it is an "east is east and west is west" kind of difference. Bob Hope and Jane Russell sang it in a movie, Paleface, back in 1947. Never saw it, but the song was popular for a long time. Everybody sang it, even Gene Autry -- to his horse, Champion the wonder horse, I suppose. Kinky.

East is east and west is west
And the wrong one I have chose
Let's go where they keep on wearin'
Those frills and flowers and buttons and bows

People often come to diverse opinions even with the same evidence before them. And, in the case of global warming, it doesn't matter what you and I believe. The world isn't doing a whole lot about reducing CO2 and methane emissions, and that includes every nation on earth.

I have written elsewhere that actually making the kind of changes that I and other extremists think are necessary, and doing so at the speed that might be advisable to save the climate, would initially be a cultural, health, and economic disaster which would be responsible for many deaths. How? By producing massive turmoil and disruption in almost all human activities!

Halting the mining of fossil fuels (coal and oil), ceasing the production of individual cars, drastically curtailing air travel, reducing consumption of electricity (server farms, for instance, produce about as much CO2 to cool equipment as air travel does), sharply reducing consumer consumption and at the same time switching to all-renewable energy sources or doing without, and so on and so forth, would produce disturbances in the production and distribution of food and essential supplies that would lead to many deaths. (Many = hundreds of millions around the world).

How would people in northern latitudes stay warm in winter (and elsewhere, cool in summer)? How would food be produced, processed, and distributed? How would necessary pharmaceuticals be produced? What kind of work could most people do, under these circumstances?

Eventually the world would adjust -- it would probably take around 50 to 60 years, minimum. Historical item: Major changes in technology have generally taken around 40 to 50 years to be fully adopted. By the time all this was accomplished, the momentum of global warming might have started to slow down and the population would have been significantly reduced.

No national or international body or its leaders want to be responsible for this sort of act of commission -- though their acts of omission will have at least the same or worse results.

I can safely pontificate all I want because the levers of power are nowhere even remotely close to my reach.

I doubt very much that you are either ignorant or uninformed. Where did the global warming narrative really begin to unravel for you?

A friend who reads deeply about climate change and economics has commented that there are some objections that can be raised against both the manner in which global warming is reported and to the conclusions which may be drawn. There are conflicting reports on the same issue -- whether, for instance, China's performance in reducing emissions (or the USA performance, or anyone else's) is not meeting, meeting, or exceeding some targets.

Sometimes the avalanche of information is overwhelming and one has to withdraw from contemplation of the details just to save one's sanity. And sometimes the avalanche is repetitious -- the same findings are presented again and again as news.

I wonder, for instance, how accurate the accounts of CO2 emissions are. When I read a report that says that so many gazillion tons of CO2 or methane are being added to the atmosphere, I wonder just how did they calculate that figure? CO2 may be the better measurement -- take published fossil fuel production figures, calculate how much CO2 is produced per ton of coal or oil, and multiply. Fine. But methane is much trickier.

Gas bubbles are coming off the bottom of lakes in northern Canada and Siberia and collecting under the ice. Poke a hole in the ice, light a match, and you get a flash burn of flaming methane. Did anybody check this out 50 or 100 years ago? Is there a change? Or methane in the Arctic Ocean: was it there 100 years ago? When the Nautilus navigated under the polar ice (some 60+ years ago, give or take a couple) did they discover any thing unusual, like big bubbles? (they weren't looking, I would imagine.). l

The changes I believe in the most are changes I can see around me: noticeably warmer winters; plants leaving out and blossoming something like 2 or 3 weeks than usual -- for the last 10-15 years. Fewer flying insects; fewer birds, etc.

I'm a believer, but there are "issues" in the information. It's sort of like the problem of AIDS and HIV back in the 1980s: Public Health people wanted people to get concerned, and they were successful: The people who were least at risk were by far the most anxious--the worried well. Gay men, the most at risk group, drew their own conclusions from their experience, and many were fatalistic. It is difficult to shape successful messages for different groups of people. Some people never did get good information.

I have no reason to think NASA is lying about anything. Do I believe climate change is real? Not in the way it’s being reported. — Brett

Here is an article from INSIDE CLIMATE NEWS that provide a survey of what has been published in the last 10 years about climate change.

Believe it or not, but at least this is the sort of thing which causes my alarm about the future.

Was 3M corrupt in their initial intentions? — Brett

Probably not. The intention of developing fire retardants was not corrupt. It may have been ill-advised, it may have been saintly; I don't know, I wasn't in on the planning. What was much less morally ambiguous was dumping a lot of the chemicals used in a permeable soil dump, where the stuff percolated down (quite a long way) to the water table. They dumped PFAS and PFAS waste in various states, not just in Minnesota.

The sales effort involved in getting PFAS into everything from pajamas to carpet to adult rain gear (!) and much more was probably independent of any caution their chemistry department had about the stuff. It has become ubiquitous, and it won't be disappearing anytime soon. What 3M did was decide that it was a good idea to coat the planet with a super stable chemical that is known to cause health and environmental problems independently of its beneficial aspects. That for the sake of profit. Lots of large corporations have done exactly the same thing with other chemicals and products.

You jump from the apple farmers to Amazon as if there’s nothing in between. — Brett

Come on, Brett, buddy. One can't cover all the possibilities with out a post that would be longer than the entire oeuvre of The Philosophy Forum.

I'm cranky, sure. But there is nothing wrong with "capital", "capitalism", and "capitalist". The Wall Street Journal uses these terms proudly. Capitalism is an economic system of corporations producing profit for stockholders. (Individual entrepreneurs, of course, do that for themselves.) It is a very robust, powerful system. It's a great system for those who are its primary beneficiaries: stockholders, managers, and well-paid employees who receive benefits. It's a very bad system for those who suffer the consequences of corporate actions which produced profits but damaged the world. It is a bad system for employees who are crudely exploited.

There is a quantitative difference and almost of necessity a qualitative difference between the small apple grower who sells produce at small farmers markets on the one hand, and United Fruit Company which fucked over Central America (they started back in 1899) with the help of American gun boat diplomacy. There is a difference between Whole Foods (now part of Amazon) and the couple that raise specialty mushrooms in their basement and sell fresh at farmers markets. Sure, it seems like the couple was selling the mushrooms for a pretty penny ($32 a pound) but they were excellent, and they aren't receiving any government subsidies and aren't covered by crop insurance.

The apple farmer and mushroom producer are what are called "petite bourgeoisie". The US has millions of petite bourgeoisie, operating family farms, small grocery stores, repair shops, small diners, little businesses selling stuff or a service, and the like. Much different than Jeff Bezos at Amazon. In many ways these petite bourgeoisie are the salt of the earth. They work very hard for very modest returns.

The Sackler family are multi-billionaires and are not even remotely in the same league as the guy with the small apple orchard guy. So yes, distinctions can be made between the tiny, petite (pronounced 'petty') bourgeoisie and multinational, multi-billion dollar mogul.

But the capitalist mandate is dangerous: maximize profit, externalize costs, pay workers the lowest possible wages, sell the product at the highest possible price. Never ask whether what you are selling is "good". If it makes money, that is all that matters.

"Good" and "bad" corporations all do the same things, pretty much. Take 3M, maker of Post-It notes and Scotch Tape. They make a lot of other stuff, too. They make a lot of fire-retardants, everything from a chemical found in children's pajamas to the foam spread on the runway when a plan may have crash on landing. These fine products contain perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl (PFAS), chemicals that never break down but do bio-accumulate. Studies have documented multiple effects, including cancers in highly exposed groups — especially testicular and kidney cancers — as well as impacts to the immune system and metabolism. Evidence also indicates that elevated PFAS in wildlife can lead to developmental and reproductive problems, the groups noted.

Millions of tons of the product have been very profitably sold, and now these chemicals are everywhere, from the suburban St. Paul, MN water systems contaminated by 3M dumps, to ice in the antarctic; from people in China to squirrels in Central Park. Everywhere. Fire retardants would seem like a good thing at first glance, but then we find they are 'forever chemicals' that can make us animals sick when concentrated by bioaccumulation (like bald eagles, apex predators, getting dosed with the stuff).

No, we don't need another word. Capitalism is a good accurate term. So, every capitalist is not guilty of Sackler-grade crimes. The universe is full of such annoying incongruities. Just round up the usual suspects, and later you can let the nice wolves go. Oligarchs? They don't have to be capitalists (oligarchs existed before capitalism) but some capitalists are oligarchs.

Would we? And is it really that easy to pin the guilt on capitalist predators like the Sackler family? I think a healthy society could handle its predators. — praxis

It really is that easy if you are prepared to foreswear fealty to capitalism and face how ruthlessly exploitative capitalists tend to be. The Sacklers are guilty; the Koch brothers are guilty; lots of people are guilty of fucking over the world in really very exploitative ways. They can be named. We could change the laws which protects these bastards. They could be put out of business. That would be a healthy society at work. Instead we stand around with our thumbs up our collective asses muttering drivel about free enterprise, and all that crap.

I don't think it is necessary to point out that capitalists are not standing idly by, waiting for the peasants to take up pitchforks and torches and burn the castle down. They industriously propagandize and legislate on their own behalf, and we fools believe them.

For the last three years life expectancy in the USA has declined, so something ain’t right. — praxis

Something ain't right, for sure. The UK has also experienced a decline in life expectancy, but we are talking about a small change for both the US and UK..

"Life expectancy" is an average. The decline has been brought about by higher rates of death among people who use opiates (ODs) and chronic users of highly addictive drugs like meth. Suicide rates among working class men have also lowered life expectancy. Deaths from heart attacks are down, and deaths from cancer are either steady or declining.

In the last 50 years the rate of smoking among adults has dropped from around 45% to about 15%. The rate of lung cancer deaths has fallen for people who quit smoking say 20 years ago. Some people are living longer and some people are dying younger.

In a healthier society (one less sickened by the depredations of capitalist predators like the Sackler family's opiate racket) we would live longer and/or happier lives.

I'm pretty sure there WILL BE "wildfires in the west, drought, agriculture failure and mass migration". I'm pretty sure that the boreal forests in Canada will burn too -- not next week, but at some point in the not too-distant future. I expect that there will be more fires in various places along the lines of the current fires in Australia (December 2019).

"Society" will survive in some form, even with a catastrophic die-off of human populations. There will be some places where life will go on for some people. How bad the environment becomes in 1000 years can't be guessed; there are just too many factors to consider. Most likely it will not be very good.

"Civilization" (apart from whatever society happens to be like at any given moment) will likely suffer pretty severely. A lot of our cultural heritage will be lost--not just from fire, flood, hot humid mold-and-rot-encouraging climate, marauding hordes, and so forth. "Civilization" requires intact inter-generational stability for learning and style to be passed on intact. Our civilization will die like previous civilizations have died, and will be revived by other people in later times (assuming we do not go extinct).

I'm not optimistic about the long term future. But there is always hope.

Thanks for the link to Economic Times/India Times, and your thoughtful posts.

Although nuclear facilities like power stations would likely go off. — Punshhh

Nuclear facilities are vulnerable, true enough. While a plant can be shut down (the nuclear reaction halted), there is fuel stored in water pools (sometimes above ground) which definitely will not remain harmless forever. As we saw in Chernobyl and Fukushima, things can spectacularly go to hell really fast. The plants will not explode like nuclear bombs, however.

I don't know how much Anthropology has caught up with this idea, so this is only speculation. It looks to me that during a previous catastrophic global flooding most of humanity was wiped out in a stroke. — Punshhh

There was never enough water on the planet to produce a flood that could wipe out humanity all at once. Even the big meteorite that wiped out the big dinosaurs didn't kill everything off -- mammals, birds, and insects survived and mammals became the dominant animal.

The catastrophic event which global warming may well bring about will be composed of features which in combination will prove fatal: too many people to feed, agriculture not able to produce enough food, not enough water, too much heat, severe environmental degradation, disorganization. Nothing more is required than that to drop the population from 7 or 8 billion back to where it was around 70 years ago -- 2 billion. It also won't be instantaneous; expect it to take a few decades. The survivors will get to watch while it happens.

You are right that a big cataclysm is a-coming, but the two critical factors are timing and location (always, location, location, location). The ocean has risen some, and will rise a lot more; as bad as the long-term effects will be, remember, the rise--relative to our life times--is slow. But again, it depends where you live. People who live on low-rise islands are already screwed. People who live in areas only a little above sea level (Jakarta, Baltimore, Amsterdam, Venice) won't have to wait too long for really serious problems-- probably in the latter part of this century. The New York Metropolitan area has already paid many billions of dollars to repair itself after Hurricane Sandy. They should be spending as many billions more to get ready for the next one. Areas along the gulf coast need to be depopulated for a ways inland to get people and property out of harms way.

For a lot of people, flooding isn't going to be the problem: it's drought, as you mentioned, and yes, fresh water will be in very short supply. People who have been driven out of their homelands by successive crop failures, drought, or repeated floods (whatever the hell it is) are going to move, and if the nations in their path don't want them there, there will be BIG trouble.

However, granted all that, I don't believe "survivalism" will work. What the "survivalist" hunkered down in his huge underground bunker with huge tanks of water, canned food up the ying yang, and so on, are really "delayers of the inevitable" rather than survivalists.

That a little cadre of Navy Seals (or something like that) can hole up in a mountain fastness and not only protect themselves and their children's children's children, but actually sustain a fragment of civilization is fantasy. Such fantasy makes for great SF plots, but a poor plan for the real world. Why?

First, because the life in the bunker will be pretty much static, and minds living in static conditions start to dull after a while. People will go nuts. Second, the supplies will eventually run out. Up in the mountains a good deal of what you bought down in the valley from the local Walmart won't be replaceable in your little habitat. Third, You won't be able to revert to a hunter-gatherer style of living either, because the first thing you will run into is a lot of other people hunting and gathering too. Fourth, all the people who are living in the degraded world will have made critical adaptations to a potentially very hostile environment. Maybe they got over the embarrassment of cannibalism and and know how to select dinner from the herd. You won't; you might be more likely to end up in the kettle.

The best way to survive is to survive in as large a functioning community as possible -- generally that means at least a small city with enough people bearing the diversity of skills it takes to keep everyone alive and well.

All of the large functioning communities are NOT going to disappear. Adaptable cities will have found ways to supply themselves with food--sustainable methods of food production and preservation. Adaptable cities will still have schools, libraries, musical performances, doctors, mechanics, plumbers, etc. -- all the people and institutions that produce civilization.

In one hundred years, 2120, sea level rise will have fairly noticeable consequences, especially for cities that were reclaimed from the ocean. A good example would be Boston. Some of Boston, MA will stay high and dry, but the core of the city will revert to wetland. It's not called "Back Bay" for nothing. It used to be open water and then was filled in in the 19th century.

In 300 years, it may be the case that the lower Mississippi River Valley will be one very big bay opening off of the Gulf of Mexico. The northern Great Plains in the future will be much warmer, more like the southern plains are now. That is NOT going to take hundreds of years. And just a word to people who imagine the corn, wheat, and bean belt migrating into Canada, it isn't going to happen. A good share of Canada is not agricultural land. It takes a long time for warming tundra to turn into fertile properly structured soil--not hundreds of years, but thousands.

A warmer climate has a relationship to insect populations, but what is much more significant for insect population crashes is the burden of pesticides, like the neonicotinoids which are indiscriminate, and nerve-gas derived poisons (organophosphates) aimed at particular agricultural pests, but which then drift, spread, and poison non-targets. Then there are the insane lawn care people that put down poisons to get rid of ants--ordinary black ants that make the little round sand circles on cracks in the sidewalk. Another enemy of insect populations is mono-culture--endless fields of corn, soybeans and wheat, and nothing much else.

Please don't post any more pictures of giant yellow jacket colonies. I can stand a few small round hives on the ceiling of the garage, which I generally let live, but giant house-invading, car-engulfing super-colonies look too much like the Supreme Growth of science fiction nightmares.

Also I don't think we can predict where the line is which we could cross resulting in runaway climate change. — Punshhh

Not precisely, no; but we can make guesses. For instance, there are a lot of lakes and Arctic Ocean floors from which methane is bubbling up, the product of bacterial decomposition of organic material.

Methane in the atmosphere traps much more heat than CO2, and as the arctic warms (faster than mid latitudes), more and more previously frozen vegetable matter will rot and more and more methane will be out-gassed. The more methane, the faster the arctic warms, the more methane. This is the sort of feedback loop that will produce a tipping point where the atmosphere has warmed enough, that some other large change will cascade into being--probably much to our disadvantage. One of the cascade possibilities is a rapid increase in Greenland ice melting, flushing too much fresh water into the ocean to maintain the conveyor belt of warm gulf salt water on top glowing north, and cold arctic salt water flowing south. If and when this happens, the prevailing westerlies that pick up gulf heat crossing the north Atlantic will turn cold and Europe will become much colder (despite global warming). @John Gill

At the same time, the NYT has published photos of methane gas plumes coming out of natural gas and fracking operations that are much, much bigger than anyone was previously aware of.

The first satellite designed to continuously monitor the planet for methane leaks made a startling discovery last year: A little known gas-well accident at an Ohio fracking site was in fact one of the largest methane leaks ever recorded in the United States.

Societies that maintain the ability to create vaccines will survive. The others will die out. — frank

You are assuming the vaccine-wielding nations won't have starved before they sickened from novel viruses. The extinction of insects has already begun, and many of the evaporating species of insects are pollinators--not just honey bees, but they are the most familiar.*** About 35% of our food supply depends on pollinators -- fruits, nuts. seeds, and vegetables. Things like apples and orange, carrots, peanuts, potatoes, tomatoes, lettuce, etc. [no more French fries]. Rice, wheat, and corn are self-pollinators and would continue in production without bees. Then again, corn, rice, and wheat production will probably be significantly reduced by heat, drought, and unseasonable rain, a shortage of fertilizers, and eventually (owing to the demise of abundant petroleum) a lack of fuel for ag. equipment.

***(I suspect that nasturtiums--a salad plant developed in France--are pollinated by earwigs. The beautiful and edible blossom has a sharp mustard-like scent and are often obscured by the foliage. Earwigs are the only animal I have ever seen crawling around in the blossoms.)

In conclusion we are, in all probability, totally screwed.

I know it was callous. It also happens to be true. That said, I'd rather be in a society that reaches out with compassion to people who are in pain than one that sees them as superfluous (even though we probably all are.) — frank

Make up your mind, Frank: either you want to live in a compassionate society, and one where people are NOT seen as standardized production units that are interchangeable and removable without consequence, OR you can accept a society where employees are superfluous (we are not quite there yet), disposable, and a COST rather than an ASSET -- which is current practice.

I once heard that when workers unionize, they just get two asshole bosses instead of one since unionizers tend to be belligerent buttheads. — frank

Did this pearl of wisdom fall out of your head when you last blew your nose? Look, corporations are often quite flawed, because corporate bosses are flawed, and unions are flawed because the membership (and leaders) are flawed. "Nothing straight was ever built with the crooked timber of mankind" Kant said. Truer words are rarely spoken.

The AFSCME union to which I belonged at one time was not highly effective largely because its membership was kind of passive and timid. The leadership wasn't great, but then the membership wasn't either. Plus, the relatively recently organized AFSCME unit to which I belonged was at a public university where the administration had not thought it worthwhile during the previous century to consider the needs or interests of the people who performed all of the diverse services we provided.

Still, workers have nothing else other than solidarity to protect themselves from the predations of corporate wolves or state bureaucrats. The efforts to build solidarity may be halting and clumsy, but eventually concerted efforts pay off. The old Bell Telephone System treated its employees quite well because the Communication Workers of America had put the telephone company over the barrel enough times for Bell to fear the wrath of CWA. GM started paying attention to union demands after the workers seized control of their big assembly plant.

Were all the Civilized Nations (sic) to apply the French law to their various corporate and/or state employers and then resort to the guillotine, a new large corporation would be needed to design, build, deliver, and maintain all the beheading equipment--sharpening blades, cleaning up the copious blood spatter, making sure that Occupational Safety and Health rules were followed, etc.

There is a reason why we get paid for coming into work every day: we sure as hell wouldn't do it for free.

There is something about the world-wide dominant paradigm of management - worker relations that so easily begins the slide down the slippery slope towards dehumanization, alienation, anomie, etc, and I bet France is a relatively good place to work, by and large. And maybe the workers at this spoiled Orange French Telecom should have practiced more la solidarité and la résistance, oui?

Moral responsibility works both ways -- offense and defense. A better cure than small fines and short jail sentences (which are under appeal and might be dismissed) is strong united worker power.

Can a discussion about bullshit be anything other than bullshit? Is analytical distance possible? Or can one only lament?

although the more passionate ones believe in theirs — god must be atheist

Eloquent bullshit*** can degrade discourse, but believing one's own bullshit is THE cardinal sin.

*** "If you can't dazzle them with facts, then baffle them with bullshit."

How are such societies dysfunctional? — TheMadFool

They are dysfunctional because they have been fucked over too many times. People left to their own devices generally settle down to live ordinary lives more or less peacefully together. Until, that is, they are invaded, colonized, obliterated, subjugated, and so forth, Or until they start invading, colonizing, obliterating, subjugating, and so on. Nothing new here -- it's been going on for a long time--millennia.

But the thing is, it's very hard to fix the damage. Take Haiti: there is a country that has been multi-fucked-over. At times they have been in pretty good shape, but then some larger nation would screw them up again. Take your average banana republic: fucked over by the church, the military, international agribusiness (Chiquita banana et al), the US State Department, etc. Take Iraq: run by a dictator, subjected to a pretty bad war (USA, USA, USA ...), then some more war, ISIS, internecine terrorism, and so on.

Normally, the best fucked up societies can hope for is maybe a century or so of being left alone and they gradually put themselves back together.

It's like a plant: You can transplant a healthy specimen and it will do fine if you take care of it. But if you run over it, keep pulling it up every week, let it dry out or rot in a swamp, it will be dead before long.

Anyone who follows global warming closely has to be aware of the problems involved in talking about both "conditions that are changing now" but are part of "conditions that will change over 1, 2, or 3 centuries time". RIGHT: Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Dhaka, Shanghai, New York, or Boston are not going to be evacuated next year or next decade, even if some small low-rise Pacific Islands are pretty close to being frequently flooded. Things are changing rapidly, but the great mass of ice, water, and land means that these changes aren't going to be over in a few years. Greenland and Antartica will take quite a while to melt.

But it's necessary to keep people's minds on both the present and the distant future, because (well, you know all this, I am sure) what we have done in the last 150 years, what we are doing now and will probably continue to do (adding CO2 and methane to the atmosphere) can't be undone quickly. Also, there are those worrying tipping points, where some changes happen quickly, and unpredictably.

I don't know what is in Greta's future, of course. Christ, I don't know what is in my own immediate future. My guess is that she will remain an activist of some sort but that her newsworthiness will fade, which is probably a good thing for her, if not everybody else.

Were I writing your paper, I would look among anthropologists, psychologists, or sociologists. Some philosophers might have written on the subject, but scholars in other fields definitely have.

I am thinking of Keep The River on Your Right by Tobias Schneebaum. It was published in 1969, and is a good lively read. The book deals with Schneebaum's encounter with the isolated Arakmbut tribe in Peru. The book deals much more with cannibalism than nakedness, but the description of his first encounter, in which he was stripped naked and investigated in detail is worth a read. Schneebaum wasn't mortified, apparently, and certainly the Arakmbut were not embarrassed either.***

Not every group of people is troubled by nakedness and shame. Any number of groups have been encountered who did not feel shame about being naked, though their "discoverers" (like missionaries, anthropologists, or conquistadores) may have felt intense shame about their own own nakedness. Shame and nakedness need not be seen as natural and necessary.

People feel shame about certain actions (theft, nakedness, sexual acts, religious acts, etc.) because they think these actions are wrong. Or they believe their bodies are very inadequate -- too thin, too fat, too pale, too dark, too this, too that -- and they are embarrassed if other people see them naked.

I overcame a good deal of shame about my body by a method similar to "flooding" which is used to overcome phobias: I found a park where other gay men sunbathed in the nude and I did likewise. Undressing in public and laying on a towel in the open took a lot of nerve on my part, but it was curative. After a few visits to the nude park I began to feel less and less shame about my appearance. (I discovered that I had misapprehended how others saw me.). In a couple of weeks I was cured.

There is also "modesty" -- a condition where people avoid being seen naked because they think it is wrong, They may not feel shame about it, but they do avoid nakedness in the sight of others.

All that sunbathing was about 40 years ago. Its benefits (aside from a couple of basil cell skin cancers) has endured.

***Summary: Keep the River on your Right is a short memoir written by painter/anthropologist Tobias Schneebaum and published in 1969. It is an account of his journey into the jungles of Peru where he is accepted by "primitive" Indians and ultimately a tribe of cannibals named the Arakmbut, which he refers to by the pseudonym Arakama. Schneebaum was presumed dead by colleagues, friends, and family after he disappeared for years into the jungle, the last westerner to see him was a missionary who had given him instructions he would find the cannibals if he "kept the river to his right." However, Schneebaum struck up a friendship with the Arakmbut based partially around his considerable art skills and his interest in theirs. The book is most renowned for its anthropological observation of flesh-eating rituals and the honest, light-hearted style in which it was written.

There are non-profits that teach people "how to fish"; some of them work in the US (or other developed countries), and some of them work in the third world. Most of them are doing good, honest work.

The problem that these programs face, even the most excellent ones, is that many, many millions of people live in societies that are at least somewhat dysfunctional, and no amount of programming can overcome people's disadvantages on a piecemeal basis. What some countries need, frankly, is a thoroughgoing revolution to remake themselves, but... that's a very risky strategy. Look at Haiti: there's a country fucked over by crooks for decades. The US has played a role in keeping things fucked up there. The problems in Haiti are way beyond mere fishing lessons.

I'm not sure that dithering over "quantum supremacy" even qualifies as political correctness. It's not even wrong. It's nonsensical.

What seems to be going on with this (and other) words is that people look at a word, check to see if they can free-associate something negative to the word, and if hey can, they feel everyone must stop using it. The behavior reminds me of the Monty Python skit in which the daughter becomes hysterical whenever she hears a "tinny sounding word" - preferring "woody sounding words"--like "intercourse".

This nonsensical political correctness is starting to infest science fiction. I recently read two sci-fi novels in which there were "aliens from other star systems". The leadership on board the space ships were very concerned that racist or prejudicial terms not be applied to the aliens. One of the alien species, a bird-like creature, interbred with a human. (Don't ask me how that would work!). The human mother was very protective of her monstrous child, very concerned that people would reject her because she was "different". Different indeed. While the mother was dithering over the equal rights opportunities for her half-bird child, the bird species was busy wiping out 9/10 of the human inhabitants on earth--too stupid and not cooperative enough. For some odd reason the humans didn't accuse the killer birds of genocide.

Back when psychoanalysis defined homosexuality as a serious deviation, the establishment considered thought it was constructed--domineering mothers, distant fathers, etc. In the early days of gay liberation (1972, to pick a year) the idea that homosexuality was essentialist was dominant and liberating. "Nature composed my sexuality in this manner, and it is good" was an empowering idea. 40 years later constructionism is back, only its more DIY this time around. Now we have this absurd list of 50 genders, which is itself an indication that gender theorists have run amok.

Essentialism and Constructionism are recruited for whatever purpose is at hand. Gender politics is a form of polymorphous perversity all by itself.

Unfortunately the list of card-carrying Liberal/Progressives was stolen just the other day by Rudy Giuliani and a gang of pro-Russian Ukrainian thugs as part of the Trump reelection campaign. Stay tuned for further announcements on the matter.

There have been a number of discussions of essentialist vs. constructionist thinking on gender in Quillette. This article is an example, and there are 3 additional articles linked at the bottom of the page.

The politics surrounding whether x, y, or z is determined by essentialism or constructionism is a swamp one does well to stay out of.

Sex is determined at the moment of fertilization: xx or xy. The body may begin with a female template of sorts, but it is destined to be either xx or xy. Sex isn't decided at birth by a committee -- it's identified at birth. in almost all cases, it's clear whether the neonate is male or female.

The human genome is 3 billion base pairs. What we are isn't wide open to choice. Those billions of base pairs define us as human with varying degrees of intelligence, physical characteristics, mental and physical features and traits. A lot of what we are, and how we exist in the world, is determined by genetics, like it or not.

This is an essentialist view. It isn't the sole property of conservatives. There are progressives who are also essentialists and conservatives who are constructionists.

True enough, our human behavior and personality is at least somewhat pliable. How it all is expressed is determined by both genes and environment. It doesn't make sense to take an extreme essentialist or a constructionist position. Clearly, both methods of shaping behavior are in play,

Don't get sex and gender mixed up. Males and females all have gender roles, and there is quite a bit of consistency in the roles, but sex is not adjustable; gender behavior is.

The old expression, "you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear" applies to animals, including us. Your average cow isn't going to win prizes at the state fair. A dog that is not very bright is going to stay that way. Highly risk averse people have generally been risk averse from their first baby steps, and explorers have, likewise, been that way from the get go. Very smart people tend to stay smart throughout life. Stupid children usually grow up to be stupid adults.

Again, no one in the Netherlands takes this seriously. It plays no part in political discourse. If the sea level had been significantly rising, we'd be the first to notice. — Tzeentch

I've often wondered if it might be a good idea to drown the Dutch, but that was just in the context of seeking completely satisfying experiences. It seems to be the case now that the Dutch will be drowned in any event, so all we need is patience--especially if global warming and ocean expansion (from temperature and melting) "play no part in political discourse".

I'd say when we let children do the talking for us, we have definitely left the realm of rational thought. — Tzeentch

Global warming has been a hot topic of discussion for the last 40 years, conducted among smart, scientist-type adults. Did I hear about global warming in 1980? No. Back then, the burning issue was the ozone hole over the antarctic and diminished ozone in the upper atmosphere elsewhere. The world took the ozone deficiency seriously, banned refrigerants and aerosol propellants (chlorofluorocarbons) that destroyed ozone. Since the Montreal Agreement in 1987, the ozone deficiency has steadily improved. (FYI: Ozone absorbs UV radiation that causes skin cancers and interferes with photosynthesis.).

Just because I didn't hear about global warming doesn't mean it wasn't being discussed. It was being discussed, and efforts began to gather more precise data. As data accumulated, it has become clearer that global warming is real, ocean expansion is real, climate change is real, and all this is having real, negative, consequences on the global environment, on which we are 100% dependent.

And just because you aren't hearing people talk about it, doesn't mean that it isn't real. People generally don't like talking about the way of life they know coming to an end. Also, global warming effects are mostly projected into the future, which makes them seem 'unreal' to some people. "Oh, 2100 is so far away." Not so far away, really; it's the time when present toddlers will be growing old. It's in the lifetime of living people.

And because we have been changing the CO2 levels steadily for the past 150 years, at least, we have to understand that changing our life ways (like our industrial culture) has to start 20-40 years ago, and will take most of the century to achieve IF we work at it diligently.

Well, Ms. Thunberg is a lightening rod, as much as an oracle. A young woman who suddenly appears (in the media--Aspergers and all), somehow has a sailboat to get to New York and then Spain, and has the nerve to speak truth to power (or shame adults, at least) and whose self-presentation is quite juvenile (meaning as young as possible) is going to trigger negative comment. I've harbored some suspicious thoughts about her -- like, what or who in her background made all this possible? 15 or 16 year olds don't launch themselves, usually.

It doesn't matter, really. The guilty parties (major hydrocarbon producers and consumers) aren't listening anyway, and when they act it is to subvert the effort to reduce CO2 and Methane production. It's not Greta's fault. The fault is with they who have eyes but will not see, they who have ears and will not hear.

ideology — Tzeentch

per @Tim Wood, since when is global warming an "ideology"?

A "fuck you greta" movement is an inevitable reactionary event. I agree with Greta 100%, but I don't especially like listening to her talk. I can imagine how repellant she must be to global warming deniers, environmental-disaster-know-nothings, followers of our fucking president, and the like.

I think that's the law in many states, applying to married adults, or adults who have designated a person to have power of attorney for them.

As for spouse vs parent, I don't have any feelings about it one way or the other -- just that it needs to be clear who has the power to decide, in the event of incompetence, medical emergency, coma, etc.

Because by that point there is no way out of the pain they've been given. You have knowingly rebirthed them into a world of pain. — Brett

Lots of people end up in a world of pain and are entirely competent to decide their own future. Most people actually choose to go forward, pain and all. Some opt for suicide, but most don't.

In your OP, you ask who should make the decision? Spouse trumps parents for adults.

These are very difficult issues for people to sort through once they are faced with the question of what to do. That's why, as Hanover said, one should establish what one's preferences are before one is comatose. There are preferences such as "Do Not Resuscitate", "No 'heroic' efforts to maintain life", no intubation, and so on. If you don't want to be resuscitated, intubated, or have the crash cart rushed to your bedside to get your heart going again, then you will most likely be allowed to die. But... you have to make these preferences clear to those who are close to you (and can act on your behalf), and your doctor (who might be on hand when the accident happens, but maybe not).

Have you prepared a living will? I have not -- I should definitely get it done.

what I want to say is that everyone cares only about themselves, their friendships are but a functional structure that facilitates the acceptance of both their shortcomings. — Gus Lamarch

The first clause of the sentence is not true. I am confident in saying that it is not true because you made it universal ("everyone") and you made it extreme ("only"). We do and ought to care about ourselves, but we gain too much from caring interactions with others to leave it there. Yes, friendships do have functional qualities, one of which is as an aid in self acceptance.

My (perhaps abnormal) experience is that we have numerous acquaintances and a small number of friends. Nothing wrong with acquaintances, of course. I have known my oldest and closest friend since 1964 when we ended up as roommates in college. Now in our 70s, we find that we are still "in college" in a way -- both still studying, sharing insights from our lives, work, and reading.

Sorry about the snarky comment. As I said, it wasn't about you, personally.

I might be willing to take "something exists" or "at least two things exist" as a starting point. Moving on, we have come to understand that many things exist. So I am not willing to entertain that idea as an account of reality.

Yes, and many people do, however someone can come and tell you “maybe the whole of reality happens in the imagination of a single consciousness, or maybe only you exists, or maybe eventually a theory of everything will prove that only one thing exists”, however as I explained it is possible to prove that at least two things exist, even if we assume solipsism or that there is only one consciousness or whatever. — leo

Quite a few 'someones' over the last decade have come forward to announce that solipsism or a single consciousness accounts for everything. These claims are then dismantled by various other 'someones'.

I suppose one could claim that the universe, and the fullness thereof, resides in the single consciousness of God. If so, God seems to have thought a very complex reality made up of many parts. The problem with this theory is that we do not have the means to parse the consciousness of God, if God exists in the first place. Still, the universe as the dream of God has a certain aesthetic appeal and weightiness.

However what I am explaining here is that necessarily, there has to be at least two things at the root of our existence. — leo

I believe in the existence of many things. The many are made up of a few particles combined in particular ways. Without the plethora of things made from a dearth of different particles, we would not exist. Is this a truth? Seems like it to me, but you don't have to accept it.

2 + 2 = 4 isn’t always true — leo

True. If 2 half-assed philosophers meet 2 other half-assed philosophers for lunch, their discussions might not add up to anything. 2 + 2 in that case may equal less than zero. I'm not suggesting that you are one of the 4.

People keep disagreeing about pretty much everything and yet somehow you guys don’t find it important to find things we can agree on. — leo

A forum such as this one brings out the urge to distinguish differences, even if they are minute. In the decade that I've participated in this and the previous incarnation of Philosophy Forum, people have agreed on a good many things. But we are all here to express ourselves, and "I agree with you." just isn't as much of an opening as "Let me explain the facts of life to you."

In any case, carry on with enthusiasm.

The matter has already been brought up, but I'll do it again: "truth" is unitary and doesn't need an adjectival intensifier like 'absolute'. What is true is true. 2 + 2 = 4 is true, period. "Something exists" is true.

After millennia of philosophy it seems we have only arrived at one absolute truth:

Something exists — leo

I haven't followed your writing here, so the following may be a misapprehension: your view of philosophy may be hermetic: thinking that is closed off from the flow of validating (or invalidating) experience, and cut off from the range of thought. People think about this world where "a lot of stuff exists" using various techniques -- science, literature, art, philosophy, labor, religion, and so on. If there are truths to be discovered, a wideness in our methods will yield better results.

Yes, consciousness is in the brain as a whole. It seems to be an emergent property of the brain's activity--that is, it isn't located in a particular gyrus or sulcus. Some people are bothered by consciousness not having a location in the atlas of the brain. It doesn't bother me. I'm just glad it's there.

I was going to comment on your use of arrant, but others have used it AND they have used it correctly (as you also did). But you are in a select group of persons deploying the phrase "arrant nonsense". It's not the coveted "Congratulations! You are the first person to use 'arrant' on The Philosophy Forum!", but it's better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.

'Rubbish' and 'total rubbish' are also used quite a bit. "Total" seems to function as an intensifier. Rubbish is rubbish, but total rubbish is more so. Much like 'fucked' and 'totally fucked'.