI for over three decades now. — Frank Apisa

73, here. I don't expect to see it in my lifetime, either. I've been on UBI's bandwagon, more or less, for 30 years too, though from the perspective of socialism. It seems to me the "installed base" of safety net programs, tattered and full of holes as they are, will make a UBI difficult to achieve here (if for no other reason that the installed base will serve as an excuse for not doing).

I am generally in favor of a UBI plan, but I do not think it is a sufficient solution to the distribution of wealth we produce.

Even if a UBI plan were instituted, higher taxation and all, some critical problems remain which would not be addressed.

1. Now more than ever, we need to make a very rapid transition from fossil fuel energy to solar / wind / hydro / nuclear. This involves a radical reorganization of the economy. If you think COVID-19 was disruptive, the very rapid (or even rapid) transition from fossil to renewable energy will be much more disruptive. Much of the world's wealth production is founded on fossil fuels, and it will take perhaps 30 to 50 years to complete the transition. Will we have enough national income to afford a UBI, or much else?

2. Current MANDATORY spending (Social Security, Medicare, etc.) and DISCRETIONARY spending (Defense, Health, Education, Housing, etc.) required 4.4 trillion dollars in 2019, which amounts to 21% of GDP. Taxation produced $3.5 trillion dollars, 16.3% of GDP. [Congressional Budget Office figures].

So, deficit spending.

Reorganizing spending will be a very painful process. Retirement planning has relied on social security for... about 85 years. Medicare has been in place 55 years. That's just two examples of deeply integrated programs. Many other programs are equally integrated in our social expectations. Unwinding trillion dollar programs won't be a simple process.

Like I said, I'm generally in favor of UBI, but implementation has to account for other complicated programs.

Sounds like a very cogent book to be reading at this point.

Yes, we should get rid of bullshit products. Now, if we can just agree on what bullshit products are! But you are overlooking the production of bullshit services. Of course, you don't buy bullshit services, either, and we will now have to decide what belongs on the list of bullshit services, too.

For instance, if Tiff complies with my suggestion that she dry her horse shit in the hot SW sun and sell it to gardeners in Chicago, would that be a... horse shit product?

the exploitation of labor has got to stop — Frank Apisa

Yes, yes, yes. I agree 1000%, unanimously. And thus the need for a revolution. Ceasing the exploitation of workers is not going to happen through any evolutionary process. (Maybe it will happen through a devolutionary process, where civilization collapses, masses die of starvation, and there is essentially no economy in which to exploit anyone. NOT something to look forward to.)

QUESTION: Are bullshit jobs inevitable? If so, why? If they are not inevitable, why do they exist?

The solution will involve getting rid of the "Protestant work ethic"...getting rid of the notion that one must earn one's living. — Frank Apisa

One must earn one's living, but that isn't the Protestant Work Ethic. The PWE says that all work is sacred, dignified, good. At the time that Martin Luther pronounced all work good, the prevailing assumption was that the work of clerics (priests, nuns, monks) was good, at the top of the heap. Mere laborers were at the bottom. Luther declared that the work of a manure collector, foundry worker, miner, baker, etc. was as sacred as priesthood.

Granted: just because one's labor was sacred didn't mean that one was going to get paid well for doing it, but at least one could look on one's sweat as ultimately worthwhile. Elevating the moral import of human labor as a good thing, worthy of respect, was a good thing.

Capitalism has no interest in the PWE except that it gives it ripped off moral cover for exploiting labor, alienating the workers' product from the worker. Capitalism perfected the Capitalist Work Ethic, which is "work for the lowest possible wage and be grateful you have a job." Capitalism is a system of acquisition and accumulation through exploitation.

Or maybe they just don't like their job and bitch about bull shit rather than hitting the highway and finding something better/different.

Yes. Humans have created bounded institutions to serve as rude speed bumps to reduce excessive boundless thinking, reacting, behaving, etc. One sees this in action all the time, where some spark plug in the organization keeps firing off one bright idea after another. Pretty soon the spark plug is managed, i.e., told to shut the fuck up. Or else!

It's a form of suffering imposed on spark plugs that had not consented to be born in the first place, and having been born, have to work to keep body and soul together--though why anyone does that since we didn't want the deal in the first place, is a mystery.

Tiff, think! You have piles of horse shit, high heat, and dry air. Dry the horse shit out in the sun, put it bags, and sell it as raw compost to gardeners in Chicago or Minneapolis. $$$

But what happened was that, although the part of work that is actually productive has been reduced, the amount of unproductive work has increased to an extraordinary degree; to the point were many, many jobs do not produce anything. — Banno

One possibility: The 8 hour day, originally fought for as a ceiling, has become a floor. Full time work is not less than an 8 hour day, whether 8 hours is too much time, or not.

Another possibility: Workers, all levels from building cleaners to building designers, turn good jobs into bullshit jobs because they are what the bosses suspect that they are: lazy, sloppy, malingering, subversive, etc.

A third possibility: Many organizations have outlived their usefulness and have become bullshit operations. Everyone who works there is, ipso facto, doing a bullshit job, perhaps in an exemplary manner.

A fourth: Bullshit jobs are the fulfillment of Cyril Northcote Parkinson's Law: "Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion." [A similar law: Paper expands to fill the available storage space.] Automation of many functions (like Xerox copiers which make excellent copies with little effort, as opposed to ink printing which requires preparing a master copy, dealing with messy ink, etc.) leaves more empty time during the day. The empty time is filled with what will inevitably be minimally productive activity.

And more!

I have occupied a few bullshit jobs. Usually the job could be done in less time than was available. But... 8 hours, and no less. I have sometimes fulfilled the boss's suspicion that workers are lazy, incompetent, sloppy, subversive, etc. And I certainly expected to be paid the same wage, on time, nonetheless.

I have worked for some organizations that had either outlived their usefulness or were never useful in the first place. Everyone working at these places (usually non-profits) was in earnest, hard working, devoted, and all that. Unfortunately, the work was futile--like shoveling wet bullshit with a pitchfork.

The 8 hour day exceeds the required time for many jobs. Because of the floor of 8 hours, one might have to fill 4-8 hours (or more) with activities that sort of resemble work-like activity--bullshit, in other words.

When workers are in jobs that are meaningful (where their executive agency actually has a positive effect on the world) they tend to work harder, more creatively, and more efficiently. A worker who was a total waste in one job might turn out to be a work-leader in a different job.

in the modern world, the physical traits/characteristics that we are born with no longer seem that necessary for us to survive. — Pinprick

The 'modern world' of which you speak is very recent and so far of short duration. I'm 73; my father, born in 1906, grew up on a farm using horses for power. Men and horses both had to put a lot more energy into their work back then. Two world wars were fought between 1914 and 1945, and physical strength and mental prowess counted for a good deal. True enough, mechanically powered farm machinery; cars, trains, and planes; washing machines and driers; bicycles, etc. have made work life easier. But all that ease takes up about only 100 of 50,000-100,000 years of modern human life.

Our survival may be more dependent on the physical traits in the years ahead than we would like to think. A greener future means expending a lot more energy by moving around under our own power -- like walking and biking, carrying stuff. It won't hurt us, and we have bodies perfectly capable of it.

Memes schmemes. I've never found the concept very useful. I'll grant you that many aspects of our lives seem to be driven by memes. Per @unenlightened, scratch a meme and underneath the surface you will find propaganda urging us to do stuff which benefits some large corporation.

Advertising and public relations, brought to new heights by Sigmund Freud's nephew Edward Bernays, are the vehicles through which corporate bastards try to shape our lives.

And he repeats himself. — Banno

Ad nauseam.

I can't see how Trump's disinfectant comments could be understood as sarcastic. — Banno

Sarcasm isn't Trump's style. He makes his point by repetition, statements he repeats; he's a repeater; he's a great repetitious unstable moron. His style is bombast, pomposity, ranting, verbosity, blathering, lying, vague generalizations, and worse.

Dump Trump at the earliest possible opportunity.

It's an expression of pessimism without a rational basis. — ZzzoneiroCosm

Definitely pessimistic, hardly irrational. I'm getting old; I can afford to be honestly pessimistic -- I won't be around, most likely, too much longer. I don't need to maintain optimistic delusions of the sort that I used to.

I'd prefer that the evidence led to optimism. It just doesn't.

This has been done plentifully in the scientific literature of climate change. But take this little piece as an example: A pandemic has (appropriately) frightened the species. Appropriate protective measures (social isolation, distancing, etc.) has produced the highest unemployment in the US (22,000,000) since the Great Depression. Millions of individual's personal economies have tanked. Revenues from commerce, taxes, transit fares, fees, and so on have crashed. Besides all that, many people are sick or dead.

Compare this massive economic and social disruption, just over 3 months long and which isn't over by any means, to the kind of massive long-term industrial/economic/social changes required to sharply and permanently reduce CO2, methane, and other greenhouse gas emissions. The costs, disruptions, ruptures with habit, and so on are so severe that it will cause far worse disruption.

The alternative -- doing what we have been doing since the industrial revolution got underway -- will mean a slower, but no less severe disruption and severe disruption--likely worse, because it will last for a very long time.

OK, technically, global warming won't wipe out the species. Remnants of humanity will remain. They will be isolated little groups of former industrial masters reduced to figuring out how to hunt and gather--if they live long enough. They will have left the glories of human culture behind--the loss of which will only take a couple of generations. Culture is either maintained or it is lost. We know this from ample historical experience.

So sure, we'll survive global warming.

Why would we do this to ourselves? Because: bright as we are, we do not seem to possess the ability to detect distant disasters (like, even 50 years away) and act in the present to avoid them. Environmental, agricultural, population, nuclear, disease, and other disasters have been clearly seen coming down the pike. Humans have not, by and large, acted effectively to avoid any of these calamities.

The [western] Roman Empire endured for many centuries--much longer than the modern world has--and sustained repeated calamities. It always bounced back. Resilience. It bounced back until just the right combination of disasters overwhelmed their exhausted resilience, Then they went down the cloaca Maximus fairly fast.

I laugh at apes. They're a laughing-stock. — ZzzoneiroCosm

You think you have the same relationship to apes that the gods have to us? a joke...

How do you make the gods laugh?
Tell them your plans.

If we're so smart, how come we don't seem to be able to do anything about the reality that we are wrecking the environment.

I hope we become less and less closely related to the apes. — ZzzoneiroCosm

In the fullness of time (which we probably don't have, being too stupid as we are to solve our problems) we will become less and less like primates, We'll probably get a bit lighter in build, and maybe--dear god, may it be--smarter. But this will take a long time--many, many generations.

And we will probably wipe ourselves out before we get many, many generations to evolve into something closer to the paragon of animals that Shakespeare thought we were.

Nietzsche — ZzzoneiroCosm

apes — ZzzoneiroCosm

intellect — ZzzoneiroCosm

Intellect isn't all or nothing. Even clams have enough sense to shut up and get out of town when trouble comes their way, (Octopi and squid are both in the same group as clams, and have quite a bit of brain power. A dog has much more brain power than a squid, but a Dalmatian can't change its spots. A squid can. A bonobo or pan troglodytes (Chimps official name) have a lot more brain power than dogs, and have a brain structure similar to ours. Bees are much different than squid, dogs, chimps, and you -- but bees too have some brain power.

That we are closely related to apes should be a matter of delight. Why? Because they are kin. They aren't our ancestors (we branched off from the stalk of the family, as they also did, millions of years ago. Well, about 8 million years ago,

Well, what have you got against apes? All apes are primates. Humans are primates. Therefore, humans are apes. Something like that. Apes are a distinguished species.

We have only 1.2 percent genetic difference between modern humans and chimpanzees. Granted, that 1.2% makes a significant difference. I don't think chimps have a hyoid bone, a piece of bone located in the human throat which is a critical part of speech production. Still, we are a lot like chimps in many ways. (Intellect isn't the only thing significant about our (plural) species.)

Does the fox object to being related to the wolf? Does the family dog object to being related to both fox and wolf?

We actually aren't apes. Our ancestors were apes. — ZzzoneiroCosm

So, at what point did we leave the company of primates?

Strictly speaking we are absolutely not apes. We are human. — ZzzoneiroCosm

We are smart apes, but apes, and being a smart ape is a major piece of our existential problem.

There are exceptions, of course. Some humans are dumb apes, like the current POTUS. Therefore, DUMP TRUMP IN NOVEMBER!

You're so strict!

So Bernie supporters, excited to vote for Joe now? — ssu

No, definitely not. I said Bernie was too old; so is Biden. Trump is a syphilitic crypto fascist. Man, we are so far down the tubes.

NOTHING. Just my opinion. You might like to read Heaven and Hell: A History of the Afterlife by Bart D. Ehrman. He explains how heaven and hell came to acquire their peculiar characteristics over a period of time. Back in the day (3000 years ago, say) the Jews thought that when you died you were dead. Nothing more.

It's a message preached in the Church Without Christ, where the blind don't see, the lame don't walk, and the dead stay dead. Wise Blood, by Flannery O'Connor.

Does 'reality' exist in 'reality'?

You dismiss truth -- fine by me; truth is like pornography -- I can't define it but I know it when I see it. Isn't 'reality' as nebulous a concept? As for the "true self", drop the adjective and self is one word clearer. Fake self? What would that be?

I feel like I have achieved some degree of self-actualization, finally! Self-actualization is emergent -- it's a coming together of one's efforts, a dropping away of one's (often self-built) barriers. It feels good, but I don't think one should get a prize for being self-actualized. If one happens to self-actualize, one should just be grateful and carry on.

A lot of the words we use, like beauty, truth, God, evil, and so many others, don't map onto the concrete world. They map onto our symbolic systems which are, of course, real enough.

Well, actually I haven't given it a second's thought since I lavished high praise on the whole thing. One of the benefits of defects in short-term memory -- nothing makes it to long term storage. Simplifies things greatly.

BTW, what are we talking about?

Oh, WHEN will the people gather in front of the White House for his afternoon Covid-19 press conference/mini-campaign rally and chant loudly and long, LOCK HIM UP

Freud, for instance, famously wrote that the aim of psychotherapy was 'the conversion of hysterical misery into ordinary unhappiness'. — Wayfarer

And such a modest, yet difficult goal that is.

You seem to have won a Double First Prize: Your readers rated your OP quite favorably (1 prize) and then gave you thoughtful responses (2nd prize). You can take that to the bank (so to speak).

Paradoxically, we can think that we have minds (and we're mighty proud of them) but when pressed for details about what our mind-body selves are, we generally can't come up with anything too compelling.

We can not rise above ourselves and view our selves at a distance. We are always subject, and making ourselves simultaneously subject/object is perhaps beyond our capability. We're stuck. We'd like to understand who/what/how we are, but we are by our nature.

Still, all of us have a varied set of features which we like to express. Your greyhound had a very strong feature of pursuit. It was bred to run, to pursue. Catching its prey was less enjoyable, maybe, than chasing it. Some of us like the chase more than the catch, too. We like to do the research; we don't enjoy writing the paper.

We do well to fulfill the exercise of our various features without leaving behind too much wreckage.

Glory, laud, and honor to science, logic, mathematics, et al. But consider the New England colonies, which were premised on ideas of religious freedom, and the importance o the religious state (the Puritans) and self-government (the town councils). Their enterprise was one of faith (and ye olde Protestant Work Ethic).

New England and Yankee culture (a strip of states below Canada and around the Great Lakes) gradually (and mercifully) lost its religious zeal, but the ideas about the collective responsibilities of the City on the Hill remained and became an essential piece of cultural DNA in the more progressive northern states.

A lot of the founding fathers were interested in science and all, but they were also imbued with the values of the southerly planter class, or worse -- the upper class English riff-raff that dominated southern culture (referencing the values of wealthy Englishmen who settled in Virginia, Carolina, Georgia, etc.).

BTY, hope everything is fine with you--no Covid-19, no corona virus anxiety, no crashing personal buddy-can-you-spare-a-dime economy.

We had a bit of Spring here; the snow all melted, the grass was turning green, and the tulips were coming up -- then we got socked with a snow storm and a return to winter. Not all that unusual. For the last two days we have been getting sometimes spectacular snow squalls which don't last very long--maybe 20 minutes. Colder too. Supposed to be 18º tonight.

That is what the American Revolution was all about. We rely on science- the search for truth, not faith in someone chosen by God to be our leader. — Athena

I thought it was about taxation, representation, and various bourgeois concerns of the colonial upper class.

In a democracy, that is not contaminated by Christianity, there is no god whispering in the king's ear it will be safe for people to return to life as normal by Easter, "such a special day". :roll: — Athena

Even in a democracy thoroughly infested by Christianity, most "kings" listen to their epidemiologists doctors, planners, and so forth. Martin Luther said that it is better to be ruled by a smart Turk than a stupid Christian. We have the misfortune to be ruled by a narcissistic, ill-informed king who is very worried about his chances for re-election. These days, the Turks have their own problems.