You can play both ends of the court if you can run back and forth fast enough (like, faster than a speeding tennis ball) but you should probably decide which end you really want to play.

It angers me how facilely white people can shrug off 400 years of brutality. — T Clark

Well, people can shrug off the violence they themselves performed yesterday, let alone violence that preceded their birth by 400, 300, 200, 100, and fewer years. This isn't white folk behavior, this is Homo sapiens behavior. People aren't that nice.

Beside that, these "white people" may not actually exist in significant numbers -- by which I mean "people whose white identity is tightly coupled with a sense of automatic superiority, deserving advantage over non-whites, approval of violence against non-whites, entitlement, and so forth". The image that some (usually) white, so-called leftists creates of "white people" is that of a Nazi race extremist--a la Third Reich.

I'm not sure that I've met a white person in the flesh who fits the model of "white people who facilely shrug off 400 years of brutality". I'm sure they exist; I don't think they exist in large numbers.

It takes time to civilize people. A century ago (22 months short) white people rioted in Tulsa, OK.

The Tulsa Race Riot (or the Greenwood Massacre) of 1921[8][9][10][11] took place on May 31 and June 1, 1921, when mobs of white residents attacked black residents and businesses of the Greenwood District in Tulsa, Oklahoma.[1] It has been called "the single worst incident of racial violence in American history."[12] The attack, carried out on the ground and by air, destroyed more than 35 square blocks of the district, at that time the wealthiest black community in the United States known as "Black Wall Street".

More than 800 people were admitted to hospitals and more than 6,000 black residents were arrested and detained, many for several days.[13] The Oklahoma Bureau of Vital Statistics officially recorded 36 dead, but the American Red Cross declined to provide an estimate. When a state commission re-examined events in 2001, its report estimated that 100–300 African Americans were killed in the rioting.

. Wikipedia

Bad, bad, very bad bad. Three generations later a repeat of this sort of event seems extremely unlikely. If it had been happening right along, then I think the characterization of white people as nazi race extremists would be more justified. But it has not been happening right along.

About America becoming majority brown... Maybe not. A lot of the Mexicans count themselves as white. Two reasons, probably. A), they read the newspaper and it doesn't take long to figure out who has an advantage--POC or WP, and B), quite a few Mexicans (and other South Americans) either are white (they are relatively recent emigrants from Europe) or they have many European ancestors. You know, like the many children and grand children of all the Nazis who settled down in South America. Eichmann, Mengele, Hitler, et al.

Let's all leave it there. I will have to settle for a revolution and redistribute the wealth to everybody. So, now hear this, now hear this: I will no longer use the term reparations.

I should stick to just plain redistribution. Reparation is causing too much confusion in some quarters. Then it would apply to traits that are objectively ascertainable: what is your income now, what was your income in the past, type of work, assets, debt, etc. Individuals who make 250,000 a year now would not qualify; people who make 25,000 a year now, would.

True, "black" is not always a certain adjective. A woman who came from 100% Northern European stock got away with calling herself black, and even became head of her local NAACP. (This was a case of this out on the West Coast, somewhere.). She just decided that "being black" fit her personality better than being white. I guess. Conversely, there are blacks who can pass for whites. So... screw race.

Focusing on race is the problem to begin with, and will always arrive at racist conclusions. — NOS4A2

Exactly.

there is no point looking backwards nor in exacerbating racial tensions. — Judaka

True enough. One of the points I have been trying to make (with not much success, apparently) is that you don't have to look backwards. In the present moment disadvantage is a matter of policy. You can look backward to see where the present disadvantageous policies came from, but the contemporary facts are clear.

As for white privilege, well, yes, it does exist. — T Clark

There are many kinds of privilege which individuals, or collectivities, can do very little about, which is what makes privilege a-not-very-useful-concept. Like straight privilege. You are straight. You were born that way. You didn't do anything to earn or acquire it. It's there because most people in general, and most people with social, financial, and political power are straight, and such big majorities tend to arrange things in their favor. Why the hell wouldn't they?

There are age privileges--different ones for different ages. 3 year olds can get away with things that 30 year olds can't, like throwing tantrums. On the other hand, 3 year olds EDIT: can CAN NOT buy alcohol (legally, anyway). There are height, weight, fitness, and symmetry advantages. Tall, slim, nicely muscled men with attractive symmetrical bodies and faces have a beauty and height privilege. Tall men tend to do better in society. Short, fat, ugly men -- not so much. As the Duchess of Windsor said, "You can never be too rich or too thin."

There are geographical privileges. People who live in hot, arid sandy parts of the world will be increasingly disadvantaged compared to people who live in temperate, well-watered, and fertile parts of the world. People living in mountainous areas are attitudinally privileged over people who are going to get flooded out as the oceans rise.

White privilege in the US is like Han privilege in China. Whites and Han aren't the only people living in their respective countries, but they have been and are the majority and arranged things to their liking. Why wouldn't they? In Rwanda, the Hutu-Tutsi strife stems from class warfare, with the Tutsis perceived to have greater wealth and social status (as well as favoring cattle ranching over what is seen as the lower-class farming of the Hutus). Tutsi privilege.

Your story is interesting but I still don't see any argument for why we should prioritise help/redistribution based on race. — Judaka

Whether we call it "reparations" or "redistribution" is not a critical question and neither are likely to happen.

The reason that I changed my mind about reparations based on race is that significant racial discrimination is clearly in force now, and has been in force for the last 50 years. (It has been in force much longer, of course, but let us concern ourselves with current discrimination.). We are concerned about institutional discrimination, not individual feelings.

Housing policy, education policy, social service policy, crime policy, illicit drug policy, prison policy, etc. have all been selectively disadvantageous to the black community. The disadvantages of the last 50 years have been built on the much longer term disadvantages of the black population.

Individual actions with respect to race play a relatively small part here. It is policy, not personal actions which are the big problem. The force of policy (like neglecting the maintenance of the large scale public housing buildings, which were a large capital investment, and which were assigned by policy to the black population, until the buildings were not fit to live in) was selectively disadvantageous to the black population. Eliminating "welfare as we know it" was selectively disadvantageous to the black population. It was of course disadvantageous to the white population too, but white people, in general, have fewer deliberate policies aimed at their suppression, at least based on race. The selective enforcement of laws prohibiting drug possession, use, and selling is disadvantageous to the black population, particularly the male population. Long prison terms for repeat offenders is an even worse policy burden.

The policies which are selectively disadvantageous could and should be changed, but even if they were changed today that would do nothing for the millions of wrecked lives which are the result of very bad policy.

Reparations are a way to aid individuals in repairing the damage. Repairing the damage done takes cash and much better policy.

I have said, and I still say CLASS IS MUCH MORE IMPORTANT THAN RACE. People who have been selectively disadvantaged and have ended up at the bottom of the class structure aren't going to get out of that location by their own efforts. This applies to whites, blacks, American Indians, asians, and anyone else who has been shafted down to the bottom.

So, again, whether we call it redistribution or reparations is unimportant. The CLASS STRUCTURE, and all the economic, social, and political policies which enforce it, are the problem. Just in case anyone forgot about it, the distribution of wealth and the power of classes has been severely skewed in the last 50, 60, 70, 80... years to favor a very small portion of the population at the disadvantage of a very large portion of the population (the 1% vs. 99%, or if you like, the 10% vs. the 90%).

It will take a literal revolution, an overthrow of the oligarchy, to enact either reparations or redistribution of wealth and a rewriting of the rules and regulations of American society. Do I expect this to happen? No, of course not. The oligarchy is riveted, bolted, and welded in place.

I can't explain myself any clearer.

If I were arguing for an across the board redistribution of wealth (from the absurdly rich to the broad working class (which I am in favor of), then the question reparations to blacks would be considerably changed. They would at last be equalized with everyone else.

Americans have about $98 trillion in wealth. A substantial portion of that is controlled by the richest 1%, then the richest 2%, 3%, and 4%. 90% of the population controls a very small portion of the wealth, and in fact, has most of all the debt. Let's say we took $50 trillion from the rich and distributed it evenly to 350,000,000 Americans citizens. Each person would receive $142,857, regardless of race, sex, or age.

There would be HUGE financial and economic problems resulting from such a sudden transfer of wealth, which is OK because it is merely hypothetical. It is inordinately unlikely to ever happen. BUT, nevertheless, $142,857 per person would accomplish reparation and would equalize wealth, for a period of time, anyway.

A Revolution would have to have happened in order to take $50 trillion from the uber rich. I am assuming that business would not proceed as usual after the revolution. A revolution will probably be required to merely raise their taxes up to where they were, not so very long ago, at 90%.

You said you changed your mind, why is that? — Judaka

I became increasingly obvious to me that the black population has been subjected to several rounds of disadvantageous policy, long after slavery ended, after the Jim Crow era ended. Disadvantaging blacks is in progress right now, through the usual means: housing policy, education policy, spending priorities, and so on. And in identifying blacks as being disadvantaged, I am not denying that whites, hispanics, American Indians, and asians are also being disadvantaged by the same methods.

For an unlikely but terrific sociology read, try EVICTED: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond‎. (available used, digital, libraries, or new) The book is about a black landlord in the slums of Milwaukee and a white owner of a run down house trailer park (also in Milwaukee). The renters in the slums are mostly black, and the renters in the trailer park are mostly white. Both landlords are making a lot of money off their poor tenants. The black landlord has something like 200 properties (all low quality) and the white landlord has something like 90? trailers, most falling apart. The formula is simple:

Charge as much as possible
Fix nothing (unless it is absolutely unavoidable, and maybe not even then)
Evict any tenant who misses payments and/or becomes too annoying

Renting to the poor in the slums happens to be quite profitable for the landlord. For the tenant, the chaos of their lives -- and the ruthlessness of the eviction policies, means repeated loss of money in furnishings, clothing, food, etc. Plus, the tenants are paying very high rents to live in what are, frequently, shit holes.

What goes in Milwaukee goes pretty much everywhere. There is limited public housing (which in many cities has largely been eliminated by blowing the buildings up), there are Section 8 vouchers (which do NOT provide luxurious apartments IF one can wait long enough to get a voucher, and there are a few grades of slum dwelling -- some of which might be OK, but most of which most people would refuse to live in if they had any choice in the matter. Outside of these alternatives for the poor, there is homelessness.

"A world based on total empathy"... What is "total" empathy?

And besides, if pigs could fly, it would be a much different world.

@et al

I've changed my mind about paying reparations. I used to think it was inadvisable, impractical, unfair, and so forth. But now I think we should do it.

There are several ways that blacks can, over the long run, be compensated for the systematic discrimination practiced against them.

One way would be to fund a selective federal housing program for black people. The goal of this program would be black-owned, private, and quality-constructed homes. Grants could be made to assist with substantial down-payments, along with requirements for banks to extend loans based on non-discriminatory federal guidelines.

Another way would be to fund high-quality achievement-oriented K-12 schools and follow that with substantial-to-complete subsidies for college (linked to reasonably good academic performance). Since there is a limited need and aptitude for academic work, non-academic training should be covered by subsidies, but not operate preferentially (that is, don't arbitrarily steer black students into trades).

There are too many blacks in prison for non-violent drug offenses. They have quite broad rehabilitation needs, and programs for housing, education, mental and physical health care, and employment need to be ready and in place when they are discharged from prison.

Some level of cash grant to blacks who are too old, or not otherwise in a position to benefit from education or new housing programs, and are not in prison. Perhaps it could work like a lottery: taking the grant in payments over time would result in a larger payout than a single up-front payment.

This will, of course, cost quite a bit of money and take time. Scores of billions of dollars, I should think, paid out over time--50 years, maybe. We might have to reduce defense spending, raise taxes on the rich, or (preferably) both.

If black people deserve reparations, American Indians are even more in need. Cash, yes; benefit programs for education, economic development, health, housing, and so forth. But for American Indians I would recommend returning substantial portions of land -- territory. And let us not return land that is good for nothing--ruined, contaminated, never much good to begin with. Rather, return land that is still good. Where? scattered across the United States. Small, medium, and large tracts. large tracts of the Great Plains are already being gradually and voluntarily depopulated. Let's speed it up, and hand over some big tracts--fences, buildings, and infrastructure removed. Let the buffalo roam...

We owe Mexico a big chunk of the United States, but thanks to illegal immigration, they are gradually repopulating lost territory anyway.

To make “privilege” a property of a certain race is nonsensical , not to mention racist. Privilege and it’s opposites applies only to individuals, not races. — NOS4A2

It is neither nonsensical nor racist. It's what it is. White people, in general, on average, have more money than black people, in general, on average. — T Clark

PRIVILEGE is derived from ECONOMIC ADVANTAGE. IF blacks had not been so thoroughly and systematically economically disadvantaged since 1865, their present economic situation would be similar to whites, and we would not be fretting about "white privilege".

White people are not privileged by dint of a light skin color, per se, and black people are not dis-privileged by dint of a dark skin color, per se, any more than Asians or Jews are privileged to do well in school. People obtain advantages through historical processes. We know how wealth was accumulated among a very small proportion of Europeans, Indians, South Americans, and Asians. (I won't review the history here.). We know that there was a class system imported into North America from England which advantaged a small number of English upper class people and disadvantage a much larger number of English "waste" and "trash" who were poor. The upper class view of poor whites was one of disgust.

Black slaves were dehumanized, and once freed by the E. P. and the end of the Civill War, were systematically prevented from accumulating wealth. A substantial chunk of the white population were advantaged by various government programs, starting with the laws applying to the Northwest Territories (think Ohio or Indiana) which made land grants available. In various ways land grants were continued well into the 19th century across the plains to the Pacific. Many settlers obtained some wealth and some security, but thanks to the vicissitudes of agriculture, a lot of them went broke. Workers in urban areas were systematically screwed by capitalists.

The last very large effort to benefit whites was housing development begun in the Great Depression and running up to the 1970s. During these 40 to 50 years, the suburbs were hugely expanded with new, quality homes which were pretty much limited to white, middle class people. The long term appreciation of these houses, properties, and communities--complete with cultural amenities--formed the basis of economic advantage for several million people, and given inheritance and further capital accumulation, to quite a few million people.

Blacks were not allowed into the suburban housing game. Considerable expense was applied to new housing for blacks--communal, large-scale, rental housing. The initial intent and execution of the various housing projects was positive; but as everybody knows, renters do not accumulate equity, and the initial enthusiasm and support for public housing (by urban administrations) withered. Before long large scale deterioration set in, and in a surprisingly short period of time what had been good turned bad.

Three to five generations of people living in public housing, very cheap low quality privately owned rental housing, or section 8 has resulted in continued wide-spread poverty among blacks. Housing policy affects education attainment and health status, and this adds to the burdens of the poor black population. (Never mind the effects of drugs, alcohol, and the war on drugs.).

ADVANTAGE NOT PRIVILEGE.

I would mark the Watergate Hearings as the last great performance of Congress and the two parties. The hearings were a distinguished investigation into the efforts of a president to subvert the constitution by engaging in "high crimes and misdemeanors". It was, because of its personalities, dignity, and seriousness, a just plain great all round political theatrical.

The last time the two-party system "worked" (but not the only time) was in the late 1950s, 1960s, and into the early 1970s. Both parties had some serious liabilities: the Democrats had the southern Dixiecrats who were dead-set against civil rights progress, and the Republicans had a fairly far out right wing which included their 1964 presidential candidate, Barry Goldwater. The Republicans also had a liberal wing (the Rockefeller Republican wing) which was not quite as liberal as the Humphrey Democrats.

But all that was back then. The last 40 years have not seen a display of great bi-partisanship.

Politics and sausage should not be made in public, the saying goes. There is something to that. In the "Good Old Days" a lot of business was conducted in smoke-filled rooms where the leadership of the party got together and decided what was what. Issues could be debated more openly, frankly, bluntly, because it was a private meeting. Some of that stuff just shouldn't be hashed out in the open.

In any case, both parties are entirely devoted to the capitalist system, and to the republic for which it stands, and there will be no salvation coming from either the Republicans or Democrats.

Nicely done exercise.

I grew up in a small (white) rural county; my family was poor, but not desperately. Seven children. Three of the seven who went to college did so on scholarships (this was in the 1950s, 60s) or worked and studied at the same time. These were educational boom times. There was more money available for college student aid back then, and tuition was low.

Even though I attended a run-of-the-mill state college, the degree (and the experience of college) granted enduring advantages. There were enough blacks in Minnesota in the '50s and '60s to produce a fair representation in MN college enrollment, had it been possible for more blacks to find a way to attend. (About 15% of white men attended / completed college in the 1960s; black men attended and completed college at around 7% (these are national figures). There weren't many (less than 7%) blacks -- or any minorities -- at the state college. This situation has changed since the 1960s. More minority students of all backgrounds are attending colleges now, but probably still at a lower rate than whites.

The opportunity to obtain the advantages of completing college degrees links back at least to one generation, maybe back to two or three. My parents admired and respected learning, even though they had not attended college.

Opportunity compounds, and because of the degree, I was able to obtain professional employment. Being professionally employed (good experiences, interesting work, references, etc.) lays the groundwork for the next professional job, or graduate school. And graduate school opens up more opportunities.

"White Privilege" is a recently coined and is an empty concept if applied to ordinary -- most -- white people. Wealth Privilege strikes me as much more convincing. Money talks. "White trash" are trash because they are poor, and have been poor for a few generations, and have had as few opportunities as poor blacks. Whiteness doesn't help them at all.

Just read about actress Rosanna Arquette stating that she was "sorry and ashamed of being white and privileged" — Teller

If Rosanna Arquette were really worried about being privileged, she would liquidate her assets and send a large check to the NAACP. Just guessing, but I bet she doesn't do that.

People generally gain privilege by material means. They accumulate wealth, property, land, etc. and in possessing these assets can exercise power over others. The people who founded this country were privileged people, like privileged people everywhere, because they possessed substantial -- material -- wealth.

Wealth is inheritable, and through provident planning the CLASS of privileged people maintain the concentration of wealth among their small portion of the population. (Like, children of rich people are married to the children of other rich people.)

Race has certainly been a factor in the opportunity to accumulate wealth, property, land, and so on. The "white middle class" was selectively favored in the post-WWiI boom by having rich governmentally sponsored benefits designated for them, pretty much exclusively. Those benefits were the GI Education Bill, Veterans Housing Administration, and the much larger Federal Housing Administration programs which paid for education and subsidized the costs of building or acquiring homes. These benefits were generally denied to other other racial groups.

So, 2 or 3 generations later, there is a substantial portion of the population (maybe 20%) who are substantially better off today because of these programs. Many working class whites received NO benefit from these programs because they lived outside of metropolitan areas, did not have incomes high enough to qualify, did not enroll in college, or lived/worked on farms.

So, SOME whites are privileged because of their race, but most whites do not posses enough assets of the kind required to exercise any sort of privilege.

Only if we get down to the details of household goods, cars, clothes, and the like can we make a scale of "poor white privilege". For the most part, poor whites and poor blacks share a lack of privilege.

Upper or Middle Class Whites and Upper or Middle class people of other races have solid privilege based on wealth. Working class whites and people of other races share the same lack of privileged perqs. Yes, there definitely are many more people with out privilege, white or black, than there are people with privilege.

START TALKING ABOUT CLASS AND STOP TALKING ABOUT RACE. CLASS IS WHERE THE MONEY IS.

That is to enhance mental functioning through various means — Wallows

It doesn't seem to be happening, as far as I can tell.

Merciful god, fads die. The fads that don't die become the culture. That's why a lot of fads should have been nipped in the bud. Too bad rap music wasn't still born. Ditto for several religions.

I've heard of cryonics, yes. People can buy whatever insurance policies they like and have themselves frozen. In stock market lingo, freezing yourself to be awakened someday in a better world is not a "SELL", "HOLD", or "BUY". It's a "DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT". It's just more proof of what H. L. Mencken said, "Nobody ever went broke underestimating people's intelligence."

I just have come to accept life with all its up's and down's as inherently rewarding. — Wallows

As well you should. Life IS inherently rewarding.

There are things I would like to see down the pike, too. I'll probably be dead before most of them happen -- just because I've been around here too long for some things to happen whilst I'm watching. That's OK. Sic transit gloria mundi, etc.

Good point. Where does the conscious mind enter into this process? I think I read your post, to which I think I am responding. That didn't happen in the part of the brain I can't observe, I'm thinking. I think I decided to write this response, and I think I rejected the first offerings that came out. As a consequence I had to think a bit (consciously) about what I wanted to say here.

My conscious mind definitely does not like the idea that it is just a figurehead of the "real" brain, mind, that operates out of sight of the public, and the conscious facility. But it is possible, that what I identify as the "conscious me" isn't much more than a shadow puppet manipulated by the "real me".

The "real me", out of sight, busy doing god knows what behind the screen, experiences what it gets from the sensory data feeds, what it imagines, what it wishes for, what it fears, etc. The "invisible real me" projects the shadow puppet because it is just very useful to have a business rep out front which can deal with other business reps, which are also 'out front'.

This probably doesn't help much.

EDIT: I used to be a huge Kurtzweil fan, but think some of his projections are a little on the optimistic side... — Wallows

Haw! There's a case of the kettle calling the pot black.

I have heard of NO developments anywhere that would lead me to think that I, or anyone else, could live far beyond the normal lifespan. Lengthen the average life a few years? Improve the QOL in the last few years? Cure a handful of diseases? Improve physical and mental functioning in younger people?

These sorts of incremental improvements may happen, IF the effects of global warming--food and water shortages, new diseases, intense environmental challenges, large die-offs from epidemic disease, etc--don't swamp our ability to support luxury-oriented bio-medical research. Luxury would be finding a really effective new antibiotic, not helping people live 200 years.

Plants and animals DIE because they can't perpetually maintain all of the systems required for a healthy life, or life at all. Some trees may live 2500 years, but by that time they are just barely hanging on, with only the smallest piece of their former glory still qualifying as "alive".

Humans are just one more animal species, and we'll keep on dying. In the whole world, there are only about 316,600 centenarians--out of 7.4 billion. A few centenarians are alive, intellectually and emotionally intact, physically healthy (for a centenarian), and able to live independently. The rest are not in such great shape. any given centenarians can be expected to die very soon.

Whatever you are going to accomplish, you will most likely accomplish it before you are 80. Probably before you are 60. So, you had best get busy and do what ever it is that you are going to do (because it is what it is).

True, but one bird of influence in the hand is worth two birds of causation in the bush.

It is actually difficult to exactly pinpoint the driving force behind Hitler's rise but speaking on broad terms, it is likely the aftermath of WW1 and the treaty of Versailles if were honest. Hate speech always needs a context and an environment. — Wittgenstein

This is true; zeitgeists are notoriously difficult to nail down, but none the less they are a real factor. Hitler wasn't just "whistling Dixie". A lot of his speech was directed toward solving German problems in a not altogether novel way.

Germany did have a problem feeding itself. It imported a lot of feed and fodder, as well as meat and fruits and vegetables. Contrary to the upper-midwestern reputation of German-American farmers, the methods of farming in the old country wasn't all that efficient. Parts of Germany (under the control of the Junkers) did much better. The population had grown quite a bit, and heavy wet soils just aren't that good.

Other European countries had similar problems. Denmark's large pork and dairy production depended on imported feed and folder. The UK wasn't self-sufficient in food. Ditto for the Scandinavians. France had a much better farming-food-population situation. The USSR had large, fertile wheat growing areas. Eastern Europe also was self-sufficient in food (my guess).

Then too Germany didn't have that magic black stuff, petroleum, to which a lot of modern industrial activity had shifted. They had coal, of course, with which their chemists worked wonders, and some iron ore. Besides all that, they imported as much high quality metallurgical ores as they could financially manage, up until the late 1930s.

If one loathed Jews, then Germany and Europe had a "Jewish problem".

A student of history would note that United States, among others, improved our economic prospects with a "take it easy, but take it" approach. The sniveling 13 states that began our country's existence had big plans well beyond the eastern seaboard. True, we bought the Louisiana territory, but the rest -- a lot -- we just snatched from Mexico. Same approach with Florida, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Hawaii, etc. We exterminated most of the Indians, at times one by one, at other times en masse. And, famously, we built a lot of our wealth on slave labor. Hitler was quite familiar with our methods.

So Hitler's speeches were preparatory to war as a tool of economic salvation. He may not have said so at the beginning -- that would have been highly impolitic -- but he and the Nazis worked patiently at revving up the war economy, getting people to focus on Jews as THE designated problem (if they didn't already think so), and so on. Various institutions like the Gestapo made sure that the German people fell into line, and stayed in line.

So, the point to all this is, Hitler wasn't just about hate. Hate was a tool. His grand design was intended to solve the German natural resource problem--Lebensraum, and more. Great Britain solved their resource problem with empire; the Americans did the same thing on the North American land mass. France, Belgium, Holland, Spain, Italy, the Turks, the Austrian-Hungarians, Japan, Russia -- all had accumulated colonies or used territorial expansion, much to their economic advantage. Hitler intended to unify Europe, whether Europe wanted to be unified or not, and whether the Europeans wanted the Germans to be in charge of the unification or not.

So, here we are now. Europe is unified (sort of) and the Germans are the keystone in the structure.

In my view, yes. I'm a free speech absolutist.

II don't agree that speech can actually cause violence. People deciding to be violent causes violence. — Terrapin Station

I don't object to your free-speech absolutism, but at the same time I don't agree with your rejection of the the idea that speech can cause behavior (violent or beneficent). If speech had no effect on behavior then we really would be wasting our breath.

Speech can influence behavior. Speech (texts) can cause intellectual and emotional reactions. Speech can influence, direct, shape, alter, and cause behavior under certain circumstances. If we grant consent to the speaker to direct our behavior, then it will influence our behavior. Who does such a thing? All of us, at one time and many more.

WHY we grant consent to speakers to affect our behavior is another complicated question, but we do. IF we decide to go to a rally for Bernie Sanders, his speech will probably "cause" us to feel enthusiastic and excited; it might well result in us writing a check, and so on. The same people listening to a speech by Trump are likely to feel all sorts of unpleasant emotions. Why? Speech works (up to a point).

I felt really uncomfortable when I read Cormac McCarthy's The Road. Did McCarthy's words "make me feel" uncomfortable? Or feel a sense of relief at the end of the novel? In as much as I granted consent (suspension of disbelief), yes it did.

I have nothing but contempt for the limitations on free speech at universities spawned by students who demand safe zones, trigger warnings, protections from ideas they don't like, and so forth. The students who want these limitations don't seem to have any control over what they grant consent to.

Controlling one's reaction to what other people say is a necessary corollary of free speech. The students at some universities apparently are unable to control their reactions. Students aren't alone in this, of course. People choose to attend Trump rallies and consent to be influenced by his speech. At a different place and time on the political spectrum, many people chose to listen to Roosevelt's Fireside Chats on the radio and were reassured and comforted. Some people chose to listen to Roosevelt and were enraged -- also by consent.

Some people are walking around with "open-ended consent to be influenced by speech". They are primed and ready to react to whatever they hear. It's dangerous for and to an individual to grant such opened-ended consent, because other people will say upsetting words, and these words will result in their flipping out.

@Wittgenstein

It would radically change the world because all it takes is a good orator appealing to a disfranchised people to get to power and commit atrocities.Take Hitler for example. — Wittgenstein

It takes more than oratory, not to discount the effectiveness of well written speech. In Hitler's case (and numerous others) more was required.

Hitler was backed up by the Sturmabteilung, literally Storm Detachment, which was the Nazi Party's original paramilitary. The Storm Troupers and the Freikorps left over from WWI backed up Hitler's speeches with liberal doses of blunt violence.

The Germans were not disenfranchised. True, the were defeated in WWI, but they weren't occupied. True, the Treaty of Versailles was intended to cripple their future military intentions, but the allies were busy with their own problems and the Germans were initially discrete.

Hitler built upon and enflamed the already well-established German (and European) anti-semitism.

The Nazi military program was effective in bringing Germans relief from high-unemployment (owing to the world-wide depression).

The Nazi Party did not gain power by winning overwhelming majorities in the popular vote.

We have this feature we call consciousness. I guess that it is an emergent feature of the way the brain works. Most of the brain is outside of the conscious facility. It isn't "unconscious" it just doesn't "report everything" to the conscious facility -- which is a good thing. Were the whole brain conscious, it would be like riot in a stadium--impossible to think.

So, the brain-outside-of-the-consciousness-facility is where most of our thinking is done. It's altogether ours, we do it, but we can't observe it. The activities of the brain-outside-of-the-consciousness-facility pass things along to the conscious facility. So, if I ask you, "What is Mary's telephone number", the answer appears and you tell me what it is. HOW the brain found the number, and WHERE exactly it was stored, and by WHAT MEANS it delivered it to your tongue to speak, isn't open to the conscious facility's observation. fMRI machines can capture some of the processing that delivers up Mary's number.

Your conscious mind did not do much of the work composing your OP, just as my conscious mind is mostly an observer watching the words come off my fingertips. I have no idea how the brain-outside-of-the-consciousness-facility assembles ideas, sentences, paragraphs, etc. and sends them off to the fingers or tongue for transmission.

Speaking of fMRIs, the dogs below are displaying a lot of attention. They are subjects in a canine cognition research program, and just right now a human is explaining what they will all be doing in the next phase--while holding up a tennis ball. Once trained to put up with the MRI, they hop right up and are given various stimuli--sounds, odors, pictures, words, etc. to see what happens in their heads. Brains all work pretty much alike, so it s quite relevant to our brains.





I suspect the "you can't even step into the same river once" quip was somebody's attempt to top Heraclitus.

The British are the Vikings, and we still describe people who go energetically and violently insane as 'berserk'. All you whiteys are European, and your horrible culture is all based on Europe's; the vikings are an influence beyond question. — unenlightened

The British are in part the Vikings, the Danes, the Jutes, the Angles, the Saxons, the Frisians, the Normans (Vikings again, but Gaels too), and more, and all those came from the east, once upon a time--interbred with the Neanderthals every now and then--the Brits are a mix. And besides, the Vikings are now the bland Swedes, Norwegians, and Danes.

We -you- humans have horrible habits and our various cultures round the globe all show the consequences of us bright and frustrated primates trying to square our pre-frontal cortexes with our highly reactive limbic systems. We all range from sublime to unrefined.

The thing about the rate of violence in the US is that it isn't a new thing, and it isn't unique to the US. The world, generally, has a steadily violent history. We humans obtain frequent episodes of peaceful co-existence with our neighbors, interrupted by the occasional episode of fratricidal rage.

Given the free-enterprise capitalism under which our economy is managed, which includes gun manufacturers making and selling as many guns as possible to maintain profits for their stockholders, it would be odd if 200 million guns scattered among 300 million people didn't lead to quite a bit of violence--that is what guns do, after all.

Gang bangers and drug dealers employing guns to settle scores we can understand. The fools wear their honor on their exteriors where it can be bruised ever so easily, and as often as not, their dubious personal honor is about all they've got. Then there are the drug debts that didn't get paid, and since they can't take it to small-claims court, what's a diligent drug dealer to do?

I don't know what, exactly, sends a few young men over the edge so that they decide to kill by the random batch. Peevishness over immigration stats don't quite account for it. I suppose it is dark fantasies unchecked against reality. Dark fantasies coupled with the medium of the rapid fire method leads to bad results.

But @T Clark is right in objecting to the disproportionate response of the media, et al. Ten people being executed by one killer seems worse than ten people being executed by ten killers, but the one-on-one death rate by individual armed killers is immensely worse, and the consoler-in-chief does not offer the country's "thoughts and prayers" on behalf of the several shot and killed every day--nor to many more who are "only injured".

Maybe it worked the first few times, but "our thoughts and prayers" has become about the lamest thing to say to the bereaved.

In some European countries, so I have heard, there are "dubbing stars" -- people whose dubbing performances have a following.

I like to see foreign films; subtitles are part of the experience. However, there are methods of superimposing subtitles on a film that work better than others. White subtitles against a light background, especially a visually active light background, might as well not be there.

It is true that one misses part of the actual film in the effort to quickly grasp the meaning of the film. However, it depends on how fast the dialog is, and how much dialog there one must catch

The best way to see film is in a real theater with an audience which is paying attention. That's true for foreign films, too. Fortunately, one can rent films and watch them on a small screen, and then one can stop the film, or back up if one needs to re-read the subtitle. This is best done by yourself. Other people will begin attacking you for interrupting the film when they didn't feel a need to reread anything.

Perhaps more film directors should do what Woody Allen did irreverently in What's Up Tiger Lily?

I think all the outrage put into trying could better be spent elsewhere. — T Clark

We modern Americans have become rather fussy about these little clusters of deaths brought about by armed individuals. Suppose the media stopped being the media and stopped reporting each one with loving care. Do you think the incidence of mass shootings would go up or down?

It does reveal a shocking lack of perspective. 6 people were killed in a head on collision near my home town. 1/2 of the 6 were decidedly in the wrong (they were on the wrong side of the freeway). Where was the outrage?

"Excess deaths" (those caused by something less predictable than natural causes like disease, old age, etc.) are common. Auto/motorcycle accidents, fires, industrial accidents, floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, heat waves, drownings, suicides, falls in the home (those stairs are out to get you -- so is the bathroom), and so on. Think of the carnage of the westward expansion which the English started back in 1620: Millions killed, quite deliberately--with guns!

17,000 deaths a year are the result of 1-by-1, or 2-by-1 armed assailants, quite often the victim having no connection to the killer because the man with the gun was firing wildly... Where are "thoughts and prayers for the victims and their families"? (When it comes to mass shootings and much else, nothing fails like thoughts and prayers!)

They are primarily a 1980s band. — T Clark

That explains it. I was busy in the 1980s studying classics, advancing the sexual revolution, going crazy, working...

Boomtown Rats — T Clark

Never heard of them. I suppose I should get out more. (But I did bother to listen to the song on YouTube, so now I know.)

"The Modern American social order and religion are able to accommodate this type of behaviour... " — unenlightened

99.9999% of Americans accommodate, tolerate, put up with, etc. this sort of violent behavior because there is nothing they can individually do about it. We could, should, must do something about it collectively, but collective action among 300,000,000 diverse people isn't exactly a simple thing.

But apart from being the cradle of democracy, having a penchant for bloody invasions of other countries, being despised and feared around the world, and having plenty of berserkers, how is the US like a Viking nation? — unenlightened

We're more like the British, I would think. The British Empire was not a tea party. Neither were the French, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Belgian, German, or Russian empires. Ye Brits turned out less savage (at home, anyway) thanks to long established class system which kept the lumpen proles under pretty tight control.

Why are the British people accommodating the (quite possibly) insane exit from the EU? Well, various people have argued vociferously and voted against doing it, but it's not very easy for you all to come to a consensus that doing so could be a really, really big mistake. And there are a batch of you who are determined to leave, come Hell or High Water.

But you know this.

"Forgive my impassioned OP, but I have very strong views on government. — Noah Te Stroete

Yeah... well, don't we all.

State governments are redundant and only serve to further divide the nation.

I don't understand your animus toward the states. Most countries subdivide themselves into provinces, states, counties, or some such. There are benefits: One big one is that states and federal government have separate, delegated and reserved, powers.

In a varied population, states can carry out collective government closer to the wishes of a smaller number of people than can occur on the national level. 5 million Wisconsinites vs. 300 million Americans. A number of states, across the northern part, are populated by people who ore or less LIKE the state, and invest the state as a vehicle of the collective will. The state is the means by which they achieve better education, health, and general well-being than other states do.

The states across the south have disliked the state from the get-go. They didn't like other states, and they didn't trust their own state. Breaking things down further, they didn't trust their county governments or city governments either. They saw the state as interference in their private prerogatives to do whatever the hell they wanted to do. As a consequence of this attitude, their stats on health, education, and generally well-being suck.

The states are free to experiment. Nebraska has a single legislative house (unicameral). Some state constitutions are better guarantees of individual liberties than the national constitution. States can legislate as they see fit on matters where they have precedence over the federal government. Voting laws vary. Minneapolis recently began ranked voting (first choice, second choice...)

NO system of government is perfect. Ours is improvable, but it isn't a total disaster, either. — Noah Te Stroete

Go Reds, smash state. Crush the Corporations.

@Tim Wood just said what I was going to say. Another thing that constitutional critics forget is that when the constitution was written, the USA was pretty small. there were only 13 states on the eastern seaboard, New Hampshire through Georgia. Vermont, Maine, and Florida were not among the first 13.

People who criticize the government (our government, your government...) forget what the purpose of government is, per Karl Marx. The government is a committee to organize the affairs of the bourgeoisie (rich people, businesses, land owners, etc.). It is not there to guarantee YOU or ME happiness. If you are well fed and content with your life, then thank your lucky stars.

First, welcome to The Philosophy Forum.

I am 17 years old — NickP

I feel overwhelmed — NickP

Being 17 probably has something to do with your feeling overwhelmed. That's not a put down, by the way. I was 17 and overwhelmed a long time ago. Now I'm 73 and still overwhelmed.

"Existentialism, nihilism, absurdism" is as good an entry point as any.

The best advice I can offer is to avoid a direct attack on the mountain of books that make up the field.

Surveys like these and introductory materials are akin to owner's manuals, or mechanic's shop manuals, for a car. They are the place to start. And take it easy. This race really does go to the slow and steady. And you'll go the faster the more solid your basics. — tim wood

Good advice. Start with books about philosophy, a philosopher or a school of thought (like nihilism). There is absolutely nothing wrong with getting an overview of the whole field (500 BC to 2019) from the "history of philosophy made easy" kind of book or program.

In its beginning, philosophy was the most organized attempt to think carefully about the world. Of course, philosophers as such were never the only people thinking about how the world worked. In time, philosophy spawned science, and science with technology changed the world, and changed the field of philosophy.

I could blather on, but let me stop with this: you don't have to read it all, you don't have to believe it all. You will find what works for you.

Were we to figuratively burn the constitution, we would be obligated to call a constitutional convention to draft another one. Most sensible people are nauseated at the thought of what we would get what with all the lunatics on the far right running around.

By the way, the Second Amendment became important only quite recently relative to the founding fathers' ideas. One of the Supremes described the claim that Amendment II means everyone has a right to own a gun as "Stupidity".

The Afghanistan fighters are practicing "asymmetric" warfare techniques, aren't they? (Whatever it is called -- guerrilla fighting vs. typical military.). It works, obviously. Worked for the Viet Cong and others. [The auto-speller hadn't heard of the Viet Cong -- apparently.]

The American rebels will be able to use asymmetric, guerrilla methods too, but they will have to learn and build up expertise. That's somewhat hard to do around here since the police, highway departments, the government, and the public-at-large take a dim view of blowing up our nice highways, what with citizens getting blown up on their way to work, etc. Same for blowing up big buildings, leveling blocks of the city, etc. They just don't like it one bit.

Back in the 1950s and 60s, so I am told by some old students that were around then, a certain kind of chemistry majors would concoct explosives and see how well they worked--out in the country. That's harder to do these days. Maybe the labs at the universities are watched a bit more closely.

How about building surface to surface or surface to air missiles? It used to be OK to experiment with rockets, back in the Sputnik days. Homeland Security would track you down, now. Drones, of course... one should stock up before they are clamped down on.

This is all purely theoretical, of course. As a long-standing pacifist I don't have any experience blowing things and people up, but (like many pacifists) the idea certainly crosses my mind every now and then, and I wonder... Just how could that be done???

Were you in the armed services, regarding your reference to Afghanistan?

Gee, thank you!

You are quite right that the armed forces might not obey orders to suppress mass civilian uprising. It's just that even if some of them did obey, given their overwhelming superiority in arms on the land, air, and sea civilians resistance would be crushed.

In the case of mass civilian uprising, there probably would be civil war--some civilians opposed to other civilians, and some units of the armed services siding with one group or another.

Subversives have plans to infiltrate the armed services, and propagandists plan on targeting the military with messages urging them to join the revolution.

But rest assured, you and your inexperienced buddies who have no training on how to fight a civil war are not going to just grab your hunting rifles (or assault weapons you bought) and march down the freeway and capture many objectives. One tank could eliminate the lot of you. A few strafing runs by the airfare would cut your "troop strength" in short order.

Depending on which side you are on, I might throw Molotov cocktails at you.

Mass murders are generally not carried out by people wielding shotguns that can fire 1 or two shots before reloading. Successful killers generally use guns (pistols on up) that one can fire off many bullets without reloading, and use magazines of bullets when they run out of firepower.



Charles Whitman kicked off the contemporary period of mass shootings in 1966. From the top of the University of Texas Main observation deck (200+ feet above ground), he fired at individuals for 96 minutes, killing 14 and injuring 31 more, plus his parents who he had murdered earlier in the day. Probably unlike most mass murderers -- but I don't know for sure -- Whitman had a brain tumor in the amygdala which may have been causing the increasingly intense violent urges he had been experiencing.

A lot of "casual" murders seem to occur because people have been prepared mentally to be ready to kill. This happens in gangs, certainly, but not just in gangs. Events happen which trigger the urge (or the social requirement) to kill; a gun is at hand, the offending victim is close by, and the killer has no "Superego" brake on their behavior.

Most people, gun owners or not, are not heading toward murder, they are not close to murdering anyone, and they won't murder anyone. But a few (numbered in the scores of thousands) ARE heading towards attempting murder. A few, I don't know how few--probably a few hundred--are mentally preparing themselves to kill a batch of people who fit sort of imagined category of enemy. Easy access to guns is what is absurdly dangerous for this two groups. They may be few, but if the doors to the gun mart are wide open, they will walk in and arm themselves.

We didn't impose controls on the casual purchase of jet fuel and fertilizer to prevent thousands of people from stuffing vans full of the stuff and blowing up Oklahoma court houses. We imposed controls to prevent a handful of lunatics, terrorists, and the like from getting their hands on powerful bomb making material and blowing up god knows what next.

Similarly, we need tight controls on guns (damn the NRA to the hottest pits of hell) to keep them out of the hands of a small number of people, where it is a matter of life and death.

Let me close by citing the case of a school board member who blew up a school (children inside) because he was irked off about property taxes.



On May 18 1927 "A school board member named Andrew Kehoe, upset over a burdensome property tax, wired the Bath, Michigan school building with dynamite and set it off in the morning of May 18. Kehoe’s actions killed 45 people, 38 of whom were children."

Crazy.

The obvious idea, eliminate the 200,000,000+ guns owned by 100,000,000+ Americans isn't going to happen, so forget about that idea. In fact, the number of guns (200 million) in the hands of Americans is a sort of argument that "guns as objects" are not the problem. The number of homicides in the country, somewhere around 40,000 a year, includes a large share of those which are suicides.

Why do so many people kill themselves with guns?

A) it is a proven method and
B) it is a fast method, therefore:
C It is generally not revokable (like, say, poison or gassing which requires more preparation and gives one more time to abort)

The general pattern is that more people are killed in places where there are more guns. One has more guns "floating around" in socially unstable situations where gun controls are lax.

Most guns in the possession of Americans are not "floating around". They are in houses and that is generally where they stay. If the mere presence of guns in a county led to high rates of death, then the annual death total of homicides would be in the several hundreds of thousands. It isn't because most people are not homicidal. (Most people are not homicidal most of the time. The problem is that when someone gets in a homicidal mood, the time delay between feeling like killing somebody and having the means to do so is very, very short.

I am no friend of the NRA (God damn the NRA to hell), and I am not pro gun. I am anti-gun, really -- especially pistols.

More, next post

the point is that the citizens should be able to fight the military if the need occur, — Obscuration

Thinking you will fight the military is what on the old left was called "infantile adventurism". No. IF we devolve to civil war between the army, navy, marines, and air force on the one hand, and citizens armed with whatever guns they can get their hands on (including assault rifles, the war will be nasty, brutish, and short--with the citizens getting the nasty, brutish, and short end of the stick.