I can see her looking fast
in her faded jeans
She's a hard loving woman,
got me feeling mean
Sometimes
I think it's a shame
When I get feeling better
when I'm feeling no pain

Did you ever read the “Power Broker?” — T Clark

Yes, and I guess there's always a risk that my kind of reflections are effectively conservative. — Jamal

That’s what’s so compelling in Lefebvre—he rescues liberalism from the charge of moral emptiness not by denying it, but by reframing it. Liberalism isn’t a doctrine, it’s a discipline. It's what we do. A lived ethic of coordination, mutuality, and restraint. Less about asserting the good, more about making life together possible.

And I liked that Hadot echo too—quiet, but clear. Ethics as practice, not rulebook. That’s why the capabilities approach fits so well here: it’s not just about rights or choices, but cultivating the real power to live well. Not a retreat from meaning, but a wager that meaning can be plural.

And still, what is the alternative? — Banno

My dad was a communist turned socialist - how was I supposed to rebel against that? Oh, I remember now, "turn on, tune in, drop out". — unenlightened

I do rather like the developing argumentum ad peanutem. — Banno

Do onto others as you would have them do onto you, and communism: To each according to need from each according to ability. Neither can be achieved, or even approached, in the overpopulated, god-ridden, money-driven, propagandized societies of today. All liberals can do is attempt to mitigate the worst outcomes. In some countries they do fairly well; in others, they fail, get knocked on their keesters, get up and try again. And again, and again.... — Vera Mont

I don't think the answer is found in a dicitionary but a history book. Liberalism and capitalism developed in tandem and share core assumption about the individual, property and greedom (that was a typo but I like it). — Benkei

A pessimistic view is that capitalists need freedom to operate, so they champion liberalism because it diminishes religious and governmental interference. — frank

Assume that the physical in the state of S1 has the caus[al] power to cause the physical in the state of S2. Physical however is not aware of the passage of time. Therefore, the physical in the state of S1 cannot know the correct instant to cause the physical in the state of S2.
—MoK

These misplaced concreteness & anthropomorphic fallacies render your (latest) OP "argument" gibberish, Mok. — 180 Proof

And the essence of liberalism is to justify capitalism with the ideology of equality, individual liberty and property rights.

And not only to justify capitalism, but to justify colonialism, slavery, and class hierarchy. — Jamal

most collectivist thought wants to maximise democratic processes where they are currently barred due to the structure of liberal/capitalism. — Benkei

On your logic, if someone goes looking for the Loch Ness Monster, then there must be a Loch Ness Monster.

Very good. — Banno

an update of Spinoza's deus sive natura, to accommodate modern cosmology — Gnomon

I agree that the laws of nature are enforced by an entity called the Mind — MoK

But we need a reason for the existence of the laws of nature in the first place. — A Christian Philosophy

The search for metaphysical causes is essentially religious in its origins, and has been a great hindrance to the advancement of human knowledge. — alan1000

There is an impressive lack of self-awareness in that article — Count Timothy von Icarus

Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR): For every thing that exists, there is a sufficient reason/explanation/ground for its existence or occurrence. — A Christian Philosophy

Matter doesn't exist. This is all an elaborate dream. — RogueAI

On the one hand you are saying it's all just chemicals and yet on the other you say that these thoughts about it all being chemicals are not due to chemicals but are "logical conclusions". Do you not see that you are contradicting yourself? — Janus

Translating the bullshit we have been sold in plain English, the trade unions have lost their bargaining power, the population has been taught that it is not the rich that are responsible for their misery but gays and foreigners, and that a state that supports the poor and the sick is undesirable and cost them too much. Hence taxes have gone down, real wages have gone down, and government spending on social care has gone down. This is also partly because we no longer have an Empire covering a third of the world to exploit. Those wretched foreigners again wanting to run their own lives. — unenlightened

if it's all just chemicals — Darkneos

I think of Whitehead's actual world as equivalent to Spinoza's immanent Nature-god [ ... ]. Yet, Whitehead's logically inferred deus sive natura[panentheism] was described as "transcendent", in the sense that any creator or programmer stands apart from its creation. — Gnomon

What went wrong?

I'm assuming that God [ground of Being] can’t or doesn’t act like a being in this world [contrary to accounts of "miracles" in religious scriptures / teachings], but instead provides the conditions that make action [e.g. "sin"] possible. — Tom Storm

Tom Storm Count Timothy von Icarus
This is a great discussion. — T Clark

Even our arch-atheist 180 Proof Is playing nice.

Spinoza is not a pantheist but a... I forget... is it an acosmist? — Tom Storm

What does it mean to say God is the fundamental existence or essence that underlies everything in the universe? — Tom Storm

I certainly see problematic aspects of theism, especially the whole emphasis on 'sin', including original sin and sexuality. — Jack Cummins

what I mean by magic [ ... ] whatever is impossible magic [ ... ] "makes" possible — 180 Proof

magic is about patterns and connections, and there being more to sensory (or extrasensory) perception than Cartesian-Newtonian thinkers have acknowledged — Jack Cummins

So,↪180 Proof's 2025 solution to the God problem seems to be to just ignore the evidence for Big Bang & Big Sigh (the standard model of cosmology), then assume that the natural world has been ticking right along for eternity. Hence, no gap to be filled, and no need for [non-explanation]super-natural "help". — Gnomon