Can't you change the pH of carbonated water by just adding a base?

They put nitrogen gas in beer/soda.

Nitrogen infusion creates beverages with a sweeter taste, even without the addition of sugar or sweeteners. Unlike C02, nitrogen doesn't create any acidity, removing the aspect from a beer or coffee's flavor profile. — www.drinkripples.com

Good answer! :up:

Currently it looks like you're right. Everyone on death row is there for murder.

One can imagine the death penalty is suitable for a depraved serial torturer if it is suitable for other kinds of murder. Could there be some room in the law for applying it despite custom/precedent, if the evidence was really crazy (Sawmovie stuff that could kill if it got out of hand)?

Maybe all the most extreme serial torturers just happen to end up murdering their victims so it's very unlikely that you'll have one crime without the other. The dead can't tattletale so easily.

However, the penalty for torture is less severe than the penalty for murder. — Agent Smith

Don't you think there is far more nuance to criminal sentences with respect to who did what and how bad it was and what the law is wherever it happened? All murder, neither all torture, is the same. Justify your lazy generalization (cite something).

Whosoever kills a human being without (any reason like) man slaughter, or corruption on earth, it is as though he had killed all mankind [...]
— 5:32 — Agent Smith

So straightforward a rule but this is from the Quran. I can imagine that if the Passion of Jesus were just another Greek play the chorus could say this to the audience. But he was a disturber of someone's peace/order. What was the formal legal justification for the crucifixion?

As a mythical moral equation it is kind of interesting in light of the scapegoating rite.

To kill one is to save all (unconsciously).

versus

To kill one is to kill all (consciously).

Better yet... Jesus comes out of the tomb and proclaims, like a swashbuckling Muskateer,
One for All and All for One... who's with me?

And soon there would be many...

Girardian theory is not true; it does not make us better readers; and it’s not an exaggeration of anything important. Like the “everything is water” claim attributed to Thales, the “all desire is mimetic,” “all violence is mimetic,” and “all culture comes from violence” claims reduce, at best, to something trivial. And while Girardianism may well be “generative,” it is surely no more so than Scientology. Yet there it is, still going strong at a literature department near you. I’m not sure how we can stop it. — Joshua Landy

_____

Similarly, did we really need Girard to tell us that innocent individuals are sometimes singled out for punishment by communities in need of an outlet for negative energy? No, we already had J. G. Frazer (1913) for that, and Sigmund Freud (1930), and Kenneth Burke (1935), and Gordon Allport (1954).[42] In fact Frazer has an entire volume of The Golden Bough, running to some four hundred and seventy-two pages, dedicated to the topic. My point is not that Frazer has it right (let alone that Freud does); my point is just that everyone has always known that scapegoating happens, just as everyone has always known that mimetic desire happens, and that rivalry happens, and that violence happens. — Joshua Landy

Deceit, Desire, and the Literature Professor: Why Girardians Exist (Joshua Landy)

You could view a moral code as just a kind of rationalization of social relations that emerge in nature.

Take for example chickens. They can't rationalize their behavior but if they did they might uphold the pecking order (generally). Hens never(?) outrank a rooster. But if rationalization came into play, hens and roosters might be justifying the system with regard to their self-interests. Is the risk to give reasons for why the prevailing system is bad, tolerable? If you're getting pecked to death you might have nothing to lose, assuming you've persuaded others to your cause.

everyone hates God? — Agent Smith

He/It is the transcendent outlier and humankind is bewildered/enraged/despaired by the problem/reality of suffering. Just like in attic tragedy, the Biblical king of kings undergoes the pereipetia reserved for all mortals, a fall (through son). Otherwise how could such a being be relatable, if you couldn't empathize with a true victim of a natural cycle of life. God has become one of us, affixed to the cross of time and materiality.

In very simple terms, because God is greatest of outliers, he must partake in the scapegoat sacrifice because that is the natural perennial process/rite, from man to god (in sacrifice) and back from god to man (in sacrifice). It's a show of reciprocity.

Otherwise our hate/despair might consume us...?

Altruists, poor chaps! — Agent Smith

That Captain America scene seems kind of dumb, unless Rogers knew the grenade was a fake. But if he knew it was a fake and jumped on it only because he knew, that doesn't show authentic altruism. If he didn't know, could he really expect such an action to protect anyone... it'd just be a terribly stupid act on his part.

Who is writing these scripts?

The ‘thing-in-itself’ is also your perception. — ArielAssante

Our loosy goosey language use is gonna get us in trouble from those who might know better. Careful you don't contradict yourself, or inconsistently/incorrectly define things with respect to intersubjective standards and what you are arguing.

Encountered a passage in Robert Sapolsky's book, Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst, about the hedonic treadmill/adaptation.

An emptiness comes from this combination of over-the-top nonnatural resources of reward and the inevitability of habituation; this is because unnaturally strong explosions of the synthetic experience and sensation and pleasure evoke unnaturally strong degrees of habituation. This has two consequences. First, soon we barely notice the fleeting whispers of pleasure caused by the leaves in autumn, or by the lingering glance of the right person, or by the promise of reward following a difficult, worthy task. And the other consequence is that we eventually habituate to even those artificial deluges of intensity. If we were designed by engineers, as we consumed more, we'd desire less. But our frequent human tragedy is that the more we consume, the hungrier we get. More and faster and stronger. What was an unexpected pleasure yesterday is what we feel entitled to today, and what won't be enough tomorrow. — Robert Sapolsky

Compare a passage from Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Discourse on Inequality.

Since these conveniences by becoming habitual had almost entirely ceased to be enjoyable, and at the same time degenerated into true needs, it became much more cruel to be deprived of them than to possess them was sweet, and men were unhappy to lose them without being happy to possess them. — Rousseau

Philosophy is intersubjective, insofar folks collaborate to use language and logic to question/analyze what they believe in methodical ways.

All perception relies on your mind — ArielAssante

Is there nothing other than my mind that a perception relies upon? If I decide to take a trip to England, does the material stuff I take to be England occur in the field of my perception because I'm actually a hallucinating Boltzmann brain floating in some outerspace? Is there then no concept of cause and effect with respect to what could be considered separate from me? How could perceptions be their own cause?

If all perception relies on my mind, how could there also be the possibility of a thing-in-itself, as if something outside of it was a cause?

Is there a good reason, if not due to an instersubjective fact, that the mind does not encompass all things? Is there only one mind? If so, whose mind is it? It must be mine... unless my mind is also your mind and there is no difference between the two.

Where is my mind?

I was of the view that human sacrifice was distinct from punishment (by death) of criminals — Agent Smith

The scapegoat is perceived as a criminal, a target to blame for social troubles. No doubt there is in the mix of the exercise of this supposed ritual through history true criminals and true victims, relative to whatever the ethical code is. At our primordial beginning, at least for Girard, the idea is that this scapegoating process is completely unconscious/ritual-magic and there is a good/bad duality to the act (ex. "god wants a victim, get him one, there is even absurd honor in being given over ").

Aristotle's aurea mediocritas comes to mind: bad is bad but too good is equally bad or worse than bad. — Agent Smith

:up: I gotta look this up.
_____

Someone talking about this stuff brought up a scene in the Dune book series after Paul Atreides becomes the emperor/tyrant-holdfast. His mother has landed and some members of the crowd are too slow to bow in respect and they are taken away to either be imprisoned or killed even though they are composed of the old and infirm. Such an extreme social demand might result in calculated scapegoating from both the top down (from leadership) and bottom up (crowd) at the same time. Ex. "Paul's rule killed my grandpa and our lives suck... kill em!, whose with me?"/ "You heretic, I will out you and you'll be quartered in the public square."

You can imagine Chimps might not be too far off from this drama, which makes Rene Girard's Christian apologetics and mythic interpretations somewhat grandiose.

There is an interesting balancing act between the unanimity of a crowd in seeking justice against the demands of social code backed by punitive/policing action.

probably a natural selection pressure against aggression but I'm not quite sure how effective it is or even whether it isn't the other way round — Agent Smith

It's all probably far too complicated for us to take any simple speculations too seriously. Somehow proactive violence (planning to take out a psychopath/outlier by coalition) puts an evolutionary check on impulsive violence. If the impulse for this kind violence wasn't removed genetically, it was possibly checked genetically/behaviorally with respect to the growing regulatory powers of the cortex. If you can't emotionally regulate according to the the norms of your tribe to a point, you're at risk of being purged.

What's interesting about the old Greek motif of the scapegoat is that it deals with outliers (very high status and low status victims). The king has transgressed moral law (there shall be no incest, no kinslaying) and must be taken out for the social welfare. Or, that old ugly, lonely outsider does not exemplify the norm as far as participation is concerned, so let's purge them from the group.

We can understand viscerally the emotional power of ethical norms as the result in our senses of admiration or disgust for social outliers (and those who become the subject/object of mass interest).

A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. — C.S. Lewis

By whose standards? I might be able to pick a random bear in the woods as a moral teacher if the cult I was born into taught it so.

The chicken was running from a perceived threat but didn't realize that it was crossing a road. It wouldn't have had time to consider the risk if even if some chicken god had tried to warn the danger of busy highways.

How do supposed rational beings, wise from practice in some cognitive gymnasium, stay cool under pressure? Do philosophers, like chickens, panic (and possibly forgo their virtues)?

Why did the philosopher cross the road?

Because it was the most reasonable thing to do?

Philosophers and Chicken Enchiladas

rounded up, and executed in pogroms — Agent Smith

It's worrisome our human history is so rife with genocide/war. We're never out of the woods as far as the potential for mass violence is concerned, though we like to believe we've made great progress.

________

Richard Wrangham proposes that collective violence, in disposing of violent males, actually played a role in diminishing the reactive violence of our species, as a process of self-domestication. Apparently chimps display far more reactive aggression (tit for tat) than we do. Maybe this was a hurdle for our ancestors to overcome toward developing a more complex culture.

A Bold New Theory Proposes That Humans Tamed Themselves (Melvin Konner, Atlantic Magazine)

Nothing wrong with the anesthetizing power of the black mirror, enrapturing the senses in the glow of a thousand dreams.



Edit: An exaggerated version of media/illusion as powerful distraction/anesthetic comes from the film/poem of Aniara. There is an AI on the ship whose special function is to comfort the passengers by projecting the features/illusions of earth that have disappeared due to ecological disaster. The film has a great dramatic event of losing the Mima because of the burden of its empathy with the traumatized crowd.

For frequentlv the world that Mima shows us

blots out the world remembered and abandoned.

If not, the mima never would have drawn us

and not been worshipped as a holv being,

and no ecstatic women would have stroked

in trembling bliss the dais of the deity. — Excerpt of translation of Aniara, original poem by Harry Martinson

Have you watched any of Desmet's interviews or read his work? — Tzeentch

Listened to couple of interviews. Unfortunately he is associated with pandemic controversy, since his term "mass formation" came out of the mouth of Robert Malone on Joe Rogan's podcast and caused a stir.

It's this aggression and anxiety that can find an outlet through political narratives, for example. — Tzeentch

Yes, am very interested in anxiety/aggression with respect to the irrationality/frenzy of crowds.

Desmet also has something to say about the irrationality of crowds via the concept of "mass formation", the tendency of people to consolidate and pursue an ideological/dogmatic quick-fix under certain conditions. This process gets in the way of a sober assessment of the facts and the implementation of science through policy. This is similar content to Rene Girard's mimetic contagion/scapegoating stuff.

Here is a commercial that might encapsulate how the contemporary world is too much for the individual, especially with respect to the proliferation of technologies. It creates anxiety which makes us more vulnerable to whatever the fall out of "mass formation". From here we could travel down a thousand rabbit holes in a paranoiac wonderland about our techno mediated future. But maybe I'm just unnecessarily activating my amygdala at the moment.

Social instability/stress due to famine, plague or war is classically coupled with the scapegoating myth of the Pharmakos.

Today we've these same stressors and the crowd contagion is visible. The political tribalism of the Left and the Right and their corresponding spheres of propaganda end up in an aggressive blame game which seems to be escalating. Fear/anxiety causes more fear/anxiety with respect to social/crowd projections. Our last president, Mr. Trump, shows absolutely no constraint in blaming just about anyone/anything. The mass hysteria of the conspiratorial right takes up a lot of headspace. But they dance in step to the moral indignation and social justice theater of the Left. Girard had a notion of doubles (rivals) that are caught in a bind of aggressive escalation. I think the caricatures/projections of the Left and Right are an example of this.

Killing/murders, whether from police brutality or vigilantism, doesn't seem to calm folks down at all. They serve as fuel for targeting corrupt transgressors in offices of power. We lack any formal ritual that would transfer blame in religious way. A new scapegoat (external threat) would have to unify the entire national crowd. We've heard the notion that if aliens landed (Independence Day style) there would be a unifying focus toward the aggressor. Or maybe due to accident/impasse, we'd project onto these aliens a threat that isn't altogether true.

Vide Salman Rushdie who barely escaped an assassination attempt just a coupla weeks ago. — Agent Smith

The Salman Rushdie attempt is also interesting with regard to the potential escalation of agression/violence. Is Rushdie at an even greater risk now? I think the event precipitated a new rush to buy the Satanic Versus (even I want to read it now). Some will herald the criminal as a martyr/hero which may inspire imitation, making the old conflict new with respect to relative systems of justice/morality.

How many young fundamentalist Muslims, who never heard of Salman Rushdie, have now been educated about the existence of the Fatwah.

The archaic Greek ritual of the Pharmakos (a scapegoat ritual sacrifice) is very interesting with regard to the content of Greek tragedy. It is a myth/rite which structures/influences some famous tragic plays. Aristotle's purgation of emotion (catharsis) for the spectator watching tragic drama is also a word that refers to the magic medicinal function of the Pharmakoi (scapegoat as drug/medicine). The scapegoat cleanses the city, cures a collective ailment, just like a potion or drug might cure an individual of an ailment.

The pharmakos [1] was a human embodiment of evil who was expelled from the Greek city at moments of crisis and disaster. The name is probably, but problematically, connected with pharmakon, ‘medicine, drug, poison’. [2] Both poison and drug were originally magical; so a pharmakon is a magical dose (Greek dosis ‘gift, dose’, cf. the German Gift ‘poison’) causing destruction or healing. Pharmakos then would be ‘magic man, wizard’ first, though the borderline between magic and religion is not easy to define; the early pharmakos might have been ‘magic man’ or he might have been ‘sacred-man’. Then, presumably, he or she was ‘healer, poisoner’, then later, expiatory sacrifice for the city and rascal, off-scourings, and so on. [3] On the one hand, the pharmakos could be the medicine that heals the city (according to scholia on Aristophanes Knights 1136c, the pharmakos is used in order to obtain a therapeia—‘service, tending, medical treatment’—for the prevailing disaster [4] ); on the other, he could be the poison that had to be expelled from the system (he is often ugly or criminal). Thus these two interpretations are not exclusive. [5] — Compton, Todd M. 2006. Victim of the Muses: Poet as Scapegoat, Warrior and Hero in Greco-Roman and Indo-European Myth and History. Hellenic Studies Series 11. Washington, DC: Center for Hellenic Studies.

I suppose the ritual of the Pharmakos is a sort of idealized jewel/motif that serves as the Girardian model of the scapegoat.

Reminds me of the utilitarian-consequentialist conundrum where you hang an innocent man to prevent a riot. — Agent Smith

Consider Pontius Pilate's supposed ambivalence with respect to the trial of Jesus. The historical hearsay of Pilate paints him as brutal/corrupt governor of Judea, who sentenced many to death without trial for practical purposes. He is recalled to Rome later in life for excessive and unjust brutality. His giving into the will of the Jewish mob during the trial of Jesus might be a pragmatic concession that brings peace to the crowd but also protects himself from the fall out of his own transgressions against the Jews.

For the Jews Pilate's worst offense was belittling the taboo against graven images by introducing military standards into the city, and depositing golden shields inscribed with the name of Tiberius, imperial cult objects in other words, in the palace of Herod. As Philo tells it, Pilate worried about the Jewish protest over the shields, because he feared that if they actually sent an embassy they would expose the rest of his conduct as governor by stating in full the briberies, the insults, the robberies, the outrages and wanton injuries, the executions without a trial constantly repeated, the ceaseless and supremely grievous cruelty (Philo Emb. 302). — https://factsanddetails.com/world/cat55/sub390/entry-5754.html

.

I wonder how empathy (or the lack thereof) comes into play considering and assuming empathy to be an innate trait in primates ("the ability to understand and share the feelings of another"). — Seeker

I've heard that empathy is somewhat of a double-edged sword. We can empathize someone who we believe is a victim, then violence/aggression can be perpetuated against those responsible on behalf of said victim.

____________

What is interesting about the Gombe Chimpanzee War is that the individuals who divided into warring tribes once composed a community (needs citation). Wouldn't there be a memory of social relations, fond memories of kinship that could mediate violence in the future? All of a sudden alliances somehow change, probably with respect to what the leader chooses to do.

I have a distinct memory of turning against one of my good friends in a rather bullying way as a kid. My brother seldom allowed me to join with his friends. I was an annoying cling-on to be shunned. Except one day I got to be part of a tag along and we formed a kind of bicycle gang. My good friend became a bully target and I joined in from a kind of enthusiasm of being part of my brother's group. We knocked my friend off his bicycle in the middle of the street and he bawled his eyes out. My alliance had changed spontaneously because I wanted to be part of my brother's company. I'm not so sure if there was a reason for it. My friend was always a target as a kid, he was always bullied but it is hard to remember why exactly. Kids found him annoying... Possibly he visibly lacked some kind of social etiquette that was normal by his age. I was very Chimp like in that instance of betrayal, emotionally fickle.

The Rwandan Genocide and Nazi Holocaust are probably a good example of fickle bonds. Folks who grew up with others and had bonds of friendship, Hutus aside Tutsis, Germans aside Jews, all of a sudden are polarized by identity politics and scapegoating narratives, to a point where mass murder takes place. Folks are swept up in the movement/demands of the crowd (i.e. "you're either with us or against us").

Looking at the Gombe Chimpanzee War we see a very human-like parallel of violence in a social species of our closest living relatives. Chimps fight over territory/resources just like we do. This is a different kind of violence with regard to what the scapegoating pattern is supposed to achieve. Does a successful kill of one's rivals temporary suspend the desire to continue to kill? One kill doesn't stop the war. But such escalation of violence in terms of wanting what others have does fit with mimetic desire (which is kind of an unoriginal observation).

Girard's idealized pattern of the scapegoat process requires that a mob unanimously attribute guilt to a non-guilty victim. But he seems to ignore/dismiss alternative attitudes toward sacrifice. Maybe new attitudes grew out of initial spontaneous acts of scapegoating. People thought that because sacrifice is good (for whatever reason) it is good to be sacrificed, either by a spontaneous selection or by volunteering.

For example, in this telling of the Corn Mother myth, the corn mother tells her community that she must be killed/sacrificed for their well being. This is voluntary(?) ritual suicide, not a spontaneous scapegoating. We could interpret this as a kind of deity giving a life sustaining gift to her sons and daughters. But maybe there is a version in which the Corn Mother is a victim (or relative to our contemporary moral facts, Corn Mother is a victim).

There is the popular hypothesis of universal heat death, when the universe reaches thermodynamic equilibrium, where there is a stark lack of differentiation of thinginess and therefore time. With respect to entropy, the quality and quantity of things make the causal arrow of time possible.

Though we can imagine that a universe at thermodynamic equilibrium has some-kind of time from an imagined point of view, as particles are still moving randomly in the homogeneous cold cosmic soup, and that such a state might change spontaneously or have new emergent properties (it might shed brand new universes as Boltzmann Brains).

Over a sufficiently long time, random fluctuations could cause particles to spontaneously form literally any structure of any degree of complexity... — Wikipedia: Boltzmann Brain

I bet the answer is a resounding NO! concerning magnet spectacles.

Do electric charges and magnets distort space, in the way that a source of gravity does?

such an assumption has little to no value in the light of progression — Seeker

Why would you take "progression" to be a sure thing given the time scales involved? Don't you think there are a lot of existential threats that might support the assumption that we don't have enough time to advance a miracle that defies the current limitations of physics. Have you heard of the Great Filter in relation to the Fermi Paradox?

It might be more likely that we meet our relatives in time (who we mistake as aliens due to separation in space and time), than we meet organisms from an independent event of abiogenesis.

What happened to the facts you were talking about? — Alkis Piskas

Do you mean the facts of distance and time? The farther out we look the older the universe is. Doesn't help with navigation toward a supposed location with life, in addition that the time getting to a location doesn't help with navigation. Everybody just seems to gloss over this in hopes for a miracle.

We're never going to encounter extra terrestrial life face to face (assuming there is none in our solar system) so it doesn't matter whether we are ready for it or not. We may see a mossy rock through our telescopes and have reasonably good evidence it really is full of life. We might get a signal but civilizations will come and go in the span of time needed to say hello.

Space is too vast. Consider just 1 light year; that is just too long for us. If we move 5 miles per second, it'd take 37,200 human years to cover that distance, or so says google. Only 4.25 light years to our closest star.

Imagine seeing an old planet rich with life but which stands in it's own time long annihilated.

Consider a depressed person who could not be cured by pills, but was cured by a more holistic approach to their psychological well-being. — Tzeentch

But all the other therapeutic modalities would do well to find evidence to back up what otherwise would just be a mess of testimonials/anecdotes. What gets in the way of this evidence, the gap between the consumer and the understanding of science, is consumer marketing/propaganda among other things. An understanding of mechanism is also what protects us from harming ourselves even more. If we all looked at the statistical evidence of pills versus lifestyle changes we might be surprised at how little pills have to offer aside placebo. What if we had honest drug commercials, showing the statistical effect aside other therapies?

It seems Desmet is drawing concern for the popular narratives and beliefs about science shaped by a profit incentive and public ignorance but it is strange to label it in such a way: "The End of A Mechanistic Worldview." I wouldn't doubt that the public is generally a lot more skeptical of the idealistic promises of for-profit science given current global crises compared to decades ago.

Part 3, “Beyond the Mechanistic Worldview,” explores how our societies can supplement science—which needs serious reform to eliminate corruption, biases, flawed findings, and outright capture by powerful and monied interests—with both traditional and alternative ways of knowing and attaining meaning (community, spirituality, mastery of craft, etc.) and to further develop the humble and mystery-respecting frontiers of science as articulated by giants such as Einstein, Bohr, and Planck. — Leo Aprendi, Amazon Book Review of Psychology of Totalitarnism, Mattias Desmet

Aren't parts relative/abstract fictions linked to the value/perceiving apparatus of a kind of being/observer. Nothing really has (or does not have) a part that isn't relative to what conceives the the part as a part (or not part).

A unity is always within something which plays a necessary part in creating that unity. There are no absolute unities, only relative ones that break apart according to the various schemes/methods of part making.

Is one single atom of a nuclear isotope that decays a unity without parts? When the particle decays, does it act upon itself? Does the presence/fields of all other things (as parts) in the universe have no bearing on why/when/how that particle decays? It can't be a unity without parts if it decays, can it? Is time a part of that unity?

Is this view point arguing for something like the precautionary principle? The discoveries of scientific empiricism always involve trade-offs when applied at industrial scales. The problem is more of science from narrowed economic concerns, what is done from local incentive with ignored consequences/externalities. It's less about what science can do in principle and more about what humans can't organize due to all kinds of other depressing limitations.

The science is great tool assuming one could overcome the hurdle of an uncoordinated pluralism (many states acting independently) to implement global coordination toward sustainability and human welfare. But let's not kid ourselves.

Choloroflurocarbons used in refrigerants degraded the ozone layer. Luckily it was reversible and there was enough universal agreement to implement a fix.

Just read that all rain fall on earth is contaminated with PFAs at levels that pose risk to human health.

Maybe someone will try geoengineering if the planet gets crazy hot but there could be unforeseen trade-offs with that also.

No matter what the prevailing dream is, it's depressing. :shade:

What we need now is a non-human mechanistic Fuhrer/Pope AI who can choreograph global sustainability while minimizing human suffering.

The trick would be intolerable by human standards. How does the AI ensnare you to believe that everything you are doing as a contributor to the grand plan of a better future is what you want to do? And is it allowed to "assassinate" anyone or perform acts of God. How could it transcend the current limits of human powers to enforce its mission?

When does your freedom become one with global servitude (all for one and one for all)? What is it allowed to take from you that you currently feel you are entitled to now? Aren't you afraid of this? How will it mollify your paranoia?

But maybe this is the utopian dream of the power of the mechanistic world view, the very kind of thinking that is dangerous (because nobody will know what is really going on to futilism, crippling paranoia). The mess of human affairs is a mess, due to the blindness inspired by local needs/fulfillment, entropic trade-offs, resource limitations, the void of eternal unsatisfaction in the being of all creatures, short term versus the long term thinking. Catastrophe, soft or hard, is probably likely.

Is selfishness/narcissism at the root of the more pejorative aspect of "ego"? The only time I ever use the term for ordinary purposes is for folks who appear to be somewhat self-absorbed, narcissistic in conversations/acts. A few figures spring to mind, celebrity rock front-men David Lee Roth, Steven Tyler, Gene Simmons. Simmons especially embodies a caricature of selfishness/narcissism, much like Donald Trump (an epitome of pathological narcissism made president). In the abject case it seems there is no commitment to a shared moral reality, honor, reciprocity, where the needs of the self supersede others in an abnormal way.

In a more rudimentary way, the self and its habits are the concrete aspects of a biological individual (body) as it works to survive and reproduce in nature. Self-awareness, if necessary for the presence of a "self", probably arises from social relationship with others as a way to further mediate behavior in complex social situations. We get to run a simulation of projected consequences.

Psychoanalytic theories use these terms in special ways however, such that the Ego is one feature of Self among many others.

The positive aspect of the ego or self (all the conceptual/cognitive projections of what one is) helps one to live. You have an image/concept of what you want to preserve, maintain or evolve based on memory, instincts, social conditioning and articulated desire and you work toward that given all kinds of worldly constraints.

Now here is a selfish dog. Why is he so selfish? Does he have a big ego?

Is "collectivism" well defined? It seems like the abject example represents the ideology of failed communist regimes, where private property is outlawed and absorbed by the state, where authoritarian mandates come from an elite governing class. But it seems it's better suited for a democratic experiment.

We're not allowed to call the modern for profit corporation an example of collectivist enterprise? A group of individuals come together and are constrained in their freedoms to work for stakeholders/shareholders as a group. Every employee is to some extent a stakeholder insofar as they rely on the company for their own individual well being (they rely on some collective for their well being). These companies concentrate the power to influence state policies and to influence the greater collective.

Wherever the individual goes he/she is embedded in collective enterprises, ideologies that bind men and women in common values, causes. There is always, always, always the tyranny of the majority and the tyranny of life's lottery (the caste/condition of one's individuality). There will never be a kind of state in which these tyrannies disappear entirely.

I was in my room, minding my own business, buggering the local barista. The door burst asunder.

"Thou shalt not sodomize!" The authorities cried. "You're under arrest."

"But God told me it was ok bugger the barista."

"Blasphemy!" the police priest shouted. "You've been deluded by Satan."

"But what does God say about North Carolina's hog farm pollution calamity?"

"Shut your trap! Sodomizer! Grace comes to the deserving."
_______

God gets to trounce secular rule because he is associated with ultimate values by his/her/its cult members. In current times this is very dangerous.

Many use God as an excuse to get what they want (power/wealth). Others are persuaded to follow by a senseless appeal to faith.

Is there really (apparently) just one substance?

There could also be a paradox of choice going on which leads to an admission of life being unsatisfactory despite all efforts to enjoy it. There are simply too many points, too many avenues, too many possibilities and yet the circumstance of satisfying some needs over others leaves one vacillating over what could've been. There is so much denied or granted to us by absurd historical accident.

The grass is seemingly greener on the other side of the fence and any satisfaction is temporary, attendant on a never ending work to sustain it. Sisyphus rolls his rock against the flows of entropy.

Then bring in misfortune and suffering. Nature demands that we satisfy our needs all the while denying the means to satisfy those needs. How could the centrality of life become inescapable pain and suffering? Perhaps the default of the human condition is one of want and its itchy and uncomfortable and we are tired of having to put salve on it every morning.

But maybe the salve is like heroin and you're having the ride of your life.