Is religion's role as the focus of community something that could be taken over by a non-religious entity? — frank

Of course -- religion isn't the only focus of community. An example:

The Degree of Honor Protective Association began in the 1870s as a women's support organization for striking railroad workers and their families. Over time it became a fraternal organization that was the focus of community, particularly in small midwestern towns, but also an insurance company. It was much like the the Eagles or Masons. They held dances, meals, parties, meetings, and so on. The Fraternal side came to an end in the 1950s-1960s. If they had been a religion (it wasn't), it would now be a dead religion. It remains as a small women-run (and profitable) life insurance company. If the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America disappeared, but the insurance companies Aid Association for Lutherans and Lutheran Brotherhood (now merged into Thrivant Financial) were all that remained, we could say "Lutheranism is dead."

There are good reasons why Christianity isn't a dead religion that do not hinge on acceptance of the Creed (like "was crucified, died, and was buried; on the third day he arose from the dead..."). I can not intellectually consent to the Nicene Creed, and not all Christians heartily endorse the Creed. But that doesn't mean that Christianity is, in any sense "dead".

If you label the UK, Germany, or France as the deciding sample of Christianity's health, then sure, it will seem like it is on life support. However, there are about 2 billion plus Christians in the world. There are around 70 million Christians in China and 240 million in the United States. The rumors of Christianity's death have been greatly exaggerated.

What are the signs of Christianity being quite alive?

Numbers alone indicate that the life of the Church is ongoing.
Most Christians adhere to a reasonably common understanding of the Creed, and to the import of the scriptures.
Christians form communities and much (or all) of their lives are lived within that community.
Most Christians identify as Christians (meaning "being Christian" is more significant than a mere demographic category).
Many Christians (maybe half) participate regularly (on a monthly basis) in worship, scripture reading, thinking about what they should do vs. what they want to do in the context of the scripture) and so on.
There are many "hot spots" of Christian religious activity, as well as some "cold spots" (for better and for worse).

The fact that mainline Christians recite the Creed during the liturgy isn't what holds the church together anywhere. What holds the church together is what holds any and every group together: regular contact, identification of similarities, psychological and material benefits derived from, and a need to belong to a community.

Even you--finding the various points of the creed absurd as you do (by the way, Jesus is thought to have died in fact, not just sort of a faked death) could (and may) belong to a Christian community. You probably couldn't get away with belonging to a strict fundamentalist community, but there is room on the edges of Christian communities for the apostate, heretic, and nonbeliever. This is true of other religions too, not because the creeds allow it, but because communities can encompass some number of heretics without harm.

My view is that much of what our brains do is not conscious. I'm not sure that there is even a place in the brain where consciousness exists. Rather, consciousness is a service of the unconscious mind.

By "unconscious" I'm not thinking in Freudian terms. Rather, most of what our brains do is not open to introspection and observation. We can only guess what it is doing (short of evidence, which we have some of).

My conscious mind is more the witness of what I am writing here than the author. I don't know where in my brain composition occurs, or how the ideas composed are sent to the motor area, so that my fingers type out what some other brain area has written. (fMRIs suggest that many broad areas of the brain operate to complete tasks.)

I don't mean to suggest that there is no person. We exist as actual, unique persons, alright, but much of our mental lives are "silent" as far as the conscious mind is concerned.

Why? — darthbarracuda

Because the kind of thinking you displayed, and which apokrisis countered with pragmatism, is just not good for you. Thinking that way will give you hives, hemorrhoids, and halitosis.

My point, rather, was that there is no value to truth qua truth. There is always something else that truth is in the service to that makes it valuable — darthbarracuda

Isn't this true of most abstracted qualities, like goodness, health, beauty, evil, and so on? "Goodness or "beauty" don't exist on their own -- they are features of something. There is no "evil qua evil" either. Some thing might be evil, some person might be evil. But evil doesn't have an independent existence.

Same for truth. Truth isn't floating around out there waiting to be discovered. It is only found in something.

People who seek abstractions (truth, beauty, power, evil, speed, etc.) are, I should think, not deluded, masochistic, or megalomaniac but are rather quite misinformed about the qualities or abstractions having material existence.

Jesus says "you shall know the truth and the truth will make you free". Who actually said that, and what they meant is lost now. Anyway, Pontius Pilate sliced across that vague formula with "What is truth?" At another point Jesus claimed to be the truth. John 14:5-6 Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” 6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life." In this case, Jesus named himself as the body of the truth. Truth is Jesus, and Jesus is truth. Take it or leave it, but at least here truth was something concrete.

The point was that the search for truth is fundamentally conditioned by the psychology of the person. Whether or not truth is valuable cannot be determined apart from the person themselves, and to assert otherwise is to trample over others in power relations. Truth cannot be separated from its source in the power structures of society, nor from the psychological dispositions of its adherents. — darthbarracuda

I don't find this paragraph very compelling. What if the truth in a concrete embodiment of some kind (a fossil from the Cambrian layer of rock is the truth about the age of multi-celled organisms. The oxygenated atmosphere is the truth of the importance of cyanobacteria...) This truth doesn't originate in the power structure of society. Similarly, to deny that the fossil has anything to do with the age of the earth (which every right believing fundamentalist knows is about 6,000 years) doesn't run roughshod over power relations. Creationism is baloney, as far as I am concerned, but I don't think creationism has very much to do with power--as a disembodied noun.

I would assert that Creationism has something to do with the psychological comfort of the community of believers. Any settled belief that we share with others tends to be somewhat comforting -- even the settled belief that Homo sapiens has fucked himself over (and much of the animal kingdom as well) is comforting when held in concert with others. It's an embodied truth.

laurels on their shoulders — darthbarracuda

I thought that laurels were worn on one's head, not one's shoulders. But since The Truth has become annoying, we won't hold you to it.

I do not quite understand how "truth" got you so riled up. I mean there is "truth" (all lower case) in some things. 5x5=25 seems like a truth. "Oxygen is heavier than helium." also seems to be "true" (all lower case).

There may be a hidden Truth (upper case T) in Hilary Clinton's e-mails, but I doubt it. But many people felt there was TRUTH (all upper case) to be discovered there. Most believers think their holy books are TRUE, though some believers will settle for "the Truth". What is true about President Trump? Is the statement, "Donald Trump is our president" true, True, or TRUE?

I can see getting riled up about "seekers of wisdom and TRUTH" (per the song above), but there are more limited "truths" that are practically worth finding.

Is your problem with TRUTH that it may be (sometimes is) hideous? The TRUTH of a terminal cancer diagnosis may be hideous. For some, maybe more in times past, the "truth" that "there is no salvation outside of the Church" is a sorrowful truth. The "truth" that Homo sapiens and many other species are probably screwed (thanks to CO2 levels) is a very sad truth. And so on.

Is the difference between the happy truth that "you shall know the truth and the truth will make you free" and the less happy truth that "sometimes you just have to grab the bull by the tail and face the situation" what has stirred you up?

Just wondering what the truth is about your OP.

Pilate said, "What is truth?"

Here's a song about the cold clear eyes of seekers of truth (from "How to Succeed In Business Without Really Trying") The song starts at about 1:48

That's not true. We haven't yet reached a tipping point as far as I'm aware. — Posty McPostface

The "tipping point" won't be like hitting a wall. It will pass pass like the very tip of peak oil -- it will be a non-event. Only in retrospect can we know when the tipping point happened.

So as not to immerse you in hopeless dread (didn't somebody start a thread about that), it is possible that climate change, global warming, our demise, may occur at a slower rate than we anticipated. In which case, if we were, are, and will be working diligently on CO2, methane, and other gas reductions (absolutely, not just relatively) we might make it. On the other hand, not to give you too much of a warm fuzzy, it's possible that climate change will proceed at a much faster rate than we anticipated. In which case, we are screwed.

False dilemma. — Posty McPostface

Nein, mein Herr. It's not a false dilemma. The real dilemma is how to bring those things about quickly -- like yesterday.

The sun works miracles on green bananas. — Posty McPostface

True, but so does ethylene gas or calcium carbide. Let's all use more unnatural methods of doing things.

Yeah, though I'm starting to doubt whether Trump will actually be able to stop the decline of the West. — Agustino

IF the West is declining (and we would want to define the ways in which it may or may not be declining) it isn't something that one president, be he Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Reagan, a Bush, W. J. Clinton, Obama, or Trump can stop. Declining or advancing civilizations are a global, macro, long range process.

It would be surprising if China was unable to mount a significant advance towards the dominant position in the world economy. A billion plus people, a well organized-even-if-dictatorial government, educational and industrial infrastructure, the desire to play a dominant role, etc. Whether it will succeed depends on many factors. It won't take a long time to get the answer.

I'm not at all sure whether any country can sustainably dominate the world economy at this point. We are past peak oil and even though the post peak period will be about as long as the pre-peak period (in other words, about a century) declining oil production is going to limit economic growth. Petroleum is just such a critical resource.

I've explained elsewhere in this thread (above this post) why there are limits on growth, regardless of policy.

But... Hundreds of millions of Westerners have not lost their basic beliefs in western values. Certainly some have, and they tend to be the chattering class, the vocal ditherati, nattering on about the bogus patriarchy, pronouns, and all that epiphenomenal stuff.

People as old as I am are well advised not to buy green bananas. Respond soon, or I might not be here.

Am I so 'emotional' over it? Not really. You are right -- I and those in my age group will be dead before the "grande merde frappe le ventilateur" to use a French expression. What I am is pessimistic about your and subsequent generations' futures.

I'm pessimistic (about climate change, global warming, rising ocean levels, petroleum depletion, CO2 reduction, etc.) because it is too late by about 40 years to make the critical changes needed, and too much time (50 years, roughly) are required to find, perfect, and implement large technological changes. In other words, the horses are out of the barn and gone.

Here's a symbolic example: President Carter installed solar panels on the roof of the White House in 1976. in 1980 President Reagan had them removed -- not because they were ruining the roof, but because he rejected the whole ecological movement. Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, and Bush II, accomplished nothing, and Obama didn't accomplish significant significant reductions, either -- though he at least signed the Paris climate change agreement, which Trump then rejected.

The 1970 decade was the last time we could have begun earnestly responding to climate change, but we didn't. Four more decades (1980 - present) pushed CO2 levels, global heating, and all that close to the top. It is now running over the top. Can nothing be done now? Well sure, if there were a world-wide-war-time-like commitment to radically changing our economies to ecological sustainability -- and then letting the economic dominoes fall as they will, yes. We might be able to turn the situation around.

Do you see anything remotely like that happening? No even middle-sized country, governmental unit, or economic region has gotten past gradualism.

IF China, the US, Europe, India, et al ALL committed to radical CO2 reduction today, it would still take at least 50 years to bring about the process. That puts us close to the end of the 21st century -- and into the major consequences of climate change -- too late.

Carbon sequestration? Gigantic solar farms and windmills everywhere? Everybody on mass transit? Abandoning the private automobile, freeways, air travel and airports? Cease petroleum pumping, plastic production, and use? Abandon consumerism everywhere? Empty the suburbs? Gut the world economy?

One might as well plan on the second coming of Christ to happen this afternoon.

The Chinese, Indians, Middle Easterners, Europeans, and North Americans have not, and can not reduce their carbon foot prints either as much as, or as fast as, would be required IF we were to be on track to avoid eco-tanking.

What about all those windmills, solar panels, electric cars, etc. Look around: how many all-electric cars do you see? Check out whether coal or gas had anything to do with generating the electricity in your town. How many pounds of plastic are within 20 feet of where you are sitting right now? Are there ready replacements for that plastic that you can obtain and afford? How many trucks do you see on the freeway? How many of the trucks are running on battery power from renewable electricity? How busy is the airport near you? How brightly lit is your city at night? How much energy goes into cooling and heating your home?

A couple of billion more people in China, India, the Middle East, Africa, and South America want to join the Europeans and Americans in enjoying the good life of material pleasures--like heating, washing machines, air conditioning, gadgets galore, cars, vacations on other continents, and so on and so forth.

Let me tell you; you heard it here first. It isn't going to happen without severe changes in the ecological, economical, and social environments on top of the problems that have already been created. It isn't that I want Indians living in shit holes, or Africans starving, or anything like that. It's just that there isn't remotely enough green energy to achieve what people want. Why? Because we want materials, not just energy.

Hey, Minnesota and Texas are leading states at achieving significant power from renewable sources like wind. So are some other states. Does that mean that our cars are running on wind power? No. Does that mean there are no coal plants in Minnesota or Texas? No. Does that mean Texas and Minnesota know what to do with the nuclear waste from their nuclear power plants? No. Are Texans and Minnesotans living "green lives"? No.

but, maintaining it and not getting paid for doing such a task entails some things, if you know what I mean — Posty McPostface

Do you mean "in lieu of getting paid, the moderators receive the occasional exquisite pleasure of executing an errant philosopher? Like, in the good old days they'd have burnt Buxtebuddha at the stake in the market square after Mass? This being the new times, the youth-perverting philosodeviants are merely expelled from our august company and sent out to beg from the philistines?

Is that what you mean?

No one so far has noted the large turds in the Greater China punchbowl.

Nobody is going to have a long term trouble free future; everyone is going to be contending with very large and practically intractable problems:

• Global heating of the atmosphere and especially the oceans
• Climate anomalies everywhere disrupting agriculture, fisheries, and forests
• The diminishing supply of inexpensive, accessible petroleum, when an expanding supply would be necessary to maintain industrial production. Oil isn't just fuel; it's chemicals, lubrication, and energy. Oil is an an essential ingredient in every step of industrial and agricultural production.
• The rapid loss of glaciers in Asia which provide essential supplies of fresh water
• The continued growth of overall population
• The failure so far of any economic region to actually achieve significant CO2 reductions (acknowledging that some small governmental units have achieved some significant progress)

What are the practically intractable problems China, the USA, Europe, Africa, South American, India, et al will be confronting?

-Significant sea-level rise displacing large numbers of people and inundating installed industrial bases
-Drought
-Shortages of drinking water
-Unpredictable and unseasonably heat waves, heavy torrential rainfall
-Insect infestations--some of which will be disease vectors spreading both old and novel diseases
-Food shortages
-Energy shortages
-Raw material shortages
-Manufacturing disruptions
-Political instability
-And More!

Christian Africa — Baden

Don't forget Muslim Africa--Boko Haram, et al...

One of the problems with the Constitution is that it is 200+ year old document written to meet the problems that could then be seen in late 18th century governance. While it needed to be, and has been amended, it has not been re-conceived for a much different world that now exists.

We could call a constitutional convention and write a new constitution. After all, it isn't only abortions that are at issue.

In a line of decisions going as far back as 1891, the Supreme Court recognized a right of privacy and bodily integrity, applying it to activities related to marriage, procreation, family relationships, and child rearing and education. Only in 1965 In Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), the Supreme Court ruled that a state's ban on the use of contraceptives violated the right to marital privacy. The court extended that understanding to unmarried persons in 1972. — Wikipedia

Maybe the Supremes could decide that, No, actually we think the state does have an interest in suppressing contraception that over-rides the protection of bodily integrity, liberty, and a right to privacy.

Anybody up for attending a constitutional convention in say, 5 years (it would take a while to call and organize one)? My guess is that the descendants of the original social, economic, and political arbitraitors would work VERY HARD to make sure there was a decidedly less permissive cast to any new constitution.

Guns don't kill people; people do — Srap Tasmaner

This is not a truism, it's a dodge intended to derail any conversation about responsibility for manufacturing, promoting, selling, or using guns. Guns are in no sense agents. Left on their own, they never do anything except rust. The only relevant agents in any murder are people -- not guns, and not any other inanimate object.

As you quite usefully noted, rocks, big sticks, arrows, spears, knives, guns, bombs -- many things -- are "force multipliers" and the gun lobby is guilty of promiscuously manufacturing, promoting, selling, and (in some cases) using force multipliers. So is the military lobby. So are several other industries and lobbies.

I'd agree, and would invite you to write an instructional pamphlet for the next attempt at a left-wing revolution. — Baden

He could just send them a copy of Saul Alinsky's Rules For Radicals. Alinsky wasn't right about everything, but he was right about some things. Like, the Occupy people could have rented a safe deposit box in one of New York's premier banks and occupied the box with a few fish and dead squirrels. They could have arranged to track dog shit into the executive suites -- at least up to the reception desk.

As Will Durant often writes....man is a trousered Ape. — Marcus de Brun

Yes, we share a lot of DNA with Pan troglodytes, our embarrassing close relatives. Trousered ape sums it up well. A combination of ape drive and human intellect is what makes us so splendid on the one hand (the paragon of animals) and Milton's very model of Lucifer, light bearer and heaven's own subversive--the devil--on the other hand.

Michail Bulgakov's satire of Bolsheviks, The Heart of a Dog, captures us well. A surgeon sews the glands (like testicles, of a human into a dog. The dog becomes quite human like, a uniformed Bolshevik bureaucrat, but has a lot of dog characteristics, like biting fleas in his armpits, sniffing around garbage cans, attacking cats, and thrusting his nose into crotches.

"Western Civilization" is a long project, stretching over 5000+ years. The "Western" part is what most of us here are heirs to, but there are also "Eastern Civilization", "African Civilization", "Amerindian Civilization", et al. The human civilizations are not all alike, not all operating on the same time-line, not equally technologically involved, and so on -- but all humans have been "civilized" for a long time--and it's always a mixed bag.

I like western civilization; it's home. Had I been born in China or India I'd like that civilization and it would be home.

Are Westerners any worse or any better than other civilizations? No. Humans all share the same drives, and if they get their hands on something really interesting and which gives them a lot of leverage, they tend to use it for all its worth.

Why did Europeans do so much colonizing? Because the benefits of colonialism were feasible and desirable. Did other people colonize other parts of the world, and exploit other people and resources? Of course. People have been moving from one place to another in search of resources and "good stuff" and this has generally involved taking over other people and their resources. This has been going on for... maybe 20,000 years.

The Roman peninsula (the site of the early Roman Empire, and then heart of the later empire) would not have been possible had not Rome gone out and gotten stuff from around "their sea" -- the sea between the lands. They sucked up goods from near Persia to Scotland, Egypt to Germany. Was it worth it?

Yes, it was probably worth it. There's usually a down-side to human enterprises, and no group of human beings are exempt. There's also usually upsides to human enterprises.

No, I wasn't clear. You and your self are synonymous. What is illusory is that the conscious self is an illusion created by the not conscious brain, which is also "you". The conscious self is an illusion or, or perhaps it is clearer to say the conscious mind is emergent from the non-conscious mind.

Presumably it is the non-conscious brain which takes the advice of the Delphic Oracle to "know thy self". To the extent that the emergent conscious mind is a good representative illusion of the non-conscious mind, we can be fairly certain that the non-conscious mind doesn't know the complex self it is, unless it works at it.

There is continuity between the non-conscious mind and the illusory conscious mind. The non-conscious mind will be as graceful, clear, and kind as the illusion it creates, and it will be as totally fucked up if that's how one's illusory self comes across.

Even if it were trivial, then the fact that you perceive other things as more important is an example of "whataboutism". — Benkei

It's not this phantom "whataboutism". The material causes of misery among blacks, poor whites, hispanics, native Americans, et al grossly overwhelm the harm caused by someone saying "cotton picking". People get poor, stay poor, and sink deeper into poverty and suffering as a result of deliberate material arrangements kept in place for the convenience and benefit of the few.

Extreme disparities in various outcomes isn't a result of insults, racist phrases, and the like. Those are epiphenomena. The very real, present, and active causes are crude economic exploitation and/or economic exclusion because some populations no longer have "utility". The average black income in San Francisco is around $15,000 a year. The average educated population income is $82,000. Clearly, uneducated people (whatever racial group) are being effectively excluded from San Francisco--the cost of living there is too high, and there is no way the unskilled can make a reasonable income. The process of being excluded is inordinately stressful and unpleasant. That's one of the reasons why there are "excess deaths" among white, unskilled, working class men in the rust belt, or among other bottom-of-the-heap groups. Having been exploited in decades past, they are now being excluded. They are no longer economically relevant. Officially, "fuck 'em". Same thing for other groups.

People only have so much attention span and so much emotional reserve. Spend it on tending to even only major slights against all the sensitive categories you are aware of, and you'll soon be either exhausted, or too wound up to think straight -- or think gayly forward either.

Worse, all the conflict over real or imagined slights (I'm not talking about deliberate and focused insults) makes it more difficult for people to cooperate. It's one thing if somebody calls me a 'homosexual' instead of 'gay'. That's not worth getting riled up about. They might even get away with calling me a cock sucker. Outrage? Nah.

That's partly why Occupy failed — Baden

Occupy..., bless them, were rebels with a cause but rebels without a plan.

But I don't see that you've said much more than you have different priorities and your priorities are better. You've conceded the principle that outrage is a legitimate political weapon. I'm just for employing it more widely than you are and am less complacent about the results of not doing so. — Baden

Right, mine are better. Absolutely.

Outrage is a useful motivator for change, but the shelf-life of outrage is relatively short. Direct it towards the most important targets. There are 7+ billion people, all of whom have prejudices of various kinds (except me and thee, and even thee has a couple of unfortunate hangups). New annoying people are being born faster than you can reform the old annoying people. The hamster wheel of outrage will wear you out.

Outrage is not going to cause the few hundred thousand people who have control of much of the world's wealth to give it up, either. But enlightening the masses about rich folks' role in everyone's lives is more doable than fussing over verbal etiquette.

What exactly is he trying to get at here? — Blake Kelson

The self is an illusion, and it is an illusion that you create. The reason that "self is an illusion" is that so much of what the brain does is not conscious. One of the things the not-conscious brain produces is the illusion that you are "in your head" and that "you" are running things. "You" are indeed running things -- after all, who else is making your body move around, type posts on this forum, drink coffee, smoke cigarettes, or whatever? It's you.

So here is an example, right at hand.

You do not experience your brain perceiving the characters and empty spaces on the screen, and interpreting all these weird squiggles and empty spaces as meaningful text. You are "just reading". Similarly, if you decide to type a post here, you won't experience anything about how your brain cooked up your response and sent instructions to the motor section of your brain to make your fingers move around on a keyboard. "YOU" composed it, and "YOU" typed it; but "YOU" did so mostly in the non-conscious parts of your brain (which is maybe all of your brain).

The experience of the conscious self is likewise something your non-conscious brain created -- a piece of work we can be eternally thankful for, because otherwise -- look at all the stuff we would miss out on!

The only war is the class war.

Outrage should be employed to a significant degree to the extent the offender is part of the prevalent power structure. — Baden

If one doesn't like the way society is organized, then let's save our outrage for the facts of "the prevalent power structure" rather than what some running dog lackey of the dominant class said.

If we are just worried about statements that have ambiguous racial overtones, but are content with the fact that the media (which distributed this errant comment) is a tool of the plutocracy, then again, the outrage is just a fart in a windstorm. Correcting people's speech is not going to change the power structure one whit.

I come from a place where nobody has ever picked cotton, and "cotton-picking..." is not a slur to my ears. But I see no good reason for somebody whose ancestors probably did pick cotton to take this as some sort of racial insult. It's agricultural work, hard work, yes--performed by slaves prior to 1865, but white sharecroppers also had to pick cotton. That poor blacks and poor whites both had to pick cotton after 1865 is just a fact of life. Picking cotton was no more degrading than any other kind of agricultural work which is performed by hand.

A lot of people are "primed to be outraged" about any expression or gesture that can be interpreted as racist, sexist, and various other "...ists". It's a complete and total waste of outrage on extraordinarily trivial causes. What people should be outraged about are the highly unsatisfactory material conditions which a good share of the population are forced to endure for the benefit of a small minority.

I think Narcissophy is better than philarcissism. Clearly you are operating under the delusion that you are cleverer, snarkier, sarcasticer, ironicer, and wordier than those of us who occupy the Peak of Snark.

Narcissophy: The collective output of any congregation of auto-fellationists (per Darth) Alternately, the collective braying of self-centered jackasses who hee haw irrelevantly in the Quadrangle of Academe.

This is an obscene act of auto-fellatio. — darthbarracuda

Auto-fellatio deserves our respect, so let's not insult it by comparing it to philosophy.

I am always in favor of questioning the utility of philosophy, but I always expect that some justification will be offered. Do we philosophize merely to hear our heads roar? Are we so locked into our personal reality that nothing we say has any relevance to anyone else? Is it not ironic that you author an account of philosophy's self-absorption and offer it to an audience larger than one? Apparently you expect your views to resonate with other minds in a meaningful way (and that seems to have happened).

Perhaps you are trying to start a revolution in the Academy, or at least a brawl--either one of which would be worthwhile; but both suggest that we aren't altogether narcissistic.

I have little interest in discovering TRUTH. TRUTH is imaginary, but there are truths about x that we can discover.

It's almost as if a psychologist would be needed to support another psychologist in their analysis — Posty McPostface

At least in formal psychoanalysis, the analyst often is an occasional "patient" of another analyst. Psychoanalysts undergo psychoanalysis as part of their training. (like the psychoanalyst who was treating Tony Soprano needed to review her ethical situation with another psychoanalyst--who recommended she drop the patient immediately.) Ordinary counselors would do well to receive occasional counseling too from a more advanced professional. Dealing with people's problems all day is actually not an entirely healthy activity. One needs to reflect on one's own situation periodically. Infinite regress? Well lots of professionals are supervised, are engaged in on-going education, and so on.

Learning about psychology should give us insight into why we behave as we do. I don't see that happening often enough. — Bitter Crank

What do you mean by that if I may humbly ask? — Posty McPostface

What I mean by that, in my humble opinion, is that people are taught lots of things in school -- reading, writing, arithmetic, but not much about what mental health looks like, how to achieve it, and how to maintain it. I'm not talking about how to avoid becoming psychotic; more like: we have strong emotions that sway our thinking; how can we best deal with our feelings? What happens to people as they go through their teen years into adulthood; why is it so often very stressful? What's the best way to safely manage sexual urges? (Jocylen Elders, a US Surgeon General, wanted to encourage teenagers to masturbate as an alternative to having sex too soon; that went over like a loud fart in church.)

There are all kinds of situations in which people have problems--and knowing a little more about how we operate mentally (personality, memory, distraction... all that) would be helpful. A lot of people who have "high standards for themselves" don't quite get how normal disruptive feelings are.

There were a couple of classes I had in high school (don't remember what the names of therm were) taught by kind of lazy teachers, who rather than preparing lessons encouraged discussions about 'stuff'. Sometimes these discussions were actually productive (and would have been better if the teacher had actually thought about how to make better use of the situation).

"Socially intelligent", "emotionally intelligent" and more sophisticated students (maybe 20% of the students) learn this stuff on their own. The rest of us may remain ignorant of some of this stuff into late adulthood. I'm talking about "practical psychology" -- how to deal with the psychopathology of everyday life--it's various shit piles, occasional bed of roses (all those thorns!), frustrated wishes, fears, worries, etc.

Here's an example: I knew I was attracted to other boys from an early age on -- but I couldn't find out much about "homosexuality" let alone how to be a gay man. Of course this was in the dark ages of the 50s and 60s. Another example: I was nearly blind until I had corrective surgery at 14. This visual defect had a significantly distorting effect on my self image. At the time, I didn't know there was such a thing as a self image that could be distorted. It would have been helpful to learn how to deal with it.

Does this all make sense now?

I'm just unhappy with how we go about educating people about psychology. It seems on face value to treat psychology as a science (to be exploited for some unknown motive by advertisers or others) is/as fundamentally unethical. — Posty McPostface

There is good reason to be unhappy with how we teach people about our psychology. Exploiting psychological insights for commercial purposes is de rigueur; exploiting any academic field for commercial benefit is pretty common. Unethical? That may very well be the case outside of market place thinking.

It's one thing to exploit psychology to do a better job teaching arithmetic or French. It's something else to exploit psychology to hook a generation of people on walking around as smartphone zombies, unable to live without a minute-by-minute update of... whatever.

Learning about psychology should give us insight into why we behave as we do. I don't see that happening often enough.

I was raised on the hereafter. It was a great relief to stop worrying about both heaven or hell.

Of the two, hell has been illustrated and dramatized much more successfully than heaven. Heaven has become most suitable as a setting for jokes. The most interesting description of heaven I heard was "being swept up in a continuous orgasm". Fine for a few minutes, but an eternity of orgasm is first difficult to imagine, then it drifts into unbearable tedium.

I took a personality theory class as part of a counseling program too. It was the most interesting course on offer. Clearly we are personalities. Different personalities seem to have predictably different features. BUT, can that be reduced to a science? Personality could perhaps be described scientifically IF, very big if, we could account for all of the biological, social, and psycho-dynamic factors that create personality. We can't. Whether we should even try for such an accounting is another issue altogether.

In my mind the field of psychology has been hijacked to the profit motive of the economy. — Posty McPostface

How could it be otherwise, and why would it be otherwise? What has not been hijacked to economic ends? I don't like it, but short of the revolution...

This is not a recent phenomena ("recent" in terms of decades). Using psychological research for profit has been underway since the 1920s-1930s. Public relations and modern advertising have been using psychological (and sociological) research right along. Just for instance, studies of how the eye moves to take in a printed page were used to locate critical words and images in print advertising. Other studies led to more subliminal methods of getting messages into the heads of consumers.

More recently, psychological studies have been applied to understanding and manipulating how people interact with high-tech gadgets -- smart phones and the myriad apps and games on them. All of them have been designed to hook users' attention and hold on to it. That's why you see smartphone zombies walking around staring at their phones: their attention has pretty much been taken over by these devices. Obvious example: YouTube. When YouTube was new (like, what... the day before yesterday?) a requested video would be served, and then it would stop -- nothing more would happen. Now YouTube automatically serves up more videos to you without being asked.

Why? Because advertising (across the various platforms) is how "free" material is paid for, and the more advertising you see, the better. The more hooked you are on gadgets and apps, the more you are sucked into an economic relationship with the sellers (Apple, Samsung, LG, Huawei, etc.)

Back in the ancient world of print (like up to about 30 years ago) Time Life, Condé Nast, the big publishing houses, et al were the majors. Now its Google, Facebook, Twitter, et al. Internet media can do something that the old print, radio, and television media couldn't do: they can push content at you, which is again a cause of the smartphone zombies transfixed by the various streams of crap pouring into their phones.

There's a psych lab behind all that.

My reason for joining is to establish contact with others who are interested in what I consider the most important question one can ask:
"How (and why) did human beings come to be able to know so much about how the Universe works?" — Ron Besdansky

I have wondered that too. For instance, How did we figure out the structure of the atom?

Clearly It didn't happen over night. The Ancients made some progress in figuring out things about the cosmos. They knew the world was round, and they had figured out about how big it is. No small feat. Knowledge has to accumulate if progress is to be made, and it was accumulating in the ancient world. The Romans, for instance, used a cascade of water wheels to grind grain. That's more engineering than science, but it was made possible by accumulating knowledge.

Knowledge accumulation didn't stop after the Roman empire fell apart (especially in the West) but it slowed down. Accumulation didn't pick up again until early Renaissance; the formation of universities, the invention of the printing press, and prosperity all helped. The West made more rapid progress this time; they had better tools--the telescope, for example.

Still, it was around 700 years after the founding of Cambridge University (1209) that Ernest Rutherford discovered the proton at Cambridge's Cavendish Laboratory. Galileo observed the largest moons of Jupiter in 1610, and it 410 years later, a probe from earth is circling Jupiter, making observations--right now.

Biology made some progress in the 18th century, but it wasn't until 1876 that Robert Koch published his postulates about how to identify the agent of a disease (germs). In 1896 viruses were identified as a cause of disease. A century after virus were identified, effective antiviral drugs began to appear (like acyclovir for herpes zoster, or didanosine and zidovudine for HIV.

Knowledge continues to expand in all sorts of areas -- some of it in huge leaps and bounds, others in small granular increments.

You might want to message T Clark -- a member here; he's about the same age as you and also an engineer.

Bentham:

The said truth is that it is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong — amirography

The calculation of the "greatest happiness (or greatest good) for the greatest number" means that everyone will get something less than the maximum. Only if there is an infinite amount of a good and a finite amount of beneficiaries can everyone get the max. Since goods of whatever variety are invariably limited, the greatest possible number will have to make do with less than they would probably like.

This isn't a flaw in utilitarianism, it is just reality. There are not enough goods to go around. Of course we should try harder. Our own distribution of one good (wealth) is extremely ill-distributed--the greatest good for as few as possible. Very bad.

Another reality is that everyone doesn't need the same amount; hence Marx's formulation, "From heach according to his abilities, to each according to his needs." Some people can produce more than others.

as non other than humans have achieved such levels of abstraction. It's not dehumanizing — amirography

I am sure you are aware that while people have achieved high levels of abstraction, they are quite capable dehumanizing other people.

While "gender" may refer only to roles (and thus are open to interpretation); while "sex" may refer to biological characteristics (XX, XY, vagina, penis, ovary, testes, egg, sperm...) is open to only the slightest interpretation, activists and their supporters have made a hash of the distinctions.

Since at least the mid-1970s I accepted the idea that "transsexualism" was real, that some persons were born in the wrong body. "Transgenderism" is the view that regardless of whether one has XX or XY chromosomes, one can "perform" whatever gender role one wishes, and that other people (can, should, must, will, had better) jolly well accept it. For a time I was willing to tolerate this view.

I've come to the conclusion that transsexuals are delusional, and transgenderists are at least slightly crazy.

Now, I am well aware that men and women (but mostly men) have been bending gender for quite a long time, and it isn't just a recent phenomena never seen before. In the early 20th century, "drag acts" were a very popular (but always outré and risqué) entertainment for heterosexuals, and a somewhat common practice among gay men. Drag was a way of asserting one's gayness, rather than asserting that one was actually a female, though the cross-gender performance could be extremely convincing (up to the point of copping a feel or undressing).

Some gay men have always presented themselves as effeminate, and some gay women have always presented themselves as masculine. There were aesthetic and emotional pleasures in the performance but it was also a way of signalling that one was interested in same-sex activity with one's own sex.

The multiplication of "genders" is part of the "at least slightly crazy" aspect of transgenderism. How many are there these days? 19? 33? 62? Who the hell knows. Mostly it's just staking out imagined differences that one can then impose upon other people.

My opposition to the "trans" business stems from a firm belief that "people are more alike than they are different". We are not all unique snowflakes, one of a kind never seen before. Most people have some willingness and ability to experiment with sexual roles, and some do--without basing their entire self-definition on what they tried.

I'm not an expert on consequentialism (or anything else). The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy lists the types of consequentialism:

Consequentialism = whether an act is morally right depends only on consequences (as opposed to the circumstances or the intrinsic nature of the act or anything that happens before the act).

Actual Consequentialism = whether an act is morally right depends only on the actual consequences (as opposed to foreseen, foreseeable, intended, or likely consequences).

Direct Consequentialism = whether an act is morally right depends only on the consequences of that act itself (as opposed to the consequences of the agent's motive, of a rule or practice that covers other acts of the same kind, and so on).

Evaluative Consequentialism = moral rightness depends only on the value of the consequences (as opposed to non-evaluative features of the consequences).

Hedonism = the value of the consequences depends only on the pleasures and pains in the consequences (as opposed to other supposed goods, such as freedom, knowledge, life, and so on).

Maximizing Consequentialism = moral rightness depends only on which consequences are best (as opposed to merely satisfactory or an improvement over the status quo).

Aggregative Consequentialism = which consequences are best is some function of the values of parts of those consequences (as opposed to rankings of whole worlds or sets of consequences).

Total Consequentialism = moral rightness depends only on the total net good in the consequences (as opposed to the average net good per person).

Universal Consequentialism = moral rightness depends on the consequences for all people or sentient beings (as opposed to only the individual agent, members of the individual's society, present people, or any other limited group).

Equal Consideration = in determining moral rightness, benefits to one person matter just as much as similar benefits to any other person (= all who count count equally).

Agent-neutrality = whether some consequences are better than others does not depend on whether the consequences are evaluated from the perspective of the agent (as opposed to an observer).

It would appear that your are arguing for "Maximizing Consequentialism = moral rightness depends only on which consequences are best (as opposed to merely satisfactory or an improvement over the status quo). You will probably find others taking up a different utilitarian position. I need more negotiating room--hence, a... eating sustainably raised meat, b... eating less meat, c... eating a plant-based diet but including eggs and milk, d... eating a vegan diet.