Of course we have a large government!

The United States is the 3rd largest country - by population - on the planet: 339,000,000. We are, and have been, the most powerful nation militarily. We are the 4th largest country by area. We have the largest GDP on the planet.

A complex society in a complex world requires a complex government capable of meeting very large and unexpected threats to our stability and security. Sure, once we had a small government -- back when we were much smaller, much weaker militarily, and much poorer. We were once a largely undeveloped country. By WWI that wasn't really true anymore.

Distribution of resources WITHIN the governmental agencies could be organized along different lines. Less money should be allocated for defense. We need a defense -- no doubt about that -- but I assume it could be considerably more efficient and effective. It won't get more efficient and effective if they keep getting a blank check (so to speak) every biennium.

Numerous programs (created by Congress) transfer wealth from the large working classes to the tiny wealthy classes. Tax laws are a good example. These are unfair to start with, and moreover reduce the productivity of the economy.

A lot of people think that the government, especially the President, is in charge of the economy. When the economy is poor, they blame the government. When it is good, they praise themselves. The economy is everybody, and while banks, government controls, and so on can speed up or slow down the economy, nobody is "in charge" of it.

It is, I think, quite normal to blame the government. It is usually distant; it is not, and probably can't be, entirely or too transparent (at least given the society we have now). Because the government is powerful, people fear it a little (or a lot, depending on their activities). A lot of what the government does, and does well, does not touch everyone, so many people think the government does nothing.

Latin is definitely not the source of any of the daily English lexicon except for the few words I mentioned, French is the source of almost everything productive in English today. English did not exist at the time of Ancient Latin. — Lionino

True - Old English did not exist in either 100 b.c.e. or 100 c.e., but the language of the people who invaded Britain and that evolved into Old English, Middle English, and Modern English Did exist. French didn't exist in 100 b.c.e. or 100 c.e., either. (Anyone who really wanted to get ahead in Roman society made a point to learn proper Latin.

French words and words derived from French make up a significant portion of the English lexicon. However, it is possible to write a long trilogy (like Lord of the Rings) and use a lexicon that is roughly 80% to 90% derived from AngloSaxon. The 10%-15% remainder are generally French words acquired by Middle English.

I don't have a problem saying that Latin came into English through French. After all, French is derived from Latin. (Can't we say French is the way people in Gaul spoke Latin?)

Quite a few Latinate words were brought directly into English by English speakers who were also competent in Latin. A lot of these words were coined in the 16th and 17th centuries. Why? Because the vernacular English lexicon, a mix of French and AngloSaxon words, was short on abstract terms. An example is 'alienate' coined in the 16th century.

Just a heads up, you ended up replying to a 3 year old post. Check at the bottom of the post in the lower left corner and it will tell you how old it is. — Philosophim

Here's another heads up: philosophers are always going back to quote people who have been dead for 2500 years. Just saying...

Welcome to The Philosophy Forum, internet cave man.

You might like this quote from Oscar Wilde, 1854-1900: It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.

Perhaps we are focused too much on Israel. There has been a long series of wars all over the world throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. The totals killed by year and by conflict are high, adding up to many millions of people killed during famous wars and wars we didn't hear much about.

I have not studied war, but my guess is that none of these wars were carried out with thoughtful sensitivity regarding the safety of civilians and children. Bullets fly and they go right through people who get in the bullet's way. Mines laid 40 years ago blow up people today. The combatants never come back to collect them all -- or any of them. There are no smart bombs.

The present war in Gaza is bad, probably worse than other wars in Israel have been. Perhaps, though, not as bad as some other wars carried out to achieve control over other territories and people.

SOME RECENT AND ON-GOING WARS

Myanmar... around 15,000 killed in 2023 (around 200k since 1948)
Israel... around 30,000 +/- in 2023 (around 55,000 since 1948)
Sahel region... around 14,000 in 2023 (around 56,000 since 2002)
Russia-Ukrane.... between 30,000 and 90,000 in 2023 (around 200,000 since 2014)
Sudan... around 13,000 in current war

Columbia... around 2500 in 2023 (453,000 since 1964
Afghanistan... around 1000 in 2023 (between 1.5 and 2.5 million since 1978)
Somalia... around 9000 in 2023, (between 350,000 and 1 million since 1991)
DR of Congo... around 1400 in 2023 ((around 9,000 since 1996)
Nigeria... around 3,000 in 2023 (about 90,000 since 1998

Iraq... around 1,300 in 2023, (between 300k and 1.2 million since 2003)
DR of Congo & Rwanda... 2000 in 2023 (around 25,000 since 2004)
Mexican drug cartel wars... 6800 in 2023 (around 350,000 to 400,000 since 2006)
Sudanese Nomadic Conflicts... about 1240 in 2023 (around 300k to 400k since 2008)
Boko Haram insurgency... about 5,000 in 2023 (around 368,000 since 2009
(the list goes on and on)

The world does not actually have a United Nations Peace Keeping service. If it did, the "blue helmets" would have to be more than a timid diplomatic service. They would have to be the biggest hogs in the trough, and the permanent members of the Security Council are loathe to give up their own "biggest hog" status.

the US has only made “blundering efforts to do good,” and is always acting defensively. — Mikie

As Churchill said, "Americans will always do the right thing after they have tried everything else first."

There are way more than 1.6 million — Count Timothy von Icarus

You are absolutely correct. Thank you for pointing out my error. My demographic picture is faulty -- but there are conflicting ways of presenting information.

Starting over: The population of Israel is around 9.3 million. About 20% of Israeli citizens are Arab -- mostly Muslim but a substantial number of Christians Arabs. I was confused about whether Gaza and West Bank were included in the population. They are not. There are about 5 million non-citizen Palestinians in the two areas.

True. States are abstractions which do not have human qualities.

I think what "nations have interests" means is that when people assume the roles of state policy and control, they tend to pursue the state's interests. Certainly, even large groups of people (nation-state sized) have friends and enemies, and this is represented in the state's interests. States belonging to the "axis of evil" (defined from the American perspective) are our enemies. Russia's interests are not our interests. From the opposite perspective, the US, UK, and EU might be defined as the axis of evil.

The people in control of a state can be blind to this or that hazard or interest. two generations of US leaders have viewed Cuba as a threat or an embarrassment. Embarrassment it might be, but alone it can't be much of a threat. The US has viewed Taiwan as an interest rather than a hazard. I'm not sure where our interest really lies there. Does it lie with the PRC? That's not altogether clear either.

I first heard this idea about 15 years ago. It seemed like a nifty phrase and I think it has some validity, but maybe I'll stop repeating it. Thanks for your thoughts on the matter.

I think he wants the refugees to leave Israel. Or die. — frank

You are probably right. Neither "kill them all" nor "expel them all" has been sayable. Instead, "defeat Hamas"; "render Gaza ungovernable". Substitute "unlivable" for "ungovernable". First Gaza then the West Bank?

Roughly 20% of Israel's population is Palestinian--about 1.600.000. Who is going to accept 1.600,000 people?

If they have a choice, displaced people tend to go where there are already communities of their people.

The countries outside the Palestinian territories with significant Palestinian populations are:

Jordan 3,240,000
Syria 630,000
Chile 500,000 (largest Palestinian community outside the Middle East).
Lebanon 402,582
Saudi Arabia 280,245
Egypt 270,245
United States 255,000 (the largest concentrations in Chicago, Detroit and Los Angeles)`
Honduras 250,000
Guatemala est. 200,000
Mexico 120,000
Qatar 100,000

The level of destruction in Gaza is very troubling. There are no intact buildings in large swaths of the territory. Water/sewer service is wrecked. Gaza doesn't have the wherewithal to generate a lot of revenue for this purpose, and in any case, they aren't free agents. They still have 2.3 million people to rehouse. Israel isn't going to mount a Marshall Plan for Gaza, just guessing,

Didn't Netanyahu say this would go on for the rest of 2024?

Even granting that Israel was entirely justified in attacking Hamas in the way they have, there is a Humpty Dumpty problem here: All Israel's horses and all Israel's men almost certainly have no intention of putting Gaza back together again. So, then what? A much more intensive immiseration of the Palestinians in Gaza and a much more intensive radical reaction -- sooner or later -- probably sooner.

Whether or not you see a shred of legitimacy in Israel's defensive war, you are probably aware that war generally results in quite a bit of indiscriminate killing. Bombing Berlin or Tokyo; invading the USSR; seizing large swaths of China; grabbing chunks of the Dutch and British Empires, etc. involves mass death. Whether the war is just or not doesn't make much difference.

A house-by-house, room-by-room, tunnel-by-tunnel rooting out of Hamas would result in many fewer collateral deaths. Israel doesn't have enough population to mount and sustain so personnel-intensive approach. Dropping bombs and shelling buildings is a more efficient use of resources, with ghastlier side effects. There's no such thing as a bomb smart enough to blow up only the right people. Bombs and shells are equal opportunity death-dealing devices.

Islam does have a fair amount of ideological ease with militancy because its central figure was a military leader. — frank

I don't know. Could be. Christianity (at an early stage under Constantine) became Romanized. The Empire was a very multilingual, multiethnic, multi-creedal operation, and the Romanized Christian Church required a millennium to stabilize its various creeds and heresies. Islam's history seems to be quite different.

Islam began as fast paced military/religious conquest; outside of the empire, it took the Christian Church quite some time for the Christian Church to achieve maximum distribution.

Is "stress" the force behind Islamic militancy?

I suppose; it depends. If social/political/economic stresses don't kill people, they probably make them more militant. Very comfortable people usually don't become hard core revolutionaries. Not never, but usually not.

The U.S. involvement has been nakedly self-serving, dishonest, and destructive. — RogueAI

I've spent quite a bit of time over the decades criticizing and denouncing US policy. However, "states" -- be the United States, Germany, Iran, Thailand... pick a state, any state... are and should be self serving. States do not have morals, friends, etc. What they have are "interests" and they are intended to pursue those interests on behalf of their ["most valuable"] citizen groups.

How well states pursue their interests varies. States don't have to be honest with everybody else, but they need to be honest within their core -- else they come to believe their own bullshit, which is a universal big mistake. Destructive? States can be very destructive in pursuit of their interests.

None of that is intended as blanket immunity. Germany was severely punished for a criminal overreach in pursuit of its self interests (lebensraum). Germany was also punished for elevating social prejudice against Jews to a lethal state policy. And more, besides. Had Germany won the war, the Allies wouldn't have been able to punish Germany.

So who do we blame for what states do? Start with their leaders, of course, and not just the 1 or 2 leaders at the tip of the power pyramid. The war in Vietnam involved many more leaders than John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Richard M. Nixon. Blame corporate interests (somebody's always making a lot of money manufacturing war materiel). Blame wishy-washy civil and religious institutions. Blame the electorate. And, of course, blame other states who pursue their interests contrary to our interests.

All that said, I don't know to what extent loyal support of Israel really is in the American state's interest. I'm predisposed by personal history to prefer Israel over Syria, say, or Israel over Iran. Apart from personal history, it isn't obvious to me that the leadership of Israel (an assortment of of people I probably don't agree with on much) is pursuing Israel's long-germ interests.

That there is a hell, or hades--a gruesome realm opposite a heaven--where anybody is tortured is enough to turn one off on all three Abrahamic religions. That a glorious heaven awaits those who suffer here is anodyne, but is likewise a turnoff. Suffering here is a dead certainty; a fluffy, cotton candy heaven, not so much,

A plague on all their houses? Well, plagues are pretty unpleasant, so maybe something else. How about a wave of enlightened secularism? More than a wave, a tsunami.

Pretty much everyone who has taken a strong religious stand in the Middle East from the getgo has been a big part of the problem. That is not to say that religious partisans haven't royally fucked things up elsewhere on the planet.

↪BC What's good BC whatcha need help with? — Vaskane

↪Hanover I didn't know 1.8 million Jews have been slaughtered since the 1960's In Europe ... Oh wait they haven't, because that post is a statistical fallacy nightmare. — Vaskane

Post WWII emigration has resulted in a decline of the Jewish population in Europe. What is the statistical fallacy nightmare you are talking about?

My apologies to you for not recognizing that your use of the term "genocide" is the bureaucratic definition used by the UN. I consider their definition far too broad and sweeping because it results in 'genocide' becoming an ambiguous 'basket term' covering too many hateful and destructive events and acts directed at groups being classified as "genocide".

In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

The term "genocide" was coined by Raphael Lemkin to describe the acts of the Nazi regime in Europe. He also applied it to the extensive destruction of the Armenian people by Turkey in 1915. Those two events set a high bar for an event to qualify as a genocide.

Please note, moderator, that I didn't find it necessary to describe your response in derogatory terms.

???

Gaza is a concentration camp whose people have been living with Israeli occupation and terrorism for decades. — Mikie

You, Benkie, and others who are perfectly capable of more precise language are falling back on terms applicable to the Nazi extermination of Jews. Israel is neither engaging in genocide nor operating a concentration camp in Gaza. People in the Nazi concentration camps were subjected to severe deprivation leading to very high death rates. Prior to October 7, 500 trucks per day delivered food and other supplies to Gaza. That's a truck load for every 42 people per week. That's 1 truck load of supplies per every 15 people per month. It could have been more, sure, but conditions did not resemble a concentration camp.

Palestinians have described Gaza as an open air prison. That is probably exactly how it felt to people who did not leave every day to work in Israel. But again, not a concentration camp.

The war Israel is conducting may kill another 20,000 civilians before it is over. At the end of the war -- next week, next month, next year, there will be nothing to return to for most of the Gaza residents, save piles of rubble. How literally "nothing to return to" describes reality will depend on how long the current bombing and shelling continues.

Creating a population of 2,300,000 homeless people is entirely worthy of condemnation. Destroying schools, hospitals, businesses, mosques, etc. adds significantly to the Palestinian misery and deserves condemnation -- even if Hamas was living under and in the hospital, the school, the mosque.

You two, @Mikie and @Benkei should be performing at a higher level of expression, especially since you are moderating,

I understand that you wish to denounce Israel for establishing itself, for dispossessing Palestinians, and for generally treating Palestinians roughly. Fine, denounce away. But dispossession and cultural disruption just are not the same thing as genocide. I'm pretty sure you understand what the customary meaning of genocide is, so use it.

Cultural destruction is a bad thing too, but I don't see Palestinians being forced to give up their religion, their language, their social habits and practices, etc. Again, their culture and lives are being severely disrupted -- which happens when your homeland is a battlefield.

Gaza probably will be an uninhabitable rubbish heap by the time Israel decides it has destroyed the military capacity of Hamas. The war in Gaza might well be the prelude to another dispossession. Who is going to rebuild Gaza, and for whom?

Don’t forget that Arab countries did try to destroy Israel at one point..a few times actually.
— schopenhauer1

Before or after they stole their land? — Mikie

Some Jews began arriving in the late 19th century. At the time...

There was no Arab or Palestinian Arab nationalist movement. In the first two decades of Zionist immigration, most of the opposition came from the wealthy landowners and noblemen who feared they would have to fight the Jews for the land in the future.

As more Jewish people moved in, they pushed the Palestinians out and destroyed their villages. There was armed Palestinian / Arab resistance by the mid 30s which gradually intensified. The day after the British departed Palestine, Israel declared its statehood--5/14/48. The next day, Egypt, Syria, and Jordan invaded the nascent Jewish state, seizing the central highland area (Golan Heights), the West Bank (Judea and Samaria), East Jerusalem, and Gaza.

As you know there were subsequent wars which resulted in today's map of Israel.

There is no getting around the fact that Israel's creation was, of necessity, at the Palestinian people's expense. "Of necessity" because the land of the ancient Jewish state of Israel was now occupied by Palestinians. The Palestinians ended up in refugee camps in the nearby Arab areas (like Gaza, Beersheba, Haifa, Nazareth, Nablus, Jaffa and Bethlehem. There would be further displacements. Some left the country altogether, to Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt.

Israel wasn't the first instance of forced population displacement. The Western Hemisphere was the subject of large scale displacement. The English displaced the Aboriginal people as they established colonies along the Atlantic Seaboard, starting in 1607. European colonization cost millions of lives in North and South America (a genocide by consequence if not by policy).

The difference between the settler / colonial system that Made America Great and Israel's settling, is this: The English, French, and Spanish were empire building for profit. Israel was seeking to establish a refuge where they would not be subject to discrimination, pogroms, and extermination camps. The Jews were, after all, originally from Israel.

The Jews have achieved a relatively safe homeland, but at the cost of frequent military defensive campaigns.

In the real world, this is what history tends to look like. Humanitarian and human rights advocates deplore it all, and civilized people put as good a face on it as they can.

Did you know that the Masons, Rotary, and Lions Club are part of the Jewish conspiracy? Hamas' charter says (among other things)

The Zionist invasion is a vicious invasion. It does not refrain from resorting to all methods, using all evil and contemptible ways to achieve its end. It relies greatly in its infiltration and espionage operations on the secret organizations it gave rise to, such as the Freemasons, The Rotary and Lions clubs, and other sabotage groups. All these organizations, whether secret or open, work in the interest of Zionism and according to its instructions. They aim at undermining societies, destroying values, corrupting consciences, deteriorating character and annihilating Islam. It is behind the drug trade and alcoholism in all its kinds so as to facilitate its control and expansion.

Israel is committing Genocide! "Israel, Israel, you can’t hide: We charge you with genocide." the demonstrators chant.

Just how many people add up to a genocide? 'Genocide' means killing a large number of a people in order to destroy a nation or a group. Civilian deaths in urban warfare are worse than unfortunate, but they are not genocidal.

The population of the Gaza Strip is 2.3 million. So far, the current death toll (according to Hamas) is 21,300. That is about .0089% of the Gaza population. A significant percentage of the 21,300 have to be Hamas fighters. Civilian deaths in war are a tragedy, but this isn't a genocide.

In comparison:

the Armenian genocide refers to the physical annihilation of Armenian Christian people living in the Ottoman Empire from spring 1915 through autumn 1916. There were approximately 1.5 million Armenians living in the multiethnic Ottoman Empire in 1915. At least 664,000 and possibly as many as 1.2 million died during the genocide, either in massacres and individual killings, or from systematic ill treatment, exposure, and starvation.

The percentage of Armenians killed by the Turks in 1915 is between 44% and 80% depending on direct and indirect killing. That's a genocide. By 1945 the Germans killed 63% Europe's Jews. That's a genocide. In 1994 75% of Rwandan Tutsis were killed -- in just 3 months! That's a genocide.

I hope Israel's war in Gaza does not approach even 1% of the Palestinian population -- 23000 -- but the longer the people there endure bombing, shelling, and bullets, collapsed infrastructure, lack of food, clean water, and medical care, indirect deaths are likely to steeply rise -- possibly quite suddenly.

Speaking of genocide, isn't that what Hamas is calling for?

Minnesota, generally a relatively low public fraud state in the US, is still prosecuting a $250,000,000 rip off of Federal Covid-19 funding. Under the name, Feeding Our Future, the defendants claimed to provide millions of meals to poor families with children.

One of the unresolved issues is how presumably honest public officials managed to fail noticing the volume of cash flowing into this previously little-known charity. Or that nobody went out to take a look at all the wonderful bounty flowing to so many unfortunate people. Never mind ordinary auditing requirements that the Federal and State governments usually enforce.

There is real risk in handing out largesse without effective controls. "Yes, Virginia, there really are crooked people out there who will take you for everything you are worth." Even small grants of < $20k can involve burdensome reporting, so one would expect extensive monitoring of a quarter of a billion dollar handout. Apparently, an entire department grossly underestimated the risk of darkness lurking in the hearts of crooked men and women. About half of the defendants in this fraud had a few million dollars in contracts with the State to provide child and adult day care. Those contracts are being investigated too -- at last.

Losing money is a risk; at greater risk is the reputation of the state as a reliable steward of public resources. Also at risk is the reputation of the Somali community. from which dozens of the fraudsters came. The thieves took the money "to purchase luxury cars, houses, jewelry, and coastal resort property abroad." When it comes to large amounts of money sloshing around in the public trough, crime is less a risk and more a certainty,

Risk is complex, as our individual estimations of risk are.

In the Shoutbox, there is a current discussion of aged egg nog -- eggs, milk, sugar, and alcohol -- aged for up to a year. This drink would pose definite risks which I would decline to take. I've had food poisoning and it was VERY unpleasant--not worth the risk!

The checklist I mentioned was used to counter lapses in memory or attention that can occur when a large number of factors are in play -- like in an operating room. NASA has a very long and detailed checklist to go through before it publicly blasts off a hugely expensive rocket and satellite or astronaut. As we know, a lot of launches don't happen. NASA, as an organization, is highly risk averse even though the business they are in is high risk -- hence the long checklist involving a large control room full of engineers checking things twice, thrice, and more.

As for everyday risk -- of which there really is a great deal -- I think we elect to not think about it most of the time. A minute by minute focus on risk can be paralyzing for us. Prey animals seem to have adapted to the risks they face, which tend to be life or death by predator. They use various strategies. So do we. The individual in a herd faces a lot less risk than the same individual grazing alone would face. Rabbits don't graze in herds, and (at least the ones I see in the neighborhood) don't seem to be very worried. One of their strategies is stillness. They freeze. Predators are often tuned to movement. Rabbits reproduce prolifically, so that is another strategy for the species.

Even plants adapt to risk. Blue bell flowers are pretty but they are a prolific nuisance. They have very large tuber-like roots which allow them to spring up again and again. If one keeps mowing off these tall weeds, they adapt by blossoming on very short stems. Damn.

Eventually, for most animals including us, the risks come home to roost and that spells The End. We know this, but we think, "not yet", and for long stretches of time we are right.

For me it is clear that languages are different and that if there is a difference then one is to be better than another. — I like sushi

Languages are different but that doesn't mean one has to be better than another.

The language(s) we learn as children are not the result of one being better than another, but rather what is available. What is available is determined by social, political, economic, and geographic factors. Is Latin better than Greek or Gaelic? (No.). Proper Latin was spoken by important people who lived in the Roman Empire and by people who wanted to be perceived by others as real Romans. "Real Romans speak educated Latin regardless of where they are from" was the rule. That educated Latin was a passport to the higher circles of Roman society was a result of the way the Roman Empire operated. When the Empire fizzled out, proper Latin started to fade away (except in the Church).

English is the current "lingua Franca" of the world, (an insult to the French) not because this "bastardized language" is better but because empires made English the most convenient language to employ in the largest number of settings. It could have been some other language, and maybe Chinese will be lingua franca in the future. Or Hindi. Who knows?

Saying "one language is not better than another" doesn't mean that there are not significant differences among the many languages. It does seem like Latin would be easier to devise poetic rhymes than English. Writing great poetry in Latin in 2024 won't advance your literary career very much, given the dearth of Latin readers.

I'd like to speak fluent German, French, Spanish, Latin, Greek, and a couple of other languages, but that train didn't arrive at the station. Sic transit gloria mundi.

So now it's a trainwreck because of extended involvement in the region most of the US's oil comes from? I give up. — frank

Most of our oil no longer comes from the Middle East.

"In 2018, the impact of U.S. shale oil production was readily apparent. Crude oil imports to the U.S. had fallen to 9.9 million BPD, and the share from the Persian Gulf had fallen to less than 1.6 million BPD (15.9%).

Canada is now the most important source of U.S. oil imports, supplying 4.3 million BPD in 2018 (43% of the total)." -- from Forbes

Her image of "the touch of Henry Fonda’s cool hand on my fevered brow" is novel, but also quite odd. There are more straight-forward, more effective ways of expressing the ideas here.

Exactly.

'Checkists and procedures ensure predicatility'', but the downside of checklists is they induce Mindlessness. We just have to follow the steps and not think about them. — Jack Cummins

Airplane pilots have used checklists for some time. "Just follow the steps and not think about them" increases the risk of ending up dead. Similarly, errors in operating rooms have been greatly reduced in institutions where the operating room staff are required to follow a short check list, like: get the patients verbal confirmation of what is going to happen; which body part is receiving surgery? Mark that body part with an "X" and a word or two; amputate left arm or right foot? Mark it clearly, And so on.

Aversion to risk varies. "Would you attend a ball game where 1 random person out of the 60,000 fans present would be killed?" A lot of people wouldn't. On the other hand, people who are risk averse in some settings are quite risk tolerant in others. The chances of getting killed while driving intoxicated is quite a bit higher than 1 out of 60,000. Some people are willing to take a level of risk during sexual activity they wouldn't think of taking with their money.

If you are / were sexually promiscuous, there is a good chance that you will have some kind of consequence. Throat cancer from exposure to wart virus HPV #16 or #18 during oral sex may take 30 or 40 years to show up. How do you measure risk when the delay is so long?

How does a 25 year old measure the risk of financial collapse when he is about to retire in 50 years? Damed if I know.

I am in favor of people taking risks, provided the risks are considered carefully. Avoiding risk as a practice is a dead end for our species.

Jeff, Mark, Sam, Tom, Dick, Harry -- all of them.

As Trump is poised to once again become president of my country (unless someone manages to cap his butt) I feel challenged by my own theory that social "winners" are sort of naturally selected and serve the larger social life cycle, whether the people on the ground understand that or not. — frank

Your theory isn't all wrong. Many or most "Winners" have preloaded advantages. Being born into wealth and privilege isn't an iron clad guarantee of success, but it is a major leg-up on everybody else. (See Domhoff: The Higher Circles and Who Rules America). The mass of people are trained to recognize "winners". Who directs this training? The people who run things (the winners) of course.

Civil society isn't a level playing field. It doesn't work like a gang where a strong man will emerge out of a nasty contest for leadership. Civil society is a rigged game, as far as "winners" are concerned.

I believe this about leftism: whatever its merits may be, it lost. The western world turned away from it. — frank

The western world (speaking of Europe--the people who are the original West) didn't turn away from leftism. They embraced it. Communism? No. Socialist programs? Yes. Democratic government? Yes. Even the United States -- after we had tried everything else, did the right thing and established a variety of social welfare programs (SSA, Unemployment and Disability Insurance, Medicare, Medicaid Federal Housing Authority, etc.)

Trump is a "winner" in the sense that he is good at manipulating parts of the system for his own benefit. Gee whiz, he's certainly not the first person to do that! Given that he's kind of an amoral narcissistic asshole, he doesn't accomplish a whole lot of good things. But FDR manipulated the system too. FDR was a much better man than Trump, and was responsible for a lot of good things.

How wealthy would the wealthiest person be in your ideal society?

Where would their wealth come from? — Captain Homicide

In my IDEAL society, there would not be "the wealthiest person" because one person's wealth requires someone else's loss. Even in an ideal society, the underlying reality is that there is only so much to go around. Wealth requires an uneven distribution.

They would both own their homes and control enough land to cultivate food for their family and community, have their own source of energy, transport and communication devices — Vera Mont

Everyone having to own a home, own enough land, generate their own energy, transport, and communication, and so on sounds like pioneer life on the Great Plains. I don't want to build my own hut, farm 40 acres with a mule, operate my own windmill and solar panels, and everything else. Whatever happened to cooperative, collective systems?

I want a society where we work together to provide what we need -- from each as they are able, to each as they require.

Home ownership, under capitalism, has been something of a scam. #1) Mortgages have been an effective way to tame the working class. If you want to keep your home, you'd better keep that job at all costs. #2) Home ownership involves buying and selling a given house over time, repeatedly. A 100 year old house may well have been saddled with a succession of mortgages for 100 years. Great for the banks! #3) Renters are held in low esteem because they are not saddled with the mortgage, and they can move more freely. Renters support the parasitical rentier class, true, but multi-family housing need not be privately owned.

Starvation would be much more common if we all had to raise our own food. The most competent farmers can not guarantee a harvest. We have a sort of collectivized agriculture (under private ownership), and because it is under private ownership for the purpose of maximizing return on investment, bad things are happening to the land.

Venezuela), seems to be looking at wanting more of those resources. And a distraction for the economic woes. — ssu

Invasion as distraction I can understand, but Venezuela already has huge oil reserves of which it doesn't seem to be able to make effective economic use. Adding Guyana's oil, plus making Guyana's citizens bitter and resentful, won't help Maduro. To paraphrase Martin Luther, stupid presidents sink ever deeper into stupidity.

Thank you. It is interesting, but it is also very late here in Central Standard Time Land, so I'll watch it tomorrow.

What would we do without chatgpt?

Heard a music program about Chanukah (commemorating the alleged miracle of 1 day's oil burning for 8 days) in the newly sanctified temple in Jerusalem). Was it a miracle? On the one hand, God could have made one ounce of olive oil burn for 8 days--grossly violating the number of BTUs in the oil at the bottom of the bottle, but with God all things are possible. On the other hand, maybe God located some oil that Judah the Maccabee had overlooked in his inventory. God, after all, sees all, knows all, and maintains a detailed list of all. Like as not He knew about an unopened bottle of cooking oil that was under some loose planks. Large bottle -- good for at least 192 hours of continuous burn in the Menorah.

At the time, Jerusalem was ruled by the Seleucids, ethnic Syrians who were part of the Greek empire. The Seleucids tried to impose Greek values on the Jews and pressured them to stop worshipping God and following the tenets of their faith.

Many Jews went along with this plan and assimilated into Greek culture, but a feisty minority refused to comply. Led by Judah the Maccabee, these faithful Jews with only primitive weaponry managed to defeat the mightiest empire in the world. They drove the Greeks from the Holy Land, reclaimed the Temple in Jerusalem, and rededicated it to the service of God.

I suppose the Seleucids were bitter and resentful about losing a war with the Jews. Probably accused them of war crimes.

The program focused on the Ladino tradition -- Ladino is old Spanish still spoken by Jews from the Spanish diaspora.

In 14 hundred and 92
Columbus sailed the ocean blue
While Isabel and Ferdinand,
Total creeps those two,
issued an edict expelling the Jews)

Ladino preserves many words and grammatical usages that have been lost in modern Spanish. It also has a more conservative sound system—for example, f and g sounds still occur where modern Spanish has an h (not pronounced), as in Ladino fijo, fablar versus Spanish hijo, hablar, and Ladino agora versus Spanish ahora.

If you see a candelabra in a window, that's what it's about.

On the one hand, zero percent of this information was supplied by ChatGPT. On the other hand, I didn't make t up either. The part about God's mysterious ways is straight from the Horse's mouth.

@Hanover -- you got your Menorah going yet?

If honest is an adj, is it like tall and short, something we are largely born with, or is it like rich, something we can gain and lose? — YiRu Li

"Honesty" is part of a person's character; we practice honesty. It's an optional behavior, not something we are born with.

Where does it come from?

We learn to be honest; we learn to be dishonest. Proper, moral behavior is taught to children, perhaps explicitly, but perhaps more implicitly, Guilt is an essential part of moral learning; we feel guilt when we fail to behave properly. For children, right and wrong, proper and improper, moral and immoral tend tp be more black and white. As the child grows up, black and white become shades of gray.

"I can not tell a lie; I chopped down the cherry tree." George Washington said, in the fable about the first president of the U.S. Maybe little George couldn't, but but the time he was an adult, big George was as capable of lying as anyone else.

A minimal level of honesty is required. "We can't do business if people are not honest." I can't quantify "how much" is necessary. Certainly, we need to be honest with ourselves -- we need to be aware of when we are lying and when we are telling the truth.

Herr Arthur Schopenhauer had such a pessimistic view of humanity; did he consider himself as wretched a case as he apparently thought everybody else was?

Some questions about love:

The body is wired for sex; we don't have to learn a sex drive. Is the body wired for agape? Storge? Philia? We seem to need to be taught about agape; love of country or community; philia may need less tutoring than agape, but we at least need to learn how to practice philia, agape, storge. ["Storage" only shows up in discussions like this. What word do most people use for Storge (storgē, Greek: στοργή) is liking someone through the fondness of familiarity, family members or people who relate in familiar ways that have otherwise found themselves bonded by chance. An example is the natural love and affection of a parent for their child.].

Is there a single source for the "love urge" be it for one's child, one's friend, one's brother, for 'the world', for whatever it is that we love?

How is erotic love -- or raw eros, for that matter -- related to the other types of love?

Is there 'a basic love' that differentiates in various ways, given the circumstances, or do the various kinds of love arise separately? (seems unlikely to me).

I'm not expecting any definitive answers. Lots of theories out there.

As for erotic love -- my theory is that eros begins as a raw form and is gradually tamed, civilized. Who does the taming, the civilizing? Parents? Not mine -- they didn't talk about sex. School? God, no. The church. God forbid. Who, then?

Eros gets civilized, tamed, during sexual interactions--in the trenches, as it were. Other people set the limits on what they find acceptable or out of bounds, and since we want their approval / cooperation... whatever, we conform to their standards.

In contrast, take a person who has lived a very protected life or has lived in an institution from childhood into adulthood, say, owing to disability or MI. They are liable to display inappropriate sexual behavior because they haven't been out and about enough. By "inappropriate" I mean they don't "read the room" very well.

(I'm thinking of a fellow I met at the Y who was in a MI program. He said he was schizophrenic; could well be. He apparently was gay. His behavior in the locker room wasn't scandalous, it was
unschooled. 99.9% of men avoid prolonged frank stares, for instance. Not this guy, I was sorry to see him at a large gay bar downtown later -- not the place uninitiated vulnerable people should be hanging out.). He hadn't learned the social routines of fitness centers, let alone gay bars.

Case reports aside, most people learn how to seek out and find, locate sexual partners; appraise them for suitability; determine interest, make appropriate overtures, and go somewhere to get It on. Having gotten there, we learn what works well, what falls flat, what is likely to upset or antagonize, and how to avoid doing it. (Thinking of my first early adult sexual experience, "OK, now what am I supposed to do?)

In most cases, it doesn't take long to figure all this out, because quite often the rules for sexual encounters are similar to those that apply in any other kind of encounter.

In decades past (like... 1970-1990) many gay men maintained less exclusive sexual relationships than some gay men do now (now many gay men seem to toe the straight and narrow). One had a set of non-sexual relationships with friends, gay and straight.. One might have a committed sexual relationship with 1 person (at a time--more than 1 gets complicated quickly). Whether one was in a settled relationship or not, there might be very casual sexual relationships that were more or less transitory.

Run of the mill sex with a casual partner usually didn't pose a threat to a settled relationship. What did pose a threat was great sex with a casual partner--it tended to pull one's interest away from the person one was most committed to, giving rise to jealousy and resentment.

How does any committed relationships last under these circumstances? They last IF both partners are committed to each other, without being exclusive. Also, as couples age, the attraction of casual partners diminishes. Casual sex takes time, and having a home, a partner, pets, a job, an exercise routine, civic / religious activities, etc. just doesn't leave time and energy for sexual adventures on the side.

even your odd evasion of erotic love now, is telling of how erotic love, leading to relationships is almost shameful. — schopenhauer1

Dear me, when was I evading erotic love?

sex addict — schopenhauer1

"Lord, make me chaste -- but not yet." Augustine prayed.