Let me give it a shot. It's like the feeling of being outside of the world, in a glass box, observing "real people" live "real life", while I sit outside, floating in space, observing life and imagining what it would be like if I was "inside"; living real life. It's like I'm a scientist in an observatory, observing far-off life forms enact a theoretical world that I (theoretically) think I want to be a part of. — Noble Dust

Are you deeply alienated, in a state of anomie, loneliness, and abandonment? Or, are you approximating what you think such a miserable state would be like. There's nothing wrong with your description, per se, but...

The problem of depression used to seem clear to me, based on training and experience. As time has passed, I've come to doubt more and more about the condition of depression, especially the relatively vague and not so critical kind that so many people seem to be experiencing. It could just be the case that millions of people live in dysfunctional societies and as such have little choice but to be kind of dysfunctional.

Some people develop quirks and kinks and screwy ideas about the way life is, and these quirky, kinked, and screwed up ideas just don't work in the real world. Trying to dislodge these ideas is very difficult -- and here we're not dealing with some vague disorder as depression. So much harder is it to straighten out a depressed person whose moods, rather than their screwy thinking, is very hard to dislodge.

I suspect those in contention with these finer points that various folks are bringing up are people who haven't actually dealt with major depression or suicidal thoughts. The cycle of miscommunication continues ad absurdum. — Noble Dust

Per above, the depressed are not in a good position to analyze their depression. Miscommunication continues ad absurdum because (to some extent) there can not be a definitive analysis to which all will readily agree. Many millions of people claim to be depressed, and the various therapies intended to treat depression do not seem to be very effective. I've taken most of the antidepressants at one time or another, for about 25 years, and I've had a year of good talk therapy. Both helped at times, and both failed to help at times.

The observable symptoms of depression are not sure signs of depression. There are other reasons for people experiencing these reportable symptoms. Having quite a few of these symptoms likely indicates that someone is depressed, and they might be. But their own interpretation might not be all that helpful.

• Persistent sad, anxious, or “empty” mood
• Feelings of hopelessness, or pessimism
• Irritability
• Feelings of guilt, worthlessness, or helplessness
• Loss of interest or pleasure in hobbies and activities
• Decreased energy or fatigue
• Moving or talking more slowly
• Feeling restless or having trouble sitting still
• Difficulty concentrating, remembering, or making decisions
• Difficulty sleeping, early-morning awakening, or oversleeping
• Appetite and/or weight changes
• Thoughts of death or suicide, or suicide attempts
• Aches or pains, headaches, cramps, or digestive problems without a clear physical cause and/or
  that do not ease even with treatment

If a depression is caused by an irregular arrangement of neurotransmitters, then trying to figure out the cognitive cause is a waste of time. Medication may be in order, if the right one can be found. If a depression is caused by external stressors, screwed up thinking (caused by believing self-defeating theories) then providing medication may not help much. Talk therapy by a good therapist would seem to be in order. Again, the depressed person may not be able to clarify this problem for themselves or for somebody else.

Those people, in fact, don't know what the experience is like, and can therefore add no meaningful thoughts into the discussion. — Noble Dust

The fact is, the people who might tell us the most about depression (the people who are depressed) are observing their condition with impaired skills.

I've was depressed for a long time. I know what depression is like, in as much as I can analyze it while being a depressed person. More severely depressed people (more depressed than I) are even less able to analyze their condition. People who are not depressed at all can only speculate about what they see in terms of the behavior of the depressed.

The problem of self analysis isn't limited to the depressed. People who are deeply alienated, in a state of anomie, loneliness, and abandonment are probably not going to be very articulate about the details of their unhappy state, either.

Happy people don't know why they are happy, but they are in a better position to analyze it, because their mental facilities are presumably in excellent working condition.

Isn't "love" more a verb than a noun?

And I don't agree that depression never ceases to exist for those who have been depressed at one time or another. — Sapientia

Confession:

The thing that ended my long stretch of depression (25 years worth) was a crisis in the lives of my partner and myself. I was fired when I was 60 from an agency I deeply loathed (the staff, not the clients) and decided I couldn't stand looking for another job at that age. My partner had been quite depressed for several years--part of his fairly severe bi-polar disorder. In 2009 he was diagnosed with cancer and died about a year later; it was s difficult and exhausting year. I grieved his death deeply, but then one day...

...early in 2011, I realized I wasn't depressed any more. I still grieved Bob's passing, but I began to really feel that my life had changed, oddly for the better. I started to regain the ground lost to depression. My concentration, memory, decision making ability, sense of well-being, sleep, all those things. Mostly, though a sense of being happy -- despite it all -- took over. I haven't felt depressed since. I still take a small dose of Effexor (partly to stave off very physically unpleasant withdrawal).

What happened was that leaving the workforce and Bob's death resolved long standing burdens. I wouldn't have done anything different, but I was glad it was over. I could not have engineered a resolution so effective.

The truism is proved again, "Therapy means change, not adjustment."

Chorus
'Cause it's not just what you're born with
It's what you choose to bear
It's not how much your share is
But it's how much you can share
And it's not the fights you've dreamed of
But those you really fought
It's not just what you're given
It's what you do with what you've got

Read more: David Wilcox - It's What You Do With What You've Got

the one curious fact I learned is that two of his children have converted to Judaism. — Agustino

Kushner married Ivanka Trump, daughter of businessman and U.S. president Donald Trump, in a Jewish ceremony on October 25, 2009. They are Modern Orthodox Jews, keep a kosher home, and observe the Jewish Sabbath.Jared and Ivanka have three children, a girl and two boys. In 2017 federal disclosures suggested Kushner and his wife had assets worth at least $740 million. — WIKIPEDIA

So, love is the cause, I guess. Or $740 million at first sight.

btw did you know Trump's father made the bulk of his wealth based on government housing contracts? — Agustino

btw did you know Trump's son-in-law is a slum lord, among other things? Are we surprised?

I've had poor vision since I was born--congenital defect. The biggest vision improvement for me has been computer screens and the digital books; the screens on tablets allow for comfortably larger print, so in the last 7 years I have greatly increased the amount of reading I do. I've always read a lot, but small print was a hard slog. Like the big thick Shakespeare book when I was in college (1966) was very small print, and the notes were even smaller. I read them, but one learns better when one can read easily.

Housing opportunities for the poor in the US are like those in the UK, I think. There is lots of up-market housing, and not a lot of affordable, down-market apartments being built. Public housing has very long waiting lists and are available first to the disabled and elderly. Section 8 housing vouchers are hard to come by (long waiting lists, like 10-15 years) and a lot of landlords won't rent to Section 8 because there are ceilings on rent.

There's nothing about being a Communist that suggests one should be a spendthrift.

I've often wished to drive, but don't because I can't see well enough. Vision in one eye took a dive this winter (effects of glaucoma) so I'm finding that even biking around town has become a bit more hazardous. Even if I were totally blind, there is fairly good public transportation where I live.

Singer's view is pretty close to Jesus. The Last Judgement is based on the degree to which "I was hungry, and ye gave me to eat; I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink; I was a stranger, and ye took me in; 36 naked, and ye clothed me; I was sick, and ye visited me; I was in prison, and ye came unto me" Matthew 25:35-36.

Jesus prescribed no testing: How hungry? how thirsty? do you smoke and drink? did you cause these problems yourself? Give because you can give, and if you can't give, at least acknowledge the beggar as a person like unto one's own esteemed self.

Another way of "giving" is to "get information". Information helps you give better. There's lots of information about why people are hungry, thirsty, naked, stranger, sick, in prison. The cracks that people fall into have histories; they didn't just appear as acts of God. People are homeless because housing policy has mandated crudely unfair discrimination since the 1920s. Prisons are a scandal. When a handful of people (like, less than 25) possess more wealth than half the world's population, you know there are reasons why people are in misery.

But there are people who're making that income who are struggling. — Agustino

People struggling on $80,000 ($1500+ a week, $38+ an hour, assuming a 40 hour week) usually have difficulty making ends meet because they are upgrading their standards of living above their financial capacity. This is true at many income levels, and is true for many people.

Some people save money even on low incomes (except if they have children to support) and if they can preserve saving habits as their incomes rise, they can accumulate enough cash to build deep cushions against misfortune or have enough money to invest in property or retirement funds. Property in Ireland took a dive, as it did in many places a decade ago, and if you had cash at that point, one could buy houses for rental purposes on the cheap.

When I started working in 1971, I earned about $390 a month--working for a Catholic college. $90 went to rent an efficiency near the college, I had a small loan to repay, and then the usual expenses. I managed to save by living frugally, which I more or less did from then on out. However, I didn't have children, I didn't own a car (can't drive), and I always rented cheaply so I wasn't tied into housing costs that couldn't be reduced on short notice. As a result, I was never close to being broke (by my standards, anyway). As my income increased, I was cautious about improving living standards, and was always prepared to cut costs abruptly when adverse circumstances came along.

What one can't do is save money on any income while regularly upgrading one's quality of life to match the larger paycheck. For instance, a bump in wages may lead someone to begin buying lunch every day, plus expensive coffees, instead of bringing one's lunch and drinking the office coffee. One can spend $5000 a year (or more) doing that. Substantially uppgrading housing as one's income rises sounds the death knell of savings. So does having several children, even if both parents are working and being somewhat thrifty, especially in a high cost area.

“To die, to sleep – to sleep, perchance to dream – ay, there’s the rub, for in this sleep of death what dreams may come…” (Hamlet)

This is said by Hamlet to himself when he thinks he is alone. He is asking himself if it is better to give up and die rather than facing his troubles but he is frightened that he will dream when he is dead and never get any peace from his earthly troubles. The speech starts with the even more famous “To be or not to be…” which is the ‘should I live or die?’ part.

(Oxford Learning)

If I were working with a person who wanted to be called XX, even if they were XY, I would comply with their wishes, just to make the working relationship possible if nothing else. I might find their situation interesting, and I might like them personally. But they still might go into a box labeled "probable crackpot" or "unfortunate case".

If someone I don't know very well, don't work with, who just happens to be around and they insist on the XX treatment even though they are XY (or whatever) I am more likely to not comply with their request. But I haven't, and don't, set out to deliberately bug people about their various and sundry alleged identities, even though I might think they are out to lunch about it.

In general, I'm a boxer. I like boxes, slots, and pigeon holes and put people, places, and things into their appropriate slot, whether they like it or not. That doesn't mean I'm not nice to people, but some people are basically crazy and I have several boxes for that. I find it convenient to have definite slots for people, even though I understand that slots don't fully contain anyone. People who go into the "full of shit" box might actually be quite pleasant people. Similarly, people I like very much might end up in "neurotic and thoroughly misinformed" box, like two of my siblings.

People want identity? There's a box for that.

Artificial Intelligences and aliens can sit there and declare they are humans until hell freezes over. Their beliefs do not make it so. I might like to believe that I am a god, but telling everybody that I am a god isn't going to make it so, just because I believe it.

It has been said that "if you are not depressed it's because you're not paying attention."

That's something of a political joke, but there is an element of truth in it. Some people focus so much on what is wrong with the world that they become very negative about everything. Dark clouds gather over their heads all the time.

But... if the world seems to be seriously out of kilter, it's difficult to overlook that and act as if it wasn't true.

Some people are always calm, up-beat, positive, cheerful, outgoing, etc. The 90 year old man from church who's 70 year-old son died a week ago is like that. He's probably been that way his whole life. Why? Don't know. It's probably not his personal achievement -- it's probably just the luck of the draw. My father was that way too, but it didn't rub off on me. Dad had as many reasons to be unhappy or depressed as anyone else had, but he wasn't. It's a gift, not a personal achievement.

Well, I think we need to get past this truism. Namely, that a medical professional can magically treat the depression him or herself and thus the depression stops. While my depression can or has been decreased in magnitude it still persists. — Question

I don't know whether there is anything that can be done to "cure" your depression. You probably (and I would say, correctly) have limits for treatment beyond which you don't want to go. A reasonable question for Question might be: "Depressed as you are, are you able to function reasonably well?" I hope you can function "reasonably well". If you can, then that takes you off the critical list and puts you on the walking wounded list, where a lot of us are, or have been for extended periods of time.

Getting less depressed might not be possible, all things considered, and if it is possible, it might be the case that only you can achieve the improvement. I don't know whether you can, and if you can't, then no body should blame you for not getting un-depressed. If you knew how to get un-depressed, you most likely would have done that a long time ago. (Sort of like asking people where they lost their keys. If they knew where they lost their keys, they would go get them.)

Maybe you can improve your life (if it needs to be improved) by accepting that you are a depressed person, and that is just part of who you are. You aren't the first person, by any means, who has been, is, and will likely remain at least somewhat depressed. It's not the end of the world.

I think a moral dimension enters when somebody wishes to not be identified by their sex. In that case I think basic respect for the feelings of others requires that we not identify them by their sex except when necessary or when impractical to do otherwise. — andrewk

If we accede to a wish that someone is to be called a woman or a man, because he or she has decided that's what he or she is -- even though they are embodied as the commonly understood male and female -- are we aiding and abetting delusional thinking?

I understand that people who think their sex organs do not match their gender often feel that way from an early age, so I pause in questioning whether confused gender identity is real or false.

I'm not concerned when adults (say, 30 years and up) decide to become the opposite gender by changing clothing, behavior, hormone balance, or physical structure. Whether it is existentially valid, or not, I just don't know--but there is room for doubt, at least sometimes, I think. I am quite concerned when children are encouraged by parents (and others) to pursue a 'become-the-opposite-gender' route. Some adult activities just aren't appropriate for children.

Ass is a pain in this life
Exemplars of ass are rife.
Ass is a thing oft pursued
Ass often ass found it's rued.
Our wants so ever elastic
Give us illusory plastic.

Sciatic nerve injury caused by pie eating must be a medical first. Quick, call the Mayo Clinic.

Do you have a theory about how pie-eating behavior would affect you sciatic nerve?

Jobs as paperweights have been automated out of existence.

The issue with many people is that they get a degree, but truth be told, you don't actually learn much practical and valuable skills in University - even if you do a technical degree. But they brainwash you to think you have. So when you go to a job, you expect to be able to do lots of things, but the rude awakening is when you find out that you're mostly incapable to do anything of real value (how frustrating - you spent 4-5 years, and you're still not a professional...). That's what I found as an engineer. — Agustino

The fact is, most people (no matter their performance in most degree programs) require, receive, and learn their trade in On-the-Job-Training (OJT). High schools, trade schools, and colleges can give you some, a moderate supply, or lots of basic skills, but in the end you have to learn how to use what you have got doing the job

I've been receiving dental care at the U of MN College of Dentistry for about 30 years, and have had everyone from first year dental students to post docs working in my mouth, From what I've seen and heard, it's pretty clear that once they learn some head and neck anatomy before they start trying to anesthetize, say, the lower left jaw (they practice on each other before they practice on patients); it's pretty much OJT from then on. What the teachers are telling the first year students is not theoretical, it's how to do the job. Then the instructor comes round every 20 minutes or so to see how they are doing. At the end of the very long appointments, the job is done well, but slowly. Students at the end of their training (third year) are much faster, more confident, and get little supervision. Post docs get consultations more than supervision. OJT.

The same is true in less technical fields too.

The 1% to 5% of the population that controls, owns, takes in so much of the wealth isn't out on the sidewalk peddling vacuum cleaners, or flogging a new idea. There are several mechanisms by which their wealth has been accumulated and is protected.

#1 is tax law. The rich are protected by a variety of laws which allow, enable, and encourage them to evade taxation.

#2 is finance. The rich are able to benefit from the manipulations of currency, stock, interest rates, etc.

#3 is the control their wealth enables them to exercise over economies; the rich get richer because they are running the show.

Entrepreneurs who are aiming for the "original accumulation" might walk the concrete trying to find people to buy their ideas. Yes, some do, and a few become colossally rich -- like Bill Gates. Most of them succeed on a much, much more modest scale, or they fail and try something else.

One of our problems is that the extreme disproportionate distribution of wealth hurts young, gifted, and greedy entrepreneurs as well as low-wage workers. The rich and the super-rich have tied up so much money that the masses of wage earning workers, small businesses, and institutions do not have access to enough cash to buy some of these great new ideas some people are trying to peddle.

Islam, is at the very least partially, a catalyzer for these inhumane acts. — rickyk95

Well, religion and politics are catalyzers for most people, no matter what the religion and politics are, or what the issue is. Sometimes the result of a religious catalyst is ugly, sometimes it is sublime. I don't have fond feelings about Islam, but a realistic view of the world shows that Moslems are not, over all, crazier than anybody else (not a very high bar, granted). Civil war is often exceptionally violent, and the civil wars in Iraq and Syria are spilling out all over the place.

Plus, rickyk95, wars have become "asymmetric". Nazi Germany attacked England with heavy armaments, and England responded in kind. That's the old fashioned "symmetric war" that we all know and love. In "asymmetric war" people who don't have an air force or huge numbers of troops do other things. They infiltrate into the enemy, or behind enemy lines and conduct artisanal, boutique warfare by blowing themselves up in crowded food markets in Iraq, or concert halls in England and France.

Yes, it is disgusting, but that's the world we now live in. Get used to it. It's no worse than the world of 25, 50, or 100 years ago.

It is important to obtain historical perspective. Yes, the islamic bombers are mean, vicious, crazy, hateful, ill-advised, and a few other things, but this kind of pathological, antisocial, crap is nothing new. In 1996 the Irish Republican Army (IRA) blew up a 3000 pound truck bomb in the center of Manchester, completely wrecking the area around the explosion. This was one of many bombings in England and Northern Ireland conducted by the IRA. Sometimes people were killed, but the IRA usually called in a warning that such and such a place would be bombed in 10 minutes.

In 1970, the Army Math Research Building on the University of Wisconsin campus was blown up -- a protest against the Vietnam War. There were roughly a thousand bombings in the United States during the 1960s. People were killed, and none of them were done by Muslims.

Western Europe was terrorized by some home-grown leftist terrorist groups, among them the Baader Meinhof Gang -- aka, the Red Army Faction. They engaged in bombings, assassinations, kidnappings, bank robberies, and shoot-outs with police over a 30 year period.

In 1974 Patricia Hearst (grand daughter of publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst, founder of Hearst Newspapers) was kidnapped by some nut-jobs called the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA). Ms. Hearst decided she kind of liked the SLA and joined them. Their "exploits" are incredible. Patty heroically participated in in some bank robberies. Here's a short video of little rich girl terrorist Ms. Hearst saving the world:

I agree with this approach -- to the extent that we can remember dreams, dreaming is the side-show of the brain processing the content of its experiences. The "weirdness" of dreams is suggestive of how memories are stored -- not in an entirely "rationalized manner" but by some other system brains work out. It works -- leave it alone.

I don't know how to account for the type of compelling images that the brain sometimes serves up during dreaming--scenes that rise above all the other dreams we have had. Some other process is at work there, like as not.

I have this image of the brain putting bits of memories in specific (real, material) locations in the brain, and then linking them together, so that useful, cohesive information can be found, assembled, and handed up to the conscious mind. But, in the process, odd-ball bits are put next to each other and at that moment, an odd-ball bit of a dream is produced.

Ideally, collaboration should always be the first option. — Sapientia

I would like the 5% of the population who have sucked up a hideously disproportionate share of the wealth from the working classes to collaborate in paying for a guaranteed minimum income. I do want to soak the rich ever so much (for their own good, of course -- a thorough fleecing would improve their moral condition) but I have several fish to fry...

One of the reasons for having a guaranteed minimum income is to free usually immature adolescent individuals from the tyranny of deciding what they want to do with the next 60 years of their lives. People need time and freedom from immediate starvation and homelessness to work out what kind of lives they want to lead.

Let's face it: There isn't enough bad work to go around; hence, there are high levels of real unemployment, underemployment, and part-time employment. There is even less good work to go around (because a lot of "good work" isn't profitable).

I also want to give people a margin of safety so they can risk occupational adventures without "ruining" their futures with debt. Perhaps they would like to try being a musician, a comic, a truck farmer, a cabinet maker, an upholsterer... (Obviously one doesn't just become a musician or a cabinet maker overnight--one has to learn how to do it. A guaranteed minimum income would enable one to take the risk of trying to learn.)

People also need time to experiment with education. Do you really want to be a high school teacher JUST BECAUSE you parents think that is a good idea? Maybe you would rather learn how to run a hotel. Maybe you will decide that the problems of running a large urban sanitary sewer system is what turns you on (there definitely are people who manage sewers and like it). But if you start with the idea that you must decide now, incur the large debt, only to find out it was a bad idea, that's a total waste.

Your question is more complicated that it first appears.

First, there is the question of how much one's education was worth as an education. Some people get better education than others. Towards what end was one's education directed? Maybe one's education was misdirected (mine was -- I should never have planned on being a high school teacher).

The jobs one gets might be the result of incompetent or super savvy job hunting skills. Any job might be hard to find; really interesting jobs are harder to find. Some people have more healthy or less healthy attitudes toward work (mine were exceptionally unhealthy at times).

Expecting a liberal arts degree (English Lit) to line up with non-teaching jobs just wasn't going to end well. The two good jobs I had (for 14 years, total) did utilize all sorts of skills and knowledge, and they were very serendipitous. The rest of the jobs were mostly great steaming piles of shit.

It's something to worth consider, are these people just trying to keep up with the Johnses or are they also living beyond their means? I don't really know many people that are satisfied with what they have. — Question

All of the above.

Keeping up with the Joneses leads to living beyond one's means. Trying to BE the Jones that other people keep up with is living beyond one's means.

Blesséd are they who know they will not, need not, and should not keep up with the Jones crowd.

Now, should people be satisfied with what they have?

Where would that have led to if, 300, 200, or 100 years ago people had said, "Let us be satisfied with feral hogs eating the garbage and small children in the street; let us be happy about millions of tons of steaming horse shit piling ever higher in the the cities; let us be happy with this Model T Ford. Let there never be a nicer, safer, more convenient, more comfortable car. This is as good as we need."

Where would be had people said 100 years ago, "These new fangled sanitation ideas are crazy. Let the sewage flow directly into the river; why should we be dissatisfied with ice delivered twice a week to our homes to melt in ice boxes? Why should we ever expect less miserable experiences at the dentist?" Where would we be if, in 1945, the people had said: "It is meet, right, and salutary that we should die of massive infections from getting a sliver in our finger. By the throbbing in my thumb, antibiotics are really dumb. Take Penicillin away. Nobody gets out of here alive."

We should be cautiously dissatisfied. Not having enough to eat is unsatisfactory. Eating to much is equally unsatisfactory. Freezing to death is unpleasant, but so is dying of heat prostration. Having nothing to do is bad, but being Mr. and Mrs. Too-Busy-To-Be-A-Homecoming-Queen is not good either.

Moderation in our dissatisfaction is the goal.

So the question still stands... how to respond to, "philosophy is a stupid and a waste of time."? — anonymous66

You could say "Some of it is not only stupid, some of it is outright bullshit; but some of it is pretty good." Sort of like life itself.

What do other people do with their degrees. — anonymous66

The two best jobs I had (14 years worth for the two) were:

tutoring college students in how to study and trying to get them to think about what they wanted to do with their lives (since the students I was seeing were likely to flunk out of college) and

conducting AIDS prevention outreach in high-risk environments for AIDS transmission (gay bath houses, adult book stores, gay bars, gay cruising areas...)

Both of these jobs were very satisfying and I had no specific academic preparation to do either of them.

These jobs were serendipity. I had no intention of working in these areas.

How would you respond? — anonymous66

"Meaningless! Meaningless!" says the Teacher. "Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless." Ecclesiastes

What isn't stupid and meaningless from the Teacher's perspective?

I tried Philosophy in college and didn't like it, but Philosophy isn't stupid, and a degree in Philosophy is no more stupid than a degree in English Literature, which I enjoyed getting, pretty much. There is no field of study that somebody has not declared "stupid".

Whether a degree in Philosophy, or English Literature, or fine arts, is a strategically sound decision depends on what your life plans are, and how the degree fits into that.

There is the question of resources: can you finance the degree (one way or another) and can you afford to not earn an income while you are pursuing the degree?

If you really want to be an electrical engineer, but find philosophy interesting, then getting a degree in philosophy first might be considered ill advised. If you are really interested in philosophy but get a degree in electrical engineering because you think you will make more money in that, then it might or might not be ill-advised. It depends on what you want your life to look like 5 to 10 years after you get your degree.

Any degree in the liberal arts (philosophy, history, literature, language, sociology, etc.) will have a similar value on the job market. Degrees are positive assets. But again, it depends... If you want to teach philosophy and can barely squeak through a bachelors degree, then it's probably ill advised. If you can't afford graduate school no way no how, then starting that course might be ill advised.

As Mariner noted, degrees-in-Philosophy are to Philosophy what a degree in English Literature is to becoming an author of English Literature -- probably no relationship whatsoever.

I know people who are philosophers, pretty much, but who have no more than a high school diploma. I know people who have several degrees who are philosophers, pretty much, and we all know people who have several degrees and manage to be nincompoops, pretty much.

The philosophical question that you need to answer is "What should I do?"

Rather do something (or try to do something) you can be proud of, and be an upstanding character. — Agustino

I think I did that. Though probably much closer to the grave than you are (at 70+) I haven't ceased trying to achieve, and be an upstanding character.

You know the fable of the grasshopper and the ant. You are exhorting the grasshopper to be more like the dull drudgery drenched ant. But, you know, the drudgery of the ant doesn't survive the grave's doom any better than the joyful music of the grasshopper who won't survive winter. But what is better? joyful music in the summer or drudgery all the way to the grave?

What's the point of enjoying yourself BC, you'll end up in the same grave, and it will be as if the enjoyment never existed. — Agustino

The same thing can be said for everything that humans are or might be. "Meaningless! Meaningless!" says the Teacher. "Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless." Ecclesiastes.

From one perspective, everything is meaningless. From a slightly different angle, the things of life have great meaning, whether they endure to the grave - or survive the grave - or not.

We have the political power to enact trade policy which prohibits trading with countries that don't have strong labor, environmental, and human rights protections. We also have the power to prohibit corporations that don't operate at those standards from doing business in our country, but we don't do any of that. In fact we do the opposite, we ratify trade deals which encourage that kind of malfeasance and give huge subsidies to vicious corporations who in turn offshore most of their profits. — Sivad

I agree with you -- entirely, actually, not just 97%. The People should be aware. The People could become an overwhelmingly powerful political force. Individuals should make ethical decisions about what they eat, how they move from location A to location B (ride a bus vs. driving a car), what they wear, what gadgets they buy, how large a house they live in, what they do with their fish wrappings, and so forth.

The People could become politically active and assert their power to shape foreign policy, trade policy, and every other kind of policy. I've exhorted people to do all these things (with dismal returns for my efforts). So: WHY THE HELL DON'T THEY DO WHAT IS BOTH ETHICAL AND SENSIBLE?

Instead we have human herds trampling themselves on Black Friday to get sweatshop swag at insanely low prices. — Sivad

I don't like referring to The People as "human herds" or "sheeple". It's bad practice, however tempting it is.

The People are targeted with a lot of heavy duty manipulation. Just consider the 30 year mortgage. In exchange for a house, you get a 30 year debt. If you fail to keep up payments, you are subject to the due process of repossession and you lose your house and whatever you've put into it. That tends to keep people's noses to the grindstone.

Wages and savings have fallen over the the last 50 years, resulting in a gradual impoverishment of workers. Most workers have no assets outside of their house and car, which is usually not paid off. Many workers have insecure employment--and not just unskilled workers whose jobs get replaced by automation. (Maybe 25% of the working class have really good, solid jobs. I'm not including professionals here.)

Many workers from across the spectrum of employment experience "social disorganization" -- the effects of inadequate education, drugs and alcohol abuse (directly and indirectly), mental illness, maldistribution of wealth (a major factor), the effects of the military industrial complex, and so on.

The answer to the question, "So: WHY THE HELL DON'T THEY DO WHAT IS BOTH ETHICAL AND SENSIBLE?" is fairly straightforward: most people are working hard to stay afloat, and they do not have the time and energy to become politically active agents of change.

I don't like that conclusion, but it seems to be the case. Yes, people could throw off the chains of illusion and other yokes of oppression. The workers of the world could unite. I have some hope that they might. If you've figured out a way of making this happen, please let me know as soon as possible.

it is well within their power to change those policies and the only reason those policies remain in effect is a lack of widespread, committed opposition to them. I don't think the working class can be so easily absolved. — Sivad

I wish what you say was true and practical, for then we could change the world. Alas... No.

Well, what you say is in a sense 100% true--in the sense that society operates by the cooperation of the people in the society. Workers cooperate with corporations, so therefore the workers share some of the blame.

In another sense what you say is 100% untrue. The dense network that enables a modern society to operate can not be disrupted very much, and still allow the society to go on functioning. Too much disruption and society falls apart. This is more true now than it was two centuries ago. More true now than one century ago. Anyone stopping the economy would be shooting themselves in the head.

Workers actually have very little leverage in some industries. Apple doesn't make it's products in this country, and no other electronics company does either. A majority of our autos are made elsewhere. A lot of many products are made elsewhere. Until recently, the US was not energy self-sufficient. Many industries employ a very small fraction of the population. Automation, robotics, digital control, etc. make workers less important in many companies than they used to be. (This is a crisis in itself, but let's talk about that in another thread.) I'm not suggesting that workers have become unnecessary -- just that they don't have the amount of leverage they once had.

Consumers have a considerable amount of leverage. If consumers stopped buying products, that would also bring the economy to a screeching halt -- but again, a modern society can not survive without all parts pretty much functioning normally.

So, workers and consumers can apply pressure. The trick is targeting precise pressure in the right place. Very difficult. Remember, corporate America is not defenseless. They can also apply pressure to workers and consumers, and chances are the government will help them.

given that we do buy many products with full knowledge of the abuses that went into the production — Sivad

Really? You may be exaggerating how much people know about the conditions under which the food they eat was produced, or the products they buy were made.

Many of the top fortune 500 companies exploit labor, pollute the environment, corrupt political processes and governments, destabalize economies with reckless speculation, and then lie about all of it through their controlled media outlets. — Sivad

The middle classes are heavily invested in these corporations and take healthy profits from their unscrupulous activities. The poor can't really be considered victims either because 1) they're mostly politically apathetic, they've demonstrated very little concern for or solidarity with their fellow paupers and 2) most of them aren't living in poverty due to any protest of conscience, they're poor by happenstance — Sivad

There's a disconnect between the first quote and the second quote. First you properly accuse the big corporations of being corrupt and callous, then in the second paragraph you blame the workers for the consequences of corporate America bastard policies.

I'm not quite sure who you are counting as "middle class" but as it is usually used, you can rest assured they are not taking healthy profits from corporate activities. Only a small percentage of the population own enough stock to worry about corporate misbehavior.

People become politically apathetic when experience shows them that their votes do not matter. It is true that many workers are illogically opposed to unions and it is true that many workers have no sense of solidarity with fellow workers -- much to their own suffering. But, bear in mind, please: organized labor didn't get sick and die of indifference. Organized labor was murdered by those fortune 500 corporations you mentioned. The USA now has an extremely negative legal and political structure which hinders workers from successfully organizing unions. Employers have way too many legislated advantages over workers attempting to unionize.

A small fraction of people are poor because they were too lazy to go to work. Most people have been shoved down the economic ladder into poverty through no fault of their own.

Micro-economics and macro-economics operate on vastly different scales. When people buy strawberries at the market, it isn't possible (at that moment) to perceive how they might be part of a macroeconomic trend.

It isn't immediately (or even not immediately) obvious that when you buy strawberries grown in Mexico, you may be causing starvation there. But you might be. If multi-cropping subsistence farming has been driven out of an area by berry producers like Dole or Driscoll, maybe local families are unable to feed themselves. Or, maybe the subsistence farmers now work for Dole and are better off, or worse off. We don't know, and can't figure that out by logic. Research would be in order.

>:O "We are not here to enjoy ourselves" - Ludwig Wittgenstein — Agustino

If Ludwig didn't enjoy himself while he was here, I see no need to follow suit.