Whether or not you see a shred of legitimacy in Israel's defensive war, you are probably aware that war generally results in quite a bit of indiscriminate killing. Bombing Berlin or Tokyo; invading the USSR; seizing large swaths of China; grabbing chunks of the Dutch and British Empires, etc. involves mass death. Whether the war is just or not doesn't make much difference.

A house-by-house, room-by-room, tunnel-by-tunnel rooting out of Hamas would result in many fewer collateral deaths. Israel doesn't have enough population to mount and sustain so personnel-intensive approach. Dropping bombs and shelling buildings is a more efficient use of resources, with ghastlier side effects. There's no such thing as a bomb smart enough to blow up only the right people. Bombs and shells are equal opportunity death-dealing devices.

Islam does have a fair amount of ideological ease with militancy because its central figure was a military leader. — frank

I don't know. Could be. Christianity (at an early stage under Constantine) became Romanized. The Empire was a very multilingual, multiethnic, multi-creedal operation, and the Romanized Christian Church required a millennium to stabilize its various creeds and heresies. Islam's history seems to be quite different.

Islam began as fast paced military/religious conquest; outside of the empire, it took the Christian Church quite some time for the Christian Church to achieve maximum distribution.

Is "stress" the force behind Islamic militancy?

I suppose; it depends. If social/political/economic stresses don't kill people, they probably make them more militant. Very comfortable people usually don't become hard core revolutionaries. Not never, but usually not.

The U.S. involvement has been nakedly self-serving, dishonest, and destructive. — RogueAI

I've spent quite a bit of time over the decades criticizing and denouncing US policy. However, "states" -- be the United States, Germany, Iran, Thailand... pick a state, any state... are and should be self serving. States do not have morals, friends, etc. What they have are "interests" and they are intended to pursue those interests on behalf of their ["most valuable"] citizen groups.

How well states pursue their interests varies. States don't have to be honest with everybody else, but they need to be honest within their core -- else they come to believe their own bullshit, which is a universal big mistake. Destructive? States can be very destructive in pursuit of their interests.

None of that is intended as blanket immunity. Germany was severely punished for a criminal overreach in pursuit of its self interests (lebensraum). Germany was also punished for elevating social prejudice against Jews to a lethal state policy. And more, besides. Had Germany won the war, the Allies wouldn't have been able to punish Germany.

So who do we blame for what states do? Start with their leaders, of course, and not just the 1 or 2 leaders at the tip of the power pyramid. The war in Vietnam involved many more leaders than John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Richard M. Nixon. Blame corporate interests (somebody's always making a lot of money manufacturing war materiel). Blame wishy-washy civil and religious institutions. Blame the electorate. And, of course, blame other states who pursue their interests contrary to our interests.

All that said, I don't know to what extent loyal support of Israel really is in the American state's interest. I'm predisposed by personal history to prefer Israel over Syria, say, or Israel over Iran. Apart from personal history, it isn't obvious to me that the leadership of Israel (an assortment of of people I probably don't agree with on much) is pursuing Israel's long-germ interests.

That there is a hell, or hades--a gruesome realm opposite a heaven--where anybody is tortured is enough to turn one off on all three Abrahamic religions. That a glorious heaven awaits those who suffer here is anodyne, but is likewise a turnoff. Suffering here is a dead certainty; a fluffy, cotton candy heaven, not so much,

A plague on all their houses? Well, plagues are pretty unpleasant, so maybe something else. How about a wave of enlightened secularism? More than a wave, a tsunami.

Pretty much everyone who has taken a strong religious stand in the Middle East from the getgo has been a big part of the problem. That is not to say that religious partisans haven't royally fucked things up elsewhere on the planet.

↪BC What's good BC whatcha need help with? — Vaskane

↪Hanover I didn't know 1.8 million Jews have been slaughtered since the 1960's In Europe ... Oh wait they haven't, because that post is a statistical fallacy nightmare. — Vaskane

Post WWII emigration has resulted in a decline of the Jewish population in Europe. What is the statistical fallacy nightmare you are talking about?

My apologies to you for not recognizing that your use of the term "genocide" is the bureaucratic definition used by the UN. I consider their definition far too broad and sweeping because it results in 'genocide' becoming an ambiguous 'basket term' covering too many hateful and destructive events and acts directed at groups being classified as "genocide".

In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

The term "genocide" was coined by Raphael Lemkin to describe the acts of the Nazi regime in Europe. He also applied it to the extensive destruction of the Armenian people by Turkey in 1915. Those two events set a high bar for an event to qualify as a genocide.

Please note, moderator, that I didn't find it necessary to describe your response in derogatory terms.

???

Gaza is a concentration camp whose people have been living with Israeli occupation and terrorism for decades. — Mikie

You, Benkie, and others who are perfectly capable of more precise language are falling back on terms applicable to the Nazi extermination of Jews. Israel is neither engaging in genocide nor operating a concentration camp in Gaza. People in the Nazi concentration camps were subjected to severe deprivation leading to very high death rates. Prior to October 7, 500 trucks per day delivered food and other supplies to Gaza. That's a truck load for every 42 people per week. That's 1 truck load of supplies per every 15 people per month. It could have been more, sure, but conditions did not resemble a concentration camp.

Palestinians have described Gaza as an open air prison. That is probably exactly how it felt to people who did not leave every day to work in Israel. But again, not a concentration camp.

The war Israel is conducting may kill another 20,000 civilians before it is over. At the end of the war -- next week, next month, next year, there will be nothing to return to for most of the Gaza residents, save piles of rubble. How literally "nothing to return to" describes reality will depend on how long the current bombing and shelling continues.

Creating a population of 2,300,000 homeless people is entirely worthy of condemnation. Destroying schools, hospitals, businesses, mosques, etc. adds significantly to the Palestinian misery and deserves condemnation -- even if Hamas was living under and in the hospital, the school, the mosque.

You two, @Mikie and @Benkei should be performing at a higher level of expression, especially since you are moderating,

I understand that you wish to denounce Israel for establishing itself, for dispossessing Palestinians, and for generally treating Palestinians roughly. Fine, denounce away. But dispossession and cultural disruption just are not the same thing as genocide. I'm pretty sure you understand what the customary meaning of genocide is, so use it.

Cultural destruction is a bad thing too, but I don't see Palestinians being forced to give up their religion, their language, their social habits and practices, etc. Again, their culture and lives are being severely disrupted -- which happens when your homeland is a battlefield.

Gaza probably will be an uninhabitable rubbish heap by the time Israel decides it has destroyed the military capacity of Hamas. The war in Gaza might well be the prelude to another dispossession. Who is going to rebuild Gaza, and for whom?

Don’t forget that Arab countries did try to destroy Israel at one point..a few times actually.
— schopenhauer1

Before or after they stole their land? — Mikie

Some Jews began arriving in the late 19th century. At the time...

There was no Arab or Palestinian Arab nationalist movement. In the first two decades of Zionist immigration, most of the opposition came from the wealthy landowners and noblemen who feared they would have to fight the Jews for the land in the future.

As more Jewish people moved in, they pushed the Palestinians out and destroyed their villages. There was armed Palestinian / Arab resistance by the mid 30s which gradually intensified. The day after the British departed Palestine, Israel declared its statehood--5/14/48. The next day, Egypt, Syria, and Jordan invaded the nascent Jewish state, seizing the central highland area (Golan Heights), the West Bank (Judea and Samaria), East Jerusalem, and Gaza.

As you know there were subsequent wars which resulted in today's map of Israel.

There is no getting around the fact that Israel's creation was, of necessity, at the Palestinian people's expense. "Of necessity" because the land of the ancient Jewish state of Israel was now occupied by Palestinians. The Palestinians ended up in refugee camps in the nearby Arab areas (like Gaza, Beersheba, Haifa, Nazareth, Nablus, Jaffa and Bethlehem. There would be further displacements. Some left the country altogether, to Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt.

Israel wasn't the first instance of forced population displacement. The Western Hemisphere was the subject of large scale displacement. The English displaced the Aboriginal people as they established colonies along the Atlantic Seaboard, starting in 1607. European colonization cost millions of lives in North and South America (a genocide by consequence if not by policy).

The difference between the settler / colonial system that Made America Great and Israel's settling, is this: The English, French, and Spanish were empire building for profit. Israel was seeking to establish a refuge where they would not be subject to discrimination, pogroms, and extermination camps. The Jews were, after all, originally from Israel.

The Jews have achieved a relatively safe homeland, but at the cost of frequent military defensive campaigns.

In the real world, this is what history tends to look like. Humanitarian and human rights advocates deplore it all, and civilized people put as good a face on it as they can.

Did you know that the Masons, Rotary, and Lions Club are part of the Jewish conspiracy? Hamas' charter says (among other things)

The Zionist invasion is a vicious invasion. It does not refrain from resorting to all methods, using all evil and contemptible ways to achieve its end. It relies greatly in its infiltration and espionage operations on the secret organizations it gave rise to, such as the Freemasons, The Rotary and Lions clubs, and other sabotage groups. All these organizations, whether secret or open, work in the interest of Zionism and according to its instructions. They aim at undermining societies, destroying values, corrupting consciences, deteriorating character and annihilating Islam. It is behind the drug trade and alcoholism in all its kinds so as to facilitate its control and expansion.

Israel is committing Genocide! "Israel, Israel, you can’t hide: We charge you with genocide." the demonstrators chant.

Just how many people add up to a genocide? 'Genocide' means killing a large number of a people in order to destroy a nation or a group. Civilian deaths in urban warfare are worse than unfortunate, but they are not genocidal.

The population of the Gaza Strip is 2.3 million. So far, the current death toll (according to Hamas) is 21,300. That is about .0089% of the Gaza population. A significant percentage of the 21,300 have to be Hamas fighters. Civilian deaths in war are a tragedy, but this isn't a genocide.

In comparison:

the Armenian genocide refers to the physical annihilation of Armenian Christian people living in the Ottoman Empire from spring 1915 through autumn 1916. There were approximately 1.5 million Armenians living in the multiethnic Ottoman Empire in 1915. At least 664,000 and possibly as many as 1.2 million died during the genocide, either in massacres and individual killings, or from systematic ill treatment, exposure, and starvation.

The percentage of Armenians killed by the Turks in 1915 is between 44% and 80% depending on direct and indirect killing. That's a genocide. By 1945 the Germans killed 63% Europe's Jews. That's a genocide. In 1994 75% of Rwandan Tutsis were killed -- in just 3 months! That's a genocide.

I hope Israel's war in Gaza does not approach even 1% of the Palestinian population -- 23000 -- but the longer the people there endure bombing, shelling, and bullets, collapsed infrastructure, lack of food, clean water, and medical care, indirect deaths are likely to steeply rise -- possibly quite suddenly.

Speaking of genocide, isn't that what Hamas is calling for?

Minnesota, generally a relatively low public fraud state in the US, is still prosecuting a $250,000,000 rip off of Federal Covid-19 funding. Under the name, Feeding Our Future, the defendants claimed to provide millions of meals to poor families with children.

One of the unresolved issues is how presumably honest public officials managed to fail noticing the volume of cash flowing into this previously little-known charity. Or that nobody went out to take a look at all the wonderful bounty flowing to so many unfortunate people. Never mind ordinary auditing requirements that the Federal and State governments usually enforce.

There is real risk in handing out largesse without effective controls. "Yes, Virginia, there really are crooked people out there who will take you for everything you are worth." Even small grants of < $20k can involve burdensome reporting, so one would expect extensive monitoring of a quarter of a billion dollar handout. Apparently, an entire department grossly underestimated the risk of darkness lurking in the hearts of crooked men and women. About half of the defendants in this fraud had a few million dollars in contracts with the State to provide child and adult day care. Those contracts are being investigated too -- at last.

Losing money is a risk; at greater risk is the reputation of the state as a reliable steward of public resources. Also at risk is the reputation of the Somali community. from which dozens of the fraudsters came. The thieves took the money "to purchase luxury cars, houses, jewelry, and coastal resort property abroad." When it comes to large amounts of money sloshing around in the public trough, crime is less a risk and more a certainty,

Risk is complex, as our individual estimations of risk are.

In the Shoutbox, there is a current discussion of aged egg nog -- eggs, milk, sugar, and alcohol -- aged for up to a year. This drink would pose definite risks which I would decline to take. I've had food poisoning and it was VERY unpleasant--not worth the risk!

The checklist I mentioned was used to counter lapses in memory or attention that can occur when a large number of factors are in play -- like in an operating room. NASA has a very long and detailed checklist to go through before it publicly blasts off a hugely expensive rocket and satellite or astronaut. As we know, a lot of launches don't happen. NASA, as an organization, is highly risk averse even though the business they are in is high risk -- hence the long checklist involving a large control room full of engineers checking things twice, thrice, and more.

As for everyday risk -- of which there really is a great deal -- I think we elect to not think about it most of the time. A minute by minute focus on risk can be paralyzing for us. Prey animals seem to have adapted to the risks they face, which tend to be life or death by predator. They use various strategies. So do we. The individual in a herd faces a lot less risk than the same individual grazing alone would face. Rabbits don't graze in herds, and (at least the ones I see in the neighborhood) don't seem to be very worried. One of their strategies is stillness. They freeze. Predators are often tuned to movement. Rabbits reproduce prolifically, so that is another strategy for the species.

Even plants adapt to risk. Blue bell flowers are pretty but they are a prolific nuisance. They have very large tuber-like roots which allow them to spring up again and again. If one keeps mowing off these tall weeds, they adapt by blossoming on very short stems. Damn.

Eventually, for most animals including us, the risks come home to roost and that spells The End. We know this, but we think, "not yet", and for long stretches of time we are right.

For me it is clear that languages are different and that if there is a difference then one is to be better than another. — I like sushi

Languages are different but that doesn't mean one has to be better than another.

The language(s) we learn as children are not the result of one being better than another, but rather what is available. What is available is determined by social, political, economic, and geographic factors. Is Latin better than Greek or Gaelic? (No.). Proper Latin was spoken by important people who lived in the Roman Empire and by people who wanted to be perceived by others as real Romans. "Real Romans speak educated Latin regardless of where they are from" was the rule. That educated Latin was a passport to the higher circles of Roman society was a result of the way the Roman Empire operated. When the Empire fizzled out, proper Latin started to fade away (except in the Church).

English is the current "lingua Franca" of the world, (an insult to the French) not because this "bastardized language" is better but because empires made English the most convenient language to employ in the largest number of settings. It could have been some other language, and maybe Chinese will be lingua franca in the future. Or Hindi. Who knows?

Saying "one language is not better than another" doesn't mean that there are not significant differences among the many languages. It does seem like Latin would be easier to devise poetic rhymes than English. Writing great poetry in Latin in 2024 won't advance your literary career very much, given the dearth of Latin readers.

I'd like to speak fluent German, French, Spanish, Latin, Greek, and a couple of other languages, but that train didn't arrive at the station. Sic transit gloria mundi.

So now it's a trainwreck because of extended involvement in the region most of the US's oil comes from? I give up. — frank

Most of our oil no longer comes from the Middle East.

"In 2018, the impact of U.S. shale oil production was readily apparent. Crude oil imports to the U.S. had fallen to 9.9 million BPD, and the share from the Persian Gulf had fallen to less than 1.6 million BPD (15.9%).

Canada is now the most important source of U.S. oil imports, supplying 4.3 million BPD in 2018 (43% of the total)." -- from Forbes

Her image of "the touch of Henry Fonda’s cool hand on my fevered brow" is novel, but also quite odd. There are more straight-forward, more effective ways of expressing the ideas here.

Exactly.

'Checkists and procedures ensure predicatility'', but the downside of checklists is they induce Mindlessness. We just have to follow the steps and not think about them. — Jack Cummins

Airplane pilots have used checklists for some time. "Just follow the steps and not think about them" increases the risk of ending up dead. Similarly, errors in operating rooms have been greatly reduced in institutions where the operating room staff are required to follow a short check list, like: get the patients verbal confirmation of what is going to happen; which body part is receiving surgery? Mark that body part with an "X" and a word or two; amputate left arm or right foot? Mark it clearly, And so on.

Aversion to risk varies. "Would you attend a ball game where 1 random person out of the 60,000 fans present would be killed?" A lot of people wouldn't. On the other hand, people who are risk averse in some settings are quite risk tolerant in others. The chances of getting killed while driving intoxicated is quite a bit higher than 1 out of 60,000. Some people are willing to take a level of risk during sexual activity they wouldn't think of taking with their money.

If you are / were sexually promiscuous, there is a good chance that you will have some kind of consequence. Throat cancer from exposure to wart virus HPV #16 or #18 during oral sex may take 30 or 40 years to show up. How do you measure risk when the delay is so long?

How does a 25 year old measure the risk of financial collapse when he is about to retire in 50 years? Damed if I know.

I am in favor of people taking risks, provided the risks are considered carefully. Avoiding risk as a practice is a dead end for our species.

Jeff, Mark, Sam, Tom, Dick, Harry -- all of them.

As Trump is poised to once again become president of my country (unless someone manages to cap his butt) I feel challenged by my own theory that social "winners" are sort of naturally selected and serve the larger social life cycle, whether the people on the ground understand that or not. — frank

Your theory isn't all wrong. Many or most "Winners" have preloaded advantages. Being born into wealth and privilege isn't an iron clad guarantee of success, but it is a major leg-up on everybody else. (See Domhoff: The Higher Circles and Who Rules America). The mass of people are trained to recognize "winners". Who directs this training? The people who run things (the winners) of course.

Civil society isn't a level playing field. It doesn't work like a gang where a strong man will emerge out of a nasty contest for leadership. Civil society is a rigged game, as far as "winners" are concerned.

I believe this about leftism: whatever its merits may be, it lost. The western world turned away from it. — frank

The western world (speaking of Europe--the people who are the original West) didn't turn away from leftism. They embraced it. Communism? No. Socialist programs? Yes. Democratic government? Yes. Even the United States -- after we had tried everything else, did the right thing and established a variety of social welfare programs (SSA, Unemployment and Disability Insurance, Medicare, Medicaid Federal Housing Authority, etc.)

Trump is a "winner" in the sense that he is good at manipulating parts of the system for his own benefit. Gee whiz, he's certainly not the first person to do that! Given that he's kind of an amoral narcissistic asshole, he doesn't accomplish a whole lot of good things. But FDR manipulated the system too. FDR was a much better man than Trump, and was responsible for a lot of good things.

How wealthy would the wealthiest person be in your ideal society?

Where would their wealth come from? — Captain Homicide

In my IDEAL society, there would not be "the wealthiest person" because one person's wealth requires someone else's loss. Even in an ideal society, the underlying reality is that there is only so much to go around. Wealth requires an uneven distribution.

They would both own their homes and control enough land to cultivate food for their family and community, have their own source of energy, transport and communication devices — Vera Mont

Everyone having to own a home, own enough land, generate their own energy, transport, and communication, and so on sounds like pioneer life on the Great Plains. I don't want to build my own hut, farm 40 acres with a mule, operate my own windmill and solar panels, and everything else. Whatever happened to cooperative, collective systems?

I want a society where we work together to provide what we need -- from each as they are able, to each as they require.

Home ownership, under capitalism, has been something of a scam. #1) Mortgages have been an effective way to tame the working class. If you want to keep your home, you'd better keep that job at all costs. #2) Home ownership involves buying and selling a given house over time, repeatedly. A 100 year old house may well have been saddled with a succession of mortgages for 100 years. Great for the banks! #3) Renters are held in low esteem because they are not saddled with the mortgage, and they can move more freely. Renters support the parasitical rentier class, true, but multi-family housing need not be privately owned.

Starvation would be much more common if we all had to raise our own food. The most competent farmers can not guarantee a harvest. We have a sort of collectivized agriculture (under private ownership), and because it is under private ownership for the purpose of maximizing return on investment, bad things are happening to the land.

Venezuela), seems to be looking at wanting more of those resources. And a distraction for the economic woes. — ssu

Invasion as distraction I can understand, but Venezuela already has huge oil reserves of which it doesn't seem to be able to make effective economic use. Adding Guyana's oil, plus making Guyana's citizens bitter and resentful, won't help Maduro. To paraphrase Martin Luther, stupid presidents sink ever deeper into stupidity.

Thank you. It is interesting, but it is also very late here in Central Standard Time Land, so I'll watch it tomorrow.

What would we do without chatgpt?

Heard a music program about Chanukah (commemorating the alleged miracle of 1 day's oil burning for 8 days) in the newly sanctified temple in Jerusalem). Was it a miracle? On the one hand, God could have made one ounce of olive oil burn for 8 days--grossly violating the number of BTUs in the oil at the bottom of the bottle, but with God all things are possible. On the other hand, maybe God located some oil that Judah the Maccabee had overlooked in his inventory. God, after all, sees all, knows all, and maintains a detailed list of all. Like as not He knew about an unopened bottle of cooking oil that was under some loose planks. Large bottle -- good for at least 192 hours of continuous burn in the Menorah.

At the time, Jerusalem was ruled by the Seleucids, ethnic Syrians who were part of the Greek empire. The Seleucids tried to impose Greek values on the Jews and pressured them to stop worshipping God and following the tenets of their faith.

Many Jews went along with this plan and assimilated into Greek culture, but a feisty minority refused to comply. Led by Judah the Maccabee, these faithful Jews with only primitive weaponry managed to defeat the mightiest empire in the world. They drove the Greeks from the Holy Land, reclaimed the Temple in Jerusalem, and rededicated it to the service of God.

I suppose the Seleucids were bitter and resentful about losing a war with the Jews. Probably accused them of war crimes.

The program focused on the Ladino tradition -- Ladino is old Spanish still spoken by Jews from the Spanish diaspora.

In 14 hundred and 92
Columbus sailed the ocean blue
While Isabel and Ferdinand,
Total creeps those two,
issued an edict expelling the Jews)

Ladino preserves many words and grammatical usages that have been lost in modern Spanish. It also has a more conservative sound system—for example, f and g sounds still occur where modern Spanish has an h (not pronounced), as in Ladino fijo, fablar versus Spanish hijo, hablar, and Ladino agora versus Spanish ahora.

If you see a candelabra in a window, that's what it's about.

On the one hand, zero percent of this information was supplied by ChatGPT. On the other hand, I didn't make t up either. The part about God's mysterious ways is straight from the Horse's mouth.

@Hanover -- you got your Menorah going yet?

If honest is an adj, is it like tall and short, something we are largely born with, or is it like rich, something we can gain and lose? — YiRu Li

"Honesty" is part of a person's character; we practice honesty. It's an optional behavior, not something we are born with.

Where does it come from?

We learn to be honest; we learn to be dishonest. Proper, moral behavior is taught to children, perhaps explicitly, but perhaps more implicitly, Guilt is an essential part of moral learning; we feel guilt when we fail to behave properly. For children, right and wrong, proper and improper, moral and immoral tend tp be more black and white. As the child grows up, black and white become shades of gray.

"I can not tell a lie; I chopped down the cherry tree." George Washington said, in the fable about the first president of the U.S. Maybe little George couldn't, but but the time he was an adult, big George was as capable of lying as anyone else.

A minimal level of honesty is required. "We can't do business if people are not honest." I can't quantify "how much" is necessary. Certainly, we need to be honest with ourselves -- we need to be aware of when we are lying and when we are telling the truth.

Herr Arthur Schopenhauer had such a pessimistic view of humanity; did he consider himself as wretched a case as he apparently thought everybody else was?

Some questions about love:

The body is wired for sex; we don't have to learn a sex drive. Is the body wired for agape? Storge? Philia? We seem to need to be taught about agape; love of country or community; philia may need less tutoring than agape, but we at least need to learn how to practice philia, agape, storge. ["Storage" only shows up in discussions like this. What word do most people use for Storge (storgē, Greek: στοργή) is liking someone through the fondness of familiarity, family members or people who relate in familiar ways that have otherwise found themselves bonded by chance. An example is the natural love and affection of a parent for their child.].

Is there a single source for the "love urge" be it for one's child, one's friend, one's brother, for 'the world', for whatever it is that we love?

How is erotic love -- or raw eros, for that matter -- related to the other types of love?

Is there 'a basic love' that differentiates in various ways, given the circumstances, or do the various kinds of love arise separately? (seems unlikely to me).

I'm not expecting any definitive answers. Lots of theories out there.

As for erotic love -- my theory is that eros begins as a raw form and is gradually tamed, civilized. Who does the taming, the civilizing? Parents? Not mine -- they didn't talk about sex. School? God, no. The church. God forbid. Who, then?

Eros gets civilized, tamed, during sexual interactions--in the trenches, as it were. Other people set the limits on what they find acceptable or out of bounds, and since we want their approval / cooperation... whatever, we conform to their standards.

In contrast, take a person who has lived a very protected life or has lived in an institution from childhood into adulthood, say, owing to disability or MI. They are liable to display inappropriate sexual behavior because they haven't been out and about enough. By "inappropriate" I mean they don't "read the room" very well.

(I'm thinking of a fellow I met at the Y who was in a MI program. He said he was schizophrenic; could well be. He apparently was gay. His behavior in the locker room wasn't scandalous, it was
unschooled. 99.9% of men avoid prolonged frank stares, for instance. Not this guy, I was sorry to see him at a large gay bar downtown later -- not the place uninitiated vulnerable people should be hanging out.). He hadn't learned the social routines of fitness centers, let alone gay bars.

Case reports aside, most people learn how to seek out and find, locate sexual partners; appraise them for suitability; determine interest, make appropriate overtures, and go somewhere to get It on. Having gotten there, we learn what works well, what falls flat, what is likely to upset or antagonize, and how to avoid doing it. (Thinking of my first early adult sexual experience, "OK, now what am I supposed to do?)

In most cases, it doesn't take long to figure all this out, because quite often the rules for sexual encounters are similar to those that apply in any other kind of encounter.

In decades past (like... 1970-1990) many gay men maintained less exclusive sexual relationships than some gay men do now (now many gay men seem to toe the straight and narrow). One had a set of non-sexual relationships with friends, gay and straight.. One might have a committed sexual relationship with 1 person (at a time--more than 1 gets complicated quickly). Whether one was in a settled relationship or not, there might be very casual sexual relationships that were more or less transitory.

Run of the mill sex with a casual partner usually didn't pose a threat to a settled relationship. What did pose a threat was great sex with a casual partner--it tended to pull one's interest away from the person one was most committed to, giving rise to jealousy and resentment.

How does any committed relationships last under these circumstances? They last IF both partners are committed to each other, without being exclusive. Also, as couples age, the attraction of casual partners diminishes. Casual sex takes time, and having a home, a partner, pets, a job, an exercise routine, civic / religious activities, etc. just doesn't leave time and energy for sexual adventures on the side.

even your odd evasion of erotic love now, is telling of how erotic love, leading to relationships is almost shameful. — schopenhauer1

Dear me, when was I evading erotic love?

sex addict — schopenhauer1

"Lord, make me chaste -- but not yet." Augustine prayed.

But for many of the masses, this is not what they care about (even if they should?). Rather, they want the progression of erotic love (1-4). — schopenhauer1

I don't think it is at all a deficiency that people prize erotic love. As embodied beings who experience the world through the physical senses, we ARE carnal beings. The sexual drive goes back a long ways. The wellspring of life ought not be disparaged. (Screw the Apostle Paul.)

Just guessing, but I don't think our emotional apparatus begins with well-differentiated forms of love -- erotic, philia, storge, agape, etc. Our first simple love is for mama and over time (decades) is differentiated. Young children evidence simple caring--simple philia. Children have sexual urges too, if maybe not erotic desire. By 12? 13? the vaguely sexual becomes specifically erotic, whether acted on or not with others. And our sense of caring, the sense of our capacity to comfort others. and empathy grows as we move into adulthood--not at all evenly across the population, of course. Well developed adults display diverse love -- erotic, filial, maternal, paternal, agapaic, civil even, Love of country.

BUT, being embodied as we are, it is physical erotic pleasure that is the foundation of long-term family relationships. (Non-sexual relationships, like college friendship, can last into old age too.)

Of course, none of this mattered centuries ago. Love had not much to do with marriage, procreation, and a domestic partner. That is relatively new. — schopenhauer1

How many centuries are you going back? Ordinary English villagers lives 600 years ago displayed evidence of courtship, marriage for love, domesticity. Kings, queens, very large landowners, (earls, dukes, etc.) were under obligations to make strategic marriages. You know, if your estate covers a couple of counties in England, you are not going to marry a woman with nothing, no matter how nice she is. You jolly well better marry the daughter of another wealthy landowner, and maybe you will be richer for it. "What's love got to do with it?"

Human psychology hasn't changed much. (That's my theory.).

Courtly and romantic love" as depicted by troubadours and poets was new back in the medieval period. It wasn't practical advice, it was 'romance'. On the other hand, the Song of Solomon (it's in the Bible) was written... maybe 900 B.C. Male and female POVs alternate.

7:1-3, 6 “How graceful are your feet in sandals, o queenly maiden!
Your rounded thighs are like jewels, the work of a master hand.
Your navel is like a rounded bowl that never lacks mixed wine.
Your belly is a heap of wheat, encircled with lilies.
Your two breasts are like two fawns, twins of a gazelle.
How fair and pleasant you are, o loved one, delectable maiden!”

As the apple tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the sons.
I sat down under his shadow with great delight, and his fruit was sweet to my taste.
He brought me to the banqueting house, and his banner over me was love.
Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples: for I am sick of love.
His left hand is under my head, and his right hand doth embrace me.

Don't sit under the apple tree with anybody else but me?

I don't know whether Solomon existed, and if he did whether he had anything to do with the poetry, but what the poet is talking about here is not strategic or arranged marriage, but good old carnal love.

This is all very interesting, but of one thing I am quite certain: theorizing about love will not get one laid. It probably won't lead to love either. I'm not being sarcastic; sadly, rationality just doesn't help the heart all that much. (It's handy though when one is doing a postmortem on a dead relationship.

So my point with 1-3 cannot be bypassed for 4 only, is the following: — schopenhauer1

You are describing erotic love as the end result of a progression, beginning with attraction and ending with "authentic" (whatever that means) erotic love. Probably all love follows a progression. The kinds of love mentioned here--eros, philia, storge, and agape--require investment, commitment, desire, and more by the subject. One doesn't just wake up one day and find one is full of agape.

But it is also because of the necessity of each step to be present and aligned correctly, for which love is generally hard to enter into and hard to keep. — schopenhauer1

One of my favorite religious writers, Dorothy Day's (founder of the Catholic Worker Movement) biography is titled "A Harsh and Dreadful Love". The love of Christ is a very difficult path to follow. Most of the time, for most people, love is not harsh and dreadful but it can be damned difficult.

Ordinary love, the kind most of us find and hope to keep, is difficult because humans are not constant. We change for better and for worse. We may fail in our love at a critical time when our partner most needs us. Love, of course, is never the only thing we feel.

There are so many permutations for unhappiness. — schopenhauer1

Paraphrasing Tolstoy, unhappy families have lots of permutations; happy families don't.

Attraction — schopenhauer1

We can be attracted to all sorts, but if there is zero attraction toward us, it's a non-starter. Some degree of mutual attraction is required. Face, figure, scent, clothes, body, bearing. Brains, maybe. Later.

One can, should, exercise one's intelligence about attraction. There are people who are extremely attractive, but with whom a relationship would be a certain disaster. That wildly worldly woman at the bar might be very arousing, but she probably doesn't want to settle down in a suburban white picket fence existence with an accountant whose hobby is stamp collecting.

emotional connection — schopenhauer1

The emotional connection may not appear concurrently with physical attraction, but if there is prompt and disagreeable emotional affect, it's probably a non-starter.

Sexual function — schopenhauer1

Yes.

Successful sexual encounters can range from the minimalist encounter in the dark to grand seduction scenes. The latter are way too much trouble for my taste.

The experience of sex is simultaneously simple and enormously complex. See Kinsey.

Relationship — schopenhauer1

If we add up attraction, emotional connection, and sex over time we will likely end up with a relationship--usually in that order. Folk wisdom has it that sex with people who were first established friends isn't going to work out. That's been my experience.

A sexual, emotional relationship that lasts will be conditioned by other factors: money, employment, poverty, major illnesses, and so on. If the partners are loyal, the relationship will endure through thick and thin, depending on the capacities of the partners. Failure can happen to good people.

In a long-lasting relationship, the factors that ignited the relationship will change. Lots of relationships endure decades with major changes in the circumstances of both partners. I believe the chances of having a long relationship improve with age. Two teenagers lack enough experience to have a chance at negotiating a long relationship. By somewhere in their 30s, people are (or should be) better able to make a long relationship work. For child-rearing, though, one doesn't want to wait too long.

Needless to say, if you mix too many drugs and alcohol into any stage of a relationship , things will not go well.

"Love" is so overworked and so heavily romanticized (fictionalized, dramatized, hollywoodated) that it is difficult (impossible?) to say anything fresh and insightful about it.

"Loneliness" has lately been getting some attention in the news. Lots of people are lonely, experts have found.

Loneliness, alienation, disconnectedness, isolation, meaninglessness, etc. are deficiency conditions. Love, friendship, belonging, connectedness, validation inclusion, etc. are conditions of sufficiency. Lonely people feel emptiness; loved/loving people feel fullness, to put it in very simple terms. Of course, the experience of emptiness and fullness are not binary -- 0 and 1. There are ever so many ways to experience deficiency and sufficiency.

Love isn't the antidote for loneliness, though it seems to be often sought out as the cure. To counter loneliness one needs friendship, connection, validation, meaning.

AN ASIDE: Back in the 1960s, registration for classes at the university involved a final stop before one could select classes: the Validation Desk. There one's university documents were checked to make sure one's academic affairs were in order. Validated students proceeded forward. Invalidated students had to go fix whatever problem existed.

We all want to be VALIDATED--judged as legit, paid up, qualified, deserving. Validation can be hard to find. END OF ASIDE

We tend to think / hope that a sufficiency of LOVE will fill in all our deficiencies. Love, in this sense, is instrumental. "you give me love" and that will make loneliness, alienation, and other kinds of psychological crap go away. If only! It doesn't.

There is a cure for loneliness, it just isn't "love" per se. In some ways, the cure is more complicated than it is for lovelessness.

We do need to BE LOVED in order TO LOVE. A very large portion of the population are adequately loved early on, enough, so they can love others.

You know, Schop, I think I'm starting to babble here, so I'll step away till later.

Keep your chat to the state of Israel. Keep inferences about the Jewish people out of it. — fdrake

Odd mod.

Romantic love is a combination of lust and trust.

...are long gone — schopenhauer1

True.

Even Nixon... — schopenhauer1

Nixon was a natural-born target for loathing, but he was a reasonably competent crook chief executive, many of whose policies were OK. Nixon's rep also benefits from the descending quality of succeeding presidents, especially demented Reagan and Narcissico Trump.

It was the cover-up that did Nixon in more than anything else. Cover-ups are a sign of the sinner sinking ever deeper into sin, and prosecutors jump on on it. My advice: If crooked politics is your game, prepare to get caught and then confess and apologize early and often. Don't stiffen up and deny everything, unless you have buried all the witnesses and nobody knows where.

It might have been the biggest cultural transformation from 1963-1969. — schopenhauer1

The pill. Mustn't forget the pill. And then later, the Roe vs Wade decision.

There were people who hated Roosevelt and New Deal programs like Social Security. There were people who hated Johnson and Medicare. There were people who hated the pill and Roe vs. Wade. These troglodytes don't seem to get over their hates, and now they have successfully gotten rid of Roe. There are recurrent proposals to privatize SS.

Point is, these were big cultural transformations as you say, and there are people who hated it, and haven't gotten over it. There's nothing that can be protected by law that can't be unprotected later on.

I expect there will be more reactionary moves in the coming years. They might fail (let us hope) but they will be tried.

I was not old enough to vote for him, but I would have.

In retrospect the Kennedy's were classier than their immediate predecessors and successors. Jacqueline delivered high style, something that Mamie and Ladybird decidedly didn't. The Kennedy clan had élan. Money helps, of course. Haute couture and 50¢ wouldn't get me a cup of coffee, but on the right shoulders it's influential. So I've heard.