Pleasure and pain are motivators, of course, but that is too simple. For one thing, they are inextricably alloyed together. In the rat labs simple pleasure or pain can be arranged, but once they are back in their cages, the rats' experience is more complicated.

Wouldn't it make more sense to either genetically or technologically get rid of emotions instead of doing nothing more than pushing the boulder from the Myth of Sisyphus to attain some fleeting sense of happiness that serves no real purpose other than increasing the probability that our genes get passed on? — MonfortS26

No, it would not make more sense to rid ourselves of emotions.

Sisyphus ended up with his futile endless labor as a punishment by the Gods.

You have already grasped that Sisyphus is the absurd hero." says Albert Camus. "He is, as much through his passions as through his torture. His scorn of the gods, his hatred of death, and his passion for life won him that unspeakable penalty in which the whole being is exerted toward accomplishing nothing.

Most of us aren't passionate enough to piss off the gods, and besides, his punishment took place in the dark underworld [afterlife] not here, above ground. It is the passions, the emotions, that save us from being like sisyphus in this world.

Where would his torture be, indeed, if at every step the hope of succeeding upheld him?

Camus asks. He adds:

The workman of today works everyday in his life at the same tasks, and his fate is no less absurd. But it is tragic only at the rare moments when it becomes conscious. Sisyphus, proletarian of the gods, powerless and rebellious, knows the whole extent of his wretched condition: it is what he thinks of during his descent. The lucidity that was to constitute his torture at the same time crowns his victory. There is no fate that can not be surmounted by scorn.

The surest path to the long hill and the big round rock is the stupefying loss of passion--the emotions. What mortal, above-ground proletarians should do about their work life is a good question, which bears on whether we will have a chance at happiness (one of those emotions you want to get rid of) or mere survival.

So the argument that guns will play a role in some apocalyptic end game against a tyrannical government seems like a dead one from the start. — schopenhauer1

Indeed.

Hmmm. Good question.

What Bitter Crank can add is that southerners were opposed to centralization. When railroads were introduced in the early 19th century, southerners didn't want to build railroads that would be part of trans-state systems, even if the states were their southern neighbors. So, they built short lines, mostly within states, not crossing state boundaries. This was a problem when the Civil war began. The UnionNorth had built centralized, more effective railroad systems, which helped them greatly.

Southerns long practiced a kind of local self-sufficiency. They practiced do-it-yourself justice (quite often lynchings). The are anti-federal government, more likely to be anti-black, anti-working class (even if they are southern trailer trash). Guns play into the picture, because if you are going to resist the state, you need to be armed. And here the state could just as well be the state, county, or city as the federal government.

Where does this come from? Two sources: The first contribution was by the Cavaliers who settled in the south, set up the plantations, established the social hierarchy. They were kind of a lawless bunch. The second was the plantation system, which created micro-states on the land. The owner of the plantation was lord and master to the slaves and everybody else.

Southern society was, by and large, organized along quite different lines than the agrarian or industrial north.

Do you find it consistent that everything you feel/think/do comes from the outside environment? If everything you feel/think/do comes from the outside, then who are you? Do you even exist? I bet you think you exist, even though you really don't have anything to do with you (since it all comes from somewhere else).

I am now going to perform an external influence on you: Welcome to The Philosophy Forum. You are free insofar as you obey. Follow the rules set by the grim Moderators and all will be well.

That there are external influences on our behavior was an important discovery -- made, as it happens, a long time before Nikola Tesla was born. At one time people believed that the stars were an influence. I agree with that -- the Andromeda Galaxy is on my case all the time. People thought that the fluids, or 'humors' in their bodies were influenced by various factors. People have thought that witches could cast spells and control your behavior. And God, of course, or the gods, and devils, angels, etc.

Modern (like Tesla) thinkers tend to think that physics and chemistry control our behavior. In a very real sense they do because bodies behave according to the rules of chemistry and physics.

On the other hand, most people believe that they have a will which they exercise free of outside influence some of the time, much of the time, or all of the time. It may not be the case that we have free will; it may not be the case that our behavior is externally determined, and it may not be the case that we can tell the difference.

As conscious social beings, responsible for our needs, wants, and behavior, it is existentially necessary for us to believe that our will is real. We will be held responsible for our behavior, whether we think we are externally influenced or not. "I am merely an automata" is nowhere on earth an adequate defense in court.

In the 'real world' #MeToo's targets are being dumped in mass by their support systems. — Cavacava

Which raises moral problems as well. Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) dumped Garrison Keillor in an act of breathtaking ingratitude. Keillor is well fixed, reputationally and financially; we need not worry about his well-being. Garrison contributed his entire working life to MPR, and is a big reasons MPR is a leading player in Public Radio. Worse, in terms of "the optics" they dumped him when they no longer needed him. He had retired from the Prairie Home Show (and they abruptly dropped that name too, replacing it with the tone-deaf "Live From Here" moniker). They also dropped the daily 5 minute Writer's Almanac and rebroadcasts of the Prairie Home show.

Keillor's crimes fall into the category of "moody", occasionally harsh criticism of staff persons, difficult to work with. On a few occasions he made "inappropriate" overtures to female staff members. Pretty mild stuff.

So why did MPR sever the Keillor connection with an axe? High morals? I don't think so. They were scurrying to avoid any financial harm from the #metoo sex panic. The effect of #metoo went off the deep end very quickly. The quite disparate organizations which did the various severings are no more moral than any other corporate entity; they were not protecting morals, they were protecting their bottom lines, and throwing a disposable cape of high ethical standards over their shoulders while they did it.

Bill Cosby's behavior isn't in the same ball park as most of the people targeted and punished by #metoo. Drugging women to have sex with them is clearly much, much worse than what falls into the category of "inappropriate". It's clearly criminal.

Wagner is a good example though of the problem of separating the man and the music. He wrote both the librettos and the scores of his operas, designing the whole thing as a Gesamtkunstwerk, a "total work of art"--I just swiped that from Wikipedia; I don't know much about Wagner. He was, they say, an operatic revolutionary. For revolutionaries, the work and the man are usually just very deeply intertwined.

Parsifal was the Metropolitan Opera radio broadcast last Saturday. I had a nice long nap during the opera and when I woke up it was still going. There are parts of his operas that everybody likes, and long stretches where you really need to be a fan.

Switching fields, Frank Lloyd Wright is also difficult to separate from his work--the buildings--because he was so deeply committed them. (When he designed furniture for his houses, he wanted the owners to keep the furniture arranged the way he intended, not the way they wanted.)

On the other hand, I get the impression that the architects for Skidmore Owings and Merrill buildings (like the Lever House in New York or the Sears Tower in Chicago) would be quite separate from their works.

If I like Wagner's ring cycle, then the fact that he was a Nazi sympathiser should have no influence — Pseudonym

Wagner died in 1883. It's more like Nazis were Wagnerian sympathizers.

I am well. Thank you. And you -- are you and your family also well?

I would encourage you to avoid nihilistic thinking. Granted, it can seem like there are too damn many things going wrong in the world. But what we worry about usually becomes selective, and we start picking out the worst-case-scenarios to think about. Not a good idea. Bad for your mental health, and it doesn't help.

In the middle of everything that seems to be going wrong, there are also things that are going right. Good things happen to people--not all the time, not enough, the deserving get overlooked, but it just isn't all bad. Even Government, Banks, and Big Corporations do good things. Target, for instance, had blueberries on sale for $3 a pint, a couple of weeks ago. From Chile--yeah, I know--very unecological, air freight from Chile to Minnesota; but they were very good.

Brave New World is a good book. If you have not read it, you might want to read 1984, too. It's a grim book, but it will provide you with lots of rhetorical fuel for future posts. George Orwell was a very good writer. He wrote several books which are not novels that are enjoyable writing. The Road to Wigan Pier and Down and Out in Paris and London are two that I read and enjoyed. The subject matter is the depression of the 1930s and British domestic policy, but Orwell is just such a good writer its enjoyable to read. (I suppose you need to be in the right mood, but that's true of every book.) He worked in several kitchens in Paris during the Great Depression, and described how the restaurant staff hated the people who were buying the fancy food they prepared. Someone in the kitchen not infrequently spat on the food before sending it out to the dining room.

The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin is a science fiction novel that is (among other things) about a society organized along a strict anarchist model. It's a good story on its own, but her development of the society is quite thought provoking.

You might like the writing of James Howard Kunstler. He is... what? An environmental critic? He wrote a series of novels, one A World Made By Hand which is about survival after some sort of apocalyptic event, when electricity and oil products disappear. A History of the Future and The Harrows of Spring are two additional novels in the series. He also wrote The Long Emergency and Too Much Magic: Wishful Thinking, Technology, and the Fate of the Nation. The last two are about what a post peak-oil future means.

Is the support of those who have assaulted, taken advantage of others a feasible moral choice? — Cavacava

I would say it is an unavoidable choice. In the real world, people actually take advantage of others all the time: economically, socially, psychologically, politically, intellectually ... any way you can think of. As for assault, it certainly is not proper behavior. But, you know, it happens, both sexual assault and ordinary assault and battery. I'm just not in favor of black listing every person who has done something wrong. BECAUSE, Cavacava, there literally won't be anybody left to do the black listing before long.

but the question is will you go see the next movie by someone who had sex with a 14 year old? — Cavacava

Yes, I would, assuming that the movie was of interest. Am I indifferent to the possible misfortune of the 14 year old? No. And I don't know what all the producers, directors, crew, actors, editors, and everyone else who worked on the film may or may not have done to whom, how, where, and when. A lot of people work on a film. People do good, bad, and indifferent things, and they may not even have done things for which they are reviled.

Many people (a large percentage of the population, let's say 25%) have done things that when exposed in public are likely to be condemned by one group or another--and viewed as OK by others. There is a long list of things that someone might have done, or be doing now, that will result in their being pilloried. The are tried, convicted, and punished by mob justice, these days conducted on line, like #metoo and TimesUp.

Take Woody Allen. It isn't as if the charge against him (by Mia Farrow and his adopted daughter) hasn't been investigated and disposed of more than once. There is no evidence that he ever had sex with Dylan. There are no witnesses who think that it even could have happened. (This case isn't new -- it started during a bitter divorce proceeding in 1993. It was recently revived by #metoo.)

I'm not in favor of these shunning/censoring maneuvers; the casting out of some group's devil de jour. Of course, I understand righteous indignation; it's one of my favorite emotions. But... conviction in the Twitter Court does not require a response from me.

Whatever else you may be, you are being difficult.

There is clearly a connection between the artist, his time, his place, his methods, and his works. The artist and his works are not the same thing, however, so we can separate the two. Haydn is long gone, but his works remain.

Harvey Weinstein, whatever else he probably did do, produced a lot of good movies. So did Woody Allen, whatever it was that he probably did not do. Garrison Keillor, the avuncular Prairie Home Companion, produced hundreds and hundreds hours of perfect radio. So, he could be slightly lecherous every few years. So, he could be grumpy. So, he could be hard to work for. Mother Theresa was hard to work for. Big deal.

If Leonard DaVinci had murdered Mona Lisa, he might have hanged for it. His hanging (or his getting away with murder) takes nothing away from his work, though it probably will affect his reputation as a man.

This is, actually, true for all of us, whether we are artists or common laborers. If I perform 8 hours of honest labor for you, you got what you paid for. If the other 16 hours of my day I drink, fuck whores, smoke pot, shoot up heroin, and piss in public, but am ready to work again at 9:00 a.m., what's it to you, Jack?

This business of "Well, she is a good enough screen writer, but you know, she isn't a real feminist" is confusing categories. "He was a great actor, but he was a communist (or a Nazi, a homosexual, a rapist, heterosexual, a Republican, mass murderer, arch fiend... whatever). "He always sold more than his quota of vacuum cleaners, but you know, he cheated on his wife." So, why should Electrolux care? Maybe he needed to sell a lot of vacuum cleaners to keep both his wife and his mistress happy. Fuck Electrolux. They should be happy he was strongly motivated.

Welcome to The Philosophy Forum.

Interesting assumptions, interesting question. But say more about what you consider "justice" and a "just society" and how far (or near) we are from it.

One reason we may or may not live in a just society is that my idea of justice might be different than yours. You may think society just, I may not.

I think what people dislike about the major institutions in their societies is their being too big, too inflexible, too unresponsive, too inaccessible, too bureaucratic, too authoritarian. The central government; the Church; the corporations; the military; the civil service; one's city, county, and state governments; universities, and so forth can all be unfriendly, and alienating.

Modern societies have tended towards being unfriendly and alienating as they have grown in complexity and size. This applies to governments at many levels, corporations (especially large ones), systems (like markets), religious organizations--all kinds of large institutions in a society.

Feeling hostility, fear, and loathing towards one, several, or all institutions is really a perfectly normal human response. It's actually desirable that people not love these huge, distant, unresponsive, uncaring institutions.

Unfortunately, and it is unfortunate, huge populations require huge service establishments, whether they be governmental, corporate, military, religious, or educational. If one wants to avoid falling into existential despair, anomie, alienation, pervasive hostility and fear, and all that bad stuff, one has to find friendly local community--and that is fortunately possible. Difficult at times, but possible.

Every citizen armed isn't going to solve any of our problems, because the most dangerous attacks on your personhood won't be in the form of armed assault. It will be more insidious, bureaucratic, omnidirectional, insubstantial. Shooting at it won't help. There will be no specific target to hit.

Why do you trust the government so much to not have any way to protect the people from said government? — yatagarasu

That is a fair question. My answer has to be somewhat equivocal and lengthy.

I do not think the federal government (the level we are talking about) is an unalloyed good. On the one hand, the government pursued an extremely and existentially dangerous atomic weapons program from 1942 to the present. The federal government has pursued a series of "limited" conventional wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan towards no clear and achievable purpose. They have also pursued a policy of destabilization and interference in Central and South America (for instance, in 1973 supporting Pinochet's violent coup against President Allende in Chile). They have interfered in Middle Eastern political affairs since the 1950s (like, assisting in the overthrow of the democratically elected Mohammad Mosaddegh, considered to be the leading champion of secular democracy and resistance to foreign domination in Iran's modern history, then installed the "crowned cannibal" Shah of Iran, Pavlavi).

The federal government has been something of a corporate adversary at times -- such as in the progressive era (early 1900s) when it broke up the giant corporate trusts. At times the federal government has regulated corporations energetically, and at times it has done very little. Generally, the federal government has been a friend of the corporate establishment.

On the other hand, the federal government finally began acting to promote the civil rights of black Americans, starting in 1954. At the same time Federal Housing Administration (FHA) continued a formal policy of economic discrimination against black people.

The federal government is primarily responsible for funding many social services, such as Social Security, Unemployment Insurance, Disability Programs, Medicare, Medicaid, Food Assistance, some welfare programs, and so on.

The saving grace of the federal government is that Congress and President are elected. They can be replaced by the people--theoretically at least. The Supreme Court isn't elected, and is pretty much there for the lifetime of its appointed judges. The "permanent government" -- the civil service and the military establishment -- are somewhat independent of Congress and the President. This is both good and bad.

So, some actions of the government are good, some actions are bad. It's a mixed bag.

The PRIMARY reason to NOT plan on resisting the federal government by force, is that the federal government has overwhelming resources for violence at its disposal. Most central governments possess the means to suppress their population's discontents. That's just part of the deal of having governments that are capable of defending the nation against foreign aggression: they can also defend themselves against domestic aggression.

So far, our federal government hasn't often found it necessary to engage in combat with citizens in the streets. State and local governments have, however, found it necessary, convenient, or both.

Only in America could the question of which one is trying to control you be a reality. Everywhere else in the world it's always been both. No wonder they are so cozy with each other in American politics. They have and will always be best of friends. — yatagarasu

If I have more hostility towards corporations than toward government, it is because I interact with corporate entities much more often than with government agencies. Plus, while the government is theoretically the servant of the people, corporations are more openly predatory. What saves the corporations from being even worse than they are, is that they are competing with each other. This alone has helped keep them from being overly aggressive. Except when they achieve monopoly status, then its a different story.

Before the American Telephone and Telegraph Corporation, the Bell System, was broken up by the government in 1982, it was a very reliable but inflexible company. A joke about AT&T was "We don't care; we don't have to." They were the only telephone company that served the whole country and provided long distance and local service in most areas. They owned the telephone on your desk. They had no competition: they were a protected monopoly. If you didn't like their service, you could just do without telephone service altogether.

The good thing about Trump, as opposed to many other Republicans, is that he's not afraid to be conflictual with Democrats when he must. For example, about the importance of God in American public discourse, etc. — Agustino

Oh, please! Surely you are not counting on Donald Trump to restore God to some alleged central place in American public discourse? Give us a fucking collective break.

In a related thread on guns (yesterday), I said:

The political block that is most dangerous in the politics of gun-control is the one which holds that The People need to be armed to protect themselves from a malignant, freedom suppressing Federal Government. The Armed Militias see the Feds rolling into town and Marshals forcing them to be vaccinated against measles, taking away their independence, their property rights, their children, their women, their reproductive organs, and their guns. — Bitter Crank

AND, right on cue, here you are!

So, I don't know how serious you are about this. Maybe you're just being provocative. But there are people running around out there who are not merely being provocative.

"The government coming to get us" has been a leitmotif of a deranged (paranoid) subset somewhere out on the far right wing for a good share of our history. It isn't clear to me exactly what happens to people that they think this way. Harsh toilet training? Siblings snatching their toys away from them? Brain infections? Worms?

So, come in, lay down on the couch, and tell me about your innermost thoughts.

Where would this tiny black hole come from? It takes a star collapsing (a supernovae) to produce a black hole. The collapsing core of the star needs to be a minimum of about 3 times the mass of our sun to have enough gravity to achieve black hole city.

Super-massive black holes like the ones at the center of galaxies (including ours) are many, many times solar mass. It is thought that the super-massive black holes at the centers of galaxies formed about the same time as the galaxy itself.

It might be possible to create tiny (microscopic) black holes in a big, big, big particle accelerator. Why wouldn't this tiny black hole consume the earth? Because Hawking radiation from the black hole would cause the little black hole to shrink faster than it could grow. It would disappear.

"The smallest ones are known as primordial black holes. Scientists believe this type of black hole is as small as a single atom but with the mass of a large mountain." says NASA.

When did he know this and how did he know it?

10 minutes ago he googled "how are black holes made?".

https://www.livescience.com/27811-creating-mini-black-holes.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro_black_hole
https://www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/5-8/features/nasa-knows/what-is-a-black-hole-58.html

Well, actually, I read about this first 10-20 years ago.

The political block that is most dangerous in the politics of gun-control is the one which holds that The People need to be armed to protect themselves from a malignant, freedom suppressing Federal Government. The Armed Militias see the Feds rolling into town and Marshals forcing them to be vaccinated against measles, taking away their independence, their property rights, their children, their women, their reproductive organs, their guns.

They can hardly bring themselves to entertain the thought that perhaps, possibly, maybe, the deranged should not be allowed to have guns. But then, who gets to decide who is deranged? The Feds, again... keeping their big databases on potentially deranged Americans -- who knows who is on their lists?

Another dangerous group is the political block of gun fetishists who have sexual feelings about guns leading to orgasm. Naturally, they are gun-protective. While not possessed of the paranoia of Fed-fearing right wingers, they make up a large denomination of gun worshippers. Their main reason for opposing any sort of gun control is that they fear being pathologized. Deep deep down down in the bottom of their hearts, they intuit that there is something quite screwy about their affection and enthusiasm for guns, which would probably not look good in the broad light of day.

A third troublesome group in the body politic are the numbskulls who prattle on about gun culture, happy hunting, how they, pioneers all, defend themselves from varmints of all kinds, and how it is up to them to defend the defenseless from crazy or just extremely ill-advise shooters.

The paranoid Fed Fearers, the gun masturbators, and the numbskulls do not form any sort of majority, but they are--of course, who else?--most convinced of their righteousness and are the most vocal. Braying jackasses all.



At the very least these three groups should be subject to the most scathing, cruelest, most humiliating ridicule that can be devised. They should also be guilt-tripped to the max, deemed to be entirely politically incorrect, addicted, un-American, perverse, child-endangering, condemned by the Pope to perpetual hellfire and damnation.

Shouldn't the NRA be investigated as a front for child pornography?

At least you won't be disappointed by the absence of an after-life.

At least you won't have to listen to Donald Trump ever again.

You managed to not exist just fine for around 13.3 billion years before you were born; you'll do fine after you're dead.

BTW, the earth probably won't be sucked into a tiny black hole. Chances are we won't get sucked into a black hole at all, and if we do, it will probably be larger than tiny.

You won't have to worry about misspelling ever again:

Like, "Seizing to exist"; "centre"; British much? "planet gets inhibited by another form of life; or maybe you meant 'inhibited' instead of 'inhabited'?

The fact that we didn't exist, and that we won't exist at any moment (maybe before the next 10 minutes is up) should stimulate us to make the most of existence while it lasts. Eat, drink, be merry; fuck your brains out; don't bother finishing dull boring books; eat dessert first; tell your son of a bitch boss to shove his head up his ass... As you have surmised, once you are dead, that's it. FOREVER.

The problem of nuclear war doesn't need an orange buffoon for ignition. The reason that the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has moved the minute hand of the doomsday clock to 11:58 pm (2 minutes before midnight -- doomsday) is that the Orange buffoon need not be involved in the initial launch.

First, seven other nations have nuclear-tipped missiles: China, Russia, India, Pakistan, France, UK, and North Korea. Israel has nuclear weapons; I don't think they have missiles to deliver them, but I haven't checked out their security arrangements yet.

I don't know what our current security arrangements are either. During the cold war, the authority to launch nuclear weapons had been delegated and sub-delegated. The Dr. Strangelove plot idea of a base commander launching B52 bombers was entirely plausible. It makes sense (if you buy into the idea of nuclear weapons at all--and the major powers have) to delegate authority. An off-shore nuclear attack could eliminate Washington, D.C. the Pentagon, the orange buffoon and much else, before any arrangements could be made for a counter attack.

I don't think anybody thinks B52s could be a significant factor at this point, but we have around 400 nuclear tipped land based missiles and a batch of nuclear-launch subs, somewhere. We wouldn't want these resources to be paralyzed for lack of an order should the US be attacked. The same goes for China, Russia, and everybody else.

Were Pakistan to attack India with nuclear weapons, were Israel decide to nuke any one of several Arab neighbors (or Iran), were India to attack China, were the North Koreans to sell a bomb to Iran (Iran has been working on missiles for quite some time), were NK to attack the US or SK, it's just very difficult to suppose that this would not escalate.

It's questionable which animals would survive. The cockroaches in your kitchen have good reason to fear that they would be totally screwed.

Were all the nuclear and thermonuclear bombs to be used explode at high enough altitude, the radiation alone would be survivable. Look at the area adjacent to Chernobyl. The problem is, the bombs aren't going to go off at high altitudes. They are going to be detonated immediately above, or on targets, including cities and industrial zones. The firestorms that will result will lift a massive amount of soot into the upper atmosphere where it will stay for... maybe 10 years, give or take a few. Nuclear winter will be the result. Will this trigger an ice age? No. What it will trigger is crop failure year, after year, after year. Crop failure and failure to reproduce because the weather will be unseasonably cold and dark too much of the time to produce flowers, bees, and food for insects, animals, and humans.

Wild cockroaches will probably survive -- along with an assortment of plants, micro-organisms, animals, and most likely some humans. But life will definitely not be great for the survivors at any time in the immediate and intermediate future, or ever -- maybe.

Once the cooling effect of soot is gone, then global warming on steroids will kick in, and that will get rid of a lot more life forms. Who will survive very severe global warming? Unknown.

I was just going to to explain to you that if it were you personally who was affirming the claim that "All men are created equal" and the particular dimension/principle of equality to which you were alluding was MORAL equality ( I assumed this might be the case from your use of the phrase "equal before God" ) then your position is totally untenable; and I would be happy to tell you why this is the case. — Dachshund

Well, go ahead and explain why it is untenable. You never know -- I might backslide into a less equivocal POV without your explanation. I admit it: I'm not entirely certain about what I think about equality. (How can anybody not be certain about what they think?)

I gather from your phrase, "Let me get this straight" that you didn't like my interpretation of what Jefferson may or may not have meant.

I might think

that no difference that exists between human beings, be it in skin colour, race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, cognitive capacity, should negate their fundamental EQUAL (identical) worth, value and dignity — Dachshund

but whether Jefferson believed that is open to question. When rhetoric like "We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal..." is deployed, the authors are not accounting for the major inconsistencies in their own affairs. Holding that "all men are created equal" and owning slaves (and fathering slave children) is a serrated-edged inconsistency.

Jefferson may have aspired to harmonize his rhetoric with the facts of his life. He may have intended at one point to free his slaves, but in the end, he didn't -- he needed their cash value.

Still, the rhetoric is there in the D. of I. It's good rhetoric, and if we make it consistent in our own lives, good on us. Unfortunately, when we talk about the EQUAL worth, value, and dignity of human beings, we are as likely as Jefferson to be inconsistent, but maybe not as egregiously.

I don't know... these days do a lot of people sincerely claim we are all created equal? And if we say that all people are created equal, do we mean that in a specially, restricted way? Like, "We are all created equal, but some of us are better and more equal than others." I suspect that most people feel they are superior to at least some others, even if they grudgingly admit that some people are better than themselves.

And if we are all equal before god, then that is god's problem to deal with, not ours, thank heavens. We'll just go ahead and operate on the assumption that some of us are better, and some of you are worse.

Would there be a need for religion if there was no fear of death?

The sum of Christianity (the religion I am most familiar with) is not all about dealing with the fear of death.

First, not everyone (Christian or other) is very afraid of dying. Some people are reconciled to the end of their existence at the time of death. Not all Christians believe in in an afterlife, and there can be sharp disagreement about what "afterlife" even means.

For some Christians who take God to be a vindictive torturer of souls, there is is more hazard in a life after death (it might be hell on steroids) than no life after death at all (merely non-existence).

The fear of life after death is, to some extent, part of the package of religion, which posits an afterlife about which you need advice and direction. If Christianity offers a way to avoid hell, a lot of the wide-screen technicolor propaganda on hell came from the church in the first place.

You are just reading from the Torah. — Rich

Daniel wasn't in the Pentateuch (Torah), the last time I checked.

So who is the shepherd? — René Descartes

Jefferson Airplane will feed you sheep and look after you lambs. They're the shepherds.

Are humans a herd-animal, a pack-animal, a troupe-animal, a family-group animal, a solitary animal who periodically tolerates others' proximity, or simply a large group of braying jackasses? Reveal

Culture is a herd product; it's simultaneously produced, modified, and utilized by the herd. So sure, we all engage in herd activity. But, contrary to the sneering tone of people who like the term "sheeple", we don't suspend our individual intelligence to utilize our cultural resources. Most people take at least some meals from "fast food" joints during given year. It isn't all McDonalds. A gyro, for instance, or pad thai are both "fast foods" -- street foods, or can be, anyway. The old-fashioned diner was fast food; so were coffee shops, with a menu of sandwiches, ready to serve blue plate specials (like roast beef on white bread with mashed potatoes, peas, and gravy uber alles) and pie. Herd.

Most people read a newspaper and their opinions are affected by what they read; true, there is a difference between reading the New York Times and the National Enquirer, between the PBS News Hour and Fox news. Herd

Even intellectuals and philosophers like to watch popular movies and TV shows. Herd.

What is the purpose of boredom? Why is it such a universal emotion? — CuddlyHedgehog

Why do people (and other animals, for all we know) get headaches? Some reason? Some purpose? Headaches happen. Boredom happens. One does something about it, then moves on. Nattering on about boredom is... boring.

OK, I'll take your word for it, then.

This Google Ngram would indicate that antinatalism has been in use (in print) long enough to be noticed and included.

Yeah, who does the OED think they are, anyway? Just a bunch of linguists in a formerly great imperialist power college town.

thanks for accepting me into this group — Oldphan

Let's not be hasty. You're here; whether you have been "accepted" remains to be seen. On the other hand, we have accepted our resident antinatalists, so there's hope. >:)

What difference does it make to you whether the OED editors have included it or not? You are using the word, other people know what you mean (I guess) so... what's the problem? Do you need the imprimatur of the OED, or something?

Maybe a £100,000 bribe would help.

The itch to build or melt into something deathless intensifies perhaps with aging. — foo

I find that I have less and less itch to melt into something deathless as I age.

Matter is deadened Mind
— Rich

That's stupid.

matter is deadened light
— Rich

That's just as stupid, if not more so. — Sapientia

Nice and direct.

BTW Jonathan AB from SA, welcome to TPF.

I just agreed with him, that's all. Neighborly, you know.

Or maybe you inhaled water, sank, lost consciousness and died, and discovered there was no second act. Sic transit gloria Rich.

Maybe not. There might be life after death or maybe you snagged a life boat before your ship sank. Or maybe your ship was driven into the rocks of grim reality by the insistent waves of misfortune, but you were close enough to shore to wade to safety. And maybe the island you were fortunate enough to wade ashore was fruitful, pleasant, and unoccupied except by another castaway who happens to be quite voluptuous or a stud, whichever you prefer. And you lived happily ever after.