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.'

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.

If you distribute sex and gender characteristics of typical men and women, what you find is a large area of overlap--not just now, but in the past. So much overlap, that the most intensely heterosexual (or lesbian) masculine women are more masculine than all but the most masculine men, and the most intensely heterosexual (or gay) feminine men are more feminine than all but the most feminine women.

That's why heterosexual men can be very good caretakers and heterosexual women can be good mechanics or construction workers. That's why typical women can dig ditches and typical men can take care of a home. That's why some heterosexual men dress in female drag and why some homosexuals dress in biker drag. There are women who can beat the shit out of most men (they've got strength and aggressiveness) and there are men who make better caring nurses than most women (they've got sensitivity to emotional/physical needs).

The whole 'trans-sexual, trans-gender, gender-fluid' quest is built on the false premise that the standard definition of masculinity and femininity provided no "home" for people out on the extreme ends of the distribution. "You can be anything you want to be" is an old American meme. It isn't true, but it sounds very uplifting. So, fuck the xy and xx chromosomes, fuck the testes, ovaries, vagina, penis, beard, breasts, and build. A surgeon can whip up a penis or a vagina and the druggist can supply the missing hormones. Biology be damned!

Except biology can't be damned. XX and XY chromosomes mark every cell of the trans person (in 99.999% of the population). Males remain males and females remain females whatever the surgeon, pharmacist, or cultural theorists does. And it is unnecessary, because biology already provided for a very wide range of sexual dispositions.

All the language of the "trans" movement reflects nothing new, really. It's just a new argot and a new market. No, you are not "gender fluid" -- you are out there on the far end of the biological distribution of possibilities. ALL of us, whatever we think we are, have features that are out on the far end, too. There are extremely sharp and extremely blunt brains; there are extreme athletes; there are musicians with extreme memory capabilities; some people have perfect pitch, some people can't sing if their life depended on it. Some people hear or see far more acutely than others. Some people are extreme risk takers, others think twice about jumping over a puddle.

Each of these extreme characteristics manage to exist without a special identity, argot, or political agenda.

I think the gender identity bit has gone done a rabbit hole, but look: If I met you, I'd be polite and call you by the name you provided. If I liked you, I'd be a friend.

Some people have been told to stop coming up with so many great discussion topics. Are they paying you to do it? I noticed you have become a regular font of fertile topics.

I think people should be worrying A LOT LESS about god and A LOT MORE about life here on this celestial ball.

One of my all time least favorite quotes :grimace: . My parents spewed that garbage from a young age, but even a few questions from a 16 year old (me) would cause them to him and haw about how much they loved working 55 hours a week, every week. As they are approaching retirement, and are looking forward to it, they are somewhat willing to admit they were wrong with that quote. — ZhouBoTong

Hear! Hear!

"If you do what you love, you'll never work a day in your life" is the kind of scuzzy lies that one finds on motivational posters.

Work, labor, in this world tends to be a pretty alienating affair, whether it be run by capitalists or commissars. The reason people are paid to work is that no one would do it, otherwise.

Work is death on the installment plan.

Language and music are intertwined. Of course, a lot of language is "un-musical" just as some music is "unmusical". Otomotopaeia is the use of words to create a "sound" or musical effect -- like Poe's Bells. And how can you listen to the lyrics if there are no lyrics? You like Beethoven's 5th? No words.

`

this would be more of an investment in my relationship with him — Stanley

You might get paid back. Time will tell. In the meantime...

Don't mix business with familial love. Loans are loans, love is love. Don't confuse the two.

The investment that matters is the relationship that has been created and built up over time and with common experiences between you and your brother: you grew up together in the same home. You (plural) have invested decades of time together in each other. You are invested. You don't need to invest cash in your brother's failed business venture to bolster your relationship.

Business dealings between family members and friends can (and fairly often do) turn bitter. It can be hard to separate out loans and love.

There is a small moral hazard here. A moral hazard exists when loans enable people to take risks without having to shoulder the consequences. Loaning businesses money sometimes creates major moral hazards -- sometimes really really big ones, like when the government bailed out AIG in 2008 to the tune of $67,835,000,000. There was moral hazard up to Wall Street's eyeballs that year.

As I indicated in another post, the primary mechanism of evolution, natural selection, acts only on individuals. I'm not sure if that contradicts what you are saying or not. — T Clark

It's a difficult knot.

The 'species' doesn't think, react, hunt, shop, cook, and eat. That's all done by individuals. On the other hand, individuals don't survive, thrive, change, or die out over long periods of time. Individuals are a flash in the pan. Individuals do not decide to talk in 7000 different tongues; language belongs to the species. But each individual has to learn their language one by one. If you and I had gotten run over by a Lamborghini Veneno ($5 million) roaring down the street at 200 kph, before we (well, you) had reproduced, the net effect would be zero. Not because you are unimportant, but because your (our) part in the scheme of things is vanishingly small and transient. The species has been evolving for what... 14 million years since the last common ape/human ancestor, and maybe 200,000,000 years for all of us mammal species. We've been around for a measly 70+ years.

On the one hand every individual is more important than the species, but the species is where our future lies, or doesn't.

Ahem...Hayseed? — T Clark

Hayseeds of the Bread Basket Unite. The urban parasites have nothing to lose but their bread and butter, their pate foi gras, their fried chicken McNugguts; their almond milk, salad greens, chick peas, and steak tartare.

by "collective" I meant all the members of the species who do whatever they do from day to day. If "we" go extinct, it will be because "we" all died without leaving successors. We didn't "fit". We were not fit. it would not be any one, two, ten, a million or a billion persons' fault. However, if you'd like to blame somebody for our being closer to extinction than we would like, here's a very partial list;

The Koch Bros. (David Koch is as dead as a doornail; Charles Koch has sadly not achieved that state yet. However, there are more Koches where they came from.
Donald Trump (whatever is wrong, blame him)
influential climate change deniers
the stockholders and BODs of coal, petroleum, gas, autos, tires, airlines, and power generation industries.
Agricultural multinationals like

BASF. Country: Germany. ... Part of the old I.G. Farben (forced labor camps in Nazi Germany)
CNH Industrial NV. Country: The Netherlands. Revenue: US$10.12 billion. ... (aka, New Holland)
Bayer AG. Country: Germany. ... Part of the old I.G. Farben (forced labor camps in Nazi Germany)
Syngenta AG. Country: Switzerland. ...
Monsanto Company. Country: USA. ...
Nutrien (Formerly Agrium Inc. and PotashCorp) Country: USA. ...
DowDuPont. Country: USA. ...
Deere & Company. Country: USA.

All capitalists and commie dictators

Most of the work the average person does has nothing to do with their survival. With this being the case, it doesn't make sense to talk about survival of the fittest/fit, or whatever. — Anthony

Right and wrong. From the individual's point of view, our efforts at work or education have approximately NOTHING to do with our individual survival, as you said. But... From the view of collective society, it does. The account clerk at a brokerage, a social worker, a housewife, a city street worker, the check out at Target, etc. are all engaged in the maintenance and reproduction of society as a whole.

Individual bees and birds aren't in the race to survive; it's their species that survive or not. Same with humans--which is not to say that individual humans are at all indifferent to their personal situations. We are quite concerned about it. But individually, we, birds, and bees will all die. Collectively, we endure -- or not.

Congratulations! You are the first person on The Philosophy Forum to use the word "bricole".

Unfortunately, you missed the boat. "Bricole" refers to the rebound of a ball from the wall in court tennis--basically a term describing balls bouncing around. Bricolage, which is what you were probably aiming for, means...

(in art or literature) construction or creation from a diverse range of available things.
"the chaotic bricolage of the novel is brought together in a unifying gesture"
something constructed or created from a diverse range of available things.
"bricolages of painted junk"

Perhaps you were using a French verb form? (I don't know -- my French is quite deficient.)