I wasn't thinking of traits like hair color either. I was thinking in terms of "life outcomes". How adaptable we are, how volatile, how insightful, how diligent, how much risk we are comfortable with, how aggressive we are, and so on are all controlled by genes to some extent. Comfort with risk taking is something that genes probably control; whether we actually take risks, when, and where we take them, are probably conditioned by experience.

One thing I do not believe like some thinkers argue is that genes determine a child's outcomes. — Andrew4Handel

Why do you think that genes, which direct the formation and operation of a person, would not determine outcomes? Granted, genes are not the only operator in plant and animal life; there is also the environment which can be quite aversive--shortage of food, too hot, too cold, too wet, too dry, death, etc.

Also one thing about human society is that it is deeply artificial. — Andrew4Handel

At first glance, human society is perversely artificial. Some aspects of society continue to be perverse even after considerable observation, but a lot of "society" is just the result of our particular animal natures. For instance, naked apes that we are, we require shelter from the environment. We lost the big teeth of our ancient forebears, so we do better with cooked food and manageable fruits and vegetables. Shelter and cooking alone -- never mind high fashion and television -- are "artificial" -- depending on artifice.

If you want to read a basic text about socialism, try The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Frederich Engels. The first publication date was 1844, give or take 15 minutes. It's a short work, you can get it for free here at Marxists.org.

Capitalism has been vigorous and relentless in defense of free enterprise and capitalism, so many people in the industrialized west have no knowledge of what Marx and Engels were proposing. It is radical - absolutely, but it isn't utopian. It isn't a long text -- its a short booklet -- but even so there are passages that are not very relevant to the present moment.

For some people, revolutionary conflict would be utopia. There would be a great cause to fight for, a great enemy to fight against -- good vs. evil -- and revolution need not be a violent overthrow of the government. Most Marxists understand that trying to violently overthrow the American system would be a good way to get shot.

Daniel DeLeon, an American Marxist (late 19th, early 20th centuries) argued that IF democratic mechanisms were available, it made sense to use those mechanisms to overthrow capitalism. For Deleon revolution is political, not military. It involves intensive and extensive organization of unions, of political activity, disciplined voting in elections, and so forth.

those old world systems could never lead to a world where every last person is happy, (which I suppose would be the definition of a utopia). So to restate my question from earlier a bit more clearly, do you think that there could be a system of economy or administration that could lead to that? — TogetherTurtle

Utopias have their attractions, but there is a hidden flaw in utopian schemes: Once everything is perfect, everything must stay perfect, and in order to stay perfect, everyone and everything must remain static. Life, given its chaotic nature, is disruptive and things don't stay static for long.

There are non-utopian schemes which might make people happy, but there is yet another problem: People are sometimes extremely unhappy despite themselves. Discontents, mental illnesses, physical ailments, injuries, and so on can leave people unhappy.

The best we can do is design a society where there is a good chance of most people being reasonably happy much of the time. Quite a few systems have achieved something of the sort. What do they have in common? (This is all pure speculation, you understand, prepared from notes written hurriedly on the cuff of my shirt sleeve.)

a) Social conditions are stable, but not rigidly fixed.
b) Social mobility (upward and downward) is possible.
c) Economic measures indicate steady growth with occasional recessions, but no booms or busts.
d) Population growth is at a moderate rate, in line with the economy
e) Public education is excellent, producing a literate, culturally capable population
f) There are no aggressive enemies
g) Government is efficient, honest, and effective
h) Religion tends to be tolerant, flexible and moderate in its demands
i) Industry is conducted on a socialist model, agriculture on a family farm model.
.....

You'll note an emphasis on stability, moderation, good government, excellence in education and 'liberal' religion. This is the sort of society that I think the largest number of people can be happy in. The conditions described are more likely to exist in an economy that is collectivist rather than highly competitive and acquisitive (which is what we have now).

Within this society there will still be unhappiness, but the causes should not issue from the nature of society itself. Our society tend to drive people crazy.

This will probably prove disappointing. It's not much of a utopia -- just something people could live with.

I'm not at all a fan of etiquette or "good manners" for their own sake. I want people to be existentially authentic and to be able to accept difference. — Terrapin Station

\\

Hear! hear!

I'm very pro-difference, pro everyone letting their freak flag fly, and pro being cool with others letting their freak flags fly, no matter how different they may be from your own, no matter how much you wouldn't choose the same things for yourself.

And respect needs to be earned.

What solves social problems is being cool with difference. Being laissez-faire. Not wanting to control others. I'm extremely against all types of social pressure in the direction of conformity. — Terrapin Station

I've been the weirdo non-conformist in many settings, so I get the importance of acceptance and authenticity. I'm fine with letting folks fly as freakish a flag as they feel like unfurling, as long as I don't have to live with, next to, or too close to them. Just as straight-arrow people ought to give freaks some room, freaks need to give straight-arrow types room too. We can be "cool with difference" and that is generally a good thing, but making "cool" mandatory seems like another oppressiveness.

In terms of freakishness, sometimes the inauthentic, straight-arrow conformist is actually more freakish than any whacked out weirdo could hope to be.

Feeling safe will always involve an aversion to a difference, or a curiosity because we are primates.
— Athena

A problem with this is that there are lots of people who don't feel unsafe just because of difference. — Terrapin Station

@Athena In general, I think primates, people, dogs, cattle, bees--all sorts of creatures--do have a strong tendency to be on guard around the stranger and the very different... whatever that is. It's not a pre-frontal feature, more of a gut reaction. Instinctive.

It isn't a bug; it's a feature, and a feature over which we can exercise some control. We don't have to kill the stranger, we can sample the different -- or not. Context matters immensely here. Alone on a dark night, strangers are more worrisome than they are in broad daylight. Strange food is safer in a highly rated restaurant than deciding whether to eat a strange plant in the jungle.

(physical evidence and reasoned logic) — Tomseltje

I don't see why a pear list couldn't be an atheist. Not only that, I don't see why a pear list couldn't also be ambiguous about the extent he was certain about being an atheist.

It's always a good idea to bear in mind that the prefrontal cortex is only one player in the game; there is also that thundering powerhouse of the limbic system. Nobody operates purely on pear lists.

I am not sure we should erase the place of personality in daily interactions when understanding how to act. — schopenhauer1

We can not, so we don't have to worry about this option.

Philosophers focus too much attention on the quiet, logical, rational activities of the pre-frontal cortex while they ignore the thundering powerhouse of the limbic system which drives human behavior. Humans think, sure; but our appetites, preferences, personalities, and so forth color our thinking and drive it in various directions.

socialization leads to us being perceived as the Other and not as we see ourselves — schopenhauer1

True, and we are both 'other' and 'self'. Try to avoid becoming an 'other' to your own 'self'. Being 'other' to other people is an essential aspect of human existence -- maybe not the most pleasant part at times. The tension between being a 'self' and being an 'other' gives life one of its essential structures. We do not, can not dissolve into some sort of transcendental Over Soul, a pool of being.

What to be done about this dilemma? — schopenhauer1

The same thing that is to be done with all of the existential dilemmas: endure or enjoy it to what ever extent that is possible for you. Life is pretty short, really; 60, 70, or 80 years for most people; not a long time, especially when you deduct the 1/3 we need for sleep, and the 1/3 we spend in (often pointless) labor. Of those 3 score years and ten, only 24 are left for everything else--not a long time.

I was often resentful about work, back when I was working before retirement. It wasn't only the boss's time clock that was ticking away. Life itself... I was so very much happier during periods of unemployment or non-employment, like retirement, when I had / have all day to exist for my own purposes instead of some other means to an end.

All too soon this pleasant time will be over, then... Pfffft.

At least to me, that just sounds like capitalism between socialist states. — TogetherTurtle

In any society there has to be a system for exchanging goods and services. Markets are an ancient institution, whereas capitalism is a relatively recent system (last few hundred years). Socialism is also a recent development, more recent than capitalism. The essence of capitalism is not buying and selling; people have been doing that for several thousand years. Capitalism is a legal system creating corporations directed by boards of directors, selling shares, and existing to maximize profits for the shareholders. A market where a seller exchanges wool for lumber doesn't have to involve any of the essential capitalists features. A market (Target, Amazon) can be a capitalist corporation, but it doesn't need to be.

Churchill — TogetherTurtle

I haven't read a biography of Churchill, but my impression is that he was like Roosevelt: a consummate politician with a varied history.

What do you think a truly free form of government would be like or involve? — TogetherTurtle

As Churchill said, Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time... (Apparently WC did not originate this statement. Didn't he also say that "Americans will always do the right thing after they have tried all the alternatives."?

Your question is utopian and I am a sucker for utopian fantasy. First, we would need to abandon capitalism as the world economic system. Capitalism isn't inherently anti-democratic, but it has no limits on its field of endeavor. It just tends to fuck things up. So, some kind of democratic industrial socialism would be a better replacement.

Under democratic industrial socialism economic decisions (which are often as not also political questions) would be made in a decentralized bottom up manner. There would be markets, because markets are the obvious method for people around the world to trade goods and services.

This system (imagined by Daniel DeLeon, founder of the American Socialist Labor Party, and others) contains elements of syndicalist anarchism (a combo of socialism and anarchism).

I am in favor of a quite liberal approach to personal and collective morals.

My vision has 0.0001% chance of ever coming to fruition, unless it turns out that God is a Socialist Labor Party member.

I just can't help but feel bad for all of the people being deplatformed. — TogetherTurtle

Yes, getting deplatformed is unpleasant. But, there is a long tradition of deplatforming which goes back before the concept of an internet platform had even been imagined. People the government considered extremists or activists in groups as dissimilar as the KKK, Socialist Workers Party, the 1960s Student Mobilization Against the War in Vietnam, the Communist Party USA, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (civil rights for blacks), and so on have always found themselves in the crosshairs of efforts to literally deplatform them, if not figuratively do it.

As odd as it may seem in a society long saturated with implicit and muted sexual imagery in advertising, where porn has been freely available since 1968 (it wasn't so freely available before then), a society where there is a steady business in commercial sex and drugs, where violence in various forms becomes background noise, sex is such a contentious matter.

Now, I realize there tends to be a pendulum swing in this sort of thing: There was very up-tight anxiety about sex in the 1950s, then sexual liberation in the 1960s, then gay liberation and women's liberation, Roe vs. Wade, and so on and so forth. Hell seemed to be popping out of the woodwork left and right. Then there was a reaction starting in the 1980s. Playboy and Penthouse covers needed to be put behind a plastic shield; Playboy was banned from college unions (at the behest of feminists); war on porn was declared; porn shops (with mostly straight, some gay content) were shut down where a rationale could be found; and so on. (The same thing happened in film production. In the early days of film, the boundaries were pushed. Then a reaction followed which imposed a code which forbade numerous rather ordinary sexual imagery and language.

Not just the Internet, but the invention of browsers led to a busting open of all sorts of new information sources, including porn. Over the course of 20 years it has brought us the blessings of Wikipedia, Google search, and so on. Plus Tumblr NSFW microblogs. Once again, the pendulum seems to be swinging back towards restriction.

The thing is, though, the pendulum doesn't swing automatically. It's pushed. Since Roe vs. Wade, conservative Catholics and Evangelicals have been remarkably persistent in opposing abortion; it has taken them 45 years to date to make abortion fairly hard to get in many places, if not outright illegal. Anti-sex anxiety attackers are involved in pendulum pushing too. Many feminists, some evangelicals, various up-tight 'family values' types, all combined have never been happy about liberalized social mores for sex.

The personnel may change over time, but there always seems to be opposing advocacy groups in favor of loosened mores, and other advocacy groups in favor of tightened mores.

Are you hung up on being consistent for consistency's sake here? You know what that Transcendentalist Ralph W. Emerson said, "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of the little mind." Now, you don't have a little mind, so this couldn't apply to you, but it is still possible to hang on to a comfortable consistency when letting go might make more sense.

Do you remember Cointelpro? [COINTELPRO (Portmanteau derived from COunter INTELligence PROgram) (1956–1971) was a series of covert, and at times illegal, projects conducted by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) aimed at surveilling, infiltrating, discrediting, and disrupting domestic political organizations.]

Your probably do, or heard about it at some point. Then there is the infiltration of the KKK, spying on Martin Luther King and other civil rights luminaries, hounding communists and homosexuals (McCarthy), etc. The feds have been quite willing to do all sorts of things in "the national interest". (I hope that last sentence doesn't lead anyone to think I am a conspiracy fan, since it's all historical).

Ah, no. I don't imagine the republic will collapse as a result of Tumblr's actions towards its large constituency of sexually explicit micro-bloggers.

What happens in democracies (it has happened here before) is that there are various bans which stick and people get used to bans. Then there are more bans. Another example of suppression: The union movement is not dead, but it is not doing well either. Why? Because a series of progressively more restrictive legislation by Congress and Legislatures have been limiting unions and hobbling their ability to organize. Unions and porn aren't related, except that suppression is achieved in much the same way -- continually tightening restrictions.

Now, the union movement is more important than NSFW microblogs, but the more ordinary individual's capacity to carry out executive agency are suppressed, the harder it is to maintain a healthy democracy.

Bin Laden is Saudi. Well, was. Is but was. is was... too confusing.

I don't remember a lot about the Soviet / Afghan war. Thanks for added info. I should probably reread some coverage from back then

I'm not at all sure what, exactly, the war on terror was supposed to be.

Invading Iraq was doomed from the get go and I said so at the time. I said we did not have the required knowledge to effectively reorganize iraqi society. That turned out to be true in spades. We invaded, we disbanded the Iraqi armed forces, and left the country a sitting duck for disorder which spiraled out of control. It did nothing to quell the terror; indeed, it set the stage for worse to come.

Was Afghanistan a required player in the attack on the WTC? Weren't the main operatives Saudis? Did the pilots learn to fly in Afghanistan? No. Maybe the terrorists trained in effectively deploying violence -- it seems like Afghanistan would be a good place to practice.

Does the Theater of Security being conducted at airports prevent terrorists from operating? It might keep people from getting on planes with explosives in their shoes and underwear, but there are other ways to blow up a plane. Airport drama has not/could not prevent the various attacks in France, UK, Spain, Norway, Germany, and US that have happened since 2001.

I'm far more worried about non-terrorist loyal Americans running around with guns, legal and not and shooting up bars, cafes, concerts, high schools, et al. With loyal citizens like ours, who needs terrorists?

9/11 won't happen again (I predict). Trucks mowing down people gathered for events are much more likely to happen. Explosives will probably come into play again. Gunfire, of course. Maybe something biological will be tried (already has been with anthrax and ricin (Japan).

The war on drugs and the war on terrorism are both sham operations which set up new profit making operations.

I'll assume that the electorate was fully informed and understood what they were voting for: Leave. But leaving in this case is a bit more complicated than just putting on one's hat and walking out. There are costs to be paid, terms, regulations, and rules for a transition drawn up, and all that agreed to by 2 dozen sides--something the government in office has been trying (without success) to accomplish. You are 3 months + a few days away from the end of the 24 month negotiation period and few are happy with the results.

It would seem like it might be a good idea to ask the electorate if they want to maybe stay and avoid the many downsides of just leaving without terms established.

What vexes me is that they fail to see how they are a part of philosophy. Without the larger picture which philosophy gives, science becomes too materialistic and fails to reveal meaning in the activities observed in reality. — BrianW

I hear you saying that when Philosophy started budding science (quite some time back) the big picture facility it bequeathed to science got lost along the way. So one sees all these extraordinarily narrow projects going on in science, with no overall picture of what it amounts to. Like, genetics and global ecology connect, just as chemistry and botany, biology and physics, molecules and men all connect in meaningfully good and harmful ways -- if one will see it.

Yes? No?

I don't see professional philosophers being of much help here, because science did bud off quite a while back (several hundred years) and has since developed it's own body of knowledge which, on average, a philosopher-specialist probably doesn't have time to gain in one lifetime.

So it would seem that the sciences will have to import big-picture capacity from philosophy to make overall sense of what they are all up to. (And they should, because they are messing around with very basic, root-level stuff, as well as very high level phenomena.) How should they go about that?

In the US there have been referenda to do one thing and referenda to undo that very thing. Gay marriage was one of those referenda: first rejected, then passed. Might there be a third to reject it again? That's possible; it might not be a good thing, but I don't see any reason why it can't happen, all quite legally.

The thing that makes a second vote on Brexit reasonable is the magnitude of the decision. In our experience, the campaigning for or against a given ballot item can be brutal, deceitful, devious, and entirely dishonest, especially from the side that has the most dollars and feels it has the most to lose. I gather there was a well funded side in the Brexit debate that felt it had a good deal to lose, and may have misrepresented the facts. The same thing could happen a second time, but at least the electorate in the UK has had time to think about which way they might vote a second time.

The various states in the USA have, for the most part, never been independent entities (not for very long, anyway) and have always been under an obligation to accept federal decisions they might not like. Many states send more money to the federal government than they get back, and they don't have much of a say in who gets the extra dollars. Southern white people were not very enthusiastic about civil rights reforms, but they were forced to accept it -- on occasion at the point of a federal gun.

States and cities selected to receive batches of refugees, like Somalis, were not asked if they liked that plan. The Federal government made the determination of where they were going to go. If 1,000,000 liberal northerners all decided to move to Mississippi (i don't know why the hell they would do that, but just for example) there is nothing that Mississippi can do about it. Similarly, immigrants into the country can settle where they please.

I understand that freedom of movement in a sovereign nation is a bigger issue than it might be in a system that was always federal in design. So are taxes, regulations, and a lot of other stuff. But it seems like the UK was benefitting from the federal system of the European Community (such as it was and is.

No? Yes?

I've read a number of articles about how identity politics have not been all that helpful. That hits close to home, since I was an active participant in the identity politics of gay liberation in the 1970s and 1980s. The problem wasn't in establishing gay pride for gay people, or obtaining some fairly minimal civil protections, such as the right to rent an apartment. Many people never accepted the idea that being gay was a good thing. Tolerable, maybe, but nothing to build monuments about.

The problem came in the a couple decades later when younger activists decided that marriage wasn't a heterosexual institutions, and that marriage should be available to same sex couples.

I have never had a desire to marry my partner. If love and loyalty didn't hold the relationship together, nothing else would. Well, water under the bridge: same-sex marriage meaning marriage in full is now the law of the land. BUT, big but, a very large portion of the population do not accept the idea that marriage includes same sex couples.

So, I am aware that in pursuing the identity politics I liked, I probably added to cultural divisions that are not helpful. Then there is tribalism, populism, and all that -- which activists in those fields are quite certain are good things to work for.

It's a puzzlement.

None of the fields of knowledge spawned and nurtured by philosophy can claim to be different and separate from it when the term philosophy itself implies a blanket embrace of them all. — BrianW

Philosophy used in that way becomes much too large a blanket to be meaningful. In the same way "literature" meaning everything that had been written would be too large a term to have much value. Some writing amounts to mere "printed matter" and some writing is sublime. Some biologists have written eloquently, but we don't usually call it "literature" along with Milton and Bukowski. (We might in the future call some science writing literature; Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy (now called clinical depression) written in 1621 is a standard of 17th Century English Literature. 400 years is probably long enough to decide. (I read some of it 50 some years ago; I can't remember enough to say whether it was good or not. At the time I was too stupid to tell shit from shinola.)

We could say, "Philosophers working at CERN discovered the Higgs Boson; other philosophers working at the Harvard Business School have devised new formulae for predicting the amount of warehouse space needed by Amazon fulfillment centers; still other researchers at Pfizer have discovered a novel antibiotic." but we don't, because nobody thinks of CERN, HBS, or Pfizer as philosophical enterprises.

And people who think of themselves as "philosophers" do not darken the doorways at CERN, HBS, or Pfizer often enough to be unremarkable.

My impression of people who are fascinated with "academic philosophy" is that many of them would do well to shelve their books for a while and do more physically engaging work, participate in more emotionally engaging relationships, and actually do some original "philosophy" in the field. Literally, go out into a field, or a back yard, or a park--somewhere--and perform an extremely close analysis of what exactly is there. Play field biologist/philosopher for a while. Or buy some chemicals and see if they can blow up something (something small). Get real, in other words.

Humans are social animals. Yet, it is also mainly true that other people are frustrating to be around in almost every regard. That is to say, not ALL people are frustrating in every single way, but at least some people are frustrating in at least one way. — schopenhauer1

You were correct in the second sentence, no need to mitigate your judgement in the third one: Other people are definitely frustrating in almost every regard, over time. Some special cases manage to be frustrating in every regard all at once. Flee them like the plague.

Of course, this sweeping judgement has to include our esteemed selves. I frustrate other people, of course, but I annoy myself as well.

Our socially annoying selves are the consequence of our evolutionary history. We abandoned the trees, developed a big brain and smaller teeth, and became puny in comparison to chimpanzees, but we retained many annoying primate personality features. We are stuck with our social needs and our social liabilities.

Refined manners, which some people cultivate, allows the aggressive features of our primate selves to be deployed in more subtle forms. Many people (too many) don't bother with the mannerly approach and just bash you in the face if you annoy them too much.

Many people (not enough) curb their social urges and spend more time in the woods, in their basement shop, in a comfy chair with a book in their hands, or in front of a screen reading, searching, learning, and other activities.

I spend a lot of time alone but I need a regular dose of social contact; the standard dose is several people for about 1 or 2 hours, or 1 person for maybe 5 hours. 24/7 social contact is OK under certain circumstances, as long as there is respite down time.

Where did you get that picture? It looks like it is a small piece of a larger picture. — Athena

Thanks to Google Image Search, we know the picture is the Ludovisi Battle sarcophagus,

The Ludovisi Battle sarcophagus or "Great" Ludovisi sarcophagus is an ancient Roman sarcophagus dating to around AD 250–260 from a tomb near the Porta Tiburtina. It is also known as the Via Tiburtina Sarcophagus, though other sarcophagi have been found there. It is known for its densely populated, anti-classical composition of "writhing and highly emotive"[1] Romans and Goths, and is an example of the battle scenes favored in Roman art during the Crisis of the Third Century.[1] Discovered in 1621 and named for its first modern owner, Ludovico Ludovisi, the sarcophagus is now displayed at the Palazzo Altemps in Rome, part of the National Museum of Rome.[2] [Wikipedia]

Where did you get that picture? It looks like it is a small piece of a larger picture. — Athena

It was from a Tumblr blog devoted to history--I didn't save the link, just the picture. I noticed the trousers on the figures because I had just been reading about what the Germans brought to the Empire's culture, one of which trousers.

I follow about 150 art, photography, and history blogs, so it's a bit hard to retrace my steps a week later. I love finding gems, like this one below. the composition and subject of the photo is perfect.



The picture is from https://undr.tumblr.com a blog of "black and white // vintage // street // photography".

I will search a bit and see if I can find the source.

Whoo, wait a minute am I wrong or was that a little misogynistic? What was ever said about Mother Mary for you to say she is concerned about punishing us and would call us sons of bitches? That kind of misogyny is a bit unnerving to me. Are you a safe person for me to interact with or should I expect to be the target of anger? Or perhaps I am misinterpreting you after a marriage with a man who had a controlling and castrating mother? — Athena

That was a joke, inverting the natures of the Trinity and the BVM. Joke? Sure, in many religious cultures (Russian, Irish, Serb, etc.) there is a strain of curses and jokes that do this. Not to be taken figuratively or literally, any more than saying "Rats!" when one drops one's keys in the mud.

Am I "safe", are you "safe", is anyone "safe"? We are all a bit dangerous, aren't we?

Carry on.

If you widen the scope of "philosophy" and acknowledge that philosophy spawned new specialized fields, and you accept the several fields of knowledge, then fine. Philosophy is still relevant.

If, on the other hand, you restrict "philosophy" to what is studied in departments of philosophy, then no: philosophy is irrelevant except inside a narrow academic ditch.

There really has been a "knowledge explosion". The sciences, the liberal arts, medicine, technology, archeology, history, linguistic studies... etc. have all generated a lot of information (granted, often unorganized, scattered, sometimes questionable information) which when digested adds up to real knowledge.

Philosophy itself is worthwhile the same way Literature is worthwhile: studying it won't make you a philosopher any more than studying literature will make you an author.

did Jesus have to play the same drama of enduring torture and sacrificing his life on each of these planets? If this is the way God works, it would have to be the same everywhere, right? — Athena

No. After Eden God said, "No more of that free will shit for sentient beings; from here on out, it's strict divine determinism all the way." And so it was. On each new planet the two sentient beings, XX and XY, always did what they were told, never disobeyed, so Jesus and his Blessed ever-virgin mother were able to devote their eternal attention to taking care of the perpetually wayward, devious, deviant, and deplorable basket of free willed homo sapiens, who, despite it all, still amused God, Jesus, and the Holy Ghost more than the radiant, obedient children elsewhere in the universe. The Blessed Virgin Mary was not amused. She often said to the Triumvirate, "These sons of bitches are not getting punished nearly as much as they deserve." For which comments God smirked, Jesus signed, and the Holy Ghost turned bright red with wrath.

I have been where you are. If praying helps, then pray. Fuck the philosophers who think it is inconsistent.

@wayfarer It is Pygmalion's situation: Pygmalion was a sculptor and king of Cyprus who carved an ivory statue of a maiden and fell in love with it.

It is no wonder that we fall in love with computers: they appear to perform autonomously; they are fast and we like speed; they appear to interact with us; they perform useful tasks; and more! So we assign traits to them such as "intelligent" because they can be made to appear "intelligent" and "engaging". Of course they are no such thing. They are containers and processors of data and programming.

What is obscene about our use of the terms we apply to computers is that we then take those terms and apply them to ourselves. We become data processors programmed to perform particular tasks, responding to inputs with output. It is Pygmalion describing himself as an exquisitely carved ivory statue.

Clearly western civilization extends beyond the anglosphere to include the languages and history of all Europe and the Americas, Australia and New Zealand, and some additional territories. The anglosphere is not the paragon of western civilization; it's a piece of western civilization, going back in time before classical Greece.

Why do you think western civ. would be limited to the Anglosphere? What about the French? Germans? The Italians? The Russians? The Greeks? The Spanish? Etc.

When do you think western civ began? 4,000 BC? 2,000 BC? 500 AD? 1500 AD? 1956?

It's an interesting question; clearly the several world civilizations have deep roots. Why do we have 360º in a circle; 60 minutes in an hour; 60 seconds in a minute? Where did that come from? What about the Proto-Indo-European language (PIE), mother of most European languages and more besides? PIE turned into both Sanskrit and Greek, Latin and Norwegian, Russian and Keltic, and more besides.

Regarding clothes making the man, here's a piece from the late Roman empire showing a German wearing trousers, the romans wearing something more like a kilt. The Barbarians and the Romans were pretty much equally good warriors--the Germans were good at fighting both on horseback and on foot. For horseback righting they had the advantage of stirrups and saddles. Plus trousers. The depiction below is a fragment that shows the German in defeat, but they were as often as not the victors.



Whether the trousers were made out of cloth or leather, the artwork didn't say. Like, there was no Latin script on the work indicating the fabric content in the mind of the artist, like 100% raw linen, or deer skin, or wool, or whatever. Damned inconsiderate, if you ask me.

I do think having a penis would make peeing easier. — Athena

Yet another way in which God favored males.

That was fun reading but a little of topic. — Athena

Maybe I was over-sharing a bit there (blushes slightly). Vestis facit hominem they said in old Latium, Clothes make the man. Whether it's fine Italian suits and shoes, handbags by Gucci, gowns by Dior, or denim, sweatshirts, and boots, our chosen costumes both reflect and amplify who we think we are.

PS when men watch football their testosterone level rises and they become more aggressive. — Athena

So what happens to women's hormone levels when they watch football? (There are class and occupational differences in men who prefer baseball to football. If I remember correctly, it's a somewhat inverse relationship: men with the most physically demanding jobs tend to prefer baseball while men with the more cerebral jobs tend to prefer football.

The big concern about colored people taking over is overlooking what female domination could do to us — Athena

As a White Anglo Saxon Protestant male I have to hope that both of those possibilities are nothing more than wild rumors. Better add a humor emoji. :naughty: :rofl:

One of the 'mysteries of the orgasm' is how Tumblr made money. I viewed only a tiny fraction of their content; they have... more than 5 million accounts. Less than 500,000 are porn. But very few of the sites I viewed carried advertising of any kind, and most account holders had not purchased a theme from Tumblr. So, how are they making money?

It's obvious when one watches YouTube how they generate money: they run first class video ads for auto companies, for instance. I never saw anything remotely like that on non-adult Tumblr sites (like NPR, for example).

(The porn industry makes more money than Major League Baseball, The NFL and The NBA combined. — Jake

The arts establishments in quite a few cities can claim the same thing. Like, "All of the arts organizations in X city bring in more income than the major league sport franchises located here." Best-seats-in-the-house tickets for high-brow concerts in Minneapolis or St. Paul, generally run around $60 to $80 and those seats are usually all occupied. Small theater productions might be $40. Given a lot of venues running year round, it's not hard to imagine that they beat out major league teams which play seasonally, and then in any given city not very often.

The porn industry (which is overwhelmingly straight) in the US doesn't just supply Americans with their visual needs: It supplies the world. And most of their production is located in southern California. It's Gods own work, because orgasms are proof the God loves us and wants us to be happy. So...

So tells us about the meaning that is going on here in this little Christian pagan party.

It is emphatically not possible for a state to withdraw from the Union of states. That was settled during the Civil War - 1860-1865.

There are some who would like to split California into two or three states because some believe that northern California and southern California have quite separate interests. They may have quite different interests, but those differences are probably to California's advantage, in the same way that rural agricultural counties in a given state have little in common with large industrial cities. But states with combination rural agriculture/urban industrial economies tend to be financially more stable than all agricultural states, or all industrial states. The two different kinds of economy compliment each other.

There is no obvious road to splitting states either. A territory could be broken into several states, but there is no provision for states to divide or merge. If California really wanted to split, it would probably require a constitutional amendment which would need to be passed by congress and 3/4 of the states.

Were California to secede, everything else being the same, it would be the 6th largest economy. I think Hell would freeze over before California was allowed to leave. Not going to happen.

According to a book I have been reading, Marriage and Family in the Middle Ages, the Roman system of Pater Families began to be deconstructed by the Roman Emperors themselves. Step by step, marriage was redefined toward egalitarian arrangements where both partners had rights and protections, and where the man most definitely did not own the woman. But prior to these changes, the woman was officially under the control of either father or husband. Unofficially, of course, things were somewhat different. For one thing, many men ardently and faithfully loved their wives and children. Most Roman marriages were solid. (The rich and the royals... ugh, not so much.)

By the time Christianity was in a position to define marriage through the state, pagan change in the marriage had already accomplished a lot towards the kind of marriage we would inherit.

Big dicks have surprisingly not always been in fashion. The up-market classical Greeks who ordered and paid for great sculpture thought big penises belonged on donkeys and horses; a small penis was more appropriate for a marble statue. (Of course no man has control over whether he has a big, medium, small, or tragically tiny dick.) And, for a bit of insider information for you, not all men who have very large penises are happy with them. They are aware that other guys (Freud missed the boat on this one -- it is males who have penis envy, not females) stare at their crotch if their large organ is visible, and keeping it out of sight means tucking it uncomfortably out of sight. Further, in gay sex, at least, the owner of a big organ sometimes finds that their partner is more interested in their dick than their whole person. Now from the perspective of the partner, a very big dick can be just too big to deal with.

There is a inchoate relationship between sex and violence. They just happen to arise together from the kind of all-out arousal caused by battle, and is more frequent with the existence of honor systems and property values. Raping a woman renders her worthless to others who subscribe to intense honor systems. If the woman is also property, so much the better to destroy the property's value.

I'm pretty sure you are aware that the German barbarians were responsible for giving men trousers in place of togas. That worked out well. Then the Jews gave us 501 button fly blue denim Levis and Dupont gave us zippers. Life has been better ever since. High heels were also a male innovation; the high heel helped the foot maintain it's best position in a stirrup (an innovation of pre-historic Asian Steppe people). Men quickly realized that high heels complimented their calves (or is it calfs?). It seems to me it was in the 20th century that the high heel became common for women.

I'm not much a clothes horse; I like denim trousers, red or light gray sweat shirts, brightly colored button up shirts, open collar/no tie, and not-too-flashy running shoes, nice leather boots, or oxfords. I occasionally wear a suit, but prefer not. Traditional plaids and tweeds are my preferred patterns. 100% cotton broadcloth or flannel. Linen and seersucker are good in the summer. Lambswool sweaters for the fall and winter. A leather vest or jacket is good.

In my youth I was known to mix plaid, florals, stripes, and solids. Fortunately I got over that phase fairly soon.

Let us assume that all transexualism is a delusional state, the question would then be whether there is greater harm in allowing these folks to live out their delusions or in forcing them to accept that they are broken. — Hanover

I am quite content to let transexuals live out their delusions. I too live out some delusions; maybe you do too. Society itself may be something of a delusion, and it is at least worthwhile maintaining it in good condition.

Quite seriously, even the most hard-headed, fact-minded realists maintain delusions of various kinds. It's a necessity for beings of our kind. There are limits, however, to how far we need to go in accepting other peoples' delusions as facts. I liked Jack when he was Jack, and when he became Joanne she was still pretty much the same likable person. Or maybe Jack was a jerk, and so is Joanne. Either way, I'm not going to take Joanne's estrogen away from her.

If you believe that given outside circumstances and given inner mental states don’t fully determine a course of action, are you less likely to feel empathetic for a poor decision? If you believe one’s character is a choice, are you more or less likely to feel empathy for them than if you would believe that one is not metaphysically responsible for one’s character? — Noah Te Stroete

Lurking in this paragraph is an interesting question about whether we are responsible for our character. Good question. Character is almost by definition something people are responsible for, as the sum of all their various voluntary acts. So, people whose characters are suitable for liars, thieves, knaves, and scoundrels are as responsible as people who are candidates for beatification.

I wonder about that.

I wonder whether the brain structure we are born with, the childhood we are given by our families, the environment in which we live... and so on -- all factors over which we may have no control -- so character is not something we are responsible for. Or at least, totally responsible for.

I don't like that; I'd rather receive credit for my good character. I wouldn't like someone saying "You are a good person, but it's not to your credit; you were just lucky."

the history I’ve read holds both the ancient Greeks and Romans as unconfused about their, quite often bi/homosexual, sexuality. — javra

The ancients didn't have a concept for "homosexuality". Their ideas about proper male and female behavior were fairly straight forward. People behaved in various sexual ways without that being an "identity". We can safely assume that some people were homosexual or bisexual, but Greeks and Romans didn't think about "sexual orientation". People just did what they did.

That doesn't mean that the Romans were just fine with whatever somebody happened to do. There were social mores, rules of etiquette, and laws. Adultery, for instance, could get one in a lot of trouble, and the punishment was pretty unpleasant (sometimes involving "the radish" a small ball with hooks attached which was inserted into the anus. Removing it would tear the flesh.)

It's difficult sometimes for us to understand the ancients. For instance, in a bath house in Pompeii there is a depiction of one male goat screwing another male goat. What did that mean to the Romans? It wasn't an advert for homosexual behavior. It was either a joke or it was something else.

The Greeks particularly worshipped Priapus, a fertility God, whose symbol was an erect penis. These Priapic statues were very common inside and outside buildings. In one invasion, the soldiers snapped off all the stone erections they found -- a clear enough message. We won; you lost. We modern people who haven't worshipped fertility gods are not likely to get what the little dildo-ike sculptures meant to the ancient people.

"Homosexuality" was identified as a trait in the latter half of 19th century. Prior to that, people certainly engaged in what would later be called homosexual behavior, but that's not what they called it.

We tell children all the time that "You can be anything you want to be." and of course we have all sorts of ambiguity about sexuality, so it's hardly surprising that people started thinking that they could just switch genders. (Of course the facts are that 99% of people are not going to be anything they want to be. In any generation of 20 years, 5 people max are going to be president. The number of professional athletes that make it big is very, very small. Most little girls learning ballet are never going to be asked to dance for money. Most child-violinists are never going to get to Carnegie Hall, except as paying customers. So basically, forget about it.