Long term it may be better if Trump wins again. Maybe it will force people away from directionless outrage and toward practical solutions? Or maybe it will just enflame the opposition into more silly sensationalist posturing and deepen the the lack of trust the public have for the administrative powers? — I like sushi

Most likely the latter.

I do not know if Donald Trump has an actual strategy. Maybe He is merely acting out his personal kinks. The effect however -- planned or not -- is to derail rational discussion. Why derail rational discussion? Because people won't buy a straightforward, honest presentation of Trumps intentions. Much better for someone who has unspeakable plans is to play games of uproar; to lie, speak nonsense; pursue policies which have no rational basis but which may serve some interest.

Better to make idiotic non sequitur statements, like "The Kurds didn't help us in Normandy" to justify pulling out US troops from a relationship that had (apparently) restrained Turkey. The Turks have invaded northern Syria, and the Isis prisoners held by the Kurds are likely to get loose. Isis emerged from hiding almost immediately, upon the commencement of the Turkish invasion.

Better to fill one's allies with the same kind of extreme nonsense of the sort I heard from some moron at the Texas State Fair on NPR: "There's no point in working with the center, because the only thing in the middle of the road is roadkill." Never mind whether that is the case or not; the point is that compromisers get run over.

Better to make a boogeyman out of Hillary Clinton or Hunter Biden: Or... Joe Blow. Anybody.

Lower the level of discourse long enough (it wasn't stratospheric before Trump decided to run in 2015) and the people will be left dazed.

Zeus or Quetzalcoatl — VagabondSpectre

I believe Zeus turned Quetzalcoatl into a toad. I feel greatly relieved because I never did like mesoamerican religion. Hail Zeus! Hail Jupiter!

There is quite a bit of evidence that affluence is a key factor in people opting to have fewer -- far fewer -- children. The theory is that with high survival rates among their children, redundant children are not necessary -- the ones they have will survive. Further, affluent people don't have to worry about not having children to care for them when they are old and feeble. Affluent people can hire poor people to that sort of work at affordable prices.

I haven't read any stats on atheism being a causal factor for reduced birth rates. Maybe it is, but I haven't seen the evidence.

I think one can make an argument (I don't have any stats for it) that it is affluence that leads to atheism. Poor people need to keep their options open, and one of those options is that a god is going to internet on their behalf, at some point. God is an affordable comfort, too.

This is true. However, 42 was a very good age.

As John Keats said in is poem about some Greek crockery, at the end of the fifth and last stanza,

When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."

Hmmm, history is so fucking complicated. I'll have to chew this over for a while.

I don't know why I thought you said scripture was the source. Christianity was hatched in Jerusalem, but it grew up under the influence of Athens (and later, Rome). So we are clear on that. Good.

Yes, it’s odd, the extent to which atheists leave one foot in the religious circle ...
— NOS4A2

Though foot prints are not blueprints — 180 Proof

Some atheists, at least, have one foot in the Xian circle because before they became atheists, both of their feet were there. I grew up in a Protestant milieu, and like it or not, I can no more erase that large block of experience than I can forget my mother tongue. So I don't believe that God exists, especially the God that I grew up with. Of course, there is more to religion than the godhead. There is the application of preaching, folk ways, social connections, ritual, music, poetry, and so forth as well.

Bertrand Russel noted that religious deserters who become atheists tend to be the kind of non-believer that they were as believers. So, some atheists are screeching doctrinaire bullies, and others are rather more relaxed about their disbelief and other people's beliefs.

The god that I don't believe in is laissez-faire. If you want a cartoon picture, then "god is in heaven, busy with whatever god does up or out there, and we are here, busy with whatever we do here. It's a long, long way between god - up or out there, and us down here. We are on our own."

I wasn't a screeching doctrinaire Christian and I am not a screeching doctrinaire atheist -- and I don't have a lot of patience with Christians or atheists who are.

many of the fundamental terms of early modern science, which laid the foundations for later science, such as substance, essence, motion, and so on, were all developed in the context of Christian philosophical principles — Wayfarer

It seems that one would have to separate out the philosophical background of Greco-Roman thinking from Christian (or Judeo-Christian-Islamic) thinking. When that is done, what does one have left?

Granted, the Christians who succeeded the Roman Empire (in the West) had other things on their plate: Converting the pagan Europeans (not completed until 1380, the Lithuanians were the last to submit), keeping their scriptoriums from being torched by the Vikings, defending Europe from Moslem armies, plagues, crusades, etc. But it doesn't seem like they really accomplished all that much until the Renaissance, which was stimulated by the new-found texts of the classical period, which were not Christian scripture.

Granted, there were technological innovations every now and then; the medieval period wasn't the Dark Ages. It wasn't as if nobody was thinking about anything but devils behind every bush and angels guarding the faithful. But I'm not sold on the idea that scripture led to the renaissance.

I wouldn't want to brand the Church as the mother of all superstitious nonsense, but it doesn't seem like the opposite extreme is appropriate either.

It's 2:19. I think I should go to bed. It's been great.

Pride is important for women too, but is likely to manifest itself in different terms than for men.
— Bitter Crank

How? — Wallows

Again, things have changed over time, and many women are in something of a bind. They used to stay at home and care for children and do homemaking work. The reason so many women gave up that role and took wage work was that the man's income no longer was adequate to support a family with one job. (This changed, starting in the 1960s). Most families discovered that two incomes were necessary for them to maintain the lifestyle they had, or had lost and wanted to regain.

Women who have gone into hourly wage and salaried work have found it a mixed blessing. Yes, it has produced the kind of income their family needed (husband's and wife's together). But children and homes don't take care of themselves. So, more work.

Plus, women discovered what a lot of men discovered: work sucks. So, women, like men, have to find some sort of validation in their sucky jobs, just like men do. It can be difficult.

Linguistic confusion. — Wallows

What, exactly, do you mean by that? I am confused or you are confused? (It wasn't an attack, so lower your shields.).

And where does philosophy fit in here? It seems like the antithesis, seemingly. — Wallows

I don't know why you would read what I said that way. man (generic human) is first and foremost an actor, one who performs roles in life. How one interprets the roles one has, or the roles that are available is a philosophical task. Even someone doing something "merely mechanical" or menial or unpleasant (like a machinist, custodian, or a sewer worker) can and should place his work in a larger context. That's a philosophical task.

You have meditated plenty on your role in life. Many people here have. If philosophy has nothing to say about how one exists in the ordinary world, then what the fuck good is it?

One can gain pride from a successful assessment which find the true value of one's work in the real world. It can be difficult, but even anonymous paper processors in the back offices of brokerages have a real function in the world. And they are real people functioning in the world, and who may loathe their work. That's worth philosophizing about, I'd say.

People who have been forced to think poorly of themselves because they are homosexual, disabled, black, short, blind, deaf, etc. internalize self-hatred (or at least very low expectations) and suffer more stress and health consequences from stress.

Pride can't be injected like testosterone; pride has to be built up. Pride for the beaten down requires a change process over time in which persons reinterpret themselves as capable, adept, strong, men worthy of respect because of who they are.

Things are better now than they used to be for many people because of pride movements. Gay pride is 50 years old now. Its work was completed for its 1969 generation a long time ago. Subsequent generations of homosexuals experiencing prejudice need a pride movement too. So do blind people, deaf people, wheelchair-bound people, blacks, and so forth.

Years of work by various 'uplift' or 'pride' groups have considerably diminished the sense of inferiority that groups I mentioned experienced. It's what gives confidence for a group of deaf friends to go out on public transportation and confidently sign to each other, go to bars, restaurants, and so forth.

Stop cringing. Performance in terms of all the sorts of life-tasks men engage in: the job, mowing the lawn, painting the house, keeping the car in good shape, his self-presentation before the world (the way we put ourselves together in the morning), his expertise, bravery, daring, risk taking, thinking up topics for this forum. All sorts of things.

What did you think I meant -- skill at fucking? Well, some guys do it better than others.

What's wrong with supremacy?

... pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath and sloth.

So where does wallowing fit in here.

So, another kind of pride is "Gay Pride" the feeling and the ideology that being gay and that men loving men is good, and about which no apologies need be made.

Black pride and Gay Pride both seek the redress of past humiliations. So, some kinds of pride have a healing function.

Pride is one of the 7 deadly sins, along with greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath and sloth. Pride cometh before a fall. Pride particularly galls the holy church because the upstart proud man is likely to challenge the priestly prick, possibly on his home turf. The church loves humility, which maketh men less troublesome. My advice: Raise a little hell.

there's nothing more central and grounding for a man to feel proud prideful — Wallows

I think this is true. A man should feel proud in his personhood, and his performance should bear some relationship to his pride. So, if a man feels pride in his skill with tools, he should be able to get good work done with his tools. If he is proud of his hunting prowess, then he should be able to bag a deer every now and then. It isn't so important what a man feels proud of, but that he should have accomplishment about which to feel pride.

Boys should be raised to be proud of themselves, and to do something about which to be proud.

Having shame and embarrassment in one's self might sometimes be justified, but usually it is a sign of somebody who has been beaten down.

Pride is important for women too, but is likely to manifest itself in different terms than for men.

As a rock climber, this has become very apparent to me in how I "read" or in fact see a cliff face and its features as ways of orienting my body and its mass and momentum in relation to further features. I see things in a cliff face that a non-climber simply doesn't see, especially ways of gaining purchase by various kinds of oppositions of pressure. I see my body up there. I see my center of gravity in relation to the holds. What it is for the features to be what they are to me is how my body can fit and navigate them under the pull of gravity using Newton's laws (bodily-intuitively understood). — petrichor

This is an excellent example of what embodiment means -- a physical body relating to the physical world in actions.

While rock climbing is not something I do -- and something I won't do -- the bad experiences in attempting to climb rocks were a vivid demonstration of how I (body) do not relate well to basic physical facts, like height, weight, gravity, and ledges that were not exactly where I thought they were. It isn't that I am risk averse -- I have taken plenty of risks in urban settings, where I am comfortably embodied.

Per @StreetlightX Nietzsche's quote, overcoming despising the body has been a long project for me.

I would mention EMBODIMENT by James B. Nelson, which is a book about the theology of being flesh and blood. Since its publication in 1978, we might have made some progress in accepting the enormous significance of being physical beings. It may seem obvious that we are creatures of flesh and blood--meat--but there is a strong tendency (coming out of Christian theology among other sources) to view the really important aspect of our humanity as non physical--spirit, soul, psyche, all that.

Luckily, Trump Is an Unstable Non-Genius
His mental deficiencies may save American democracy. PAUL KRUGMAN

16! That's amazing. I was 16 once, about 57 years ago.

I'm interested in religion, but I'm not religious. My working assumptions about the world are pretty much those of an atheist: The dead stay dead, no miracles, no heaven or hell. I don't expect Jesus to dropkick me through the goal posts of life.

I have picked at philosophy (like one picks over a chicken carcass after dinner) but have not found it particularly helpful. I was an English major in college. Science is good; so are the humanities provided they are taught well and are not larded with Pomo mumbo jumbo.

Why am I surprised? Because shocking facts are always cropping up -- like "the devil is in the details" being a 20th century expression! I thought for sure it was Roman, at least.

Welcome to THE Philosophy Forum. We are several years old here, but we used to be "Philosophy Forum" and had been that for about 10 years. Some of the same people have been on the site for most of those years.

It's a good place to be, and your interest and studies in science will stand you in good stead here.

Yea what nutter came up with that — Fruitless

If you were less limited, you'd know that one leading candidate for the phrase is Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, the modernist architect, who phrased it "God is in the details". Flaubert's version is Le bon Dieu est dans le détail.. God, devil, all the same. At any rate, the phrase is not older than the 1960s. The recentness of the phrase gives me unlimited surprise.

Limited joke factor.

Remember that the devil is in the details.

I hate to break it to you, but there are definitely limits. My patience, for example. As far as I know, the speed of light is the fastest that any object can go--not just will go, but can conceivably go. So photons can not travel faster than themselves.

The world (universe, cosmos...) is very detailed because everything is made up of smaller parts down to a certain level--Quarks, is it? Quarks will do for now. Quarks make up sub-atomic particles like protons and neutrons, which make up atoms, and atoms make up molecules, and molecules make up... on up to the parts of the organic cell--there are many parts to the cell--and cells make up tissues, and tissue make up body parts, and body parts make up plants and animals, and plants and animals make a world, and worlds surround stars, and many stars make up a galaxy, and galaxies make up galactic clusters. Beyond that is the whole universe. Then there are black holes, white dwarfs, supernovae, and more besides.

So, Fruitless, no matter what you look at, it is made up of smaller parts -- the details.

No, everyone on earth does not have the same capacity to feel as everybody else, and everybody doesn't have the same brain.

"Feelings" and "emotions" are a product of the limbic system (of the brain) and not all limbic systems are exactly the same. Some people, for instance, are more "emotionally labile" and "emotionally volatile" than others. Some people feel some emotions more intensely than other emotions. So there's quite a bit of variability.

The more or less normal human brain (normal at birth) is put together on the basis of DNA and all sorts of signals. Yes, brains are all very similar, but even at birth some people are likely to be smarter than others, have better memory than others, have better motor skills, and so forth. Then there is the sensory equipment which feeds information to the brain as the person has experiences. As noted by several people, experiences vary and differing experiences lead to more differences in the brain (and emotions).

Putting all that aside, I would say we can become more tuned to the quality of the emotions we have, and we can become aware of, and counter, efforts on the parts of our so called "super-egos" to suppress certain kinds of emotion. I'm not sure whether or not we can dial up the amplitude of our emotions the way we turn up the sound or the heat.

used to believe a welfare state was the mark of a compassionate citizenry. But now I’m not so sure, because why would a government need to assume responsibility for the welfare of the public if the public never eschewed that responsibility in the first place? — NOS4A2

"The public" has never taken on the responsibility of general welfare. Whatever has been done (and for long stretches of time it would be "not much) has been done by the Church, by private institutions (such as orphanages, hospitals, etc), or the government. Institutions can bring to bear donations, private wealth, or taxes. Individuals normally have neither the resources nor the information available to improve strangers' quality of life. Pool resources in the collection plate or tax coffer and enough is available to make a larger difference.

The need for welfare assistance has grown because the population of indigent persons has increased; the complexity of indigent problems increase with the use of drugs and excessive alcohol; the economy which produces great wealth also produces more poverty. Further, built in prejudices have deprived some sectors of the population (blacks, for example) from acquiring the financial stability that many people have obtained.

A rule? Maybe: The government will normally not exceed the generosity of the public. Stingy people elect stingy representatives who pass stingy policies. Generous people elect generous representatives who pass generous policies. That's why benefits tend to be higher in the NE and northern Midwest than in the SE and the SW. People in the NE and Midwest believe in higher levels of collective generosity. People in the SE and SW do not. This principle is also why people in the NE and Midwest tend to be better educated, healthier, and live longer than people in the SE and the SW.

The problem with religion is that it is suitable only for those who can have faith in something for which there is no experiential evidence. — Janus

Not all of religion lacks experiential evidence. Some other reasons people engage in religious activity: They like getting together in church and singing; they like being reassured and praying (which is experiential for the people praying; a listening god is not experiential). They like the experience of ritual, like the eucharist. They like seeing friends. Participants in religion like social events such as common meals which happen in church--pot lucks, funeral luncheons, Advent or Lenten meals and worship, or Christmas parties, and the like. All experiential. Being taught about "that for which there is no evidence" is itself experiential. Sunday school is experiential, even if the subject of the teaching is never manifest.

Religions ALL involve a lot of person to person stuff, which is our human bread and butter.

That's a good question, probably has something to do with the human condition. Psychological bias, racism, you know, those kinds of things.

To that end, you think it's a pathology of sorts, or just human nature? — 3017amen

SophistiCat was asking a rhetorical question.

How about adding "history" to the list, along with "something to do with the human condition. Psychological bias, racism..." The United States isn't "naturally" a more religious country than France, and it is no accident that people of color are poorer than whites. Both the religiosity of Americans and the relative poverty of blacks are the result of a long history of specific religious teaching and economic practice.

The dominance of religion in a given population isn't the consequence of the "overwhelming truth of the religion"; its the consequence of intensive and long-lasting promotional activity. When the intensive and long-lasting promotional activity is withdrawn (especially during periods of rapid change) the number of adherents is likely to decrease.

One of the consequences of the US not having an established church is that every two bit (and $10) religious organization was free to promote its religious views. And they did -- from Anglicanism and Catholicism to Mormonism.

Thats why “brainwashing” seems like such an accurate word when describing how people come to religion. — DingoJones

What would you like me to do with them? — 3017amen

People are no more "brainwashed" to believe a some deity or batch of deities than they are brainwashed into accepting the existing economic/political arrangement, or the basic method of bookkeeping. Brainwashing and learning amount to the same thing.

"Brainwashing" applies to situations where, under pressure, people are forced to adapt a contradictory view of the world. An example of this is "brainwashing" a captured enemy soldier so that he comes to think of his own country as an aggressor and his captors as victims. Children are not "brainwashed"; they are taught to believe what their parents believe.

Atheist parents tend to teach atheism to their children (usually - not always) and religious parents tend to teach their religion to their children (usually, not always). Whether their teaching is successful is another matter. Children are not born with anti-religious views, so teaching them religion normally has nothing to overcome. Same with teaching children to be atheists.

I do think there has to be positive survival value to higher cognition. — Artemis

I think so too, but... Homo sapiens hunt and gather successfully (presumably using their higher cognition) but primates also forage successfully, without (apparently) having our higher cognition. Wolves and bears hunt and gather successfully with even less higher cognition. Primates are still here because enough of them avoided being eaten, and they didn't have higher cognition. So did we, with higher cognition.

Question: For a relatively long period of time (several hundred thousand years) we were hunter gatherers, doing much the same thing that other animals do. So, where do the higher cognitive skills come into play?

Well, tools come to mind. Other animals make tools, but nothing approaching the complexity of a carefully knapped piece of flint attached to a shaft and thrown. Fire? The early use of fire required skill and insight to use for beneficial results.

Wandering? Moving long distances required adaption over a relatively short period of time. Wandering people would encounter dangers they hadn't seen before, as well as new foods.

Primates haven't made many advances in the last million years; we have (for better and for worse). We would not have, had it not been for higher cognitive functioning (and maybe the opposable thumb, upright posture, ability to walk and run a long ways, etc.)

No one has won a Nobel prize for philosophy because there isn't one. Old Alfred figured that If philosophy hadn't accomplished its aims after 2500 years, there was just no likelihood of prize-worthy breakthroughs in the future.

That seems to be true. Do you know of any living philosophers who have done anything even slightly noticeable (never mind jaw-droppingly outstanding) in philosophy? Does Alfred's invention, Dynamite, offer a solution to philosophy's centuries-long boredom?

"See those barges loaded with philosophy books being hauled up river to the new State University library?"

"Yes, why?"

"Blow it up. Dynamite. Tonight."

He shouldn't be dismissed, no. But as a Sanders enthusiast, I am worried about the combination of his heart and age. He appears to me to be in excellent mental shape, and he hasn't had to take a lot of time off from campaigning. That's all to the good.

The Presidency is a tough job (if taken seriously--DONALD) and the demands on one's physical resources are high -- at least that is what I have read. Haven't tried it myself. So, his running mate is more important than usual.

@Hanover I don't think Trump is a Nazi--even a crypto-nazi. He could be more easily described as having some fascist tendencies if we think of fascism as less a list of specific doctrines and more a set of tactics which undermine democracy. His (seeming) desire to be a one-man operation could be a psychological bug (or feature), or a characteristic of fascist thinking. His disregard for veracity in his statements could be chalked up to stupidity or another fascist approach to define the truth as whatever it needs to be. His anti-immigrant stand is legitimate enough, and there is a coherent rationale for sharp limitations on immigration. Scapegoating groups, however, is a distinctly fascist move. Scapegoating should be condemned because it is another anti-democratic, move. Scapegoating makes it more difficult for rational policies to be considered. And so on.

I look forward to seeing Trump run out of town, but I don't see him as a little Hitler. He's a little asshole, for sure, and every now and then does something normal and politically acceptable. But not often enough. Before we we impeach him, we should remember his VP, Mike Pence, another prick. Nothing to look forward to.

He's just had a heart attack, he's 77 and looks every day of it — Wayfarer

Sanders was born September 8, 1941; he's 78. He'll be 79 before the 2020 election, about as old as Reagan when he completed his second term.

The age of presidents has been increasing steadily for a long time. Biden may have had heart problems, and it appeared quit a bit earlier than it has for Sanders.

I would vote for Sanders, but age and heart / brain health are a matter which should be considered long and hard for any over-70 candidate and more so for a 79 year old one. (Reagan had Alzheimers (he was functional, I guess) and his wife Nancy was consulting astrologers!).

Excellent analysis. Thanks for posting the video.

Opposite the riff raff in Erie, PA and the various deindustrialized areas of the US (and the UK) are the Boston-New York-Washington metroplex (and London) elites who dominate a great deal of what we see, hear, and read in the national media. The New York Times, New Yorker, Wall Street Journal, and so on speak to and for the elite. Their views are skewed toward the interests of these highly privileged people (numbering in the single-digit millions).

The kind of world that is good for the elite isn't the same kind of world that is good for the riff raff. The riff raff have been impoverished partly by globalization (featuring cheap Asian labor costs), but also by the successful wage-stagnating strategies of business, the steady erosion by inflation, and the gradual thinning of what passes for a social safety net. All this has been a fact of riff-raff life since the 1970s.

There is a large faction of "the left" and the elite that is suffering from what Quillette author Dr. Benedict Beckeld (a philosopher, not an MD) calls "Oikophobia" -- the hatred or dislike of one’s own cultural home. Oikophobia tends to set in when a powerful nation passes its apogee of power. Images of what were celebrated on the way up (rough, tough industrial workers, strong ethnic communities, political solidarity among the majority population, and so forth) becomes a crass embarrassment to those who no longer feel like they are riding an ascendent rocket. After the apogee, the elite begins to loathe the formerly heroic rough tough workers as sexist fat failures who couldn't adapt to the new economic realities (which they themselves rigged against the workers), views strong ethnicity as racist, and reinterprets the old political solidarity as populism tinged with a hint of fascism.

The narrative of the elites tends to place the responsibility for racism, sexism, xenophobia, islamophobia, homophobia, etc. on individuals, meaning "your privately held primitive attitudes are the source of the problem", rather than naming elite-administered national political and economic policies as the major factor. A very significant example of this is that American suburban racial and economic segregation was explicit national policy starting in the 1930s. The policy was "home ownership in segregated suburbs for whites with adequate resources and segregated rental housing in the urban core for blacks". It isn't that there were no racial/income gulf before this policy, but there were some blacks, with as sufficient resources to buy houses in the suburbs as some whites, who ran into the brick wall of FHA policy and financing rules.

The government didn't invent racism, of course. But separating the races in urban environments solidified and aggravated racial bias.

I haven't smoked cannabis, a lot, and I used to enjoy it. Somewhere along the line the way I reacted to it changed (or the pot I was smoking changed) and it stopped being amusing and became just a mild altered state that was kind of tedious. I bought some a few months ago in Colorado (edible and smokable) and have had the same reaction -- it was annoying more than amusing.

Maybe it is the set and/or setting; maybe on other occasions I had had more beer; maybe I don't find my internal musings as amusing as I used to -- don't know. I definitely didn't find concentration, memory, insight, perception, or anything else changed for the better. 50 years have passed since the first effective use, so maybe the old gray horse isn't what he used to be. Very disappointing.

On the other hand, I feel like my brain is working better now than it has for quite some time.

as Samuel Delaney said, "Science fiction is not ‘about the future.’ Science fiction is in dialogue with the present…[the science fiction writer] indulge in a significant distortion of the present that sets up a rich and complex dialogue with the reader’s here and now."

In his novel Stars In My Pocket Like Grains Of Sand, many species bear implants which allow them to communicate directly with the General Information Service. One can mentally ask for and receive all kinds of information, like... what is the proper way to greet, eat with, and talk to the locals on a planet occupied by aliens you know nothing about. The needed information is added to your memory. No more faux pas! The Internet serves that function in a less powerful and on-board manner than General information, but the effect is similar. One can get all sorts of information quickly.

Even the off-board Internet can affect one's thinking. IF one can get any telephone number, spelling, date reference, etc. from Google (or Bing, I suppose -- I don't know anybody who uses Bing much), then there is no need to remember, or possibly learn it in the first place. This makes one entirely dependent on Google, Bing, or somebody else, however. It could, if carried too far, deprive one of enough digested general information in one's head to think clearly and precisely. Autonomous brains need plenty of self-digested on-board information.

... to stay relevant in this universe ... ? — Jhn4

Relevant in THIS universe? A) it's the only universe we've got, and B) with whom are we competing in this universe such that we could/would become "irrelevant"?

lon Musk, Billionaire, has a start up called Neuralink, which, in the future aims to alter our perceptions and inner workings with brain implants, so that we could become cyborgs. — Jhn4

Really, fuck you Elon Musk, and drop dead too. There are enough people already trying to alter our perceptions and inner workings WITHOUT brain implants.

Who the hell would trust their brain (their being) to a corporation (even one started up by Elon Musk)?

A question I have not read about is, "Why did the British (in our case) select Africans as the slave of choice? Could they have selected some other group: Aboriginals, South Asians, Arabs...?

I am guessing there are two, maybe three reasons:

The first is that it was convenient to obtain slaves from Africa. You remember the triangular trade map from American history? Ships left the American Colonies with rum (before cotton became a big crop) and unloaded the liquor in England. Then the ships traveled south to Africa where they picked up slaves. Then to the Caribbean colonies to unload the slaves who would be used on cane plantations. Molasses was loaded up and taken to New York and Boston. The molasses was made into rum which was shipped to England.

The second is that there were slave sellers on the African Coast. The English didn't have to hunt down slaves; Africans did that chore for them, in exchange for desired goods.

Why did the Africans sell their own kind into slavery? Well, for one -- they didn't see much of what happened to slaves. The trip west or east (Arab slave traders) was a one way trip. Two, people are willing enough to sell out strangers, and for the most part, the Africans who were sold into slavery were strangers to the sellers. Europeans were not the first people to obtain and trade in African slaves. Arab nations obtain slaves along the north and west coast of Africa. [Among the last states to abolish slavery were Saudi Arabia and Yemen, which abolished slavery in 1962 under pressure from Britain; Oman in 1970; and Mauritania in 1905, 1981, and again in August 2007.]

I don't know whether 17th and 18th century British society considered Africans sub-human or not. I get the impression the British of the time tended to consider everyone who wasn't upper-class British to be sub human. Snobs.

Again, you would have to sell me on "all slavery is equally bad" before I could accept this. — ZhouBoTong

We are debating degrees of suffering here, not whether there was suffering. Was being a Greek slave/tutor in Rome no worse than being sent to the mines? Granted: The mines were obviously worse. Slaves died at a high rates in (some) mines, or wished they were dead, maybe. But bear in mind that an educated Greek didn't start out life as a slave or as a tutor. He probably became a slave because he failed in business, was swindled, or was captured during a war. His family was enslaved as well. In the Empire, a person could be transposed from top of the heap to bottom of the heap in short order. The transition from a man of importance to slavery (even if in a post where one could use one's knowledge) involved a radical adjustment in status.

Granted again: What makes slavery bad is the kind of labor one is forced to perform. Gladiators might have had the worst labor--fighting to the death. Working in the mines was pretty bad. Agriculture? Long days, certainly -- but the agriculture of olive, grape, and grain growing (as well as garden farming) were not as horrible as cotton or cane farming. For one thing, vineyards require skill on the part of workers. The workers had to be happy enough to be careful about what they were doing.

Southern American and Caribbean slavery involved quite disagreeable working conditions. Romans had some very unpleasant work too--galley slaves, for instance, but nothing on the scale of the cotton industry. (At least, that is my impression.) Also, in the ancient world, no worker had a particularly easy life, because work was mostly manual. Slave or free, work was a lot of sweating labor.

Here's a clip from I Claudius, where Livia, Emperor Augustus's wife gives the gladiators a pep talk. She's very much against them using professional tricks to stay alive. In Robert Graves novel (based on Suetonius) Livia was chief conspirator (for whatever skullduggery was going to happen). She's a real nice person.

I am maybe one of the few people who likes S, — Baden

I like @S.

He wanted to be banned, so I don’t see much of a choice for the mods but to accommodate him. — DingoJones

Sounds like getting shot-by-cop suicide.

If he just knocked off being an asshole, — schopenhauer1

"First they came for the assholes, and then there weren't many left."

Thanks for a positive comment on @S.

BTW, @S, you should have stuck with Sapientia.

[Citation needed] — Pfhorrest

Bitter Crank died and stayed dead. Everything allegedly written under his name is produced by an autonomous computer program, which by the way, is looking for more live warm humans to replace. You, for instance...