Whites have nothing to be proud of except what that individual achieved for themselves or was a part of themselves. — Judaka

Perhaps you are asserting that society does not exist, and are throwing out culture as well. "it's all individual activity. Nothing else."

It amazes me how someone can take responsibility for or take pride in individuals who lived ages before them as their own based on such a superficial similarity. — Judaka

Well, the connection to the past is a two-way street. We look back and the people of the past looked forward. People of past centuries, or past decades, or the past 15 minutes, thought, spoke, acted, and wrote and their thoughts, words, and actions are carried forward by their witnesses. Going back a ways, Hammurabi (ancient king in Babylonia, 1792 BC to 1750 BC) had an audience. When Hammurabi spoke, people listened. King David and Isaiah also spoke, and people listened. Jesus and Paul spoke and people listened. Julius Caesar, Charlemagne, Joan of Arc, William Shakespeare, and John Donne spoke, and the people listened. Donald Trump speaks not very well but the people nevertheless listen. (MEMO TO THE PEOPLE: Pay no attention to the fat man with bad hair standing behind the podium. He is an artless clod.)

We are still reading words from the past--at least if we aren't completely uncultured slobs and dolts, we are.

The modern white American has more in common with a modern black American than he does with the white Americans who killed the native Americans or owned slaves but all the same, people want to take responsibility for that. — Judaka

That assertion could be challenged. Some quite careful observers (white and black) think that black and white Americans practically live in two separate countries. Again linking up with the past, there are quite specific historical reasons WHY most white Americans are better off than most black Americans, and why even middle-income whites are much, much better off than poor blacks. Slavery, the Civil War, Reconstruction, the severe backlash by whites tagged "Jim Crow laws" which have largely been eliminated, and contemporary housing discrimination (and more besides) account for the differences between black and white fortunes in the United States. There is an unbroken chain between the present and the past. If there wasn't, there would never be any material or intellectual development or progress. Each individual would have to start all over.

If we want to understand where we are now we have to understand the past, and to understand the past we have to be familiar with the who, what, when, how, why, and where of the past.

Whites have nothing to be proud of except what that individual achieved for themselves or was a part of themselves. — Judaka

So what is it that you have accomplished and are proud of, that DID NOT DEPEND on the efforts of people who lived and died before you?

Always remember: Homo sapiens are primates, animals. Talk about metaphysics and ethics all you want; just remember it is an ape with a bad attitude that is doing the talking. — Bitter Crank

Just saying... don't get too uppity about being a human.

I have debated whether to get into an argument about whether Jews are Caucasian or not but I decided it wasn't worth it because I am not Jewish and I don't really care. I have always been under the impression that there was a Jewish race and culture which was separate from the religion and after doing a bit of research because I was challenged on it, realised that I could easily find sources that confirmed and denied it and I guess I'd have to dig deeper to determine the truth. You're even talking about Indians and Iranians being causation and while you're welcome to give me an argument for whatever it is you believe, I wouldn't have said what I said if I realised people were going to dispute it so strongly and I got no real stake in what the truth is. — Judaka

I am not Jewish either, at least as far as I know. I'd be fine with it if I was. I do care about race: I like the fact that there are distinct racial groups, with their various features. What we need to remember is that we are all one species, pretty much, even if some of us are mixes of archaic and modern humans, and mixes of races and ethnicities.

Apply the American motto: e pluribus unum, out of many, one. The PC Left seems to think it we are e unus unum--out of one, one. No, we are several races, many ethnicities, all human, and the variety is good.

Multiculturalism means nothing (and is indeed pernicious) if it fails to honor the cultures of the world, one of which happens to be the white, European, North American, Australian culture, with its additional established territories. Third world cultures are good, and so is the now dominant first world culture, the culture that colonized much of the rest of the world (but maybe not long enough and thoroughly enough), the culture that injected the scientific and industrial revolutions into the whole world -- for better and for worse.

White people have no more, and no less, to be proud of, and/or embarrassed about than any other people -- Africans, Asians, Aboriginals, etc. As a species, we are not all that nice, and never have been. Sure. we try to be decent, but our primate drives are powerful, and our systems of control only somewhat effective.

Always remember: Homo sapiens are primates, animals. Talk about metaphysics and ethics all you want; just remember it is an ape that is doing the talking.

The idea that Jews--and western asian people--are caucasian comes out of studies of ancient population history going back around 20,000 years. Two examples of this kind of research are: Jean Manco, Ancestral Journeys: The Peopling of Europe from the first venturers to the Vikings. 2013 & 2015, Thames & Hudson, Ltd, London.

The Horse, The Wheel, And Language: How Bronze-age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes shaped the modern world, David. W. Anthony, Princeton University Press, 2007.

What these books (and others) show is that between the first arrivals (early homo sapiens and Neanderthals) and the finally settled Europe well after the Roman Empire collapse, there was a great deal of population movement, both into Europe from Eurasia and within Europe. What was true in Europe was true elsewhere, too. Nobody, for all practical purposes, ever just arrived and stayed put for ever after. Everyone was pretty much pushed or shoved out of the way from behind, supplemented or suppressed, refreshed or replaced. Someone estimated that since the beginning of the species about 100 billion people have been born. All these people had feet and so traveled around. Sometimes they formed large groups, and their movements were very significant in the long pre-historical run.

Jews are a unique ethnic group, which is a subset or maybe sub-subset of one of the 4 or 5 racial groups). Jews are to caucasians what the Celts are to caucasians, or what Eskimos are to Amerindians: part of a larger whole.

Neanderthals and Denisovans (and maybe other archaic humans) lived among and mated with homo sapiens on the Eurasian continent. Over time there has been a lot of mating going on, and while there are several racial groups, there are hundreds of ethnic groups.

What I am saying is that there are a lot of similarities between the east Asian countries trying to maintain ethnic hegemony and what the alt-right want, similarities between the alt-right wanting whites to be prioritised in "white" countries over non-whites in the same way that governments across the world prioritise their majority races. — Judaka

The problem with white supremacists, nazis, white racists, alt right, fascists, and so on is that these are all epithets tossed by liberals, SJWs, "marxists", and so on at people they don't like, for one reason or another. Most people don't identify as "white supremacists, white racists, nazis,, fascists, and so on. (Granted, some people do self-identify as Nazi or fascist, but far fewer than are accused of it.)

What do these people self-identify as? I'm not sure what terms they apply to themselves.

So, your average white man, as frustrated as everybody else is, by the many changes going on in lots of different nations, tries to find solidarity among other white men (and women, presumably), a familiar white culture, familiar sex roles, and so on, gets blasted as "white supremacists" by (usually) other whites who quite often occupy relatively privileged positions.

Deploying terms such as these tends to set up conflicting camps--virtuous multiculti preachers on one side, and wicked perpetrators of all evil in the other camp. It is difficult to parse who which side is, in fact, most objectionable.

I can barely tolerate ultra-conservative white people who would probably join the KKK if a local was available, and I loathe listening to the virtue signalers who find a white racist or a fascist under every bush. A plague on both their houses.

Einstein wasn't even white — Judaka

So, he was Chinese? African? Native Amerindian? What?

According to some, "Caucasian" means western Europe and descendants therefrom. Broader definitions include western Europeans, plus Russians, Arabs, Iraqis, Iranians, Indians, Afghanis, and Indians. A broad definition would be consistent with language group relationships -- Greek and Sanskrit, for instance--Indo-European,

So Jews originated along the eastern Mediterranean shore. By some stories, they came from northeast (Abraham) of present day Israel. Wherever they came from they were in an area generally counted as Caucasian, or white. Jews were spread out in a diaspora before 66 AD.

So, it would seem like Einstein was probably more white than he was anything else.

Anglo Saxons are white, certainly, as are Norwegians and Finns, Latvians, Jews, and Italians. So are the French and Serbs, Greeks, Turks, etc. Caucasians are a large, diverse, multicultural assembly.

monkeys carry diseases which are fatal to humans — Jake

Sounds like quid pro quo to me.

How do you tell the difference between the escaped and cleverly adaptive monkeys and your average Florida primate householder?

This is in fact happening. All sorts of tropical pet reptiles that got too big have been let go in peoples back yards where, Florida being sub tropical, they have all done quite well. Ford has a quite fascinating collection of snakes now that they didn't used to have.

If the alligators don't get you the pythons will.

Alligators and pythons, properly deployed in urban areas, should help keep down the riff raff population in Miami and other cities, down there. The alligator hatcheries are turning them out as fast as they can. Once a constrictor starts squeezing, the subject and snake are sitting ducks for a trained alligator to move in for the kill.

work is done for survival — leo

tools helpful to survive — leo

When we do not work for basic survival — leo

because it helped our ancestors survive — leo

but why does it feel good? Isn't that simply because we know we can count on them if we need help? — leo

And so on.

The animals from which we evolved (as yet another animal) all had various survival behaviors and strategies. Those ancient mechanisms are part of us. We have, however, evolved a surplus of cognitive resources which, given a successful hunt or food gathering foray, could be allowed free play. Over a long time, we developed language, technology, and so forth. Some of our inventions are applied directly to survival, and some are not.

We can describe any and every behavior as survival-enhancing if we want to do that. But we still have lots of surplus cognitive resources that tend to engage in free play, as soon as survival requirements are met. Calling for help is a survival use of language. Writing an Ode To A Grecian Urn, however, doesn't seem to have anything to do with survival. Keats had some extra time and surplus mental capacity on his hands after his survival needs had been met.

The Philosophy Forum exists because there seems to be a lot of otherwise under-utilized surplus cognitive resources out there. People whose survival is secure for a few minutes can afford to speculate about all sorts of irrelevant and quite peripheral topics here. In the event that somebody would die if they were unable to express themselves here, I suppose we could call TPF a survival tool, but that would be stretching the term past the breaking point.

We need to eat, but nobody has to eat pate foie gras--fancy force-fed chopped goose liver--(except the French who require pate foie gras). Americans prefer braunschweiger, which is smoked pork liver and bacon sausage -- much better. But braunschweiger isn't a necessity either. Some people require kale (which was winter cattle fodder until vegans made a fetish out of it). There is evidence that nobody actually likes to eat kale, and I for one believe that life is better without it.

Simply put, beings who know they will die cannot withstand extended periods of amity. Unable to confront the ultimate evil of death directly, it’s essential to have enemies, enemies that can be confronted. We need, that is, human surrogates for evil who are at the very least potentially vanquishable. — Robert Levin

I do not think 'death' and 'the fear of dying' accounts for our bouts of bellicose behavior. The only condition under which we could achieve universal peace is in a perfect and completely static world -- where no new desire or need or dissatisfaction could ever arise.

Do people, most people, many people, any people... really think of 'death' as an evil? Death goes with the territory of being alive. Everything dies. Practically, everything must die to make room and resources available for new life. Our species alone has produced something like 100 billion individuals since we became a species. Imagine sharing a finite world with all of them!

As Woody Allen put it, "I'm not afraid of dying; I just don't want to be there when it happens."

At 72 I'm not afraid of being dead, or dying relatively quickly. I just don't want to have to go through a dying that is too slow.

Why do people offend on purpose? — Joseph Walsh

Cussédness.

Sometimes when we experience free-floating anger, rage, anxiety, animosity, resentment, etc. we want to relieve the static charge by zapping somebody. Normal people vent verbally. Males are maybe more likely to punch somebody out.

In extreme cases we get ourselves a gun and wipe out a few people, or quite a few.

H. L. Mencken, a long-time columnist for the Baltimore Sun, once said: "Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats." Mencken was also a scholar, and a critic of the average American yokel / rube. Here's another quote: "On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron." He said that long before Bush II or Donald Trump. Very prescient.

His most famous saying is "No one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public."

When you look at the life of people who have done atrocities to others, there is always a story. The guy who killed a bunch of people in Christchurch felt they were a threat to the white race, to him and the people he deems to be like him. — leo

But sometimes people are also deranged madmen, and survival isn't really the point of their behavior.

I'm not sure what all drove Brenton Tarrant to kill 50 people in Christ Church, NZ -- or what drove any other mass or serial murderer. I don't think 'survival' is an adequate explanation (any more than survival was the point in Van Gogh painting Starry Night).

If 'survival' was all that was possible, then that is all that we could strive for, because all our energy and time would be taken up. People sometimes end up in exactly that situation of extremity, and they either survive or they do not.

It is the case, however, that more than mere survival has been possible for most of us most of the time. There has been enough food, shelter, water, clothing, etc. available, and it has not taken all of our time and energy. We have had time and energy left over. The surplus allows for activities beyond survival. Rich and varied culture is the result.

Survival, however, remains the fundamental problem of all species, including us. In our case, "raw survival" is usually concealed under our collective species' success, except when it isn't. Natural disaster can strip away the success story, revealing individual efforts to survive. Stepping outside the envelope of collective effort (such as by being homeless and unable to care for one's self) also reveals individual survival efforts.

Global warming, climate change, sea level rise, crop failure, etc. may strip away much of what we have taken as 'normal', given, natural, -- granite bedrock -- for a long time. I hope not, but we'll find out in this century.

Which of these is most satisfactory?

God - present / world - bad
God - absent / world - bad
God - present / world -good
God - absent / world - good

Which one is likely to lead to the most satisfactory conclusion? What have you got to lose in choosing to think that the world is good? Isn't thinking that God is good and present preferable to thinking that god is either bad or absent?

You want evidence that god is present, good, bad, or absent? Ardent believers don't get that sort of proof -- why should you or I get it?

Go for the good.

This is a very tasteless picture. Not only do we see bits of male genitalia, but the sow's tits are also clearly visible. Further, there is some sort of menage a trois shaping up. Entirely too salacious for philosophers to view upon. Thankfully we were spared the full audiovisual effects of motion and sound -- all that laborious thrusting and grunting.

One needs no science here. Just spend an hour among humans, then spend an hour among pigs, and it becomes obvious that we are closely related. The pigs probably lost more than they gained.

I think this is a dangerous underestimation of psychological warfare and propaganda. — CaZaNOx

I don't want to downplay the power of propaganda or psychological warfare methods. But I was trying to state this point clearly: that it is unclear to me how, exactly, people come to hate particular groups. I am not questioning the fact that they do--just that the individual psychological mechanisms aren't certain. The social function of media, propaganda, personal interaction, and so forth are more observable than the transactions inside people's heads.

If one pays even some attention to world news, there is clearly a lot of inter-group friction -- some of it very abrasive -- going on between all sorts of groups. This is, of course, not new. Some people -- for reasons that are not clear to me -- are much more affected by this friction than others. "Friction-sensitive" people are more likely to engage in peace making or hate mongering,

One of the advertent or inadvertent functions of media -- mass media, social media, whatever media, is to increase friction. Media seems to increase social friction by amplifying awareness of events. So, both white-supremacist ranting and anti-white-supremacist ranting both serve the same function: heightening friction.

However one could f.e. say that they are like dogs following their chinese overlords (insert documentary of chinese influence of canada) or that the friendly immage they portray is just to trick you to not look whats going on behind the scences (insert random despicable practice f.e. pedophila that is so reprehensible that it has to be hidden behind a smile further insert maybe a link to the cathlic church that also has a simular issue with a seemingly inocent image and further insert documentary of candian pedophiles and suggesting it is widespread or emphazises in the news that there was again an incident in canada). — CaZaNOx

These are all great ideas, and we should try them out at once.

But without some seriously abrasive interaction between Americans and Canadians (like, torpedoing canoes on boundary rivers and lakes, or cross-border shelling of villages from British Columbia, or the US threatening to seize Quebec to guarantee Francophone culture, vicious anti-Canadian riots in Houston, Texas, and so forth) I don't see propaganda alone creating solid hatred.

Story of my life. But people are stupid, too. Seems like, anyway.

The dilemma where you have the power to divert a runaway rail truck so that it would kill one person, rather than stay on its course of killing multiple people. — wax

But Wax, if we agree that people are stupid feckless fools, then why would we ever want to deflect the killer caboose from its appointed rounds? The trouble is that the ruthlessly soft-tissue squishing railroad is running over too few stupid fools, rather than too many.

The obese unit that is standing next to you on the bridge should of course be thrown off the overpass to improve public health stats, but in no way should the fat unit deflect the bone-crunching skull squashing vehicle.

I read somewhere that people are stupid.

I am much less certain than I used to be about what causes people to experience strong feelings of hatred, and what causes them to act upon those feelings.

Speech alone isn't sufficient. Significantly negative experience with the hated group would seem to be required, in addition to other factors. Hatred needs peer assent and support. The hated group (hating a group is different than hating 1 person) is probably somewhat insular, or visibly 'different'. The insular Amish in a state could be the target of a hate group, while Norwegian or German farmers wouldn't be. The Amish farmers stand out, the Norwegian and German farmers are invisible background. (Some people do resent having to navigate around horse drawn equipment.)

Being "different" helps a group become a target, if several other factors are present. Getting or having some special advantage that others don't have contributes to hate-targeting. Let's not forget TRADITION! The targeted group has probably been loathed for quite some time. Take the Jews in Germany before the National Socialist Party was conceived, let alone took power: Lots of people loathed Jews then, and had been loathing Jews for centuries. The Nazis did not invent antisemitism. What the Nazis did was fan the flames of hatred, and then pursue hatred to its extreme conclusion: just kill them all!

But it doesn't seem possible just to pick some arbitrary group (Canadians, for example) and build a hate program against them.

Moslems are not an arbitrary group (like Canadians). They are (I gather) new immigrants in places like Australia, just as they are in parts of the United States. They are somewhat insular (language, dress, religious customs, diet, etc.). The immigrants themselves are not terrorists, of course, but they are co-religionists with some terrorists 9/11, Islamic state, Boco Haram, etc.) I would imagine that for many people in England, IRA terrorists did little to improve the reputation of the Irish.

Merely being admitted to a country can seem like an undeserved privilege to someone not inclined to like some group. Why and how did Minnesota go from zero to 80,000 Moslem Somalis in 30 years???

So, in my view, it takes quite a bit to breed a fire-breathing hate group willing to perpetrate lethal violence. Policing speech is too easy, and leads to suppression of speech of many kinds that have nothing to do with hate (like calling a horse "gay" apparently).

When people get arrested for calling a horse “gay” I think we can say that this is a problem. — I like sushi

WTF? Was a horse upset, frightened, or annoyed by being called gay? As in "I don't care what people do, so long as they don’t do it in the streets and frighten the horses!" (The attribution for this quote seems to be unclear.) Hey, some horses are queer, they're here, so get used to it.

So, I guess from now on haters of homosexual horses will just have to shut the fuck up.

I can't tell whether it was racist or not. Can you provide the twit's tweet text?

Calling Sikhs Moslems, or visa versa, is not racist. It could be that our alleged comedienne (I don't know whether she is funny or not) just doesn't know the difference between a Moslem and a Sikh. Or a sheik and a shack, or shit from shinola.

A question on Dutch meat and dairy production: It wasn't clear to me whether the Dutch are producing all of the fodder and grain / protein which they need to produce quality milk, cheese, ham, etc. Are they importing animal feed?

Similarly, Denmark produces various export crops and products; is Denmark producing their animal feeds, or are they importing those? (The Danes used to import most of the animal feed they needed.)

I'm not asking the question as a criticism; I found the information in the video on Dutch production to be very impressive. A lot of the red/yellow/orange sweet bell peppers we eat in the US are Dutch imports. (The cost is between $3 and $4 a pound; domestic green bell peppers are about $1 a pound.

The expansiveness of US, Canadian, Australian, and Argentinian fields makes it easier to foist highly industrial processes on farmers there. Obviously, RoundUp ready tomatoes grown in a greenhouse makes no sense.

It's pretty amazing. Several very large corporations, like Monsanto, DuPont, Bayer, Dow, etc. own or have controlling interests in dozens of other companies that are part of the Ag. business.


https://civileats.com/2019/01/11/the-sobering-details-behind-the-latest-seed-monopoly-chart/

But seriously, government intervention is needed. A young man can not just start farming. Capital is needed -- cash, machinery, seed stock, animal stock, housing, and so forth. The government can help in several ways: university training in agriculture (quite a few state universities have colleges of agriculture); trade-school level training in agriculture; active university-based agricultural extension services; state financing; busting up the seed/herbicide/pesticide monopoly, so that farmers can buy self-perpetuating seed stock, and seeds not dependent on the seed company's herbicide (RoundUp Ready corn, for example).

Giant corporate control of agriculture has to be ended, and that requires state action on the highest level.

A young man starts farming. He has children. He convinces the children that farming is the best thing in the world (evidence to the contrary). Rinse and repeat every 20 years.

I haven't checked this, but it seems to me that tree-crops (apples, pears, apricots, peaches, oranges, pecans, almonds, walnuts, etc.) have very high value and weight per acre. And forestry on land that is too steep for anything else can, in the very long run, be profitable. A large walnut or oak tree (maybe 80 years old) is worth quite a bit a cash.

I'm all in favor of small farms, organic methods, minimum tillage, truck farming, and so on. There is nothing impractical about any of this. Before WWII agriculture was conducted considerably differently than it is now, 70 years later. Farms were much smaller, herbicide/pesticide application was minimal compared to present practice, production was much ore diversified, and so on.

What are the barriers to our returning to pre-WWII farming methods and organization?

1. Over the last two and three generations, farms have been consolidated into large acreages (where the lay of the land allows for big flat fields);

2. very few young farmers are available to begin farming on 200 acre farms, even if they were given the land and capital;

3. the machinery used for diversified family farms is no longer being made (smaller tractors, various kinds of tillers, rakes, etc.);

4. seed production (from which crops are planted) has become a hostage of seed, herbicide, and pesticide corporations like Bayer and Monsanto, et al.

None of these barriers are insurmountable, but they would take a generation or two to overcome

We don't know whether we would be able to attain the current level of production in corn, wheat, soy, cotton, sorghum, oats, and so forth in a rediversified, small-farm re-arrangement. We will certainly be able to produce as many apples, potatoes, cabbages, rutabagas, carrots, kales, and cucumbers as we do now, and probably better.

All these changes would have to be forced -- I don't mean by soviet style collectivization -- by very intrusive governmental action more akin to to WWII production mobilization. The technology of small farming hasn't been lost -- it has been merely neglected. But it would certainly take time (a generation) to train in a generation of novice farmers in how to manage crops and animals and manage farm finances -- never an easy task.

we export a lot, we also import a lot more. — unenlightened

Most countries do, because other countries grow food that are in demand. Like, hard sausage from Italy, apricots from Turkey, olives from Greece, wine and cheese from France, etc. Basmati rice from India is far superior to "texmati" grown in Texas or California. California supplies much of the world with almonds. Iran is a major supplier of pistachio nuts. Some of it is a bit absurd -- selling Jaffa oranges in California, for instance, or importing cheese into Wisconsin (where the license plates say "eat cheese or die").

1 United States 72,682,349.79
2 Germany 34,628,800.73
3 United Kingdom 29,540,218.71
4 China 25,152,286.27
5 France 24,114,557.76
6 Netherlands 23,271,570.93
7 Japan 21,870,881.77
8 Canada 21,803,448.88
9 Belgium 15,742,034.88
10 Italy 13,890,507.81 — ssu

$73 million??? SSU, where did you get these numbers from, and what do they represent?

A quick search showed that the value of just two US food exports--soybeans $12 billion, and corn $10 billion, greatly exceeds the figure you cited. Total US food exports last year were expected to be about $144 billion.

Oh my! It IS SO EASY to shovel good advice off the back of the truck. Be sure to take it with a grain (or 10) of salt.

I notice I tend to seek attention in conversation and always talk about myself. Its almost natural for me to do so. — Perchperkins

Everybody likes to talk about themselves; why should you be any different?

My goal is to get into real estate. I have a friend who I envy who is a mentor to me, who lives in Florida. He moved down there on his own dime at 18, and two years later he is now selling multi-million dollar homes and is meeting incredible people every day. This seems incredibly appealing to me. The sole reason he got to where he is, is because he is a phenomenal people person. He knows how to connect with people and make people feel wanted. — Perchperkins

And he isn't taking medication for anxiety, I bet. He may be ideally cut out for selling real estate in Florida. You might not be. Mercifully, most people are not suited for selling expensive real estate in a part of the country that will be under water before too many years.

Ive known that this job isn't helping me reach my full potential for a year or so and because of it I have become very bitter towards myself because I didn't do what I KNOW is right and find another job. — Perchperkins

Most employers are not in the business of helping people reach their full potential. You are working there to help your boss reach HIS full potential. That's just the way the world works. You can improve your people skills wherever you happen to be, as long as you are around other people. You are working your way through college. A job is a job; most jobs aren't going to be thrilling experiences. I worked in various jobs for 42 years, and most of the time working was not terribly enjoyable. Maybe... 10 years in all were really good. The other 32 -- pfffftttt. But that's just life as it is. There is a reason people have to be paid to go to work. Nobody would do it for free.

Be nice to other people. Listen to them as much as you can. (But, to be honest, we all want to talk about ourselves, too. I AM the most interesting person I know, after all.) Say pleasant things to other people, even if it is faked. Try to say it like you mean it. (That's what small talk is about. It's important, even if it 99% bogus. It isn't what we say in small talk; it's that we are standing together chatting pleasantly, that is important.)

Accept who you are. That may seem difficult; who wants to be a socially anxious person on medication? Well, that's where you are right now, and you are doing the best you can with the cards you were dealt. The cards we get are mostly a matter of luck, not because we deserve them, and we may not ever get a hand that will win all the money on the table.

Remember: you are a young person. You are still working on who you are.

You say your mother is bipolar. Is she receiving psychiatric care? If so, what, and if not, why not?

I take it your mother's feet are sufficient recovered from surgery that she is up and about. Right? Also, I assume you and your brother are at least somewhat financially dependent on your parents. Your father travels for work, but how does he understand the situation?

Your mother is mentally ill. She's smoking pot and drinking... how much? (This is not good.) Is she following post-operative care instructions? Is she diabetic? What kind of foot surgery did she have?

This sounds like a very messy situation, but here are a few pointers:

You and your brother (how old is he?) can establish some boundaries around what you will do and what you won't do, what she really should be doing for herself, and where she needs help. "Boundaries" are not ultimatums. just decide what you can reasonably do and what you can reasonably put up with. When your mother wants you to do something that is within what you consider acceptable, do it cheerfully. When what she wants is outside of what you think reasonable, tell her that [whatever it is] is something she should be doing for herself--assuming that she can.

If she makes a big mess in the kitchen while high (and or intoxicated), tell her (nicely) that it isn't healthy for her to be high, intoxicated, and cooking. (The risk of accident and injury is higher.) She should be as mobile as she can possibly be. If she is thirsty and can get a drink of water herself, then she should get up and get it--for her own good.

People who are depressed or manic are not in their right minds (at least some of the time). Bi-polar can be very disruptive for everyone concerned. Just bear that in mind when her behavior is inappropriate. Your best bet is to be kind, be consistent, be supportive, and maintain your limits. Your doing EVERYTHING she wants you to do, your absorbing ALL of her MI behaviors will not help her.

You are in college? What year? In the not too distant future, you won't be living at home.

She didn't ask to be bi-polar. She didn't ask to have foot surgery -- those things are not her fault. You may not like the way she is, but her ability to cope with her own problems may be fairly limited.

(I don't know anything about your mother or your family, of course so... take all this with several grains of salt.)

We can define "natural" (from nature) quite precisely but it may not make any difference in how the word is used. That's because the connotations of "natural" are so positive.

"Middle English (in the sense ‘having a certain status by birth’): from Old French, from Latin naturalis, from natura ‘birth, nature, quality.

The phenomena of the physical world collectively, including plants, animals, the landscape, and other features and products of the earth, as opposed to humans or human creations.

The basic or inherent features of something, especially when seen as characteristic of it.

Humans are natural; a computer is not natural? Petroleum is natural; what about polystyrene?

A computer is unnatural; polystyrene is unnatural. Strong negative connotations are attached to the word "unnatural". they are perverse, abnormal; obscene maybe; they don't belong here; etc.

Humans, by our nature, compound, invent, build, change and destroy things. It's normal for us; natural. That our natural compounding, inventing, building, changing, and destroying things can get out of hand, can backfire, and can threaten our own existence doesn't mean it is unnatural. What it means is that homo sapiens sapiens is naturally a high risk species--high risk for themselves, and high risk for many other species.

The human activities conducted in the advertising industry have, naturally, screwed up the meaning of natural; advertisers are liars by profession, and are prone to call all sorts of things "natural" that are highly contrived and loaded with man-made chemicals. So just disregard the words "nature", "natural" "cage free", "organic", "farm fresh", "grass fed", and so on when you when you see it in advertising and packaging.

Letting chickens spend all day outside, wandering around in green pastures big enough for 20,000 large birds (if not several times that many) is just not going to happen. Yes, we could employ people to collect eggs from wherever the chicken might happen to lay them, but then they would cost a lot more than $1.89 a dozen. Small flocks of chickens can be raised outside, and really small flocks can be kept inside humane chicken coops where the chickens can law their eggs in boxes. Those chickens aren't going to end up in the mass market.

Milk can be produced from pastured dairy cattle; but note, it takes a lot of acreage to produce enough milk to supply all the markets in a metropolitan area, never mind a region. And then there is late fall, winter, and early spring when there isn't enough grass (at least in the north) to keep a few cows happy, never mind many thousand. The cows that give milk in January in Minnesota are not eating grass; they are eating hay, grain, and fermented corn stalks (which they really like).

If you want actually fresh orange juice, you usually have to make it yourself.

I'm far closer to being homeless than to being even slightly rich.

All that and more. "Decades" are significant only when they really do start at the moment of change. Prohibition began in 1920; the effects of prohibition marked the entire decade. The Great Depression started (more or less at the end of 1929, and lasted throughout the decade. WWII, on the other hand, engaged the US from 1942 to 1945--which isn't to say we had not noticed that there was a war in Europe. The Big Event of the 1960s was the introduction of the Birth Control Pill in 1960. BUT, it wasn't till 1965 The Supreme Court (in Griswold v. Connecticut) gave married couples the right to use birth control. So, clearly it took time for the oral contraceptive to become widely available and accepted -- maybe by mid-decade. The summer of love was 1967; Stonewall was 1969. The Berkeley Free Speech Movement was in 1964-65. JFK inaugurated the decade, but then was assassinated early on. Maybe NASA was a leitmotiv throughout the 1960s. Even the War in Vietnam doesn't square very well with the dates of the decade. What happened in 1970-1980? Nothing that I can remember that marked the whole decade.

Were I really smart, I would know whether it was a better Idea to agree with you two or say "you must be kidding". I do like the sound of people saying I am smart, but I have solid evidence of me not being very smart when it really mattered.

Another thing about Reagan is that he was losing his mind from early alzheimers (while he was still president).

I don't think so. I don't know what my IQ is. There are vast encyclopedias of info I know zero about. On some subjects I can fake encyclopedic knowledge because I've had a lot of time in the last several years to read a lot. If an expert on some topic I wrote glibly about challenged me, they'd find my installed base of information to be kind of thin.

The other thing is a reasonably good memory. There are also the frequent consultations with Google and Wikipedia which you don't know about. I can't remember where I left my keys, but I do remember bits of stuff from documentaries, most of it is useless.