Is it possible to live a happy, fullfillng life without knowing how to dance the ding an sich schottische? It is. Never mind Hegel. Nevertheless...

According to Kant, knowledge does not conform to objects but objects conform to knowledge, to our a priori structure. — philosophy

I have problems with this. Granted, "we" are "locked in" within our thick skulls with only sensory information to reveal to us what objects (the world) are supposedly like. We don't have a pipeline to some sort of absolute truth. Roses are red, violets are blue; our a priori says this is true. Whether roses in themselves are actually colored, shaped, scented, and thorned the way we think they are, some think, is knowledge out of reach.

If boundaries don't exist in the real world, then neither do things — Jake

Seems like a plan to me. Even fluids have boundary layers (sometimes, anyway).

Can we say that our senses must be more or less accurate reflections of the real world? It seems like we are pretty much obligated to think so, because empirical evidence consistently points to irresistible forces and immovable objects that can not be explained away. To think otherwise is to go down Alice's rabbit hole where things and forces can be whatever we want them to be. Alice's Wonderland would be fine if we could get away with it, but I have found that immovable objects and irresistible forces just will not put up with such nonsense.

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.” “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that's all.”

I utterly reject such blame shifting operations. — Jake

The solution to these speeding scofflaws is not to quintuple the number of patrol officers or put more cameras in place. The solution is to get rid of the auto. Granted, autos are very convenient. But autos are part and parcel of other processes like suburbanization by which a tremendous amount of money was made selling land and houses. Work has remained centralized (or at least not located near to most workers) so a tremendous amount of travel is required by millions of people at the same time. Bad planning.

There are options for urban travel that a lot of suburban Americans find unappealing -- buses and trains. And well they should dislike shoddy service, which is what they have often been offered by public transit. But when its well done, people will leave their cars at home and read or chat on the train.

Inter-urban travel used to be accomplished by long-distance trains and long distance buses. When those services were first rate, people liked them. The same way that people used to consider getting on a plane and flying somewhere a special event. I think it's safe to say that few people find flying much better than taking a dirty Greyhound bus.

(Inter-urban train travel was not particularly good at the beginning of the 20th century. Trains went just about everywhere, but travel required a lot of tolerance for inconvenience. Further, a lot of the trains were not pleasant. The heyday of train travel was post WWII. It didn't last, because the American model is "make a profit for us or go to hell". By 1970 private passenger train travel was over; enter Amtrak (which actually is pretty decent, to the extent that Congress doesn't starve it and the companies that control the railroads let them get to the stations on time.

I think this is a false fatalism and apathy. — Andrew4Handel

I don't know why you think I was being apathetic or fatalistic.

I think apathy is one of the most demoralizing things and also a power tactic. Apathy can amount to discouraging action or encouraging inaction. — Andrew4Handel

I quite agree. Apathetic people (individually or in mass) are much easier to control or conversely, they tend to leave one alone. Apathy is extremely disempowering.

I get what you are saying about children -- having or not having. I'm neither a heavy-duty pro-natalist nor a heavy duty antinatalist. I never had any intention of having children, though.

Right. So they should stop exercising individual choice. — Jake

Our lives present more opportunities to exercise individual choice than we have time to use. Most of the time we can exercise individual choice without adverse consequences. But, sometimes not. If the sign says, "Crumbling rock on edge of canyon. Do not approach rim." you are well advised to forgo the great picture you would get by standing right on the edge of the crumbling rock. But go ahead. Get right out there, it's your choice. You have a right! Be sure to upload the picture to Facebook while you and the camera plunge to the rocks far below.

Since you are an avid hiker, I am sure you observed such signs--as all reasonable, intelligent, charming persons did. The ones who didn't are no longer with us.

Right. So they should stop exercising individual choice. — Jake

It isn't what we should do or even what we want to do when we are individual drivers in the middle of a dense traffic flow (or individual pedestrians in a dense crowd): The flow of traffic determines what we will do. If you are in a 65 mph zone and dense traffic has slowed to 45 mph, you must slow down with it. If it speeds up to 80 mph, you have to speed up with it. If you ignore traffic conditions, you are likely to be in accident. The life you save may be your own. Go with the flow.

Now, when you are in a low density traffic flow, like in Iowa (see above) you CAN choose to follow the speed limit, exceed it, or travel below it.

For pedestrians, the worst thing you can do when you are caught in the mass movement of a crowd is resist it, stop, demand to exercise your rights. People who do that get trampled. People who travel with the mass survive.

But rather that by using some powers they possess to go in a certain direction rather than being helplessly sucked along. But I think it is almost subconscious and they are in denial of what is happening. I suppose by power here I mean influence or withholding influence. — Andrew4Handel

It sounds to me like what you are talking about is "executive agency" -- the capacity of an individual to decide to do something and then carry out the plan.

Executive agency does require some power. For instance, some jobs leave employees with zero power, except for the power to walk out the door and not come back. Other jobs entail a lot of executive agency and people tend to like those jobs better, not because they have so much power, but because they have enough power to do what they think best (or goof off for the afternoon...)

I don't find "power" all that helpful a feature to analyze; most of us have a modicum of personal power to run our lives, go to work, raise a family, etc., but very little power beyond that. We can get more power by uniting with other people to accomplish something. "One man's hands can't tear a prison down. But if two and two then fifty then a million, we'll see the walls come down..." labor organizing song

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has. Margaret Mead (anthropologist)

As the old-time (50 years ago) Catholics used to say about suffering, "offer it up".

When I encounter people like this online... — Terrapin Station

You are encountering them in a setting where there is no interpersonal nuance. Were we all to meet in a bar for a few beers, we'd all get along just fine.

In my bombastic blowharding opinion, this topic appears to be a classic case of philosophical overthinking. — Jake

No, not overthinking. You are underthinking this. Anyway, it's not philosophy, it's traffic engineering. Here, look:



Interstate 80 near Berkeley. Above. very little individual choice; dictatorship, tofu, vegans, commies
Interstate 80 in Iowa. Below. Lots of individual choice, freedom, corn and pork, crypto-fascists



Jake, I'm not arguing in favor of people disregarding the law, or Iowa vs. Berkeley; and I'm not lauding heavy traffic as a good thing. It's just when you have 1000 drivers in a limited space all going the same direction, they can't exercise individual choice any more, even if they want to. They have formed a fluid. Where there are few drivers, individual choice is much more important. There is no mass controlling movement on the road.

Too many bicycles on greenways, crowding pedestrians in shopping malls, 1000 rats exiting the sewer, ball bearings in narrow race tracks -- all behave the same way.

Then the police you know should be fired. It's not their job to make the law. It's their job to enforce the law as it currently exists to the best of their ability, — Jake

True. The problem that highway patrols have is that their policing territories are too large for the number of cars and officers to be able to ticket individual drivers on secondary roads, let alone ticket individuals on freeways. They do ticket, however, and the spectacle of ticketing tends to slow down traffic for a little while.

Declining oil supplies and global warming will resolve the issue over the coming century.

I set my cruise control on 40mph — Jake

Why don't you just drive with the flow of traffic? — Terrapin Station

You are both right.

The posted speed limits are real and are rationally determined. People can and ought to obey the traffic laws. On the other hand, mass-traffic is no longer an individual matter; it's much more like a fluid in a pipe. If the mass of traffic on given highway is moving at 40, 60, or 80 mph, (never mind the posted speed) individual drivers will tend to go with the flow. Bucking the flow by going much faster or much slower causes perturbations in the flow and if it doesn't cause accidents, it raises a lot of blood pressure.

There is also a difference between freeways, which are (supposed to be) engineered for a higher average speed, and 2 lane secondary roads which serve local traffic. Exceeding the speed limit on 2 lane roads (especially curvy, hilly, narrow roads) is much more reckless than traveling over the limit on freeways.

Exceeding the speed limit on urban streets is more dangerous still.

Technology offers methods to detect and identify the license plates of speeding vehicles (or vehicles that disregard stop lights), but these methods have run into successful court challenges in some jurisdictions. Cameras and computers can identify the car owner, but they can't identify the driver (yet, anyway), and there is often a mismatch.

Hmmm, interesting. Tell us more about the operation.

Maybe you would get rehab services if, for instance, you were a lame duck?

What deal is that? — Posty McPostface

Whatever deal life offers that includes happiness. Like,

"Dear Posty McPostface:

"Here's the deal. You will go to college, major in philosophy, graduate quosdam laude (with some praise), and get a mid-level management job in a bio-engineering food factory where you will be totally unable to use your philosophy degree. In fact, the less you think philosophically, the happier you will be there. None-the-less, you will enjoy a nice, sophisticated, but fairly quiet life. You will have a happy life for 23 years. Soon after the 23rd year of bliss you will be run over by a robotic truck. Death will be pretty much instant. Once you are dead, you will stay dead. Finis. Sic Transit Gloria Mundi. Kaput.

"That's the deal. Enjoy college and enjoy the engineered food business. It will be voted 24th among the 100 best places to work in 2029.

Yours sincerely,

Life"

Happiness, like love, is--as you said--not something you can grab onto directly. One must approach happiness from the side, by living the kind of life that suits you. By itself, living that kind of life won't automatically produce happiness. So, having the kind of work one likes, having the kind of people in one's life that make one feel good, by having casual pursuits from which one can derive pleasure -- so on and so forth -- sets one up for happiness, but there is still one more step:

In order to be happy one needs to accept the deal happiness offers. Life probably won't provide happiness exactly on the terms one imagines would be perfect.

I know people who are unhappy because the deal life offered for happiness was like, 12% off from what they thought they needed.

the squirrels my wife is raising down the hall are often far more interesting — Jake

Your wife is raising squirrels? Literally?

I like squirrels, determined inventive rodents that they are. Most of their charm is probably owed to their sitting upright. Plus it doesn't take much to coax them into taking a free handout from one's primate paw. We're getting ready for the annual winter die-off here; they don't all die during the winter but more than the daily summer toll of getting run over.

Thanks! I haven't read Cox in quite a few years, and now my aging eyes like e-texts instead of ink on paper.

You might be interested in a book that came out in 1964; I found it very useful in my thinking. The Secular City by Harvey Cox. I read it quite a while ago, but he lays out his ideas of the three-fold mission of the Church in a secularized, extensively urbanized world (the global village hadn't become a meme yet). It's very upbeat. He wrote some other interesting books on theology (On Not Leaving It to the Snake was good and short -- two pluses -- a reinterpretation of temptation story in Genesis.)

The Secular City is worth reading but you might find it a bit dated -- he was writing in an up-beat time where extensive and (to many) desirable changes were happening in the world. 54 years later, we all aren't so upbeat.

most people prefer to be around other people in some manner or form — Posty McPostface

This is true.

You are young enough that you may possibly see a Mars landing and (with a good deal of luck) a successful return of the astronauts. The problems of actually living on Mars are rather large:

1. Not much air (like, almost nothing)
2. No magnetosphere, meaning lot's of hard radiation
3. Not much heat (-195F at night, maybe 70º at high noon on the equator in the summer
4. Mars is a 6 month high speed trip from earth

On the other hand, there is water. That's a plus. The planet is (apparently) very stable. That's good.

In order to live on Mars, one would need to construct underground facilities to protect from radiation and severe temperature fluctuations. One would have to haul a lot of materiél to mars: heavy machinery, food stuffs, building materials, solar panels, and so forth. Lifting equipment into earth orbit and then landing it on Mars in excellent working condition is hugely expensive and extremely difficult, both in terms of developing technology, energy use (to power rockets), and lost opportunities to pursue other goals.

I love a good science fiction story, but science fiction is... fiction.

We should probably colonize Detroit first, per @tim wood

Blasphemy law by the backdoor — jorndoe

Back door or front door: I am against having blasphemy laws in any shape, manner, or form.

There are rules of etiquette instructing us to be nice to other people with whom we do not agree. Such rules are generally not a bad idea, and most people are capable of following them. But etiquette is best left a suggestion to follow, rather than made into a law to obey.

Perhaps this just reflects the approximately 600 years head start that Christianity had, because Christians in the past were themselves sometimes a nasty bunch, and in some cases still are. — tim wood

The thing about "received religions" like Christianity and Islam is that their founding documents are "revelation by god himself". If god said it, who are you to mock it? We should, of course, punish you most severely for offending god (like god can't take care of himself without our help?).

Christianity isn't 600 years ahead; Islam just hasn't digested the modern age, now a few hundred years in the making. Secularism gives Christianity indigestion, but at least we got over burning heretics at the stake some while back.

Another large and relevant issue. In the 1960s there was an exodus from the churches -- Catholic and Protestant both -- that greatly reduced the membership of the churches. Those people haven't come back. What is true in the U.S. is even more true in Europe, and conversely quite the opposite in Asia, Africa and South America where various kinds of church attendance is growing.

But "the West" has become much more secularized and this changes what the church should do. As I mentioned, I'm no longer the Protestant believer I used to be, but if the Church has a valid and valuable message, then it ought to do a better job of preaching. I have not the slightest idea of how it should do this. Or secularists need to come up with a compelling morality and mode of being in the world (which would be a tough act all round).

Well, that's the tricky part...

In Europe there was the Zentrum Catholic party in Germany, for instance. There were also Christian democratic parties which were Protestant. That was part of their tradition and it worked for them. I can't imagine such an arrangement being tolerable in the US. A large number of Americans would be adamantly opposed to a Catholic-oriented party, just because it was Catholic. Similarly, a lot of Americans would be opposed to a political party explicitly aligned with evangelicals. (Never mind a Jewish or Islamic party.)

In India the BJP is currently the dominant party, combining religious and nationalist elements. There are Islamic parties in various countries. It isn't just a Christian/secular issue.

My preference is for secular political parties and secular states but... other people have other preferences.

...if a political structure should be in place, which one? — CarlosDiaz

I'm perfectly free to be in politics, and to be partisan, so I'd say democratic socialist. Americans get nervous (and well they should) when church and state get too close, because the State is secular and it functions best when it sticks to secular business and secular values.

The church can and should take about justice, fairness, the good of the people, moral public behavior, and so on. This may place it squarely in opposition to the partisan establishment of the state. Maybe the partisans in politics will praise the church for its messages about justice, but in either case, the church should avoid partisan involvement -- for its own good.

Aside from partisan involvement, the church must even more avoid back-door involvement with a partisan state, especially fascist states (like Spain under Franco, Italy under Mussolini, the various S.A. juntas, US sponsored banana republics, and so on. Backdoor relationships with a benevolent socialist state should also be avoided by the church.

The church should avoid these relationships because the generally the state will seek to use the church to cloak unsavory activities, and defang the church with complicity.

I have nothing against the black athletes who gave the 1968 black power salute, but this wasn't civil disobedience. It was at most impolite. The punishment was worse than the offense.

Kant provides a way of evaluating moral action; he doesn't provide a list of moral acts.

So, what do you think was moral here? Is impoliteness at highly dignified and socially important events an offense against Kant's imperative? Or is it permissible? What exactly motivated the Olympic Committee to severely punish this gesture? Was it a moral motivation or not? What do you think?

"The church" -- the Body of Christ -- be it Coptic, Catholic, or Calvinist, has to be in the world without being "of the world". Tricky.

If the church focuses on performing the requirements of Matthew 25:35-46, if it preaches faithfully, if it is salt and leaven--all to the good. The church has to take account of the social, political, and economic movements of the world without being partisan, without further afflicting the afflicted, and without siding with the princes and their palace politics. The church can't side with wealth and power and remain faithful.

Preaching to the choir as if there was no world on the other side of the stained glass windows is failure. But still it's tricky to be in the world without getting stuck in the swamp.

I'm no longer a believer, and I don't have very high expectations of The Church (however defined). Even so, the church can be a force for good (when it isn't busy helping the devil).

In the light of Tim Wood's good response, it looks like there are no easy outs. You promised the impossible; you are not the first person to do that. Impossible promises can not be kept.

A better promise would have been, "Mother, I promise to take care of you as long as I can, and then I will have to find another way for you to be cared for." Or, maybe you can't take care of mother. Then, "I love you mother, but I can am not strong enough to lift you. You have to live in a nursing home." (And in many places in the world, there is no nursing home available...)

People usually do the best they can. That may not be as good as they imagine they should do, but be realistic.

I don't think there is a subconscious mind in the form that Freud theorized. What there is (IMHO) is a mind that is mostly non-conscious, but is very active, and 99% without devious, twisted intentions. [There are people who are devious and twisted, but usually it isn't a secret.] It takes care of our physical needs, and does our thinking, but out of earshot of our conscious function.

When you pick up your phone and dial a number, you are not aware of all the mental processes that are required. You are not aware of how the brain actually generates and delivers speech out of your mouth. That is a very good thing: being aware of and needing to direct the detailed machinery would interfere with higher level mental activity.

So where are "you" in all of this? "You" are present in everything your brain does, both not-consciously (as in thinking about how to fix something while you are busy with another task) and consciously, when you are very much in the present moment.

If economics is a science, it's not a very good one.

Lots of people understood that the run-up of house prices in our own neighborhoods was abnormal in 2003-2007. $75,000 of value gained (without so much as washing the windows) in a 4 year period of time is a sign of speculation, or a bubble. We homeowners didn't know when things would change, either, but a lot of us understood that there was no point in selling our inflated houses and using the profit to buy a more expensive houses. Then the bubble burst. People who sold and bought up in the market got screwed royally when housing prices dropped dramatically (not for lack of demand, but for lack of financing and liquidity).

But it wasn't just too much speculation in housing. It was the rampant corruption in the finance industry that caused so much trouble: the credit default swaps, the mortgages to people whose main asset was a regular pulse, and the packaging of very dubious mortgages into bundles of "high grade" securities.

Economists didn't see it coming. Neither did regulators. Same thing applies to the tech bubble at the end of the 20th century, and the 1987 recession. (Some disruption was expected after the OPEC oil boycott in 1973, and then after 9/11.)

Clearly, immensely complex behavior is involved in economics: 7 billion+ agents acting alone and in various combinations all trying to make the best of their situation at any given time. All of the behavior is too complex to track, capture, and predict. In addition, some agents (very wealthy people, corporations, and governments) also have mixed agendas and the wherewithal to affect aspects of life for hundreds of millions or billions of people.

For all of that, we should keep trying to improve our understanding of economic activity. We don't have to call it a science to do that.

...we have been bombarded with all sorts of punditry on what has caused these attacks...

Predominantly I have been hearing how this violence is related to Trump's speech

...how is it that anyone can know that Trump's speech was a cause for these violent acts? — LD Saunders

My assumption is that there is no specific criminally chargeable relationship between Trump, or the NRA, or any number of far-right groups and the various violent acts. I believe that no one in the white house ordered the attacks in the manner that the Turkish prosecutors think that Prince Salman ordered the assassination of Mr. Khashoggi.

But there is plenty of reason to suppose that there is a relationship of influence between Trump's reckless, crude speech and the actions of his supporters. We have extensive experience in measuring the connection between speech of various kinds and behavior. Advertising would be just one of those situations where we see suggestion having concrete results.

Campaigns to convince voters to vote for ballot measures are another. We know that intensive canvassing, political messaging, and political speech can sway the public (to a certain degree) and increase or decrease voter turnout.

We know there is a huge difference between the speech of socially marginal groups (like the American Communist Party or actual Nazis, of whom there are not very many, and a president or House Speaker. For instance, Communists were outspoken in support of racial justice. The speech and actions of Presidents Kennedy and Johnson had vastly more influence when they were outspoken in support of racial justice.

So too there is a difference when riff-raff post hateful speech on their Facebook page (or alt-right site) and when the President says similar sorts of things.

Are there other influencers at work? Sure there are. The body politic always has pockets of bitter resentments directed at target groups like blacks, gays, jews, latinos... take your pick. Chronic economic hardship encourages rash statements. Political marginalization intensifies outsider status and outsider speech.

Hateful speech is not usually turned into murder, but it is actualized often enough to merit caution on the part of public speakers like the president.

President Nixon was an active participant in unpresidential dirty tricks. Maybe Trump is also involved in dirty tricks, but it would require an intensive Watergate style investigation to show that. In the mean time, his public performances convict him of being a very poor representative of presidential probity.

Why do you think Tim Wood was parodying?

I noticed you used the Apostle Paul's formulation from Corinthians: "When I was a child, I thought like a child...

The idea that "human beings" are a fallen species has a lot to recommend it. It accounts for a lot of bad things that happen.

I'm a failed believer (I stopped believing) but the good thing about God's relationship with creation is that God apparently wishes to be reconciled to this world. Man and God are naturally separate; we can hardly help it. The all powerful, all knowing, omnipresent loving God could not be more unlike us weak, stupid, low-browed narrow-horizoned hateful primates. God, never the less, likes us; loves us, in fact, and wishes us well.

God wants us to respond as well as we weak, stupid, low-browed narrow horizoned primates can. (God knows us and despite of everything, loves us.) I'm assuming that God didn't actually spit in the dust and make Adam out of the mud ball per Genesis. I'm guessing God watched the universe unfold and probably loves other beings besides us -- beings that are probably stronger, less stupid, mid-browed or better, and higher-and-wider-horizoned than us. I'm sure these other creatures have their own problems. Just because they are smarter than us doesn't mean they don't have flaws.

Christians believe in Christ's salvation of a world fallen into sin by the disobedience of Adam and Eve. St. Augustine explicated the theory. If you want to hear a very nice explanation of all this, attend an Episcopal Church service of Nine Lessons and Carols which are generally scheduled between the first week of December and a little before Christmas (during Advent, in other words). Scripture is read interspersed with very nice Advent and Christmas music, hopefully with a nice English high church flavor. It's just listening and singing -- no Eucharist.

I don't believe I have done anything wrong — Posty McPostface

Really? A rather lengthy cross-examination (so to speak) would be required to determine whether you were lying or not. Jesus and Santa Claus both know whether you have been bad or good, but Santa is concerned only with the previous year, and Santa's standards are not extraordinarily high. But as it happens, it doesn't matter whether you've done anything wrong or not. By being born human, you partake in Adam's sin and there is nothing you, or anybody else, can do about it.

So, we all need to be saved according to this theory, and nobody is so nice that they are exempt.

Most Christians think you have to be baptized, and most Christians think you should at least be favorably disposed toward Jesus in order to be saved. Evangelicals will insist that you proclaim that you have accepted Jesus as your personal savior. Mainline Christians put quite a bit of emphasis on God's wish to be reconciled with the world, and God's open-handed welcome. The Baptists will send you to hell if you haven't taken JC as your PS.

This all assumes that God exists, that God agrees with mainline and evangelical theology, and that God takes orders from down here, rather than the other way around.

I hope for your sake that you were baptized and confessed your manifold sins and wickednesses before you took communion at mass. If you didn't, you would be in very big trouble with very conservative Catholics who might want to burn you at the stake for sacrilege.

The Unitarian Universalist Church (which comes out of the New England Transcendental tradition) holds that there is no trinity and that everyone gets saved.

Where is Reverend Crank to ask if this conversation is giving us an ego hard on??? — Jake

You rang?

@Ranger is doomed here, I suspect. Won't be long...

Daniel De Leon, 1852 - 1914, American socialist newspaper editor, politician, Marxist theoretician, and trade union organizer, advocated revolutionary industrial unionism utilizing democratic institutions. He led the Socialist Labor Party for 24 years. The SLP still exists in sort of petrified form.

The SLP and it's like-minded socialists did not advocate any sort of a violent revolution, violent reorganization of society, or violent suppression. DeLeon et al backed the dissolution of the state once workers had, through democratic means, gained power. There is some anarchy-syndicalism in the SLP approach which is more explicit in the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW).

That's the socialist tradition I find most attractive. But whether this socialism produces a great society or a dismal failure will depend on the how the people implement the new society. The approach I like involves NO revolutionary vanguard, no concentration of power, no dictatorship.

The formerly rich should suffer no more than having to take jobs like everyone else, and of course, losing the power, luxury, and leisure they one had. "Liquidations" or "exterminations" must not be part of the plan. Expropriation of the accumulated wealth is what I, at least, have in mind. So yes, those terms should not even be thought. (As Mark Twain or Clarence Darrow supposedly said, "I've never killed anybody but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure.")

A centrally planned economy for hundreds of millions of people is probably not workable just because our capacity to plan and execute isn't all that great. What I think of in place of the capitalist market economy is a market place of organized producers and consumers negotiating the particulars of production and consumption.

We do that now, to some extent, but the process is skewed by the capitalist drive to achieve ever more profit through perpetually escalating sales. Maybe there is a residue of puritanism in me which leads me to think we should be consuming a good deal less rubbish than we do.

All this is pretty much fantasy, though. There is as much chance (at this point) of the US becoming socialist as there is of us building cities on Mars next year.

I honestly want to understand your reasoning. — Fusilli Al Dente

FAD, I'm not trying to sell you on socialism or capitalism here. I'm just trying to explain the basic theory.

Where does "profit" come from under capitalism?

Mr. Candyland owns the 'means of production': the stores, the counters, the popcorn poppers, the big copper kettles where caramel corn is made, the candy making machines, tons of popcorn, tons of sugar, tons of butter and oil, and so on. Mr. Candyland doesn't actually do any work. He hires people (his employees) to do all the work. All the stuff sitting in storage (popcorn, sugar...) has some, but not great value. What workers do is change cheap kernels, sugar, butter, salt, and oil into fairly expensive caramel corn. The raw materials become much more valuable after workers have transformed them into the delicious snack. Same goes for candy or salted popcorn. The value of the stuff in the popcorn box is worth maybe 10 times as much as the unpopped kernels in a barrel.

Profit is the difference between the raw material and finished goods, less the cost of materials, wages, and overhead.

Mr. Candyland puts the profit in a bank and enjoys his leisure time. The popcorn workers, on the other hand, barely make enough to scrape by. (Karl Marx: Value, Price and Profit)

What socialists propose is eliminating the owning class (because they are, basically, parasites). A basic idea of socialism is that the people who produce caramel corn with their blood, sweat, and tears should be the primary beneficiaries of their own labor.

Let's say Candyland existed in a socialist economy. What would be the same and different? The popcorn would still be delicious, if the recipes were followed. The workers would still have to buy raw materials -- popcorn, sugar, butter, oil, salt, and so on from other socialist suppliers. They would still make the popcorn products and sell it.

The difference is this: the workers would keep all the profit left over after all the bills were paid.

The same would go for steel mills, auto plants, clothing factories, and grocery stores. Nothing would be operated to generate profit for people who did not do any work. Those who did the work would benefit.

Labor creates all wealth, and the wealth it creates is really quite an enormous pile.


True, it is difficult to sue the State. For one thing, the State can decide that it would prefer not to be sued and the Court (part of the State) can dismiss your suit. Secondly, sovereign states are indeed very powerful.

While the states do protect individual citizens to some degree, they are especially anxious to protect the interests of large corporations (like Microsoft, Exxon, Apple, Boeing, ATT...). As Karl Marx put it, "The state is a committee to organize the affairs of large corporations (and their owners)." (paraphrase)

So, if you are a worker trying to organize a union, you will find that the state has passed laws making it quite difficult for you to complete the process of union organization. Law, in the United States, as very unfriendly to workers who want to organize for better conditions.

Corporations want to keep the cost of workers as low as possible, and the rate of profit for the owners (stockholders) as high as possible. That's why the richest 5% of people in the US have more wealth than the poorer 95%..

Huge gaps in income are not sustainable. They tend to undermine the health of society on which all depends.

high rank officers would exchange artistic posts for sexual favors. — Fusilli Al Dente

Isn't that what the capitalist Harvey Weinstein is being prosecuted for?

It isn't clear to me why you think you wouldn't be able to make and sell popcorn under socialism.

I do a good job making popcorn — Fusilli Al Dente

It's dirty work but somebody has to do it. In Minneapolis, superior popcorn is made by CandyLand. After the revolution the workers will continue to make their excellent products, just not for a profit to support the leisure life of Mr. Jack "Candyland" Smith. The workers who pop corn by the bushel now will continue to pop it. Or, they will recruit you to work there. Or you can open a popcorn stand wherever you happen to live.

Markets can exist in a socialist economy. They pretty much have to exist in any sort of workable economy. Do you think a central computer will send you a box of food once a week, and that is what you will be required to eat? That everyone will wear either white or black socks? That you will be assigned at random to work in this or that factory -- maybe Ball Bearings Factory #28? That everybody will wear blue shirts?

No.

Why didn't the Soviet Union have a better consumer culture? Look at their history: The revolution happened during WWI. A lot of people died during that war. Then there was a brief civil war. Then people tried to pull the USSR out of the backward industrial culture of the Czars. Then Stalin took over and fucked a lot of people over. Then WWII came along and many millions of Soviets were killed either in battle or by ruthless Nazi troops. Eventually the war was over, but their agriculture, population economy, and infrastructure west of the Urals had to be rebuilt.

After WWII the US and the USSR began competing for world dominance. As it happened, the US was able to outspend the USSR and eventually the USSR collapsed.

In a nutshell, the USSR didn't have time to develop a market economy, or was too badly managed.

in a capitalist society, each one's role in society is determined more or less in a democratic fashion. — Fusilli Al Dente

It is not. One's role in society is determined by: who your parents were and how successful they were; where you were born; your race; your good looks or your good luck; various other arbitrary factors. Each individual has a narrow range of opportunity within which to achieve. For some the range is wider because of their parentage, race, location of birth, etc. (If you are white and born in Manhattan you have a better chance of being successful than if you are white and born on a small poor farm in Alabama. Being black and being born on a small poor farm in Alabama is just not a promising set up. You're screwed before being born.)

It's up to you, individually, to figure out how you are going to make a success of your life. You might be out-competed and end up begging on the street. What's democratic about that?

—believing the mind (tied with identity) is separate from the body. This belief would allow for heaven or spirituality or religion or an afterlife, and there's something comforting in that. — Play-doh

From your perspective, you need a free-floating mind separate from your body in order to have heaven. Is it the case from God's perspective that you must have a separate mind and body?

Christians presumably believe in the resurrection of the body. It says so in the creeds.

I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy catholic church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting.

A god capable of creating the universe and who offers heaven in addition to everything else, can presumably manage the resurrection of your body. Jesus didn't raise Lazarus's mind from the dead, he raised Lazarus's body.

The prospect of heaven is a comfort, no doubt, but substance dualism isn't a requirement to get into heaven (as far as I know -- but then, how would either one of us know?). Is it death that is disturbing or is it the dying part?

Crises can sometimes moot the points of disagreement. Person A may favor targeted fiscal stimuli to get the economy back on track, while person B may prefer tax cuts.

Once they discover that their neighborhood just got wiped out in the level 5 going on 6 hurricane, they will both quickly discover that long term economic planning doesn't matter much to them any more.

Not that we need more hurricanes to resolve disputes.

Do you have any interest in psychotherapy? I don't mean getting it (god knows we could all stand a few hours on the couch). I mean studying-doing. I wouldn't suggest you double major in philosophy and psychology because a BA in psychology isn't likely to be very enjoyable (just my opinion) and it won't in itself lead to much employment opportunity. (Sort of like philosophy that way.)

Finish a degree; if you are interested in doing psychotherapy, consider training in a particular approach like rational emotive therapy, CBD, or DDT, 24D, Roundup ... whatever turns you on (or off, as the case may be.)

I met a guy at the bar last night (50+) who majored in philosophy and classics (took Latin as his foreign language, did quite well) and since has worked in business. He worked for Deluxe Check Printing for quite a few years and now works for US Bank in a responsible accounting position.

That's exactly what I'm saying. — Posty McPostface

I hear you. I was mimicking the way Rogerians talk.

Someone always has to feel like they are right; but, what about agreeing to disagree? — Posty McPostface

"I'm afraid there's no doubt about it, Dave." **
"You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile. You will comply." ***

** So said Hal9000 in 2001.

*** The standard negotiation position of the implacable Borg in Star Trek: the Second Generation

Does that sound overly simplistic? — Posty McPostface

"I think I hear you saying that Rogerian therapy methodology seems like a good, non-threatening way to discover truth, Mr. McPostface."

Getting a gay white supremacist (they exist) to agree about truth with a straight black supremacist would be very difficult, no matter what method of truth-discovery was used. Getting someone who held that the brain is the organ of intelligence, thought, and feeling to recognize the same truth as someone who thinks the mind is something apart from the physical brain and body would be a very freighted task.

Your idea isn't so much "overly simplistic" as an underestimate of difficulty. [Or to put it in very non-Rogerian terminology, "It's just fucking dumb!"] It's hard to get people with opposing viewpoints to find common ground (if there is, in fact, any common ground). People who think capitalism is GREAT! and people who are waiting for workers of the world to unite may not share enough common ground to agree that the sky is blue.

The best that one might hope for between some opposing people is recognition that each has a rational basis for their hopelessly mistaken viewpoints, and that neither side is outright insane.