There was a lot of fuss in sea-side tourist resorts a few years ago. People couldn't resist feeding the sea-gulls (herring-gulls) with sandwiches and potato chips. Then the sea-gulls took to swooping down and grabbing them from their hands as they were munching them. I haven't heard any complaints recently. People must have learnt not to "open-carry" goodies along the sea front. — Ludwig V

I would post a link to a New York Times piece on gulls from a few weeks ago, but I'm pretty sure you would find it secured behind their pay-wall. Gulls are pretty smart, and they are good observers. They like to eat food that other animals are eating: "If she's eating it, it must be good. I'll just have some of that!" That goes for a gull's approach to what humans--and other gulls--are eating. Gulls show up when the food shows up.

They are good parents; both males and females care for the young. So, a plus there -- they don't hatch and then abandon their chicks. (Elsewhere I read that pigeons are good parents too, so their children are neither seen nor heard. On the other hand, I don't know what, besides popcorn and the like, urban pigeons would have to feed their little chickies.)

The science writer recommends watching the gulls closely for individual differences; in a sea of gulls dive bombing your hot dog, that might be difficult, but give it a try.

I hope that's tongue-in-cheek. — Vera Mont

Oh, no! Totally serious. (Ouch! bites tongue)

So when a new thing does the opposite, the first reaction is surprise, quickly followed by delight — Vera Mont

Long ago I saw an episode on Ira Flatow's Newton's Apple where he asked how a helium balloon in a bus would behave when the vehicle began to move. One would suppose that the balloon would move to the back of the bus, as the forward momentum occurred. Shockingly, it's just the opposite (do try this at home). The balloon moves to the front of the bus. (Enough of the heavier air moves to the back of the bus, forcing the lighter balloon to move forward.)

One shouldn't waste scarce helium on experiments that have already been done, so take your helium balloon to an MRI lab where it can be recycled for more important uses, like scanning brains. Or inhale it to achieve a Donald Duck kind of voice for a few seconds.

Very often to see how many times their adult caregiver will retrieve it for them — Vera Mont

Has anyone determined what the average number of retrievals a caregiver is willing to perform before the object is thrown out the window?

The grey squirrel is a good example from the US — Ludwig V

The upper midwest of the US doesn't harbor many red squirrels, so I'm not familiar with their behavior. Grey squirrels are everywhere around here. They usually are grey with a white belly, but they sometimes are black or white (not a seasonal change).

I've read about the terrorism directed at your red squirrels by the Yankee grey squirrels. Social scientists and psychoanalysts have not been able to determine what, exactly, is the source of this inter-squirrel hostility.

The urban grey squirrel readily exploits human behavior. The smart squirrels on the University of Minnesota campus follow people carrying paper bags. If you stop, because you happen to like squirrels, they'll go so far as to climb up your pant leg to access the presumed food in your bag. This is somewhat disconcerting.

It's not hard to let them eat out of your hand; even to sit on your knee and eat the offered peanuts. I've established such a relationship several times since I was a kid. I'm more fastidious as an old guy, and would just as soon NOT have even cute rodents sitting on me.

the dog's actions cannot be explained by applying the gaze heuristic, because that heuristic deals with tracking moving objects. The dog is not tracking a moving object — cherryorchard

An impressive example is a dog tearing after a Frisbee, then leaping to catch it in its jaws. But other animals do this too. An eagle dives to catch a rabbit, but the rabbit, no genius in the animal kingdom, swerves sharply at the last half second, and the eagle ends up with dirt in its grip. Eagles are fed and rabbits are not over-running the countryside, so the eagles are successful often enough.

Quite some time ago I read that infants have a limited built in knowledge about the world. This was demonstrated by showing the baby a helium-filled balloon, and then letting go of it. The balloon, of course, rose to the ceiling. The baby exhibited an expression of SHOCK! Objects are supposed to fall when released. I'm assuming this was done more than once, and on at least several babies. (Sorry, too far back -- don't know where I read it, but it was not in a tabloid newspaper.)

So, what are the swallows and robins supposed to eat — Vera Mont

The worms that early birds get are something of an ecological problem. The native earthworms of North America were scraped off by the last glacial period and are still recovering. When the first people arrived in North America, there weren't many worms crawling around in Northern areas. The Europeans brought big fat earth worms with them -- not deliberately, but in plant containers and root bundles. The big fat earth worms prospered and have spread over much of the "wormless zone"--in between southern Canada and north of Kansas, Missouri, Kentucky, etc.

How could big fat juicy earthworms be a problem?

They are a problem because they eat all the leaf litter on the ground. The native worms weren't big and robust enough to do that, The Euro-worms, however, are. When it rains, the bare soil (no longer covered up with a thick layer of leaf litter) erodes more, washing away the top soil, including the fertile worm castings.s

What to do, what to do?

Native earthworms can, of course, be planted in northern forests, but that isn't going to get rid of the Euro-worms. Pay birds a bounty on each big earthworm they eat? Imagine the difficult bookkeeping problem that would entail.

I haven't had to wash the windshield all summer. — Vera Mont

It seems to me that insects (using it as a general term) are scarcer than they used to be. Mayflies (order Ephemeroptera) used to be extremely plentiful near rivers and backwaters. One rarely sees them now. I haven't seen many butterflies of any kind in the past few years. For that matter, I don't see many house flies, either. Mosquitos seem to be holding their own.

People who live in crop growing rural areas certainly see more insects than urban dwellers. Hordes of a Japanese beetle imported to prey on aphids that feed on soybean plants collect on houses in the fall. They aren't harmful, but it 'bugs' some people. They look like lady bugs but when rubbed reveal a very bitter odor. Flies would be a lot more common around barnyards, hog pens, cattle, and so on.

In various places where researchers have counted insects, the numbers are down from the past. I am not sure what impact declining insect numbers have on birds, because global warming affects birds negatively in a number of ways. It can't be good.

OK — Ludwig V

I don't think either one of us is right, or wrong. I don't know enough about how the brain works to be right or wrong. I'm just guessing and passing on ideas I've picked up here and there.

I dislike some of the ideas I've come across such as the statement "The self does not exist." Maybe there is no lobe in the brain that houses "self", and maybe 'self' is generated by different parts of the brain, BUT, however it is produced, 'SELF' EXISTS as a durable, cohesive entity. My guess is that the 'self' is generated by the brain and social interaction from birth onward. An example of early self building might be the two-year old who, having learned the word, deploys "NO" as an expression of this new self that has a little power and choice. The "terrible twos" are a time when young children have come into possession of their self. And then we spend the rest of our lives cultivating 'selfhood'.

Some animals seem to have a self and some do not. An alleged test of 'self' is whether the animal recognizes itself in a mirror. 'Elephants do, dogs don't. On the other hand, the dogs I have lived with all seem to have diligently pursued their self-interests and preferences. I don't know any elephants.

So, question: How do you think the self is composed? Does DNA play a role? When does the self form--does it arise gradually or suddenly? Can we 'lose our self"? (not talking about literally losing our heads, or terminal brain disease which destroys the brain)

A question which has come up in discussions of the afterlife (about which none of us know anything): Does our self survive death? (To quote Flannery O'Conner, one of my favorite short story writers: "I belong to the church without Christ, where the lame don't walk, the blind don't see, and the dead stay dead.") Even if I don't believe in it, I find it difficult to imagine an afterlife of zeroed out souls who are without the selves they possessed in life.

We know a bit about the brain, but not very much. — Ludwig V

If it is the case that neither of us knows more than just "a bit about the brain' than your claims about your self, and my claims about my self, and what our respective brains are or are not doing, are both based on insufficient evidence. We have reached an impasse.

But you could only describe it as thinking if you are prepared to say that a computer thinks. The brain is, after all, a machine. — Ludwig V

I have not, would not, call the brain "a machine". After some brains invented computers, people started comparing their computers to brains and their brains to computers. My brain loves my Apple computer, but a computer is to the brain what a screw driver is to the brain: an sometimes useful external object,

a computer is to the brain what a screw driver is to the brain

That is the third version of the analogy. The Invisible Copy Editor, which is located on the underside of the Frontal Cortex next to the Olfactory Center, received a BAD SMELL alarm, indicating that the first version stank. My self was alerted, and I tried out a couple of different versions. Now it's back to Auto Mode.

The least obtrusive and most reliable way to discover how other animals think is to observe them in their natural habitat, solving the problems nature throws at them. — Vera Mont

Which is how Lars Chittka figured out so much about The Mind of A Bee, his 2023 book about bee perception, cognition, and success. One of his observations is "Bees live a very fast life; they have about 3 weeks from leaving their wax cell as an adult to their likely death. They have to actually learn a lot--it isn't all pre-programmed in their genes. In order to do this, their neurons seem to be far more efficient than ours. And they have very capable sensory capacities -- a sense of smell, touch, taste, hearing, the ability to see different parts of the spectrum than we do, a directional capacity, and so on.

When they land on a flower--which they did because the flower met certain specs--they can immediately tell whether another bee has recently foraged there. If so, they fly off. They 'know' it takes a flower a few hours to refill its nectar dispensers.

It takes a lot of unobtrusive observation to discover these things, something bee scientists have been doing for decades.

But the suggestion that I and you don't exist is absurd. — Ludwig V

It isn't that 'I' or 'you' don't exist; rather, the identity that I have doesn't occupy a specific region of the brain called "the self" -- at least they haven't been able to find it, and they've been looking, What seems to be the case is that various facilities in the brain maintain our identity as a seemingly solid self.

If it's a fiction (which wouldn't be my choice of words) then it's a fairly solid fiction in a healthy, intact brain.

Why do you separate composing from typing? — Ludwig V

Several different areas of the brain are involved in composing this sentence. Obviously Broca's area, (language production) is involved; thought creation areas are involved; memory, etc. None of these areas control motor functions (like typing). So, once the sentence is ready, the motor centers are in charge of the typing.

Granted, the brain has some degree of plasticity, and an unused area can be recruited for some other purpose, but in adults, especially, this isn't a quick process. For example, were I to be blinded, the visual cortex would have a lot less to do. It might be recruited to process sensory input from the fingers in order to understand braille.

The idea that saying something is somehow unspooling what the brain has already done just pushes the issue back a stage into an infinite regress. — Ludwig V

There isn't "something else unspooling what the brain has done". The brain itself is managing the process of issuing a statement from inspiration to expression. Broca's area alone can't produce speech without coordinated effort by the motor system controlling tongue, lips, jaw, and breathing. Brain injuries and brain manipulation (during surgery) reveal that different areas of the brain control different aspects of our whole behavior.

I don't think the brain thinks. I'm the one who does the thinking. — Ludwig V

That's why I asked, "who are you?"

No matter what you say, what you think, what you do, it issues from the brain labeled "Ludwig V". What the neurological researcher is saying is that the "representation called the self of Ludwig V" is not doing the thinking, Almost everything the brain does is silent; we don't hear it thinking. We can't watch it retrieve a memory if a grade school teacher; we can't observe it coming up with a new idea. It feels like "we" are doing the thinking, but that's part of the fiction of the self.

Ludwig: Your brain is doing your thinking, it's just that "your thinking" happens in your brain below your radar.

Hey, show a little gratitude. The brain controls everything about you from your happy smile to your asshole and everything in between. You don't want to know everything your brain is doing. Yes it does your thinking, which you want to claim. Why don't you claim the task of keeping yourself upright when walking; blinking regularly to keep your eyeballs moist; keeping track of your temperature, blood pressure, heart beat, and breathing; waking up every morning (rather than not waking up); registering a patch of itchy skin; and hundreds of other services going on all the time?

You don't claim all these functions because you probably feel thinking is more noble and important than managing your bladder and rectal sphincters. Well, Ludwig, just wait until those bladder and rectal sphincters stop working, and you'll no longer consider their control beneath your dignity.

Thinking is just one of many things that we are not 'personally' responsible for.

I don't think the brain thinks. I'm the one who does the thinking. — Ludwig V

And who are you? Where did you come from? Who do you think you are?

So, some neurological researchers and thinkers propose that the 'self' -- you, I -- is a convenient fiction. The self is a creation of the brain, and we don't know how this is accomplished. As a fiction, the self is an extremely compelling story. But, you know, as I type this, it is somewhat clear to me that "I" am not composing these sentences. I'm reading them as they appear. The composer is a mental facility composed of various brain circuits. This facility outputs the text to the motor facility which causes my fingers to move in just the right way to produce this text.

"I" have edited the text; I decided to change some words here and there. But again, Neurological research shows that the decision to act is made BEFORE we are aware that we want to act. The "I" editor operates a couple of beats behind the brain circuits that actually made the decision.

That's OK, because most of the time the various parts of my brain are in accord on the importance of keeping "me", body and brain, together in one piece. Risk-reduction circuits in the brain try to keep "me" from getting beat up in The Philosophy Forum, and possibly killed (figuratively here, for real out on the street).

There is a lot "I" don't like about these loosey-goosey theories of self, consciousness, and all that, even if I grant them plausibility.

One could argue that the powers are less secret than they seemed to be back then. — Ludwig V

When it comes to our power of thought, it's still hidden. We don't know at this point how the brain thinks BECAUSE we do not have access to enough of the brain's processing to figure it out. Yes, we have fMRI, EEGs, direct measurement of neuron's firing, etc. But these just don't reveal in anything close to granular detail how the brain produces the self, consciousness, novels, symphonies, mechanical inventions, and so on and so forth. There are clues, but the case isn't solved by a long shot.

Will it be solved? I don't know. Depends on the stability of civilization over the next century or two. The brain's 90 billion neurons (give or take a half dozen) and their trillion trillion interconnections are literally beyond our reach at this point. C. elegans' brain (all 300 neurons) has been fully charted, but that's a far cry from even a rat's brain, let alone the extraordinary brain of Ludwig V.

If we don't figure out what ever neuron does, that's fine. We don't need to know. Our brains are not so reliable that they should have more knowledge than they can safely use.

No, mate. I don't participate in guiri things. — javi2541997

Google said 'guiri' means "uncouth foreign tourists, usually those with Northern European looks".

Well, of course thrifty Northern Europeans would have to go south to find tomatoes cheap enough to throw at each other. On the other hand, the Northern European Lutherans around here (the upper midwest of North America) aren't accustomed to engaging in public disorder, especially a public food fight. Are you sure it isn't Russians and Bulgarians who are the guiri?

The availability of fruit emoji's might be sufficient reason to move the whole TPF site to Discord! One could use the pineapple emoji to efficiently welcome new members, for instance (pineapples were once a symbol of welcoming, so I have heard). Banana and banana peel emoji's would have several uses. Sour grapes, kiwis, nuts, cherries, peaches, apricots, eggplant, raspberries (the Bronx cheer) rotten tomatoes, etc. Speaking of tomatoes, did you participate in the big Spanish tomato fight?

I just find Discord an ugly user interface with annoying operating features. I generally avoid social media sites like FaceBook et al, because I don't like having content pushed at me. I prefer to "pull" content by actively seeking content -- as one does with TPF or on-line newspapers. The drivel quotient at most social media sites is high, too.

All that said, sites can go down, and it can be a rude shock, especially if it lasts for more than a short (minutes, a couple of hours) time. The old PF site went down for several days once and it was quite distressing. It IS a good idea to have a location where news about the outage or outrage can be shared and digital antidepressants can be dispensed. .

Welcome to TPF; I don't like discord, either.

I deleted my account. Solved several issues with one click.

I used up my available chances to edit my account, so now I have to wait 3 days. Fine. 3 days, 3 years, whatever. Screw it.

What are we at risk from? — Amity

Brain worms, mostly. Robotic devils, viruses up the ying yang, subversives of every variety -- nothing too unusual. Dark mode is very dark, indeed -- an outcropping of the dark web.

Personally, I resent having to deal with yet another sign-in rigamarole. It wanted a password. Safari produced a non-memorable password, but doesn't seem to have put it anywhere. Now I'm stuck. Fuck.

Usually these sorts of discussions begin on the wrong foot by conflating communism with state capitalism under a ruling party. — sime

Exactly to the point.

Simply won't happen — Shawn

Hey, Shawn; I don't think it's going to happen either--not because the population is so satisfied, but because the capitalists are so entrenched and well fortified.

But it remains the case that in advanced capitalist economies, workers--as a group--have the knowledge to operate businesses without capitalists being in charge. Claiming that they are knowledgable enough to take over the economy isn't the same as claiming they will take over, or that they would do a splendid job of running society--we primates being the flawed species we are.

Advanced capitalist economies account for a minority of the world's population--think the G8: France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, Japan, the United States, Canada, and Russia. China and India? Not quite there yet. So, most people are either in developing or undeveloped capitalist economies, where work is not so technically advanced.

Do those workers in less advanced economies, those societies, find communism appealing? I don't know.

I don't believe it is applicable towards the current state of affairs of many developed and developing countries. — Shawn

Why the hell not? Isn't one of the consequences of capitalism that the proletariat (working class) become increasingly proficient in the complex workplaces produced by advancing capitalism? As time goes on, the proletariat acquires more and more skills and knowledge until they are able to operate capitalist enterprises. We are there, comrade.

Take any of the major tech giants: they run on code. Who produces the code? Their workers. Really? Yes! Workers have been learning how to code in college and other levels of education, and also acquiring the mathematics, statistics, marketing knowledge, and so forth they need to produce reliable effective code for all sorts of operations. The (now 'ancient') COBOL programs that are still running some critical systems were not written by God on Mount Sinai. They were written by working mortals who learned how to write Cobol back in the 1960s. ***

True enough, workers are kept out of the executive suites on the upper floors of the skyscraper where the execs make the big decisions -- like selling Twitter to Elon Musk. Though, workers can get in the way of such decisions, as happened in the case of the AI company a few years ago.

Across all industries, workers carry out a vast array of complex operations resulting in the robust profitability of the companies in which they work.

The proletariat--workers--could, were they properly organized by communist organizers (another group of highly skilled workers) take over the firms in which they work. Would the stockholders take that sitting down? Certainly not! They would be on their well-shod feet shaking their feeble fists in the air. Stockholders hate it when communists take over, because they end up having to become workers like everybody else -- their wealth having disappeared. Such a comedown. No more penthouses. No more mansions in France. No more chauffeured travel around town. No more $1000 meals. It's just tragic.

***

By the way, COBOL was invented by Grace Brewster Hopper in 1959. Among other things she had a PhD in Mathematics from Yale. A guided-missile destroyer, USS Hopper, was named for her, as was the Cray XE6 "Hopper" supercomputer at NERSC, as was the Nvidia Superchip "Grace Hopper". During her lifetime, Hopper was awarded 40 honorary degrees from universities across the world. A college at Yale University was renamed in her honor.

The world wa very grateful for COBOL.

Emma Goldman, the famous early 20th Century anarchist allegedly said, "If I can't dance, I don't want to be in your revolution," As is often the case for famous quotes, there is no record of Goldman ever having said that. However, on one occasion she had been dancing with great enthusiasm when this brat (a cousin of Alexander Berkman) told her it was unbecoming for her to be dancing.

I did not believe that a Cause which stood for a beautiful ideal,
for anarchism, for release and freedom from conventions and prejudice,
should demand the denial of life and joy.

My questions to you:

How many people see 'communism' as a beautiful ideal?
How many think that 'communism' will bring release and freedom from conventions and prejudice?
(How many even approve of abandonment of convention and prejudice?)
How many people look to 'communism' as an affirmation of life and joy?

STATING one's ideals is not the same as acting on them, and is not the same as having one's stated ideals become reality. The realization of one's often stated ideals could be the worst possible outcome.

Among the socialists and communists I have known (not a very large number), a minority seemed to find joy in their missionary labor. I was closer to being a drive-by communist than an ardent activist. I was supportive, but the idea of militant activity in support of communism wasn't (isn't) very attractive.

With the above said, I want to ask, to whom would communism appeal towards, nowadays? — Shawn

Are there no oppressed masses yearning to be free? No exploited-to-exhaustion workers? No lumpen proles? Where's the alienation, the anomie, the despair?

the United States is more cosmopolitan than ever. — Shawn

Communism is an obscene perversity wherever Capitalism is the dominant ideology and economic system.

Our cosmopolitan power elite have done (and do) a pretty good job of managing the public's perception of reality. (It's not a conspiracy, it's a modus operandi.) Nothing new in that. It isn't that 'the people' have not heard of the gross disparities in wealth between the 1% and the 99%; it isn't that a lot of our work is boring and unsatisfying; it isn't that everyone has enough food, clothing, shelter, and financial security (many do, many don't). It isn't that nobody has noticed the life as we know it sucks.

What is the case is that 'the people', the 99%, have little access to the levers of power by which significant changes can be made in government and the economy. Yes, I know that The People can vote, and I know that everyone can exercise economic choices to maximize their wellbeing. Except that voting in a rigged system is futile, and exercising economic choice over scraps from the master's table doesn't amount to much.

The typical American has a standard of living that is quite similar to his and her neighbors. That's important, because people are much more disturbed by small inequalities in their close social group than they are with gross inequalities among people that are socially distant.

Given that a large share of the population believe that they live in a free society with abundant opportunity to become wealthy and financially secure, they are pretty happy.

And I am reasonably happy too, at this point in my life. I'm not in the workforce, and I haven't forgotten how wretched work can be. I still think socialism is better than capitalism, but I understand that it is not within reach. I still think that an egalitarian society is better than a hierarchy run by oligarchs, but the oligarchs have a tight grip on power. I still think that the way we live--our civil society such as it is, our economy, our way of being in the world as a technological society--is unsustainable and that we will crash and burn--hopefully only figuratively and not literally. Not just the US, but the whole world.

What should the EU do when Trump wins the next election?

Have you no highly skilled assassins? Have you no advanced voting machine hackers? Have you no experts at insidious anti-Trump propaganda? Have you no skilled spies, infiltrators, and manipulators? Have you no personal-sized warhead guided missiles? Have you no war ships to mine our harbors in protest? Could you not seize control of Tesla's navigation systems to direct Elon's cars to attack Trump wherever he is? Ram, blow up, whatever?

Or is the EU just a bunch of feckless liberals with a sickly inability to use force?

Have you no balls?

Kant asked, "What can I know? What ought I to do? What can I hope?" — BC

What are your answers? — Athena

At the risk of foot-in-mouth-disease...

a) the world is understandable.
b) our sensory information is reasonably reliable
c) BUT we are perfectly capable of ignoring reality
d) AND we often believe our own bullshit over the facts of the matter

e) what we OUGHT to do is often clear enough
f) BUT that doesn't mean we want to do it or will do it
g) BECAUSE we are neurotic semi-evolved primates and not divine beings

h) we can hope that we will be sensible
i) we can hope we won't be disappointed too often in our hope for sensibility

Conclusion: It's not looking good for us.

My knowledge of Kant is from snippets I've read elsewhere. His work IS, however, on my list of things I would have read had I been born in an alternate universe.

His anchorage in Königsberg is, perhaps surprising for a seminal intellectual of the time. Some people certainly traveled around at that time, thinking of composers like Haydn or Mozart. Napoleon covered a lot of territory. On the other hand, there is Blake's "To see a World in a Grain of Sand / And a Heaven in a Wild Flower / Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand / And Eternity in an hour". A quick look at his bio in Wikipedia showed that he published a paper showing how the gravity of the moon slowed the rotation of the earth and eventually became tidally locked. He also explained that the great Lisbon earthquake was caused by caverns of hot gases. Not the case, but at least it's a theory based in nature rather than theology. Plate tectonics weren't discovered until the 20th century.

I'm not a big fan of traveling, though I have been to Boston, New York City, Washington, D.C.,San Francisco, Denver, and the Grand Canyon; East Africa, England, the Netherlands, and--high point of anyone's travels--Winnipeg, Manitoba. What can compare to Winnipeg? Well, it's colder than Minneapolis, but otherwise not much different. Probably won't make it to Omaha, Cleveland, or Buffalo.

How about you? Traveled much?

We all lose a certain number of brain cells every day, about 1 cell every second. Tick, tick tick. Since yesterday at this time you have lost 86,400 brain cells. Between the ages of 18 and 91, we lose around 9% of our brains.

A 91 year old may not display many deficits resulting from that missing 9%. On the other hand, a 35 year old with severe brain injury may have lost so many brain cells that he or she no longer recognizes a spouse, children, their surroundings, or self.

Does the person who has lost his or her identity still have one? Does it matter if everyone else knows who this person's identity is, but the subject does not? If I don't know who I am, what good does it do me if there are a million people who know my identity? No good at all!

Our identity is as secure as the structure of our brain. Brain disease, traumatic brain injury, and stroke can wipe out our identity, never to return,

A neurosurgeon, poking around in your brain, could make a bad slice here or there and you would not be present in the recovery room after surgery. Your body would, your brain would, and but for those unfortunately severed connections you would be there too.

The upshot for me is that our identities are quite perishable.

Probably the worst sermon topic for any preacher, priest, or pastor is what they have to deal with on Trinity Sunday. Explaining the Trinity, and why/if/how it is important to following Jesus is damned hard, if not nigh unto impossible. It's worse than the Immaculate Conception the Virgin birth, miracles in the wine cellar, and so on.

Suppose you somehow became convinced that Christianity is false. Suppose you came to believe that Jesus was just a man. — Art48

Been there, done that.

Except that I don't consider Christianity "false". There are no "true" religions so there can't be any "false" ones. Religions begin; grow and flourish because they satisfy the needs of their members; increase in complexity; continue on for a long time; or begin to fail and may go extinct. As far as I know, nobody is making sacrifices to Jupiter or praying to Zeus. Competition is a factor, as is outright suppression. Christianity both competed and suppressed.

Jesus was a man. Unfortunately, his biography was a highly partisan project. There weren't any impartial inquiries into his activities and ideas. I believe Jesus was an itinerant preacher who attracted a following. He had some very good ideas which remain worthwhile.

It's a lot easier to put up with this (probably) very scruffy, (quite possibly difficult) man, than his latter day followers, and the 2000 year accretion of dogma.

4. None of the above. I would do something else. — Art48

I first did what a lot of Christians have done -- I absented myself from the church. Later on I developed more specific objections to Christian belief and practice (and the beliefs and practices of the other two received religions).

I may believe in God (some days yes, some days no) but in any case, I'm not an atheist. Atheists seem to feel their non-belief is some sort of great accomplishment. It's not.

One way to avoid Covid is to shun other people, who are nothing but hell, according to J. P. Sartre. Fuck Sartre.

Kant asked, "What can I know? What ought I to do? What can I hope?"

There are clear positive answers to the first two questions, which we can at least hope is the case.

Very interesting. I first heard about the EUB when I was a freshman at Winona State. The 'house parents' of the Wesley Foundation house were an EUB couple, one of them a local EUB pastor. I had never been alerted to the schismatic parentage of Wilbur and Orville Wright. Once again I must ask the staff, "Why was I not informed?"

Protestants do more splitting than an atom smasher, which, I think, keeps them strong and healthy, at least until they grievances all cool off. Everybody leaves the schism refreshed and energized. In time they merge with some similar group and after an appropriately long union, split again. The United Methodist Church is in the process of splitting over gay clergy, gay marriage, and all that.

No LSD in my bucket.

Per my favorite New York Jew, Woody Allen: "I'm not afraid of dying; I just don't want to be there when it happens."

I'm 78; I scheduled hip replacement surgery (3 months hence), and I hope to get at least five years of use out of it. My siblings are all in the 80s and are mostly doing well, except a brother who has metastatic prostate cancer and likely won't be with us much longer. I had a cancer removed from my throat almost 5 years ago and there is no sign of recurrence. My skin seems cancer prone. Sunbathing on gay nude beaches can lead to AIDS; that could have been me. It could still lead to melanoma. I take a statin, a BP med, an antidepressant, and drops for glaucoma.

There are a lot of problems I don't have, and I feel physically healthy, apart from joint pain.

I've been happy and content, more or less, since 2012, I have gotten better at avoiding sturm and drang. I can certainly get torqued out, but that doesn't happen so often now. I don't get around much any more, so run into few high drama situations with other people. A lot of crap has been flushed down the river that runs through it.

I have not done everything I want to do. I have not seen Paris, Berlin, or Rome. But then, I haven't seen Omaha, Cleveland, or Detroit either. On the other hand, I've seen London, Amsterdam, Nairobi, Kampala, Duluth, Des Moines, and Denver. There are many unknown topics I want to learn about, at least to some extent. I'll stumble onto those in due time. I wanted to be suave, sophisticated, and multilingual. That boat left the dock in so many ways so long ago.

I never ran a marathon, but I did do 2 century rides on my bike (100 miles per day). I never got over my fear of heights (no rock climbing, ferris wheel rides, or roller coaster nightmares, thank you). Spiders and centipedes bother me much less than they used to. I haven't seen a snake in a long time, so don't know how I feel about them.

I came out and dove into gay life at about the right time. That was a good thing. I probably drank too much and smoked too many cigarettes, but it was all worth while. I found a lot of great sex and long-lasting love. I had a long fling with socialism, which is over. The group I belonged to died a merciful death. I planted some successful gardens, and several that were failures. The raspberry patch has turned malevolent and threatens to engulf the back yard.

The genre of "gospel" music is quite large and a lot of it is very singable for otherwise unskilled congregations. "Power in the Blood" is a good example. The Methodist Church I grew up in didn't use much of this genre -- it stuck to mainline hymns like "Come Thou Font of Every Blessing".

"Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing" is a hymn written by the pastor and hymnodist Robert Robinson, who penned the words in the year 1758 at the age of 22. It was set to a number of tunes, including shape-note tunes which were generally sung at a fast clip, a cappella. Here is a Primitive Baptist congregation a cappella performance to its most familiar tune.

"Sacred Harp" was a popular late 18th/19th century style of singing for congregations without the wherewithal (or desire?) for instruments. It was sung a cappella in a manner that sounds harsh to our ears. Myself, I'm a church music snob and prefer high-church music to low-church Primitive Baptist styles. Here's an example:

On the other hand, this is more distinctive that the Mormon Tabernacle Cheese Press in Salt Lake City whose mass choir size and big organ crushes everything into a very similar but pleasant sound.

The title of the thread is actually a slogan from the Soviet Union. — Shawn

Proof of the difficulty of talking about the happiness of the masses.

Certainly the USSR had a properly functioning social fabric. They wouldn't have been able to survive Stalin's and Hitler's pathological programs if they hadn't had a tough social fabric. Social fabric, however, isn't the same as happiness.

I'm not suggesting that nobody in the USSR was happy, or that unhappiness was the daily lot of soviet citizens. It just seems like that the USSR presented significant barriers to individual happiness, and the collective joy and happiness of the people was more a Potemkin village than a reality.

I'm not suggesting that everybody in the USA is happy, or that unhappiness is a rarity here. Here (USA) barriers to individual happiness are erected by private agencies rather than public ones: employers, retail companies, advertising companies (looking at you, Edward Bernays), political parties, churches (you're going to hell IF...). real estate developers, banks, and so on.

In the US, the collective joy and happiness of the people is a Disneyland rather than a Potemkin village.

I don't think it is difficult for the basic human to feel contented and happy. It seems to be the case that people living in small, pre-industrial, at least somewhat isolated cultures achieve contentment and happiness with much less effort than we do in big, industrial, integrated, striving, rat race cultures.

Dropping out (as in "“Turn On, Tune In, and Drop Out,” encapsulated the spirit of a generation seeking enlightenment, freedom, and a break from societal norms. The phrase was first uttered by Leary during the Human Be-in on January 14, 1967, a pivotal moment at the peak of the Summer of Love) is one way of attempting happiness and contentment in this society.

I didn't turn on with LSD, but I did tune in and drop out intermittently, between jobs to maintain a viable if minimal budget. (Homeless encampments are nobody's idea of happiness.) This strategy worked pretty well because I was readily employable and had lots of interests to pursue when I wasn't wage slaving.

I could have done better (been happier more often) had I planned this out more carefully. I wasted a lot of time working out this strategy, and maintaining delusions of professional social service occupations.

Shawn: Are you happy and contented?

I don't know how to think about "The Happiness of All Mankind", all 8 billion individuals -- one by one or collectively.

Only individuals can experience happiness, and it's a subjective experience. Even commies can only pursue happiness one prole at a time. The way I read it, Jefferson's life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (whatever he was thinking of at the time) is a one-by-one project. MAYBE one can organize a society so that it is easier to have life, liberty, and happiness, but it will still be the individual's initiative that gets the job done.

Universal happiness, universal peace, universal fairness, etc. sound nice until one begins thinking about the absurd amount of social engineering it would take to achieve a fair, just peace that would satisfy every one of the 8 billion beneficiaries.

Too pessimistic? BC is short for Bitter Crank, after all. People who live in a society which has a certain amount of "fluidity" -- where people can fairly easily select circumstances that contribute to their happiness -- have a better chance of happiness than people can achieve in a rigid, dogmatic society like Taliban-plagued Afghanistan.

What are we to make of this? — Gregory

What I make of it is that eventually the dogma becomes crushingly heavy and squeezes the life out of whatever liberation a religious movement might have offered in its beginning. That's just me. Hundreds of millions of believers find dogma quite tolerable, or find ways of dealing with it.

Jesus without dogma was apparently an itinerate Jewish preacher who attracted a following. In the hands of the church he later became Christ; the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world; miracle worker; healer; the great judge.

For what it's worth, the Jesus Project discarded much of what is attributed to Jesus. I gather they saw in many of his sayings later dogma that was back dated into his mouth or just not convincing.

The program of the church (from the New Testament on down to summer camp) is compelling enough, especially if it was not rammed down ones throat. I found it pleasant enough, even compelling at times, for many years.