We certainly want a much larger proportion of the population residing in the "flourishing" category. Nothing against positive psychology, but it seems like more will be required -- like changing material conditions of economies, for instance, to achieve the desirable end. For instance, the kind of school system that would promote positive psychology is most likely not the kind that @all sight suggested. But the factory school is what we've got because it suits economic ends.

As for the education system though, I think that it is mainly to situate you for particular occupations and employment. — All sight

This is a deadly 'instrumental' approach: feeding children through the educational processing plant to prepare them to fill slots in the capitalist machinery as cogs on wheels. We do this, of course, in as much as we know what jobs there will be (12 to 16 years into the future) and what the requirements to fill them are. The products of this processing will be mostly unable to assess why their lives have become one of monotonous production and consumption. What a waste!

Unless you think that capitalism is the final organization of society, The People need to think about alternative arrangements to meet needs. From my perspective, capitalism is not the final form of society, and is, in fact, becoming the central threat to human fulfillment.

My idea of progressive education is about as far from current practice as factory farming is from having chickens wandering around the barnyard doing their clucking bird thing. I'm on the side of the chickens in the barnyard, figuratively and literally.

In an ideal world, the goals of education would be to...

First, aid the individual in discovering what his native traits are -- the who and what I am.
Second, to apprehend the nature of 'the world' in its physical and social manifestations.
Third, to aid the individual in finding a congruent path between his nature and social expectations.
Fourth, to discover what is for him good work, and acquire the necessary skills.

Rats. Just noticed that we don't live in an ideal world. Well, that's a problem, but we can still pursue my Four Goals. (Note: This kind of education can not take place where society is in a state of advanced deterioration.)

Primary school is still... 'primary'. Education for children through 6th or 8th grade is the critical phase. "High school" (9-12) really should be quite academic, but still not overly structured and restrictive. By the time one is 18 they will, one hopes, be reasonably insightful, reasonably capable, and reasonably socialized individuals. Of course, there is variation.

Acquiring linguistic skills (reading, writing, listening, speaking) and numeracy requires structure. (This must begin in infancy when the parent is responsible for development.) Children need quite a bit of freedom (within safety limits) to discover who they are, at times without adult direction.

Apprehending the physical and social nature of the world again requires structured learning, as well as unstructured interaction. Children need to be free to be who they are becoming. ('becoming' can be a very messy process; clean-up crews on hand?)

A criticism: Parents aspiring to produce accomplished children fill their days with rigid school schedules and extra lessons in music, dance, sport--all sorts of structured activity. This runs counter to the child having unstructured time for personal discovery.

Finding a congruent path between personal identity and social expectations requires ethical training. Some social expectations are good, and some are not. What one likes and dislikes isn't a sufficient guide. Individuals need a grounding in right and wrong as well.

Finding good work (work that one likes, and which contributes to both the individual and society) is a daunting task--made more so by the state of advanced capitalism in which billions of people must operate. There is 'good work' available, but not nearly enough to go around. Most people are going to find 'good work' hard to find.

I think children benefit growing up in a permissive -- and reasonably safe -- environment; what is permissive for young children may not be appropriate for older children, and visa versa. Actually, this is true for adults too. We like being able to explore possibilities without constant restraint and prohibitions.

I am relegated to informing anonymously if I choose to do so in this case. — ProbablyTrue

How strongly do you believe in this prospective act if you are not willing to claim it personally, by name?

What are the differences? Which is called for? When is it called for — schopenhauer1

Both the ascetic and the engineer are extremely dedicated to the work and discipline. They both are probably somewhat indifferent about social niceties. Of course, their goals are as different as can possibly be. One is attempting to tunnel away from the world, the other is digging a tunnel into the heart of the commercial world. The number of meditators in the world, compared to the number of people screwing around with printed circuits and codes would resoundingly validate the life of the nerd over the life of the monk.

Arthur Clark wrote a short story about a monastery of monks who operated a powerful computer. They were trying to compile a list of all of the names of God. When all of the names of God had been written, the universe would end.

One night they left the monastery and walked away. Overhead the stars were going out.

As I indicated, I don't believe in education as it is now practiced in the US (and maybe elsewhere too), but "happiness" is a worthwhile goal IF happiness means a fairly high order of learning, accomplishment, commitment to the common good, and pursuit of good and worthwhile goals during one's life. This is not elitism.

Good schools would have to be properly functioning academies, and not detention camps in disguise. What schools have traditionally taught (literature, language, history, science, math, etc.) can still be taught, is still useful, and is part of a good "happy" life. Outside of class, students need to learn about contributing to the common good and how to live a worthwhile life (religious institutions exist for teaching this if they care to fulfill the function).

Demanding and getting this kind of school and in the end, happy productive good people, assumes that the community actually believes in, and can deliver, a worthwhile future. That part is in doubt, it seems to me.

But, what are your thoughts about our current education system? — Posty McPostface

Oh... the current education system... what a god damned fucking dreary topic.

Around the time I was in teachers training, back in the mid-1960s, books were coming off the presses damning the education system. The gist of the criticisms was that, "The educational system does not, and is not intended to provide excellent, or solid, or very useful education to most students." There were questions raised about the competence of both teacher training programs, teachers, and schools. Some suggested that the education system served as a regulator of the labor pool -- keeping people in school (HS, college, graduate school) and off the crowded labor market for as long as possible. It was at the time quite possible to graduate from high school and be functionally illiterate and innumerate.

20 years later, a classics professor who was also an old school marxist pointed out that in the heyday of immigration and national expansion, schools had the critical job of preparing students for work, and citizenship, and to be responsible consumers--in that order. The little red school house did that.

In the late 20th century, and on into the 21st, the school was no longer suited for this task. Because of jobs were increasingly de-skilled, automated, or lost to robots and low-wage assembly lines elsewhere on the planet, job preparation was no longer important. Citizenship wasn't either, really. What was really important was that people be taught to consume -- and the best tools for teaching that curriculum were 24/7 mass media.

Education is irrelevant to most people now. Those who will run America (upper middle class functionaries, and the like) will get properly educated. Ambitious reasonably affluent parents will see that their children get a reasonably good education. Even some outright hoi polloi will end up with some education. BUT MOST WON'T.

Most won't because they really don't have much future in society, and the last thing they need is unusable education, and the last thing society needs is 10 or 20 million bitter and resentful young people who are educated but can't get a job and start analyzing their situation and coming to revolutionary conclusions.

Society is falling apart, and the seams are ripping open among young people who do not have great expectations. They aren't alone in misfortune, of course, but they are going to be surprised how low the ceiling on their aspirations will be.

... humans are not so much evolving as selectively breeding, kind of like with dogs. — 0 thru 9

Evolution operates through breeding, whether it's kind of choosy or a free-for-all (my favorite kind). I haven't read Quinn; is he a rivetingly good author?

The only conceivable way we could remove ourselves from the process of evolution is IF a) we had a complete understanding of which genes did what (understood the entire genome) AND b) tightly controlled breeding was directed toward precise goals (such as achieving the ideal human physical form along with brilliant intelligence and laid back personal affect).

Were we, a la Brave New World, to carefully redefine our species from one that evolved randomly to one that changed according to a very specific plan) we could say evolution (as it is understood, at least, had ceased to operate. Fortunately for us, we don't have anything even remotely resembling complete understanding of the human genome, and thus we do not have the information needed to precisely direct our future condition. In addition to not having highly detailed genetic knowledge, we also do not have a clear understanding of what our future in the cosmos should be. Our ideal physical form and intelligence would presumably be suited for a particular role.

Would a laid-back personality be a good thing? Not if in the future we had to fight alien species from "out there in space". Aggressive personalities would be more important. Whether ideal bodies would matter would depend on how we had to fight. Hand to hand combat? Quality bodies would be important. Robotic and death ray weapons? Intelligence would matter much more than muscle.

Some good is conceivable; you don't get credit for that. For pain and damage, that's all yours. — tim wood

I think what Wood meant is that you won't get credit for good outcomes, and you will be blamed for bad outcomes. Why?

Because in spilling the beans, you become the most visible and least valuable person in the equation, rating well below the adulterous spouse. Therefore, the full truck load of tragedy will be dumped on your doorstep.

Your position seems to be that marriages and monogamy are largely bullshit mirages — Hanover

Some marriages are mirages. Most seem to be mixtures of hopes, fears, love, high expectations, and at least in the beginning, enthusiastic commitment. Later on the commitment may change from enthusiastic to resigned commitment, just as love changes from lusty romance in the beginning to something much more sober and less sexual.

I've seen what happens (up close and personal) when friends and relatives decide that a relationship or marriage needs a truth-telling intervention. The results can be intensely negative, and the people who carried out the intervention will be blamed--as perhaps they should be.

Is it stupid to expect fidelity in this day and age? (Was it ever sensible?)

Yes, I think it is a little stupid to expect fidelity under any and all circumstances. Let's say the husband is in the navy (cue the Village People) and is on assignments that take him away from home for long stretches of time. Is the wife NOT somewhat naive to think that her husband has never and will never find sexual partners during the long months of separation? (The long months of separation alone will probably erode love and commitment.) Is the husband sensible to think that when he periodically leaves his wife alone for months at a stretch that she might wish the affection of even an interloping partner?

Failure to maintain marital vows doesn't make someone evil, and therefore subject to anything that might happen to them, especially when what makes marriages work well is missing.

So, we monotheists think that our God wants us to be happy, and if we are clever, or very, very good we will figure out what the formulae is. Polytheists think their Gods want them to be happy too, but they have another layer in their universe, the Indifferent Overlord. The Indifferent Overlord might be called fate, and is utterly indifferent to our happiness. Fate crushes the brave. The Indifferent Overlord oversees infinity and we just don't figure into that picture. We aren't even splattered gnats on the windshield of the infinite.

So, one useful lesson we could teach children is that "The Universe does not care if you are happy, and isn't going to do anything to help you be happy." A second useful lesson to teach children is "If you are going to be happy in life (no guarantees) you can only try to engineer a reasonably happy life. Keep your expectations fairly low. EDIT: Insert quote here: Most men lead lives of quiet desperation." Sooooo fucking true, Thoreau.

The expectation of great achievement is a major cause of unhappiness.

The less you value material goods (materiel) the better your chances of being happy. The struggle to get cargo is one of the major causes of unhappiness. The greater load of cargo you want, the more unadulterated bullshit you will probably have to put up with.

Never never never compare your life to the lives of the rich and famous.

This is a question I have pondered from a personal POV for decades. What the hell DO I want?

At certain times it was clear enough. I wanted to be in college, and I was. I wanted to learn and find new friends, and I did. 1968. Then I wanted to succeed in a job. Unfortunately, what I thought I wanted (to be an English teacher) was clearly something I was probably not going to succeed at. I spent a couple of years in a volunteer service program, which was great. When I got done with that, I still thought I wanted to work in schools, so I got a masters degree in counseling -- except that the faculty didn't think I'd make a good counselor in schools.

I immediately got a job counseling in college and for several years that was what I wanted to do. Then there was a whole series of other things I thought I wanted to do but most of them turned out to be unsatisfactory. This pattern continued on till about 2007 and what I then knew what I wanted to do (and it turned out to be 100% spot on) was not work any more. 40 years was enough. Since leaving the workforce I have been doing what I want to do: reading, writing, researching topics of interest, chatting with friends, making such contributions to the world as I can. This is what I always wanted to do, plus have lots of sex, which I finally did. Sex isn't important any more (as age snowed white hair on me).

I'd have been happier had I found a way to to loaf around for 40 years; read, write, do research, chat with friends, play in the sun, and so forth, and not end up an impoverished old man. Alas...

Only the very rich or those willing to tolerate poverty can get away with such a plan.

Would I rather live in a kingdom of truth or lies? Should justice be thwarted or encouraged? — ProbablyTrue

Setting aside what kind of world we would like to live in, we do -- in fact -- live in a world where right and wrong are often ambiguous, and the appropriate response from others (like you) is -- in fact -- even more ambiguous.

All this ambiguity is troubling; I have been hung on the horns of ambiguous moral decisions numerous times. When I was young, black and white were much closer to a checkerboard pattern. As I have aged, the black and white tiles have become fuzzier and fuzzier (especially in interpersonal categories like this). Sometimes I can't even tell whether there is a pattern.

Even if they were living in a beautiful lie, it would be a questionable decision to let them stay. As it is now, the cheated person is more likely to be in an unhappy marriage and the worst of it is just beneath the surface. — ProbablyTrue

1) "Let them"? Who gives authority over people outside the relationship to "Let" anybody live the way they are living?

2) "Unhappy marriages"? Many marriages are unhappy. "Marriage" has been defined as an inherently unhappy state. Life involves a lot of unhappy arrangements (like work, for instance) that one just has to put up with. Propagating the species in a reasonably effective manner works better with two people (even if they are unhappy within the normal distribution of unhappiness).

3) "Beautiful lie"? If it is working, don't take it apart to fix it.

4) "Cheated"? Well... "Birds do it; bees do it; they say in Boston even beans do it." The institution of marriage still carries with it very outdated (paleolithic) meanings. "Ownership" still lurks in the background scenery. That's why we say "cheat". "You Bitch! You cheated me out of my sole ownership of your vagina!" (Or whatever organ is involved).

Some people are so possessive they don't want their spouse to have close friends: It transgresses on their painfully narrow definition of relationship -- solely owned proprietorship.

Look: Some are going to search for people outside of their primary relationship to have affairs with. If the marriage is reasonably happy, what difference does it make? If it is unhappy (without the affair) what difference does it make?

Suppose that I know that the person having the affair (that you also know, but not very well) is an extremely vindictive person who isn't above having some bones broken if she is crossed. How would you feel about me telling this Mafia daughter that you are planning to tell her husband that she is having an affair? You might have something quite unpleasant done to you. Sure, I would bear some guilt for you her having your thumbs cut off (sans anesthesia), but my guilt would be easier to live with than you having your thumbs sliced off and then living without those ever-so-useful opposable digits.

Of course... far fetched scenario pulled out of an old movie.

In reality, people "snitch". ("Snitch" goes along with "cheat".) Marriages blow up periodically whether there is any cheating and snitching or not. People go into marriages (relationships in general) with all sorts of unreasonable expectations of ever-lasting happiness and bliss, and roses, picket fences, great sex, cute accomplished, obedient, respectful children, and so on and so forth. These daydream-marriages generally end up getting run over by the garbage trucks of reality.

So what are these new traits humans have? — Andrew4Handel

I highly doubt we have acquired new traits - de novo. Traits are generally developed from previously existing traits, or potentials. (Like, writing and reading uses traits previously existing.)


"Traits" might be to wide a concept for evolution over a relatively short period of time, but an example of a "trait" emerging would be this: Certain people in a particular area of Europe were not susceptible to Yersinia pestis, the plague-causing organism. Descendants of those people (carrying two copies of the mutation in question) were also highly resistant to HIV. When exposed to the HIV they did not go on to seroconvert or if they seroconverted, to develop symptoms of AIDS. (This mutation or something similar probably exists among some groups in Africa too, because there are some cases--prostitutes, for instance--who should have been infected, all things being equal, but were not.)

Maybe -- just speculating -- agriculture and urbanity required the existence of a (possibly new) trait that allowed for settlement and living among large groups of people. Neither our primate relatives nor our hunter/gatherer ancestors lived in large groups (more than 50 to 100). In a very short period of time, we shifted from mobile to settled people, from widely distributed to compacted populations.

Would stone age homo sapiens been able to live in New York, London, Calcutta, Tokyo...?

Some jobs (in the US at least) come with mandatory reporting requirements. If you, as a teacher for example, or social worker, or a few dozen other job titles, know or suspect that persons are being harmed or will be harmed, you have a legal obligation to report it. Your situation is NOT a mandatory reporting one, literally or figuratively.

Leave it completely, abso-effing-lutely alone. — tim wood

I agree.

You can not predict what the consequences of your tale bearing will be. There is a quite good chance that you will make the situation worse by informing so-and-so that the partner is having an affair.

You might be assuming that the relationship is perfect, except for the dirty cheating spouse's slimy affair. Maybe the relationship is dead, and the spouse has found companionship, consolation, and pleasure with someone who was livelier. Is tale-bearing going to make the unresponsive partner suddenly lively and fascinating? Probably not.

You don't know... maybe murder or a serious beating, or two murders will be the result. Who are you to have zero tolerance?

Agriculture stopped evolution? Nonsense. Think...

Plagues continued after agriculture, and those who were most resistant to plague survived
Chronic diseases existed before and after agriculture and have continued to shape the species (very little that we can observe over a short period of time)
Agriculture sometimes fails to feed the people who practice it. Famine is a culling event.
Etc.

Have we reached an intellectual summit over the reigns of evolution by allowing severely disabled people to live prosperously with taxpayer supplied checks? — intrapersona

Is it the severely disabled continuing to live that bothers you, or is the "taxpayer supplied checks"?

Paleontologists found a Neanderthal skeleton of an old adult who had skeletal deformities (severe osteoarthritis and molars missing, for instance) that would have prevented the individual from surviving anywhere close to as long as he did -- had it not been for the care of kin. This skeleton was from... roughly 45,000 years ago . As far as I know, this sort of discovery is very rare. The skeleton was part of what appears to be a deliberate burial rather than an accidental accumulation of bones. Plus, given where he was found, he was French.

Apparently, behavior running counter to the best advice of evolutionary policy is not new.

Evolution led us to be care-givers as well as perfect survivor specimens. Evolution doesn't have a plan. It just grinds along powered by random mutations. It's not heading anywhere. We are not the apex of creation, and evolution wasn't trying to get us there (unless you entertain some teleological ideas about the omega point, etc.).

Don't forget Thorsten Veblen.

Keep reading.

When will you be finished and have a full understanding of how modern life unfolded from the beginning of making stone tools? If you chip away at the task in-between your other studying and life-living, you should have a fairly good idea by 2030. It depends on how fast a study you are. If you are very very fast, maybe 2021. If you dilly-dally around, 2050. It took me around 50 years to corral a good understanding of our long history (while I was doing lots of other stuff).

From a Paleontological view, we started out as ground-dwelling, scavenging, simple tool-making primates (millions of years ago). By around 400,000 years ago (give or take 15 minutes) we had evolved into our present physical shape and were making stone tools, using fire, foraging, hunting, and the like. We traveled around, screwed around with our close relatives (Neanderthals, Denisovans...) and very gradually developed more elaborate culture. Culture is the key: otherwise, we do what other mammals do: forage, eat, sleep, breed, and loaf around when nothing else is required of us, and so on.

We invented culture as a means of preserving the insubstantial knowledge accumulated from generation to generation. Culture, in turn, began to play an independent role--acting on us, as well as being our invention and means to a valuable end. (We do not and can not know a lot about the culture of people living 200,000 years ago.)

As we get closer to the "modern era" of 25,000 years ago, we begin to see evidence of culture: carved statuettes or paintings on cave walls. What we see is recognizably cultural stuff.

So, life has proceeded for thousands of years in such a manner: We meet our mammalian needs, and we deploy culture to enhance our chances at survival and enjoyment.

We find ourselves today in an immensely cluttered environment, piled up with cultural artifacts and complex routines which seem to obscure the mammalian needs underneath it all.

How to make sense of all this?

I'd start reading about the last 12,000 years of our history -- from the period just before we started growing food (agricultural) and living in constructed housing. So, one book from Jericho (first city) to writing (10,000 to 5,000 years ago).

Read another book or two on ancient civilizations. There are scads of books in this category, so a couple of good surveys should do the trick -- it's about 3,000 years of history up through the end of the Western Roman Empire when, In 476 C.E., the Barbarian German Odoacer replaced Romulus, the last of the Roman emperors in the west. Bear in mind that the "barbarians" didn't want to wreck Rome, they wanted to live in Rome.

Because this is THE Philosophy Forum, I am required by law to recommend that you read a survey of ancient philosophy.

Next do the years between the end of the western empire to about 1200. this 800 year stretch of the the Medieval Period (aka Dark Ages--which it wasn't) saw the gradual reorganization of life and culture in Europe. (Sorry, I'm Euro-centric.)

At 12:00 Midnight, Central Standard Time, on the night of December 31, 1200, the Renaissance began. The ancient philosophy--which you read about in that survey--had been pretty much lost to Europe, but was found again. Universities were begun in Paris, Oxford, and elsewhere.

About this time forward, the pace picks up as we head downslope to the present.

ou might get further faster by keeping a journal. — tim wood

Good idea -- something else to add to your already busy, overburdened life. But sure, keep track of what you read in the journal, and what major points you come across.

I do, and I object. Where is your complaint department located?

Yeah; but, what good has complaining ever resulted in? — Posty McPostface

The squeaking wheel gets the grease. (That's a folk saying. Squeaking wheels are similar to complaining individuals. People who complain get fried in hot rancid fat. NO, sorry, that's not what it means. It means that complaints tend to get addressed because those with some wherewithal get tired of hearing people whining, wingeing, bitching, and carping all the time.

Q: Do atheists have beliefs about the self and the universe which they follow with great devotion?

A: Yes all atheists must have such beliefs and follow those beliefs with great devotion.

Q: Do Atheists have religious beliefs?

A: Yes if they are to continue to live, they must have beliefs, and those beliefs must be followed 'with great and particular devotion'.

Q What becomes of an atheist who does not follow the beliefs essential to his/her/it's continued existence?

A: The atheist becomes a dead atheist! — Marcus de Brun

I don't have a problem with your assumption that atheists must have religious beliefs, provided religion is sufficiently broadly defined, like "where do I stand in the cosmos?" kind of thing. One can wonder where one stands without assuming that there is a deity also standing around.

"The only real Atheist is a DEAD atheist"

Everybody ends up dead, eventually. It's one of God's great mercies that eventually we get out of here.

We don't have a lot of evidence that Neanderthals buried their dead with rituals. I hope they did, and if they did, I hope they got some comfort out of it. But there is only a few finds (after all these thousands of years) that could indicate ritual burial.

There are a few (1? 2?) skeletons that have been found that also show that very disabled children were cared for into adulthood. Neanderthals weren't baboons, so sure -- they deployed various cultural behaviors. Just like homo sapiens did/do.

Have a nice day.

So, I'm seeing your point here.

Minutia mongering: Excellent.

I submit that we have probably passed our capacity to monger all the minutia we have to manage. All the code that it takes is too voluminous, too complex, too inter-connected, for any individual or team to adequately oversee. The result is all sorts of failures (cleverly called bugs rather than mistakes) that are discovered only by putting the product into the hands of millions and letting them find all the errors by the brute force of daily use. EDIT: JUST NOW THE NEW VERSION OF iTUNES (which I didn't ask for) WOULDN'T LET ME QUIT; I COULD CLOSE THE WINDOW, BUT NOT TURN IT OFF. I HAD TO USE "FORCE QUIT" TO SHUT IT OFF. A small example.

The stakes are not very high for a draw program running on a tablet. The stakes are rather higher if the program is running the air traffic system, a nuclear plant, oil refinery, or missiles, or a big bank, or that autonomous self-driving car everyone is waiting for. I have read that legacy systems (like that running the FAA system or Social Security) are often so complex that officials are reluctant to replace them, because, of course, errors would be catastrophic.

So, yes: software engineers are very, very valuable.

As time goes on, and complexity continues to grow (as it will) we will have to off-load a substantial portion of the burden onto computers, which (or who) have a much larger capacity to finagle complexity than we have. As we do so, we will, of necessity, relinquish a degree of control over the programs themselves.

Bear in mind, though, that the drive to increase technology is top down rather than bottom up. Tech is the product du jour. The reason Apple and Samsung and who-the-fuck keep coming up with new and snazzier phones is that maintaining profits requires new phones. You don't need a new phone; I don't need a new phone; nobody on earth needs yet another version. Apple, Samsung, and who-the-fuck need new phones so that they have something to sell that is different than what they sold yesterday.

The same thing applies to apples. There are already I don't know... around 5,000 apple varieties. One would think that those 5000 apple varieties probably suffice. But no: places like the U of Minnesota keep breeding new ones. You like Honey Crisp? That's one of the U of M varieties. They've introduced it's successor this year. Successor? Right. People are tired of The Apple of the early 21st century. Apples must be perpetually sweeter, crisper, juicier...

Why? Because apple growers need new apples to generate consumer interest. "Consumer interest" is a different beast than "feeding people", you understand. Consumer interest is about selling stuff.

The technologists who analyze consumer behavior are also very valuable people. More valuable than we band of brother-philosophers, certainly.

How could an infinitely knowing, present everywhere at all times, unlimited in power being reveal the Divine Existence to primates who have been sort of sapiens for a few hundred thousand years? For that matter, how can we cousins of pan troglodytes even conceive of an infinite being?

According to doctrine, God became man. God didn't become superman; God began his human career in a manger, in flesh now appearing. By departing heaven, becoming human in the person of Jesus, dying, and persisting as a spirit (spiritus Sanctus) God ceased to be immortal, invisible, hairy thunderer...

Now, I am sort of an atheist, lapsed believer, apostate, something. I doubt very much that human beings have ever been, would be now, or ever will be happy seeing raw godhood on display. I doubt very much if any gods care very much whether humans (primates, remember) find the absence of a handy divine avatar / icon frustrating. "Tough bounce, apes!" is their likely response.

I asked the Universe if it was at all dependent on me. I have not yet received an answer. I'm guessing not.

So far, in my 72 years, I have met and interacted with one person who was not male or female sexually -- this 40 some years ago. This person was self-named "neither shehe. Shehe did not look normal as the result of a major chromosomal disorder. (Shehe was quite bright, and was active in the peripheral politics of the peripheral gay community.)

There are a small number of hermaphrodites--persons whose bodies are inter-sexual; neither xx nor xy chromosomes dominated. I have no idea how this works, biologically, but it does happen once in a while.

Outside of those few individuals whose chromosomes did not establish clear sexual form, mammals are one or the other. As mammals, so are we one or the other. However, we can wish we were otherwise. Any of us might wish we could change who we appear to be -- not just along the lines of gender but how good are brains are, how nicely defined our muscles are, how tall we are, how sensitive our senses are, how much sex drive we have, and so on. Fortunately, we can not (at this point) be so easily changed. Some people can't even make big muscles, even though they can get extremely fit. We can change our hair color easily -- provided we commit to regular trips to the hair people.

Gender change has become a fashion. If we could redesign our bodies to suit the movements of body fashion, a good number of people would be doing it. Bertrand, with his remodeled jaw, bulging muscles, greater height, deep voice, hairier body, and enhanced pheromones, would probably change his name to Hank, and might trade French Literature for a hard hat job. Or maybe he'd just be the professeur dur à cuire (professor tough guy).

But many progressives want there to be a wide progressive unity, as wide as possible — Michael Ossipoff

That's nice. They should be as progressive as they want; just keep it in the family. They seem to want everyone to march in lock step. Surely progressives don't want to be dictatorial, do they? I say "he"; you say "they". He/they. They/he. Let's call the whole thing off.

You make it sound like an arduous task. It requires at most the reworking of the occasional sentence. Come on — MindForged

You may not be aware of the time and energy devoted to nouns and pronouns in liturgical circles. Where once (and still usually) the priest said, "in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit", some priests say something else. Maybe, "in the name of the Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer" or some such formulation. Is that a problem? For one, it doesn't have the well rounded patina of centuries of use. And "Creator / Redeemer" erases the parenthood of God from Jesus. Now, personally, I'm not losing sleep over this, but if I happen to be at a funeral where a nouvelle rendition is in use, I find it grating (much like scraping off the end of one's nose with a cheese grater).

Some people in liturgical circles don't like the word "lord" either. So the table grace,
"Come, Lord Jesus, be our Guest,
and let these gifts to us be blessed.
And may there be a goodly share
on every table everywhere."
becomes something else. Come coordinator Jesus...

Our Father who is in heaven
hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come
--oops, there's that royal supreme male again,
...
for the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours... What kind of triumphalist bullshit is this?

Hey, I'm not joking. There are liturgical cliques who actually say such things.

But there's still a modern problem: What if you're referring to a particular person who rejects gender? — Michael Ossipoff

If a particular person rejects gender, then I think they should deal with that decision themselves, and not require that everybody else also deal with their choice. Even if 1 million English speakers out of the 1.5 billion people who speak English reject gender,it's still their problem, not mine.

English has 2 singular gendered pronouns, one of which has been used to represent individuals of either masculine or feminine gender, 'he', and latterly, 'she'. "If a student wants to study geology, she should be encouraged to do so." doesn't mean that males need not apply.

Granted, there was/is a preferential option for the masculine built into the language, but for most female English speakers, that has not been a huge problem. What has been a problem for the 1.5 female English speakers is having material limitations placed on them only because of their sex. But even this varies from place to place.

Almost a billion people speak romance languages which are decidedly gendered. Life is not an unendurable hell of gendered words in those language areas. If women's options are limited in a province of romance language, then it's discrimination based on something much more material than a pronoun.

the value of any currency is what the world's consensus of its value is. Value "jiggles" up and down continuously. Currency is connected to real stuff through what? Trade. A country which has (practically) nothing to sell is going to have a virtually worthless currency. If you sell stuff then you can buy stuff, and if you pay your bills, your money is good. Stop paying your bills and your currency might turn into cat litter. Value comes from the market. — Bitter Crank

The value of fiat currency comes from real production and trade. The cartoon desert island has nothing to sell, nobody wants to go there, and the two people there very much want to leave. "It" could declare a fiat currency but it could not be worth anything. But suppose the two castaways discovered that the desert island was composed of nothing but pockets of pure rare earths (lanthanum, praseodymium, neodymium, gadolinium, terbium, dysprosium,, ytterbium, and so forth). Now the desert island would have something to sell that was in demand, and with the income from selling it's ore they could buy stuff. It's fiat currency would be welcome everywhere.

"Having stuff to sell" doesn't guarantee that everything will work out just fine. Look at Venezuela. Even though Venezuela has stuff to sell, it was able--through centralized gross mismanagement--to end up in an economic shithole.

I don't think we are getting anywhere. Nor do we have anywhere to get to. Were we to go on a tour of factories, I think we'd both point out the same things as significant.

Consumers are not valuable. Only the creators of technology are. That's the thing. The investors are nothing without the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. They are needed by consumers, owners, and investors alike. There is no real production without it. — schopenhauer1

They are all critical to the others' success. No production without consumption; no production without finance; no technology without production -- and visa versa.

But when you think about technology, how far back are you going? Isaac Watts? The mechanical loom? Water power?

Manufacturing is just applied tech. In the "lithic" eras, stone tool production was not a mass operation; it was a boutique operation. The entire tribe didn't gather together to knap flint rocks for a week. It was skilled work, taking a lot of practice and time. What whole tribes did do was trade. In south central Minnesota, for instance, there are all sorts of flint tools and flint chips accumulated over 9,000 years which are not obtained from local rock formations. Some of the stone tools are from as far away as 100 to 300 miles. There is no obsidian anywhere close to south central Minnesota. They traded stuff that x tribe made for different materials that tribe y had.

There was quite a lot of technological knowledge worked into the stone tools. A producer had to know how a type of rock (of which the traded supply was very limited) would respond to the kinds of knapping blows that it might receive. Sometimes only pressure was applies to a location to achieve the desired material removal.

There are a lot of "home manufactured items" in our history. Fabric is a major one. Taking animal hair (like wool) and turning it into a durable garment is, like stone knapping, skilled labor, often varied out alone. There are all sorts of things made by hand, 2 hands at a time. But there were also group efforts. Ore was dug up and smelted by numerous individuals working together.

Moving all this forward... at some point, individual workshops turned into group workshops turned into factories. Water power would have enabled the factory to use several mechanized processes.

So, in my view, technology goes back quite a ways. I'm pretty sure that early factories (like cotton spinning factories) had to have had investors, or the founder would have needed to be rich from the start. You can't have technology without infrastructure (like a dam, a mill pond, water wheel, power shaft, over head leather pullies, a solid building, windows, etc.

I mean, tech isn't a person. It doesn't walk in a magically transform nothing into something. Something has to be there first, and it has to be paid for early on. This hasn't changed in a long time.

Who are the best?

One instance where "the best" technology is bought, where tech is tech, is in the purchase of patents. Large tech operations sometimes buy small competitors only for the value of the patents they own. Once the sale is complete and the patents have changed hands, the recent acquisition is flushed down the drain (if it isn't otherwise worth keeping).

Oddly, the patents might not be needed for future manufacturing. They may be useful only for future litigation. It's like if some small company owned the patent for "the computer mouse" they could sue all sorts of computer makers for patent infringement, and make a nice income. Apple, for instance, keeps unneeded patents on hand to sue or counter-sue competitors. They all are involved in this "high tech" legal maneuvering.

You can call it technology if you want, but if it's defined so broadly enough it could just as well be called output, production, GDP, or whatever.

I'm not minimizing the value of technology; granted, it's a component of some pretty ordinary things. But I don't like the idea of shifting the 'pivot point' of society from brute economic activity (which almost all of it is) to this entity of "technology". What Intel or Samsung does in their factories is complex manufacturing, certainly, but it isn't really all that much different than what goes on in a Ford plant. Men and machinery are combined to produce highly engineered objects. Modern dairies are much more "technological" than they used to be -- in some operations cows and robots move around in the barn as they wish. When a cow wants to be milked (and they do want to be milked at least twice a day) the cows solicit the services of a robot. Whether it's done by a robot or a guy carrying a Serge milking machine from cow to cow, milk is sucked out of mammary glands.

High tech and low tech operate the same way in the economy.

Ford and Intel are making a product from raw or previously processed material, then selling the product for as much as the market will bear. In both cases, there is a major markup in price between the factory and the final purchaser -- probably by a factor of 10. (Each stage--manufacturing, warehousing, selling, shipping, incorporation into another product, more warehousing, distribution, etc. adds a little more to the final cost. By the time you buy something at Target, a lot of handling costs have been added. That's true of an eggbeater from Target or a computer from Dell.

I prefer to think of "technology" as one factor in products along with initial cost, toxicity, repair costs, longevity, convenience, and so on.

So it is still the inventors and engineers that are needed most. — schopenhauer1

An economy might need consumers more than inventors. 70% of US GDP is personal consumption spending. I buy a little tech every now and then. Most of what I buy are food, utilities, health insurance, property insurance, and miscellaneous stuff -- as high tech as a kitchen pan, underwear, bike tires, etc. I bet most of your household spending is similar.

So, you can describe the methods for which investments promote technology, but LITERALLY money means nothing without the BACKING of the value technology gives money. Yeah money can be seen in lots of ways, as an exchange or a "store of value"..but none of it stores anything unless there is the technology for which the money can obtain. That is the final telos of the money.. It is waiting to be cashed out in technology. — schopenhauer1

True, and not true, maybe. I'm not all that knowledgeable about this.

For a Roman, a gold coin was the value of gold. It didn't represent anything, it just was. Now the value of any currency is what the world's consensus of its value is. Value "jiggles" up and down continuously. Currency is connected to real stuff through what? Trade? A country which has (practically) nothing to sell is going to have a virtually worthless currency. If you sell stuff then you can buy stuff, and if you pay your bills, your money is good. Stop paying your bills and your currency might turn into cat litter. Value comes from the market. The currency of Zimbabwe was so worthless (nothing to sell, couldn't buy anything) that they started using other countries' currencies -- to the extent that they could get them.

Money is itself a technology. Several hundred years ago the social infrastructure of Holland was solid enough that one could say, "Hey -- I want 500 tulip bulbs. Let me give you a check..." (which was a promissory note). You got the tulips bulbs, the bulb seller took your check to your bank and got the gold coins. That was good for a few hundred years. Then we figured out how to make the promise to pay through an intermediary -- the credit card company. You hand the man your card, he swipes it, the credit card company (eventually) pays him and (eventually) unsubtly informs you that it is time to pay up or else. (Quite a bit of money is made by the "or else" -- usurious rates of interest).

Now we can point our phone and pay for something. Soon you will be able to merely think of something and a sale will be charged to your account. "Oh, nice shoes" -- WHAM! $600 deducted from your account and the shoes are on their way. That'll put a brake on daydreaming at the mall.

What gives a society the ability to command respect for its currency isn't so much "technology" as "production". The major currencies (euros, dollars, yens, renminbis, pounds) are "major" because they are backed up by trusted economies that turn out a lot of goods people want. Back in the day when Japan made "cheap jap junk" (after the war), the yen wasn't worth much. When Japan outstripped Detroit as the #1 Auto Maker (1980), the yen got lots of respect.

Economic activity doesn't have to be high tech to count. China may make iPhones, but they also take shiploads of waste paper and turn it into cardboard. Not exactly high tech. China outsells other producers by using that lowest of tech devices, low paid workers.

I can come up with more scenarios, but I need positive reinforcements. Drop a quarter into the slot, every now and then.

Try to make an argument against the fact that the most valuable people are the technology originators? — schopenhauer1

Creators, inventors, come up with new ideas. Labor brings them to fruition. In a capitalist economy workers are wage slaves and without paid work starve. Creators require the means to manufacture -- that means a building, machinery, and workers. Further, they have to buy raw materials (like sheet metal). All of this requires cash. That's where investors come in: IF they think the idea will make enough profit, they may invest.

Then there are intangible factors: Does the inventor (and owner of the technology) and the engineer who figures out how to turn the patent into a product, and the factory manager, the workers, and the investor all get along? There are frequent disputes. The investor thinks its taking too long to get production going. The workers think they are not getting paid enough. The engineer feels he is expected to pull rabbits out of hats. The inventor feels he's getting ripped off by everybody else. The whole process sometimes breaks down.

Later, the factory is turning out the Barbot, the robot that helps you score at the bar. Demand is high. Hammacher Schlemmer has ordered 10,000 units. Then problems arise. The special processor that helps the Barbot exude charm is held up by labor unrest (aka, a union drive) in China. The Indonesian chemical company that produces the Barbot's special pheromones can't get enough extract of yak gland from Mongolia. The factory floor is flummoxed. 1,000 fully operational units are shipped, which only fuels demand which can not be satisfied.

Finally Hammacher Schlemmer*** Hammacher Schlemmer decides to drop the Barbot for the Fully Obedient Stormtrooper, which isn't as charming, but is fully stocked at a warehouse.

The Barbot operation can't get production going again; law suits are begun; Barbot goes bankrupt. Another one bites the dust.

Meanwhile, the 1000 Barbots that did get made, shipped, and purchased are helping nerds do a land office business at the bar. What can't be accomplished with charm and pheromones can be accomplished, it turns out, with a vice-like grip. So, the Barbot introduces the potential bed mates it has located to its owner with a soto voce message in the ear of the potential bed mate, "or else. Just remember, we have vays..."

***The actual Fully Obedient Stormtrooper is much larger than it appears in the illustration.