2) My claim is this should not be interpreted as backsliding but rather as an overestimation of the percentage of the world population who embraced liberalism to begin with. — Joshs

I don't know much about the over-estimation of the world's liberalism, but that is certainly the case for the United States.

It might seem like liberals had super-majorities in congress during the Roosevelt administrations, and in some other decades, but only if one mistakenly equates "Democrat" with "Liberal". Democratic majorities were possible because the illiberal solid-south Democrats had pretty much complete control over southern state politics. It became more difficult for Democrats to control congress after the illiberal Democrats switched and became illiberal Republicans. That's one thing.

States in the midwest and west coast have always held strong conservative constituencies along side liberal districts (usually urban). Minnesota illustrates this well, sending a mixed conservative and liberal representation to Congress. Minnesota was a consistently religious place, with strong "family values". It less religious now, less traditionally family oriented, but still has about the same mix of conservative and liberal. California, the home of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan et al, has had some remarkably illiberal episodes.

If you take a random sample of Americans, I would expect the majority to express a mix of values which can't be taken as resoundingly Liberal. That doesn't mean that the majority are on the edge of fascism, but far right leanings make up substantial group (the "MAGA base").

Pundits are saying the Democrats don't know what to do to win elections. I don't think that is true -- they know how as well as the Republicans. The problem with the presumably liberal Democrats is that their liberalism isn't deep or strong enough to motivate them, to the same extent that the far right Republicans are motivated. They seem to be having difficulty clearly articulating the liberal cause.

The failure to articulate and hold the liberal center allows for growing encroachment on the political center by far right wing thinking and 'left of liberal' thinking on the left side. MAGA and some of the so-called Democratic Socialists both pose problems for central liberalism, whether rounding up 10 million illegal immigrants or abolishing the police.

It will eventually, but probably not in our lifetime. — frank

I'm not confident that I will be dead before things spiral out of control, and I'm an old man.

Of course you didn't invent it. I'm familiar with the principle even if I don't like the application.

For me personally, it was a big disappointment — Astorre

You can imagine, then, how much bigger a disappointment it is for Americans who didn't vote for Trump and altogether disapprove of him and his policies.

Trump did not win the popular vote by a wide margin; it was Trump 49.8% and Harris 48.3%. The large margin was in the electoral college, which I don't want to discuss here.

The Senate and the House are both controlled by Republican majorities--not huge margins, but still a majority. This might change in the 2026 election, or maybe not. We'll see. Trump had the unfortunate opportunity to name 3 justices to the Supreme Court, tipping the balance strongly toward the conservative judicial view. With both legislative houses, the court, and the presidency all controlled by the same party, the republicans can expect to have many policy wins.

The BIG thing about Trump is that he is willing to flout legal precedent and ignore laws (and the constitution) which place limitations on his some of his overt policies and actions, and his party approves -- so far, anyway. From what source would powerful opposition come? Not from the House; not from the Senate; not from the Court. "We the people" won't have a chance to vote for House members and 1/3 of the Senate for 14 more months, and if an overwhelming majority of liberals were elected, they still wouldn't take office until 16 months (roughly) from now. That gives Trump a long time to continue on his rampage, and possibly abort an election where he would lose power.

We are in uncharted territory with a president who doesn't care what the court rules. The courts do not have an army to force him to do anything. The uncomfortable fact is this: You can't do business unless people are honest, and you can't have an effective law-abiding government if people (particularly in government) don't care about the law, facts, and reality.

An American has to be something of a rebel, a dissident, to perceive how propaganda and soft power operate on the home front -- never mind in countries where we don't travel a lot. Most Americans are not dissidents, not given to reading Marx or other socialists (real socialists, not the Democratic Socialists). Certainly the recipients of propaganda, soft power, and sometimes hard power have no difficulty seeing American foreign policy at work.

A previous administration used to conduct "secret wars". The New York Times reported on these "secret wars". Noam Chomsky, in blasting the NYT, asked "To whom are these wars secret? Certainly not the people who are being bombed! It's Americans from whom the wars are kept secret."

I'm a gay man, but I can understand how the western 'gay movement' does not translate well to some other societies. Health workers in Uganda, for instance, don't think that they need to worry about gay transmission of HIV because "there are no homosexuals in Uganda" -- or that was the view 25 years ago. Uganda is apparently virulently homophobic at this time--not a good time to start a gay liberation movement. I'm not sure which countries are open to some of the esoteric gender issues which we have been dealing with. "Gay liberation" can only happen in societies that are ready and willing.

That is your pov.

Western foreign policy is increasingly criticized as hypocritical — Astorre

Hypocrisy is a universal trait (even if it is undesirable) among all humans and all human institutions. It's just easier to see in other people, other nations.

The U.S. dollar was seen as unshakable. Western democracy was often cited as the highest political ideal. Western consumer goods were considered objectively superior. And the broader cultural narrative—academic, technological, even moral—was clearly West-centric. — Astorre

a) Is an 'unshakable dollar' a measure of the western ideal?
b) Why wouldn't 'western democracy' remain the highest IDEAL, even if, in reality, it is less than ideal?
c) Are objectively superior consumer goods, nice as they are, a measure of western ideals?
d) The 'broader cultural narrative' isn't accepted by all western academics.

Many Americans (liberals in the best meaning of liberal) find unsatisfactory a good deal of what is going on in the US, the west in general, and the east in general. So, it's not surprising that people elsewhere -- seeing anti-liberal trends in US political behavior -- would have doubts. However, IF liberal values were good 10 or 15 years ago, they ought to still be good.

Are we truly entering an era of multipolarity? If so, what are the philosophical consequences of a world without a dominant cultural “center”? — Astorre

Within the last 125 years, various regimes have arisen whose focus was decidedly unliberal and unwestern. One of them, the PRC, remains. It's been a going concern since October 1, 1949. It has not been without some really major difficulties (famine, cultural revolutions, glorious rich-getting, etc.) There is a large batch of smaller illiberal and/or un-western regimes which have come to the fore locally. Just to name a few, Saudi Arabia; Iran; Spain; South Africa; Serbia; Cuba; Argentina; Chile; and quite a few others. Some of these regimes, like Fascist Spain, have reformed. Argentina and Chile eventually got rid of their generals.

The US has had better and worse period of western democratic performance, and is currently in one of its worst-performing periods, with Trump at the helm. The big question for me is how long this dispiriting episode will last.

By "state" I mean either a federal state (US GOV) or a subunit (Florida, North Dakota). I live in a state, Minnesota, that abandoned the death penalty in 1911. Apparently there had been a badly botched execution which resulted in a voter demand to drop the death penalty. Botched execution have become a thing, again, evidently.

But to say that capital punishment shouldn't be part of the system because the justice system is not perfect... — L'éléphant

I am not holding out for "perfection". What I say is that the justice system (particularly on the state level in certain states) is bad enough that irrevocable sentences (execution) should not be ordered. Evidently, some states are much worse than others when it comes to police and prosecutorial misbehavior and incompetence. Exoneration can only benefit the living.

Even if the Justice system were to be perfect, I am still against capital punishment. I do not believe it has the power to dissuade someone from committing a capital crime, because #1 murders are often committed in the heat of the moment when regard to consequences is low. #2 reason is that in our system, for better or worse, execution often occurs long after sentence is passed. This greatly dilutes any theoretical benefit of prevention.

"The State" of course is an abstraction and can't execute a fly. Executions are carried out by individuals working for the state. It is unseemly for the state to ask employees to carry out what are cold blooded murders. The employees may feel OK about it -- I don't actually know -- but the execution is definitely cold-blooded murder, by definition.

Minnesota has had several exoneration cases, recently, which freed men who had been in jail for up to 20 years. There is a tipping point -- varying by individual -- when the last exoneration becomes too many to put up with. I have not reached that point for imprisonment.

I don't think I am being sentimental about capital punishment. People die every day in unwholesome, perverse situations, killed by -- for lack of a better term -- deluded self-centered assholes. It makes me angry that these kinds of death occur, but society seems to be OK with it, as long as it isn't in their part of town. So far, in 78 years, I haven't personally known anyone shot down on the street.

I don't approve of capital punishment, along with an assortment of other things. I have no plans to personally do anything radical to stop it, like self-immolation on the steps of the prison.

Why should I act this way and not otherwise? — Astorre

Isn't this where reward and punishment play a major role? From an early age on we are offered rewards for acting the way an agency prefers -- that agency being anything from parent to a government. And the opposite, of course: punishment of some sort from an early age on. At an early age, punishment installs guilt, a powerful guide and something to avoid by behaving 'correctly' whatever that is.

I like your statement, "What is the price of my action? Am I ready to bear it as part of myself?" This is a critical issue where we decide to deviate from the dominant rules and regs. An example is the decision of a gay boy, man, to announce that he is gay, even though this act of existential truth may bring immediate negative consequences. 75 years ago, being a communist in the United States was that sort of existential issue. (There are always these existential issues -- different times and places, different existential issues.)

Is there any way to know for sure what is right and what is wrong? — Truth Seeker

First, people are born into societies with a standing system of values (reflected in law, religion, manners, and so forth). So from the start, that is one source of certainty.

Once one is old enough to think for one's self, one can revise and edit the received rules. There are limits on how far one can go: Even if you have decided it is OK to steal, most of society thinks it is wrong and if you steal, you may be caught and punished. There are usually core values and rules which you had best abide by, like it or not. There are often quite peripheral rules which can safely be ignored. But sometimes peripheral rules, like fashion, are almost as critical as core rules.



So, if your Home Owners Assn. says that your lawn must be weed free and no longer than 3 inches, then you had better hop to it. Or else!

I don't think WS was arguing for completely subjective morality. I take what he said to mean that we can 'think' our way from one position to another, from an act being bad to that act being good. There are plenty of historical examples of thinking our way from bad to good, good to bad.

Most people make up their minds about what is good and bad based on their society, on very strong influences, and on one's own thinking. There is usually some wiggle room in the morals of the 8 billion + people on earth, but not too much. That's one reason why most of us get along with each other reasonably well most of the time.

What brings major trouble is when a political leader (Mao, Hitler, Stalin, Trump, Ayatollah Khomeini. the Taliban lunatics, the Sudan warlords, etc.) decide to impose a moral scheme at considerable variance from the people's generally practiced moral system. Trump isn't in the same league as Hitler (yet, anyway) but his shredding of USAID, Voice Of America, the Department of Education, the CDC. his nonsensical policy on science and vaccination, and other actions undermines what people thought good, true, and right about government. The consequences will be less health around the world, less health at home, less reliable information around the world, less education, and so on. Not good!

Punish only up to the extent of the law. Anything beyond that is vindictiveness. Vindictiveness and wisdom cannot co-exist in you simultaneously. — L'éléphant

Thanks for calling me out on that.

Sadly, "the extent of the law" may include capital punishment. I am against capital punishment for two reasons: #1, in the United States, at least, justice has been perverted in a significant number of convictions, including those of capital cases. The wrongfully convicted are sometimes exonerated by the hard work of a few justice groups. It's bad enough if someone spends 20 years in prison for a wrongful conviction. A wrongful execution is beyond appeal.

#2, execution is an unseemly activity for the state to engage in. Prison is punishment enough -- for life if need be, but in most cases, not that long. Now, I don't like the way states run their prisons either. People can become better in prison, no worse, but that takes a commitment to betterment. We don't have that, by and large. I don't like states running gambling operations, either, or if they so chose, any of the traditional rackets.

So, "they can hang twice" is a rhetorical flourish, not an action plan. Besides, I probably won't be around in 10 years, never mind 100. There is some comfort in getting closer to the end.

I'm not worried about you plagiarizing anything! I think we are both in the same age group--aged and high functioning. We are in a position for a late harvest of a lifetime of thinking, doing, living. A few weeks ago one of my sisters (more aged than I and not doing quite so well) were discussing the 20th century history of Israel. I was reciting the history of the pre-and-post WWI changes in the Middle East, the Balfour declaration, and so on. She accused me of reading this off the computer. No, it's something that I had finally learned well enough to draw from memory.

You have batches of material like that too, material you have learned well and can spool off in a post. It's a great thing to have, a working memory that is full. (I'm not bragging -- I can't remember what the weather was like here last month. Did I take my pills this morning? What did I spend the 20 bucks on that was in my wallet? Etc.). I wish I had learned more in college Geology 101; we had a wonderful teacher. The one thing I remember vividly is his description of plate tectonics which was still a relatively new discovery. I remember some stories in the 6th grade Weekly Reader about the International Geophysical Year, 1956. One of the stories was about the sea floor spreading out from big cracks--a key piece of continental drift. As for the different types of rocks we were taught, not much remains. Plagioclase feldspar? the name stuck but the description didn't.

Wisdom tells me that the second hanging is a formality, since the hangees will no longer be 'present'.

On the other hand, I'll own up to a certain amount of vindictiveness toward responsible agents who wrecked the climate and caused billions of deaths.

you can take me out and shoot me, but I have to use AI to make this post much richer than what I can do without it — Athena

Which AI are you using? Are you using the summary labeled as AI which Google provides to a query? For quick checks, it generally delivers acceptable answers--at least, they are as good as Google query results, which are sometimes not good, but usually are at least acceptable.

I generally don't use CHATGPT, or other AIs--not for any great reason; I just don't find it that entertaining.

AI is a tool; so is Google. Of course it's there to make money, now or in the near future, but that's no surprise. I think the problem the Management here has with AI is people substituting AI output for their own thinking, their own composition. I'm against people doing that because it's only by actually doing their own thinking and their own research and their own writing that they will get better at it.

You are not substituting AI output for your own thinking, which you have clearly been doing for a long time. So pick up the tools that help you gather information. Any tool, be it a pencil and note cards or Ai.

We need honesty and we need to act on what we know. We must not let the discussion stop at ignoring the problem because change would hurt. — Athena

HEAR! HEAR!

What if all this crashes in only 100 years? Will our young be prepared to figure out how to survive? — Athena

"All this" will crash. The young of 2125 won't be grappling with an oil shortage. In 100 years heat will be the biggest problem -- heat; previously unseen climate and weather patterns; drinking water shortages; insufficient food production; maintenance of critical aging infrastructure. In 100 years it is likely that intolerable heat will prevail in many parts of the world, including parts the United States. Specifically, it will be too hot and too humid to carry out agricultural labor. Disease pattern changes are already under way. We can expect that malaria, West Nile virus, chikungunya. Lyme disease, zika virus, and more will become endemic in much of the US (because of heat and the spread of ticks and mosquitos and the diseases they carry).

End of the world? Not quite. But it is likely to be a world with fewer people, fewer resources, fewer comforts, and very big problems. Let us hope that there we don't have nuclear warfare to add to the future's problems.

People who can will adapt and life will go on.

People who could not adapt through no fault of their own will have departed this world.

I am selfishly glad that I am an old man in 2025, and will have departed this world long before things get much worse. Who is to blame? Let's keep it simple and just blame everybody since the Industrial Revolution. Our generation's government and corporate leaders are doubly culpable for knowing that coal, oil, and natural gas cause climate change and not doing something about it. Let them be hanged twice.

The next several generations will join the class of climate criminals if they do not act. The Angry Children of 2125 will have no shortage of responsible and guilty parties at which to shake their fists!

I don't think anything is more important to our decision-making than geology. — Athena

Well, geology IS the bedrock of reality, so, yes.

Iran is currently in a water crisis -- not enough to go around. The SW United States is headed toward the same crisis. Johannesburg, South Africa came very close to zero water in the very recent past. The Oglala Aquifer laying under much of the Great Plains is being depleted. The Colorado River is heavily over-subscribed, and its reservoirs may never recover (at least in time to make a difference).

The Greens, Environmentalists, Vegetarians, and Vegans want us to quit oil altogether, right now. I used to think that too. But we can't. James Howard Kunstler's book Too Much Magic argues against technological optimism: Oil and coal are the root cause of global warming. They are also the root of global prosperity. That's where we are, for better or worse. All sorts of whiz-bang solutions are offered, but the fact is: we are stuck with oil. We have passed "peak oil" but that doesn't mean we will run out tomorrow. It will take about as long to run out as we have been using petroleum -- so another 100 years, roughly.

We can't quit using oil because it is too deeply integrated into our technology ("just one word: PLASTICS" was said to The Graduate), our chemical supply, our transportation--electric cars not withstanding, our pharmaceuticals, agriculture, our clothing (polyester, nylon), and everything else. Water mains and gas lines are now made out of plastic.

It is so critical a substance that if we abruptly stopped using carbon fuels to save the climate, the world's economies would crash -- and that crash would cost many lives all over the world, from starvation, from loss of electricity--wind and solar not withstanding, from lack of water, lack of transportation, lack of work and income, and on and on.

Unfortunately--and it really is unfortunate--the consumption of carbon fuels is not declining much.

Is there nothing to be done? Of course there is. We could build a lot more wind and solar farms, everywhere. Nuclear power is available. We could shift away from individual auto use. There are about 1 billion cars on the road in the world. The individual car/driver was never sustainable, and for large areas of the industrialized world it wasn't necessary, either. We could all get a lot more frugal in our energy use.

But there are 8.1 billion people to convince. Fat chance of doing that! Fat chance of getting the US Government (DT et al) on board environmental salvation.

Speaking of geology, we are in the Anthropocene epoch, where industrial substances are not only altering the global climate, but laying down industrial substances in new geologic layers.

This is a little far from raising children, but if we did so with a bigger picture of reality, would that change how we raise them? — Athena

No so far from the matter of raising children.

Children can grow up to be open to the always-changing world, to new music ("All music was once new"), new art, new science, new technology, and so on, while also being open to the past. I have no idea of how, exactly, parents should go about that other than to be open themselves both to the ever changing present and the past. And they should do that with as much taste and selectivity as they can manage. New fashion might be hideous, and some new technology might be insidious. We don't have to rush out and buy it.

Yes, but whores usually don't go in for a lot of batting practice, probably didn't play football in school, didn't golf, or go out for track and field. So, while they COULD become football players (or golfers) there's a learning curve that gets in the way of your average hooker playing adult children's games in the big leagues.

I appreciated Unenlightened's comment about professional sports being a variety of prostitution. It also seems unnatural to pay men (or women) many millions of dollars to play children's games as if it mattered who last had the ball.

There is an element of subservience in many jobs. Your perform as much work as they can get out of you for the least possible amount of pay. The worker is usually not a free agent on the job but is subject to numerous restrictions, a few of which may make sense. If the boss doesn't like you (for any reason) you can be fired without cause (the legal term is "employment at will").

So prostitution sucks (literally) and so does the typical job.

A prostitute is not a football player. — AmadeusD

Really! Who knew?

The term also normalizes/de-stygamtizes it. Somewhat. That is both good and bad. — Relativist

That said, I am firmly in the camp that going to OnlyFans instead of getting a skilled job is absolutely a cop-out and not something we can sufficiently compare as "work". — AmadeusD

I am tolerant of other people's sexual behavior. Part of this comes from liberal thinking about behavior, and part of it comes from my own sometimes shameless promiscuous sexual behavior (way in the past--I've aged out of the scene). Whores, hoes, prostitutes, sex workers: is that an ascending scale of value? Or is it all the same?

I am tolerant of commercial sexual behavior, but I don't think it is in the same category as 'normal work'. And I don't see the ardent advocates for the dignity of prostitution as a job ever being tempted to take one of those dignified sex worker jobs.

There is sometimes no dignity whatsoever for the terms of labor for a w, h, p, or sw who has aged out of the better terms of work. Having to solicit blow jobs for $20 is more like whoring--most of us would find it a severe humiliation; it is not dignified, but it is work for certain. Performing sex from an expensive out-call service with much higher pay and more comfort on the job is better sex work, much better whoring, or classier prostitution. But no matter how well paid...

There is a scene in Butterfield 8 where Elizabeth Taylor's character declares, "Mother, I am a WHORE." This is not low self-esteem talking. This is a high class prostitute recognizing the reality of her life.

Would people who think that "sex work" is dignified labor be willing to consider it as a temp, short term, or career job? Well look - you can run your own business (maybe); maintain your own hours of work (usually at night, but not always); be free of income tax; meet interesting people. You have the option of refusing tasks that you don't like (which might be bad for business, at least). Special outfits are not necessary. Wear what you like.

If W, h, p, and sw were like any other job, one wouldn't expect to age out of it quickly. Ballet dancers don't last long--their feet fail them first. But then they can teach, direct, or shift into some other area of performing arts. Lateral mobility is difficult in the sex business. Vertical mobility is mostly downward. It doesn't look good on a resume and recommendations are hard to get. Tired sex workers are just done. Singers and actors, on the other hand -- and truck drivers, programmers, tax accountants, or nurses, can work in their fields and advance until normal retirement.

The terms of work for w, h, p, and sw are not dignified. It generally involves the insertion of a stranger's penis into one's orifices in a range of ways that might very well be unpleasant. Is there some other job that is similar?

Having sex that you want might involve the same act that obtains between a whore and his or her customer, but does anyone value the two acts the same?

For sure the mood of the country is different today than when I grew up full of hope that we would make a better world. I — Athena

The mood of the country is different than it was say 70 years ago. But then those 70 years have changed us as well. So neither the world nor we are the same.

I think each cohort has its unique music inspired by the time. — Athena

That raises an interesting question: What features of a given time (say, 1890s, 1940s, 1990s... either 'inspire', 'cause', or 'influence' music's periodic changes? Ragtime became popular in the 1890s, at the same time that Jim Crow laws were most draconian. Despite Blacks being terrorized and excluded, Ragtime was very popular in the Black community where it originated, but it also became popular among middle-class whites. Why? How?

Two technical developments helped: one was the wide available of sheet music. At this time before radio and recorded music, many people produced music at home, and there was a large sheet music industry feeding the demand for interesting music. The other development was the increased availability of the player piano, which enabled households to buy performances of both classical and contemporary music. A roll of ragtime might better capture the rhythms than interpreting sheet music.

Black artists (like Scott Joplin) weren't celebrated; quite often the whole black origin of Ragtime was 'white washed'.

Are you familiar with Louis Moreau Gottschalk? He preceded Ragtime by 20 years, at least but he had a very strong influence on both Ragtime and later Jazz (he died in 1869). He wrote a lot of music for piano and orchestra; here's a short piano piece, which is a fair introduction if you have not heard him before: The Banjo:



Gottschalk, Joplin, Jelly Roll Morton. There were dance bands, and then big bands -- the kind you see in old movies, like Benny Goodman or Glen Miller. Then Rock and Roll, and here we are.

I agree that each sub-generational cohort has its preferred genre, but the varieties and the generations are kind of all mushed together. Hard to sort out one thing from another.

Oh dear, I may be a snob. But I think having standards are important to a civilization. I don't like bringing everything down to the lowest level, and I don't think that is good for society. — Athena

Of course it isn't good to bring everything down to the lowest level. Sex in itself is not a low level. It's a topic. It can be treated in a lot of different ways, some elegantly, some crude, some poetically, some politically. Sex can transgress standards and be worthy of a film, or be very pedestrian and belong on the cutting room floor, along with the pedestrians.

I don't have any ready made guidelines. I'm pretty tolerant on many topics (except certain political matters). Have I never been offended by a film? I suppose -- I went to see I AM CURIOUS YELLOW, the Swedish shocker sex film of the late 60s. It was a bore and I left with a headache. I saw DEEP THROAT in the 70s; I'm gay; its plot was pretty much heterosexual. Another headache, another bore. Quality queer sleaze doesn't offend me, but it's usually not worth movie-length treatment. 5 minutes is about right. "For god's sake, stop talking and DO SOMETHING!"

When we had sensorship, we could tell the stories but make the show less sensational. — Athena

Censorship is fine when one doesn't like the stuff the censor is shredding, anyway, but not so great when it is one's favorite books, poems, newspapers, magazines, films, etc. that are getting trashed.

In the good old days (which were not so good) censors worried about sexual content -- which back then was more like innuendo and suggestion. A glimpse of stocking was something shocking. CHOP! Married couples (in some films and tv programs, had "Hollywood beds" -- single side by side -- to avoid the obvious fact that couples slept together, quite possibly naked, and -- “QUELLE HORREUR!” engaged in sexual intercourse right there in that double bed!!! CHOP!

So sexual innuendo, and god forbid that the film should present a positive image of certain immigrant groups, certain political groups (leftist, labor, etc.) or socialism / communism CHOP! CHOP! CHOP! No homosexuals on screen, please, and no mention of the actor's homosexuality off screen. CHOP! No unwed women getting pregnant, no blacks and whites together -- absolutely not!!! It was OK to have Sydney Poitier sweating for a bunch of German nuns, but that was the limit. CHOP!

Donald Trump didn't like the Smithsonian Institution's display about impeachment (sore issue with Donald) so the display was withdrawn. CHOP!

Donald Trump doesn't like it mentioned that he lost the 2020 election. It wasn't stolen from him, HE LOST IT!!! CHOP!

Violence was never at the top of the list for censorship. Violence, mayhem, scary monsters, freaks, crashes, bullets flying, etc. were normally not viewed as problematic.

Granted, "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" is not up there with Giacomo Puccini. "Yesterday" by Paul McCartney is a good song by any standard. McCartney was 22 when he wrote and performed Yesterday. He's 83.

Yesterday
All my troubles seemed so far away
Now it looks as though they're here to stay
Oh, I believe in yesterday

Suddenly
I'm not half the man I used to be
There's a shadow hangin' over me
Oh, yesterday came suddenly

Why she had to go, I don't know, she wouldn't say
I said something wrong, now I long for yesterday

Yesterday
Love was such an easy game to play
Now I need a place to hide away
Oh, I believe in yesterday

I like operatic music, but some of opera's lyrics are slop -- slop set to sublime music, quite often.

Were the big stars of Rock and Roll and Folk music talented? Oh God, yes they were. But everybody wasn't a big star, up there with the Beatles, the Doors, Bob Dylan or PP&M. There were second and third string rock bands doing bubble gum slop (which, as it happens, isn't totally without merit; it doesn't have a lot of merit, but still...).

One of the problems with AI and it's large language model is that when it answers a question, it is drawing on that vast ocean of print which is what it has been 'trained' on. So, some of the material it is loaded with is good (high quality); some of it is bad (not immoral, but low quality); and a lot of it is indifferent. There is no artificial "intelligence" driving AI. What makes it tick is software instructions.

So, question: Where did AI get its opinions about Fantasia? Certainly NOT from watching the film as either a human child or an adult!

I'm not altogether against AI, but like electrification, mechanization, automation, the assembly line, photography, motion pictures, the telephone, radio, television, internet, and a lot of other industrial innovations, it will have both predictable and unanticipated + and - consequences. We can rest assured that the companies building and selling AI will not take responsibility for any of those consequences.

that once something gets through the process of research, it resymbolizes reality as much as a plastic-wrapped steak resymbolizes the cow it came from. — Athena

Granted, one would not be able to imagine a cow based on a steak, but the steak is still 100% cow. So, even though social research generally examines just a small slice of the whole society, it still is society that is illuminated -- poorly, better, or brilliantly, depending. Having said that, we have all read social research to which the response is a resounding "what?" or "so what?".

One piece of research that does come to mind is this: People who watch a lot of local news organized around crime stories tend to be more fearful about their neighborhoods than actual crime would justify. That makes sense: there are too many repetitions of the same violent story line that are actually not relevant to 99% of the larger community. If you are not in a gang, dealing drugs, and so on, you are not likely to have somebody shoot you for non-payment or being on some other dealer's turf.

Cormac McCarthy's The Road was a disturbing story. I was going to watch the movie as well, but decided it would load way too many disturbing images into my head. I've read a couple of science fiction stories where the same thing applied -- the text was disturbing enough. So yes, material that is disturbing to adults is likely to be just as disturbing to children.

I am thinking of the copycat crimes — Athena

Some news media (in Australia) have made limited moves to limit the details of crime reporting, or limit the amount of coverage of sensational crimes. In a competitive environment that's hard to do, of course, and if all the other stations are covering it, well... But it makes sense that wall to wall coverage of every school shooting spree might inspire copycat behavior.

have you seen how Elvis moves his hips? — Athena

Elvis isn't one of my favorites, but I have lately been listening to a lot of popular music from the 60s and early 70s. There were a lot of great performers! Good looking young singers, great voices, sometimes great lyrics but sometimes vapid songs.

I Googled, "Does TV influence teenagers" and AI gave a strong "yes, it does". — Athena

Well then, it must be TRUE. AI says so! But this is an old debate, and as I recollect there has never been a definitive answer to the question of whether, how, and how much comic books, movies, TV, video games, and music affect behavior. We know with certainty that billions of people engage with all these media, but to what effect is harder to say.

Untangling all the influences on a person from cradle to grave is an insurmountable problem--because we are always both the subject and object of our lives. There are too many factors for which an accounting would have to be made, and each individual brain is dealing with all these factors in a somewhat unique fashion.

It is clear that there are patterns in behavior observable in large groups of people. For instance, more women and fewer men are attending college now. That's a reversal. Why? That's much more difficult to get a handle on. We can both propose various reasons, as experts have, and the proposals both do and do not explain the changes. This is just one of a thousand patterns to account for.

Advertising, marketing, and sales data show that media messages affect consumer behavior to some extent. But even here, where whole industries are built on collecting and analyzing consumer behavior, there are few hard and fast rules one can count on. The manufactured objects themselves (everything from breakfast cereals to cars) are in themselves attractive objects. One doesn't have to have seen advertisements to buy packaged cereals. Seeing a new car on the street can stimulate one's itchy desires, even without media preparation. Or the car itself may have no effect at all on the viewer.

So, when we turn to deeper issues of influence -- one's habits of thought, ethics, imagination, complex behavior -- like parenting -- it is far more difficult to find clear, unmistakable connections between influences and practices. Still, it is obvious that there are connections--we just can't be precise about them, usually.

If one "examines one life" as the philosophers recommend, one will find both explainable and inexplicable patterns in one's life. That's true for everybody else, too.

... for all the pioneer women who were isolated when we moved west and filled the wilderness... They should have at least had the Internet. That would have made life so much better! — Athena

AT least the internet, but chances are the computers would not have fared well being banged around in the ox carts on the way west. Then there was the problem of a reliable connections, even with the extremely slow transmission rate, which was a bit slower than the average ox cart. Not to mention making the oxen hitched to the ox-powered generator run fast enough so you could check your e-mail. And we haven't even touched on the problem of dirt from the sod roof falling into the computer's hard drive and screwing things up.

No, back then civilization had a hard time. I mean, one's latest issue of The New Yorker was sometimes 6 months late! The local general trading store just didn't keep up with fashion, not to mention all the gnawing vermin in the cabin that were hard on one's wardrobe.

It was a great thing when the CBC finally started broadcasting life-saving symphony concerts and operas to the wilderness around Toronto, where paved roads and V-8s hadn't arrived quite yet.

Additionally... 30 million words heard by age 6 isn't hard to achieve in a family that is literate, quite verbal, and engaged with it's children. That's your basic "middle class" family".

Where it is difficult for a child to hear 30 million positive (non-command / non-curse) words is in poor families, especially poor black families. Children from these families may arrive at school with a 10 million-word deficit, and a lot of the words they have heard have been negative, commands, or curses. Again, it is the language of the caregiver, not the television or uninvolved people that matter.

I bring this up because for these poor children, remediation of language deficits is very difficult, and by 3rd grade, the child has often fallen far behind--which becomes yet another barrier.

IF there is a solution for this language deficit, it is to train caregivers to "start talking" positively and a lot. The sort of talk that helps is, for instance, describing to the child how the bed is made; how the laundry is done; how the dishes are washed (all at the fairly early language learning stage). Praising the child is important. What the child needs to hear a lot less of is the negative language one sometimes hears on a bus, from parent to child. It can be very harsh.

Can parents be taught? Yes, provided there are funds to launch the kind of intensive outreach that is needed, and to maintain the instructional programs for years on end.

On to textbooks, Dick and Jane textbooks were for the "see and say" method, which is highly dependent on memory and resulted in a large number of students failing. — Athena

One of the many things I don't much about are the theories (good and bad) about teaching reading. I have seen several studies that emphasize the importance of hearing A LOT of language in the first 4 or 5 years of life -- not babble from a television, but spoken by care-givers in a positive manner. The more complex, the better. By first grade (5 or 6 years) a child needs to have heard around 30,000,000 words. Being reared in a diminished and negative language environment can make acquisition of reading (and other school-taught skills) very difficult-to-impossible.

I grew up in a large family; positive speech was plentiful. I remember being read-to, comic books usually. I don't remember having any great difficulty learning to read. I attended a small-town school and most of my classmates also were successful readers.

The difficult transition for students who fail in school is when learning to read shifts to reading to learn. That has happened by 4th or 5th grade. I remember that in 5th grade I became obsessed with mushrooms, which I read about in the World Book Encyclopedia we had in the classroom.

What is AGI? — Athena

Artificial General Intelligence doesn't exist--yet. AI, and its large language models, are a step in that direction.

Have you tried buying old grade school textbooks? — Athena

No, but I did buy some old family / sex education books from between 1900 and 1920. Their advice on family and marriage (sex) was perhaps applicable before WWI; it became less applicable year by year. "Sex" per se didn't change, but the roles of men, women, and marriage were changing rapidly. Further, the culture was undergoing rapid multi-directional changes and so was the economy. The Crash of 1929, resulting depression, and WWII brought about even more dramatic changes.

I learned to read using Dick and Jane readers. Sure, in the 1950s (I started 1st grade in 1951/52) some aspects of D's & J's world were familiar; many mothers were at home; most fathers worked. But even in the small town Podunk I grew up in, some mothers had to work, some fathers didn't, and there were some children who were clearly poor and not well cared for. We were poor; my working father did not wear a suit (it seems like the D&J father did).

Have you tried buying old grade school textbooks? They were about preparing children for life, not just preparing them for jobs. — Athena

Was D&J a good reading text book? I don't know, but at least it wasn't based on any of some of the very screwy ideas some schools use and fail to teach children how to read. I don't remember much about reading books after 1st grade.

The classrooms I remember from 1952-1964 were peaceful. Was this because Dick and Jane readers had modeled peaceful, cooperative, respectful behavior? I doubt it very much. We were peaceful, cooperative, and respectful because those were common family values and were expected. No, not every family transmitted or practiced these values consistently. Enough did that the "herd standard" worked pretty well. And we lacked diversity; we were all pretty much culturally the same.

It's axiomatic that life is always changing. There was no period in American / Canadian history when society was not undergoing significant change. As James Russell Lowell put it in his poem, Once to Every Man and Nation, "time makes ancient good uncouth".

They were about preparing children for life, not just preparing them for jobs. — Athena

Schools, teachers, and school books have always been preparing children for both LIFE and jobs. Only for the severely disabled or the extremely privileged will LIFE and WORK not be inextricably entangled. Didn't the Lord tell Adam and Eve that "from now on, you will earn your bread by the sweat of your brow"? Genesis 3:19. No more easy street for you, buddy!!! Now, get out of here, and get to WORK.

I am exhausted and heading to bed — Athena

Hope you are sleeping well!

The Greek philosophers would choke on such materialistic goals. — Athena

Contemporary society would choke Greek philosophers in ever so many ways.

Look, I'm not proposing that we toss Greek philosophers into the fire, but they didn't exist in a world of 8 billion plus people, AI, automation, atomic weapons, mass media, and more, much more.

Yes, I do want schools to educate students so that they can be employed and prosper in the economy of the 21st century. I don't know to what degree even this goal is practical. AI and automation are serious challenges to employment -- and not just for semi-skilled workers. Some very good students who just graduated with degrees in computer science are finding themselves irrelevant.

You have a fetish about the National Defense Education Act. I can't help you with that.

I agree with you entirely about the military-industrial-complex. It is flourishing and is a malignant influence, in distorting military policy, government budgets, domestic production, and world trade (in weapons, particularly).

I have to laugh at myself. I feel so strongly about being okay with material poverty, but not okay with intellectual poverty. — Athena

I sympathize with you. I spent many years poor for the same of pursuing intellectual goals. I'm 79 now, and am very glad that I still have a (reasonably) agile mine and not too many material concerns--knock on wood.

I just don't see a past golden age in North American education, as experienced by the 90%+ of the population who were neither part of the elite nor had any likelihood of joining the elite. The elite received what I think you would consider a very good education -- heavy in the humanities, Greek, Latin, etc. For boys going into business, (even law, until relatively recently) higher education was of little use.

I'm thinking here of the later 19th century, mostly. As society, industry, business, etc. became more complicated, greater education was needed for success. Andrew Carnegie was well-self-educated, with some basic education received in Scotland. He did well. J. P. Morgan graduated from Boston's English High School, learned French and German at university in Europe (1 year), then returned to the US and began as an apprentice banker. He did well.

During the 20th century, college education became a requirement for more types of work. In 1960, according to Statista, 7.7% of the population had at least a bachelor's degree, and 40% completed high school. Today it is about 37% and 91% respectively. The increase from 7% to 37% over the last 65 years has been quite gradual. The steepest increase was between 1960 and 1990, rising from 7.7% to 21.3% of the population.

I was lucky to be able to complete college in 1968, thanks to a state program. Had it not been for that, I would have been among the 40% with only high school, and not prepared for much of anything.

What are your thoughts on this take on this comment by boethius — unimportant

I do not agree that everything is reducible to "imperialist race supremacy". There are several "isms" that can be cited as a universal cause of all problems: sexism, communism/capitalism, imperialism, colonialism, racism, classism, and so on. All these 'isms' have real consequences; they are not imaginary, after all.

If you look at the history of housing and housing finance in the United States, it is very clear that race mattered in the way that housing expansion in the 20th century was managed. THE COLOR OF LAW by Richard Rothstein (2018) closely examines how federal law and policy built white-only suburbs and black-only public housing in cities. The policies have knock-on effects for wealth and opportunities three generations on.

However, class plays a role in housing policy as well. People seem to prefer living among people who are similar to themselves in terms of culture, education, and occupation. Class preferences are going to have racial aspects, because of wealth (and thus class) distribution. Upper class people (roughly 10% of the population) prefer to live among other upper class people. Middle class people (entrepreneurial, economic strivers, fairly well educated, etc.) generally do not want to live with people in the lower working classes, regardless of race.

I don't think that arranging to live with people like one's self (race, class, education, etc.) is pathological.

On the other hand, it is perfectly clear that one goal of racial policy is generally to suppress one racial group for the benefit of another. Economic 'warfare' is a very old game, played in both racially homogeneous and racially mixed populations.

There are plenty of other evolutionarily useful traits that get sidelined like cooperation and community care in favor of beauty above all else as the highest value. — unimportant

In evolution, Task #1 is reproducing. Beauty is better at promoting sex than being clever at organizing a group sing-along.

aesthetics has been 'fetishized' to use Marx's jargon — unimportant

A better word than "aesthetics" would be something more specific like tits and ass; big breasts; big dicks; gym-sculpted body features (6 or 8 pack, pecs, etc.); blond hair. Youth is fetishized. Except that in many countries, young people are the largest demographic, which makes them compellingly important to the political future.

Is it just a corollary of the runaway principle of capitalism? — unimportant

It's somewhere between very difficult and impossible to answer such questions because we may be the product of that corollary. We might be blind to it.

Just look at how old people are mainly ignored in society. Not even old-old but after 20s people are generally removed from the main stage to accept smaller and smaller roles. — unimportant

Come now! That's not remotely true. It might be true that after 55--certainly after 60--it becomes much more difficult to find appropriate jobs, because one is likely to be older and more experienced than one's supervisors, for one thing.

It depends where you are. Were I to visit any of the gay bars that I used to successfully cruise and socialize in, I would expect to be flat-out ignored (I'm 79). But political pollsters seem to think my opinions are valuable. I have a great credit rating; bankers like me--I'm finally a good risk.

My peak social and career success was between 40 and 50, without a sharp cutoff.

What would life be like in a world where wisdom and personal integrity were the ideals that were instilled as the greatest good — unimportant

We don't know, because wisdom and personal integrity have been on offer for thousands of years and people tend to honor it in the breach more often than in the observance.

I don't know why it is so hard to get people to accept that western society is superficial so far. — unimportant

Because people are alike all over the world and you can't walk 10 feet any place on earth without tripping over at least one shallow air head.

This society teaches, off the top of my head, basically: money, fame, beauty are the major tenets of the good life. — unimportant

What about the motto of the Communist Chinese reform movement: Getting rich is glorious! Just remember: We are all one species and we tend to be very very similar. However... don't give up.

While we are all quite similar, we all also have unique individual aspirations, goals, needs, wants, wishes, values, strengths, and weaknesses. The condition of the world can look very different by shifting one's gaze from the small number of most noticed people (followed by the press, social media, etc.) and the much larger majority who spend their days working, being quite sensible, and just getting on with life.

Not to mention that social workers can't solve every problem either! The fact is society is not fair, and those who suffer most from unfairness are usually screwed and there isn't much that can be done to undo the damage.

I was helped a great deal by one (1) teacher who referred me to a state program which enabled me to go to college instead of taking the first clerical job that came along. It was a strategic intervention on her part, for which she was unfortunately never thanked. No other teacher, no administrator, and no counselor (did we have one back then in '64? Don't know) saw any reason to steer me towards something better.

I'm not complaining. The teachers at Podunk High School taught their subjects well, indifferently, or badly. Nothing more than teaching was, or should have been, expected. After all, no one expects the butcher, the baker, or the body shop to solve people's larger problems.

Teachers aren't social workers and schools aren't community support systems. They are for educating kids. — Hanover

This is true, up to a point. Schools are not social service providers. No surprise. What might be more surprising is that "educating kids" is calibrated for their future in the economy (or lack of it).

There are good schools which do educate children well. I'd say that 20% of school age children are in these good schools. A lot of these children will go on to college and take on professional work. At the other end of the spectrum there are, just for symmetry, another 20% of school children who are in dysfunctional schools. Their families, their communities, and their schools are consistently poor. That leaves a big middle which ranges from fairly good to poor.

Why is this the case? 'Society' needs a cadre of well and properly educated people to manage its affairs. There are excellent schools (public and private) which deliver.

'Society' also recognizes that there is a cadre of people who do not have much of a future in the economy. Excellence in education for this group would be a wasted effort. The larger population in the middle, the 60% of children, have a broader future in the economy, and receive such education as is required. A lot of these people in the middle will be respectable members of the 'working class'; they will have jobs, families and be major contributors to the economy, but they do not need elite skills.

I don't like it, but that seems to be the way it is. Raising up the underclass and the less skilled members of the working class isn't an educational function. Even if the schools were funded and prepared to deliver excellent education to every child, it would not match the needs of the existing national economy.

And it is that, the existing national economic structure, that would have to be reorganized to provide a good job -- a raison d'être -- to every adult in the country. Production of goods would have to be re-shored, be almost entirely domestic. The economy would need very strong central direction from the government to accomplish this. A significant redistribution of wealth would have to come about -- much less concentrated at the top, more dispersed throughout. And so on.

It's not going to happen, but such huge changes might accomplish what some people are asking schools to do.

[Thanks for contributing.

quote="L'éléphant;1006735"]There's an erroneous understanding that the influence of parents and teachers last forever. There is actually a point in the life of children when the influence of the outside world, social media, advertising, outside friends takes precedence and may replace the teachings of good parents. This should be taught to parents and educators alike.[/quote]

There is a lot of truth in what you say. I experienced that kind of disjunction as a gay man. I moved from small town/rural life, oriented around heterosexuality and traditional lifestyles, to an urban environment, and was greatly influenced by the norms of the liberationist gay male community of the late '60s and early 70s.

However, as unlike a gay lifestyle was from growing up in Podunk, MN, a lot of the values and behaviors of my parents remained.

The influence of school experiences is probably weaker than it is thought to be. The multiplication tables I learned have endured. Ditto the grammar and spelling lessons. The largest part of my school experience was being socialized to an externally regulated work day. I resented it then and I still resent it. I don't know what school is teaching these days.

So, they don't become shocked when a person raised in a happy household with all necessities provided become a killer of their own spouse due to domestic turmoil.
Plenty of doctors, white collar executives, teachers have committed unimaginable criminal acts. — L'éléphant

We often have too little information about a violent person's childhood to make a connection. But in a significant number of cases, (I believe) bad childhood experiences contributed to bad adult behaviors. However, a lot of people with pretty bad upbringing manage to NOT re-enact their childhood trauma on others.

Goodness, Athena; I've been waiting EIGHT YEARS! for your comment.

In the past eight years, from 2017 to 2024, there have been at least 579 school shootings in the United States, according to Everytown Research & Policy. This figure includes incidents where shots were fired on school grounds, whether or not there were any injuries or fatalities. The number of school shootings has increased in recent years, with 2023 having the highest number of shootings in the past eight years.

Here's a breakdown of the annual figures:

2017: 59 shootings
2018: 93 shootings
2019: 113 shootings
2020: 21 shootings
2021: 36 shootings
2022: 53 shootings
2023: 60 shootings — google ai

This is a quoted AI answer. Note that 2023 was not the year with the most shootings, contrary to what AI said. 2019 would be the peak. Covid cooled things off in 2020. Viva la virus.

Children should not be allowed to consult AI sources until they are at least 21 years old. Let them learn to think for themselves first. Adults who depend on AI should be locked out of AI for at least 5 years, or until they are able to think independently again.

I graduated from Podunk; there were no elites there -- just us hayseeds. We hayseeds don't really like being in places where the elite hang out--be that a bar or the ivy league.

@javi2541997, Here is an interesting interview with Mary Beard, British scholar and author. She does speak about sex in Rome among other interesting topics. She suggests that one should be careful about taking everything Romans said about sex at face value. Romans, like everybody else, might exaggerate on occasion. (Well, everybody except me and thee.)

The problem isn't putting a leash on the dogs; the problem isn't even getting good (or at least 'better') dogs. People are corruptible, and bad systems will corrupt.

What elements of politics (not just in the US or EU or China -- but everywhere -- lead to corruption? How can those elements be greatly reduced or eliminated?

Take 'cost plus procurement'. It's a dead ringer for corruption. Take privately funded elections. They are a guaranteed method of leaving the door wide open to corrupt influence. Just two examples among many.