Maybe you ought to read what you quoted.

I don't understand the recent shift to the right of the political spectrum.

I guess I must have missed it. Clinton won the popular vote by around 2 million votes.

I don't think Reagan's policies had much of an effect on the US's standard of living with his voodoo economics, except that he expanded the national debt plenty.

Sowell cherry picks his facts...he left out the whole bit about how many more wife's had to go to work to prop up the standard of living between 1969 and 1996 as follows: Wives working year-round full time rose from 17% to 39% of households, and in households with children from 42% to 60% of households...so yea real household income rose because wives left the home and went to work, to buy that color TV (Census Bureau)

Interesting comment from Reagan in stump speech Reagan made in Alabama 1980. He relates his experience as the governor of California rebutting the idea that people on welfare are lazy and don’t want to work.

“I don’t believe stereotype after what we did, of people in need who are there simply because they prefer to be there. We found the overwhelming majority would like nothing better than to be out, with jobs for the future, and out here in the society with the rest of us. The trouble is, again, that bureaucracy has them so economically trapped that there is no way they can get away. And they’re trapped because that bureaucracy needs them as a clientele to preserve the jobs of the bureaucrats themselves.

I've no clue regarding the UK.

Explain why it makes sense for someone who knows he will soon be tortured - but isn't being tortured yet - to fear the impending event.

Our prior experience of pain reminds us of its inescapability, how it obliterates the dualism between mind & body, how we become an unreflective one in it. It's the trauma we relive again and again as if we could change it. It goes against our bias towards the future. The anticipation of pain creates a discordance between our desires, which are future headed and the inescapable reality we know we will experience, as we have in the past. Its power over our consciousness invokes the a real sensation of fear. Our body, our closest ally, reacts instinctively and we seek transcendence which we are denied.

I think we are constructed by others who provide the foundation for what we shape and mold as ourself, those closest and dearest to us provide the bricks and mortar, we lay brick.

I really like your sky!

Seems to me you've just lost one. As for Trump's 'successful businesses', five of his businesses went bust, and he has been sued in over 1500 lawsuits by people he didn't pay. Of course all that will be forgotten now.

Yes, as I said I doubt it is Trump, perhaps you missed that, in any case given that this information was known prior to his election, it only strengthens my suspicion that what he symbolizes was more important to the people who voted for him.

My 2 cents.

I think the 'left', 'right' metric lacks the dimensionality that we find in today's world. The right has nowhere to go, it's fundamentality, reactionary quality, can't move it towards center and the left's progressive stance (its determinism) can't understand it own inability to move people. The center is vacant, a desert with no life of its own. Both ends on this horizontal plane are pushing away from the other. The general will is nowhere to be found.

What’s politics? Nobody knows it anymore. Does it still make sense to talk of Right, and Left and centre? Maybe it makes more sense to talk of above and below. […] In politics we don’t need a leader, we are grown up people. We need a vision of the world […].

Beppe Grillo 2005

I am not sure I totally agree with Grillo, but he hints at a another dimension more vertical than horizontal, one that pits order versus chaos, tribalism versus anarchism, above versus below. The part I disagree with is that we don't need a leader. I think we need a leader with some sort of encompassing vision.

I doubt Trump is that leader, but in thinking about what he symbolizes in kinda of a bizzaro way reminds me of what he is in real life, i.e, the CEO of a large (and apparently) largely successful business. Corporations are growing to the point where some corporations cash flow exceed many nation states. Perhaps order in this postmodern period means corporate governance. Where states are managed like successful corporations. Capitalism eats democracy.

A spanish fisherman a long time ago was asked what he thought about politics, he said something along the lines, 'let Franco worry about the state, I fish'

Your question reminded me of something I read in Hannah Arendt's The Life of Mind where she is discussing the will and how Christ though his apostles (especially Paul) changed the world's whole system of valuation. The Old Testament was the all about the law, following the commands of god as revealed in its books. The New Testament the emphasis on following the law changes:

"I have come not to abolish [the law] but to fulfill [it]"( Matthew 5:17). Hence not "Love your neighbors" but "Love your enemies", "to him who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also"; "from him who takes away your cloak do not withhold your coat as well". In short, not "What you don't want to be done to you, don't do to others" but "As you wish that me would do to you, do so to them" (Luke 6:27-31)--certainly the most radical possible version of "Love you neighbors as yourself".( Willing pg 66)

Paul was aware that Jesus radical teachings might well be beyond the human power of the will, I-will-but cannot. The point is-- having the will to follow the law--would be sufficient. The emphasis changes to man's inner life, from doing to believing, from appearances to man's inner life which could be judged by God. (possibly why Nietzsche hated[envied] Paul)

I'm not sure Kazuma.

The Doctor had displayed an unbendable will in a way I doubt I could measure up to, but his circumstances were unique and he did not have many options. In the back of my mind I think he saw his role to help others as his transcendent goal*, he embraced the absurd as his raison d'ê·tre (his god).

*Transcendent means to go beyond, which is not necessarily transcendental. Levinas used the term transcendent to mean going across over to the other. The desire is for the other to be absorbed as part of my own reality, while this desire can't be actualized (there will always be a gap), it can be deepened.

The doctor accepts his role as a doctor in spite of his inability to escape the absurdity of this role in the face of the irrational force of the Plague. He does not despair, he does not seek the safety of a transcendental god, he is not an existentialist, he is the ultimate realist who embraces the absurd for what it is, and he keeps on trudging up and down his own hill.

I think that epistemology leads to and structures ontology, not the other way around. What we believe we know, determines what is, not what is determines what we think we know.

To say "it was all meaningless until we came along and gave it meaning" is to admit that something (the "all" being referred to) existed before human consciousness. And the advent of human consciousness simply tagged this existence with "meaning". Fine, but that still seems to imply a mind-independent existence. (By the way, what "meaning" does existence have? Or, what are you implying when you use the term "meaning"? Is it simply that we give labels to things, like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden naming all the birds and beasts? Or that somehow our minds imbue existence with purpose?)

What exists and what has existed prior to us as a species is in the history we tell ourselves about the world, and the cosmos. I am not claiming and I did not state that there cannot be any mind-independent being, simply that whatever does exists is only meaningful to regards to us, it has no meaning in-it-self. The sciences, physics, mathematics, chemistry are all objective, they are rationally based and they explain the phenomena. The subjective and the objective are mediated by reason.

I doubt nature has a end, a teleology. I think that practical reason is 1st philosophy, that what we ought to do, what we value, what we find meaning in, what we think is historical gives us place us within the schema of things within a community of others.

Mind-independent. The objective world doesn't depend on us perceiving, knowing, or talking about it. It's objective precisely because it doesn't vary based on individual perception, cognition, etc. It's also objective in that it doesn't depend on us being human. Man is not the measure, if anything is truly objective.

That's meaningless isn't it.

The objective as you have described it has no meaning, it may exist and have existed but that existence is meaningless without us. It was all meaningless until we came along and gave it meaning. It more a question of how we play into the schema of things, since there is no schema without us.

When you say 'objective' what do you mean? Are geometry, physics, and the other sciences all strictly objective, or are they also subjective. Or when you say objective do you mean 'real' as existing in the world outside of us, separate from us as things?

Didn't Kant connect the subjective with the objective, uniting or mediating them with reason which is objective universally necessary, reason which is the paradigm example of objectivity, yet is also a subjective ability,

Thanks for the reference. No, I don't agree with Mr. Sharma's agenda. His use of statistic regarding world trade is as suspect as his information regarding immigration. This is not to say that he could not be right, but rather that I don't think he has shown his case. Talking about percentage increases or decreases when you are describing a 70 trillion dollar plus world economy is daunting especially when discussing long term trends, because it disregards the absolute numbers involved.

In regards to immigration, he does not specify if he is talking about legal or illegal immigration or both. Pew Researh in October said: (http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/10/05/key-facts-about-the-worlds-refugees/)

Nearly 1 in 100 people worldwide are now displaced from their homes, the highest share of the world’s population that has been forcibly displaced since the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees began collecting data on displaced persons in 1951.

I don't think using short term time intervals (<10 yrs) to project long term trends is realistic when you are describing world economy.

Since 2008 world trade and the volume of money flows around the world have shrunk, not unlike the time immediately before 1914. There are fewer 'democracies' now than 20 years ago, and more aggressively defensive militaries are defending more home land areas.

Do you have references for either of your assertions:
a) That there are less democracies today than in 1996
b) That money flows have shrunk

I doubt both of them, especially b, which I think is improbable to say the least, my guess is that it some multiple of money in circulation (i.e. like 5xs)...I mean look at the size of the stock market in 2008 and compare it to now.

In regards to globalization/deglobalization, structurally whatever maximizers capitalism will dominate. I don't think the EU can stay the way it is currently constituted, but some sort of looser association of states is necessary for trade, for capital pursuits. If anything sovereignty is more important, that's what Brexit demonstrated, and that is what I think the upcoming Italian referendum will show. I noticed that Renzi took down the EU flag at his latest press conference, he needs to distance himself from the EU if he is going to have any chance at political survival. His political adversaries have transformed the upcoming referendum (Dec 4th) on the restructuring of the Italian Parliament into a quick way to have a regime change by forcing Renzi out, by targeting the EU as the cause of all Italy's problems and identifying it with Renzi.

'Ability to accept what is' - That's what Camus described as 'philosophical suicide'. By finding something transcendent, one can get too complacent. Camus argues that we don't know and that we can't possibly know. That's why accepting means creating an illusion and then accepting the illusion in order to feel more comfortable.

His mythical man accepts the conditions of his existence in almost stark rebellion as he trudges up and down his hill. How does he do this, how does he maintain his rebellious attitude, in spite of his eternal condemnation to this absurd task. He can do it because he is his own man, he is not sorry about anything. Man can scorn anything.

In Camus's Plague there is a scene where the doctor (Rieux) and a priest (Paneloux) spend a whole night with a child dying from the plague. The child dies a horrifically painful death while neither of these men can't do anything but watch. The child was an innocent the doctor screams at the priest, who says that we cannot understand the ways of God's love and the doctor says he wants no part of that kind of love.

What drives the doctor? He says his concern is with health. He says:

"What does it matter? What I hate is death and disease, as you well know. And whether you wish it or not, we're allies, facing them and fighting them together... Rieux was still holding Paneloux's hand."

The absurd death of the child cannot be justified, just as there is no justification for luck, the contingencies of life. How does one react to life's contingencies? Camus doctor in The Plague has no choice, there is no meaningful answer, he works to help the sick because they are sick and he is a doctor...and that is what he does.

So the first problem of philosophy is a moral question, one that Shakespeare addressed "To be, or not to be?" Levinas also thought that Practical Philosophy is 1st Philosophy. It is a question that has to do with the will's contest against itself. Why the will to power stops me from doing what I want to do?

The question of suicide masks the real issue, which is our own temporality. It's true we want to be happy, be at peace, but it this is not always possible, and living a temperate life might alleviate some pain, but in the end it is all the same, death sooner or latter. It's not meaning which counts, it is the ability to accept what is, to will what is, inspite of what is. I think that is only possible by finding something transcendent, beyond one's self.

We all tend to have a bias towards the future, don't we. Not the person in 4th stage cancer, not the 90 year old solitary man that can barely get out of bed. Not the convicted felon looking at 30 years imprisonment. Why shouldn't these people seek early release from their misery? There is no answer that applies to all, each must make their own decision.

Why did Socrates commit suicide? He could have escaped, his friends had already made the arrangements. His act of will was in accordance with the rest of his life, his love of Athens, and its laws, and his willingness to abide by them. He found something higher than himself, yet immanent in the world.

MU I think McTaggart's argument is like a river you must cross to get to the promised land, there might be another route but I have not found it yet.

By the way Aristotle thought about time in three ways:
1) Quantitatively as a measure
2) As motion
3) Chronologically, 'before & after'

McTaggart suggests an A and a B series to time. The A series views time's passage. The B series views time from moment to moment historically. The B series would be impossible without the A series, even if the B series is ontologically superior to the A series. It seems to me, in reading your conversations, that both of your positions mashup these differences...The A series I associate with Augustine's phenomenal position and the B series with Aristotle's mechanistic/scientific position.

Of course his argument is about the unreality of time, but I find it helpful in thinking about time.

Madame la Fleurie
Wallace Stevens
"Weight him down, O side-stars, with the great weightings of the end.
Seal him there. He looked in a glass of the earth and thought he lived in it.
Now, he brings all that he saw into the earth, to the waiting parent.
His crisp knowledge is devoured by her, beneath a dew."

And yet it is reported that Stevens took communion on his death bed, perhaps
subsuming to Pascal wager.

So much for wisdom.

Not sure I understand do you meaning. I looked up time space bubble and found:

The concept of Alcubierre drive, which (as I understand it) is the shifting the space around an object, contracting the space in front of a space craft and expanding space in the rear,or something along these lines. Enabling the craft to go faster than the speed of light without upsetting physical laws.

Physics Book IV part 11.
http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/physics.4.iv.html

I think that's what Paul Klee thought...I am still trying to work it out.

Every work is beautiful (Schopenhauer?), I don't think so, I think that works are beautiful only in so far as they can illuminate their object, there is a truth that makes itself evident in the work, it's that truth that grabs.

No, the other 95 people simply don't understand the history/narratives behind the work, perhaps they don't have the proper education to appreciate the work, they don't see what is important about the work, it does not hit them.

Perhaps they don't see whatever truth is in the work, it does nothing for them, it does not open up any possibilities in their lives. Atonal music is not easy to appreciate, it requires thought and knowledge of music, for people with the proper understanding may see what the artist has tried to accomplish, they understand the history behind the music, it's truth hits them, it juts itself out of its matter and grabs them.

Certainly if there is only one observer, that is the community, but no, not ad populum as I stated it is the relationship between matter, the narratives/history, the artist, and the community of observers.

Beauty is only beautiful if its intrinsic truth opens a new range of possibilities in the way that we conceptualize the our narratives about the art object. In that way a we can find a mountain range, a Picasso or a work by Mark Twain all beautiful. This truth lies in the relationship that forms around their matter, our narratives, the artist and the community of observers, it is not simply in the "eye of the beholder".

Well that's part of the problem, how do we independently conceptualize time, since it's inherent in our conveyance of thought, our expressions in language, which is why people like Augustine talk about it conceptually and not linguistically.

Augustine's point which I think holds is that all time is present. The past can only possibly be remembered in the present and what we anticipate, the future can only be anticipated in the present, this is his distension of time. He was interested in our phenomenal understanding of time.

Aristotle also talks about time in his Physics where he is interested in its basis, its quantification, there he says that motion occurs in time, and is never found separate from time, motion is in time but is not time, rather time is a measure, he uses the term 'number of change' . He presents time as the fleeting instant of the present where before and after meet, the present as a vanishing point. This is an ontological, quantative sense of time.

I think language is the tool by which we think, it constitutes thought. Our conception of time seems, to me, to be built into the syntax of language.

Perhaps: Commas are pauses, semicolons are rolling stops, colons barriers, ellipses gaps in time and periods the terminus....?

If valuation mediates between subject and object then the proof that every being has value lies in the cognitive truth content of that mediation.

Don't we perceive the effect and impute the cause. We use our reason and memory to do this, perhaps memory is inner 'space' (how we measure), then time phenomenologically is reason spanning memories of what we have experienced, imagining causes.

I thought that quantum physics thinks that physical time is in principle otiose, encapsulated in the mathematics of space.

I think Augustine explains the issue...the distension of the present:

For what is time? Who can easily and briefly explain it? Who even in thought can comprehend it, even to the pronouncing of a word concerning it? But what in speaking do we refer to more familiarly and knowingly than time? And certainly we understand when we speak of it; we understand also when we hear it spoken of by another. What, then, is time? If no one ask of me, I know; if I wish to explain to him who asks, I know not. Yet I say with confidence, that I know that if nothing passed away, there would not be past time; and if nothing were coming, there would not be future time; and if nothing were, there would not be present time. Those two times, therefore, past and future, how are they, when even the past now is not; and the future is not as yet? But should the present be always present, and should it not pass into time past, time truly it could not be, but eternity. If, then, time present — if it be time — only comes into existence because it passes into time past, how do we say that even this is, whose cause of being is that it shall not be — namely, so that we cannot truly say that time is, unless because it tends not to be?

–Augustine of Hippo, Confessiones lib xi, cap xiv, sec 17 (ca. 400 CE)

Perhaps weirdly dovetailing into my conversation with TS, he thinks that our experiences can't be uploaded onto a disk, and he is probably right, but I don't see how that is logically impossible, which he maintains (for whatever reason). I think my experiences are what I recall and, they are not the actual experiences, any more than the information on a disk is the original information. So I don't think you would have to fit the world into your head, just as AphaGo does not have to calculate all the possible moves in playing Go.

but do we have any trouble actually doing it in practice?

No, but what does that mean? I think it means that our notions about such concepts such as identity are faulty, as you state we seem to have no such problem in practice.

I am not sure. Do you think all experiences would have to be down loaded? or just those experiences that are pertinent to identity (if tech was this advanced, don't you think there would be a way to relevantly parse experience)....and beyond this even if something is physically impossible, it might still be logically possible and therefore relevant to the argument.

Maybe, but that is the problem for those saying we have some sort of specific identity, which is maintained even after death, which is exactly what I am questioning.