wikipedia says that Herman is a proponent of the great men theory of history — Wosret

Odd how many books he wrote like "How the Scots Invented the Modern World" or "How the British Navy Shaped the Modern World" and "Freedom's Forge: How American Business produced Victory in WWII" where it was collective efforts, not single individuals that made the difference. But... he also wrote several great-man books too. Like one on Churchill and Ghandi, or Wilson and Lenin, and MacArthur.

The Great Man shaping history theory is, I think, the result of many biographers' efforts rather than the efforts of great men. Of course, we can't re-run history with different characters to see how somebody else would have managed the same situation. Suppose Stephen Douglas had won the election of 1860, instead of Abraham Lincoln. What would have happened next? Don't know, won't know, can't know.

A lot of people were involved in putting the Civil War on--not just Lincoln and a few generals. The North won the war because of the efforts of millions. The South lost the war despite the efforts of millions (or they seemed to lose it; sometimes one wonders...)

I think you are right about historical staying power. Lincoln is a great man, proved by his historical sales receipts. He's still selling well. One doesn't maintain brisk sales in bookstores for 157 years for no reason at all.

et al

This poor root is getting pulled up to see how well it's doing too often for it to be do as well as it might. There must be posts for the mods to be busy checking for spelling, punctuation, grammar... something.

.

Pff - you'll never see them make Agustino a mod, are you kidding me? >:O — Agustino

Making you a mod might be their perfect revenge?

One of the things the management of this outfit probably keeps in mind -- they should anyway -- is traffic count. You may (you can; you shall! you must; you will) annoy the mods, but you also generate considerable traffic which is important. And, more to the point, you are not dishing up idle chatter. Some posters are much better at this than others, and traffic generators are an essential piece of success here, and in most other sites.

A forum such as this needs diversity, and you and Thorongil (among others) help keep the door open to conservative views. Without diversity what one would find here is an echo chamber.

Does a bird know that it's beautiful? A Weird Argument For Theism

This is a poetic question more than a philosophical one, but it brings up a valid philosophical line of enquiry: Is there a macrocosmic hierarchy in which beings "look down on" beings lower on the hierarchical scale and observe qualities of those beings which are invisible to those lower beings themselves?

And secondly, could there be a higher form of being that observes and apprehends a beautiful quality in us which we are incapable of seeing? — Noble Dust

Beginning with birds is a weird way to argue for theism, but I guess the analogy works well enough:

We are to birds as God is to us

I don't know what birds see in each other. It could be that what the bird sees is the same thing that we see--that is, the female cardinal clearly sees a red male cardinal. Some birds do, anyway. Crows are apparently able to recognize human faces and classify them as belonging to friend or foe. If they can tell us apart--as different as we are from them--then they must be able to see each other as individuals.

When I put a new male finch in the cage with the female, the male made a bee-line for the female and mounted her -- the time from the box to mating was about 1 second. Point being, the male instantly recognized the female, and visa versa, apparently.

Our identification of beauty in birds doesn't inform them of their beauty. It's a bridge too far. So, perhaps "we are to birds as God is to us" still holds, but oppositely since

God may be as distant from us as we are to birds

So, God's vision of us may do for us what we do for birds, which may be something, or nothing.

Darwin thought beauty was a critical piece of natural selection, along with fitness. Birds prefer--choose--beauty in their mates, he thought. A male cardinal does not need to know that he is beautiful, but his selective mate does. She (apparently) is the one who decides who gets to share her nest.

Knowing one is beautiful would seem to be a special accomplishment. Many people like the face they see in the mirror; its kind of disadvantageous to not like it. But to assess one's appearance as "handsome", or "beautiful" and identify the degree of loveliness requires an accurate assessment of one's appearance from the POV of others.

What we more likely know is how well our face does in the market place. That we can see -- how people respond to us, what they say to us, who shuns us, who gravitates to us, all that. And of course, all that isn't based on beauty alone.

There is a New England shape note song--or maybe the Southern Harmony tradition which speaks of the longing to see God, or if not God directly, the throne, a sight that would be infinitely pleasurable. And even more, to be in the embrace of God.

Father, I long, I faint to see
the place of thine abode.
I'd leave these earthly courts and flee
up to thy seat my God

Here I behold thy distant face,
and tis a pleasing sight
but to abide in thine embrace
is infinite delight.

I'd part with all the joys of sense,
to gaze upon thy throne.
Pleasure springs fresh forever thence
Unspeakable, unknown...

Are we all happy again, now? Yes? Adorable!

"Apologist for rape" is the sort of ideological slander that should not be allowed. Such statements should be deleted. Now that she is a mod, she can just delete the offending post and retract her accusation.

I would expect my views on uncontrolled migration of Arabs and Africans into Europe or uncontrolled migration of Mexicans, Central Americans, and South Americans into the US to be characterized as an "apology for genocide" and "racism" and be threatened with banning. Migration should be controlled. Look at what uncontrolled migration of Europeans into North America did to the American Indians, or uncontrolled migration of the English into Australia did for Aboriginals.

Who made TimeLine a mod and why? — Thorongil

I don't think it's very mysterious. Timeline is an intelligent sophisticated person. She asks to be a mod. She's female. You've probably noticed that some of the male mods are concerned about the balance of estrogen and testosterone in the Body Philosophic. They might like it to be 50/50. In fact, nothing runs on 50% T and 50% E, except Title IX regulation of college athletics. It's mostly one or the other.

Time will tell whether she is a good moderator or a bad moderator. It's sort of like appointing a supreme court justice. Sometimes appointments backfire, and the justice doesn't rule the way the appointing president hoped. The difference is, this appointment isn't for life and bitching about decisions can be incessant as well as up close and personal.

I don't know why anybody would want this unpaid, thankless, and slush-mucking job. I'm glad somebody does.

My main complaint about TimeLine is that I feel she could do a better job proofreading her posts, and that she is a fan of pasta salad. Pasta Saladorians should be suppressed.

IF we are speaking in the broader context of culture, it would seem like somethings that are lost, are really and truly lost. Some things that are lost, however, have donated to the culture parts of themselves.

Take the Antikythera mechanism as an example. The Antikythera mechanism is an ancient Greek analogue computer and orrery used to predict astronomical positions and eclipses for calendar and astrological purposes. Measuring 340-millimetre (13 in) × 180-millimetre (7.1 in) × 90-millimetre (3.5 in) the mechanism employed 37 intermeshing bronze wheels; the largest--5.5 inches, had 223 teeth. It was lost in a shipwreck The function or purpose of the thoroughly encrusted object was not immediately obvious. By carefully clearing away some bits of corrosion, using advanced imaging techniques, and reconstruction, several pieces of lost information were found.

1. Greek craftsmen were able to cut precisely fine toothed gear wheels.
2. The various diameters of the wheels was precise.
3. the manually powered wheels could predict future eclipses, positions of stars, and so forth.
4. A lot of knowledge about astronomy was baked into the Antikythera mechanism.

The lost object did not deprive the Greeks of anything more than the object itself. Everything that went into the mechanism--knowledge and technique--remained in Greek culture--for a period of time, at least. By sinking to the bottom of the sea, the object was, however, lost to those immediate successors who might have benefitted from having it. Eventually the Technique was lost, and wouldn't be redeveloped for another 1500 years with clock mechanisms. The knowledge about the movement of the moon, sun, planets, and so forth was dissolved into succeeding cultures, and became quite degraded as the cultures themselves degraded.

How information and technique is lost is a more interesting story than a boat sinking and taking with it lots of interesting stuff.

The Antikythera mechanism

I'm no fan of Donald Trump -- wasn't from the get go. I don't think any of his policy or program actions have been positive. His public persona is that of a rich rube. But...

Trumps public performance is worse than all 20th-21st century presidents since Warren Harding. It isn't vastly worse, only because other presidents haven't always performed superbly either. Narcissism is probably a prerequisite to anyone who aspires to high national office. We know that behind close doors, Richard Nixon wasn't cooly rational. Kennedy was an active philanderer. (I don't hold it against him, just that he wasn't a model of probity. Johnson behaved like a professional ;;politician: effective in managing congress, unsuccessful in managing the Vietnam War. I never thought Reagan was a great communicator, and I don't think he was a 'big picture' thinker, so to speak. The reputation of Clinton's presidency may very well deteriorate over time. He also had sexual improprieties, but succeeded in passing some neoliberal programs (like ending welfare as we know it) that did the poor no great good.

I loathed George Bush II. His war on terrorism is a lingering blight on this country and the Middle East. Obama seemed pretty upright. No huge scandals, no big frauds, no hands in the wrong place, and so on and so forth. And then there's Trump.

Trump's policy objectives don't require him to be especially statesmanlike. To the extent that he is something of an isolationist, why bother being nice to other countries' leaders? If you don't really care what most Americans think, (he got elected), there is no need to now project patrician sophistication. He can afford to project, "I'm a rube, you're a rube, but I'm a lot richer than you are."

I'd like to see Trump impeached and convicted out of office. I just don't see him contradicting himself.

In ancient Greece, the birthplace of philosophy, a small penis was seen as better than a large penis. — Michael

The professor said the ancient Greeks thought that a big penis was comic--Wikipedia says 'grotesque'. Of course, this insight is based on damned little recorded gossip by the ancient Greeks which would reveal what they really thought. They did seem to prefer small dicks on sculptures. On the other hand, the Greeks employed phallus sculpture as part of the cult of Hermes in his function as a fertility god. (As opposed to Hermes Psychopomps). The phallus sculptures were sometimes quite large.

There is a reference to a shortage of dildos in Lysistrata -- the war seems to have interrupted the supply. Aristophanes didn't say how large the dildos were. There is also a joke about erections visible through clothing--the sex strike by the women had left the men very horny. Presumably their actual dicks were big enough to be noticeable under a robe. "It's not the heat, it's the tumidity" is the modern version of the joke.

A good thread, but I'm a little surprised there aren't more posts already if I'm honest. — believenothing

What do you mean, not more posts -- there are 39 pages of posts? Or are you thinking of text posts about what people are listening to?

Everyone's diagnosis of Trump is that he is a narcissist -- a diagnosis with which I concur. He's pretty much a narcissistic liar/thief/knave/scoundrel rolled up in one, However, even narcissistic LTKSs may have good reasons to misrepresent the situation. By always maintaining that "it's going to be great" (whatever that might be), or "We're going to do an outstanding job of" (whatever that might be), or "I have no fears of the investigation" (of whatever investigation might be going on) an air of confidence and 'full steam ahead', all is well... is maintained. People like that better than "the end is near", even if it evidently is near. The effects are short term, of course, because some issue is always ready to raise its ugly head. Other administrations have done the same thing. Johnson, Nixon, Clinton, Bush, et al.

My guess is that in closed door, off the record meetings, the President and his lawyers/advisors are probably frank and honest about the progress of the war, the defense against the investigators, the pursuit of the terrorists, or what have you. But, if the war is not going well, or if the investigators appear to be ready to screw one to the wall, and maybe will impanel a grand jury which will hand down indictments, what else can the Prez do by put up a positive front?

After all, it might work out OK. It didn't for Johnson (huge demonstrations, civil disobedience), it didn't for Nixon (he was screwed to the wall, indicted, convicted, impeached, disgraced...) but it did work out OK for Clinton (he was investigated, impeached, disgraced -- and somehow managed to successfully finish a second term without too much difficulty. George Bush II screwed up royally, wrecked Iraq, fucked over the American economy, was feckless in ever so many ways, but still wasn't disgraced. Obama's every error (nothing too minor to criticize) was brought to light, but he managed to complete two terms without being tarred and feathered (they tried).

There is some evidence that Trump has a thin, but Teflon coated skin to which shit doesn't stick. Kennedy, Clinton, and Bush II all seemed to have that special slipperiness. People loved accusing Nixon. The good men Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama just couldn't avoid stuff sticking to them. If there was a bad smell 10 miles away, it would stick to those two. They fortunately had no personal scandals (hardly so much as a really bad faux pas) or they would both have been run out of town on a rail.

Soft drink makers — WISDOMfromPO-MO

Coca Cola and Pepsi Cola are quality products. Yes, they have sugar in them, but where in the advertising or on the cans does it say that one should drink as much of the stuff as one can get one's hands on. Beer, wine, and rye whiskey are fine products too. The brewing and distilling industry has never said that one should get drunk in one's youth and then stay that way for the next 70 years, Bacon is a fine product. That doesn't mean that one should wrap a piece of rich fudge in raw bacon and then deep fat fry it. Such concoctions are heart attacks on a stick.

A chef remonstrated with Julia Child about the amount of butter, sugar, and other fine ingredients she was putting into a dessert. She said, "Well, you're not supposed to eat the whole thing -- each person is supposed to get just one small slice."

You can only help people so far.

Churchill — Cuthbert

In another good quote, Churchill said "Americans will do the right thing after they have tried everything else". [1]

[1] According to Quote Investigator, the gist of the quote (in more elegant form) was spoken by Abba Eban in 1967. Some of the versions say "Nations will do the right thing..." Churchill wasn't credited with the quote until 1980. Churchill scholars say they can't find such a quote in his writings. So, he probably didn't say it, but it doesn't matter. Churchill gives a quote more cachet than Eban uttering it, even if Eban is more elegant.

... so I didn't ask about the details, and they weren't ever explained to me — Wayfarer

That's because there are no details.

I would have to reread the Gospels again (and try to do so in a "de novo" frame of mind), but it doesn't seem to me that the resurrection of bodies was upper-most in Jesus' preaching. It doesn't seem to me that life ever-lasting was either. Which makes sense, because (again recollecting) it doesn't seem to me that the Jewish tradition on which Jesus stood was all that concerned with those issues either.

My own belief is that one could fully satisfy the demands of the last judgement (as described in Matthew 25:31-46) without expecting to exist after death, and without expecting one's body to be raised from the dead. Of course, if one was to be present at the last judgement, one would have to still be alive, sort of, but... well... be that as it may... mumble, mumble, now on to the next item in the syllabus.

The Sex Panic has arrived. We have a prominent cause célèbre here in Minnesota.

Garrison Keillor, the Prairie Home Companion himself, has been publicly repudiated by Minnesota Public Radio and the Washington Post. Keillor worked for MPR for several decades, bringing in a tremendous amount of fame and revenue for the organization. The "inappropriate sexual behavior" as described by MPR was inadvertently touching the bare skin on the back of a female performer on the show (backstage) who had been telling him of various unhappy events in her life. He intended to merely pat her on the back. She flinched, he apologized personally and in writing, she accepted the apology, and said "don't think about it". Keillor said he had considered her a friend until she showed up at MPR with a lawyer, 10 years after the "event".

Apparently, just guessing, she was wearing a short vest-type blouse over a low backed dress. Where he expected to encounter cloth, he touched bare skin -- on her back--not rear end, not breast, not thigh.

So, ONE ten year old complaint about a non-event resulted in MPR severing all connections with Keillor. (He had retired from performing a year or so ago -- he's 75.) No more re-runs of the PHC, no more carrying the excellent Writer's Almanac, a daily 5 minute piece on literature. They're even dropping the name of the Prairie Home Companion for the show which somebody else now hosts.

The Washington Post, for whom Keillor is an occasional columnist, also fired Keillor. Keillor had written a column last week defending Al Franken, one of Minnesota's Senators.

I think women can tell the difference among an accidental touch, flirtation or a pass, a sexual advance that persists past initial rejection, an assault, and rape. I have to assume that when women come forward with the sort of complaint lodged against Keillor (and some others) that they are doing so dishonestly, or are delusional about what happened.

Bah! Humbug!

Oh come on! Rotting in the ground and becoming skunk cabbage isn't reincarnation -- its recycling.

Reincarnation would seem to be precluded by the Christian belief in the resurrection of the specific body which once was a man, as stated in the creeds, "I believe in the resurrection of the body". Within Christian theology, we are born once, live, and die -- and will be raised from the dead at some future time. Let's not get into how a dead body recycled a hundred times over is going to be raised from the dead -- that would be God's problem, not ours.

Supposing that Christianity countenances reincarnation is like saying Buddhism countenances the single resurrection of the body. As far as I know, it doesn't.

Religions arise in various cultures to answer ultimate questions, but that doesn't mean that they end up overlapping all over the place. A Jew, a Buddhist, a Zoroastrian, and a Christian each have a unique take on life and death, and whatever--if anything--happens after death.

Some not-very-well-informed Christians would like to import reincarnation, I think -- beats me why they would want to do that. Personally, I think once is enough.

And that doesn't make it immoral or wrong. That just means our culture's view on sexuality is very much twisted by christianity's sick view on sexuality. — BlueBanana

Christianity has plenty to answer for, no doubt. But let's be fair: religion isn't the only player in determining the shape of our contradictions. Social practices, economics, politics, jurisprudence, and so on all apply torque. Over the last two millennia Christianity has changed, changed again, and changed once more, as have the societies which preceded the present ones. One thing that is a constant, is that sex always finds a way. Everything from the most boring heterosexually normative sex within the bonds of marriage to exotic polymorphous perversity have all happened over, and over, and over, during every generation to have lived within the Christian sphere of influence (and outside that sphere).

Whether the landscape is thrilling or depressing probably has something to do with the immediate task at hand. If one has to move people and their burdens on foot over a mountain range, it is probably less thrilling than if one is on vacation in Banff (the Canadian Rockies). Crossing the Great Plains by foot and wagon train was and was not thrilling. Unending flatness, tall prairie plants (not just grass), wind and sun made it a mixed experience. Grandeur on the one hand, endlessness on the other.

Storms present something similar. Experiencing an Atlantic gale on the coast, in a warm building, would be a rather different experience than being in a boat (if one survived it). A tornado is an amazing experience if one isn't in it's immediate path. A blizzard is awe inspiring if one isn't stuck somewhere and slowly freezing to death.

I'm not saying that people fail. Customers, workers, managers and shareholders all get what they want, and the whole enterprise is considered a success. The whole economy is considered a success. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

Well, I don't have reams of data at my finger tips, either. But... Logic tells us, does it not, that if customers, workers, managers, and shareholders are all getting what they want, then the system has to be working. Customers want affordable and decent-quality goods; workers want reasonable labor loads and adequate pay managers want production to go smoothly and profitably; and shareholders want dividends and their assets to hold value.

If everyone in the economy is fucking up, fucking each other over, fucking off, and constantly lying, cheating, and stealing then no one is going to be satisfied: not the consumer, not the worker, not the manager, not the stockholder.

Most people are getting what they want. The economic system is big enough and complicated enough to allow for a certain low level of continuous failure. 35,000 people die in traffic accidents, true. But out of 320 million americans covering hundreds of billions miles a year on the roads, that is a low failure rate. Sure, there is waste, fraud, and abuse in every organization--whether it be the Cancer Society, Apple Computer, Exxon, or the Arkansas legislature. But, if the level of waste, fraud, and abuse is low and tolerable, we can live with it.

It takes an extremely efficient and vicious police state to eliminate all waste and fraud. I'd rather have some waste, fraud. and abuse and NO police state. As the recently disgraced Garrison Keillor said at the National Press Club a while back:

We should be careful, though, not to make the world so fine and good that you and I can't enjoy living in it. A world in which there is no sexual harassment at all is a world in which there will not be any flirtation. A world without thieves at all will not have entrepreneurs. (Laughter.) A government in which there are no friendly connections or favors between politicians and powerful people would be the first in the history of mankind. (Laughter.) And a world without fiction, my friends, would be unbearable for all of us. — Garrison Keilor

↪WISDOMfromPO-MO I'll have to give your reply more thought. — Bitter Crank

12 days later, I'm still thinking about it.

There are too many owl vomit pellets around here.

Kind of ethnocentric of me. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

What's ethnocentric about it?

people do not seek work that they are good at. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

We may not live in a strict meritocracy, but most employers/managers have a reasonably good idea of what excellent performance looks like. People who like what they are doing are more likely to perform at high levels. After all, most of have a limited repertoire of what we can do well.

People seek careers in professions with very high salaries, high status/prestige, and/or above average power--never mind how good they would be at the work. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

They do, but I do not think there is any reason to suppose that millions of people breeze into their high-prestige, high power, highly paid jobs without being expected to deliver the goods--doing what they were hired to do, and doing it quite well, at least, and on time.

The workforce is not entirely rational when it comes to gets hired to do what -- everyone has witnessed examples of people getting jobs without being qualified (because they gave good head maybe). I have gotten a couple of jobs that I wasn't really qualify for, but I didn't give anyone head to get them. What happened? I washed out of the jobs. There is such a thing as knowing how to do something, on the one hand, and not knowing shit from shinola on the other hand. Other people actually can tell if you know what you are doing.

Along the lines of irrationality... there are jobs in industry, government, and NGOs that are so nebulous nobody can tell what the employee is supposed to be doing -- including the employee. It doesn't matter who gets these jobs, because they are pretty much empty from the start. But most jobs are NOT like that. Most jobs involve concrete activities that are purposeful, measurable, and observable. If you fuck up on the job, it will show.

I suppose everyone has had negative experiences in workplaces where there were people who didn't know how to do their jobs, despite their training. Like I said, I was in a job like that three times. The first one was a temp job in a call center. Couldn't figure out how the database system worked. booted in one month. The second one was as a departmental principle secretary at a University. Way, way too many details for me to learn and manage in the very distracting office setting. Gone in 14 months, voluntarily. The third instance was in a job I was initially qualified and able to do, and did do. But after 2 years, we had to seek contracts with very different requirements. I was supposed to be doing something called "risk reduction case management". Even though I had written the grant, the guidelines were extremely nebulous, and wasn't trained to do the kind of case management that the agent thought I should be doing (but which didn't have much to do with the objectives of the grant). Conclusion: Fired 7 months into the contract.

Now, in the other jobs that I held (some 38 years worth) I was generally able to function quite successfully, do the job I was hired to do, and did it well. But... there were these three that were totally out in left field for me. Other people have been in the same situation: Just not able to do the job for which they were hired.

The failures are the exceptions. Most people who are hired are identified as capable of doing the job, and do perform adequately.

Success and failures occur at all levels of employment, from menials on up to top executives; the successes far outnumber the failures. You (or I) may absolutely loathe the society we live in, but the fact is, as loathsome as it is, it functions successfully to keep being loathsome. It doesn't fall apart.

Tyranni infelici casu fortasse.

Occidit omnes tyrannis!

Sig Heil, Heil, mein Führer, and all that. As for you mein kleiner Führer... Wir haben Wege you might not like so much. For one, no Saint Nicholas swag for you this year. Der Widerstand formt sich im Keller.

Oh, great wise brilliant and authoritative leader, you failed to provide a check box to signal that we irrelevant, worthless, and pale worms had read, understood, and committed our abject selves to your most authoritative wise and brilliant leadership. Correct this deficiency immediately.

Be sure to add a "fuck you very much" box.

Meanwhile, back at the sweatshop where the moderators and administrators toil in ignominious degradation, unappreciated and unrewarded, people are decompensating and going off the deep end.

THIS

OR THIS

I've spent 70 years in the more or less flat midwest. A dramatic feature is the 500 foot deep Mississippi gorge, or maybe a large limestone rock quarry. A nice grass covered hill. This is hardwood territory and in the fall the trees turn bright colors, and in the winter the first heavy snow brings another transformation.

Chicago, Boston, New York, San Francisco... are all pretty impressive. It isn't just the size; it's the intense energetic vitality and urbanity of these places. Seeing the ocean for the first time is pretty grand too. I was 45 before I saw real mountains (the Rockies, Banff), the Grand Canyon, and the SW American desert.

Soaring rough (because they are geologically new) mountains, the red rock of the SW states around the Grand Canyon, Devils Tower, Yellowstone, It puts the prairies in perpetual shadow.

I would almost go as far as geographic determinism. Port cities seem to have a cultural fertility advantage over inland flyover towns like Minneapolis, Kansas City, or Omaha. Inland towns are not wastelands (Madison, Wisconsin used to be a midwestern outpost of Boston and New York), but port cities are usually not as insular, parochial, or as socially conservative stolid as inland cities. Chicago is something of an exception, having been the national railroad hub and port of entry for the midlands.

Are people that live in the Rockies different than people who live east of the mountains, on the plains? Don't know. I suspect there are some differences, owing to the geography of those places.

People mostly care about power, influence, prestige, status, wealth, etc. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

It sounds like childish narcissism, to be honest. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

It would be, except that I don't think most people are so obsessed. Most people seem like they are just trying to get through the day, their life, without too much misery.

Some, a small minority, really are obsessed with power, influence, prestige, status, wealth, etc. and they are a troublesome lot.

I thought I was agreeing with you. You don't think that race (genes) produce particular cultures do you?

If man is intrinsically good, then salvation makes no sense.
— Mariner

But doesn't Abrahamic anthropology affirm that man is intrinsically good? He is corrupted, fallen, but still good, inasmuch as he exists at all, since being and goodness are convertible terms in traditional Christian thought. — Thorongil

This is an important question that everyone has to decide how to answer:

Are we collectively good, individually good, or collectively and individually corrupted, fallen, damned, rubbish, etc.?

Even if there is a some evidence to the contrary, there are advantages to thinking that we are good, and worthy of Christ's salvation
To be our Great Healer from death, hell, and sin
Which Adam's transgressions involvéd us in"
as Billings phrased it.

That we are good, can be good, and will do good things is a more salubrious self-fulfilling prophecy than that we are scum, filth and dirt and cannot, will not do good things.

It is easier to understand and work in concert with others if there is a basic assumption of goodness and redemptive capacity than if the basic assumption is that people will screw you over every chance they get.

We are mercifully not in charge of other people's salvation. For one thing, we don't have access to the database of the damned, saved, and could-go-either-way. Starting with the positive assumption that other people are as good as ourselves (if such a thing is even possible) frees us from a lot of judgmental thinking, which is tiresome to the thinker, and certainly exhausting to everybody else.

It would help if we included "ethnicity" and culture, not just race and culture.

There is a genetic relationship (not overwhelming, but detectable) between Jews named Cohen, Kahn, and Kahane. Why would that be? How would such a thing get started? Before the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem by the Romans (the Abomination of Desolation), the priesthood of the Temple was hereditary. The families became Cohen, Kahn, and Kahane in the diaspora, and they intermarried often enough to maintain a genetic connection.

Similarly, the Phoenicians. Whatever happened to the Phoenicians? Where did they disappear to? Well, they didn't go anywhere -- they are still in Palestine, the original Palestinians, and they are genetically related. The same is true for Samaritans, another group that has been in Palestine for a long time.

Phoenicians, Samaritans, Jews and more are probably all related if one goes back a thousand years BC.

Families that survived the Great Plagues in Europe, the Black Death, did so partly because of peculiarities in the immune systems. Over the years, the plague survivors interbred often enough to maintain the variant. It is not common now, but descendants of several small European populations that survived the Black Plague are also highly resistant to HIV -- it's the same genetic trait.

Culture doesn't derive from race, ethnicity, or genetics -- or race, ethnicity or genetics from culture, but they all have this much in common: they are passed down through time from parents to children. Why would 4 and 5 year old white children in North America play "ring around the rosie? Because it's been passed on from generation to generation since the plague, when "ring around the rosie" was invented by children surrounded by people sick and dying of the plague.

One might say there are too many generations for the past to survive that way. Not really -- since Christ there have been only about 65 +/- generations; far fewer since the plague.

So, Maori culture has lasted for a long time because the Maori people have been busy reproducing themselves and their culture. Ditto for Tibetan culture, Zulu culture, Jewish culture, and Anglo-Saxon culture. Where family (genetics) and culture get separated more often, one sees a lot more drift -- such as in the United States. Many Americans are cut off from old-world culture and interbreed quite readily with other ethnicities. One of the results of this is that Jews, for instance, are losing cultural continuity--especially among the reformed and conservative Jews. This is less so among the Orthodox, who have (mostly) maintained old-world culture in the US.

From my experience there are few that choose to logically build ideas. — Myttenar

I suppose it depends on how few the few are, and what is considered "ideas".

True, most people... 80%? 90%? do not work with all-caps "ideas", big ideas, the all-time-great ideas, and it's a good thing they don't, because the world is not perpetuated by great ideas; it's perpetuated by working in the dirt to raise food and fiber, digging in the ground for metal; cooking, cleaning, mending, minding, and managing life. Without the tedious and exhausting labor of the many, there would be no survival of the few.

Martin Luther praised the labor of the many as sacred as the labor of priests, monks, and nuns. The labor of the many is God's work as much as the labor of the saints.

As for the 10% or 20% who are not weeding the crops and spinning cloth, most are not concerned with "philosophy" per se. There is nothing less elevated in their work if it doesn't concern philosophy. The fields of the Liberal Arts all entail as elevated an understanding of the abstract as philosophy. OK, I'll readily grant that Business Administration, Medicine, Technology, Agriculture, Chemistry, Physics, etc. are all concerned with the tangible world. But the tangible world should not be dirt under the philosopher's feet.

Further, the labor of the many which is as sacred as the labor of priests, as elevated as the supposedly elevated work of philosophers, isn't so simple. Compelling the tangible world to become useful was not, is not, ever easy. Take a small cattle herder as an example. Cattle may not be as clever as crows, but they aren't mindless and they don't have to cooperate. Sometimes they don't. A successful small herdsman understands the animals he works with, and knows how to appeal to the animal's preferences. Cattle have preferences, and they have precedence. A farmer that doesn't recognize which cow is First, Second, and Third won't get them organized in the barn. Even an above average philosopher will not be able to tell one cow in a herd from another. For most of us, all cows of the same kind (jersey, holstein...) look exactly alike.

The great mass of technology which holds the human world together, and has held the human world's functioning together for a long time, was built up by ordinary workers. Sowing grain by hand, for instance, is a technology. So is preparing the soil, so is harvesting, so is grinding, so is baking bread. A Platonically minded philosopher can talk about the ideal loaf of bread (which can not be eaten) but a humble woman making bread understand the physical thing of bread, how it must be handled if it is to be good bread. Project forward a few millennium to a French pastry chef: more understanding, more technology, a philosophical French croissant--but still the physical world which must be understood.

The rarified philosopher may be very deficient and impoverished in his understanding of the physical world. I feel this impoverishment in myself (though I am not much of a philosopher) when I confront ordinary physical problems like, fixing a leaking faucet, or trying to understand why my garden will not support certain plants. Of course, I CAN figure these things out -- at least I used to know how to fix a faucet, and the fact is, parts of the garden just have crappy soil--all sorts of different dirt, sand, gravel--even a sidewalk--have been buried there. But, bad experiences have led me to think I am better off paying a plumber to fix things, rather than having disasters later.

Getting a head of lettuce from California's fields to a Boston table, and have it be fresh, crisp, and flavorful, requires a lot of technology, thinking, logic, planning. Supply chain management is invisible to the philosopher, but without it, he'd starve--as would most of us.

The ultimate reason why philosophers are not superior beings is this: Trained in logic, thinking, and abstract ideas he may be, but his mind is no less subject to failure than anyone else, and his emotions are as likely to lead the philosopher into--or out of--the weeds as anybody else.

We are part of the natural physical world, whether we are troglodytes or live in the ivory tower, and are always physical beings Think we can, but it's all the physical world that makes it possible.

So, sadly, it is almost by necessity that is world is ruled by fucking idiots. Those who see the truth would want nothing to do with this world. — Aurora

This is an abysmally lazy statement, and crude too -- no sign of refined thinking on your part. You and Myttenar too,

The contempt shown for the benighted hoi polloi is staggering. — T Clark

Of course, one has to wonder about the hoi polloi at times. But then, one has to wonder about the corps d'elite too, quite often. The latter are capable of doing so much more damage.

“Excuse me—do you have a moment to talk about the needs of really rich people?”