strong sense of self-awareness — schopenhauer1

conceptual cultural transmission — schopenhauer1

Probably evolved capacities.

I wasn't quibbling over the ghastliness of human trafficking, just the stats.

My assumption is that brains have been evolving as part of all animal bodies. Animal brains are initially shaped by genetics and the pre-natal environment of the developing fetuses, and then by experience interacting with brain tissue and more genetics.

Behavior is a product of brains. Bird brains manage the kind of singing each species (and each individual) performs. Bird brains also manage mating, nest building, egg laying, egg incubation, chick feeding, chick fledging, and so on. I don't know how birds do it all, exactly, but they do.

Animals that are closer to us than crows, like dogs, have bigger brains and have evolved to learn and do more things. You've heard of the border collie that has learned the names of about a thousand objects and can connect each object to its name. This collie also has grasped some rudiments of grammar. Dogs are uniquely able to look at us and identify what we are looking at. They can follow our gaze. Very few other animals can do that. They are good at manipulating us.

Most people don't have a problem attributing crow and dog psychology (their behavioral abilities) to evolution, What else would it be?

But then we come to our own case and suddenly the thought that our behavior might have evolved ranges from "Of course it evolved!" on over to "Evolutionary psychology is anathema!"

I'm of the former, rather than latter, view. But what does that mean?

We didn't evolve the ability to read and write. What we evolved was the ability to deploy language. Presumably we began talking early on. We talked for a long time among our small simple hunter-gatherer groups. Writing and reading came about (you know, 5K years ago) when the complexity of society developed enough that it became advantageous to capture abstract spoken concepts in abstract written symbols (like, in clay).

Learning to speak (Chinese, Arabic, Danish...) is very easy for children--all three at once, if the environment allows. That's an evolved ability. Learning to read and write the language we speak (or any other language) is difficult. Reading and writing are not evolved abilities.

We didn't evolve a preference for French Roast coffee (or some other inferior slop). What we evolved was the capacity to metabolize caffeine and feel slightly stimulated. The same goes for quite a few psychoactive chemicals.

One could go on for hours citing examples of what capacities we did not and did evolve.

The thing to avoid in thinking about evolved psychology is that we didn't evolve specific preferences -- houndstooth over plaid; vanilla over strawberry; antinatalism over pronatalism. What we evolved was the ability to prefer, and manage preferences. Etc. Etc. Etc.

Numbers on the trafficking of males are challenging to estimate and considered underreported

I'm always on guard when a report says that something is very difficult to measurer or hard to track, that there is not nearly enough solid information available, etc. AND THEN come out with an estimate which, according to their earlier statements, is probably not very accurate.

Still, I'm sure boys and men are trapped into prostitution. trafficking happens to women far more often and that's probably as much as can be confidently said -- until someone traipses through the sewers of sex trafficking and nails down hard numbers.

Sexual behavior, in general, is challenging to track because most people tend to behave sexually in private, and don't publicize what, exactly, they did.

The core nature of sex work may not differ around the world, but the details certainly do, depending on the culture, the local economy, "the local" in general.

The urgency of AIDS prevention efforts has helped researchers get behind some of the privacy screens people maintain. But the success of AIDS prevention varies from place to place too.

*****

If one doesn't have police records, or the police enforce law differentially, then one has to rely on participant observers, outside observers, and surveys. In surveys or interviews, self-definition matters. A man might think of himself as a whore (low self-esteem), a prostitute (better self-esteem), a sex worker (better esteem yet) or an entrepreneur (very robust self-esteem). Or, he may cleanly separate the sex work he performs from what he thinks about himself.

In affluent countries, one can carry out stealth sex work. You have heard the phrase, "slept his or her way to the top". I know a guy who did exactly that in the wake of gay liberation (back in the 70s). He was not a man of means but he was young, ambitious, good looking, charming enough and reasonably talented. He chose his partners carefully on the basis of their ability to help him get ahead. (Stupid me never thought of that approach.). Within a few years he was running a new national gay organization in Washington, D.C.

However, all that is about a small group of men. For most men, sex work is just a means to an immediate income, the way a million other jobs are, whether that's in an affluent or poor country. There are advantages and disadvantages, upsides and downsides.

Some historians (like Peter Turchin) Think the post WWII era economic regime was pretty close to that of Europe's social democracies: a proactive state (Medicare, Medicaid, AFDC, solid levels of education spending at the state level, etc.); labor/capital cooperation (reduction in taxes for workers, increase of taxes on wealth); a fair amount of labor stability; etc.

Social democracy a la EU isn't socialism, and it isn't a revolution -- but, comparing it to sex that is just OK, it's not that bad (paraphrasing Woody Allen).

The far right, the lunatic fringe, the tea party, crypto-fascists, etc. hate all that stuff--from social security onward to Obama Care. It's all burrs up their butts.

Would that the left had enough power ... We just don't. — fdrake

Would The Left please stop beating itself over the head for not launching a successful revolution.

The last time progressive labor (just an adjective, not the name of a party) had any power, and some of the aspirations of the left were met was during the post WWII economic expansion when government, labor, and capital cooperated to achieve a broad redistribution of of wealth. That happy time ended in the early 1970s. (Peter Turchin: End Times: Elites, Counter-Elites, and the Path of Political Disintegration: 2023)

The hard core left of American communists, socialists, and so on (in the US) ended after WWII. Just like the "the labor movement didn't die a natural death; it was murdered", the left was also "murdered". The forces of capital (government, corporations, etc.) bore down hard on the left that existed before WWII. The parties were infiltrated, subjected to prosecution, massive negative propaganda, and so on. By the time the FBI's Cointelpro program was made public, the job was pretty much finished,

From the 1970s to the present, capital abandoned the government/labor coalition and returned to an earlier era of expansion, accumulation, and impoverishment of the working classes.

Capitalism was, is, and (in all likelihood) will be the overwhelming dominant paradigm in the US.

Hell yes – "unattractive" chronic masturbators need to get-off too! — 180 Proof

They do, indeed. One of the features of gay bath houses (with which I'm pretty familiar) is that an appropriately sleazy operation provides dim to dark venues where the least attractive can find pleasure. Charles Shively at Harvard theorized that "mandatory promiscuity" would insure that everyone had the opportunity to experience pleasurable sex. (Hey, I did my part back in the day.). James Nelson at United Theological Seminary in his book Embodiment discusses the importance of persons with deformities, immobility, movement disorders, mental illness, etc. being able to experience the sexuality they are embodied with, (He didn't get into methods. It was a theology book, after all.) Sex workers are the obvious solution for both men an women, gay and straight. (Good luck getting funding through the legislature.).

Have you seen the inside of a brothel? I have not; there are legal brothels only in some counties in Nevada. "No legal brothels" doesn't mean there are no illegal brothels of course. And presumably some of them, at least, are well run. Rebecca Rand was a Minneapolis madam who ran 2 upstanding brothels. At the time (in the 80s and 90s) there were 11 brothels in the Minneapolis and St. Paul dba "health clubs" or "massage parlors". She said, "There is nothing oppressive about prostitution; what is oppressive is going to jail." There were others, too, presumably, and other sex-for-sale businesses. "The Minneapolis Forum" was available in select establishments; it listed various sex-for-sale venues--not, of course, in so many words.

Were I to meet a woman or a man, for that matter, selling sex I would not refer to them as a whore, and probably not as a prostitute, either--for the same reason that I would use the stated preferred pronouns of a trans person. It's a matter of politeness in public situations.

I'm not always polite--sometimes I'm just plain rude--but there is a reason for those instances. I might call Senate majority leader, Republican Mitch McConnell, an old whore for example. Ditto Donald Trump--maybe crazy old whore for him. I don't expect to get the chance in either case.

I don't object to sex work in principle, with several provisos attached--like it being uncoerced. The 'sex business' isn't subject to any regulation in the United States (just suppression except for some counties in Nevada). The chances of any given person in the sex business getting a raw deal are pretty high.

Please define your use of legitimate here. — Ø implies everything

"Legitimate" is a loaded word.

"Conforming to the law or to rules" is the first meaning of legitimate. "Socially acceptable" often matches the first meaning of "legitimate". The laws and rules are often clear enough, but what is socially acceptable is variable from group to group. Sometimes what is socially acceptable is contrary to the law or rules (a major problem of Prohibition). Many gay men consider various kinds of public sex (tea rooms, cruising parks, etc.) as socially acceptable, even though it is prohibited by law and rules.

According to a YOUGOV [not a government operation] poll, Women judge prostitution more harshly than men and are more likely to think it should be legal. 51% of men and 30% of women think it should be legal, and 36% of men and 50% of women think it should be illegal.

The thing that I don't like about marijuana is that it disturbs my sense of time passing, such that time seems to pass very slowly for a while. It has other effects as well.

Does anyone happen to what parts of the brain THC would have to affect to result in the sense of slowed time? Does that part of the brain also cause older people to feel time is passing faster than it did say, 40 years earlier? (This seems to be real, not just old folk's imaginations.)

This is the dark side of human invention. — Vera Mont

I have no idea whether artificial intelligence can decide to be evil, or whether evil code needs to be provided. But we know humans can decide to be evil in ever so many ways, AI is a new more powerful tool than what was previously available. Predatory governments, corporations, or powerful organizations will find ways of using AI to prey upon their preferred targets.

AI will be used for crooks' nefarious purposes (like everything else has been). What people are worried about is that AI will pursue its own nefarious purposes.

Excellent! Nuclear winter would be a refreshing change of pace--personally, I'm getting bored with the same old CO2 and heat wave hysteria. Unlike the global toaster oven, the nuclear freezer wouldn't take long to start up. Why, this evening we could fire off 100 H bombs over urban areas that stand in need of urban renewal anyway, and the resulting firestorms would hoist megatons of smoke, dust, and soot into the atmosphere, where, of course, it would prevent solar heat from getting in and screwing things up.

True, the atmosphere would probably cool down too much and most of the plant life would die, which would be inconvenient. A lot of people would drop dead, but the elite -- safe in their long-term underground retreats, would be fine and in 10 years or so, once the dust settled, they would soon have nice weather again -- and a lot fewer annoying people around. There would just be the elite, fine folks all, and the virile fecund robust workers they put into storage ahead of time.

Do you happen to have a set of launch codes handy? It doesn't actually make much difference which cities get nuked, because only the elite will survive, and there will be nobody left to point accusing fingers.

China is the best example — Judaka

The next best example (because it doesn't exist anymore) was the Soviet Union, where the state operated as the corporation for which everyone worked, whether that was on a collectivized farm music school, or GUM Department Store. There was virtually NO private enterprise in the Soviet Union.

China is a weird hybrid mix. There are state owned businesses, privately owned businesses, military owned businesses, and so on. The economy is subject to state intervention without being a command economy exactly. The Party can, no doubt, command. it does this (I gather) through regular planning processes and documents. Xi Jinping can, I assume, also command things to happen, like having so and so disappear, maybe Jack Ma, for example. Jack seems to be back. Many who disappeared have stayed that way, so far.

Some people think China is a fascist state. There are some elements of fascism in China. I don't know if it qualifies as a fascist state or not.

It's all just part of neoliberal capitalism — Judaka

I'm not sure "neoliberal" describes capitalism; I see it most often used to describe conservative political policy with respect to regulation, government-sponsored social assistance programs, taxation, unionization and similar matters. I'm 100% anti-neoliberal politics. Capitalism is capitalism whether we're talking about companies making toilet bowels or fast fashion.

"Fast fashion" is the epitome of consumerism. High speed design, manufacture, shipping, low prices, and then "fashionable" clothing which is quickly thrown away. This isn't haute couture, of course.

then I believe that I'm correct in saying [u]it's[/u] irrelevant — Judaka

Sorry, I'm not quite sure what [u]it's[/u] is referring to.

We don't just buy fancy shoes, we buy respect, for status, to present an image, to be attractive, stylish, and so on. — Judaka

I confess that I have bought expensive shoes -- Allen Edmonds. They're made in Wisconsin and are all-leather (at least the all-leather models are). They're up-market but not fancy, just well built. They are 13 years old and still going strong. I also bought a pair of Allen Edmonds boots several years ago -- built like work boots. I didn't need a pair of brown lace-up work boots by any stretch of the imagination, I don't even go to gay bars where boots are obligatory (I used to go to such places). No, it is all in the image of the shoe, the boot. [Note: of course I bought them on sale :halo:]

I don't think consumer culture is a problem, or that it's causing any of these issues that are being talked about. — Judaka

Global heating, for instance, isn't being driven by fast fashion or fancy shoes, I would agree. Certainly not by MY shoes. It's being driven by a different grade and scale of consumption -- like automobiles, airplanes, and trucks; like heating and cooling buildings; like global shipping; by waste in gas and oil fields (venting and leaking methane into the atmosphere; by cows -- damn them! It's all that burping up methane while chewing their cuds. But I like beef.

We're inundated with different products, there's no basis in consumer culture for opposing change — Judaka

Opposing change or promoting change?

By the way, your OP for this thread is more relevant than a good many topics on the forum.

You mentioned the addictive nature of opiates. I'm not, never have been, addicted to alcohol or opiates, coke, or meth, etc. Instead I'm dependent on an anti-depressant. No doubt, I needed them, and may still need them. I'm not sure because discontinuing the small dose I am on is not an option. I've tried tapering off, etc. and after say 72 hours without, I feel positively horrible -- not depressed, just sick. I've been and am a very reliable customer for Effexor. This is something doctors don't talk about much, but after an extended period of taking these drugs, many people find it impossible to discontinue the drugs. That's why drug manufacturers prefer products like antidepressants to antibiotics. People take appropriate antibiotics for 2 weeks and they are cured. Not much profit in that! Statins and blood pressure meds are the same -- we take them for decades.

I withdraw aspersions I cast in the direction of Sherman. — Srap Tasmaner

That's OK, I'm don't hold any stock in W. T. Sherman & Company.

Right, that was very bad PR. I should read about Patton or find a PBS history program on him. SOOO much history, so little time.

Facts matter, a principle you probably uphold. Fact is, propaganda is important for winning a war. Motivating the troops, motivating the domestic populace, depressing the enemy, etc.

Allied troops, including Americans, had a fairly high rate of desertion during WWII in the European theater. There was practically no desertion in the pacific theater. What was the difference? Were the American soldiers in the Pacific braver, gutsier, tougher than their brothers in Europe?

No. In Europe, there was some place to go after you walked away from the battle. In the pacific, the battles were mostly on islands, and if you wanted to leave -- well, it was a VERY LONG swim.

George Patton was apparently a great general whose mouth got him into trouble when he spoke out of turn off the topic in the wrong place. (I can relate to all that.)

A famous Patton quote:

No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country.

Quite sensible, really.

American Heritage history of World War II, a story, possibly apocryphal, that German troops were a little unnerved the first time they faced Americans. They had fought the British, and the British, heirs to a grand military tradition the Germans could understand, sang as they entered battle. But these Americans were silent, grim. Americans weren't there for glory, but to do the job and get back home. — Srap Tasmaner

The silent grim rugged brave tough American soldier -- definitely an American heritage theme--the Greatest Generation, etc.



IRON GUTS -- no irritable bowel syndrome for these men!

Sherman — Srap Tasmaner

"War is hell." William T. Sherman

So "who" or "what" does a baby believe it is? — Benj96

As 180 Proof noted, babies don't have beliefs. I suspect your use of the word was not a suggestion that babies do have beliefs, but rather, just a way of asking, "What's going on in there? Quite a bit, apparently, a lot of it is one-way, all that perception pouring in.

William James uses the phrase 'blooming and buzzing confusion' to describe a baby's experience of the world as pure sensation that comes before any rationality

Hmmm, what is that thing down there, poke poke; it seems to have feeling when I touch it. Hmmmm, that could be a piece of me -- hadn't thought about it all these years. poke poke. Oh! My secretary just said that was my foot, Foot! Imagine that. God! There are two foot, one right next to the other one, How did that happen? And they are attached!

Good to get body part consciousness out of the way early.

I understand why I have difficulty getting rid of books. They have content and symbolic value. What is harder to understand is why I have as much difficulty getting rid of stuff that is by definition, junk. Because this stuff has been in my possession for decades, it has developed attachment, adhesion, linkage. It's just plain hard to let go of it. (Until I do, then POOF! I no longer care about it.)

I think the world can easily manage a radical drop in consumerism. — Tom Storm

But the relationship between consumerism and industrialism (production) is reciprocal: a radical drop in consumption means less production; less production means fewer jobs, fewer incomes, fewer meals, fewer everything,

Yes, of course, factories could produce strictly for human needs (not wants). Yes, if people stopped consuming so much crap they would have more money left over, everything else being equal. Alas, everything else isn't equal. If consumption were radically reduced, a large share of the world's economy (the jobs people work at to earn wages to support themselves and their families) would disappear.

I would strongly prefer to see a radical reduction in production and consumption (for the sake of the environment, if nothing else) but at the same time, 1 or 2 billion people (or more) don't want to be thrown into destitution.

I don't have a solution to this problem.

It's the same problem as global heating: We need to radically reduce CO2, methane, and CFC emissions YESTERDAY. If we did that, the world's economy would crash. Fossil fuels and industrial production are the core of the world economy. Break the core, and the economy is broken. Unfortunately, we no longer have time to carry out reductions slowly. The upshot, as far as I can tell, is that we are totally screwed.

Let me take a different tack than the one I took above, where I said "Culture hasn't been a key factor? Au contraire!"

There's that Madonna song, written by Peter Brown and Robert Rans, Material Girl (1984). The chorus is...

'Cause we are living in a material world
And I am a material girl
You know that we are living in a material world
And I am a material girl

The existing technology and industry that is available determines the sort of culture we have. Agrarian societies have agrarian cultures based on agrarian technology. It's not 'no tech' but it does tend to be low tech--the devices used to connect the horse to the plow, the plow, the crop yields, the kind of life that horse power makes possible. Not all that bad. Elsewhere, steam is harnessed to do much more work than a horse can. One day, the steam engine pulls a train out into the hinterlands and the agrarian culture is changed by the industrial technology. Now the farmers sell their crops to distant markets and and can buy things from distant warehouses, which the train will deliver. No more home-spun cloth; now they can get nicer cloth made in a factory. No more clunky locally made boots. Now their boots are made in a factory with big machines, better leather, and standard sizes. Much nicer.

Industrial capitalism has different rules than agrarian agriculture--which is what many countries, including the US, had in the past. Industrial capitalism, in the US or China, depends on the reciprocal movement of production and consumption.

Question: What leads the reciprocal process: consumption or production?

It might be production. I have the technology at hand; I can use it to make shoes. But how many shoes should I make? 1 pair per person per year in this city? My factory can do that quite easily, and it will be somewhat profitable. However, I have the capacity to make 2 pairs of shoes per person per year. At that level, I will make more profit and will get richer. But somehow, I have to convince people that they should buy an extra pair of shoes per person per year.

Fortunately, somebody just invented advertising. I can use advertising to convince people that it is actually a very good thing to have 2 pairs of shoes per person per year--a black work boot and a brown oxford. Next year the ideal will be a black work book, a brown oxford, and something new, an fancy slip-on. And so on.

The shoemaker's factory is humming, he's getting rich, and shoes have become fashion. More, more, more.

Industrial production and capitalism's need for ever-expanded markets creates and drives culture. What used to be an agrarian culture of peasants, yeomen farmers, able hard working men and sturdy resourceful women, becomes a dense urban culture of many people working together, doing all sorts of narrowly defined tasks.

In the industrialized, capitalist urban environment, buying and displaying goods has become more than a habit -- it's an economic necessity. The act of buying and having takes on values that were entirely irrelevant or unimaginable in even a prosperous agrarian society. The mountain of products that the factories produce must be bought -- whether or not people need or want them. (Or overproduction leads to a depression.)

Industrialized capitalism is a trap. Once a given culture steps onto the treadmill of production and consumption, it's very hard for it to get off without a crash. And, like all good traps, it isn't really visible until it's too late.

A cynical atheist said, "Nothing fails like prayer." Ambrose Bierce's definition of prayer is similar in tone.

The act of prayer ought to be a humbling, rather than an ego-boosting, experience. God knows all about us, after all. Our files are complete and open to him for review. Who are we to have so many demands?

That, at least, is one teaching about prayer.

There are many factors involved in this, but it seems like a global phenomenon, and culture hasn't been a key factor behind it. Do you think consumerism is the primary factor, a primary factor or a motivating influence for these other factors, or just generally, where does it fit in for you?

For me, concerns about climate change, pollution and other environmental factors, as well as issues such as worker pay, home affordability, wealth equality and issues such as my OP, are all examples against the idea of "progress at any cost". — Judaka

Culture hasn't been a key factor? Au contraire! Consumerism (I am what I buy) is a key aspect of American and other cultures! No, not everybody, but it's a dominant flavor, like clove and cinnamon. We may have exported consumerism to some places; other places developed it on their own. In itself it isn't such a terrible thing -- having comfortable furniture, a nicely decorated home, a good car, a whizzy computer, a cell phone with great features, high quality food, nice clothes... but consumerism goes beyond that. It's the ever bigger house, more new and better furniture every few years, lavishly decorated homes, 2 or 3 cars, the latest whizzist computer, a new cellphone every year with ever improved great features ($1300, $1400...), extensive travel, meals at nice restaurants, more, more, more.

It's a relentless driver.

It keeps people hard at work to earn enough to at least stay even with the monthly payments on all that stuff. The ruling class was quite aware that home ownership would limit workers willingness to take risks with unions, strikes, and leftist politics. A mortgage helped the relatively powerless buy into the status quo. The 65% of workers who own their own homes have a stake in the system. The system may be less successful in keeping renters at work, but evictions remind renters that they had best get to work every day if they want to stay where they are.

150 objects — Tom Storm

1 fork, 1 spoon, 1 knife, 1 bowl, 1 cup, 1 left shoe, 1 right shoe, 1 shirt, 1 pant, 1 hat, 1 house, 1 car, 1 computer, 1 towel, 1 tooth brush, 1 light bulb, 1 chair, 1 blanket, 1 pillow, 1 roll of toilet paper... Hell! it adds up quickly!

My house was built in 1918; 850 square feet on 1 level for a couple and 1 child. Much less than what some people now consider barely habitable for 1 person. No closets? Working class people once had no need for several large closets. They didn't have that many clothes.

There is a source for consumerism; it didn't just arise out of nothing. Edward Bernays and many associates developed methods of manipulating the public for the benefit of, among others, manufacturers and retailers. There has always been a desire among those with enough resources to enhance their lives with better material goods -- so that part isn't new. Over time, let's say from 1901 onward, retailers made concerted efforts to get people to buy more of newly invented, newly manufactured goods. Then, just more.

The resulting increased consumption certainly didn't feel like an evil thing. Consumption increasingly drove production (GDP) and plentiful jobs. We live in the world where consumption has been taken to its logical extreme.

Socialism or communism aren't the cure; their impulse isn't towards minimalism, it's toward equality of resources, and more.

Environmentalism can be a route to minimalism. Get rid of the car, use a bicycle or public transit; consume less; stay home (avoid air travel); get rid of the little pasture on which no cow will ever graze (the lawn).

Religion can be a route to minimalism--asceticism. 150 objects with no car, no computer, that one dim light bulb. Grim but holy. And very good for the environment and the soul.

Asceticism has a huge downside: Were it to be widely practiced, it would send the world's economies into free-fall from which there would be much chaos and many deaths. That's the whole catch to the global warming problem: Bring fossil fuel consumption to a screeching halt and the consequences are severe. Don't halt fossil fuel use, and the consequences are severe.

I love historicism — Moliere

Maybe I spoke too soon. I like reading history. I'll just stop there.

I love historicism — Moliere

Same here.

an acknowledgement that there is a difference between philosophy and the history of philosophy — Moliere

This is applicable in several fields. The history of science isn't science; the history of the arts [literature, painting, music...] isn't "art"; but a decent history requires the historian to be sensitive to, delight in, be familiar with performance, etc, else one gets a ham-fisted treatment. The history of philosophy requires an engagement with the relevant philosophers.

Books about philosophy are sometimes the best approach to a given philosopher, because the about can provide context, background, explanation of terms, and so forth that a general reader might not (probably doesn't) have. That's certainly the case for me.

We might talk about "the history of ideas" because it is part of history, and as we know (I think we at least have some idea) that the conditions of life CHANGE over time, and along with those changes, our thinking.

Do you buy the idea that "how the conditions of life in any give time and place relate to changes in thinking (arts, sciences, philosophy, politics, etc.) is "history"?

If you do, what's your problem with Wayfarer's paragraph? If you don't buy it, what is your definition of history?

We don't seem to be gaining any ground against @Wayfarer's statement that "there is no countervailing ideology to consumerism".

I pretty much listen to public radio, whether it's NPR, the BBC or the local service. I don't watch TV. Can't comment much on broadcast liberal news outlets. The New York Times is a liberal news source, more or less.

"Deaths of despair" and opioids do get more mention on NPR than some other media, just guessing. What media in general are reluctant to do is get specific about how the despairing dead were driven to their graves over an extended period of time -- cutting costs by exporting production overseas; destroying the labor that gave these men and their families a half ways decent life; cutting social services of all kinds in neoliberal drives to "get government off our backs"; dismissing these people as "deplorable", and so on.

Immiseration doesn't happen all by itself; neither does huge accumulations of wealth. There is a causal relationship between despair at the bottom and greed at the top. It's obvious; report on it.

Yes, there are efforts to organize Amazon and Starbucks. Both corporations are vigorously opposing unionization and the successes have been pretty limited. According to NPR, "Since then [the organization drive at a Staten Island facility], though, the Amazon Labor Union has gained little ground. It has yet to win another union election. And Amazon still refuses to sit down for contract negotiations." March, 2023

More Starbuck locations have been organized, but according to Wikipedia, "As of June 2023, over 8,000 workers at over 331 Starbucks stores in at least 40 states in the United States have voted to unionize, primarily with Workers United. As of March 2023 none have yet enacted a collective bargaining agreement.

Starbucks Corp. also strongly resists unionization. So, good to talk about this little success story.

The Service Employees International Union has had more success organizing office cleaners and the like -- 2,000,000 members strong.

Yes, it's possible they want to highlight historically underrepresented groups and correct an unfairness that has been the status quo for a very long time. I'm sure some staff within the public media organizations would like to do that.

What makes me doubt that this is a deep commitment is the "bandwagon effect" in which an about-face occurred in all sorts of organizations at pretty much the same time. Highlighting historically unrepresented groups was suddenly de rigueur; it was "trending". Time will tell how long this new-found virtue will last.

Then there are the groups that remain in the pre-woke shadows, like working class white men--a group that has historically been discounted. The plight of workers in general isn't prominent, and it will probably be a cold day in hell before public media gives extended attention to the exploitation of the working class by the predatory rich. One rarely hears much about the history of organized labor, unions, unionization, or corporate and legislative efforts to block unionization. The increased immiseration of large parts of the working class--and its class-related cause--is another neglected topi that affects working men, women, blacks, whites, latinos, and asians.

I thought NPR was even minded - then they began supporting wokeness — jgill

NPR isn't what it used to be; the same goes for some other public TV / public radio / public media operations. What was the cause? Changes in management; changes in funding levels and funding sources; herd-movements among media operations of all kinds; etc. The 1619 project started in 2019; a year or so later there was George Floyd's death (and several others) and the ensuing riots. The media, managed and staffed by a lot of white people (especially those "white men") seemed to have a crisis of "white guilt" that required compensatory changes in how and what was reported.

An example: Minnesota Public Radio's music programmers suddenly woke to a previously unmet need to program and promote black classical composers and musicians. Suddenly Florence Price (died in 1953) was hot. She's a worthwhile composer, certainly. The quality of the music they added to the repertoire isn't in question. It's the obvious and PR loaded reasons for the change. their 'racist guilt'.

If all reporting is biased, does this mean that all reporting is equally biased? — hypericin

No, all reporting is variably biased, and we can not immediately be sure how.

We do not/can not see the world "as it is". We always have a POV; we are all subject to at least several of the numerous cognitive biases available; we always have our own histories; we are always influenced by others' reports--and so on. Further, the receiver of reportage is also biased in several ways.

Do our deficiencies mean that there is no "truth" in reporting?

Something approximating "The Truth" has to be extracted from the information available to us. The news media are variable, but are generally consistent in their bias. Fox News won't sound like NPR. The New York Times won't sound like Epoch Times. On important topics (like global heating, climate change, fossil fuels, etc.) one has to dig deeper, adding books, web sites, magazine articles, and the like. Reflection and discussion are essential. (Given that we have lives to lead, only a few topics can be subject to intensive consideration.)

So, one compares and contrasts; looks for bias; is on guard for major inconsistencies; checks multiple resources; and so on. Eventually one settles on what feels like a reliable version. The reliable version may stand up over time, or fall apart.

Got any examples in mind? Any particular cultural forms you can point to? — Wayfarer

The only western institutional practice of asceticism of which I am aware is the practice of poverty among some religious. Most nuns and monks may have little personal property, but collectively they have access to substantial material resources. There are a few monastic communities who are poor by choice, poor in resources, poor in food, clothing, and shelter. Their lives are quite restricted, mostly spent in prayer. A related institution might be the Catholic Worker Movement which was/is, in some ways, monastic but was deeply engaged in working with the poor and does not involve any profession of vocation.

There are also the occasional preachers of voluntary poverty (which can be entirely secular) and simple living. Voluntary poverty, if embraced fully, involves operating on really pretty marginal resources. The problem with this approach is that in cold climates, shelter and heat are required. Paying rent and heat (and other fixed expenses) requires some level of income. The requirements of employment for income run counter to the practice of poverty, so it's a difficult act to pull off, particularly individually.

Some religious groups practice counter-cultural lifestyles -- the Amish and maybe some Mennonites. But the Amish aren't trying to be poor. They're trying to live at their preferred level of modernity which is roughly what prevailed 150 years ago in rural America.

In sum, I agree -- there are damned few alternatives to consumerism.

I don't really want to think about this just right now.

One thing about the Affirmative Action decision and the legacy issue: The number of colleges where affirmative action, legacy admissions, and the like are major issues is small, mostly limited to a a small number of elite institutions, like Harvard. There are other colleges -- about 4,000 4 year colleges and universities, running the gamut of excellence. Many of these colleges admit large percentages of applicants to their very big campuses.

Just for perspective, if you don't insist on going to one of the very choosy, very expensive, very rich, very competitive schools, you have hundreds of good to excellent -- and much more affordable -- colleges to choose from. A degree from U of Nebraska or U Washington might not give a student the same entree as a degree from Harvard, Yale, or North Carolina, but if they choose majors which are likely to lead to employment, work hard for high grades, then they have a good chance of making a quite good living. They may not make it into the elite on the basis of their alma mater, but... tough bounce.

The large land-grant institutions (U of Michigan, U of Wisconsin, U of Minnesota, etc.) admit large shares of their applicants, so affirmative action is in many cases much less an issue. True enough, these institutions can afford to wash out a substantial number of first year students and still have large graduating classes. Some private colleges also practice relatively open admission--it isn't ONLY public colleges.

Informative article from NYT 7/3/23

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/07/03/opinion/for-most-college-students-affirmative-action-was-not-enough.html

Good OP.

Personal moral beliefs, though seemingly individualistic, ultimately align with the core features of morality, including social control, emotional responses, and the application of moral principles to oneself and others. — Judaka

Personal morality is / must be derived from the social milieu in which one is reared. We may have some innate, simple forms of right/wrong, fair/unfair, but these innate forms are too limited to count as 'morality'.

(Even other animals can be observed to object to unfair treatment (in very structured situations). Primates in experimental situations stop cooperating if the rewards are unfairly distributed or are of unequally quality (cucumber vs. apple). Dogs are satisfied as long as they get something; they don't weigh quality of reward. Dry bread instead of meat counts among dogs.)

Not many children survive without adult assistance, and thus we do not have adults who really devised their own system of right / wrong. People who "march to the beat of a distant drummer" are following social morality as much as anyone else is. That someone feels the distant morality is superior to the local version is a social decision.