Yes, I understand that avoiding capital gains taxes, income taxes, inheritance taxes, etc. is the issue. The rich have many ways of avoiding taxation on shore and off shore. It is not inevitable. As I remarked earlier in this thread, taxation on wealth was far higher during the depression, WWII, and the post WWII boom, and there were about half as many millionaires and multi-millionaires as there had been in the 1920s, The number of multimillionaires and billionaires has doubled from what it was in 1975.

So, please excuse my joke at your expense.

Great, IF the spouse has lots of cash,

I don't recommend it. — L'éléphant

Especially if one IS the rich spouse.

Expropriating the expropriators would be a simpler solution to the problem of too many way too rich people than screwing around with the complicated tax code.

Short of that raise the income tax (inheritance tax, etc.) to at least 90%. Too high? It used to be that high. In those days there were about half as many millionaires and billionaires back in the ancient Depression and Post WWII boom days as there are now. Many of the current crop of -illionaire parasites got their start in the 1970s.

no one would have the balls to talk about all the benefits of slavery — T Clark

Zero benefits to the slaves, certainly. While slaves did learn skills, it was for the exclusive benefit of the slave owner. The property owners, merchants (all goods), and bankers received huge benefits from slavery. The value of slaves (prior to the civil war) was about $4 billion--a major chunk of American assets at the time (based on the number of slaves and the average value of slaves).

Cotton exports were a major source of income for New England and New York exporters, shippers, bankers, and mill owners. Buying and selling slaves was also quite profitable, and involved businesses beside southern planters. Poor whites in the south didn't benefit; neither did pioneers moving westward. The white workers in various industries benefitted far less than the owners of the shops.

Racism has to come from somewhere. It didn't just pop up out of nowhere. American racism is rooted in class antagonism that has been maintained since Plymouth Rock, and our history of chattel slavery.

Class status (which is generally a visible trait to attentive eyes) matters. White people who look 'lower class' are likely to get shabbier treatment than other white people who are several steps up the class ladder. White people who are 4th or 5th generation low class tend to be stuck there.

Race is linked to class. Blacks have long been at the bottom of the class hierarchy. People whose identity began (in this country) as chattel property are, by definition, the rock-bottom lowest class. In their most vigorous discrimination, whites assign to blacks the bottom status of lowest value, least deserving respect, lowest paid, worst jobs, expected to be welfare, probably petty criminals, and so on.

Long ago the ruling classes learned that insecurity is one more handy tool to keep the peasants under control.

It is very difficult for white people whose class status is insecure to grant the kind of treatment to blacks they would accord to other whites who are their equals or betters. White people do not reinvent race hatred in every generation; we inherit it. Black people likewise inherit their low status.

If the government takes two municipalities and over a century, gives one immensely preferential treatment. Then in year 101, says, okay, this unfair treatment is over, each municipality is free to do with their tax revenue what they wish, and we'll treat each the same. Well, one city is going to have quality infrastructure, well-educated and high-income citizens, access to employment etc. The other will have none of that, plus a ton of social problems and issues due to a century of neglect and oppression.

In that case, the statistics and the disparity in outcomes wouldn't prove that the government wasn't now giving equal treatment. Since the historical context might suffice. — Judaka

That's where we are at. 160 years of unfair allocation of resources.

Raising blacks' collective low status requires both the opportunity and the means to better their status through their own demonstrable efforts. Reparation plans that involve giving every descendent of slavery $5000 cash (or whatever figure they might settle on) won't achieve anything more than aggravating race hatred.

A California reparation plan makes more sense: Use the funds set aside to give to black people the same opportunity to own property and accumulate wealth that whites received from the 1935 FHA legislation: readily available mortgages for good properties. More, use the set aside funds to do compensatory education, job training in fields with a future, like hospitality management. (Blacks were specifically denied the benefits of FHA and VA mortgage programs.)

IF the material means can be significantly improved, and if working class financial security cam be achieved (a revolutionary goal, not something that is going to happen under the current regime) race hatred can be reduced--maybe eventually expunged (but don't hold your breath waiting),

White people don't like black people... — T Clark

Making assertions without evidence or justification isn't very helpful. — Judaka

It seems to me it is evident that many white people are very prejudiced against most black people. There are stats that validate this observation, but anyone with eyes and ears can see prejudice in operation without having to look very far.

If T Clark had said "Black people have more money that white people..." one could reasonably demand evidence, since the statement is so contrary to the common view.

This Pew Research report is the sort of thing that backs up T Clark's statement.

[neoliberalism's] upending would do much to cure the disparity in outcomes between racial groups. How does this factor into the topic of the comprehensive understanding of racism? — Judaka

The disparity in input and outcomes (like, how much is spent on educating a child and how well that child does after graduating; or how much is invested in a given neighborhood and how well that neighborhood functions over time) helps maintain prejudice.

A lot is said about the wide performance gap between black and white children; less is said about the wide funding gap between wealthy white suburban school districts and poor black school districts. Much richer neighborhoods are much nicer than much poorer neighborhoods. Families tend to do better in neighborhoods which are green and leafy; have convenient high-quality markets; have little crime; where rats and roaches are a rarity; where the streets are clean; where there are safe and pleasant playgrounds.

Accessible good schools and nice neighborhoods or services that every family needs generally are not plentiful where they are provided on a for-profit basis (the neoliberal method). Social investment is a long-term project, not a fast turn around profit-producer.

Any group of people who regularly receive the least share of social goods are going to be looked down on, and be the recipients of prejudicial treatment.

Should "ending racism" be understood as addressing such factors, such as neoliberal capitalism and others? — Judaka

Yes. I would suggest that achieving social (or racial) justice will mean black's access to better education ----> better jobs ----> better housing ----> in better neighborhoods. Skip the "anti-racist training programs", skip black English, forget about micro aggressions, etc. etc. etc. DELIVER first rate education and training programs. Make sure there are no artificial barriers to equal access to good jobs; enforce equal access to housing in any neighborhood. In other words, make it possible for blacks to work and live as well as whites.

Will that automatically result in the disappearance of prejudice? No, not immediately, but prejudice will matter less.

"Speaking of dystopian societies, maybe you should ask ChatGPT what it thinks about a childless future for humans," he said, sarcastically.

I am familiar with the plot, but have neither read the book nor seen the movie. Have you seen it? Is it any good?

In many apocalyptic-themed novels, people descend into barbarity pretty quickly--the Mad Max reference. There is a nice contrast in On The Beach by Nevil Shute. The world is dying as a cloud of radioactivity descends from the northern hemisphere towards the southern pole. Southern Australia is next in line, among the last to go. People behave with remarkable civility as they "carry on" either waiting for the radiation cloud to arrive, or swallowing the poison pill which is freely available.

We now have a real-world apocalypse awaiting us in the possibly uncontrollable heating of the planet. One exceedingly hot summer doesn't demonstrate how bad it will get, but it is suggestive. So far, people either deny the possibility or they live with low-level anxiety about the future. We know how to solve the problem, but we do not have access to the levers of power in corporations and governments. People seem to be living calmly in the face of this calamity--their children's certainly, or their own, if they are young.

You know that birth rates in affluent countries and/or among affluent layers of society are below the replacement level. Many breeding-age people in Japan, for instance, don't seem to be overly concerned. Some European countries are in the same situation as Japan -- demographically doomed. Older people are anxious about it, but not the younger ones, Seems strange to me.

I don't think most of the world has to worry about a childless future. The title of Jeff Goodell's book says it all: The Heat Will Kill You First.

I've been reading about the 1919 Chicago race riot by a contemporary reporter -- Carl Sandburg, the poet, writing for the Chicago Sun Times. WWI was over and the Great Migration of blacks from the south to northern industrial cities continued. There was a lot of labor unrest, corporate resistance, and racial tension in the country as a whole.

Sandburg's articles are snapshots of various aspects of the black/white encounter in Chicago centering on jobs, income, housing, and rent. It's about the behavior of employers and real estate agents; white workers, black workers, unions and families.

His reports are refreshing because Sandburg recounts MATERIAL events--causes and consequences. Neither "racism" nor "sexism" are used as explanatory devices.

The book is about a deadly race riot that began at a Lake Michigan beach, but it is surprising how often integration occurred without incident. The meat packing industry was unionized, and black slaughterhouse workers were strongly encouraged to join the unions, which they did. Many factories were integrated with management suppressing hostility from white workers (profits over conflict).

Housing was definitely not integrated. Rents for blacks were significantly higher than for whites, for often inferior housing. White flight from neighborhoods where blacks were approaching was a well-established phenomenon in 1919. Owners of apartment buildings might sell at a loss rather than rent to blacks, but after the dollar-loss sale, the next owner would rent to blacks at much higher rents.

Of course, if everything had been just great, except for a few housing problems, there wouldn't have been a race riot. The cause of the riot was pretty clear: Some white people were flatly unwilling to accept the presence of blacks in their communities and acted accordingly. It was race hatred--a more concrete term than racism.

But I still don't think it's easy for us to appreciate, from a modern perspective, how different sexual mores were in traditional cultures, to what we take for granted. — Quixodian

It can be hard to get into the minds of people who lived just a few centuries ago, never mind 2 or 3 millennia. Native Americans, for instance, thought much differently than the Europeans did on all sorts of matters.

I don't know whether the American province of Christendom is / was any worse than the English or Australian branches as far as the body, sex, sexuality, and physicality were concerned. From what I've read in American manuals and family advice books from around 1900 - 1910, American attitudes were pretty strait-laced at the beginning of the 20th C. By the 1960s, a lot of young people were ready to ditch the old-fashioned sexual morality. (Birth control pills greatly facilitated sexual liberation.)

Protestant Christian thinking had a large influence on American culture, and so did Catholic thinking (especially on Catholics). I was loaded with all sorts of guilt feelings and shame about sex. So were millions of others.

It was a great relief to hear about Stonewall and begin participating in consciousness raising in the gay male community. It was an even greater relief when I finally figured out the various protocols of cruising, bathhouses, parks, and so forth. I knew that the church (broadly speaking) disapproved of homosexuality in 1971, but the erotic drive was very strong, and I sought out and gave in to temptation.

By the mid-1970s it was possible to be gay and sexually active and be a member in good standing of Metropolitan Community Church (nondenominational), Dignity (Catholic), Integrity (Episcopal) or Lutherans Concerned. These mostly male groups stood in frank opposition to the mainline Protestant and Catholic churches with respect to sexuality.

By the early 1980s, I was ready to exit from Christian belief. Attitudes toward sex wasn't the only thing about which I objected, but it was one of the most focused dissatisfactions. I much preferred feeling free to pursue sex and love without the irritating intrusion by stuffy morality.

Gay liberation was and remains for many a liberation from Christian sexual and family morality.

True, there are denominations and congregations which are now anxious to embrace gay people. I suspect this is similar to the interest of many white congregations to get some colored folk into the pews. There is also the problem of diminishing membership in many churches. A dozen or two younger, reasonably well-employed gay couples can make a nice addition to a struggling congregation. Necessity made a virtue of inclusiveness.

That's not my problem — universeness

If you do not communicate successfully, that IS your problem. Granted: there are people who manage to misunderstand a simple phrase like "Good morning". But quite often when posters are misunderstood, it is the poster's fault, and the problems are typical of writers in general. That's why publishers and newspapers employ editors.

Moderator Mikie's thread on religion has been troubled by unclear communication which I think is his problem. I don't quite know why he's not stating his case more clearly. Perhaps a vague concept at the beginning--God & Christianity Aren’t Special--has hobbled his thinking,

is an expression stemming from combined ignorance, unjustified certainty, blatant inconsideration for others(immoral behaviour if there is such a thing),and spiteful arrogance — creativesoul

Is that attitude best described in 1 word as "gall" or "chutzpah"?

I would never try to undermine anyone's personal convictions — Janus

Why the hell not? What could be more constructive than undermining BAD personal convictions?

What is a waste of time is engaging in philosophical questioning and discussion about various aspects of God when you already accept that Christian dogma is one of many and accept the anthropological point of view. — Mikie

Sorry to quote your two "waste of time" statements out of context. But it really isn't clear to me why you hold the view presented in the quoted sentence. It seems like what you are describing here is what people who are interested in "religion as a topic" engage in periodically. People have written books comparing and contrasting Jesus and Buddha, for example. They treat both of them seriously as subject matter rather than as gods. They might well not believe a word of either man, but believing isn't what they are after.

So many aspects of human endeavor amount to colossal wastes of time, effort, and cash. We are not very good at evaluating the actual worth of a lot of what we are busy doing.

Anyway— I don’t care about whether people are Christian or not; I care about what they do. — Mikie

Jesus and you agree on the importance of "do".

"Everyone who hears my words and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. 27 And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.” Matthew 7:26-27

But in terms of philosophical questioning on a philosophy forum, especially if you’re otherwise secular — yeah, people should move on from that. Either study theology or treat god like any other god. No reason to give “god” special attention just because you happen to be raised in that faith. — Mikie

You are rejecting the specificity of people's experience and their development as persons. You have all sorts of features as a person that are a reflection of how, where, and when you were raised. Perhaps it would be a good idea to lose that fear of spiders you acquired as a child, but there's no reason to lose your language, preferred music, preference in vegetables, and so on. If you were raised in a secular family and have no religious experiences or interests, there's no reason for you to ditch that.

Most style books recommend capitalizing God, thus giving him special attention. If one is talking about various gods, then no special treatment is required. It's a feature of English and its history within Christendom.

I don’t think religion is a waste of time — Mikie

It’s a waste of time. — Mikie

Lots of people have acted on the sentiment you express. They have left. Moved on. Many of the departed are NOT religious--they've become "spiritual". Then there are those who might be "religious" but NOT spiritual. The Church is a useful institution; it's a place to maintain social contacts. A lot of clubs and bowling leagues have gone out of business. The church is still there on the corner. Potluck, anyone?

Is "religion" a waste of time? For some, yes; for others no. Like it or not, many people find it helpful. Whether they are Buddhists, Hindus talking about Vishnu, Moslems yelling Allah Akbar, Baptists ranting about Jesus, or WHATEVER the hell they are, people find religious activities personally useful. That rulers also find religion useful is a much less praiseworthy aspect of belief. That's another possible thread.

I'm no longer a believer and I'm not "spiritual" either--but protestant Christianity is the milieu in which I grew up. As an old adult, I might think I should have been raised in a secular humanist family in Boston or New York City, but I was instead raised in the very conventional rural midwest. There are a lot of things I don't like about the Midwest (or New York City, for that matter) but it is what it is.

In time, more and more people will have grown up in secular, non-religious communities. Maybe someday everyone will be secular. We'll have to come back from the grave to see whether that makes all that much difference.

Gay people often have a hard time in Catholicism in particular, as well as the topics of abortion and even contraception. — Jack Cummins

Yes, yes, yes. The church forgets St. Augustine's sexuality --

"Oh, Master, make me chaste and celibate - but not yet!"

The Catholic Church is unequivocally committed to reproduction, for sure. Officially, no contraception, no abortion. Masturbation? Is the pope against that too? Can't remember. But it isn't just the Catholics. At one time or another, every branch of Christendom has led the charge against various forms of unauthorized fornication. In these more liberal times, many churches welcome gay folk. I suspect that one source of this welcome is their chronically shrinking demographics. They weren't welcoming when the church was full with breeding pairs.

The construction crew began work decades after Jesus. At the moment I can't cite a number.
— BC

To be precise, it began three centuries after Jesus, in the exact year of 325 CE. This is the year of The First Council of Nicaea, where the doctrine of the Trinity was compromised between and constructed by different factions into its initial manifestation - this with the oversight of the Roman Emperor Constantine. — javra

Thanks - good information. I haven't done any reading in the early history of the church for quite a few years and it seems like there is only so much room upstairs for facts. Each new fact costs me one old fact.

The Creeds are a stumbling block for me. On a good day, if I'm feeling sort of religious, I can passively assent to the first statement in the creed

We believe in one God,
the Father, the Almighty,
maker of heaven and earth

but then as it gets further into the weeds, the whole thing becomes pretty dicey.

I'm sort of fond of OLD institutions, The Stella Artois logo and marketing pay homage to the Den Hoorn Brewery, established in 1366. The Hudson Bay Company is 365 years old. Mere children! Kongō Gumi Co., Ltd. (株式会社金剛組, Kabushiki Gaisha Kongō Gumi--no connection to gummy rats) is a Japanese construction company founded in 578 A.D. St. Benedict died in 547, which puts the Benedictine Monastic tradition in the same old-age league.

Must a believer think that the Jews became a people and the Christian Church arose because God intervened in history to make these happen in the way that they did? Or, can a believer think that the Jews constructed their history in the process of living it, and that the Christian Church was constructed without the participation of its divine founder?

I think Christianity was constructed apart from its founder. There was never a historical necessity for the Christian Church to exist. The First Century Roman scene offered a variety of possible belief systems. But, as it happened, Holy Mother Church was constructed from the available materials and it succeeded.

The humanly constructed church without divine guidance or intervention will be anathema to orthodox believers. The sacraments require God to have been present from the beginning, and God is required if ecclesiastic personnel are to have creditable religious standing. I'm OK with that. I can tolerate their position better than they can tolerate mine.

I believe that everyone who engaged in constructing Holy Mother Church did so with authentic, good motives. (In time, yes, there were bad actors all the way to the very top). The founding of Holy Mother Church was meritorious, even if wasn't "divine". The Church should be taken seriously, as should its rituals, sacraments, and traditions.

As I understand it, Christianity was constructed well after the deaths of Jesus, his disciples, Paul, the participants in the post-crucifixion home churches, and others. I presume there was a continuous community who carried their experiences, memories, and collective understandings forward, but they did not "construct" an institution.

The construction crew began work decades after Jesus. At the moment I can't cite a number. The crew had various writings in hand (like Paul's), oral material that was eventually committed to writing--some of which probably came directly from Jesus and the 12. How much? I don't know. They also had a fairly numerous body of 'Christians' (as they would eventually be called) who needed documentation to buttress their faith and experience. There was also a need to establish some sort of organization -- the early 'church' -- but not yet the organization that has come down to us,

The construction crew existed in a rich and varied cultural context. which influenced how they edited documents, what they accepted and what they rejected, and perhaps what intent they wrote to tie the fragmentary documents together. The construction did not take place in Jerusalem or thereabouts.

The thing is, the story of Jesus came together as a cohesive narrative supplied in the Gospels, but the letters of Paul, and by other authors. That's the document -- New Testament.

Thousands of believers scattered around the Mediterranean in the Greco-Roman world had their own local experiences, and over time developed rituals, liturgies, orthodoxies, and heresies.

Eventually the nascent bishop prick of Rome and some other centers became strong enough to promote the right kind of faith and suppress the wrong kind of faith.

So, here we are, after 1500 years+ of never-quite-kept-for-long-peace-and-harmony-in-the-Body-of-Christ.

Christianity Today is being deconstructed through several avenues.

1) millions and millions of people no longer participate in Christian religious activities.
2) scholarship (like the Jesus Project) undermines the historical record that was established by the early church. (This is different than the historical record of whatever actually happened in Jerusalem or on the Road to Damascus about which we have no objective sources.)
3) secularism and secular institutions supply many of the services the church alone once supplied

1) It isn't as if Christianity was on its last legs. It is, however, shifting from the active religion of Europe and the western hemisphere to the active religion of the global south -- particularly Africa.
2) Christianity is the leading faith, first before Islam, and most people in the world are followers of one religion or another.
3) In some areas, evangelistic Protestantism is supplanting Catholicism (South America). Protestants (Anglicans, Methodists, Lutherans, etc.) who have substantial membership in Africa are being outflanked on their right by conservative churches--not fundamentalist or evangelistic, just more conservative theologically. The consequence is the fracture of groups, like the Methodists, into a new more conservative group and an established mainline group. Sexuality is often the gravel in the gears that leads to rupture,

Thanks for posting the document.

The plan calls for much more material about African Americans than I received in high school or college history courses (through the 1960s). That's all to the good. But how many courses is all this stuff supposed to be taught in and at what grade level? I can see teachers covering these materials in a very good school with literate, cooperative, attentive students. In schools where students are less literate, less cooperative, and less attentive it would be an uphill slog.

Florida ranks fairly highly in education, so maybe the course material is doable. Their racial gap between the performance of colored students vs white students is not as wide as Minnesota's, for instance, which is another state that ranks well in education

If they want to stir things up even more, they could do the same thing for working class whites, who have always been considered kind of trashy from the colonial period to the present. (See White Trash : The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America, Nancy Isenberg).

The facts of the working class, white and black, is a key piece of American history, which like the history of slavery, hasn't been treated honestly.

Once upon a time, the US had very conservative and very liberal democrats and very conservative and very liberal Republicans. On the Republican side, there was Barry Goldwater (very conservative) and Nelson Rockefeller (quite liberal). Liberal Democrats were to the left of liberal republicans. Conservative Democrats (particularly Dixiecrats) overlapped conservative Republicans.

In the big reshuffle, conservative southern Dixiecrats and conservative Republicans merged. Liberal Republicans just disappeared, and liberal Democrats occupied the territory left by the departed liberal Republicans. FDR-type democrats are now smeared as 'socialists', and are far fewer in number.

The progressive, liberal and socialist parties have moved increasingly centerward — Vera Mont

Are you talking about the USA? Outside of the Democrat and Republic parties, there is (for all practical purposes) NOTHING. Democratic Socialists? Progressive Labor Party? Socialist Workers Party? American Communist Party? Green Party? PFFFT.

All together, these parties command too few votes to win a dog catcher election.

I count myself as a socialist, but there is no party which is at risk of having to represent anyone in a legislature or city hall. I don't like it, but that's life under mature capitalism.

some American black people benefitted from slavery by learning trades such as blacksmithing. — frank

The statement, in itself, is true. Many slaves were skilled workers in various trades, both on plantations and in shops. Blacksmithing is one example. The US Capitol building and White House were largely built by skilled slave labor from several trades.

It is probably the case that some slaves either escaped slavery or were freed and used their salable skills to earn a living. Those facts do not take anything away from the evils of slavery.

This is why we need identity politics: there's always a racist, sexist, anti-gay politician looking to chip away at what the rest of us know is true. They — frank

Identity groups did not achieve major victories in improving society and reducing unfairness and injustice. It was broadly based efforts like the Progressive Movement, the FDR-era reform efforts, the Civil Rights Movement, and Women's Rights movement. These efforts were broadly based and were directed at diverse targets. Their work promoted a greater sense of unity across divides.

Identity politics tends toward ever more fractioning of a given group's identity. For example, sexual identity politics has achieved such a dizzying array of "sexual identities" that identity politics becomes impossible. Conversely, Blacks can organize around large issues, each one affecting large populations (hiring practices, real estate practices, health care practices, etc.). Blacks are a major demographic, less an "identity". The same goes for poor whites. They, like blacks are not an "identity" -- they are a large demographic segment. The very comfortable top 10%, the professional and wealthy class, are likewise not an identity group. Women cross different demographic groups, and are too large and varied to be called an "identity". What does it mean for 165,000,000 women to have "an identity"? Like as not they have many identities. The same for men.

So, no. I don't think we need "identity politics". We need economic justice across the board; major tax reform in favor of the working class. Higher wages and a greater share of profits for workers. Equity in health care, housing, and education. A serious reduction in the privileges of the elite class. Stuff like that.

Let's imagine there was a world whereby sex was unknown. All people knew was self-pleasuring..... The telling part is the cultural part. It is shared diffusion of information that otherwise would be unknown. — schopenhauer1

Certainly there is diffusion of information in society. The need to eat isn't "knowledge" but WHAT can safely be eaten certainly is. Trial and error, repeated naively over and over, leads to dozens of dead diners.

We can agree on that much. Sex? Maybe not.

Rather it is the whole artifice of "attraction to someone, romancing/courting/initiating with someone, and having sex with someone". That is a long complex conceptual web of ideas that don't just come innately. — schopenhauer1

Yes, this is all socially constructed. Showing up at the cave of one's love object with a haunch of deer, as an inducement to adjourn to a pleasant thicket in the woods, is the distant antecedent of showing up in at his steady's house in his father's new Chevy with a box of candy and plans to see Beach Blanket Bingo--and who knows what afterwards.

More social construction.

But what is likely to happen in the back seat of the Chevy doesn't need to be taught.

We disagree on this. That's fine. Disagreeing with EP doesn't make you a second class citizen, and you won't be arrested for thought crimes. Jesus loves the social constructionist about as much as he loves the evolutionary psychologist--which is not that much. Both of them will deny his grandmother's immaculate conception of his mother and Mary's perpetual virginity. Actually, Jesus doesn't care that much either way, but Saints Elizabeth and Mary are very dogmatic about it.

And, you might ask, WHY WHY WHY did immaculate conceptions and virgin births happen anyway? Well, it happened because these two people (Liz and Mary) were from that society where people just pleasure themselves, and hadn't heard the Gospel of S*E*X. They had apparently not been enlightened by any of the smart serpents one always finds slithering around, about the good work of a stiff dick. When the angel Gabriel explained to Liz and Mary how sex worked, they were horrified. So it was that Gabriel had to settle for the hocus hocus miracle method of reproduction rather than the usual down and dirty method that God invented for us and that Gabriel was looking forward to. The two hysterics stopped yammering and were duly impregnated in the most unlikely of ways.

Sometime later Jesus was born and we have no record of his pleasuring himself or anyone else. I suppose he, as a diety, could just imagine having sex with the entire human race at one time. Actual sex for the gods is sort of beside the point.

But I digress.

Where did they get the idea of mating? It’s not an innate concept. — schopenhauer1

We disagree on this. You think it's cultural; I think it's innate behavior -- a product NOT of our development as Homo sapiens, but the product of vertebrate evolution. To borrow a phrase from Dylan Thomas, it's "The force that through the green fuse drives the flower", applied to animals.

"Doing what comes naturally" doesn't mean doing it well, gracefully, or appropriately. There is a learning curve on the way to doing it well. What constitutes "doing it well" is a cultural matter. A stiff dick doesn't concern itself with "goodness" "grace", "propriety" or much else. Again, it's society's role to keep stiff dicks under control.

What is this mechanism that allows a story to be ingrained for 400,000 years? Racial memory (Jung's idea)? Some sort of encoding that is transmitted genetically? Some epiphenomenal process that the body passes from generation to generation?

There is the trope in culture, "When I reach X age, I am supposed to be attracted to someone and pursue them or be pursued (or mutually pursue or whatever)". — schopenhauer1

Come, come -- back to the real world. The 'trope' in culture is to put the brakes on the youngun's sexual drives, and discourage premature mating. Premature = before they are materially ready to independently provide for their own, their mate's, and their children's basic needs.

it SEEMS like there must be an evolutionarily biological reason for why we direct our pleasure towards someone else. — schopenhauer1

Seems, Sir? Nay, it's a necessity. Were this abstracted atomized pleasure all that was necessary, evolution would have never got off the ground and we'd all be single-celled prokaryotes instead of multi-celled eukaryotes.

Boredom appears in animals with enough brain matter to get bored. Chickens don't get bored; bright parrots do. Animals that are caged (or live in our houses) who become bored can be very problematic. BTW, dogs don't hump our legs because they want to mate with us; they are engaged in a dominance display.

However, "seeking out a mate" is a trope. — schopenhauer1

Baloney.

I don't know exactly why, but some people seem to like EP and some people don't. Both can find justifications for their preference.

So I think we are almost on the same page, but it is where the delineation should be made that we are disagreeing.

You seem to be saying that various appearances of the person and qualities are probably culturally derived, but the very drive "to fuck (someone)" is not.

I am saying on the other hand, that it is simply "pleasure" that is innate, and directing it "to someone" is STILL cultural. I gave the analogy to my previous post: — schopenhauer1

We are singing from the same hymnal at least; not sure if we are on the same page. I agree that pleasure-seeking is biologically driven, but we are also driven to achieve it with somebody else. Who that somebody else ought or ought not to be is a cultural matter. We are not naturally onanistic. We're a social animal.

We have a batch of drives from the most basic -- hunger, thirst, sex -- on to more complex ones: comfort, security, mental stimulation, touch, expression, love, freedom of movement (nothing political meant here)... various people have drawn up lists, like Maslow. hunger and eating are biologically driven; what we eat, where, when, how, and with whom is culturally defined. Sex and pleasure with somebody else or alone is a basic biological drive. My guess is that the basic "how" is pretty much baked in. The rest of the animal kingdom manages to mate without a guide and I think we can too, even if the Kama Sutra isn't hard wired. We require touch as infants and are driven to seek out touch, but where, when, with whom, and where not, when not, and with whom not are culturally defined.

And so on and so forth,

Yet homeless learn to do it, and the ones that like the lifestyle prefer um, "urban camping" (and not saying all or most homeless people do of course). — schopenhauer1

The homeless are outliers. Many of them are drunks and drug addicts, or MI, and as such, are destitute. Some of the homeless are destitute and don't have CD or MI issues. People sleep on the sidewalk (or in doorways, on steam grates where such things exist, or in shelters of some sort) where there is simply no alternative. The CD homeless can't use in in shelters, and the MI may not be stable enough to be housed in shelters.

99.99% of the population consistently avoid sleeping in the streets.

I am not saying that preferences aren't somehow "innate" or at the least, "individual to the person", but rather attributing those preferences or even BEING ATTRACTED ITSELF as somehow a cultural thing. That is to say, the culture reinforces being attracted AT ALL to SOMETHING. — schopenhauer1

Reminds me of this Jefferson Airplane chorus, particularly the imperative last line:

Don't you want somebody to love?
Don't you need somebody to love?
Wouldn't you love somebody to love?
You better find somebody to love!

Music has been flogging the importance of love for decades. All you need is love sung in 10,000 different songs. Quite often "love" is another term for sex.

On the one hand, hormones are the primary motive for us to go find somebody to fuck. Cultural expectations are secondary, but more elaborate. Fucking is fundamental. On the other hand, culture decorates the urge and gives it a more elaborate shape. There are culturally defined standards for prospective sex/love objects. Just any old slob won't do; a very exciting partner might be too unpredictable. We are expected to find a beautiful or handsome mate, curvaceous or muscular, blond or brunet, nicely dressed, etc. People are judged on the quality of their partners--someone you could confidently take home to meet your folks.

I guess let me clarify, the "ability to make up complex conceptual frameworks" might be evolutionarily evolved, but the specific "stories" within those frameworks, perhaps, were not, is what I am suggesting. — schopenhauer1

Good point. EP may produce all sorts of behaviors, but what we are going to be able to parse out is mostly pretty general.

But culture plays so much that even inborn ideas of justice (babies being pissed when you don't give them their deserved reward or something) can be quickly curbed such that maybe its more of a trait that is not even that significant. — schopenhauer1

Never mind babies. In experiments with chimps (not to make unflattering comparisons) when a subject was either not rewarded or was rewarded with an inferior snack (a cucumber slice instead of an apple slice they stopped cooperating with the experimenter. Dogs were a little more forgiving. They cheated dog would stop cooperating if one dog was rewarded and they were not. If they each got a reward (even if one got meat and the other a cracker) they were satisfied.

The animal evidence suggests that some sort of "fairness standard" operates in some social mammals, at least.

It isn't just "turtles all the way down". It's a meatloaf of biology, evolution, and culture all the way down. This meatloaf is the mostly unobservable brain -- by unobservable, I mean I don't know what most of my brain is doing, never mind my knowing what your brain is doing. We just know that small conscious bit. I can scan your brain with a fMRI which tells me just about nothing about culture and evolution.

Reminds me of E.O Wilson's theory of Biophilia. — schopenhauer1

I haven't read E. O. Wilson (yes, I should have but...) so I didn't get any ideas from him directly.

A lot of this discussion is revolving around whether our behavior is "essential" (bred in the bone) or constructed (taught). We are not one or the other, of course -- both come into play.

Some people think that homosexuality is constructed. I say NO, but the way homosexuality is executed is largely culturally constructed. An otherwise culturally isolated homosexual community probably won't develop a black leather and chains fetish sub-group--unless there were some male motorcycle clubs around wearing hot looking black leather and chains. Probably won't cook up rainbow flags, either, or call one another 'miss thing'.

Heterosexuality is not constructed either, but it is certainly culturally constructed. There is nothing essential and biological about the oft-cited Leave It To Beaver lifestyle of suburban living, (I never watched the show; we didn't have television at the time.). Suburban living was LITERALLY constructed.

I confess that I do not know how to separate out influences of evolution from all the other natural factors that shape us; or how to separate biological factors from cultural factors.

I further confess that I do not have much knowledge about all the evolutionary pressures our ancestors faced. Lions, tigers, and bears--an obvious pressure; finding enough food--another obvious pressure. Mating and successful child rearing, finding shelter from the stormy blast and a safe place to fall into unconsciousness for 8 hours, +/- every day. Some of that may explain why we don't just lay down on on a busy sidewalk and go to sleep and similar things we don't do.

The bands of hunter gatherers who are our kind since a few hundred thousand years ago also had social pressures. Of course the social pressures they had to deal with were simpler than ours -- they didn't have to coordinate their shoes, socks, trousers, jacket, shirt, and tie else be made fun of. (These days people wear all sorts of shit in public, so maybe evolution is entering a new phase.) I am pretty sure that questions like "who's in charge" was an issue. In other social animals, who is top chicken, top cow, top dog, top chimp is contested. That a social characteristic we seem to have inherited in spades. "Who does what" was, I suspect, also a recurring issue. I'm thinking less of gender roles here and more social status roles. Who gets the biggest hunk of meat, for instance. Who decides whether this or that rock outcropping makes a good place to stay for the night?

I don't think the paragraph above is a story. Though, why wouldn't Harari's story telling theory be an example of evolutionarily produced behavior? (I agree, though, that story telling is regularly used by humans to do everything from getting up in the morning (against the body's unwillingness) to why we should send a sample of our species to Mars.

Thank you!.

The Science article was useful -- particularly the map of major events (tipping points) that could/would/will/might occur at different increases in the global temperature. If we are very lucky, and extremely successful in our efforts to limit the climate increase to less than 2ºC, the climate tipping points will be bad enough, at 3ºC and 4ºC, much worse.

At <2ºC, we can have Greenland and West Antarctic ice collapse, failure of the North Atlantic circulation system, and thawing of the Canadian permafrost.

Where do existential threats kick in? Mass existential threats or local existential threats? Local existential threats are here. IF Phoenix, AZ were to lose electric power for a day or two, the total deaths would be in the thousands -- given tightly sealed buildings and dependence on air conditioning, ventilation fans, and water pumps.

At 115ºF in Phoenix, dry heat or not, if you don't have access to a cool refuge, you have a very good chance of dying. Unfortunately, warm blooded animals are designed to maintain body heat, not cool one down quickly. As the internal body temperature rises from 98ºF towards 104ºF --107ºF tissue starts breaking down at the cellular level; heart failure or general organ failure (or melting of cell walls) ensues.

There are a lot of climate disasters we do not have to worry about because, as Jeff Goodell explains in his new book, The Heat Will Kill You First.

Scientists have talked about "tipping points", that features of the climate will not change smoothly over time, but will display sudden patterns. Are the current round of exception heat, exceptional rain, exceptional drought, etc. the result of large systems "tipping", producing dramatic change?

Anybody?

There is reason to think visual artists can in some sense overcome the slightly misleading way we think about what we see. — Srap Tasmaner

That reminds me of Alexander Melamid's and Vitaly Komar's book, Painting by Numbers, edited by JoAnn Wypijewski, It is not 'hard' science, maybe not hard 'social science' either, but it is interesting and relevant here. The authors wanted to know what different broad cultural groups preferred in paintings and colors. (The authors produced their own paintings for the surveys.) They found broad preferences in groups. Blue was the most popular color, orange the least. Representative art (like landscapes) was much more strongly preferred over abstract paintings. Most groups preferred occupied landscapes (presence animals or people). Blue sky, green hills and grass, water.

It seems reasonable to me that people would like landscapes more than, say, abstract expressionism, for the same reason that people tend to find parks with trees, grass, flowers, etc. more pleasant than the the most splendidly designed concrete plazas.

Boston City Hall Plaza is an architectural failure, in my opinion. I like many brutalist (bare concrete) designs but this one failed to incorporate humane relief. The building dates to 1963. Some recent efforts have been made to change the building, ranging from demolition to redesign. Like many "urban renewal" projects, City Hall replaced what was described as a seedy but vibrant area. Can't have seedy! (Minneapolis did the same thing with Block E, a very seedy and very lively block in the middle of the downtown area. Once leveled, that part of the city died, and nothing they have tried has brought it back to life.

Boston City Hall



Boston Public Gardens

@schopenhauer1 When I reflect on the behavior of animals (setting human animals aside for a moment) they seem to have very similar behavior within their species. Chickens avoid deep water, ducks prefer it. Squirrels build characteristic nests, so do robins. Dogs, with which are very familiar, all exhibit quite a few specific behaviors. And so on.

How is it that animals behave in characteristic ways? We think they evolved to behave in certain ways that worked for them in the environments in which they exist(ed). Behavior, we think, is governed by brains--brains that have evolved, and through some mechanism (which I don't understand) produce consistent, somewhat predictable behavior.

Consistent, predictable behavior is what enables us to manage animals, and animals to interact with us. (I'm thinking of university campus squirrels, for instance, that are expert at spotting potential free food, and will "reach out" to said sources, maybe even climbing up a pant leg, if the subject stands still.)

Every animal learns new information, but they come from the mint with a package of behaviors which enable them to succeed (if they aren't eaten, run over, get shot, get sick, starve, etc.).

When it comes to the paragon of animals--our esteemed selves--a lot of people are squeamish about US evolving.

We aren't separate from the rest of nature, we are nature, and the workings of life have produced in us the kind of animal that we are. Just like it did everything else.

That's my basis for thinking that our behavior evolved, and how we developed technical abilities. There was a long stretch of time--hundreds of thousands of years--between the first stone tool (a rock to crush nuts) and the first brick. Between the first camp fire and the first fired brick, between the first club to kill something, and the first metal spear tip. Millions of years between the incessant chattering of our direct predecessor in an African tree and the equally incessant chattering of French intellectuals.