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...

It seems like you're saying, as long as there are coping strategies and preferences (like jobs that are more preferable than others), then it is justified to put people into these situations which inevitably cause suffering or are at least known to be a source of it. — schopenhauer1

Risk tolerant, resilient, and somewhat forgetful people are OK with the existence of bad experiences as long as people can cope. War, for instance, is very, very bad but nonetheless, most soldiers (80%?) cope with it well enough. Aren't some soldiers quite damaged, one might ask the risk taking, resilient, forgetful person? "True enough", they'll say, "but given time they will get over it, and will go through life successfully." This has turned out to be true. Damaged but recovering, recovered, and moving on. (Of course, for maybe 20% the damage is severe and they don't recover -- ever. They become permanent walking wounded.). The risk averse will focus on those who don't get better. The risk tolerant on those who cope.

It's not logic, Schop, it's our fates writting in Adenine (A), Guanine (G), Cytosine (C) and Thymine (T).

Life is inescapably a mixed experience, and not a mix of equal "good", "bad" and "neutral" parts. "Neutral" rules the roost. A large portion of life is experienced as neither good nor bad. Of the good and bad, I think "good" has an edge over "bad". That's my view.

People who think that "bad" rules and neutral has an edge over good will probably choose to not have children. There are a fair number of people who choose not to have children who wouldn't call themselves "antinatalists" which is a specialized term used in places like this one. People refrain from reproduction for various reasons, but some people feel that the world is too wretched to bring children into it.

Most people view the world as less than perfect but not so imperfect that it is an unfit place for people to live and bring more children into the world. I suspect that the coming century of global climate change may serve to suppress such enthusiasm.

Only those who accept your view that "the inescapable bad experiences overwhelm the good experiences" are likely to foreclose having children. (But there are probably fatalists whose views might accord with yours who will have children anyway, because they are fatalists.)

One's optimism or pessimism about happiness, the future, suffering, reproduction, and so forth is not controlled by logic. No one will be moved from one side of the continuum to the other by argument. What argument can do is strengthen one's ability to defend one's predisposition. Where one falls on the optimism/pessimism scale is mostly determined by genes. It isn't that we have one gene for optimism and one for pessimism, of course. Rather a cluster of genes that produce, eg, risk tolerance, self-confidence, and resilience will probably (with a few more genes) produce an optimist. Likewise, a risk averse, timid, and less resilient person is more likely to be pessimists--on the basis of genetics.

Risk takers just aren't persuaded by the actuarial tables showing people who hang glide die younger than people who cross country ski. The possibility of death (more than vanishingly small, but also not a "dead certainty" so to speak) is part of the charm of hang gliding. People who love cross country skiing love it because it is vigorous and safe (except in areas patrolled by ravenous wolves, hungry grizzlies, and giant weasels).

Resilient risk takers just don't feel the world the way you do.

Work/labor is ... inescapable — schopenhauer1

Quite so. And what is inescapable is just inescapable -- not good because it is inevitable. The best one can hope for is "good work" -- work that is personally rewarding (in psychological terms, not monetary terms). Good work is still work, and is likely to involve slogging through tedious or odious tasks at times. Good work might be very unpleasant: caring for the sick is certainly good work, but can be extremely unpleasant at times.

What about the inverse view, that what is inescapable is inescapable and not therefore 'bad'? Suffering is generally intermittent (and may seldom occur but it is still inescapable. Work generally involves some suffering but the suffering is rarely continuous.

Life is like that: inescapable but provides intermittent pleasure and suffering. ("Inescapable pleasures? Sure. Antinatalists focus on the inescapable sufferings, but overlook inescapable pleasures).

What to do, what to do, what to do?

Forget it. Forget as much as possible. Forget the absolutely real suffering one endured, forget the insults, the failures, the disasters. Forget the pain. A cop out? Not at all. Forgetting lessens the suffering of the inescapable. One may have had an extremely painful physical or emotional experience last week or 50 years ago. One can either dwell on the suffering for years, or one can let it go. ("Forgetting" isn't like the destruction of traumatic brain injury. It's selective.)

"Forgetting" is a normal process -- just as remembering is. But one can stack the deck in favor of forgetting. It takes practice, and it may take therapy. (Therapy means change, not adjustment.).

Whether we can easily let the memory of suffering go or not is not entirely voluntary. Depressive types tend to hold on to the memory of suffering. Being depressive is not a voluntary condition, but the most depressed person can still make an effort to forget unpleasantness. The goal is not to escape into 'la la land', which in any case is short term and involves the payment of unpleasant withdrawal later on.

Successful forgetting won't change the antinatalist into a population explosion; it will just make their life more endurable until inescapable death provides relief.

I also remember seeing a B&W TV screen covered with the plastic sheet in 3 colors at a friends house. This had to be in the early 1950s. I couldn't have been more than 7 or 8. Seeing these colored bands pasted over the screen was unforgettable -- I think because it was so extremely unconvincing.

(Real) color TV was demonstrated in 1950 (one system) and 1951 (another system), but color broadcasting was not approved until late 1953 (using the RCA system). A system was used that was compatible with B&W sets, so that color broadcasts could be seen on any television (but few people had color sets in 1954). Apparently people had heard about color TV, and you can imagine people seeing little ads in the back of magazines promoting a way of "seeing color on your black and white television". Send $5.95 to...

Interesting irrelevant factoid: If I remember correctly, the color television cameras taken on the Apollo moon landing were the type invented by CBS in 1950. it used a mechanical system of color separation (as opposed to an electronic system developed by RCA). It happened that the mechanical system was far more robust than the electrical separation system and could tolerate the unmediated sunlight blasting the moon surface. The RCA cameras would have burnt out in overly bright light.



This must have been one of the cheaper versions. Not very colorful. Or the color faded over the years.

"If a condition of life is inescapable, does that automatically make it acceptable and good?"

No, of course not. What is inescapable is inescapable. Why should the inescapable have some other quality attached to it (like "acceptable and good")?

What is it that is "inescapable"? Life? Existence? There are escape routes available. Being born is inescapable (because the unborn do not exist in the first place and are not party to the problem of existence and escapability). Suffering? Again, it is not inescapable. Death is inescapable, if one has been born.

Mortality balances natality. If life was inescapable, if one could not die, it would be suffering indeed. But we all escape, sooner or later, through death's door.

Good start, but there are missing terms.

Well, manna falling from the sky would be nice, but in fact I was never waiting for that to happen. Of course I recognized that a living is got by going to work, staying there all day, and then showing up again the next day, and the next, the next... I did that for 40+ years, after all.

Death on the installment plan is hyperbole, but not altogether. It isn't the work, per se, that is usually the bad part; it's the social and psychological structure of work that gets one. Some jobs are great. One is given work that is difficult, interesting, exciting, and regenerative. I've had a couple of those and they were NOT death on the installment plan. Some jobs are terrible. The work is tedious and of no value to the workers (granted, it has value to the employer) and is coupled with oppressive and demeaning regimes of oversight.

I don't know whether you have performed that sort of terrible job or not. Maybe you were lucky enough to avoid it. it's labor where the worker value is not acknowledged, or only grudgingly so. That actual persons are employed is ignored as much as possible. It's dehumanizing. I've had several such jobs -- they didn't make up a huge portion of my work experience, but they were illustrative.

Most jobs are neither great nor terrible. They are just humdrum.

But getting back to work life balance: only while performing jobs that are really good can one also maintain interesting lives. To live an interesting job after work requires one to have energy and enthusiasm at 5:00 pm. Really tedious jobs, or even just humdrum ones, leave one too disheartened, tired, depressed, etc. to do a 180º turn when one gets home and pick up some fascinating project.

Purple is the liturgical color of Lent and Advent. Advent starts on... December 1, this year, and is over on December 24, midnight.

That's not purple.

Oh, I see purple now

Next thing they'll want to change the name of the site. Then the content.

As Nat King Cole said,

When my sugar walks down the street
All the little birdies go tweet, tweet, tweet

I think the hereditary nature is more the "fatal flaw", but it being almost exclusively African is what makes it racist by definition — ZhouBoTong

My objection to slavery is not that it was racist, but that it was extremely exploitative, extremely dehumanizing, and extremely cruel. Racism, to my way of thinking, does not make slavery worse. Racism, could not make slavery worse. Whether the slaves were one ethnicity or a dozen ethnicities doesn't matter. Being reduced to chattel property and treated as an object can't be topped.

You know, Karl Marx identified "wage slavery" as the curse of the working class. The employer doesn't exactly "own" the worker, but the worker is entirely dependent on the "wage-paying class" for their minimal sustenance. In one of his examples, he said a farmer could use a Negro slave to re-roof a barn. Or he could hire an Irishman to do it. Which worker was the better deal? The Irishman of course.

If the slave fell off the roof and died, the farmer faced the large loss of the slaves substantial value. If the Irishman fell off the roof and died, the farmer wasn't out anything -- unless he decided to give the widow the irishman's unpaid wages--a small sum.

Capitalism can use slaves, but it is cheaper to use more disposable employees. From the capitalist's point of view, the purpose of hiring a worker is to exploit his labor as much as possible and pay him no more than it takes to keep him on the job. Since the worker is dependent on labor, the amount that it takes to keep him coming back is not that much.

My understanding of slavery in Rome, at least, was that it was hereditary, but the Romans allowed some (limited) avenues of escape from bondage. A slave might be able to conduct business on the side and earn money to buy his freedom. Slaves were sometime granted manumission as a reward. But most slaves stayed slaves. The Romans had mixed feelings about slaves -- not guilt. They didn't trust their slaves, for the most part; they didn't like the habits of a lot of their slaves. But... the better off classes could not live their desired lifestyle without plentiful slaves.

Slavery held Rome's development back. There was no need to develop efficient technology when you had this steady supply of fresh slaves coming into the heart of the Empire from the expanding periphery. When the Romans felt the need, they could put together mechanized industrial operations. One of the large water powered grain mills in Spain, I think it was, ran multiple grinding wheels by a cascading water supply. One falling stream was able to power multiple grinders in close proximity to each other. The output of flour was quite high (by Roman standards).

There are some other examples of remarkable Roman technology, but for the most part, they didn't pursue technology. There was no need -- until late in the empire when expansion ceased and the periphery began to shrink. As the periphery shrank, and as provinces moved out of centralized Roman control, the economy began to shrivel up and "efficient technology" would not be a concern for a long time.

Red represents Republicans, blue Democrats. @Hanover should be thrilled!

Aqua-teal, please. Easy on the eyes. — tim wood

I don't give a rat's ass what color it is as long as it's not teal or aqua. Red and blue are the world's most popular colors. Only .003% of the world's population actually like teal or aqua, and they are all very sick people.

What's black and white and red all over? A burning nun.

"being a mean person" might not be as bad as being a mass murderer or an arsonist, but certainly meanness is a moral flaw. Take a look at the synonyms:

unkind nasty spiteful foul
malicious malevolent despicable
contemptible obnoxious
vile odious loathsome
disagreeable unpleasant
unfriendly uncharitable
shabby unfair callous
cruel vicious base low
horrible horrid hateful
rotten lowdown beastly
bitchy catty shitty

Harm causing, all. Bad news.

Racial slavery fostered racism. Slavery harms the owner as much as the slave (well not really, but certainly morally). — ZhouBoTong

Do you think this was true in the Roman Empire or for other Mediterranean Basin slave-holding cultures going back 1 or 2 millennia BCE? The Roman economy was also very dependent on slavery; 1/3 of the population of the Italian peninsula was slave. (I'm not sure what the fraction of slave populations were in say... Gaul, Dalmatia, Cappadocia, Mauritania...

As far as I know, Roman slaves were the very model of diversity -- Greek, German, African, Middle Eastern, British... whoever could be hauled into slavery. Was the fatal flaw in Anglo-American slavery that the slaves were pretty much exclusively African?

Slavery in the Roman empire varied from employment of Greek slaves as tutors for one's children to extremely harsh labor regimes in mining. Anglo-American slaves performed a fairly narrow range of labor in fields, farmyard, and house, and the exploitation seems to have more intense and systematic than slavery under the Romans.

It seems very safe to stake out the claim that "Prior to the Civil War, most Americans were racist". it's also safe to stake out the claim that Americans were racist after the civil war.

Slavery was an attractive system of extracting involuntary low cost labor from a designated group of people (Africans, mostly). The English did not introduce slavery because they were racists. They bought sold, and transported slaves because it was profitable. Slavery is old school -- going back a very long ways.

The Greeks and Romans owned slaves without developing intense negative feelings about the ethnicity of people who were slaves. Racism isn't a requirement for developing a slave system. Necessity and convenience are required.

Our peculiar American problem was our high-minded ideas about freedom and representation. It was contradictory to talk about freedom and equality when the keystone of our economy was slavery. Slaves couldn't be equal and free and still be slaves. One solution was to classify the slaves as not fully human, The 3/5 compromise counted the slaves along with whites, just subtracting 40% of their numerical weight. The purpose was to reduce the represented population of the slave-holding states.

Thomas Jefferson, slave owner, probably did not count Sally Hemings as sub-human when he had sex with her.

Slave holders likely had intensely ambiguous feelings about their slaves -- valuing them on the one hand, intuiting that they were humans like him or her self, and yet treating them with scalding cruelty. The outcome of these intense feelings wasn't to free the slave; rather it was to keep and hate them.

Slavery was an integral part of our economy, north and south. Northerners also had to square their ideals with their realities. (Granted, there were many people, north and south, who were not responsible for slavery's existence. But it was still a vital part of the economy.

The problem is primarily with brightness, though. Not magnification. — Tzeentch

Reduce the brightness of your screen? Cover the screen with waxed paper? Go to bed instead of staying up all night to haunt the empty crypts of the damned?

I didn't look at any of the links provided because I agree that "overconsumption, intensive farming, deforestation, heavy use of pesticides" et al are real and present problems contributing a great deal to species' decline. No, it is not all CO2's doing.

Pick a pesticide or herbicide and it's probably screwing things up. Neonicotinoids, a newer pesticide, is a known bee killer. Of course! That's what pesticides do. Kill insects. So, we should not be surprised.

But global warming plays a role. Insects and birds are affected by heat, as are their food sources. But I agree with your list of primary contributors -- overconsumption, intensive farming, deforestation, and heavy use of pesticides.

The only way is to adapt. But I also don't believe it will end civilization. Humans are very good generalists, and we have technology. We survived an ice age with stone-aged tools and migrated all over the planet thousands of years ago. — Marchesk

Yes: adaptable humans will make it IF they are located in northern climates, are not too numerous, have lots of resources, and have viable economies to produce the machinery to survive. The number of people fitting those specs are small, in relation to the rest of the planet.

There are definite limits to adaptation. Take the "wet-bulb-temperature": it's a measure of how much heat a human can lose at a given temperature and humidity level. When the wet-bulb-temperature exceeds our capacity to lose heat, we die--quickly, from heat stroke. It will become increasingly difficult to perform agricultural work in tropic and sub-tropical areas--in this century, in 30 years.

Most crops do not do well in high heat. Heavier rain makes it difficult to till soil, plant, and harvest. Beneficial and harmful insect populations are falling. A lot of food is dependent on pollinating by bees, a group not doing too well (and not just domesticated honey bees). Plant breeding is an option, of course, and one we had better hope works, but it's difficult to breed adaptable plants for rapidly changing conditions.

Good weather for growing cereals is being pushed northward; there is a lot of land not currently being used for crops that will become available. Unfortunately, most recently thawed northern land is going to be altogether unsuitable for growing much of anything. Thawed tundra will need thousands of years to turn into soil.

Adaptation will require a lot of energy use which will probably come from coal and oil, which will aggravate global warming. Cooling already uses around 10% of world energy production.

IF we were going to make it through ingenious adaptation, we would already be installing the massive new technology. I don't see that happening. Major technological system changes usually take around 50 years to invent, design, develop, and deploy.

What does it have to do with climate change? — Tzeentch

The species are fucking dying off, that's what it has to do with climate change. Most species evolved to fit a specific environmental niche. When the niche disappears, the species often goes with it. Environmental change like early or late arrival of blossoming dates or migratory bird arrivals can be curtains. in North America and Europe bird and insect populations are falling. This is really, really bad news.

I'm saying there will be no doomsday. — Tzeentch

How dare you, Tzeentch, fly in the face of us doomsayers. Elvis Perkins sings in one of his songs, "I don't let doomsday bother me; does it bother you?"

Though I forget your name
I remember your sweet face
'Til Doomsday, fiddle-aye
Man, I went wild last night
Oh I went feelin' alright
I don't let Doomsday bother me
Do you let it bother you?

I am a climate change survival denier. I believe in climate change and I don't think we will survive as a technologically sophisticated species in the long run (next millennium, outside).

Why not?

Because we do not know how to change our collective behavior fast enough. EVEN IF everyone agrees that we should make massive changes in the way we live, EVEN IF we know we should do this within 10 years, we don't know how to impose that much sudden and dramatic change on ourselves.

I can picture us all riding on buses, trains, bikes and our own two feet. I can picture us all being vegetarians; I can picture us all being energy thrifty. What I can't picture is getting us FROM where we are EVEN HALF WAY TO successful survival behavior.

Does anybody know how to trigger major simultaneous and coordinated behavior changes in several billion people -- within 10 years? Within 50? Never mind, 50 years will be too late to begin changing.

If we had a century to carry out change, we would still have problems doing so. We don't have a century. What will defeat us is the synergistic sword of Damocles causing too many challenges, one after another.

The threat, real as I think it is, isn't a near and present enough danger that get's people moving fast. Here it's 50F tonight, with frost likely in the next week or two. That's reasonably normal. On the other hand, Minnesota received 60 inches of rain this past year -- about twice normal. That's more like New Orleans annual rainfall. The last record rainfall was in 2016. not good.

In the long run we'll survive in small numbers, but in a culturally stunted milieu.

2. Your mental feelings about your physical sex — Pfhorrest

I have spent what... 6 decades coping with conflicting feelings about my physical self, about how my sexual desire is manifested (given that I grew up thinking I was a pathological deviant and was sinking deep in sin). Plus I was unhappy about my body (not gender) and was something of a social outcast. This all got better once I got the hell out of town after high school and started college, but it still took like 25 more years to resolve all the crap.

Lots of ordinary men and women are conflicted about

1. their physical sex
2. their mental feelings about your physical sex
3. Social stuff about role and presentation that is associated with sex

not in the same way a trans person may be, but conflicted none-the-less. The issues are different, the expectations are different.

The way we are embodied vs. the expectations of the community in which we are located and the desires and delusions our selves can be difficult to square. Not everyone is so troubled, but enough are to call it a near-universal problem.

This isn't about me. — Pfhorrest

It's at least somewhat about you because you are the only one who can provide testimony about how you feel and think about your self. How else does anyone have first hand information about being human, except by being a "me"?

I thought this was a progressive community — Pfhorrest

I don't know how progressive "it" is. TPF is a collection of posters, some of whom have been kicking around here for quite a few years, and who feel a certain amount of loyalty to the operation. The turnover is fairly high. Some of us are progressive, some of us are conservative. Our doors are wide open so we get a fair number of walking wounded.

I'm a retired gay male, 73. (might be one of the walking wounded). I well know how homosexuality was classified up to the 1960s, and it wasn't particularly complimentary, even if it wasn't altogether inaccurate. While there are "pitchers and catchers", pitchers are not necessarily dominant and catchers are not necessarily submissive. Too simplistic. Gay men do not want to be women, may or may not like women, and may have various motivations (more than reasons) for wearing women's outré costumes. You never see "a blouse, grey skirt, and sensible black pumps" drag. The view then was that homosexuality was a pathology. In a different context it was a grievous sin (it still is in several religious groups).

I have known a dozen or so trans people over the years. Most of them seem to become happier after they redesigned themselves as whatever they think they ought to have been, than before. So that's all good.

Still, I am not 100% confident that some, most, or all trans people are entirely on the level. Some are, I think, deluded. Now, "DELUSION" by the way, is less a bug than a feature. Most people (98%?) entertain various delusions about themselves, their families, their friends, their work life, their religion, their politics, their amusements, and so forth. The delusions are a necessary part of our operating systems, but it [usually] isn't all or most of it, and they usually isn't running the show.

We delude ourselves out of necessity. As Sigmund Freud noted, "happiness is not in the cards." Life is a bitch, and without strategic delusions cushioning the abrasive hardness of life, it can get to be intolerable.

(Technical question: how do you people here in a way that links like that?) — Pfhorrest

@name so @pfhorrest

oops, that wasn't helpful. @ " name " so @ " pfhorrest " EXCEPT no spaces.

The public voted for Trump. — Banno

As you know, the majority of the people did NOT vote for trump.

Let's hope Swan's attempt sidetrack this fine topic does not succeed. This forum is in desperate need of some decent analysis - and of posts that do not hide in quotation marks. — Banno

I didn't think @Swan was sidetracking the discussion; you might say the same thing about my posts.

This graph displays the overlap of male and female personality traits.



It sees to me that that personality traits that males and females can display covers the territory claimed by "trans" terms.

@Pfhorrest

It seems like avant-garde gender and sex theorists/activists are reacting to the most conservative picture of masculinity and femininity. The stereotypes of Madison Avenue and Hollywood define real men as tough and insensitive and real women as soft and caring. This old-fashioned and fading view of gender and sex has never typified real people. — Bitter Crank

The various socio-psychological traits of masculinity and femininity are already pretty broadly represented in people.

I am not right wing but this stuff is ridiculous. — Swan

I'm fairly far to the left. My lefty peers don't approve of my views. Much of this topic (gender vs sex) seems to have gone down the rabibit hole where,

'But "glory" doesn't mean "a nice knock-down argument",' Alice objected.
'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.'
'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean so many different things.'
'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master — that's all.'