It would be, except that I don't think most people are so obsessed. Most people seem like they are just trying to get through the day, their life, without too much misery.

Some, a small minority, really are obsessed with power, influence, prestige, status, wealth, etc. and they are a troublesome lot. — Bitter Crank

Kind of ethnocentric of me.

The overwhelming majority of people who are living under the global capitalist system--and the number who have managed to escape that system is probably miniscule--are living on the periphery and are indeed just doing what they have to to survive.

But I think that is safe to say that among the small privileged minority living in the core people do not seek work that they are good at. People seek careers in professions with very high salaries, high status/prestige, and/or above average power--never mind how good they would be at the work. Competition for positions in those careers is intense. People do things like cheat on college entrance exams, lie on resumes, etc. to have an edge over the competition. Networking and connections are more important than knowledge and skills that can be used performing work. Marketing one's self effectively is far more important than proficiency/ability in performing work.

If you think about it, actual knowledge and skills don't play much of a role in the market for highly-sought jobs. Somebody with more knowledge and better skills but no bachelor's degree is going to be overlooked as employers only consider candidates with a BA or BS, no matter how mediocre those candidates are.

If people actually tried to be really good at something, and if hiring and promotions were actually based on knowledge and skill, the economy would look much different in post-industrial society.

Without the tedious and exhausting labor of the many, there would be no survival of the few. — Bitter Crank

I can't find it right now, but I read a column a few months ago that said the opposite: it is the highly-educated elites who keep everything running. Without the highly-educated elites, I recall the author saying, the farmers, postal carriers, and the rest of us non-elites would be helpless.

What no side of this discussion tells me is why anybody wants to put their own role in the system on a pedestal. The common worker often sounds as elitist as the paper shuffling CEO ("Without the work that I do, the whole system would implode").

Let's be honest. People mostly care about power, influence, prestige, status, wealth, etc. Pragmatic considerations, such as keeping the population fed, are secondary at best.

If pragmatic considerations are our concern then we need the knowledge and skills of everybody. No matter if is the organizational skills of a CEO, the problem solving skills of a logician, or the skilled hands of a carpenter, we need all of it to be marshaled to the benefit of everybody.

Apparently people can't be happy with being good at something and being fairly compensated for it. Apparently people can't be happy unless what they are good at enjoys high social status, is allowed to have greater influence in public policy, and is widely recognized for its greatness.

It sounds like childish narcissism, to be honest.

Personally, I think that the people we do not heed enough are cultural anthropologists.

Logic is a highly specialized science.

If you want leaders, voters, managers, etc. making better-informed decisions about the big picture, lobby for the employment of more people from cultural anthropology.

If you want to understand as much as you can about, say, overpopulation, how would a specialist in logic be more useful than a cultural anthropologist?

One perspective is that most of us will hold something in the highest esteem, and that is what we ‘worship’ - not necessarily literally, but metaphorically at least. Hence ‘the other’, those with radically different notions of the highest good, become the target. There’s a of this polarisation occurring, especially now. I don’t think I have a solution but I think Eagleton at least helps make the problem more clear. — Wayfarer

Is that why Ken Wilber is said to be a New Age quack? Because he doesn't go along with what the establishment holds in the highest esteem?

Or is there some objective criteria, such as passing the "peer-reviewed" test, that disqualifies Wilber?

Even if Wilber is a New Age quack, he obviously gives enough people something constructive to be well-published and have a loyal following.

People turn to other sources to try to find something constructive. The pop-psychology industry is the most obvious example.

My observation is that, no matter if the subject matter is negative or positive, there is very little about mainstream intellectual life in the West that is constructive. Nihilism or no nihilism, the objective rarely seems to be things like greater understanding, greater wisdom, more productive lives, etc. There rarely seems to be any objective other than publishing rather than perishing.

And the work of those who get published sets the tone for the rest of us, I think it is safe to say.

A thousand years from now, maybe nobody will care about Ken Wilber. Will anybody care about Daniel Dennett? Billy Graham? Steve Jobs?

On the other hand, a thousand years from now people will probably still refer to the life and work of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Or I could be completely off base and the work of Richard Dawkins has had a positive impact on people who care about truth, justice, etc. as much as the work of Mahatma Gandhi. I don't know. I can only report my perception from my vantage point.

If culture is humans' adaptation to their environment, it makes sense that subjective cognitive material such as where one left his keys could be compromised while collective cultural cognitive material, such as what those keys are for and how to use them, would still influence his behavior.

I know very little about neuroscience, but I wonder if the body's defenses against brain damage and lost brain functioning give some material priority over other material.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/feb/27/culture-death-god-review-terry-eagleton — Wayfarer

Are Eastern traditions more constructive?

And when you're attempting to sell a product, as you've worded it, that product needs to be worth investing in. You can come up with all the advertising, branding, and so on, but it's moot if what is actually watched is garbage. Maybe some people don't watch women's sports because they're sexist or something, but I'm not so sure. — Buxtebuddha

In the big college town where I live I have seen women's college basketball go from being barely on anybody's radar to being a regular sports page cover story. I have seen it go from crowds in the low hundreds and tickets for pocket change to regular, deafeningly loud crowds in the thousands and much higher ticket prices.

What changed? A new athletics director who wanted the school to be competitive and relevant in all sports, not just football and men's basketball.

I witnessed first hand the surge and sustained interest in women's college basketball that radio ads, billboards, and a well-publicized national search for an elite head coach led to.

See what happens when you focus the attention on the product and not on glass ceilings?

— Myttenar

"Global society constitutes a system of inexpressible complexity. It is like a huge central nervous system in which ‘social neurons’ (i.e. people) interact with each other via an infinity of interconnecting and overlapping subsystems. The fundamental dynamic of the system is power, that is the ability of a social group or individual to influence others in accordance with its/his/her interests. Interest is thus the principal, and most effective, means through which power is transmitted.

Here, already, is the starkest possible contrast with our conventional psychology: what animates us is not rational appraisal and considered choice of action, but the push and pull of social power as it manipulates our interest. It is not argument and demonstration of truth which move us to action but the impress of influences of which we may be entirely unaware.

Reason, then, is a tool of power, not a power in itself. Just like moral right, rational right is not of itself compelling and, when it is in nobody's interest to regard it, will be disregarded. Those who - like Thomas Paine for example - seem successful advocates of Reason in its purest form, may fail even themselves to see that it is in fact not reason alone that makes their words persuasive, but the causes (interests) to which reason becomes attached. No doubt Mein Kampf was as persuasive to those already sold on its premises as The Rights of Man was to 18th century revolutionaries in America and France. This does not mean, to those who value reason, that Paine's writing is not worth infinitely more than Hitler's; it means simply, and sadly, that Reason alone is impotent. What really matters is power itself." -- David Smail, Power, Responsibility and Freedom

Also, I often discover books by other thinkers in which Ken Wilber's thinking is in agreement with the author's and is cited for support.

Have those writers been brainwashed?

I don't know much about Ken Wilber. But I did watch a youtube video where he claimed to stop his brainwaves. I think people should be careful about making silly claims otherwise they will find themselves with quack status. — JupiterJess

I would wager every dollar that I am worth that something far fetched could be found in the work of many mainstream intellectuals.

Seeing something far fetched out of context isn't sufficient reason to dismiss an entire career as the work of a quack.

Even Kant, Nietzsche, Hume, Plato, etc. probably had less-than-admirable moments.

Contributing to intellectual traditions does not make one superhuman.

Ken Wilber seems no less of an intellectual to me than, oh, Sam Harris.

— unenlightened

— ArguingWAristotleTiff

See here.

So they are driven to talk about contextualisation, appropriateness, banter, harassment, disempowerment and oppression: all useful concepts, but often invoked where 'let's mind our manners' will do the job well enough. — Cuthbert

When people are on a crusade to do things like destroy "the patriarchy", it won't do the job for them at all to say "Let's mind our manners". On the contrary, they'll likely tell you that those manners were created by men in a male-dominated society in order to keep women in their place and maintain male privilege.

The irony is that they don't see how censoring speech is itself a form of oppression.

What has gotten lost in all of this is respect. People have a right to their thoughts, feelings, beliefs, attitudes, etc. Other people have a right not to be exposed against their will to those thoughts, feelings, beliefs, attitudes, etc. when they are harmful. People on neither side of the issue mutually respects those rights, it seems.

It is all self-interested politics and extremist ideology, it seems safe to say.

The workplace in industrial society probably wasn't very diverse at one time. But it is very diverse now. Part of that diversity includes people who like to indulge in banter, dirty jokes, etc. Condemning them as misogynists, male chauvinists, an old boy network, female enablers of misogyny, etc. is no more inclusive than their words and actions that make the workplace uncomfortable for people not like them. Should feminists in the workplace be allowed to say things in front of everybody like, "Men are all misogynists afraid of losing their privilege"? That is not anymore inclusive than non-African-Americans using the n word.

But not only do we have people in this thread who are not speaking on behalf of respect and inclusiveness for all, we have them saying that some people's thoughts and words "belong in the toilet". We have them saying that anybody who tells certain jokes is a contributor to genocide and other evils.

It is illiberalism, basically. It is McCarthyism.

None us are omniscient. None of us can read other people's minds. Somebody telling a joke could be a card-carrying misogynist, racist, homophobe, etc. Or he/she could be caving in
to pressure to fit in against his/her better judgement. Or he/she may not know better; he/she may honestly believe that the joke is harmless and would be surprised to learn that anybody was hurt or offended by it. Only he/she knows. It is not the job of the government or other organizations that serve the public to judge people. Moral witch hunts are not a good use of resources by government or business. That is probably why the diversity program at one job I had said, "Focus on the behavior, not the person".

Clearly, we have people here who want to co-opt government and business to indirectly censor things that they believe cause social harm. In my humble opinion, they are no less illiberal than a business owner who denies homosexuals public accommodations as a way to advance his/her ideology, agenda, etc.

Everybody's focus should be on finding a happy medium that makes the workplace and other environments as inclusive as possible in a diverse, pluralistic liberal democracy. Calling people misogynists cannot be part of that inclusiveness. Insisting on having the right to tell jokes that some people find hurtful or offensive cannot be part of it either.

Alas, we live in a time when society is extremely polarized. Things like compromise, respect for those who disagree with you, finding common ground, etc. seem to be a thing of the past. Just look at how this thread has unfolded if you do not know what I mean.

My guess is that watching TV on a really nice big screen is a pleasure. If they can buy that pleasure on sale on Black Friday, well... that doesn't mean they are consumer zombies.

Most people (living lives of quiet desperation as we do) don't have a whole lot of choices in our lives. Getting the big TV or not might be one of the few choices we get to make. Most of our choices are already made. Will I get up to go to work? If I want an income, I will get up. I don't like my job but I will put up with it because we need the money. I'd like a really nice car and a nice home but I don't have enough money for those things. And so on and on. — Bitter Crank

One can have pleasure without being a capitalist consumer. Taking in a sunrise is one example.

Being a capitalist consumer is a lot of stress and headaches. You have to borrow money--and then pay it back, plus interest--to buy that TV set, car, McMansion in the suburbs, etc. You have to arrive early (you should have seen the usually empty parking lot behind my apartment at 5am one Black Friday), spend hours in line, etc. to get those deals. And then a lot of what you buy, whether you keep it or give it away as a gift, collects dust and/or ends up in a landfill. Then you repeat the process next year.

Think of the stress and money that would be saved if you just borrowed your neighbor's cordless drill on the rare occasion you need one rather than going through Black Friday to get a deal on something that will mostly collect dust.

But in order for capitalism to work enough people have to be able and willing to consume more and more stuff.

As some observers have pointed out, with jobs outsourced to Third World countries for sweatshop wages, and with stagnant wages at home the past 50 years, the only way that consumption has been able to keep going in the U.S. is through credit and a lot of (probably unprecedented) household debt.

I think that it would be too generous to call it "consumer zombies". Helpless fools seems more fitting.

Or is it really fulfilling to go ballistic because a product does not deliver the benefits you were promised? Taking it out on an innocent person working the phones in a call center who did not design or make the product and is powerless to do much (and is often being forced to follow a script), is that how a liberated person acts? Is that how a person empowered by having choices acts?

Being liberated and having choices would be learning to cook your own satisfying meals from scratch, make your own living room furniture with your own tools (or your neighbors), create your own entertainment, etc. Depending on other people who do not have your best interests in mind to make you happy, make you feel free/empowered/liberated, etc. and then taking your disappointment, frustration and anger out on powerless innocent people is not be anything that I would call good, no matter how much marginal, fleeting pleasure it yields.

Being a capitalist consumer is not much different from being a capitalist worker.

It is when it is abusive power types that care more about delegation and power than development and growth. — schopenhauer1

I don't see why that person would be hated. It is the managers that cause division, favoritism, keeps only the people that work harder accountable and allow others to slide by, and not just tolerates the nonsense but causes it by talking about other staff, etc. That's a Trump-like managerial environment. — schopenhauer1

Yeah, but much of that clashing is bound to happen when you have fact that jobs without very limiting features (as Bitter Crank has described) are scarce. It says something about the human condition that we cannot think of better things to do than some of the more soul less jobs out there. People are so programmed to have tasks to accomplish, that they will take inanity over boredom. Part of the reason to not throw more people into the world is the inanity of much of the economic sphere. People are forced into a high likelihood of these types of jobs. You can turn it around and blame the worker's attitude, but how do you know that isn't just a "meme" that keeps people turning on each other than the structures itself? In other words, the tables can always be turned on blame. — schopenhauer1

I hope so. I hope there is a better way than the antiquated inanity of the last 100 years give or take of the modern workplace. — schopenhauer1

It's not just work.

Before people can go through all that inanity in the workplace there has to be consumer demand for the products and services being produced. Today in the U.S. was Black Friday at most retailers (even though it is Thursday; even though it is not Friday yet). How much of the goods purchased today do you think people really wanted or needed? Steve Jobs went as far as saying, "It's not the consumer's job to know what they want".

It's how capitalism works. In Global Problems and the Culture of Capitalism Richard H. Robbins shows how capitalism requires several elements in order for it to work. Two of those are an inexpensive, disciplined labor force and a class of consumers willing to purchase more and more commodities. He shows the ways that cultural change occurred that changed people from being frugal to being willing consumers of more and more commodities. For example, he shows how the attractions at Walt Disney World in Orlando, FL were designed to do downplay in the minds of visitors the damage that capitalism does to human rights, the environment, etc. They were designed to mold more willing consumers in the global capitalist system. It is all thoroughly documented/footnoted. Even if you aren't interested in reading the entire book, the chapter on the creation of the capitalist consumer won't disappoint you.

Therefore, I find that a lot of the people I interact with are very boring. They have no creativity. They have no intellectual life. They might attend church regularly, but they have very little of what I would call a spiritual life. All they know is Monday Night Football, "The Big Bang Theory", trips to Hawaii and other made-for-the-consumer tourism, etc. It feels like the only thing they know how to do is be consumers, to be honest.

All of the research that I read about says that that consumption doesn't make us happier. It does make our lives extremely stressful, I think it is safe to say.

All I can tell you is that to be happy you will probably have to create your own way of life outside of capitalism. During those times when capitalism does not have a choke hold on you--such as when you are not on the job--discover things that have not been commodified and watered down for mass production and consumption, such as nature; work on projects of your own imagination while you have a break from working on market-researched, McDonaldized, uninspiring projects; learn to appreciate things that capitalism has little or no use for, such as the art of homemaking; etc.

Capitalism probably can't last forever. I know of nobody who honestly says that capitalism is sustainable.

If you need to hear something refreshing about work and economy, read Wendell Berry's essay "Christianity and the Survival of Creation". Even if you are not religious/theistic, it is a refreshing reminder that not everybody thinks in lockstep with capitalism about work and economy.

Ronald Wright points out in A Short History of Progress that hunter-gatherer societies were egalitarian and that civilization is hierarchical. He calls civilization "A fool's paradise".

The work that has shown me more than any other that this capitalist misery is not inevitable is Grassroots Post-Modernism: Remaking the Soil of Cultures, by Gustavo Esteva and Madhu Suri-Prakash (I read the 1998 edition). The most riveting book that I have read. Their thesis is that among the world's oppressed majority--who have only suffered from capitalism--a post-modern epic is unfolding and those people are moving beyond all of the things like the issues that you bring up.

The whole global capitalist system is oppressive and unhealthy, not just the hierarchical organizations/beaurocracy that are part of its infrastructure. Things like work and business can--and may eventually be ecologically required to--be done outside of all of it. During the time that the system does not have a choke hold on you, there's nothing stopping you from behaving other ways economically.

"Csikszentmihalyi writes:

An autotelic person needs few material possessions and little entertainment, comfort, power, or fame because so much of what he or she does is already rewarding. Because such persons experience flow in work, in family life, when interacting with people, when eating, even when alone with nothing to do, they are less dependent on the external rewards that keep others motivated to go on with a life composed of routines. They are more autonomous and independent because they cannot be as easily manipulated with threats or rewards from the outside. At the same time, they are more involved with everything around them because they are fully immersed in the current of life." -- Autotelic (Wikipedia)


The words above describe me.

It is a matter of learning to work around all of the rules, commands/directions, structure, etc. and do good, fulfilling work.

I could be wrong, but I think that some managers/supervisors are relieved when they have a self-starter and they know that there will be productivity, efficiency and good results with minimal intervention/supervision.

Some people overmanage and that can be deflating to someone who is a self-starter, autotelic, etc. The trick is to learn to appreciate the drive of the person who overmanages. It is easy to appreciate when juxtaposed with the attitude of a manager/supervisor who does not care. Nothing is more deflating than working under the authority of someone who is happy with mediocrity or failure, only cares about doing enough to keep his/her job, and/or favors personal relationships over work performance. I have never heard of poor morale under a manager supervisor who cares or cares too much.

I think that often the reason why a person in an organization is hated is because he/she does not practice favoritism, holds everybody accountable, does not tolerate nonsense, etc. I think that people confuse that personal managerial style with an oppressive hierarchy in an oppressive organization.

Maybe it's just me, but I think that most of the rules are in place to facilitate success, not to control me. The problem is, most people ignore most of the rules/policies, so you never have any way of comparing outcomes.

I would say that the stress is not inherent in the structure of the organization but is the result of workers' goals, intentions, attitudes etc. clashing with the organization's goals, intentions, attitudes etc.

The latter may be the biggest reason why companies do not hesitate to replace humans with artificial intelligence.

I agree that some shit is smellier than other shit. There are grades of it. — unenlightened

No.

It is apples and oranges, not varying degrees of the same thing.

But it all belongs in the toilet, and none of it by the water cooler. — unenlightened

Your personal attitude towards it contributes nothing to resolving the issue.

It could, however, encourage the behavior that you detest. The fact that it gets people to respond like you are responding probably affirms the attitudes, beliefs, power structures, etc. that generate it.

If a joke is so bad that it harms people, it probably isn't a funny joke.

Something objective that can't be refuted is probably going to be a lot more effective than something subjective like "That belongs in the toilet". Try, "That is not funny. The punchline is based on a stereotype that educated people started seeing as false a long time ago".

You can call that a straw man if you like, and it will indeed be a pattern, as long as people seek to justify oppressive, demeaning, and totally unnecessary behaviour. — unenlightened

Saying that logic does not matter is not a good idea, especially if you want rational people to hear what you are trying to say.

Speaking of logic, I hope your use of the words "justify oppressive, demeaning, and totally unnecessary behaviour" do not refer to me. I brought up a point made by a woman who was arguing against something that she saw as harmful to women. We can only conclude that you think that it is "justifying oppressive, demeaning, and totally unnecessary behaviour" for someone to think critically, rationally and objectively about something and then share her concern about how it harms women.

If "justify oppressive, demeaning, and totally unnecessary behaviour" refers to somebody else in this thread, where is it? I haven't seen anybody trying to justify anything. I have seen people expressing frustration with laws that they believe make life miserable for innocent, harmless people.

Even if you do not see things the way that they do, a little empathy would probably bridge the gulf between you and them and give resolving the issue a better chance.

"It's a fine line between, "You look nice today," "You look nice today" with a leering grin and an ogling chest-level stare, and “You look nice today” if you’re worried that not looking nice might cost you your job. Contextualizing a workplace conversation helps us determine what falls on which side of the harassment line, but it’s still a distinction that’s extremely difficult to articulate, and even harder to prove. A company can't control the actions or words of an individual employee. They can only set policies that create clear expectations of what is acceptable work behavior, and provide an easy, hassle-free avenue to address issues." -- Sexual Jokes And Lewd Conversations In The Workplace: Where's The Line?

When I was a lad in days of yore, there were a thousand schoolboy jokes about the foolishness of the Irishman, always called Paddy,who always worked on a building site. And another thousand about a well endowed black man whose name I forget.

This was the time when there were places advertised for rent with signs, "no Irish, no blacks, no dogs".

To be the butt of derogatory jokes is to be subject to ritual humiliation, and is part of the process and justification of 'endangerment'. Jokes are fake news, that rely on, and so reinforce, the acceptance of the unspoken stereotype. Jokes have always been at the heart of prejudice, bullying, and systematic oppression, as a glance at German Nazi propaganda will illustrate. and accusations of hypersensitivity and lack of sense of humour are just as commonplace accusations in defence of oppression. — unenlightened

I am beginning to see a pattern. It seems like whenever you respond directly to me we get a straw man or something else that misses the point.

I think that the point Kipnis was making is that there's a big difference between a woman's boss telling her "Perform oral sex on me! I could terminate your employment, you know!" and a group of guys sharing a dirty joke at the water cooler.

If that were the case, the money supply could be reduced, solving the problem. Too much money in circulation chasing too few goods causes inflation.

Metal coins (gold, silver) are not impervious to inflation, either. In ancient times currency was inflated (or debased) by adding base metals to the precious metals, allowing for more, less valuable, coins to be struck. — Bitter Crank

The point that I am trying to make is that the problem is the supply of money exceeding the value of existing goods and services. To pay dividends to investors, pay debts to creditors, etc. there has to be more economic growth. For there to be more economic growth more things have to be commodified. For more things to be commodified, the supply of resources for production has to increase. To increase the supply of resources for production, people have to be dispossessed, ecosystems have to be destroyed, etc.

We are not living within our ecological means. A supply of money in excess of the total value of existing goods has a lot to do with that.

"Kipnis also notes that the concept of sexual harassment has expanded to cover things like dirty jokes in the workplace. "So that's where it's both infantilizing and where it also overemphasizes female vulnerability," she said. "And I think women have been complicit in this by not being able to separate out being offended from being endangered. The whole issue of our sense of vulnerability to rape is the hinge there." -- Against Feminist Orthodoxy

Madman — Madman

Money is just a medium of exchange.

Unless every transaction is made through bartering--something not possible in the complex globalized economy we have on a heavily-populated planet--something has to serve as a medium of exchange. If you eliminate money then something else like precious metals (instead of exchanging dollars, euros, pesos, etc. for an iPhone, exchanging gold for an iPhone) will have to serve as a medium for exchange.

But even if we do all bartering or replace dollars, euros, pesos, etc. with gold coins, we won't be eliminating capitalism. We still will not have eliminated a system where every individual acts according to what he/she rationally calculates maximizes his/her utility and the invisible hand magically makes all of that self-interest result in maximum collective good. We will not have eliminated the greed, exploitation, etc. that such a system encourages. We will not have eliminated the need for inexpensive labor. Inequality will still be required for the system to work.

As I understand it, the real problem with money is that the amount of it in circulation is greater than the amount of resources available for production and consumption. To give people something in exchange for their money we have to keep commodifying more and more things and cutting costs wherever we can (labor, environmental protection, etc.)--we have to mortgage the future.

Furthermore, rationing everything through price is a problem because prices do not include all of the costs of making a product--they do not include externalities like pollution, unsafe working conditions, loss of biodiversity, absence of the right to unionize and collectively bargain, etc.

Until we start living within our means, and until we have transactions that honestly account for all costs, the problems you think can be eliminated by eradicating money and replacing workers with AI will likely continue.

↪WISDOMfromPO-MO Traumatic brain injury, chronic traumatic encephalopathy, alzheimer, and such are not all-or-nothing conditions. They generally occur on a scale from mild to severe. Some people with TBI, CTE, and other brain disorders are able to function quite well in ordinary situations. That doesn't mean they aren't seriously impaired, in general.

There are people with alzheimer disease who have written books, and there are people with alzheimer's who have no mental coherence or control over their bodily function. Then too, we don't know how much assistance the alzheimer book writer received. The effects of brain trauma may suddenly come to the foreground when a person is under stress, and they just fall apart.

A professor friend who does bio-research had a very bad concussion from slipping on ice. There was extensive bleeding, surgery was required, etc. He seems fine in ordinary situations, but he reports memory problems and problems managing the mass of details involved in research. His wife who has always worked with him in the lab has taken up the slack.

Even people without PTSD, TBI, CTE -- just people whose lives involve a lot of ordinary stress -- may display decreased mental functioning. Take them out of the stressful situations, and they return to normal.

Social skills may not be affected as much as cognitive functions. Some brain injured people display normal social affect. That really helps a great deal. But, others have difficulty socially -- and they tend to be judged as more severely affected. (Some of us have social difficulties without any brain injuries.)

Normal social behavior is pretty important. — Bitter Crank

If somebody can't walk due to a broken leg he/she still practices locomotion in the same way--moving from the kitchen to the dining room after cooking a meal; standing in line at a supermarket checkout and then moving forward when the line moves; etc. The map/filter/structure between him/her and the non-human world is unchanged. The difference is moving according to that map/filter/structure without putting weight on one leg. Another difference is that the map/filter/structure has more presence in his/her conscious mind--he/she has to think about locomotion and how it is practiced rather than doing it out of habit and not being conscious of it.

That map/filter/structure is culture.

The broken leg is like the concussed brain.

But there is no "Philosophy of the Leg" forum.

Philosophy of the mind is a different story. It is a major intellectual concern involving many disciplines/traditions. A major element in philosophy of the mind is the human brain. Hence, questions like "Does your mind end at your skull?" are asked.

My question is about what brain functioning tells us about the role of culture--that map/filter/structure that varies across space and time and is independent of the existence of any individual being--in our lives.

It seems to me that as the biology of an individual changes--aging; an injury; diminished or lost functioning--one of the last, if not the last, things to go is the impact of that map/filter/structure. Hearing loss may biologically diminish one's sense of sound, but he/she will still seek sound from a TV set and avoid sound from a construction site (noise). The impact of sounds that we neither seek nor avoid, such as the unpredictable sound of the wind, will be gone before the impact of sounds that we have culturally been conditioned to seek or avoid.

What I am trying to say is that if diminished functioning of the brain--the location of thoughts, emotions and many other things that are believed to be essential to the experience of being a functioning human rather than being, say, a rock--does little to reduce or remove the impact of culture then we are greatly underestimating the role of culture in shaping our lives. In other words, much of what we assume to be human biology or the non-human world may really be culture.

If culture is as powerful as I am suggesting, we may have to rethink a lot of what we believe about sexuality, disease, diet, intelligence, etc.--things that we overwhelmingly attribute to biology and the natural environment.

↪WISDOMfromPO-MO Very well stated. In the other gun thread, the argument I gave in favor of retaining the constitutional right to bear arms is that this right is grounded in the natural right to self-defense. Put in a syllogism, it looks like this:

I have the natural right to defend my life and property.
I have the right to own the proper means of defending my life and property.
Firearms are one proper means of defending my life and property.
Therefore, I have a right to own firearms.

This was the chief principled argument I gave, but apparently, it's easier to endlessly compose infantile, sarcastic quips than engage with such arguments, judging by the responses. — Thorongil

I think that the way this thread has unfolded greatly supports the thesis that inspired its conception: Enlightenment progress is being reversed, and it is liberals/progressives who are responsible.

The usual narrative says that liberals/progressives fight for liberty, equality, and the rights of the individual; fight against oppression and the abuse of power; etc. while conservatives resist the expansion of liberty and individual rights; maintain the status quo; and seek to undo progress.

Guns are dangerous. Guns are a major threat to public safety and public health. Guns are involved in many avoidable, preventable early deaths. We get that.

What is the liberal/progressive response to that public health crisis? Better educate the public about the risks of guns to individual and public health and safety? Better educate the public about more effective alternatives--such as Neighborhood Watch--for protecting one's self, loved ones, property, neighborhood and community? Empower individuals and better inform them to make their own decisions about the relationships between firearms, themselves and their communities? No.

The liberal/progressive response has, as far as I can tell, been to increasingly call for taking away what most people recognize as a right: the possession of a gun for one's personal protection. Some go even farther and say that it never was a right of any kind in the first place.

Some of the same people who lecture us--when the issue at hand is same-sex marriage, abortion, etc.--about how taking away rights is not the American way make no effort to employ tact or be diplomatic with respect to guns: even though the status of gun rights is not clear (just look at the disagreement over that question in this thread alone) they are not going to err on the side of caution or give any benefit of the doubt like they do with other rights; denying or taking away a right is their intention, and they have no hesitation and no qualms in saying so. Some of the same people who lecture us about how American history in particular, and Enlightenment progress in general, has been about expanding rights make no secret about their wish to do some subtraction in the rights column with respect to firearms.

This is not about what kinds of guns existed when the U.S. Constitution was drafted and what kinds exist now. It is not about unfettered freedom from any kind of regulations any more than freedom of the press, freedom of religion, etc. are about unfettered freedom--all rights have limits. It is not about the U.S. versus "other industrialized countries" (which gets very tiresome). It is about the rights of individuals and the role of those rights in a just society, in moral progress, etc.

I am not sold on "It is not hypocrisy". But even if these liberals/progressives who can't wait to see governments deny or take away gun rights are not being hypocrites, I think that their language and their lack of tact/diplomacy betrays either internal inconsistencies in the idea of liberal democracy or, on their own part, a denial of or backtracking on Enlightenment progress, universal human rights, etc. The fact that when they say that individuals do not or should not have gun rights they add that the government--and only the government--should have guns is the most telling thing about their viewpoint and the worst indictment of their position on liberty, democracy, etc. What's next? Words cause a lot of harm, so only the government should have freedom of speech, maybe?

If guns, which, unlike tanks, submarines, nuclear missiles, etc. have historically been owned and used by individuals, are the dangerous, horrible menaces that liberals/progressives say that they are then the liberal/progressive thing to do is to call for complete eradication of them and to trust free, informed, responsible individual citizens to make the right choices in realizing that goal.

So they are planned! — charleton

That is not what I said.

I said that they often seem to be planned well in advance .

Another thing I have noticed is that they all involve guns never imagined by the people writing the constitution at the time of writing.
I also note that automatics are "illegal" but a kit to turn a gun into an automatic can be legally bought at exactly the same time as the gun.
I also note the high yield of morons in the USA generally, and in the gun lobby in particular. — charleton

Anybody who more than casually keeps up with politics and current events is reminded of such superficial elements in the gun issue all of the time.

Any thing else you want to say? — charleton

In other words, if you want to look below the surface and try to identify the underlying causes of gun violence, do it alone and keep it to yourself. Only narrow, everything-is- black-or-white, superficial ideology will be respected.

10-4.

Dollars to doughnut, you won't find 5 female shooters in a hundred gun rampages. — Akanthinos

The point is that it not always men, and that I forgot about maybe the most infamous one where the shooter was a woman.

Good luck with that Banno. Those who are financially vested in gun/ammo have money and power and people who write the laws as well as people who pass them...

Fix the monetary corruption by virtue of passing anti-trust laws. We, as Americans, cannot assume that those in power are good actors. Our laws do not reflect this. The facts do not support it. Unfortunately, those in power write their own rules. — creativesoul

The Supreme Court of the United States has ruled that corporations are persons with rights; that, I believe, monetary contributions to politicians are free speech protected by the First Amendment (I say that it is bribery); etc.

Congress, the President, and the Supreme Court have also upheld the gun rights of private citizens.

Which one do you see activists spending a disproportionate amount of their resources trying to undo?

Which one do you see the news media--FOX notwithstanding--frequently casting in a negative light?

The government gets to have and do a lot of things your average citizen doesn't. Police and military having weapons while others do not is not frightening to me. The military has Tomahawk missiles, but I'm not bummed I can't have one. Also, police brutality is a separate topic. — ProbablyTrue

Your subjective feelings are irrelevant. The question is: is owning a gun for one's personal protection a right?

Do we need to be at an all time high to call for changes to regulations? Just because things were once worse doesn't mean they couldn't be better than they are currently. — ProbablyTrue

This thread is about individuals' right to own a gun for their personal protection.

This thread is about taking away or denying rights.

If something is an inalienable right of individual's that means that the statistics about things like crime are irrelevant.

The point is that while liberals/progressives have increasingly conflated guns with homicide the overall rate of gun-related deaths in the U.S. has declined.

That being said, even if the numbers have increased, armed citizens are certainly not the answer. There are almost zero instances of an armed citizen defending himself with force against abusive law enforcement. — ProbablyTrue

Completely irrelevant.

You asked if the people being shot all of the time are not part of the oppressed and vulnerable. I pointed out that it is the police--the ones those aforementioned liberals/progressives are fine with possessing guns while they say that the rest of us have no business possessing guns--who are shooting those unarmed, vulnerable, oppressed people.

Admittedly I didn't search forever, but I couldn't find info on the last 20 years. I did find info from 1999-2015 here. From what I can tell it has been pretty consistent. — ProbablyTrue

"Yet the current rate of firearm violence is still far lower than in 1993, when the rate was 6.21 such deaths per 100,000 people, compared with 3.4 in 2016."

Groups of people that are being shot up with a fair amount of regularity should count as vulnerable peoples don't you think?... — ProbablyTrue

It is the police who are shooting those people a lot of the time.

It is those police shootings--and police brutality without guns like in the case of Eric Garner ("I can't breathe!")--that the protests and media scrutiny have been about.

Yet, we have liberals/progressives saying that the police and military should have guns and that the rest of us have no right to possess guns.

As for the increasing intensity, every new shooting acts as an exclamation point to their original call for gun control. Even the slaughter of twenty elementary school children didn't move the needle. Indifference can be maddening... — ProbablyTrue

The rate of gun related deaths in the U.S. is down from 20 years ago.

And most of the mass shootings probably could have been prevented with interventions that have nothing to do with the manufacture and distribution of firearms. For example, if I recall correctly, in a recent school shooting the assailant targeted classmates who had bullied him. Stopping the bullying probably would have prevented that shooting. Local and national campaigns to end bullying are already underway.

Or if asked if they would be okay with a gun free America they answer honestly. You can't blame them for that. — ProbablyTrue

It is one thing to say that society should be free of guns and to work to make that a reality without compromising other people's rights.

It is another thing to say that possessing a gun for one's personal protection is not a right and that only the police and military should be allowed to have guns.

The US could get along without guns. Other countries already do. Plus, this fervor for and fetishisation of guns by the right is fairly recent, despite what the NRA would have you think. This article goes into the history at length. — ProbablyTrue

The U.S. could get along without cheese.

But nobody is saying that the right to cheese does not exist and that only the government should be able to make, possess and consume cheese.

It is about individual rights and state power, not about pragmatic outcomes.

If pragmatic outcomes are really the issue, like I showed in another thread, a new study concluded that pollution is responsible for 15 times more early deaths than war and violent crimes. Do you hear liberals/progressives saying that polluting is not in any way a right and that at the same time only the government should be allowed to pollute?

Is having tunnel vision and spending all of one's resources fighting against guns--devices that are used for a variety of things besides killing people and most of which, as far as I know, are never used to kill people (how much pollution can you say does not kill anybody?)--really the pragmatic thing to do?

With all due respect, it looks to me like liberals/progressives are as obsessed with guns as their opponents in the gun debate.

This right to arms is enshrined in our Constitution, but unintended consequences are a hallmark of the best made plans. I see no reason why we can't reevaluate the rules we made/make for ourselves if the consequences become too great. Do you think the great thinkers of the enlightenment would frown upon us reconsidering vague and archaic documents put in place by men of yore? The Bill of Rights is America's holy book, but it should not be seen as eternal and infallible. — ProbablyTrue

I agree with all of that.

But the people I am talking about do not think like you do. They say that no right of any kind to possess a gun for one's personal protection ever existed in the first place and that only the police and military should be allowed to possess guns. If social conditions have changed in a way that warrants reconsidering our personal and collective relationships with firearms, I doubt that many reasonable people would oppose such reconsideration. But to use language that implies not recognizing rights that most people recognize or calling for rights to be taken away is illiberal. And it is hypocritical when such language comes from people who condemn it in other matters such as the right to same-sex marriage.

Ah yes, I remember fondly the passages of Voltaire in which he proclaimed the human right to own guns; the eloquence of D'alembert in his passionate defense of rifles; Spinoza's more geometrico proofs of the divine right to arms. However could we have forgotten? — StreetlightX

People should be incarcerated for possessing a firearm? Or just fined?

Manufacturing firearms other than for the purpose of supplying the police and military: a prison sentence?

Will museums see any guns in their collections confiscated? Will such firearms be taken out of sight, or will the government display them in government-run museums?

Thoughts? — Posty McPostface

Our individual and collective intellectual experiences are really just a big, long-running conversation over many millennia and across the globe.

We do not have to have formal, credential-awarding educational institutions to have that conversation. Furthermore, those institutions--especially at the elementary and secondary levels--are increasingly overwhelmingly interested in training workers and have very little interest in being shepherds of intellectual and cultural traditions.

Why do you want to centralize intellectual life into a handful of people with the formal title of "teacher"?

If you want the conversation to keep going and keep developing/evolving, do it. As often as you can, do things like saying to that stranger in line behind you at the grocery store, "Yesterday I read about this new theory/idea/angle/perspective. What do you think?"

"Diseases caused by pollution were responsible in 2015 for an estimated 9 million premature deaths -- 16% of all deaths worldwide -- three times more deaths than AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria combined; and fifteen times more than all wars and other forms of violence. It kills more people than smoking, hunger and natural disasters. In some countries, it accounts for one in four deaths." (emphasis mine)

Source: Pollution responsible for 16 percent of early deaths globally

I left out violence against ecosystems.

Maybe an accounting of all violence past and present would show that the Industrial Revolution has been the most violent single event ever and the source of the most continued violence.

"Yet the current rate of firearm violence is still far lower than in 1993, when the rate was 6.21 such deaths per 100,000 people, compared with 3.4 in 2016. The high rate in the early 1990s was linked to a variety of conditions, most notably the emergence of a large and violent market for crack cocaine. It’s too soon to determine the causes of recent increases in gun violence or whether the upward trend will continue." -- Five myths about gun violence

Again, the rate of gun-related deaths has declined overall in the last 20 years.

America might seem more violent than anybody else, but remember North America was colonized by Europeans, who, as it happens, have had a rather bloody history, locally and around the world. Are Americans violent? Sure we are -- just like everybody else. We have given ourselves far more convenient, cost-effective means to actually carry out our violent urges than most other people have. — Bitter Crank

I think that you are applying to me what other people have said.

I never said anything about how violent the U.S. is compared to other places.

I asked why it takes mass murder with guns to get people angry about violence and condemning violence when violence is abundant in many other forms.

I gave the global violence that can be attributed to the West as an example of those other forms of violence.

And some of the time when I have worked in call centers I have taken calls from non-Americans. They were verbally abusive as well, so it is not anything unique to the U.S.

Are guns the problem? Of course they are. — Bitter Crank

According to what I read the other night, the rate of gun-related deaths in the U.S. has declined significantly over the past 20 years.

There has been a recent upsurge, but the overall rate is still much lower than 20 years ago, I read.

I sense a contradiction in this paragraph. How would someone determine when entering a formal market is their only choice?... — Nils Loc

He wants or needs something, but he can't supply it himself.

Wouldn't such a decrease in the demand to travel outside of one's own geographic locality make air travel too expensive for the average joe... — Nils Loc

Just because people withdraw from, say, the market for cauliflower does not mean that the market for air travel would operate any less efficiently. Supply would adjust to demand, and prices would adjust.

Airavel wouldn't be there as choice. Whatever the old market was it wouldn't be there anymore and the new kind of market would be the formal market(?) — Nils Loc

Where do you get that one market shutting down results in an unrelated other market shutting down?

You believe that if households decide to make their own hand soap rather than getting it through markets that air travel would cease to exist?

One of the terms you might find useful here is "externalized costs". — Bitter Crank

I know.

I'm​ a picky writer, I guess. Using the word "externalities" did not feel like it would have the desired effect.

If chicken is produced in the U.S., shipped to China where it is made into​ frozen chicken nuggets, shipped back to the U.S., and then sold in a package labeled "Product of the U.S.A.", the consumer probably does not know about 1% of the costs of making that product and the retail price probably doesn't reflect much more of those costs. Things like peasants being dispossessed to free up the land to build the factory, young women being recruited under false pretenses to leave their families and move far away to work in that factory, etc. are nowhere on the consumer's radar and are not reflected in the price.

Consume more local products when operating in formal markets, and increase economic activity outside of price rationing and formal markets, and we don't have those problems to the extent that we do.

"Consume less" does not break the cycle. Buying only two bags of the frozen chicken nuggets each year rather than four bags does not break the cycle.

Wayfarer It's interesting that the rebuilt Europe went with social justice policies that where never taken on by the USA - universal health care being the most obvious and costly example.

The myth of the self-suporting individual strikes me as a potent source for this; in a world were each man (!) looks out only for himself, any common, shared wealth is abhorrent. Support structures that allow folk to get back on their feet after adversity never developed in the US, leading to what you describe as the "societal bottom (being) essentially kicked away". — Banno

Oversimplification.

If you want a brief source that tells you a lot of the story, take a few minutes to read A history of why the US is the only rich country without universal health care.

"However, just as court-ordered child support does not make sense when a woman goes to a sperm bank and obtains sperm from a donor who has not agreed to father the resulting child, it does not make sense when a woman is impregnated (accidentally or possibly by her choice) from sex with a partner who has not agreed to father a child with her. In consenting to sex, neither a man nor a woman gives consent to become a parent, just as in consenting to any activity, one does not consent to yield to all the accidental outcomes that might flow from that activity..." Source: Is Forced Fatherhood Fair?.