including being made into dolphins or whatever — Terrapin Station

I am unanimous in the opinion that nobody should be allowed to be made into a dolphin. I mean, do we really want to insult dolphins that much?

I see... the list gives an air of verisimilitude to the otherwise airy notion that there are more than two genders--male and female.

Just as well the Social Psychology Quarterly is on the case! — Wayfarer

What drugs bring on the states-of-mind that enable people to write such crap as this?

more than two genders, some up to five — Wosret

Would you care to explain what the 5 genders are?

"The Kiss" by Gustav Klimt — TimeLine

Klimt has become quite popular, seems like. It's been a long time since I read Anna Karenina. I should reread it. (It's on my list.)

I hate to mention this in the present company of high art, but there is a children's story that I think makes a quite good point about love: The Velveteen Rabbit. I first heard it as a middle age'd adult. The Velveteen Rabbit wants to know how to become real. The rocking horse explains that one becomes real by being loved. Adults who prefer sucking lemons won't like the book.

The book doesn't explain how people becomes loved if they are not loved already. That problem is dealt with elsewhere--or it isn't, depending on one's perspective.

http://thesolutionsproject.org/

I'm curious what everyone thinks about this — MonfortS26

There are 2 parts to their site -- the information map obtained from Stanford and then their own organization page. Their organization looks like a conventional well-meaning non-profit that is promoting some nice idea, but nothing substantial.

Many assumptions and estimations went into the information map projections which would need to be assessed to determine how "real" the projections are. My guess is that the projections and estimations were quite optimistic. Not that a little optimism about solar/wind would be a bad thing.

Around 10-12 years ago, someone in Worthington, MN claimed that the 6 wind generators outside town provided most of the town's energy--though the diesel generating plant was still needed (the wind doesn't always blow). True or not? Don't know. It seemed plausible. Worthington is a town of 10,000 with a couple of ag plants -- an alfalfa dehydrating plant (uses natural gas for heat) and a meat-packing plant. Otherwise, it's just down at the heels retail and residential.

If the short-term storage problem is solved, if residential and commercial demand is reduced, and if transportation is shifted from 1 person per car to 80 people per trolley, freight shifted to electric trains, we might be able to make it work. Whether large-scale agricultural field operations can be conducted by electric motors, I very much doubt -- not with existing batteries. Very long extension cords, maybe?

In the long run, we don't have any choice but to rely on wind and solar (and/or nuclear), so we had better figure out how to do it.

Feminists need to take constructivist position because they want to eliminate all barriers (like biology) from the accomplishment of their wishes. Unfortunately for feminists, biology has decreed that women shall be the exclusive agents of child bearing. Female biology is built around their reproductive role, just as male biology is. Men just happen to have a much more pleasant role in reproduction than women do: For women, a baby is often a prize they had no wish to win; for men, the fuck 'em and forget 'em approach is much easier. Not that we would recommend that approach, of course.

Feminists also want to get shut (southern US expression) of socially defined roles that they feel are restrictive.

Are feminists crazy for wanting to be free of biological and social limitations on the way they want to live their lives? Some feminists are decidedly crazy, and unpleasant spoiled brats besides, but sure--be whatever you want to be. If you want equality, fine--just don't shirk ditch digging, street cleaning, and foot soldiering during the next war.

Sometimes you have to take the horse by the tail and face the situation.

"gender self-determination" — Wosret

For better or worse, 'transgender' or 'transsexual' is grouped with gay and bi. One prominent issue in the discussion of sexuality within the GBT population is whether sexual orientation and gender is "constructed" or "essential". The "construction" is engineered by society, but individuals can take a hand at shaping their behavior, their preferences, their identity. The opposite of this view, essentialism, assumes that sexual orientation and gender is at least largely determined by biology.

Which is right? Well, in my opinion it's biology over society for the most part. Biology doesn't specify that women wear skirts and men pants, or that women should be teachers and nurses and men should be executives and engineers. That's all society's doing.

People who are gay or transgender generally sense they are different (and in what way, more or less) before society has a chance to define all this for them. That's biology at work.

How many grains make a heap depends on the shape of the grain. If they are square or have flat parallel surfaces then 2 grains can make a heap -- 1 resting on top of another. 2, 3, 4, and on up. if they are round, it would take 4 grains. 2 or 3 grains stacked with spheres would fall over. Four however, can form a heap. Not much of a heap, but a small heapish pile nonetheless.

Do you suppose you could get to the point in somewhat fewer words? I can't quite untangle all of the text.

Julia Gillard, writing in the March 7, '17 Guardian, asks... "With great female minds idling on the sidelines, how much progress have we lost?"

Apparently there are male and female minds, and like auto engines, they can be left idling while parked.

"There are no facts, only interpretations" — River

Is that a fact?

POV: If I flew through the cloud that you were standing under, from the planes window it would not appear to be a thick white or gray could, but somewhat thick fog. From one angle it might look white to you, from another gray, and if the sun were setting behind you and the cloud, perhaps orange.

The reports and POVs can be correlated, and you, me, and other observers can come to an agreement that there was a cumulonimbus cloud above you.

A "fact" is the truth, arrived at with care.

This meaning (of 'fact') developed from Latin factum, neuter past participle of facere ‘do.’ The original sense was ‘an act or feat,’ later ‘bad deed, a crime,’ surviving in the phrase before (or after) the fact. In the late 1500s it took on its present meaning of something truthful.

I and Thou, Martin Buber (Kaufmann's translation)

A reference link to discussions of the various terms for love in Greek -- Agape, Eros, Philia, mainly but also Storge (stor gay) would be helpful

The Four Loves by C. S. Lewis

Carl Rogers, Becoming Partners -- This book is not a study of partnerships or marriage. It is about the search of men and women for relationships in the United States in the 1970s.

Neel Burton M.D.
Plato on True Love
Plato's account of true love is still the most subtle and beautiful there is.
Posted Jun 23, 2012 PSYCHOLOGY TODAY blog

A General Theory of Love
January 9, 2001
by Thomas Lewis, Fari Amini, Richard Lannon

Three eminent psychiatrists tackle the difficult task of reconciling what artists and thinkers have known for thousands of years about the human heart with what has only recently been learned about the primitive functions of the human brain.

JOURNAL ARTICLE
The Definition of Love in Plato's Symposium
Donald Levy
Journal of the History of Ideas
Vol. 40, No. 2 (Apr. - Jun., 1979), pp. 285-291
Published by: University of Pennsylvania Press
DOI: 10.2307/2709153
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2709153
Page Count: 7

Philosophy Now, Issue 81
Question of the Month: What is Love
https://philosophynow.org/issues/81/What_Is_Love]

The Ascent of Love: Plato, Spinoza, Proust
Martha Nussbaum
http://philosophy.uchicago.edu/faculty/files/nussbaum/The%20Ascent%20of%20Love%20Plato,%20Spinoza,%20Proust.pdf

2 items in a Google Search

[PDF]Treatise on Love - Islamic Philosophy Online
www.muslimphilosophy.com/sina/works/avicenna-love.pdf
its position in the development of the philosophical Arabic doctrines of love, ... Risalah fi'l 'ishq had no predecessors in the field of Arabic philosophy. As a matter ...

[PDF]John Donne's Poetic Philosophy of Love
https://www3.dbu.edu/naugle/pdf/donne_philosophy_love.pdf
Donne's poetry is “the work of one who has tasted every fruit in love's orchard. ... philosophy of love in which he deals with what he called “the central problem in ...

Bulgakov - The Master and Margarita — TimeLine

The Heart of a Dog by Bulgakov; It doesn't have anything to do with love, but it's very good.

↪Bitter Crank I see identity as being more fluid than anything else. I am the result of the consciousness that is produced by my brain. My identity is the result of that consciousness trying to make sense of itself in order to achieve a feeling of comfort and familiarity. — MonfortS26

Many people seem to have a more fluid identity; it's variable, depending on the situation. For better or worse, I don't think my identity is fluid. It's plastic, but only very slowly changing.

I have never taken pride in being a man or being white. I take pride in my accomplishments and my ethics. My actions are the indicator of who I am and that is where we should find our identity in my opinion. — MonfortS26

There is nothing at all wrong in taking pride in being a white man. And it is also right to take pride in your accomplishments and ethics. You are a whole person, after all, a unity of "body and soul".

I think that transgenderism is simply people who don't feel normal trying to do so. — MonfortS26

Could be. When I was in graduate school, I heard that abnormal people (their word) tended to not be effective counselors and therapists. The person's history of physical/psychological deficiencies prevents normal psychological development. At the time I was shocked and appalled by this view. Over many years (that was... almost 50 years ago) I've come to grudgingly accept some of the truth in their view.

I grew up being nearly blind and totally gay. Being a fish twice out of water did skew my personal development--impeding it. Parental and social attitudes had something to do with this too, of course.

I can see how someone whose conflict is over which gender they are (and gender being an extremely pervasive factor in life) would similarly find their adaptation to life skewed. If I could redesign my life and live it over, I would opt for 20/20 vision, but leave gayness in place. Deficient vision was a real problem (still is). Being gay wasn't an advantage when I was growing up (as if it is now) but there was no frustrating, confusing ambivalence about it.

I very much understand why transsexuals want to bring their physical appearance into accord with the way they feel about themselves. This ambivalence can trip up and confuse one's efforts to achieve and to be ethically satisfied (not that they are 'unethical').

What concerns me about young people who think they are transsexual is that they may be too young to be certain about their identity, and I don't think they or everyone else is well served by saying they should be allowed to use whichever toilet or shower room they feel the need to use, with others with the same gender identity. This 'integration' is being pushed too fast, and most children and adolescents are not going to benefit from being the star of this sort of political show.

Does that give you the right to eradicate all termites on Earth? — Harry Hindu

Did I suggest that I had the right or intention to eradicate all termites on earth? No. Am I not the founder of "Termite Lives Matter" after all?

Who has the right to exist, termites or humans? — Harry Hindu

Both, of course. Just not in each other's houses. I believe in segregation.

You have to realize that value statements are always subjective, while what I'm saying is from a far more objective viewpoint — Harry Hindu

Your replies are sometimes loaded with a lot more subjective value statements than they are objective viewpoints. Your sense of humor is a pit pinched as well. My comment on the Chinese was clearly self-deprecating.

Here are some quotes (which you will probably hate, but hey, I don't want to read a long, thick, hard book on love. Short works only at my age -- brief articles and quotes.

So when you publish your list, remember to put some hay down where us goats can get at it.

The Song of Solomon is not too long, for instance. I have read it. It's not a didactic discussion of love -- it's poetry

The Kamasutra by Vātsyāyana... haven't read it (too long, Sanskrit, Hindu ideas -- way too much work) but Wikipedia assure me that it is actually about love as well as how to perform sex in several different positions.

Here's a sample of quotes from No Sweat Shakespeare. Some of the quotes are more pregnant with meaning than others.

Speaking of Shakespeare, include the Bard in your list.

Sonnet 130:

My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red, than her lips red:
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound:
I grant I never saw a goddess go,
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
And yet by heaven, I think my love as rare,
As any she belied with false compare. — Bill Shakespeare

I think these quotes are quite good--truthful, not sentimental and flowery.

“Love is the word used to label the sexual excitement of the young, the habituation of the middle-aged, and the mutual dependence of the old.” — John Ciardi, professor, editor, author

“Do you want me to tell you something really subversive? Love is everything it’s cracked up to be. That’s why people are so cynical about it… It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for. And the trouble is, if you don’t risk anything, you risk even more.” — Erica Jong (author of Fear of Flying, et al)

“There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.”
Nietzsche
“At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet.”
Plato
“Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.”
Aristotle
“Love is like a friendship caught on fire. In the beginning a flame, very pretty, often hot and fierce, but still only light and flickering. As love grows older, our hearts mature and our love becomes as coals, deep-burning and unquenchable.”
Bruce Lee
“I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.”
Martin Luther King, Jr.
“Where there is love there is life.”
Mahatma Gandhi
“You come to love not by finding the perfect person, but by seeing an imperfect person perfectly.”
Sam Keen
“Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.”
Lao Tzu
“Forgiveness is the final form of love.”
Reinhold Niebuhr
“Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere. They’re in each other all along.”
Rumi
“Selfishness doesn’t consist in a love to yourself, but in a big degree of such love.”
Aristotle
“Love has three kinds of origin, namely: suffering, friendship and love. A human love has a corporal and intellectual origin.”
Boethius
“A person has two passions for love and abhorrence. A big disposition to excessiveness has just a love, because it is more ardent and stronger.”
Descartes
“Love comes with hunger.”
Diogenes
“Love is a person’s idea about his/her needs in other person what you are attracted to.”
Thomas Hobbes
“The sweetest joy, the wildest woe is love.”
Philip James Bailey
“Mysterious love, uncertain treasure, Hast thou more of pain or pleasure! Endless torments dwell about thee: Yet who would live, and live without thee!”
Joseph Addison
“People who are sensible about love are incapable of it.”
Douglas Yates
“One’s first love is always perfect until one meets one’s second love.”
 Elizabeth Aston
“There is love, of course. And then there’s life, its enemy.”
Jean Anouilh
“In this world of extremes, we can only love too little.”
Richard Cannarella
“Love is a canvas furnished by nature and embroidered by imagination.”
Voltaire
“Love built on beauty, soon as beauty, dies.”
John Donne
“He that falls in love with himself will have no rivals.”
Benjamin Franklin
“No one has ever loved anyone the way everyone wants to be loved.”
 Mignon McLaughlin
“I never knew how to worship until I knew how to love.”
Henry Ward Beecher
“Pleasure of love lasts but a moment, Pain of love lasts a lifetime.”
Jean Pierre Claris De Florian
“Love won’t be tampered with, love won’t go away. Push it to one side and it creeps to the other.”
Louise Erdrich
“There is hardly any activity, any enterprise, which is started out with such tremendous hopes and expectations, and yet which fails so regularly, as love.”
Erich Fromm
“The love we give away is the only love we keep.”
 Elbert Hubbard
“We are not the same person this year as last; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person.”
W. Somerset Maugham
“Love is a temporary insanity, curable by marriage.”
Ambrose Bierce
“Romantic love is an illusion. Most of us discover this truth at the end of a love affair or else when the sweet emotions of love lead us into marriage and then turn down their flames.”
Thomas Moore
“Falling in love consists merely in uncorking the imagination and bottling the common-sense.”
 Helen Rowland
“There is no remedy for love but to love more.”
Henry David Thoreau
“When one is in love, one always begins by deceiving one’s self, and one always ends by deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.”
 Oscar Wilde
“In dreams and in love there are no impossibilities.”
Janos Arany
“Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared with love in dreams.”
Fyodor Dostoevski
“One word frees us
Of all the weight and pain in life,
That word is Love.”
Socrates
“Better to have loved and lost, than to have never loved at all.”
St. Augustine
“Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.”
Aristotle
“The first duty of love is to listen.”
Paul Tillich
“Where there is love there is life.”
Mahatma Gandhi
“At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet.”
Plato
“A pair of powerful spectacles has sometimes sufficed to cure a person in love.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
“If you want to be loved, be lovable.”
Ovid
“To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.”
Bertrand Russell
“All mankind love a lover.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Love is the delusion that one woman differs from another.”
 H. L. Mencken
“Love is the beauty of the soul.”
Saint Augustine
“The moment you have in your heart this extraordinary thing called love and feel the depth, the delight, the ecstasy of it, you will discover that for you the world is transformed.”
Jiddu
“The hours I spend with you I look upon as sort of a perfumed garden, a dim twilight, and a fountain singing to it. You and you alone make me feel that I am alive. Other men it is said have seen angels, but I have seen thee and thou art enough.”
George Edward Moore
“Love is being stupid together.”
Paul Valery
“Life without love is like a tree without blossoms or fruit.”
 Khalil Gibran
“Fortune and love favour the brave.”
Ovid
“Don’t forget to love yourself.”
Soren Kierkegaard

But yeah, you and Bitter can ignore the more interesting points about humans being natural causes to Earth's climate — Harry Hindu

I thought I had agreed with you that humans are a part of nature, and therefore, what they do is "natural". But just being natural isn't in itself always good. Termites are natural too, and if they infest your house, it will eventually collapse as they eat--and weaken--the structure.

Cherry-pickers — Harry Hindu

Somebody has to pick the cherries.

Pets really are a good opportunity to learn about animal minds, because we spend so much time with them. We can observe them in all sorts of situations. Of course, we can get carried away with over-interpretating their behavior. But then, we sometimes get carried away with over-interpreting our own and other humans behavior too.

Our pets enter into relationships with us; they learn about us--like which buttons they can push for specific responses, and they push them. A dog who wants to go out, or a cat who wants to be fed can make it very clear to us what they want.

Homo sapiens are just one of millions of extant species of conscious animals. — jdh

There are a little over ONE million species of animals -- not multiples of millions. Of that one million, there are about 5,000 mammal species. A few birds and a few mollusks seem to be fairly bright. True enough, as noted, even insects can carry out some cognition. Some insects (bumblebees) are better at it than others (house flies).

Humans, then, stand at the apex of a fairly small pyramid, not a huge one.

There are activities we do that other animals don't do, like manipulating abstract symbols with ease and facility (writing music, poetry, novels, scientific theories, love letters, bad jokes, obscene books, and speeches for Donald Trump.) Not only do we do these things, we know we do these things, which as far as we can tell, other animals don't know. Not only do we know what we do and can do, we know what we can not do. A human can not outrun a cheetah or a gazelle; a human can not dive as deep in the ocean as a whale; a human can not fly like a bird--and we know that about ourselves.

why not go to China and make your claims there? — Harry Hindu

My sublime thought is available to the Chinese via the Internet. I am sure there hang on every word.

As the climate changes, there will be winners and losers. In the US, for instance, the southwestern region will probably be a loser and the northern plains probably a winner. Far more people live in the SW US than in the northern plains, however.

It is also the case that some places will first be winners, then losers; others first losers then winners. How, exactly, and who will be demonstrated over time.

It is also the case that disasters like South Sudan owe a great deal to bad politics. Famines often have political as well as environmental causes.

Then there are economic factors, like having passed peak oil, that come into play. Over time oil is becoming more difficult and expensive to produce, and there will be less of it. This alone will make it more expensive and difficult to adapt to particular climate changes.

So, point being, crises are multidimensional.

Maybe you should just settle for wearing a dolphin disguise.

I have reservations about transsexuality. I have what I suppose is a reasonably well grounded understanding of the mind/body conflict that transsexuals experience. I understand that many transsexuals are much happier after "becoming" the gender they think they really are, even if their original genital (or even hormone levels) are left as is.

That the complete sexual transformation does not work for everyone (that is, some are NOT happier after hormone treatment and surgery) makes me wonder whether either the counseling and therapy preceding and/or following surgery were not adequate, or perhaps that the benefits of the process were oversold.

A lot of people (maybe... 30%? 40%? 80%?) are troubled by their "self identity". They didn't become the individuals that they think they could have or should have become. It isn't that they feel they are in the wrong body; it's that they are in the wrong life. I feel that way sometimes.

But that IS life: When we are too young we don't know enough about life. By the time we know enough about life we are too old.

Let's say Montfort that you are 45 years old and you want to be the person you have always imagined yourself to be, but sadly, were not. You spend a pile of money to have your body remodeled along the lines you would like: basically, you have your body "re-upholstered". You can now successfully wear the kinds of clothes you wanted to wear; you now look like the person you always wanted to be. With the addition of a pile of cash, you could graft a new lifestyle onto your old one.

You haven't changed gender; the same equipment and hormones are there, as always. But you look different, and you feel like you are different. Because you feel very confident about your new self, other people tend to accept you as your "new self". So, question: Are you really a different person? Or have "the Make-up and Costume Departments" so to speak, made you into something that you can change out of and wash off?

Your appearance and the outward appearances have changed. Are you the same real you, or are you a different real you?

Maybe it depends on the sport. In contact sports (like American football) the mass of the body makes a difference. In a number of sports, size of muscles, length of legs and arms, and so on make a difference, and men tend to be bigger.

Where performance times for men and women converge, maybe competition would be appropriate.

There is another reason: can one sell more tickets to a male only competition, to a female only competition, or to a mixed male/female competition? Selling tickets is a critical piece of sport. If teams and venues can sell more tickets for mixed sex competitions, then that's what will be done.

In amateur sport, there are certainly specific women who can out-distance specific men. A very strong female bicyclist or runner is going to beat a male competitor who is not as strong.

Man is certainly part of nature, and our activities are "natural" for us. But using the term "natural" here confuses factors outside of human activity (like solar radiation) and activities that are purely human, like burning coal to make steel.

You are right, though, that many people wrongly locate human activity above or outside nature. But just because we "act naturally" doesn't mean what we are doing is beneficial to ourselves in the long run.

The poor bears... We really should get some pelts for posterity while supplies last! — VagabondSpectre

The bears will do fine once they switch from seal to primate meat. There are so many of us, there may be a glut of white bear fur on the market. Too bad pandas can't switch from bamboo to a robust primate flesh diet. Eating Chinese would give them more gumption so they could get it on and breed more successfully. They are so very, very cute but so clumsy and possibly so stupid from their vegan diet. The same goes for elephants, lions, tigers, leopards, white rhinos, scarce birds, wolves... Eat the people.

BTW, I don't desire any of this bad stuff to happen. I dread what seems to be coming. The problem is that there doesn't seem to be an escape hatch from the problem.

I don't exactly see it as a sure thing that the population is going to actually shrink anytime soon, even in the face of drastic climate change. — VagabondSpectre

It won't shrink much at all in the next couple of decades, unless there is a plague, or something.

Monsanto — VagabondSpectre

All the works of Monsanto, Syngenta, Land 'O Lakes, DuPont, Groupe Limagrain, Bayer, et al assume plentiful, cheap petroleum (for fertilizer, transportation, farm operation, irrigation, etc.)

Massive new and high-density agriculture simply must be contrived through technology — VagabondSpectre

The Green Revolution (Norman Borlaug) depended on, and "massive new high-density agriculture contrived through technology" assumes plentiful, cheap petroleum (for fertilizer, transportation, farm operation, irrigation, etc.)

This is where the lawn mower chews up some more of your optimistic garden hose.

In roughy 30 more years of all out pumping, petroleum will no longer be plentiful or cheap. Remember, we passed peak oil. INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY WAS BUILT ON CHEAP FOSSIL FUEL. Less cheap fossil fuel, less industrial society, more hand labor. More hand labor, less world food production. Less world food production, more death from starvation. Plus, heat, rising oceans, new insect vectors and tropical diseases to boot.

I think it would take a global catastrophe, or a long insufferable period of global depression, to actually put population growth into the negative. — VagabondSpectre

And just what do you think the combination of global warming (aka climate change) and the steady decline of cheap, plentiful oil (and all the industrial, technical prowess that it brings) is if not "a global catastrophe"?

Listen, the agriculture/medical/pharmaceutical industries all depend on cheap, plentiful petroleum for power, but also many products and chemical feedstock.

So here I am today, in basically the precise year which twenty years ago was hailed as the beginning of the end, and instead of worry or anxiety, the main emotions I feel toward climate change are curiosity and a kind of urgency or excitement. I look at climate change and instead of focusing only on the ways in which it can be or is bad for life, I am much more interested to know about the ways in which we can take advantage of and exploit it. — VagabondSpectre

In my quintessential middle age, I was also reading science and hearing about global warming. Warming was something of a relief because 20 years earlier, scientists were worried about nuclear winter: 40,000+ nuclear weapons aimed at the USSR and the US: What would happen to the climate if the cold war turned hot? The dust-saturated atmosphere would reflect too much solar energy and we would all freeze -- those who weren't killed by blasts or radiation -- not sure how few that would be.

It's not too late: most of the atomic and hydrogen bombs are still around.

But here we are, and global warming is delivering on-time changes. The arctic will be ice free all year round pretty quick, and the polar bears will not have ice flows to hunt from. They will probably starve. Or they will begin eating humans whom they can catch and eat on the thawing tundra. There will be enough humans to go around as we all flee the heat further south. My only request of the bears is that they totally kill us before they begin the banquet.

I see it as my job here to run the lawnmower of bad news over the garden hose of optimism.

While it will warm up, for sure, it will warm up too fast for environments to adapt. We can't just move banana and pineapple production up to Kansas, and wheat up to Hudson's Bay. The weather over North America is already becoming a bit less stable than it has been, and more violent storm systems could well make it difficult to successfully grow a lot of anything.

The population will shrink. It won't be nice, but as food production falls, billions that the earth can no longer feed will die. That will bring consumption closer to production at a much lower level.

Warmer oceans will suit some sea animals--probably not the ones we like a lot. Maybe we'll get more lethal stinging jelly fish, poisonous sea snakes, killer sharks, and deadly algae blooms. The ocean will be more acidic.

Remember, Nature bats last.

Boys and girls playing games as children is not a problem. Their respective musculature and strength is quite similar. As Chany points out (as it should be obvious to a casual observer) adult men and women have divergent levels of muscle mass and strength. It is easier for males to achieve x amount of muscle mass and strength than it is for women to achieve the same. some women can, but most women can not.

Transgendered persons present a complicated problem. They may have a lot, or little, muscle development prior to beginning hormone treatment. Females receiving testosterone will develop more muscle mass and lose fat under the skin (assuming that they exercise). Males receiving estrogen may lose muscle mass, and will generally pick up fat under the skin. Level of exercise, of course, is critically relevant. Subcutaneous fat and muscle mass has a lot to do with how "male" or "female" we look.

At any rate, a transsexual is an adaptation of physique to mental imagery. A male body does not become a female body (and visa versa); the male body can be made to resemble a female body, and visa versa.

You could take the slogan, "Today is the first day of the rest of your life" and turn it on it's head: "Today is the last day of your life, so far..." It could, after all, be your final day on earth.

You could live each day as if it were your last (note the subjunctive tense). How would you live your last day?

Here is a song for your possible last day by the great Bill Monroe (mandolin) titled "My Last Days on Earth". Listen and weep.

Just as an odor can trigger very strong memories that have been silent for decades (or memories can trigger the experience of the odor), so it is with music: Music (like odor) is often remembered with strong emotional ties to other memories. A particular song might awake an odor, a very vivid picture, the feelings that went with it.

Music, places, people, things, odors, feelings... all kinds of memories, are linked in sometimes unpredictable ways. They are linked by literal physical connection among neurons. Sometimes the connections make sense, and sometimes are baffling.

Do you think it is a waste of time to argue politics? — MonfortS26

Absolutely not! It's one of my favorite activities--BUT... I engage in two kinds of political arguing:

One kind is when I argue politics with people whom I am in substantial agreement with -- and we can change opinions because the differences are not fundamental. Like discussing politics with another socialist.

The other kind is where the disagreement is great and the differences are fundamental. Like a socialist discussing politics with a rabid Republican. It might be amusing, but neither of us are going to accept the other's opinion.

I don't think I'll ever have the power to make even the slightest of change in any of that unless I run for office and I don't want to be a lawyer. Why not just live a self indulgent life? — MonfortS26

You probably won't make the slightest change in all of that even if you do run for office and if you become a lawyer.

Ordinary hubris is a more common flaw in humankind than narcissism, self-indulgence, or nihilism. For most of us, it's a self-extinguishing flaw; we end up exhausted by the effort to achieve our over-blown Great Plans. Our house of cards collapses on top of us with usually no injury greater than a crushed ego.

It isn't as if there was nothing but two political parties caught in an endless loop and people who don't want to be helped. The world still is a stage, and you can choose the part you want to play on it. You don't have to choose between the role of hand-wringing Cassandra or a perky, ever-optimistic Pollyanna.

No matter your flaws, not matter your strengths, no matter you plans, no matter your past failures... you have to choose what you are going to do next. Let your imagination loose, and dream of what you could do. I have no suggestions for you. You have to find (or write) your own script, then follow it.

Good luck.

"Is it our duty as members of society to confine ourselves to it's standards?" — protectedplastic

The initial or default answer is "yes, because initially the individual has little choice in the standards received from society." Later, though, as the individual learns and experiences life, he is able to actively accept or reject the standards of society, and make adaptations. The first active rejection of social standards is often in college, or somewhat earlier.

The young will always run into resistance when they challenge the established standards. This is appropriate. The rebellious young are not always right (and neither are the elders).

Peace is negotiated.

§§§ Kunstler's fiction depicts the worst possible case for resource depletion. It's great post-apocalyptic stuff. But... The Long Emergency's main point is that cheap abundant oil is simply not replaceable by any technology that we know of.

Not solar, not wind, not tidal energy, not hydro, not geothermal, not biomass, not conversion of garbage to crude petroleum, nothing. All of the proposed solutions offer a small percentage of the power and benefit we get from cheap oil and coal, and all those small percentages add up to maybe a quarter of the power we need to operate the world in the manner to which we are accustomed.

The main drawback of oil (in the context of life as we know it) is that its supply is not infinite. We've used up half, and much of the remaining half will be much harder and more expensive to obtain. The end of oil (coming sometime around mid-century or soon after to an exhausted oil field near you) doesn't mean the end of civilization, but it does mean an end to our accustomed and preferred way of living.

I am on board with doing what we can, but it will require reaching widespread consensus on both the problem and the solutions. — aletheist

Who, exactly, has to reach consensus? About 97% of climate scientists have reached a consensus. Everyone doesn't have to join the consensus. There are, though, a few thousand top echelon decision makers that need to join the consensus.

The main obstacle to reaching consensus on the existence of the problem (and the anthropogenic cause of global warming) is the politically motivated resistance of Republicans in the American Congress. — Pierre-Normand

Exactly. And their corporate pay masters.

James Howard Kunstler [World Made By Hand series of novels and several non-fiction books on oil, particularly The Long Emergency] §§§ - next post - has written convincingly of what life without oil will be like. In a nutshell, life without oil means much, much more animal and human powered work, fewer people, and the loss of everything that cheap abundant oil made possible--which is a good share of the world wide culture.

I think some people are paralyzed by the awfulness of what the absence of cheap abundant oil, coal, electricity, transportation, etc. mean. It means an end to life as we know it. Some of those people are in positions of national power. If they aren't paralyzed, they may be too shocked to deal with it. I found the details in Kunstler's books pretty unappetizing.

THE END OF OIL won't happen abruptly, and it won't happen tomorrow (literally, March 3, 2017). But we are running out, and in the meantime the climate is warming up and changing unpredictably. We have time to make other plans, other arrangements. We have time to adjust our sensibilities -- but we should now be in route to those ends, instead of dickering about whether it is a real problem.

For better and for worse, politics will be involved because people will be involved — aletheist

If the future of the earth's habitability isn't THE political issue par excellence, I don't know what would be.

I am not a climate scientist, but the reports that lay out the scientific case as readily available and some are accessibly written for lay audiences. In legal terms, the evidence for global warming is between "a preponderance of evidence" (the low end) and "beyond a reasonable doubt" (the high end).

All of the CO2 we are releasing through the use of fossil fuels was in the air before -- back in the Carboniferous period, 300 million years ago. It was very warm back then, and algae and higher plants grew like crazy for millions of years. The plants died, accumulated, were buried, and eventually were folded under geologic formations where they were pressure cooked into oil and coal.

Since the late 19th Century, we have burned roughy 1 trillion barrels worth of oil. We have, and are burning trillions of tons of coal, thus releasing into the atmosphere CO2 that has been out of circulation for many millions of years.

That's the basic story.

Lots of variables go into climate, some human produced, some not. CO2 is one (big) factor in global warming, but it is one among several. There are other gases (methane, H2O, Nitrous oxide (N. 2O)Ozone, Chlorofluorocarbons, mainly) that contribute, some more potently than CO2. When gases trapped in ice (from deep cores) are analyzed, abnormally large amounts of these gases are not found. These gases (particularly CO2) begin to show up in the last 200 years--the period corresponding to the industrial revolution and huge increases in fossil fuel burning.

We can't ignore global warming because the effects are profound and pervasive, to which we are already witnesses. Bigger changes are in progress now. It may be the case that there is little we can do about it. More likely, we can have at least a moderating effect on climate change, and since this is the only place we have, we would do well to get on with whatever we can do.

Your interpretation of the Protestant Work Ethic that you provided — schopenhauer1

I was just trying to fill in background on "the Protestant work ethic". "All work is holy" is better than "work or die", but Luther (b. 1483) preceded the full realization of the industrial revolution and capitalism. He didn't have a theology of alienation of labor (which Marx provided). Our experience of alienated labor is not Luther's 15th-16th century experience.

The context of this was to ask why we perpetuate institutions. — schopenhauer1

It's very basic: Human beings live by culture much more than instinct, and institutions are the means by which we transmit culture across generations. That doesn't mean that every piece of culture is good or that institutions transmit culture only beneficently. We develop bad as well as good elements in our culture, and human-inhabited institutions often twist culture into malignant forms.

We live more by culture than instinct, but instinct is definitely a player. Our bent towards individual self-preservation and enhancement, and our capacity for perfidiousness are one of the major factors in the twisting of culture and institutions into some of the horror shows that we know and love so well. Authoritarian regimes arise, again and again, because some people really like to be Boss and be obeyed, and some people like being bossed. Some institutions operate on S&M principles.

Work, play, eating, sleeping, and so on are not "institutions". They are elements of life. The elements of life (of which all animals partake) are given a particular shape and function in human institutions. All animals (and plants) expend effort to obtain food--work, in other words. But "jobs", "sports", and 3 star restaurants are purely human. The elements of life are given a cultural form, and are perpetuated by institutions, in our species.

So, therefore... we perpetuate institutions as part of our individual and collective efforts to survive.

"No one ever thinks about my blackness", the frying pan's eloquent silence conveyed. — unenlightened

Black pans matter.