The French -- or at least some French -- seem to have a history of collective action which American workers don't seem to manifest. One thinks of the much more frequent strikes in France, of student demonstrations, ands so on. I don't think the French state differs all that much from other states -- they are in business to arrange the affairs of the bourgeoisie, as Marx said -- and if they have been generous with working class benefits, well, that is probably in the past.

Americans in the home of the brave, the land of the free are under more thorough control--not "self-control" but the external control of threatened force and deprivation of employment without a safety net. One doesn't see active resistance very often in the US. Occupy Wall Street was a good experience for participants but it wasn't active resistance. No one went out on strike, traffic was not blocked on major thoroughfares, no effort was made jam the gears of commerce, etc.

And it isn't as if most American workers have it so good that there is no motivation to resist the Corporation and the State. Most workers are being subjected to a gradual multi-decade impoverization whose source is difficult to identify. Taxes, very weak growth in wages (or none), diminished benefits, inflation, shrinking well-paid workforce, growing low-paid service workforce, new costs (things like cable, internet, cellphone service) have been added to old costs, reduced social services, and more contribute to the significantly reduced wellbeing of American workers.

One can hope that Americans will take a hint and follow the suit with the gilets jaunes, but I wouldn't count on it. The memory of active resistance to the power of corporation and state has, I think, become too distant for most Americans.

Amy Klobuchar: FLICKED.

Morally sensitive people will feel like "all of the above".

Take Amy Klobuchar, my esteemed senior Senator from Minnesota. What on earth does this woman bring to the task? She's possibly a nice person -- even if she was a nasty boss -- throwing a binder at one of her employees and hitting him in the head. Does that qualify her to be Leader of the Free World? Her highest achievement before the Senate was podunk County attorney. Big deal. Her most famous line around here is "Bridges are not supposed to fall down in Minnesota" -- after the Interstate Highway 35 bridge over the Mississippi River collapsed during rush hour a few years back.

I propose the Ticket of Bernie Sanders for President with Pete Buttigieg for VP, the 37 year old gay mayor of South Bend, Indiana. Does Buttigieg know shit from shinola? Maybe. But an old socialist and a young gay guy would be at least a novel combo. He seems sensible.

My goodness; it's been such a long time since the days when I hung out at The Factory and I taught Mr. Warhola everything he knew. :rofl:

I enjoy observing artistic figures at a distance. Had I at a young age been dropped into the middle of Warhol's life I am pretty sure I would have fled in horror. Could I use a time machine to take my present self back to the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s New York City (and dear god, I wish I could) I'd find it fascinating -- the beats, Warhol and Company, Mapplethorpe -- all those and many more. At the time they were doing their thing in New York (and elsewhere) I was living a life of arrested development (really!) in the backwater provinces of the upper midwest. In my life, a Campbell soup can label was a Campbell soup can label and not an object of pop art.

Just a few years ago I read Alan Ginsberg's poetry and other beat works with appreciation for the first time. When I was a young man I was too stupid to get it. I tried, but was developmentally way worse off than a day late and a dollar short. I didn't start catching up until later.

One goes along the road of life and one often comes to a forking road. Maybe a fellow traveler urges one to take the road into the dimly lit side street where a lot of interesting things seem to be going on, but the other road is well lighted, familiar, and safer. I tended -- not always but often -- to stick to the safer fork. It was probably a good thing. Plunging into all the interesting things going on in the side street would probably have led to either an early death or an early awakening... One has to keep one's bearings, though.

So I like the Warhol prints I've seen in museums, and in books. I've seen a couple of documentaries about Warhol and he was an impressive worker.

Your opinion about Andy Warhol, please.

At the rate we are going, I think we are laying the necessary groundwork for implementing a thorough-going anti-natalist plan.

@Blakley seems to have read something about hunter-gatherer societies. I have not -- I know what I hear from a friend who has recently gotten into anthropology/archeology and has been intensely reading about it.

Anthropologists seem to think that modern day hunter-gatherer tribes (what few of them left there are) are a good sample of what HG societies were 200,000 years ago. It seems to me probably that HG people evolved and developed over time. Whether the HG societies we see today are the same as they were 200,000 years ago, I doubt. in his book THE BETTER ANGELS OF OUR NATURE, Pinker said that archeological evidence suggests that the 200,000 years ago HG societies were pretty violent (based on the number of skulls that were bashed in).

Anyway, from your perspective been born has been a bad deal for a long time. Being born seems to have been a bad deal ever since animals evolved the means of eating each other. Nature red in tooth and claw, and all that gory mess.

choosing for someone to be born, is to bring someone who will try to enculturate and labor for society. — schopenhauer1

This principle is much less clear in mass society than it was in simpler agricultural societies -- and that wasn't a long time ago--just a couple of hundred years. Breeding slaves for future laborers would be the most obvious example, but free farmers expected children to labor, too.

The exchange of work and rewards in mass society is just a lot more rococo than it is in simple societies, and it's harder to keep track of the simple details. Not working, and being a consumer of goods and services, is a real role in mass industrialized mature capitalism. Children fill that roll for at least 18 to 26 years, depending on how long they are in school. Everyone receiving support for old age and disabilities fits into that group. And of course, the idle rich parasites.

Consuming without working is an absolutely essential function. In a modern economy (like ours currently is) where consumption amounts to 72% of the GDP, buying stuff -- consuming -- is an essential task. Buying stuff is dirty work, but somebody has to do it.

Of course, if we consumed less some people would have to work less.

Suppose automation took over all work -- from raising food to high fashion. Would being born still be such a bad deal? E. M. Forster wrote a science fiction noel around a century ago, The Machine Stops. In it machines supplied everything we needed. Individuals lived in 6 sided cells (not prison cells, more like bee hive cells) where everything they needed was supplied by The Machine. The function of people was to produce and consume ideas. One had to apply to the directorate to be a parent. That was all fine and dandy for a long time, until The Machine started wearing out and eventually stopped. Bad things happened at that point.

Great story. A PDF is here.

realize that happiness itself is the problem. — Wallows

People who are happy -- some how, some what, some time, some where -- don't think happiness is the problem. professing indifference to happiness reminds one of the fox and the grapes in Aesop's fable: the fox couldn't jump high enough to reach the luscious grapes, so she left muttering, "They were probably sour, anyway." -- hence the expression, sour grapes.

I doubt if anyone can become even moderately never mind completely indifferent to pleasure and satisfaction. It's wired in. We need it. Indeed, the effort to affect indifference to pleasure, satisfaction, good feelings is more a validation of happiness than a rejection.

In a strange manner, I feel as though I have leaped ahead of my psychoevolution and am living as if I were an old man. Nothing bothers me anymore, I feel content, I have someone I care for, and I feel safe and secure. — Wallows

Is that not happiness?

From an old man to a man who is not old yet, what you describe makes me think you have achieved contentment. You were expecting happiness to be a rip roaring orgasm? Take your breath away?

the supreme philosophical goal of eudaimonia. — Wallows

How do you define the state of eudaemonia? Must it mean "happiness" (which is, unfortunately, a very overworked term)? Maybe eudaemonia is being contented, flourishing; getting on with living your life in a way that you find satisfactory and consistent with your values.

Every one of us has to define what a good life is, and it will vary from person to person. I don't think that Eudaemonia should be narrowed down to a highly specific meaning.

It's 2:30 a.m. Time to go to bed, happy or not. Good night.

After years of reading various books, magazines, internet forums, this forum, public radio talk shows, and the like, I am heartily sick of hearing about sexism and racism, homophobia, body elitism, classism, and so on and so forth.

It isn't that I like, approve of, and practice crude racism and sexism, homo hatred, body elitism, classism and every new "----ist" oppression. I don't. What I dislike intensely are the frankly highly imaginative ways that extremely esoteric offenses are put forward as crimes against humanity. I hate the "non-negotiable demands" of the craptivists who seek out these imaginary offenses which are, frankly, just self-righteous tantrums in many cases. Frankly, the academic demonstrators yowling about sexism, racism, transphobia, etc. are not compelling. They are repellent.

Discrimination based on race and sex seems to be declining, even if it hasn't begun to disappear, and when it occurs it's usually not symbolic. It's material. For instance...

There is nothing symbolic about financial institutions targeting poor neighborhoods (black, hispanic, native American, white) for exclusion from home loan programs. There is nothing symbolic about bad schools in core urban areas. There is nothing symbolic about the high and rising rates of HIV, AIDS, and STDs in the gay black, gay hispanic populations. There is nothing symbolic about 1% of the population controlling more wealth than 99% (or however the percentages are distributed). There is nothing symbolic about women who work 8-10 hours a day on the job also doing 85% (or more) of work at home. And so on.

The most intense, and harmful forms of discrimination boil down to discrimination based on class. People with very little -- or no -- wealth are severely discriminated against by very wealthy people. This is just plain old classism. One could rightly say,"When it comes to discrimination, the only war is the class war."

Those who have the most wealth have the most power, and they clearly intend to keep both their wealth and their power. THEY are not going to share their wealth or their power with US. THEY are going to keep US as oppressed and powerless as is convenient. The overthrow of the class system (of highly disproportionate wealth and continual exploitation of workers) is the SINGLE most important cause -- the key "site of resistance".

(Sure environmental disaster is important too -- and the means of making more and more CO are in the hands of the ruling class. So again, the only war is the class war.)

Workers of the world unite, etc.

In these later years, I have spent a lot of time evaluating the course of my life and have often wondered, "What intervention, taken at the right time, what kind of program, might have significantly changed my life so that it would have turned out 'better'?" Not that my life was or is terrible. It wasn't; it isn't. But one wonders...

What I lacked at age 18 was maturity. Four years in college, two years in the domestic Peace Corps; a couple of years of graduate school helped enormously by giving me time to grow up some. My entry into the real world was delayed by 8 years. Finally, at age 26, i landed a responsible professional job, had an apartment and was living a more or less normal life.

The next 40 years were a bumpy ride -- there were some peak periods and several long ditches.

Could school (at any time from K to 17) have taught me what I apparently had not learned very well on my own? Such as...

how to conduct a satisfactory sex life?
how to work constructively in very volatile political settings?
how to understand the nature of (my own) mental health and mental illness?
how to effectively pursue life plans...

I've been around long enough to know these are common problems. Many people have chaotic sex and family lives because they don't know the basics of relationships (among other things). Community groups often come together to address important issues, and find their efforts disrupted by intense conflict over ends and means. People experience intense anger, loneliness, fear, alienation, confusion, etc. -- even actual depression -- without having enough self-knowledge to see that their functioning is failing. Millions (billions?) of people can not maintain long term plans (like... 5 to 10 years) to achieve desirable and practical goals.

Having these good features adds up to being effective persons. Let's say that 60% to 70% of the population consists of at least effective people, including many who are highly effective. Still, that's 30% to 40% of the population that flounders about ineffectively. COULD SOMETHING HAVE BEEN DONE TO IMPROVE THEIR PERFORMANCE?

Maybe not. Skills are at least somewhat normally distributed. The largest group of people are going to be reasonably effective; smaller groups are going to be very effective, and some are going to be ineffective to very ineffective. The distribution is probably skewed in favor of "ineffective".

Can we suppose that everybody can be a big success? No, we can not. There are too many variables in intelligence, background (race, class, sex, physical health / physical handicap, wealth / poverty, etc.) birth order, # of siblings, family health or disorganization, quality of communities and schools, genetics, disinvestments, and so forth. If children reach K or 1st grade with significant deficits, it is almost a certainty that the child will either overcome them himself, or will suffer negative outcomes. Children can not be started over under better circumstances.

IF in the United States, 30% to 40% of the 56.6 million children in school (K-12) have significant life-skill deficits, those 16.8 million to 22.4 million children are too numerous to provide provide remediation--assuming we knew what effective remediation looked like.

I think a certain level of individual failure in life is inevitable--more inevitable now than in the past when the technical demands of work, play, learning, etc. contained more -- and simpler -- options.

If an individual has no empathy for a particular individual or small group of similar individuals, they will likely not be thinking about this individual or small group, and they won't be interested in them either. Emotions, like empathy, sympathy, sorrow, love, fear, anger, joy, etc. are what prompt us to think and behave with respect to things and other people.

If you discount empathy, you are devaluing the prime mover of behavior. Delete the prime mover from your thinking, and you won't know jack shit.

Emotion and cognition don't operate in isolation from each other -- they are reciprocating pistons. It takes both parts. Feeling and thinking together leads to insight, discovery, the "ah ha!" moment.

I'm not saying we should give up on trying to understand others but rather than it should be obvious that it won't be easy to do that — Judaka

So you are telling us that understanding other people is hard. Who knew? You discount knowledge and empathy as both being insufficient. So, we use emotional and intellectual tools to try and understand each other -- which you say is not enough.

What is the upshot? What else have you got?

Someone capable of empathy about another's situation still has to employ rational analysis to really understand their situation. Anyone might feel empathy for a homeless person, but knowing something about the rates of homeless, the causes of homelessness, the existence of programs for the homeless, and a little bit about actually being homeless will have a much better understanding of the homeless than somebody who can only identify with their misfortune.

And sometimes empathy is pretty thin and cold. For instance, people who say they feel empathy for the homeless, but wouldn't give them cash because they might use it to buy alcohol are not actually empathetic -- they're being judgmental. If I were homeless, I would consider it entirely appropriate that I should salve my misery with a few beers, especially in the hot summer. If I were addicted, I would consider buying a hit (of whatever I needed) as a necessary thing.

When you say "obey" and "obedience" are you referencing the kind of obedience that a dog exhibits when it is commanded to sit, stay, heel, etc. or the kind of obedience that (99.9% of) Americans exhibit when a Highway Patrol orders them to pull over. These obedience behaviors are practically like reflexes. Lights and siren, one pulls over. One wouldn't think of doing anything else.

On the other hand, there is obedience to laws, warnings, and the like. Obedience and non-compliance is too complicated to be rote. Complying with IRS rules requires interpretation. A warning about how to mix, and how not to mix, chemical x and y together may take up several pages of discussion. Obedience will be a very careful, rational response.

It seems like many powerful authorities would like to receive rote obedience. "Jump!" when I say "jump." Quick and (largely automatic) obedience requires training -- whether of a dog or of a soldier or a child. Dogs and people are not naturally inclined to do what they are told. Obedience training has to get over the "Why should I?" response. "What's in it for me?" (Self-interest doesn't have to be a consciously worked-out position.)

People can make a rational decision to undergo obedience training -- they sign up for military service.

A lot of homeless people have other sorts of chains. Drug addiction, alcohol addiction, psychological problems, to name a few. — Tzeentch

This is totally true -- usually people who are reasonably well put together don't end up sleeping in doorways.

But, I have known two who were well put together charming, cultured people who did become homeless -- they were sheltered, fed, clothed, and so forth -- but they lost their homes. One's circumstances can change from solvent to broke in a very short period of time, and if you are broke... bad things happen.

Casting off one's material chains -- the vast array of stuff we keep -- is a very difficult, radical step which I think requires very strong 'spiritual' (for lack of a better term) motivation. Living simply (there's a movement and apps for that) or voluntary poverty (not very popular) are more secular routes. Voluntary poverty / simple living has a lot to recommend it, and I've tried it off and on several times.

The best example of voluntary poverty I can cite is the Catholic Worker Movement started by Dorothy Day and Peter Marin (back in the 1930s). Their mission was to serve the homeless and neglected, and they practiced poverty themselves, though as Day said, poverty is both commendable and a horror. She became a devout Catholic from her starting point as a secular leftist journalist. Christianity (in the form of pre-Vatican II Catholicism) provided her with the spiritual structure that made her work possible -- for her and for others in the movement.

Material reality isn't quite as generous as you make it seem. Adequate food -- never mind really good food, adequate clothing for the season (winter, where winter is a harsh material reality), and shelter -- beyond a reasonably adequate location in a box under a bridge, is not guaranteed, and in many places is a pay-or-drop-dead deal.

Yes, there really are people who go hungry, poorly clothed, and homeless even though they are able, willing, and even actually working. At Our Saviour Shelter, for instance, about 10% of the clients work. Housing has become too costly for them.

Are there people actually living in boxes under bridges in midwestern winters? There are. There are many more in California where, while it might not snow, can be very cool and wet.

Social resources are ratcheted: it's much easier to go down than back up. Once you fall off the bottom rung of the ladder, you find that the first rung to get back on is quite a ways above one's reach. It is very hard to overcome the disadvantage of hitting the bottom. Do people literally starve and freeze to death? Yes. It may take time, but hunger, exposure, and homelessness are life-shortening conditions.

they think they cannot live without — Tzeentch

Like food, shelter, clothing... stuff like that.

Status? The urge to maintain a high standard of living? Social pressures?
The value of these matters is all illusory in nature. — Tzeentch

Status can be measured in very small increments. If you are living on the street, having a piece of dirty, deteriorating foam rubber to lay on is a step up from laying on the bare concrete; having a cardboard box to sleep in is a step up from not having a box. living in a noisy, smelly, cockroach ridden efficiency is many steps above having a box. Living in an old small house is many steps up from the efficiency. Living on the 33rd floor of the new condo building is a step up from living on the fifth floor. Living in the 80th floor penthouse (and having the whole floor to yourself) is many steps up from the 33rd floor condo -- as nice as that was. Having a fake Picasso is many steps above having a house full of abstract depressionist paintings by your sister-in-law in Cincinnati, Ohio, for god's sake.

That all this status is illusory is a rather harsh judgement. If you are sweating day and night to plunder the pension funds of auto workers, you had jolly well better believe that the status is real.

It takes more than one's self to strive for status, because status requires the jealous comparisons of one's peers. If absolutely no one gives a rat's ass about your new kitchen, what has one gained? Well, the $40,000 stove gets hot, but so did the old one. The deluxe 360º glass refrigerator gets cold, but so did the one you bought from Ikea. The granite counter top, imported from a nicely distant quarry allows you to chop up turnips, but so did the old Formica counter top.

Status requires a jealous crowd. No crowd, no status.

"Work! Strive! Persevere! You are all victims of a monstrous hoax."

You are very generous in your praise.

Isn't Democracy just an illusion made out of a Hollywood movie — pbxman

Not really -- Hollywood hasn't been around that long.

The quality of governance in the United States varies a great deal from national to state to county and city levels. It differs from place to place, and it differs over time. There are too many moving parts to all the political mechanisms to allow for gross generalizations and over-simplifications.

Not least among the moving parts are the electorate who have something to do with the quality of our political life in this sort of democratic republic. Then of course there are a lot of very focussed efforts being applied to the electorate to keep us too confused to vote boldly for better results.

Governments tend to be most attentive to those with the most power in society -- the wealthiest people. The United States has a lot of wealthy people who have seen to it that their interests are well protected.

As Karl Marx put it, "Government is a committee to organize the affairs of the richest people." We see this principle reenacted again and again where national, state, and local governments--elected all--hand over to the wealthiest citizens benefits.

Here's an example: The owners of the Minnesota Twins and the Minnesota Vikings both wanted new facilities, paid for largely at public expense. The voters in Minneapolis rejected the plans (for both teams) because they didn't want yet another sales tax surcharge tacked on to help pay for the venues which, to be honest, most citizens would never use. Further, the owners of the teams would be the primary beneficiaries.

What happened? The state government over-rode the popular vote and imposed the cost of the facilities on the metro area.

So much for democracy, right?

:up:

What say you — schopenhauer1

There are several points here with which I can agree, or not.

I'm going to define politics as trying to or actually achieving influence/control over a community of people. — schopenhauer1

That's 1/2 of politics; the other half is resisting control. Individuals and groups prefer to maximize autonomy, just as surely as the goal of some individuals and groups is to minimize others' autonomy. Scale matters here: parents must exercise control and limit autonomy of children in order to keep them safe and prepare them for autonomous life. Family life is the genesis of politics. Employers exercise control and limit the autonomy of workers in order to operate an enterprise. That's economics shading into politics. The kingdom, satrapy, nomenklatura, senate, party, ministry, chancellory, etc. is about control. That's politics.

The first act of control over us is being born in the first place. — schopenhauer1

This has been discussed at great length from many points of view.

De facto, being born throws more workers into the grist mill of the economic-political system. The first coercive act is throwing a new human into the labor force to be used as a source of labor. Socialist/communist societies are more transparent that this is what a person is in a sociological setting. Capitalism has a gloss of "individualism" that simply puts a thin veil over the fact that the individual is used as a source of labor with the principle of the "invisible hand". We were never born for ourselves, but always on the account of another. — schopenhauer1

Karl Marx (and maybe others before or beside him) called it "reproducing society". People don't just reproduce themselves through effective parenting, they reproduce the personnel and the roles required at all levels of society. In mass societies, individuals existing for themselves is a necessary illusion. We don't -- we can not -- exist just for ourselves--and we never could, even in a primitive hunter-gatherer band.

No mass political system -- whether capitalist or collectivist -- can afford to be overly transparent. There are various necessary illusions. Stating the terms of existence baldly, "You are free insofar as you obey", is unappealing. "Your primary function is to serve". "Your task is to consume as much as possible." "Work, or else." "Vote!" -- even though it is often a meaningless gesture; we require a sign of your consent to be governed.

In fact, it is an impossibility to live for oneself — schopenhauer1

Yes, but let's be a little more nuanced about it. Life is too difficult to live only for oneself. The requirements of life require toil which one person alone cannot perform. We need and we must be helpers. We require both sources and objects of love and comfort--and so on.

People are de facto coerced into laboring. This I believe to be a harm to the individual. — schopenhauer1

Well, I would say the harm to the individual is being coerced into laboring for somebody's interest not his own. "Work or else..." when the labor is for the greater wealth of the ruling class; when the labor is too poorly rewarded to enjoy life; when the cost of labor is an early death -- all that is indeed a harm to the individual.

People are not free- they are social factors, social products. The individual, first person point of view, matters not in the political sphere. — schopenhauer1

It is true that we are not free, since we are not vaporous spirits whose existence is above the material plane. We are material, social, and individual beings. As such we can not be free of the demands of a material world.

So, "The individual, first person point of view, matters not in the political sphere" is clearly not true--even in a mass society where individual political freedom is highly constrained. It can not be true because the individual POV have always been the starting point of change that threatens to bring down the superstructure of power. Thinking about how things work occurs in individual minds, and when individual minds start comparing notes and when two, and two, and fifty, then a million... change can happen.

You, for instance, are an individual with a distinct POV beating the drum of antinatalism. You are not the only individual with a distinct POV about the futility of reproduction and a sensitivity to the ethical dilemma of bringing children into this particular world. You (obviously and correctly) think there is some point in expressing your individual point of view.

You could form a political group of antinatalists, and (you might be surprised) have remarkable success in promoting non-reproduction as an ethical act of resistance.

I'm not saying you would be successful, or should be successful, but if you were successful it would be because of individuals' points of view. (And, of course, social conditions that would either favor or negate your various efforts.)

I have no problem with the claim that men are stronger (on average) than women. Greater size, greater strength is one of the noted characteristics of men, compared to women. And, of course, both men and women are (I assume) separately normally distributed with respect to strength -- most people being in the middle of the distribution.

All that I was driving at was that sometimes bad design makes things difficult. Three of us spent 90 minutes trying to figure out how to detach the battery from its case on a VW Golf, and two of us were very mechanically inclined. "Devious" and "obscure" are the words that come to mind for VW's placement of the fastener.

Needless to say there was hardly any gender identification before gay pride took over — kill jepetto

No gender identification, no gender rules before gay liberation? Not so. "Appropriate sex roles" for men and women have been in place and 'policed' for quite a long time. The language changes over time, that's all.

I don't know how old you are, but I was on the scene when "gay pride took over" (granted, in the backwater of Minneapolis).

You've heard of Christine Jorgensen? -- first (famous American anyway) transsexual -- that was in 1951. Transsexual surgery was enough of a thing before 1951 for him to have heard about it before he became her at a hospital in Denmark. In the late 1940s homosexuals were quietly struggling to be merely tolerated, if they were doing anything political. Pride was a ways off.

There have been what were/are called 'gender-benders' in the homosexual community -- drag queens, basically. That was so in the late 1800s, early 1900s homosexual community in Chicago, for instance. It's still the case.

There were a few transsexuals around when gay pride took over in 1969-70. Where else would a transsexual hang out if not at gay bars? They were not tolerated in most places. So, they were absorbed into the gay movement, whether they really belonged there or not. Maybe transsexuals are just drag queens taken to the logical extreme.

Gay liberation is a piece of social change; I wouldn't claim too much credit for it -- or blame either -- for the social changes that have occurred in the last 50 or 60 years. There are too many other changes in process. Women's liberation, black liberation, (and various other ethnic liberations), huge economic changes, and so on. If one takes a Marxist view, economic and technical changes are the foundation for social change. The Pill is a prime example. A new drug enabled huge changes in sexual behavior, because fertility became more easily managed.

Geographical mobility and omnipresent media are two other economic, technical changes that have brought about many changes -- some foreseen, many not, some desired, many greatly regretted, Look how cell phones have changed social behavior.

Exactly! Every cell in his feminated body still has the xy chromosome.

You probably could just considering strength differences. My wife can change a flat tire, I still had to assist her a few weeks ago because she didn't have the grip strength to get the large plastic wingnut that secured the spare tire to the bottom of her SUV's trunk. — Taneras

Just because Superman was the last person to tighten the plastic wing nut on the spare tire shouldn't be taken as a strength deficiency. Maybe your wife just hasn't had to deal with enough wing nuts in her life. (Or maybe she has,) I've been outfoxed on a number of occasions by nuts and bolts,

BC said "Social construction is just egotism: I can be anything I want to be!"

That's not social construction. — bert1

The improved sentence: "I can be anything I want to be!" is socially constructed egotism.

Nor are people with genuine gender dysphoria, as far as I understand, in a position to freely choose what gender to identify with, any more than gay people choose to be gay. — bert1

Homosexuals and heterosexuals, metrosexuals, ambisexuals, ultrasexuals, desexuals, male feminists (aka eunuchs in the haram), those with gender euphoria, dysphoria, and especially those with gender dysphasia*** are all free to IDENTIFY with whatever gender they want. Hell, they can identify with whatever species they want. They just can't really BE any sex or gender they want.

***Gender dysphasia is a relatively recent disorder in which supposedly intelligent people with intact brains spout all sorts of unadulterated nonsense about gender. There is no known treatment, but gagging and handcuffing people with gender dysphasia can help everybody else.

I have never known a woman to mend a puncture on a bicycle. — bert1

IF they are 25 miles out, have a pump, have a patch kit, and don't want to walk 25 miles, they had jolly well better fix it. I've known a woman with a broken chain (on her bicycle) to take out a de-linker, shorten the chain 1 or 2 links, and ride on home in a high gear (because the chain was now shorter and the high gear sprocket is a smaller diameter). (Note to young philosophers: People have not always had cell phones.)

The women at the Hub Bicycle Coop in Minneapolis not only fix flat tires, they do complete bicycle overalls--dirt, grease, solvents, and all. So do the men. Ovaries or testicles just depends on what worker is next up.

I am a male, I know how to fix tires; I have fixed many flat tires. I can't do it any better than a woman with similar practice. I don't carry a de-linker. I know how to shorten a chain, but it's a son of a bitch to do if it is raining ... I'd end up walking.

We have some reasons to minimize genetic influence: being controlled by genes (mere molecules) gets in the way of our determination to be whatever we want to be, however and wherever. Social construction is just egotism: I can be anything I want to be! Children are told that they can grow up to be president of the United States. (During a persons life between 25 years and 85 years of age, at the most 15 people can be president. 299,999.985 out of 300 million are not going to be president. But hey, it could be you, little Hillary, Elizabeth, Amy, Betsy, William, Richard, George, Ronald...)

I'm somewhat persuaded (not going overboard) that our behavior is largely genetically directed. Since we have apparently exhibited cultural traits for a very long time, I think we can safely say that "some sort of culture" is a biological trait. The detailed expression of culture, though, is learned and can be innovated. Use of language is ancient and genetic; book publishing is a mere 700 year old innovation.

Genetically directed sex-role behavior is ancient; the ink hasn't dried yet on the up-to-the-minute cultural innovations in gender theory. The various "gender categories" (numbering in the dozens) suggests that a lot of the ink of gender thinking is not only still wet, but that a lot of it is also malarky. Yes, with hormones, costuming, and surgery a man or a woman can carry role playing to an extreme.

Technology, business practices, trade, corporate power, and so forth have lowered the economic value of individual human beings. As individual value has decreased, irrelevance has increased. The unpleasant fact is, that whether one is a male human or a female human is just less important than it used to be. Outside of being consumers, a lot of people have no economic utility at all. It just doesn't matter much which "gender" they want to play at. They are free insofar as they as they serve an economic function.

Biology plays a long-run game. The details of culture are just daily news. Oliver is now Olivia. George is gender fluid. Amelia wants to be a Navy Seal. It turns out that the serial killer called the Cannibal King is Emma Johnson.

Yes, no matter what you introduce to them in school they go back to that environment. So should school/education be a way of escaping that? Is it more than teachers can do? Some kids go to school because they can get away from that environment for awhile, but they don’t necessarily engage. — Brett

So much critical development takes place during the first several years of life -- before most children get to school -- that the child can arrive at first grade with significant deficiencies. If optimum language development hasn't happened by age 6, the child has a good medium-term chance of not succeeding in school.

Cultural factors and poverty play a critical role. There are significant differences among groups in how much language children are exposed to, and the rule is, the more the better, the more positive the better. Children who are short-changed by hearing significantly less positive and complex verbal discourse from parents and other care givers just miss the boat on language development.

It is very difficult to remediate missed development in children as they grow older. It might not be impossible, but it would be a very intensive and long project.

Peers play a critical role in how well children do in school. IF most children in a given community like school, like reading, like learning, peer support will help. If the prevailing peer culture dismisses school as an unpleasant burden to be avoided, then peer support will go to avoiding learning.

So, that's one thing.

Another thing is cultural turmoil which leaves everyone uncertain about the nature and future of work, the future of our society (in terms of what anyone may need to know in the future), and the uncertainty of the natural environment and the economy.

We really don't know what exactly lays ahead, but it looks like children (and adults) could be running into unforeseen "cultural discontinuities" to use a vague term to cover over some very unpleasant possibilities in the years ahead that render obsolete and/or irrelevant whatever people have learned.

Just for example, to pick up on a trend that isn't getting enough attention... IF the declines in insect populations continues, the economic sustainability of agriculture will begin sinking (because insects pollinate). What kind of knowledge does one need to know if agriculture starts failing? Beats me. Maybe hand pollination of food crops will be a critical skill in the future.

Is it to make good citizens of our children
is it to help them cope in a competitive world
is to make them fit in and maintain traditions
is it to make them fully rounded out human beings
healthy psychologically, physically and spiritually? — Brett

All of the above, but who, what, when, where, how, and why.

Parents have the first and most critical responsibility: psychological, physical and spiritual health. When parents fuck that up, their children are screwed--not invariably, but almost always. Stupid, fucked up people have difficulty delivering healthy children to kindergarten. (There are unfortunate social reasons why some parents are stupid and fucked up; nevertheless, it is a major handicap to the child to have stupid fucked up parents.)

Citizenship is, I supposed, either learned by 5th/6th grade, or you end up with garbage. Some schools do good work in citizenship development. Some schools should be dynamited. (of course, it isn't corrupted bricks and criminal concrete. Of course, it is corrupted, criminally incompetent administrators and teachers who cause the problem. Plus, you can't make marble New England Citizens out of the dirt who populate a degraded slum.

Parents and schools can launch a child into the competitive world, but once out, it is up to the individual to adapt, survive, and succeed without screwing everybody else. Good luck. The facts of life are hard.

Becoming a well-rounded, four-square, and fully human being is a lifelong task, It's not over until it's over.

Whether fitting in and maintaining traditions is a good idea, or not, depends on the traditions. Maybe one should not fit in.

Let's get serious about security. Enough of this sickly inability to use force!

It isn't the physical barrier that effectively keeps people in or out. What works are the land mines, the machine guns, the watchtowers, drones, mobile pounce squads, ill-tempered guards and worse-tempered guard dogs, and a robust desire to use force. It's the summary executions, the avoidance of fussy civil rights rules, the ICE raids where the illegal workers are carted off to labor camps, and so on.

Are their no planes capable of strafing caravans? Where are the box cars to deliver people back to their beloved homelands?

Brick walls? Naaah!

OK, so how's that rational desire limiting working for you?

Most of us have more desires than we can shake a stick at, so it is a good idea to stop wanting everything we can possibly think of. Wanting less gives one more energy to actually obtain some of the stuff one wants. A paradox. Or is that irony? Or divine wisdom? Or just plain nonsense?

And they are not doing that anyway?

Never mind larks on the wing, snails slithering over the thorn, Robert Browning. CO2 levels are rising, our celestial orb is heating up, insect populations are crashing, God is in His heaven and the world is going to hell in a handbasket.

Or, just don't get the body work done -- I mean, if the driver's side door still works, and the windshield is intact, that's pretty much all you need. If your car looks bad enough, other cars will start avoiding you -- bad juju, again. Make it work in your favor.

In far less rarified circumstances than Ming flower pots, I don't like buying even slightly dented cans, or boxes of food that have been slightly crushed. Like the vase (soft 'a' sound, 'z' for 's'), nothing is at stake, really. I've never opened a slightly dented can or slightly crushed box that was anything less than what I expected it to be, but still...

I've observed better-grocers sorting fruit and discarding slightly blemished items. I once asked the produce manager why they did that, and he held up a 'perfect' pear and a slightly blemished pear, and asked me "which one would you buy?" Well, the perfect one, of course. Case closed. Hopefully they donated the slightly blemished pear to a food shelf. THEY CAN'T AFFORD TO BE THAT FUSSY!

When you buy a new car, you should hit the hood with a hammer and put a noticeable dent in it, before you even drive it off the lot. This will relieve the new-car-driver of the horror of getting the perfect new car scratched or scuffed in a parking lot. Just dent the damned thing and get it over with.

Perfection is a maybe-not-quite-literal fetish--less in the sexual sense (being turned on by some thing) and more "bad juju" -- being haunted by a bad vibe. The dented can or barely visible Ming vaaazz is touched by bad juju. It's contaminated. Some people have contaminating power. One might have admired a particular shirt, but if you see it on one of these corroding persons, the shirt is immediately degraded. If Donald Trump were to say he loves to read Dostoyevsky--and worse, quoted something significant from that esteemed author, references to Dostoyevsky would disappear from The Philosophy Forum. Donald Trump's bad juju would spread shit on all of Russian literature for several thousand well-read liberals.

(Fortunately bad juju wears off, and can be cleansed with the appropriate action.)

Of course they should be abolished--not personally, of course. We don't need to liquidate the super rich, just divest them of their ill-gotten gains. Once their financial morbid obesity has been cured, they can work as salaried employees in a research and development company, where they will excrete great ideas for humanity. Or else.

Speaking of research and development, people who think no one will work unless they can get rich, should look at Bell Laboratories (now Lucent Technology). The researchers at Bell Labs came up with many discoveries which enabled various new industries. University researchers come up with new ideas all the time, and generally the University owns the patents. That doesn't mean the researchers aren't rewarded, just that the rewards are reasonable.

Do we have writers like Homer, Shakespeare or Doestoevsky? — Brett

We do not, and we do not have Homer's and Shakespeare's time, either. Dostoyevsky is obviously much closer to us.

Question: Are you an active reader of Homer, Shakespeare, and Dostoyevsky, or are they placeholders for an idealized literature?

I have read Homer and I can't say I came away with much satisfaction. Shakespeare is more accessible, closer to us, but I'd take Dostoyevsky over the other two, any day.

I quit focusing on "great literature" a while back. 19th/20th century history and essays on the contemporary world have taken their place; biography, letters, etc. Short stories, some of which are great literature, are more appealing.

I read fiction, certainly -- but I'm looking for engrossing story lines and interesting characters at this point. Great moral messages, not much.

Peace and War — Number2018

the unabridged edition of War and Peace has a sales rank of 43,486 on Amazon--not bad for a book nobody is reading, when sales ranks run into the hundreds of thousands.

Now, now... let's not be stealing sheep.

My children love Monty Python as much now as I did forty years ago. — andrewk

Before I checked in with TPF, I was watching an old BBC interview program in which John Cleese and another Python were defending recently released The Life of Brian against Malcom Muggeridge and some aged Anglican bishop. The two old farts were lamenting the state of western civilization, and how TLOB mocked Christ, and so on and so forth. I thought Muggeridge and this old bishop had probably contributed a lot more to the near death experience of Christianity in England than Monte Python and all their works did.

Right, I wouldn't recommend anybody watch Monte Python for moral uplift -- that's not what they do. I'm not sure the bishop does that either, frankly. Or Muggeridge. Watch Python for inspired humor and a good laugh.

As you say, Andrew, literature (and the arts all combined) provide a lot of services for us--intellectually, emotionally, morally, and more.

Culture does provide time & trouble saving teaching through parents teaching their children how to behave -- that's the first crack that "the culture" gets. School, church, the playground, and so forth add on more later.

Here's an item in the Guardian (London) about a groundswell in favor of taxing the rich much more heavily. You might find it interesting.